The SFFaudio Podcast #844 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Noseless Horror by Robert E. Howard and The Haunted Corridors by William Hamilton Osborne

The SFFaudio Podcast #844 – The Noseless Horror by Robert E. Howard (34 minutes) and The Haunted Corridors by William Hamilton Osborne (1 hour 37 minutes). Both are read by Tommy Patrick Ryan. These are followed by a discussion of both. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Alex (Pulpcovers), Cora Buhlert, and Tommy Patrick Ryan.

Talked about on today’s show:
Thomas, two stories, Magazine Of Horror, February 1971, Mystery Magazine, October 1, 1918, haunted by the image, very different, some similarities, pulp magazines, a lot less about Mystery Magazine, one of the first mystery pulp magazines, 1917, into the 20s, a break, bought by Street & Smith, merged into another magazine, later volumes, quite interesting, this is a science fiction story, improperly done, kind of a mystery story, always reliable Robert E. Howard, mystery/horror, Agatha Christie style, The God In The Bowl, police procedural, major flaws in both, more forgivable, generally flawed, much faster, doesn’t linger over its problems, predictable, fun, the full reveal, some interesting ideas, a more current reader, leaving women completely out, racism, such a strong powerful scary looking brute, red herring, the history of the mummy, put on a naive hat, a cynical hat, a little obvious, only 3 people in the house, one of them has no nose, inflated in the fire, well done, The Black Stranger, vengeance from beyond the grave, Vale Of Lost Women, a sharp sword is a hardy incantation, A Witch Shall Be Born, fight with gods, being racist, interesting article/review, Adventure Fantastic, pointed out a couple of things, forgotten, characters in Skull Face, reused names all the time, her liked certain names, a name to conjure with, not that many Sikh names, used interchangeably, by pulp standards, using the racism as part of the red herring, I don’t like the look of him, missing a nose, made me cringe a lot, what do I look like oriental?, we’ve rejected the use of that word, generally in society, eastern, people from India or East Asia, people from the middle east, all east, not referring to Siberia, Eastern Catholic churches, the counter to the idea that this story is racist, he did a particular thing, Noseless first, page 20, aided?, really good job with the accents, you’re a real man, the compliment, that is straight out of Kilping, Gunga Din, ignorance, the outlook at the time, a useful insight, his dark skin, his missing nose, his propitious strength, Howard’s intention, the hero of our story, sympathetic characters of color, N’Longa, a cliche character, the hero of those stories, sympathetic muslim characters, Saladin, the knight from Ireland, Cormac Fitzgoffery, Talbot Mundy, recently scanned by a collector, 1912, six years later, one stands on its own, The Soul Of A Regiment, a regiment can never die, a non-white doing the good thing, a very scary title, The Damned Old Nigger, a fez, a story building, it isn’t the skin it’s the man, it comes from a racist time period, there are exceptions, a British name, the unnamed narrator, Dr. Watson, the crazy Egyptologist, a Baskerville style mansion, the servant, the rival who comes back from the dead, he pulls a Lovecraft and faints, great white hunter, in a fight with the Afghans, as anti-racist as you can get in about 1928, nobody knows, this story doesn’t fit anywhere, written in two sessions, the feel changes, then we get action, an infodump at the end, such a great sentence by sentence guy, full of great ideas, handled terribly, a better story because it’s handled so well and so quickly, science fiction, crime story, the watchman threw me straight out the window, a crime magazine, reincarnation, 15 ideas?, so science fictiony, H.G. Wells might have done something with this idea, there’s no radio stations yet, the touches that we go to, the tone is all over the place, I’m gonna die tomorrow, what his other stuff is like, a lot of gender stuff in here, Queen Victoria was a man, Charles Martel was a woman, interesting, just thrown out there, no completely impossible, we know he had sons, very casual, trans by the way, Cleopatra, we would consider ugly, not a beautiful woman, so successful with men, coins are like official portraits, the same idea of accuracy, a really sexy woman on the coin, Hannibal’s Children by John Maddox Roberts, awkward, distracting and not in a good way, plays in, a professor and a scientist, Virginia is the beautiful daughter, professor of English literature, dime novel, 10 pounds of shit into a 5 pound bag, sparky but it fizzles, how cringey, how to pronounce it, let’s agree, two heads are better than one, that could be something interesting to explore, already super dense, made it hard to read, 15 pages vs. 13 pages, an hour 40, so much longer, back in Michigan, fancy sound equipment, the ending part where they’re in Egypt, a much larger portion, the cop and the shakedown artists, a comedy?, completely superfluous, supposed to be a detective magazine, history, that’s amazing, one of the things they don’t explore, making notes in their private journals, there’s no secrets anymore, why Jesse is weird, everything’s the past, the present doesn’t really exist, still annoyed with Jesse, the future doesn’t exist, everything we’re doing is looking backwards, there’s no more secrets now, we all learn sign language, that Robert Redford movie Sneakers (1992), The Quiet Place, what are the implications, love story through time, a Lincoln speech, kinda like it, on the cover, saw this cover Galactic Central (Philsp.com), looks Lovecraftian, the truths revealed are kinda stupid, The Black Cat, The Thrill Book, higher standards, all about the ideas, a counterpoint to that, a terrible story, it’s not good, it’s too long, such a good comparison, not innovative, entirely derivative, Robert E. Howard’s ability, a lot better than most pulp writers, the trunk of unfinished stuff, in a week, 2 days, banged it out, still better than most stuff being published today, Don Mark Lemon’s The White Death, a western story set in Mexico, Valley Of The Lost aka King Of The Forgotten People, evoke actual fear, Connor recorded People Of The Black Coast, the crab people, this noir horror, very simple ideas, guy goes to Mexico or South America, the forbidden valley, I’m prospector I must go, finds some bones, finds so gold, hops onto him and eats him, Mother!, a 12 minute story, an idea and nothing else, that guy really knew how to spark up a story and get out, not to its benefit, I’m really enjoying this story, there’s a mix, where is this going, what is going on?, all over the place, completely unnecessary characters, compelling, more or less in one take, recording setup, more interesting, the characters, the action, picturing the setup of the mansion, as if it was an Agatha Christie, for the genre, he’s such a great mood writer, comparison of the opening, Abysses of unknown terror lie veiled, he’s doing a Lovecraft right there, straight out of The Call Of Cthulhu, the rending of the veil, a locked room, familiar with the form, Mary Roberts Rinehart, a mystery story based on, Gum-Shoe Mixley, in a quandary, rank grass, remunerated him, old fashioned, what makes somebody just is that they pay him, solicited the patronage, as dark as Egypt at night, much more like The Hardy Boys, and what are they doing there?, why there?, in line of sight, they didn’t have radio towers, it keeps doing that, recreate the come hear Watson I need you, Alexander Graham Bell, Shakespearean comedic character, emotionally and tonally all over the place, two stories for scripts, its terrible and needs to be changed a lot, so easy, scary and fun, it would be impossible, too many, stripped it down, it has to be the tech, sound goes on forever, every step you take doesn’t echo in eternity, a cool idea, ghost hypothesis, The Stone Tape (1972), psychic images from great trauma, a murder in a castle, like phonographs, resonating properly you can see the past, the inspiration, really ancient whispering stone, recording equipment, voices from the past, a voice from the future, come to yell at it, get the hell out, we got out, the stone was warning him, its from the future, the abbey museum, there’s a nuclear war coming but we don’t know when, 1016 words, a similar idea, light, Slow Glass, Light Of Other Days by Bob Shaw, slower than the speed of light, a thick slab in a nice setting, leave it there for 15 years, recorded views, a picture window to that place in Ireland, makes your dingy apartment wonderful to be in, an Irish countryside, honeymooners, quaint country farm, off they go to live their life, she’s a young woman and he’s an old man, the slow glass was going two ways, a beautiful story that takes a science fiction idea and does something exquisite, Cleve Cartmill, Tom Godwin, all the things that it teaches us, incoherent and pointless, a better writer, broken them up into a couple of different stories, incongruent, the intro, the main plot happens in Egypt, so much exposition to develop the machine, they’re doing it, a train, its a romance?, she died, she died randomly in the end, trying to make it uncanny, the trope of a scientist and his beautiful daughter, Lester Del Rey, Futurama, an intern, Amy, guh, Stanley G. Weinbaum, distraction to the main character, how they look alike, reincarnated brother and sister, why is this happening, bad writing, trying to understand everything, Mistress Of Mellyn by Victoria Holt, not understanding why things are happening, associated with fear, people fear things they don’t understand, thunder is a good example, they act instinctually, hunker down, the cover is iconic, a guy running between pillars, Hammurabi style statue, very Persians, mouth open, what caused that?, covers are very important, this seems Lovecraftian, Syrian bearded dudes, the overwhelming truth about something in history causes cosmic horror, muted, 106 years old, when people still remembered Lincoln speeches, why was it soundproof?, an old dowager would, in the 70s they’re doing 70s stuff, the fifties was not understandable until Back To The Future (1985), the tech, the cars, the music, movies set in the 40s, the 80s, 90s, 00’s, 10s, study the past, the 1890s, Sherlock Holmes, William Hope Hodgson, prewar stuff, Anita Loos, Gentleman Prefer Blondes, every period of time, the Wilson presidency, super-conscious of race, not fast enough for some, post WWI to the early 20s, the last month of WWI, almost doesn’t exist, German spies, exists in Canada, rationing, important for Lovecraft, Nick Carter magazine, Blue Book, one of the sweats, Boston Blackie, heroic burglar stories, Johnston McCulley, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Edgar Wallace, Achmed Abdullah, the beginning of the pulp industry, the format is dime novel, no inside advertizement, formatted in a style that we don’t really understand, a popular consumable, biweekly, comics in the 90s, biweekly X-Men, who is the audience for this?, young men maybe, what year is our Robert E. Howard story set, it doesn’t matter, probably not set in 1928, he doesn’t do any work to pin that down, Sir Thomas Cameron, Sir John Baskerville, born into it, a competitor who was a German/Dutch, ring any national bells?, generic German aristocrat, having a von in your name, ancestors, Indiana Jones and Belloq, in 18__, why do you do that, comes straight out of Poe, neither is doing a Poe, Poe’s wife’s name, these are people who are aware of these past writings, lead to the next, a triumph, learned a lot, not mad at all, worth discussion, this isn’t great writing, creating the product, so much exposition to get us to this “climax”, not being able to handle women, almost intervenes, beating on the feet, whipping women, a reminder, he had that issue, the death of his mother, so unnecessary, he’s this way because his love was forced to be Cleopatra’s face, not useful, really poorly done, the one we’re discussing, a great idea, this story is super-interesting, administering the beating, over her stood a lower magistrate, shriek upon shriek, this is a piece of history, recorded forever, you will be haunted by it, a local colour thing, its not the visual images, it’s a story about sound, when you cover your ears, block out history, wanted to explore it and utterly failed at every turn, squint, the last part is about a third, 2/5ths of the story, the weird frame with the cop, back and forth with Virginia on the phone, three months later, Virginia’s voice in the past, how would she known, unlikely to have ever heard a recording of her voice in 1918, a certain direction, dissatisfying, no mystery for the Egyptologist, shrunk and turned into a mummy, fetish hut, he had all the pieces, two guys with no noses, a little bit of tweaking, Almuric, Otis Adelbert Kline, notes thrown in, very Howardy, Kliney, not his normal thing, British dudes talking about British dudes, just as racist towards the British, stereotypes about British people, a very very racist time, talking about some other issue, the universities in China, grandfather had been in an important player, one of Mao’s generals, a positive effect on the gandchild’s social life, if you’re a minority in China, an exam, out of 500, an ethnic minority gets an ethnic minority, if you’re not han Chinese, their version of affirmative action, George H.W. Bush, if your dad was president…, that is the thing that’s happening to us now, programs, that’s our reality that everybody knows about, everybody was racist, why H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard were talking about, the Satanic Panic really effected Jesse’s life, a panic, occult, the backlash to Harry Potter, a Ouija board, the lone Catholic kid, a panic about cults, how terrible cults were, seems like something out of the 1930s, that was devil worship, no longer allowed to Dungeon Master, subject to forces that dictate the conversation, real insight, they’re trying to do stuff, science fiction doesn’t become science fiction until Stanley G. Weinbaum, there needs to be a shaping, Alfred I. Tooke, weird fiction, him ripping off Lovecraft after high school, 25 years ago, Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, still is amazing, there’s other stuff too, Guy De Maupassant, dealing with tropes and stuff, reading that Hardy Boys book, enlightening, those boys are lawbreakers, not what I expected, lessons learned, ancient Egypt, subconscious, they both have H in the title, fashionable, Orientalism, Some Words With A Mummy, they found King Tut’s tomb, what this project is, look at old things and see what the past was like, echoes from Adam and Eve, sound doesn’t echo into eternity, no one else is talking about The Haunted Corridors, dug up out of the trunk, 1970, in 7 months, in the year 2610, be a haunted again, a cool takeaway, what is the purpose of reading old things, you have no sense of history, how men don’t read, why that is, its perpetually, none of them reference each other, the historical explanations, boys don’t read, YA fiction, why Pulpcovers boys don’t read new fiction, what about Dogman?, romance, a prize to be won, message issues, Lodestar award, barely readable, the other Alex, one of these charges, a comicbook that you find at Walmart, superheroish, 10 years old, in that age range, teens talk about that, subbing a lot, Diary Of A Wimpy Kid, Dr Seuss, Doctor Suess’ Sleep Book, he’s classic, the touchstones of Cora’s childhood, Meckie the hedgehog, Pingu, an official superhero version of the leader of Venezuela, Super Mustache, what we only ever do, the deeper you study the past, we don’t have a good focal length for studying things near, video and records and newspapers and the internet, elevated even tho its so crappy, think about what it means, they could listen to it again, looking at the past, transmissions from earth, this is not a telephone cable, this is sound itself, hilariously stupid, a great idea for a story, more sensitive to the science of it, make it slightly mystical, The Silmarillion, echoed there forever more, it turns into heat after a certain point, magical realism, because of the period, the Resonator from From Beyond, Francis Stevens, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, supercool, suspend disbelief, the Star Trek communicator, across time zones, an international call, ring the operator, Unseen – Unfeared, narrated by Mike Vendetti, 1919, a framing device, the mad scientist, that’s how it does start then he fumbles it, Sunfire by Francis Stevens, Argosy, millions over millions of years, you need to give yourself homework, find the time, nephews, give them some Dogman, comparisons, wet women, super on the nose, too much in common, lack of innovation, we had fun, a dude lit up, grappled by something, a weird startling story, similarly clothed, harrowing and weird events, a far off island, sparks coming out of her hands, a monster nearby, the derelict fleet, fire of the sun, the first few pages, the right use of the word, she’s good, she deserves to be better remembered, scientist goes on vacation, ticked him into dying, a science story and fantasy story, weird fiction, science fiction, another dimension of Pittsburgh, never gets picked up again, a pocket universe, this lady’s a girl, Leigh Brackett’s birthday, sane take, she’s uneven, C.L. Moore is all right, as a female author who’s really important, Jean Veil, innovative, her last story is in Weird Tales, follow these great authors, worked for a Mormon magazine, John Bellairs, The Face In The Frost, fairly scary, Astrid Lindgren, The Mummy, The Will, And The Crypt, listed in Appendix N, died really young, only 53, after he died, his characters, just under Poul Anderson, one of the most obscure, Margaret St. Clair, getting yelled at, the first Gor book, would read it again, John Norman, infodumpy, where’s the sex?, BDSM stuff, super-superflawed, the green muscle mommy book, Legends & Lattes, a Gor movie, Jack Palance, John Lange, the bit from Police Squad, not disguised at all, Betty Page, she’ just barged right in there, Jabba’s sailing barge, lot’s of slaving, the proper order of the universe, Tarnsman Of Gor, fetishy, 7 hours 44 minutes, very prudish, that dude just grabbed that gal’s breast, 27 hours 30 minutes, Ralph Lister, probably pretty tame, 1966, very quickly stopped, badly written, not great, off the rails, no one would remember, great Boris Vallejo, fascinated, Eaters Of The Dead by Michael Crichton, abortion book?, A Case Of Need, Congo, Airframe, such a weird book, thinly disguised Boeing, a plane crash in Russia, so weird, a hobby horse he was on, Pirate Latitudes, Travels, Micro, Disclosure, weird sexual harassment, bitches be lying, The Great Train Robbery, Sphere, Dragon Teeth, golden age of fossil hunting, came out in 2017, State Of Fear, how global warming isn’t real, wrecked his reputation, captivated until the end, really good writer and clear, too much baggage, Timeline, with Paul Walker, a castle siege, rock and roll jousting, a Heath Ledger, A Knight’s Tale (2001), David Bowie and Queen, on brand, its Beowulf with Neanderthals, Antonio Banderas, filmed in British Columbia, downloaded and organized, The Ship Who Sang, The Ship Of Ishtar, an early Munsey magazine, Isekai?, entangled, dreamlandy, Queen Of The Black Coast with parallel dimensions, Exile Of The Eons by Arthur C. Clarke, a social satire, a dude with a boy, a Virgil Finlay space suited dude who’s a giant, audio drama, it’s terrible, so ableist, thalidomide scandal, Philip K. Dick, a classic, Eric’s book club, mutual acquaintance, pairing things, how long do you want this to be, so many good books to read, go do your podcast boys, the more people the longer, some long individuals, Scott is very short, Mr. Pulpcovers is pretty short too, Mad Max novelization for 4 hours, R. Murray Gilchrist stories, deep and rich, compare and contrast, there’s not much to say about it, West African mummies, he just made that up, weird fiction stories lend questions, rich and good, the more enigmatic the more fun to talk about, book club, too much going on, Paycheck and The Weapon Shop, dislike it more, hasn’t aged well, talk to you next year, good slide into the New Year, good job, as a voice actor, new equipment, optimal settings, Philip K. Dick never disappoints, Jungle People, he was 13, able to map it, a novel with a key, a fable, a bunch of monkeys going to war, because he’s Philip K. Dick that’s why, quick dinner.

The Haunted Corridors by William Hamilton Osborne

The Haunted Corridors by William Hamilton Osborne

The Haunted Corridors by William Hamilton Osborne

The Haunted Corridors by William Hamilton Osborne

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #819 – READALONG: We Can Remember It For You Wholesale by Philip K. Dick

The SFFaudio Podcast #819 – Jesse, Will Emmons and Jonathan Weichsel talk about We Can Remember It For You Wholesale by Philip K. Dick

Talked about on today’s show:
Fantasy And Science Fiction, April 1966, not perfectly representative of everything he can do, Total Recall (1987), very easy to watch, a transitional movie for Hollywood, last big budget, extended CGI sequence, through the X-Ray, all hand drawn, blonde guy with glasses helping Richter, looks like CGI, we can look this up sometime, not in the story, a lot of the stuff that’s in the story is in the movie, he never goes to Mars during the course of the story, the movie is an action film, still also tame, wow, a famous story, famous stories, they don’t meet the hype, a bad relationship with his wife, a bad relationship that week, interesting, it doesn’t have to be good to be successful, Jesse’s Lester Del Rey theory, came out 6 (or 7 months ago), the park bench, telepathically, so not filmic, the ending was a little silly but fine, the ending kid of ruined the story, Hollywood does it a lot, a Rod Serling ending, he’s not writing movies, his way, think about what happens in this, he actually was an agent for interplan, the space police, he’s remembering what happened, replacement memory, suppressed memory, an amazing coincidence, they did a psychological analysis of his character, his deep seated wish, just by existing he saves the planet, Philip K. Dick thumbing the nose at himself, an extra turn of the screw, he fucks them up on purpose, a nice little circle, an electronic animals, fleshy animals, the pulling the rug out from his own idea, there’s no bottom to his solipsism, how to put a button on the story, the movie improves on the short story, the primal cause, the first cause of the story, nobody else could have, make Plato a pulp science fiction story, a terrible ending, silly, his way out, that park bench sequence is so bad, look at that homeless man talking to himself, wouldn’t want to be him, all I have to do is continue my existence then everyone owes me, a manifesto spray painted on a parking stall, when I take things it for you, its not shoplifting when I do it, a guy who’s explaining to the people who visit the store, he doesn’t have a job, he’s saved all of us, the movie is really fun, less grounded in reality, homeless people talking to themselves, delusional people, are they delusional?, turning the clerk at an unimportant desk, a construction worker, why Arnold Schwarzenegger, quail, shiver and shake, vs. Quaid, more like Quatto, prompts, a bad movie, like Matt Damon but the other guy, The Adjustment Bureau (2011), because a dog falls asleep, reality being constructed, out of joint with reality as it is being constructed, make a black man fall asleep on a park bench, why it doesn’t translate well, boobs, dogs, coffee, wives, how do I know what’s real, all of that except for the dog, inside of his obsessions, limiting, its not everything that’s going on with him, The Goblin Reservation, a little bit into the future, Time Is The Simplest Thing by Clifford D. Simak, Martian Time-Slip, Paul Verhoven, interested in what’s going on in America, Showgirls (1995), RoboCop (1987), disgustingly awesomely correctly cynical, pulls back on that, ultimate power, an assassination, a Black Panther, MLK, memory cap, memory blocker, prevent their agent from knowing he did it, a negotiation with them, isn’t there some other way?, if they kill him the world will end, a solipsistic fantasy, awesomely stupid and funny and pathetic, it’s just him, the wife, the secretary with the blue boobs, offering herself to him, an ulterior motive, she needs to offer himself to him, a wish fulfillment fantasy, hilarious, he believes they’ll fulfill their promises, the nearest barracks, he knows what’s going on but also can’t fully buy into it, nice people, Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Lincoln conspiracy theories, a logical explanation for it, Lincoln’s wife was really into psychics, do not go to the theater, my wife believes in all that, gets assassinated, drinking buddies with John Wilkes Booth, look this up, John Wilkes Booth is Edgar Allan Poe as a time traveler, dies mysteriously, raving about somebody named Reynolds, out there in the universe of broken threads, time travel, dreams in this story, starts with a dream, the dream grew, the dream and the yearning, the enveloping world, are you getting up or not, fierce crossness, okay, Douglas is his go to name, Charles J. Colchester, its times vs. our times, psychology, in a more scientific way, they believed it was more scientific, repressed memories that can’t be suppressed, misused in a different way, what passes as psychology today in the 90s would be dismissed as self-help gimmicks, a scam, infiltrated academia and psychology, Little Miss Sunshine (2006), Alan Arkin is always amazing, by losers for losers, destigmatize, mental health, everybody could potentially have a mental illness, almost everybody is neurodivergent, instead of expanding, limited, self-eating, how educated people thought about it, engaged with psychiatry, mental doctors, getting committed, committed one of his wives, write a story about that, Clans Of The Alphane Moon, it comes in as truth, maneuvers to analyze it, its cute because it wants to kill, accept, ignore, dispute, what techniques you use, how old you are, techniques of training, when Philip K. Dick goes to a doctor, paralyzed by thoughts, needs to engage, shows up in his writing, spiritual enlightenment books, what’s the truth of this?, what’s important, what is reality?, Freud, dogmatically, repression, too much sexual repression bad, run around like savages killing and raping each other, just the right amount of repression, misreading a novel, take the wrong lessons from Nineteen Eighty-Four, this is the only book you need to read, metaphors are fiction, hypothetical examples, speculative theory, not testable, not subject to falsification, what at this story at core really about?, suppressed memory?, the movie Gaslight, gaslighting, I know it by its objects, momentos, Paycheck (1944), The Man In The High Castle, a short story about a snowglobe, a souvenir, in contemplating, martian maw worms, unicellular organism, a sneaky pete pistol, a life rod, a death rod, a tangible connection to a vague memory, how do we know these memories are real, go to Europe, how should I go, a time of film, film was expensive, just myself, a stone from a gravel path in the garden behind Versailles, how do I know, oh yeah, there was that thing that happened, a perfect memory to connect all of our experiences together, whats the difference between suppressed and repressed, the name of the shop is Rekall, a much better story, the movie is much better, engages an idea better, Hauser vs. Quaid, good guy vs. bad guy, Hauser is fucking Melina over, Quaid loves Melina, very masturbatory, how could I have that without doing any work?, the reason why is buried, before he was assigned there, he didn’t want to go to Mars, an assignment, it happened to be Mars, a different layer of consciousness, this person is scared of snakes, a trauma involving snakes, a man flashed her his penis when she was five, suppressed in her unconscious, buried in memory, why did he spend all that time digging around in the Martian memory, the story of Paycheck, the reason he collected these objects, Severance, a very long two seasons, the park bench stuff is slow and boring, what’s the wife’s job in this story, much improved in the movie, an agent?, is she here to watch me, he thinks about it, he thinks a lot, two major boobs scenes, 3 or 4 people, Doctor Lull, Doctor Low, the technicians, refunds, retail, vbery business oriented, the Company, the CIA, InterPlan, they take him back to the retail store, his brain changed not wholesale, why is it called that?, Beyond The Door, over breakfast, a cuckoo clock, I got it wholesale from a friend, women want you to spend money on them, show you’re going to stick around, defeats the purpose of buying an expensive gift, in their own facilities, such a piddly little retail guy he can’t imagine how the CIA actually works, show up at our barracks, the secret police, so piddly and silly, the doctor, I’ll give you half back, motivation, to make money, the stupidest thing, getting the ideas and following through, if he wasn’t so greedy, little note, he’s really a spy, these guys are gonna whack us, give him evidence, silly, Philip K. Dick is naive about the things he knows are really going on, distracted by boobs and a mean wife, pretty damn good, a problem with a Hal Clement, a tweet, June 6th, qoute tweeting Ultra Blast, what about the guy you lobotomized, how human nature really works, schedule a short story, sell it to you retail, what’s going on this claim I’m making, in the movie, Hauser’s using Melina, to assassinate Quato, very Verhoven, Cronenberg was set to direct it, steered away from that, amazingly tight, the trip to Mars, schizoid embolism, just acting out of self-interest and aesthetic appeal, Hauser is a cynical operator, the naivete of his future self to fuck somebody over, why is this human nature, a turtle , you aren’t helping, you aren’t helping, you already know who you are and that person doesn’t help, you see a drowning squirrel or a puppy, untie his legs, take the cat out of the bag, on your way home you see your future self, that’s for that squirrel!, my nut factory anymore, things need to be done, we can’t sit by and just allow things to happen, lunch break, a kid in an empty classroom, building a house of cards, breathing over it, you feel good and bad, tgapping on the table, we have to know that these things are within us, tie up the princess of the train tracks, the guy who tied, Smedley Badwright, human nature is such that we must act, take a model of who we are, I’m not going to do that again,the tattoos, wwjd, model themselves on somebody, what wouldf spiderman do in this situation, that’s what this is about, one must act, you cant live in that horrible office job, a vacation as a solution to problems, two weeks of Saturdays, back to the old grindstone, hat e their job, whatever it is on twitter, self-trolling, insightful into human nature, such a stupid story, non-cynical about political assassination plans, human nature is as human nature does, a bully in a group, that’s cool, that’s not cool, the people are very similar, boys must act, with Quail, wants to be an agent, becomes Lee Harvey Oswald, erase your memory, that doesn’t make 100% sense, plant the wife, this story isn’t quite that far, an office job that doesn’t matter, he was used by the company, with the destroying rod, the tangible objects you find in the drawer, a weird language with a starmap on it, where did that come from?, a destroying rod vs. a healing rod, we have the capability of throwing squirrels and drowning squirrels, didn’t feel guilty about killing the guy, out of patriotic duty, the right thing to do, memory of going to mars and being a spy, does it, old memory back, to the surface, erase his memory again, nice people, like mice, motivated him to become a spy in the first place, a more important story than he does it, pathetic, if we knew that that was your fantasy, maybe it wasn’t a fantasy, why does Arnold Schwarzenegger want to go to Mars, Sharon Stone says let’s go to Saturn, I like sex, settle for this fake memory, optional extras, filling out the survey, what’s the same about you, famous jock, tycoon, he could be a spy, like Lee Harvey Oswald, a lackey and a patsy, these tangible objects, that trip to the beach, why is my wife mean to me, how did I end up married to this person, extraordinarily strange, definitely an outlier, the articulation that’s strange, a late 90s internet guy, hacker zines in the 90s, radical ideas, normal office drones, fantasizing about spies and shit like that, Paul really liked it, it would be okay if I was like a secret cop, they didn’t know, what if I had this alternative, what if I manifest it, bored out of fuckin mind, maybe then, an insight that Philip K. Dick had, wish fulfillment, about wishfulfillment, the wish gets subverted, turns into a nightmare, its horrible, as a subculture, science fiction wasn’t necessarily self-aware about this, the dark underbelly of America in someway, the mainstream culture couldn’t accept, a generative contradiction, Philip K. Dick normal guy ethos, fantasies of being a spy, its weird to have the rug pulled out from underthing, always overquestioning, what science fiction was aware of, processed recently, 1946, Margaret St. Clair, Fantastic Adventures, Introducing The Author, a little bit of the thing you were saying, caught more or less by surprise, a photograph and an autobiography of herself, curly brow covered hair, bangs to cover forehead, [Bettie Page] mod?, usual editorial deadline, about women liking to talk about themselves, 9 or 10 years of age, My Terminal Moraine by Frank R. Stockton, Jules Verne, Hugo Gernsback publication Electrical Something, fair, a story about people, detective and mystery, quality magazines, the same kick, freedom of imagination, ordinary people of the future, present day motorists, essentially true, got married, pet hobbies, carnations, raising dachshund puppies, out here in Richmond (California), terrestrial paradise, no special ambitions, the pulps at their best touch a genuine folk tradition, a balladic quality, The New Yorker, science fantasy fiction, ballad-like, new fairy tales, this story we read today, a fairy tale is a fake folk tale, Hans Christian Anderson, Christian, Aesop’s fables, the Bros. Grimm, Cinderella, a complete Grimm, this is from this region, Bluebeard is Charles Perrault, The Castle Of Murder, before the show started, stories that need responses, stories in dialogue, Isaac Asimov’s robot stories, a collection of folk tales about robots, made by an individual, fingerprints, produced, Snow White, a new narrative, Walt Disney’s fingerprints, R.U.R., a story based on that idea, a collective knowledge about what things are about, Lin Coln, Star Trek episodes, he freed the robots, what is it that fairy tales do, wish fulfillment, folk tales are more functional, if Jonathan had written this story, a warehouse or something, it wouldn’t have the nagging complaining wife, that’s not your kink, boobs changing colours, lights inside of them, based on her mood, purplish/pink, jealous green, bad at his job, he’s the only one doing it, his badjobbedness, in the end, really good, doing it before everybody else, everybody knows Philip K. Dick’s stuff now, all the Verhoven stuff, she’s naked in the story, nail colour on her nails, the non-nakedness, a three boobed lady, Sharon Stone skin, kicking in the balls twice, grabbed in the crotch, swearing, blood packets, primal screaming by Michael Ironside, mutants, prosthetic arms, an infiltrator, even tho a mutant himself, happens everyday, that guy there wearing black from head to foot, that guy there was the fed, shaman hat, freedom!, the naive guy, an insurrectionist, I can’t image the government would ever do something like that, diminished faculties, sucking on the propaganda tit all day, children torn apart by bombs, have your memory changed, not be aware, why Philip K. Dick is so relevant, we don’t got to Rekall to get things done, NPR, those Houthis are bad, do you condemn Hamas?, Jesse you’re weird, just tune it out, he’s calling it out, very good very solid, a technical difference, psychiatrist is a doctor with patients, a psychologist who does therapy, the same trade, a license to prescribe, a university funded by DARPA, rich people love psychologists, talk about themselves all day, explore themselves, instead of having to read, schizophrenic, bourgeois, love the psychologist, this talking doctor, explore himself and his own memories, explain his behavior, the spiritual route, he wasn’t accepting the things he was being told, he’s fighting with his wife, is that really true, is she a hebephrenic?, guiding your thoughts, if he just told you you wouldn’t believe it, no longer done by psychologist, therapists, licensed professional counselors, the worried well, extensive experience, a candy dispenser for medicine, give you anything, a psychiatric nurse, gives a shit, even as this industry expands, the demand, people bad at it, degree mills, an interesting field, another word for horrifying, a vital field, physician is the body doctor, psychiatrist is the brain doctor, Scientology, he was reading a lot, his letters, passing comedic references, Dianetics fully discredited in the science fiction community, in Galaxy, Planet Stories, making fun of it, Writers Of The Future, Galaxy Press is Scientology, bigger, still exists, nothing dies, if you won that thing, blacklisted, the Tor people are the hip group, Reactor Mag, Tor.com, changed its name, the mainstream, any kind of audience, an audience of themselves, Lightspeed, a proofreader, does that for free (of course), Analog in the 1980s, write for Analog, submit your story now, read the magazine to learn what kind of stories we publish, not a pyramid, a lifestyle, something I’ve always wanted to be, I would like to have written, in this story his fantasy is about having done, not doing, what made Philip K. Dick a great writer, go out to his shack and write up a story, do it again and do it a gain, read these artifacts, no where near the top, a Tom Cruise movie, Minority Report, the only thing that’s good about is the idea, a car drives up the side of a building, a robot taxi driver, a guy who says weird things, that person isn’t just an object, imagine he was a subject, star rating, nice things about your clothes, Jesse has never been in an uber, the Church of our Mother, interaction mediated through a cream sweeping machine, a very expensive car, driving a Mercedes, uber guy, delivers pizza, this is how we are now, that’s really sad, nice old Philip K. Dick times, what if we had robot drivers, single taxi drivers making a living, Married With Children, shoe salesman hates his life, two kids, he’s a loser because he’s a shoe salesman, we can’t imagine anybody having their own house and being a shoe salesman now, streaming from their bedroom in their mom’s house, that’s how things are now, driving an amazon truck, what Philip K. Dick imagined, the robot is the box, a robot manager, why did you make such a sharp left turn, his doors that won’t open until you pay them, oppressive and horrific, moving to quickly, postal worker, one’s employed by the government, move like robots, when break time comes, favourite interaction, everyone around here has worked at Amazon, a big warehouse in Lexington, always cry before my shift, it was so boring, this is what our expectations are, author copies, printed in Delaware, Ingram books vs. Amazon books, running out of ink, save money, why aren’t we buying up old printing presses and putting them in our basements, why we’re not doing it, cheaper through amazon, they can be relatively small, the way Benjamin Franklin did it, against the enterprise, Amazon owns everything, Lightning Source, Ingram Spark, everyplace that’s not Amazon, the Ingram family, every commercially published group, a monopoly on printing presses, distribution, conflating the two, you have to play the game to get books in hands or podcasts in earbuds, the middle man, the bookstores are gone, a Chapters in Coquitlam, candles and LEGO, Walton’s, Waterstones?, back into books, many independent bookstores, go to Oregon to find one, we have to travel so far, nail salon, skin salon, dog food store, catalogues, Sears Catalogue, big retail, the internet came, big box retail stores, better than the internet, leaving your house and going out, too soon to tell, Apple’s not giving up on their headset thing, bearish vs. bullish, bearish on VR stuff, for thinking about VR, or AI,companies are already starting to cutback, expensive and inexpensive, augmented reality, students like chatgpt, the people who grade the homework, anti-ai homework service, how do they monitize chatgpt, Scott’s paying for it, if school wasn’t mandatory, when you do crypto, burned an acre of rainforest, big computers, bitcoin, disruptive to the fiat currency systems, isn’t a result of the fake school system doing fake homework, from the fake ai money, the requirement to do or pretend to do, the horror that is school, getting hooked, solving a problem, people’s actual history with school rather than theoreticals, individual teachers, cram, take in then regurgitate, so weird, learned all on my own, we all know this true, busy work, Wordle, the word manga was the five letter word, such a funny story, has to be true, all outraged, such a boomer story, why does it exist, they need to fill time, garden a little bit, people like word games, keep your brain sharp, sudoku, relationship with crossword puzzles, but why?, don’t they have something better to do?, horrified, so unproductive, jigsaw puzzles, pretend to do something else, increases spatial awareness, listerine, advertizing back in the pulp magazines, rupture-easers, never been debunked and never will be, germs, lemon squeezy stuff at the door during COVID, throwing their money away, wrecking the environment, Jesse’s totally wrong about those, second most liberal school, cooked food is bad, stop washing my hair, stop using toilet paper, leaves, pages from books, water, there’s a whole alternative ecosystem, causes damage to your anus, bidets, reinforce, we need bidets, they smelled like shit, don’t wipe for a week, Jesse doesn’t smell like anything, three times a day, days without showering, stopped noticing their own bad scent, small classroom, coffee can do that, cigarettes, cigar people, if Will was stinky Jesse would tell him, in great danger of stinking, curbside pickup, drive thru, could be a danger sign, the bidet will help, occasional daily shower, middle ground on this body product issue, stay off the deodorant, worried about it, stinky notifications, if you get all sweaty have a shower, homeless person, memberships to gyms, change your clothes, stinky feet, stinky anything, not being on the body product chemical stuff, very sensitive nose, vacation to Egypt, far afield, the discussion that we’ve had today, not compelling, males must act, for all mankind, not a compelling theory, they need to do something, what’s the alternative to doing something, being passive, play PUBG, interaction with gamer, against their own interest, a discipline thing too, do you not remember when you’re building a house of cards what happens?, which is easier to do build or destroy, patience and skill, as a child which is easier, gain some skills, you can build, some patience, more satisfying, they’re immature, a pro build person, that’s deranged, liking destroying more than building, creative destruction, Sales Pitch, a commuter going through outerspace, pelted by advertizing for products (including body part replacements), pushy robot, men are looking for relevance, women are looking for security for their offspring, not even human, animal, the biological essence of women, very biologically different, animals don’t think about their gender as much as humans do, psychology or vagina, the psychology, why do people go off to fight in Ukraine when its not their war?, their being is fighting, act as if they should be out in the forest hitting each other with sticks, classroom sort of based stuff, foam sticks, eye protection, how to raise a kid with a knife, not even the same thing as a gun, you’re going threw a piece of broken glass, throwing things in the water is cool, this creature growing inside of me for 9 months, warm and safe when the birth happens, cats or dogs go find a place, motivation vs. psychology, money security, comfort, communal creatures, activities going on in the brain, under the surface, the archaeological record, prehistoric hunter gathers, the men and the women did the same kind of work, pretty up on archaeology, a subscription, middens, big piles of shells, more like regular people, misunderstanding, modern agricultural farming with land rights, less controversial example, human culture, animals are the opposite, that’s not true of all birds, sexual dimophism is a thing, two cockatoos look identical, let’s say he’s only talking about the birds, male turkeys, plumage, scrawny very small, male fish, clown colours, little grey things swimming around, women dressing up, in past human cultures, African American culture in the United States, purple zoot suit, a horse race, little pastel shirts, the Kentucky Derby, what the word dude means, these things are cultural, make money and look professional, he gets the Mercedes, jewelry, watches, anklets, make up and powdered wigs, cultural expectations of men and women, the man asks the woman out on a date, with the younger people, situationship, come up to each other and say “skibidi toilet”, in the 2000s, offline website, Will sent the first message, its not really about clothes, Jesse has this thesis that women’s primal drive is to seek safety and protection, motivated by different things, people have all sorts of narratives, they want to be near the money, basic psychology, enjoy writing like to tell stories, he wants to have sex with a woman, become a famous writer, who are we talking about here?, broken is such a way, make art, it would be good to have that art appreciated, Freud’s theory of sublimation, that energy that’s suppressed needs some place to go, divert that energy, largely done by males, triggered by Jesse, disagreeing, is your disagreement substantive, all the cave art, what is it about, different modes, blows paint over their hand on the wall, we are here, an accounting system, stories on the walls, a lot of animals, game animals, herd animals, herds exist in nature, some prehistoric people, goatherds and shepherds and cattle, natives of the plains, buffalo is a good example, elk or whatever, reindeer, a domestic animal for pulling sleighs and such, a wild animal, semi-domesticated animal, why do they obsessively paint these animals, this is like their religious association with the act of killing, to eat its flesh, take its hide, take its bones, they know that killing is wrong, insects, fish, furry creatures and birds, that’s what we are, we’re cooking flesh creatures, who’s making that art, it’s men, didn’t have stories yet, unlikely, didn’t have language yet, pictograms all over BC, the ones in France, before they were talking, how do you prove this, communicate that to organize into a hunt, bees do the same thing, I just found these flowers, pretty simple, how long does it take to develop language, communication, very few animals have grammar, chimpanzees are living in the stone age, bears in the pre-fire age, looking at peoples bodies stress injuries, a recent Predator movie called Prey, hyper-realistic, the vast majority of human behavior is throwing sharp sticks at food, rock attached to a stick, male work, more upper body strength, at what point are humans humans, are neanderthal humans, which one can rip Jesse’s arm off faster, harem of females, bonobo, female is the dominant one, we’re definitely on the spectrum, massive sexual dimorphism, some tiktok lady, bow-strength, butch ladies, there’s some femme guys, pretty normal, not 50 50, since the early 2010s, the ideal body type for women is athletic, 1920s, women were waifs, big shoulders, Dolly Parton, Kate Moss, Claudia Schiffer, Baywatch, fat women, big butts, hoops in the back, from decade to decade, fashion, my woman is well fed, you’re putting that hoop skirt on her, that archetype, she runs track, karate and jujitsu, female wrestling team at a highschool?, bjj, roles for men, we’re men looking at women, Schwarzenegger and Stallone, Lady Gaga is a throwback to Madonna, chips and videogames, girl gamers, very successful career woman, boyfriend or husband is just like a loser, trailing behind her head hung low, sidegig, uber on the weekends, a reversal [see also the 1894 story THE REVOLT OF… by Robert Barr], economic issues with marriage, breast milk, weird hormones for strange reasons, breast pump, back into the meeting, a ton of hours, the cooking, no hunting going on, any fishing?, did he take your sister fishing?, girls should be allowed to play on boys baseball teams, more motivated, his sister, a fairly good baseball player, Will’s back, that’s like a thing, neighbours who live down the street, a pretty good job in IT, a parent they have to take care of, Meg is pulling down more money, not pumping out kids, Jesse’s pretty strange, a few steps ahead, what happened, to reading Day Million in the 80s, Larry Niven in the 80s, Jonathan has one child, a 10 year old, tend to not to vs. can’t, the history of hospitals vs. doctors vs. nurses, Florence Nightingale, doctors are ancient, Galen, hospitals are from the middle agents, christian brothers, more people visiting the Holy Land, bind each other to a covenant, a safe route for travelers, knights hospitalers, knights templars, hospitality, a modern mecca pilgrimage, filled with patients, doctors come into the hospitals and see to the patients, war hospitals, women want to contribute, swapping out bandages, giving them food and drinks, all those separate jobs are created the behavior of the genders, fraternal orders, they like fighting, shoot crossbow bolts, everything related to violence, theyre the orcs, the consequence of what they’re doing, our vision of Rambo, a useful idiot, pulled back in for the sequels, built into the human boy, not built into the human girl, girls going into the , a Lysenkoist, Jesse loves Stalin, Jesse doesn’t love Stalin, epigenetics, how you get your grant, cooperate and help each other, he got his grant year after year, its embarrassing, why less destiny than genes are, The Not-World, talkin with Cora, a fake Nancy Drew, sounds like girl stuff, she’s so fuckin weird, girls are interested in investigation, and getting tied up, investigating with flashlights, makes sandwiches, figures out a fact, swaps jeans with her best friend who’s probably not a lesbian, Time Is The Simplest Thing, will was on vacation, our friend Scott Miller, a parasocial relationship, franticly dmd, the Ray Bradbury agent estate, either bullshitting or wrong, three strikes then his account is deleted, if they don’t rescind their takedown notice, he’d have to sue them, The Visitor by Ray Bradbury, here’s the source, either their records are fucked up or…, he had to pull something down, more from his podcast?, that’s a bad sign, one somebody’s radar, Don Congdon & Associates, long deceased, Wall Street Plaza address, the take down notice, possible being trolled by another youtuber?, the official website?, their DMCA notices, this is why, if you can’t win don’t play, a rigged game, too much, it is rigged, lots of reasons to not have children, when Will was one, babies are boring, peekaboo is pretty limiting, can’t bounce them too hard, get sad, can’t explain why, crying kids explaining what the problem, temper tantrums, what it was v.s what I thought it was, incoherent, seems like it is pain, some of it is permormative, pretending to do them, podcasting or walking, Land Of Our Fathers, Paul Robeson, travelling around Wales, toy laptops, toy kitchens, fake oven, tiny, my little bakelite, easybake oven, a boy equivalent, easy bake machine shop, easy grill, easy lathe, easy gunsmithery, metal molds, put goop in them, creepy crawlers, bug toys, probably toxic as hell, still not very good at cooking, make your own food, cheaper, better for you, can be a serious problem, here we are childless with all these cats, Mars Express (2023), at the spaceport, a robot that looks like Astroboy, looks like their grandchild, nuzzles the robot’s head, full of that, at every turn, teaching you the plot like a really good mystery movie, the name of the people who made it, French people who like, know and do, the Astronaut’s daughter is really important, I am going to stand in for my sister, must have a dressing contest, it gives away its ideas, too much of it, the dress up contest, first romance with the Mormon lady, Twilight, not good for Jesse, the Olympic Peninsula, rainforest, Indians, girl gas to choose between werewolf and vampire, sparkly qualities, hot native, very loyal, of course she chooses the white man, just so hard to choose, Betty and Veronica , Rebecca Black’s Friday, what will I do?, a mean reading of women’s psychology, look at the options available then choose the best one, uncharitable, vs. men choosing women, a line about beautiful vs. hot, hot is about how one is dressed or undressed, the signals of hotness, hair in a bun, glasses on, pantsuit, not putting out the hot signals, all women have the potential of being hot, distracted by hotness, this other thing, kindness, amiability and kindness, what do you think?, eventually got together, pre-Meg people, propinquity, accessibility, big factor, Pinky, little Chinese girl from next door, the cookie store in Chinatown, how different human beings can be from each other, one of those people, two definitely, only in touch with one, fucked up and broken (but still look pretty), didn’t jive well, fucked up girlfriend, sex addled, similar personalities, similar sense of humour, big schemers, convince other people to do things, you should join this church, an elaborate party in order to get Will a scanner, scanners live with meaning, watching PulpCovers put out weird menace story art, get somebody to read for me, a podcast to edit up, a student, oh coffee, dad and mom and brother for father’s day, an afterthought, Children’s Day, you honour your mother, you don’t have to do homework today, seems dangerous, one day a year where they don’t have to study, all poor kids, out-competing their non-hagwan forced bretheren, univerities jobs, diplomas, it is a scam, the Jesse lesson: can’t win don’t play, forget about the suicides over there, what jobs exist, not at Walmart (for the old and disabled), young and abled work at Amazon, all other jobs are for Koreans, China’s the place to be for an upwardly mobile job, what you actually do in them, what the culture is like, elaborate paperwork all day, grade the kids, needs more of this, fun and funny, off to Korea, throws in something about capitalism every story, The Society, flame, peach and hen, can’t see the end in sight, many other hens, everyone were crazy about peaches, even the hens were framed harmed and killed each other for peaches, in style without curiosity, once foxes blocked the road, they usurped peaches, disturbed other hens lives, masks to hid their expressions, gave up, made a little flame, it began to swallow the foxes, fell into a swamp, the foxes were eaten by the flame, she was tired and the end of the road had come, she could saw a bed at the end of the road, with this the hen’s long journey, doesn’t it see similar to something? right?, it’s society, here is a translate, the road, corrupt politicians, the swamp, pretense, the bed death, awesome, to delight Jesse, he delighted me, so delightful, do it for free, to explain what a sleeve is, how that would come about, my teacher touched my arm, done it with drawings before, more concrete, sniffing and acting and banging the table, the word bruise, ouch it is a bruise, whatever, its tough out there, the good ones make it really good, six great ones, four or five somewhere in the middle, minimum wage approaching Jesse’s wage, a number of coequal workers, asking politely vs. an ability to walk away, other methods, hitman?, tutor privately.

World's Best Science Fiction 1967 - We Can Remember It For You Wholesale - illustration by Jack Gaughan

We Can Remember It For You Wholesale - Editorial introduction from F & SF

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #816 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Cat-Woman by Ray Cummings and In The Orbit of Saturn by R.F. Starzl

The SFFaudio Podcast #816 – Cat-Woman by Ray Cummings (read by Mike Vendetti, 55 minutes) AND In The Orbit of Saturn by R.F. Starzl (read by Edmund Bloxam, 52 minutes). These are complete and unabridged readings of the stories (1 hour 48 minutes) followed by a discussion of them. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Will Emmons, and Jonathan Weichsel

Talked about on today’s show:
[Cat-Woman by Ray Cummings – from Terror Tales, May 1938 and In The Orbit Of Saturn by R.F. Starzl from Astounding, October 1931] that narrator, LibriVox, like to not listen, performing, distracting, a noble effort, everbodys got an accent, Trois-Rivières, a cultural, 30 years watching news reports, CBC generally gets its pronunciation right, the main character is an American, the half-breed Indian, Beaumont, a New York lawyer, take it too far, way too far, two miles from Manhattan, US states, the geography is so bad, giant book showing different continents, they don’t even know where they are on the map, maybe geography is a useless thing, from one tube enclosure to another tube enclosure, maybe it doesn’t matter, you need to understand geography in order to understand anything, a geology a little bit, from the Libertarian convention, use its military to defend itself, from what?, giant moat on either side, defending Hawaii, you don’t need a sixth fleet in the Indian Ocean, Nevada, Oregon, accents?, more than accent, Iraq, Iran, hearing about it on the news, the correct pronunciation, say it in Spanish, all these tourists, east coast politicians, it doesn’t need to be set in the orbit of Saturn, not as good as the other Starzl, E.E. Doc Smith, more compact, starts deep into the action, we’re in the middle of a battle, holding cells, dialogue happens, we’re done, fairly good for being fairly bad, published in the October 1931 issue of Astounding, the Clayton era of Astounding, having trouble following the action, put on a really big smile for your videos, the muscles of your face, practicing to be the joker, he’s really selling this, in seven months we’ll know if it was all worth it, Sword & Scandal, with that great art, very solid, character names, Quarl Finner?, Coerl?, Black Destroyer, Braniac Five from the Legion Of Superheroes, Lenore, character from Poe, Moby Gore, Lt. Burroughs, Captain Strom, he’s not shy, Mark Twain, a newspaperman, family newspaper in some midwestern town, its good, real things that happens, engaging with real stuff a little bit, her brother dies, dies from pneumonia, daughter of a capitalist, a capitalism in space story, the eugenics pirate, a good noble man, a man without a planet, engaging with the materials of the times, the Burroughs thing, make it about Romance, he doesn’t solve it, the IFP, the interplanetary flying police?, pirates infiltrated by east Indian company agent, sexy redhead pirate queen, a depth to it, for how short it is, a lot of time hating, too simple, a super good example of pulp that doesn’t suck completely, not enough beams, a cloaking device, I’ll parole you, new laser beam, ray of some kind, a little ethical back and forth, working for the fuckin cops, tremendous amounts of concentrated energy, the energy becomes sentient, weird juice, for the amount of plot and backstory, something in a series, ISFDB, seven of these stories, The Earthman’s Burden, very depthy, another Starzl story, Madness Of The Dust, he’s on mars, he has martian slaves, martian dust makes him go crazy, Against All Flags (1952), Errol Flynn, Anthony Quinn, off the coast of Madagascar, a political dissident, party now because there is no afterlife, mythological pirates, historical pirates, crook, of the golden age of piracy, still pirates today, the Horn of Africa, not British naval slaves, their backstory is different, a really good movie, the Mad Max novelization, Stone (1974), Satan worshipers, very beautiful, very artistic, by looking at pirates, land pirates, living life free from societal law, Hell’s Angels by Hunter S. Thompson, patch him in and patch him out, harassing ransom people, Pirates Of Venus pirates are not really pirates, Gully Foyle, Alfred Bester, a positive spin, write the pants off, very early in the history of magazines, by the early 30s Weird Tales is getting good, Science Fiction isn’t as mature, willing to pay relatively good rates, the writing of both of this, Ray Cumming fuckin sucks, The Girl In The Golden Atom, this is a fun story, Cat-Woman, flies by the seat of his pants, bad stuff in here, as a relatively short weird menace, shudder story, so similar much better idea, serums that transform you, a lot hornier, more idea filled, Sam Moskowitz on Ray Cummings, went downhill, never evolved to keep up with the times, formulaic, 1938, Ambrose Bierce, this genre didn’t exist, a story about glands, the science of glands, 1910s and 20s, the gland doctor in France, put this in a novel, mad scientist in France, a cutting from testicle from a young monkey, Bobby Derie’s blog, wealthiest men in Paris, complete nonsense, great scientist, have they retracted the story yet, the little touches, there was a magazine, that magazine had the formula, I never found that magazine, maybe she is a cat-woman, very meta, lurid covers, ladies being tortured, fed into machines, when they get nude, delivers on all fronts, exotic northern Quebec setting, palpitating breasts, her heart is beating so hard it makes her breasts beat, palpitations, am I fighting a drug or am I really sleepy?, can see out, writhe around on the animal skin rugs, jumps out the window, bad planning, four characters in this story, made no sense, masturbating in the corner while she dances around on the rugs, terrible plotting, terrible, horrible, a grindhouse 42nd street horror movie, very entertaining and over the top, entertained, trouble visualizing, so very visual, a floorplan of the cabin in the woods, needed to be in the same room as her, wakes up, girl dancing around, a big mirror thing, now that she’s my wife, she looks in the mirror, saw him as a cat, then a literal cat shows up, why does it have a baby in its mouth?, unburied baby?, the cat after all, badly put together, was fixing this story worth Ray Cummings’ time, pulp fiction factoids, Frederik Pohl, bulldoze Pohl, wearing a cravat, almost unusable stories, your standard pulp author didn’t write a second draft, after editorial notes or revisions, how Weird Tales worked, make some changes, I like money, I will not accept payment, my words are perfect, something in common, Lovecraft needed money, scrip harder, he wouldn’t work, he couldn’t work, rich as a child, grandfather was wealthy, wife taking care of him, sending cheques, artists need to be supported, inheritance money, residual stuff, lived with his aunts, rent and food was cheap, three suits, not buying a lot of stuff, editorial revision business, Edison’s laboratory assistant, Edison’s philosophy, Thomas Edison, mix these chemicals together, shrink ourselves down, looking through a microscope at a piece of gold, become very small, just a matter of looking in your cupboards until you find the right chemical, great men before corporate, Elon Musk, emerald mine, get a bunch of guys working for you, a patent troll, Musk isn’t as a bad, E.E. Doc Smith, invented powdered sugar, manufactured it industrially, revised it, space opera, doesn’t need to be set near Titan, a tour of the solar system, protect the whole solar system, as an ideas man, Fitz James O’Brien’s The Diamond Lens, covered in mirages, fun, stupid, fun, from the text, forays to the faraway undisciplined Pluto, colonial thing, tropical Venus, Aryl, stupendous and neverending mirages, Jesse’s Paul hat, his anti-Paul hat, mining anything near Saturn, too fuckn cold, nuclear power all the time, radiation, make it into heat, energon cubes make no fuckn sense, purple, pinky purple, I eat energon cubes, to sell cars that transform into robots, disguises, you think I’m just a boring, my uncle was in the Navy, a mcguffin to chase after, if Jack London had written this story it would be way better, lab assistant, Wells was the lab assistant to Huxley, learning shit, science teacher, The Star by H.G. Wells, Goliah, a device that zap people out of existence, blackmail the capitalists into obeying him, you don’t need it to be set around Titan, wanting to change reality using his tech, more science fictional, when E.E. Doc Smith solves problems, we can’t restart the warp engines cold, the mechanism of the plot, somehow do the thing that is impossible, during the battle they invent technology, Borg shit is fake science fiction, nothing real and tangible, to engage in a new relationship with reality, bad science fiction vs. fake science fiction, pretty different, what makes something a western?, Outland (1981), sean connery in space, High Noon (1952) in space, a western in space, is this story science fiction?, just cuz the guy wants to do eugenics, the invisibility shield, small details, invented from not used, prevents them from having an incident, we have nuclear weapons in our cargo hold, had them, didn’t use them, the combination, trying to change the world, bad at his job, a plan to do so, a new race of humans, rich, capitalist, large mine holdings on Titan, visiting dilettante, hostages for money?, science fiction but not good science fiction, the gland formula, moving the goal posts, weird fiction possibly by science fiction, werewoman, also possibly, the narrator turns into a cat, it could be it was a science fiction, I lost the documents, undercutting it on purpose, read the end, secret formula in a published magazine, Frozen Canyon, Jeanne and I, glorious vibrant young body that nature gave her, she is normal, a scheming criminal half mad with lust, had never seen the French magazine she mentioned, there was no such magazine, the product of a deranged mind, she disrobes, gazing at her beauty in her bedroom mirror, the grinding maw, for you see sometimes a strange lethargy, cat naps, gleaming green and yellow, my mind is tottering, the watchful eyes upon, like a cat watches a mouse, the ambiguity, doesn’t impact the rest of the book, is there any supernatural activity in this story, half-breed French Canadian in the north, Franklin’s motivation, wait until she gets her money, gotta see her naked, you can’t wait five minutes to see her dance nakedly, nice and ambiguous ending, are we reading a diary entry?, if you go back early enough in the story, undercuts his whole story, if we drank milk we’d all be like cows, the doppleganger one, real science fiction, Mike Vendetti narrated, what supernatural thing happened? what scientific thing happened?, dosing with something apparently, spanish fly, masturbation talk, to perform for her guardian, doesn’t deliver, buy your thesis, precluded from science fiction, breed a new race?, white man’s law, given the period, philosophers have said, atavistic, ray weapon, primitive urge, the great simians who he resembled, a south seas story can be science fiction, Island Of Dr. Moreau, A Thousand Deaths, dogs and disintegration, The Monster Men, amnesia, therefore worthy of the daughter of the scientist, memory returned to Quarl, orderly procession of the stars, the artificial gravity, very early, pre-Heinlein, very interesting, as the ship rotated, a thick swathing of bandages, peaked face, rotten, a portable apparatus, progenitor, this will work, an agreeable warmth, a great lassitude followed, filled the blouse, tunic, blue trousers, gold braid down the side, clothing talk, one of the chosen, the chosen race, an out and out damned pirate, what else?, inscrutably melancholy, the idealism of a poet, many means, disguise one’s purpose, for instance, felt himself redden, Strom was a zealot, prompt penetration, the point is he wants him to join the team, breeding a new race, takes generations, Hitler’s plans, it won’t work, the fiction part, because it was real, trying to do something science fictional, before Hitler, not running his race programs, everybody loved it, homegirl, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, sterilize, its a good story for what it is, how short it is for the amount of material that is in it, romance stuff, an outline rushing through the material, get to the ideas, who in this group is fun to hang out with?, the author more than the characters, genuine science fiction opening, faltered in her course, stockholders, visitors, aware of a cessation, bad sentence beauty, parts of Cat-Woman, badly worded, fictitious gravity, main salon, the entire midship section, to flounder in helpless confusion, they’re being attacked, skipped past, not a good story, interesting and kinda fun here and there, trouble following it, poorly written, omniscient, first person, a character narrator, more economy there, how to tell stories, 1st person, 3rd person, close and far, really important, detective novels told 1st person, Sherlock Holmes, 1st person from the 2nd main character’s point of view, Watson’s POV, very easy to follow, if he did see it he didn’t observe it, 3rd person, tightened up, Ray Cummings masturbating while writing this story, sexy stories, the girl here is terrible, how she is behaving makes no sense, aliens who come to Earth to kidnap all the women, not writing in the first half of the 20th century, explorers, our universe is an atom in a larger structure, make themselves really big, you’re blind, why are your blind, my eyes don’t work, why don’t you just replace your eyes, execute him, more ethical than we are, had Heinlein written that, a 10page philosophical discussion, elemental and frenetic, and then this happened, why it has a bad reputation, Lester Del Rey writing really short stories, three book series, good stuff as well, more detail, more sweat put into it, Jonathan as a the new Paul, shownoting a show with Paul, invite him back, email Evan, Cora couldn’t show up because her mom died, reschedule for sometime in the future, other plans, I honor my commitments, arguing himself into something, Paul makes the show worse, talking over people, not all being in the same room, a delay, distracted, bad for the listener, Paul can contribute well but often doesn’t, “comps” is what they call them, bad thinking, being worried about spoilers, bad modes of thought, why are other people interested in spoilers, fundamentally misunderstanding, ladies in glass cylinders coming to earth, 7 minute story, aliens kidnap all the women, research projects, spiderwomen, an excuse to read it, beef with this story as a cat-woman story, made her a pig, wildcat, mountain lions, didn’t do any research, remote or something, not thinking it through, care about ideas more than writing, nice writing, experiencing the story sequentially, the end is the most important part, two exciting novels, Donald E. Westlake crime novel, new Ace Double, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos, no Alex?, LibriVox, set in Florida, good noir opening, Murder Mistress by Robert Colby, “Scott Daniels is a washed up showbiz announcer who hit the bottle a few too many times and blew his big chance.”, three and half hours, a lady drowning in quicksand as a sex fetish, mud, this is a new time, naked on a bed, I could read that, crime and mystery stories, more interested in the phenomena of these horny novels, naked woman on the bed pointing a gun, pink unmentionables, green negotiables, Killing Time by Donald E. Westlake, Ben Tucker, Smith will squawk, the small town aspect, Westlake is really good at his job, eating a ham sandwich, I’m looking for a guy named Smith, heavy browed, hand painted and too wide, front name, this is your lucky night, nice prose, painted ties, vintage 1961 feeling, Westlake is awesome, 4.5 hours, zoned out again, check in, a push notification, something stupid, addicted to the petty bourgeois, small freeholder, yeoman?, the dopamine, 46, pick up from you, it is good to get out of the house, enough to pay minimum wage, it is good to have hobbies, put a scanner somewhere in the middle of that, give it to the world, even just covers, archive.org’s custom scanner, ones from China, funky, wanting to preserve the book, designed for bound books, you can’t crack the spine on a sewn book, reams, come loose, quasi pornographic, Lost City Of The Damned by Alec Rivera [Charles Nuetzel], horny science fiction novel, sex, excitement, and the unknown, terrible in all the right ways, John Kendrick Bangs, Bangsian fantasy, like Beetlejuice (1988), The Good Place, A Houseboat On The Styx, inspired Riverworld, collaborative, a sequel, four books in the series, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s Inferno, ghost stories, it just goes on, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, so cool, he doesn’t know where it is going, offered him $100,000, Thorne Smith, person turning into a goldfish, The Stray Lamb, Topper series, a navy, nautical fiction, supernatural, when a book that’s falling apart, there’s lots of things I could do, an unassailable defense, E.W. Hornung’s Raffles, the gay response to Sherlock Holmes, not being gay enough, Conan Doyle’s brother-in-law, Bunny, a burglar, unbelievably gay, the lady in the mud puddle, in mud puddles?, why is this a thing, high heels, Barrett Whitener, mild mannered, Cary Grant, ok?, 1937 film, the novel is public domain, a few TV series, 78 episodes, Eric Idle, Transformers: The Movie (1986), Roddy McDowell, Bettlejuice sequel that nobody asked for, curious, what was left to be said?, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024), an imperfect novelization, something really cool, a lot of infodump, an excuse to explain, depopulated Australia, shot without permission, one week at a time, in terms of story, reading it through a novel, more action and is simpler, incredible astounding wonderful, dog dies in both, Mel Gibson, [he has a monkey in the third one], 4th one is not good, 5th one, worst kind of idea, go watch the backstory happen, a very unnecessary film, 7 minute standing ovation at Cannes, just because a movie gets a trophy, Eisner awards, a popularity contest, a lady doing the petition, more like the nebulas, people campaign, understood the process, how to get into comics, Maus, not entertaining for kids, better than other homework assignments, leaves his burner on, wants to save on matches, a very long term view of this show, Jesse has an ideology (campaigning for certain things, campaigning against certain things), very hesitant to ever give Amazon any money, most people go along, get along, bootstrap, the PDF page, to try to get more shit on Librivox, hasn’t worked out that well, LibriVox won’t use Jesse as a source, they use Project Gutenberg, Haithi Trust, why it takes so long, very precise, Canadian and Australian ones, FadedPage, Scott Miller [of the Lost Sci-Fi Podcast] is great, his agenda, to record unrecorded stuff, make a little bit of money, he likes this stuff, doing a ton of work, 200 episodes out, three times a week, he wants to mix it up, things that people request, ads in his podcast, the ones on youtube, on the other hand, an imperfect system, Mike [Vendetti] recording for Audible.com, he has other names too, The Last Spaceship by Murray Leinster, the mushroom world, The Mad Planet, Clifford D. Simak, more packaging?, mutual on twitter, stuff for fun, used to be Jesse’s job, a tape gun, very precise, do things fast, Halloween costume, against store bought costume, diplodocus?, cardboard costume, you can model things up out of cardboard, homemade costume, a standing desk, so unergonomic, way too low, no warehouse, fairly small objects, so lucky about media mail, guy from Britain, copies of Analog, Children Of Dune, $40 shipping, silly, Connor can’t get anything in and out of Australia for a reasonable price, New Zealand, horrific, a person in the world today, internet, worst shithole countries, tweeting from Gaza, delivery of things, if there was ever a case, start with mail, an essential service, what makes a country, parcels and letters and things across the place, what made the Mongols an empire, without getting Mongolized, the postal agency, the main job of the government, insurance and mail, universal coverage, being Westlakian, make that explicit, before eveveryone dies, he goes down so smooth, he’s a good guy, The Triumph Of Evil by Lawrence Block, the purported author, wanted to join the CIA, gets recruited, assassinating the president, love the premise, suggest both, five political figures, one man with a gun is enough for the job, a man who’s sole life function, Miles Dorn, he’s so good, the one set in Ireland with a folksinger, hung out with Maissa, Passport To Peril, Reading, Short And Deep short Lawrence Block stories, wonderful narrator, very powerful, good with the openings, professional newscaster, sidethings, horrible ads, normcore, Apple podcasts, regionally targeted, government health insurance, Uber teen accounts, big city thing?, am against, not invented something new, 88th birthday, surrounded by the elderly, dangerous, they can cut you in their gangs, make friends with young people, work at it, make em come on your podcast, meeting young people through science fiction, one pulp fiction friend younger, a year younger, everybody else, fifty is pretty young, aint that young, conversations with people, the whole point is the side benefits, a lot of time looking at books you want to read, help kids pass tests and get better marks in school, let’s do something that will help in the future, don’t lose money at it, shovelling money out the door is unsustainable, maintaining, spend time around cool paperbacks, real conversations about books, most people don’t read, they gain in value, an insight into that period, 1931, 1938, investigate more shudders, weird menaces, weird fiction, Weird Tales is still being published, dude, trolling Jesse, this ideology, only share things that can be shared, worrying about the terminator gene, monsanto’s plan to destroy farming, doesn’t affect your worldview, support illegal things to stop the terminator gene, watch a minute of it to see the BC legislature, Edison Motors, response to Tesla, as a guy, electrifying logging trucks, powerful youtube channel, we better pay attention to this, invited called the Green Party, a third party, pretty small in B.C.’s legislature, a bill to change funding for vehicle subsidization, election’s coming up, very different from American politics, not wholly incompetent clowns, so much clownage is happening, spread everywhere, clown world now, more enclownified, Kentucky legislative proceedings, seeing the room, special costume, threw off that yoke, judges don’t dress up funny, tradition is all we have left, a gavel, Alien Nation, tv series, main white guy, main human guy, alien girlfriend, the way they do the show, there’s aliens, pull out some fact about Mr. Spock’s physiology, builds up lore, lore is the most serious problem any Star Trek has, moved all her stuff in, I see you put up the clowns, paintings of clowns, we do not have clowns in our culture, cirsova, mental maps, no massive overlaps, new fiction, imagine if you were going to open a restaurant, not allowed to use food from after a certain year, recipes are not copyrighted or trademarked, secret recipe, formulations vs. recipes, why do recipe books exist?, she wants to try new food, the creative art, I should write a book, like their poetry, a reference book, not supposed to read it cover to cover, ooh we could make that, get up the courage to do one of the things in there, look at my art, the cookbook is kind of a dead art because of the internet, youtube channels, food algorithm, instagram, twitter, I’m now going to talk about god for the next couple of minutes, preface your conversation about god, why Jimmy Dore quit pot, a Jungian analyst, funny and interesting, spoilers skip ahead, fuck off, they think they’re supposed to, people are very copying, Seventh Victim, you really need to sell it, when they go to read Sheckley, unwreckable, a visual display, lots of money being spent, go to work and feel happy or sad, the narrator explains, hailing, cars going by, a weedwhacker, on a porch, in a room, a novel about cars recorded in a car, doesn’t edit it, how ratchet that is, so charming, can’t even call it pirated, never going to come into, he wanted to read this book to you, he’s a human being, the ideal form of being, people telling a story, another person enjoying that story, and talking about that story, a really good pitch, Louis Rossmann, laptop repairman philosopher guy, right to repair, not everything should be a subscription service, the right way to go, not getting a lot of traction, no money behind it, individuals trying to be ethical, something like a movement, Rossmann has a billionaire backer, leverage political change, leveraging their youtube channel to get a government subsidy, can’t find a place to build their factor, they’re a municipality, Merritt, B.C., other countries are courting them, moving farther north, less investment taken, idle land, investment property, vocal complaints, we want government to be somewhat responsive, Apple will fuck it up on purpose, past the pain point, Starbucks getting shit on for Israel, Nancy Pelosi’s friends kids were killed, Starbucks gave $3 million, special beans, be on the phone with Nancy Pelosi to get shit happening, two gift cards, Tim Horton’s ones, Starbucks, big corporate now, its fine, donuts, Starbucks’ food is very expensive, $3.60, cheap for their products, an expensive part of the world, in terms of land, hard to find housing, a city but suburbs, unhoused, hobos, houseless, tentless, half a duplex, half-housed, housing many animals, some raccoons, big swollen teats, some babies, what racoon milk tastes like, the science of racoon milk, latch on and give a little suck, made redundant, life in rural Kentucky, mixed up with weird apologies for Joe Biden, Trump Derangement Syndrome, sniffing kids, blatant lying, confabulating memories, gross children grabbing, Astounding, doesn’t know he’s on camera, nobody calls him on it, his daughter’s diary, she left it somewhere, like the son left the laptops, woman sentenced to prison for stealing and selling Ashley Biden’s diary, going to therapy and telling the therapist her dad was having showers with her, pretty damning if true, Hunter calling his dad a pedophile, to hurt it his dad, pawing children, hand on a girl’s breast, evil that he gets away with that, a lot going around, what percentage?, double digits?, a survey, look around, just in your own life, it’s not zero, Biden paws girls breast, video distorts, granddaughter, here’s the apology for it, Natalie Biden, Beau Biden’s daughter, a Biden who’s not allowed to be a Biden, John Snow, what Game Of Thrones is about, politics, titillation, perverted sex stuff, Scott liked it, George R.R. Martin, huge entourage of women, Freya Stark, women’s brains, not a handsome man, got money, an attraction to the storytelling, for women, something to him, the first book is in the show, why people are into it, so much of it, the media stuff is not reading, people like talking about things around the watercooler, Americans are very prudish, HBO would have a little bit of nudity, traditionally verboten, high drama, reversals, responding to Tolkien’s vision of Middle Earth is escapist, Martin’s vision of Westeros, trying to be realist, got dragons, war of the roses, infighting between royal families, bottom up characters, when you see a princess get raped, that’s dramatic, girl mind mentality, they’re different, common core, women are weaker than men, shorter than men, things growing inside your body for 9 months, women care about health more, watch Alien Nation with Meg, watch the pilot, cheer for schooling, the Ruby Bridges story, desegregation story, govt. agents, sit in a classroom by herself all day, very TV dramatic, how fucked up American morality is, prudishness, the names are so funny, the original 1988 movie, a family drama done as a buddy cop show, got punchy, funny names, Sam Fransisco, low level humour in the background, another baby, needs to find a binnaum, Albert Einstein, you’re gonna let Albert fuck your wife?, be in the room while the partner is being cuckolded, Heinlein style violation of norms, this is all biological, made up to tell stories like that, to break down prejudices, so lefty feelgood, genuine SF, little details, weirdly sexy show, sex stuff on Fox TV in 1990s, cancelled, brought it back, reshoot the final scene, set in 1995, highly rated show, second to last episode: child sex slavery with politicians, nothing stays in print anymore, Netflix shows removed from Netflix, lost the license or embarrassed, not vertically, horizontal, vs. spherical, own the mines for the raw materials for your cars, marketing and movie theaters, merging with competitors, productions that it greenlights, Quentin Tarantino will own Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019) in 20 years, a Star Trek movie, see you next week.

Cat-Woman by Ray Cummings - from Terror Tales, May 1938

In The Orbit Of Saturn by R.F. Starzl from Astounding, October 1931

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #451 – Moon Dog by Arthur C. Clarke

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #451

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Moon Dog by Arthur C. Clarke

Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.

The Unveiling was first published in Galaxy, April 1962.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #798 – READALONG: Return From The Stars by Stanisław Lem

Jesse, Will Emmons, Cora Buhlert, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about Return From The Stars by Stanisław Lem

Talked about on today’s show:
a betterized Terence, what happened to Jonathan, refusing to speak with us because communist dictators, Bibi worship, need more Lem, great, really great, great science fiction, solid novel, there are moments that are excellent, great ideas, amazing scenes, the ending confused, Beyond Atlantis (1973), a 1970s movie from the Philippines, Lovecraft combined with Atlantean, a sexploitation movie, John Wayne’s son, family friendly, the opposite, an adult movie, hits all the beats, competent and funny, Jesse promises, The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre (1948) with Atlanteans, they lost all their pearls, that’s not funny, at the end of Gumball Rally (1976), “gumball”, illegal road race across the country, the bird at the end, the betrazated bird, no wild things exist, unlikely to kill humans, notice it isn’t afraid of the human, taught to be afraid, humans are no longer scary, confusing beginning, first gets on/off the airplane, cutouts, flashing across the ceiling of this tube, end of the book, sitting in the snow, eating snow, going home, acting like a child, pretty good at telling us about what it means, people don’t change, a pretty good theme, describing this book to a dude, guy comes back from space, stronger than anybody else on earth, no other men on the planet, they’ve all been castrated, like John Carter, jump super high, the chairs reach up to comfort you, masculine power has been turned into something useless, John Carter goes to Mars and there’s no problems there, he’s going to go on that expedition, sets up the sequel, turns this book into The Forever War, a utopian/dystopian book, Conan shows up in a kingdom, what’s your problem, ruins Robert E. Howard’s argument, undercurrents of discontent, robots?, drug to undo, an underground supply, we do that too, people consuming alcohol or cocaine, in vino veritas, there’s no escape from a dystopia, a non-dystopia, fell in love with a woman who belonged to that society, the adventure is good side, the final transformation, a star child or a messiah, nobody gives a damn about them, he becomes ordinary, echoes the end, I did not want the stars, crazy/derranged, a man must be completely ordinary, otherwise impossible/pointless to live, testosterone fueled adventurism, espousing conformity, he doesn’t seek betrazation, conditioned by capitalism, seeing creative destruction as good, its own sense and logic, he can never be at home, he doesn’t want to go and do it again, he falls in love with a woman who is ordinary, extraordinary didn’t interest him, chose ordinariness, exhibit D, a page from Teen Confessions, a redhead and her teen boyfriend are falling in love while visiting Washington, D.C., outside looking at the moon and the Capital building, you’d better agree, would there be a penalty?, then I’d kiss you and keep kissing you until you agree, romance comics, girl comics end with periods, in that case I refuse, I’ll keep saying no, thinking while being kissed, end of scene, she’s figured it, so interesting, the scene that’s like this in the book, trouble communicating, jesus christ people have difficulty communicating their wants, animal sex, are you okay with me kidnapping you?, the heart of the problem, when she don’t know what’s she’s thinking at all, she’s betrazized incapable, she can’t ask to be kidnapped and raped, unthinkable, the reason you carry a woman over a threshhold, taken her from her father’s house, a hairpulling thing, caveman style of interaction, maybe she wanted this and that’s why she’s afraid, women do like men and their male characteristics, not just a roleplay, I’m forcing my will upon you, that’s what we’re told by the narrator, he doesn’t know that at the time, that’s how stupid I was, we’re not telepathic beings, words are usually a good way of rationalizing thoughts, you’ve stated it perfectly, dialogues, not knowing what it meant, incomplete sentences, left puzzled, one of the topics of this book, Planet Of The Apes, The Unincorporated Man, its not about understanding it’s about action, it’s about metamorphosis, another possibility, by loving this woman, he turns into a child at the end, how much can love transform you?, he does not fit in, hence his attraction and our attraction to go back to space, ordinary is not the same as conformist, the anti-I Am Legend, he’s just a normal guy with superman muscles, 1961, East European science fiction, space books, the thing to remember, the official doctrine, we will have socialism soon, wonderful utopia, socialist utopia, there will be people who won’t fit in, German science fiction writer, socialism is like Christmas, just sleep a few more nights and there will be socialism, socialism was the endgame, we know this is going to be the future, how do we get there?, what will we lose when we get there?, the women in the book, there were three, progression between the women, no matter where Jonathan went, many such cases, it’s because Jonathan’s a handsome American, do you want me?, $200, pre-fall of the wall, interhotels, similar things in the Soviet Union, women who would do whatever you wanted for western money, she’s kinda like a whore, the screen star, the actress, the realist, she treated him like a whore, he was novel, maybe I can conquer him too?, eventually, figure her out a bit, take her from her husband and go talk to him, Terence came to France (the apes had power), spoke French very badly, a talking dog, quite amusing, fell in love with a French woman, became French, hear from Will, thinking in terms of dialectics, what is a dialectic?, two poles, old style man adventure, the betraized Eloi, John Carter meets The Time Machine, the death drive vs. the pleasure principle, discharging energies to get to a steady state, death drive, alcohol or crazy choices, changing paradigms, always a possibility of setting up a third way, dialectical, this society is impossible, there are contradictions in this society that are staggering, do this poorly, the propaganda version, a school textbook, have you read school textbook, school is designed to indoctrinate, the offical ideology, the robot smelting plant, does it set something up, underrealized, a reel of a realization of that, I’m in here improperly, I’m not broken, really crying out for help, what’s so cool about that, all the humans have become robots, putting them into recycling centers instead of death camps, the robots do the selection, really terrific book, Mockingbird by Walter Tevis, suggested based on a John Lange novel, from there to here, the weird German copy, The Terminal Man, using pleasure to counter the death drive, deep writers, reinforces the murderous impulses, inhibition is A Clockwork Orange, also a travel book, air b and bs, a utopian novel, a dystopian novel, Logan’s Run, the Berlin Wall, traveling was aspirational, Lem did travel, privileged, The Dispossessed, poverty planet, everyone suffers under communism, to capitalist planet, that’s the point of fandom, Donald A. Wollheim, how about reading this book as not a utopian government, fully automated luxury, safe under grandma’s skirts, communist countries were more open, Hillary Clinton couldn’t imagine being a woman astronaut, it was just different, Sally Ride, Valentina Tereshkova, she was a seamstress, this is girl planet, what makes a man a man, the ability to have violence in any conversation, handshakes are a big deal, girls and handshakes are copying men’s behavior, I can’t be pushed over, something wrong with their brain, apologize, farmers hands are all sinew, he doesn’t know all strong, a possibility of violence between us, many skills and not drunk, that potential for violence is always there, the holding up the hand is the unarmed, not a universal human greeting, the open hand, the how, you have to learn it, this is what its for, holding out your hand, as opposed to against that person, refusing a handshake, doesn’t know what to do with his hands, feels weird in his skin, what they look like or what they’re wearing, SFWA dm, the people over here are odd and strange in different ways, luxuries we don’t have, obviously German, weird acronyms, words we have to intuit, legal loophole, sold east German stuff to us, about being a man, many ways of being a man, most masculine hobby is smoking cigars, beer tents, unhealthy, one of the ways of being a man is act as a protector to the smaller female, women cops protecting male victims of crime, moderated, he’s a pilot, traumatized, backstory, why he’s PTSD, an Earth that can’t understand him, boxing matches aside, stolen girl, tell me about this scar, he’s such a wounded animal she can’t resist them, scars on men, a whole German society, a lot of Nazis, right wing, this is a planet that has been feminized, man against lion, the lion is not a threat, holograms, not a robot lion, where does the meat come from?, lion and a lioness, the hologram experience on the rope bridge, dives in and rescues her, everybody has been coddled, everyone has soft hands, physically strong, considered suicide, even the dudes are girls, everyone seems to him like his idea of a girl, a little hyperbolic, bring boxing gloves, I need someone to threaten me, would be as lost, nobody has to work because everything is free, if you want to have a car, the supervisory job, an archaeologist studying an ancient relic of human civilization, a very discombobulating world, becomes a child again, putting snow in your mouth, Jesse would still be a podcaster in this world, Ukraine or Belorussia, Poland was recreated as a state, after WWII, Truman was strongly involved, Stalin decided, after the Russian revolution, the Baltic states, put into houses where German people had lived, traumatic, always upset, uproot us again, Silesia, moved to northern German, literally stopped living, no chance to keep his farm house, a weird guy, felt sorry for him, 1921, survived the holocaust with false papers, always in the subject of the other countries around it, a post national world, does everybody speak the same whatever it is?, esperanto?, the opening is awesome, Lem has a plan, continously discombobulates, how the tech works, why the behavior is so stange, a lot like Logan’s Run without the depth, calling them Eloi, constantly young and beautiful, no predator underneath, even the robots, take this another direction, lead a robot revolt, if you listen carefully to what the robots are saying, reasonable, religious fanatics, a whole bunch of demented people, the other option is a horror, this whole society can’t be fixed, a lot of time in hospital, help me!, get me out of here!, just yelling, looks good on the surface, a totalitarian government, that is totalitarianism, propaganda, hypnagogic tapes, we don’t know who issues those, a smokescreen, they can’t, not wanting to as an excuse, an inhibition, they have all the tech for it, lost their sense of adventure, going to space would be dangerous, can’t place themselves in danger, if Niven took this book, Berlin, kids drowned in full view, their own comrades would shoot them, immigrant kids, people standing around, society is based around several lies, just as bad as the alcoholic, a religious fanatic who is peaceable might be annoying, dysfunctional, less likely to drunk drive you, dysfunctional neurotic, just as neurotic, in a different direct, less manly, there’s no PTSD on this planet, the primary contradiction, incapable of wanting it vs. incapable of doing it, the idea cannot come into their heads, the apologetics aren’t necessary anymore, space rapes, Theodore Sturgeon, penetrating other spheres, ideological belief in equality, no, you’re a homemaker, we don’t put women into danger, men are disposable, the tragedy of a woman being destroyed in space, given this premise, he would try, turn it off, fix it, even rapeyer, pretty rape, The Cosmic Rape by Theodore Sturgeon, castration, violent thought come from the balls?, the totalitarianism, Philip K. Dick’s Progeny, maybe Will is just totalitarianism, the one child policy, a blanket solution, oppressed nationalities, a button you switch on or off, totalitarian style thinking, you’re not wise enough to have children, turn off all these indians ability to have children, when in doubt sterilize, do it on the downlow, not something you advertize, controlling every aspect of reality, nobody has any boo boos, where Larry Niven could take this story, we could do a robot uprising, religious leaders, you could do a lot with this world, has the guy broken in the end, that expedition is gonna solve anything, super-anti-gravity drive, go away forever, unless they’re doing it Heinlein’s Universe style, posit something new, he’s going to inform, evidence against it, he chooses to become ordinary, his children will be betrazated, a profit and loss thing, 50-50, hence he gives in, the central thing that distinguishing, falling in love with one of the dogs, showing your hands in a weird way, incapable of doing the horror, what’s the central contradiction?, the solution to violence, it’s not true, those in power can order a robot to kill someone, money is not eliminated from the economy, money exists for more valuable and rarer things, she’s gotten illegally, the drug, where’s the prisons on this planet, what crime takes place, what makes it illegal, the robots are not the police, the robots will kill you if you’ve gone to far, the robots are the people, the robot might decide, this is a system, she’s studying at university to become an archaeologist, the robot supervisor (husband), wants to secretly confront him, legit there wasn’t a second engineer there, a false flag, an excuse to visit this horror show, compare this very good book to Mockingbird, there are only systems, a secret government hidden in a bunker in Cheyenne Mountain, not because it is illegal, robots don’t get upset, who’s really running things, isn’t this exciting, phones being tapped, the paranoid person from the past, insane, he’s a failure, he’s Conan, he’s Tarzan of the Apes, come back to a world of pussies, don’t, slap the tarzan out of my mouth, will?, like a really good star trek episode, the Betazeds, a trick question, you should be saying it, what kind of fantasy?, an idealist fantasy, a materialist piece of science fiction, not a contradiction between classes, understated, what are the classes, the robots and the eloi, the young and the old, the aging problem, a weird way to go, third childhood, the men try to look as young as they can, women would look for wealth, heroics, scars, we don’t need a biological solution to war, nations are an output of classes, trying to say things she’s unable to describe, no context, she seems to confirm it, wants to be taken but unable to say it, what female genes say: take me take me now, the y chromosomes don’t understand, character posing with two dolls almost kissing, Masters of the Universe collection, this is part of the girl version, the love of the relationship stuff, the Princess of Power movie, the original She-Ra, a continuous storyline, Days Of Our Lives, superhero team movies, don’t care about princess, princesses and magic swords, Sheepfarmer’s Daughter by Elizabeth Moon, The Deed Of Deed Of Paksenarrion, kinda like Red Sonja, Baen, terrible distribution, a fantasy solution to the science fiction presented today, not a series makes it even better, Lem can be very funny, The Futurological Congress, all brain material, super-science fiction stuff, under pressure, The Silent Star (1960), serialized on VKvideo, 5 part 1989 production, very popular for adaptations, a great book, second Lem, One Human Minute, grumpy about doing this one, it was available, The Cyberiad, last week, Jesse tried to pin it on everyone, we are all guilty, no one forced you to sign up for this, all your hands are bloody, the Wikipedia didn’t make it sound great, plot wrong, coming together right now, a little less than Paul, Australia or Poland, twitter is the best way to keep in touch, The Devil’s Elixirs by E.T.A. Hoffmann, in 58 parts, caveat under the audiobook, just during the high moments, an outcue and an incue, barring change, Bremen Soviet Republic, family secret, they didn’t talk about that, Connor is hard to get, 17 hours, Terence has nothing but time, Will studies science fiction right now, lifting weights, kettlebelling your brain, making critical claims, didn’t get the pseudonym of the dictator who went to Mars, always Pulpcovers, Scott Miller, dictator goes to Venus, his title was number 1, you have to infer it, the dictator is Weichsel, read the description of the tweet, Happy Ending by Fredric Brown and Mack Reynolds, whatever it was?, did Stalin like dogs?, Khrushchev? we are not destalinizing the dog space program, miniseries, a late night thing, the lady who plays the hologram, no excuses, Dark Carnivals: Modern Horror and the Origins of American Empire by W. Scott Poole, The Gun by Philip K. Dick, Murray Leinster had nothing to do with it, Mad Planet by Murray Leinster, The Liar is Jonathan’s idea, that was a robot, Demons Of Cthuhlu by Robert Silverberg, Time Is The Simplest Thing by Clifford D. Simak, up to speed on Fredric Brown, that’s a robot dude, that’s a fuckn robot, audiobook with terrible feedback distortion, the DRM?, you don’t have enough audiobook experience, an argument from authority vs. an argument from strength, a british fuckin robot, not a human, just listen, three tenths of a second you can tell, look at the hands, a lady drawing a sword, two handled sword, hilts on both ends, wait for the humans to do the human work, it’s wrong, my life is worth more, not going to pay for it anywhere, it’s not labour it’s love, you could eat toothpaste, fake sugar, aspartame, way too sweet, gotten sweeter, adulterating your toothpaste, toothpaste shouldn’t be delicious, baking soda and salt, East German toothpaste, read by a single narrator, this is where dictator Jesse comes in, can you have all the tools, a robot show, a good place to draw the line, a Margaret Atwood book, dramatic readings on LibriVox, almost incomprehensible Italian guy, Scott Miller looks up fuckin word, he’s a perfetionist, he’s a great voice, so good at producing his show, AI art, he spends a lot of time crafting some of them, Paul’s argument against AI art, not more than the usual mad at Jesse, busy being mad at Chengdu, if Paul was here, chat GPT style things, his argument, gives him a bad answer, you have to work with it, the way you play with your dolls, Lego Minifigures, going into a database of copyrighted materials, AI art is bad because it sucks not because its morally incapable of being good, if we were in power, AI generated picture, extra fingers, a stray head, Jonathan at some point robot narrators may become great, Gregg Margarite has good taste, if we can’t find a good Gregg Margarite, loved what he narrated, if you listen to Scott Miller on his livestreams, he brings the same interest and level of care to the production of his audiobooks, hired an artist, more difficult, Deviant Art, artists who are doing something approximate, rates and other stuff, if you objectively look at Jesse’s tweets: looks at art all day, oh lovely, appreciate/criticize, pretty good taste so far, nudity, sand princess, not nude enough, covering over her nipples is unfortunate, fuck off, artstation, that’s a good cover, hashtag leg cling, posted, tweeted, frickin pirates, hashtag leaked, reign over the museums, what’s allowed to be purchased to the state, handshake isn’t strong enough, the green creatures are around a woman doing things to her, doesn’t have the good taste that Jonathan has, exquisite taste, more minifigs than He-Man, allows them power, chat gpt gives you power, to really appreciate a good essay you have to be able to write one, when acting as an artist, planet’s worst actor, you appreciate good acting, good art, good writing, getting excited about it, little kids are excited about ai art, collage, on a book cover, ai art book covers are better than most industry book cover art prior to ai art, tin ear, the font matters, he’s Ukrainian and Jesse is pro-Russia, not a Nazi?, get out of your bubble, bud, embargo, we’re not going to stop Putin or Lukashenko, we’re not going to stop the Houthis by dropping bombs on them either, Cora doesn’t have sympathy for the Houthis, Appleonster, too cheesecakey, people need an eye for shit, you need to know what to look for, Uncle Horst, bought a bad car, overwhelmed by its beauty, beautiful mistake, ASAP, pirate website, step off, is it illegal?, you wouldn’t download, show me the law, taking a law course, terms of service, DRM interfaces with the law, a license, you can’t steal something that you can’t own, tab city, continuous defollowing, unfollowed 500 people/publications/organizations, mute people, muting Jesse, peak COVID, nothing but COVID, still coviding, we’re all going to die anytime soon now, maximum COVID panic, used to be the argument, verbal sparring, argumentation, loved university, meet a lot of young people, getting into fights, people who were right wing, confusing for people, that star trek planet, you’re not of the body, Operation: Annihilate, spore that go into people and betrazate them, racist, conservative, this or that, a fear of infection/contamination, precious bodily fluids, no brown grandkids, their dancing is pretty cool, put up a wall, dirty/icky/scary, show me the difference between that kind of people and people who are fearful of covid, left winger or right winger vs. liberal and conservative, calling people communists who are not communists, slurs, pro-vaxxer exists, pro-booster, this covid one isn’t very good, do your own research kinda guy, reading, Jesse is a fan, Hugo Book Club and Cora tweets, this is politics of being fans, not a fancast, calling people out, not playing the games, procasts, fanatic yes, fan no, a doomer account, sad, the only kid who masks at the tutoring place, white lady, corporate profits, can’t even process that, we are creating their future habits in realtime, COVID hysteria, long covid since 2020, the profit thing, open the businesses again, keeping the economy open, ruined people’s businesses, livelihoods, happily wears a mask indoors, bribed with hotwheel, people who are deluded, deluded people, seeing reality in the wrong way, the argument for licensing parents, every Jesse button, back to that well, Our Opinions [Are Correct], try not to follow accounts, mainstream comics, feels bad to unfollow people, I don’t value their voice, angry/annoyed/pissedoff, try to keep a good ratio, crown corporations and indian tribes, Jesse always was an indian, he just forgot about it, adopted, first nations, when you go to their indian reserve and you talk to the indians, some indians say first nations, Jesse’s sister, The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Jesse is Old Shatterhand, Cora is obliged to marry Jesse, Chief Dan George, what privileges does this get, nothing, hired actors to do acting, hiring indians for playing indians to play indians, CBC turned, a little tiny industry was cool, so Paul could get triggered, cool people, land acknowledgement at Davos, Turks and Vietnamese in Germany, Montagnards, pretending to serve food, authentic Chinese people, Italian ice cream parlours run by ice cream, ice cream culture, gelato, good ratio, still working on it, 2 to 1 almost, following 1700 people, bad for your brain, going looking for tweets more sketchy, three bad tweets in a row you’re a candidate, can’t call you out on the podcast, it’s rough out there, listen and learn things, interesting insight, what Puppies are, calling Jesse is not a fan, dealer’s room was the best part, something that will never happen, if they wanted to make the Hugos better they should not do media (tv shows and the movies), suggested for ages, coverage is only for dramatic presentation winners, send a representative, two ladies from Sony Ireland, animated Spider-Man movie, pointing towards an argument, undermines the whole prospect, do you need a Hugo?, Hugo Winner Cora Buhlert, a piece of land with two motorcycles, two cars and two Hugos on it, hanging on to the dream, indians rode around on horses, very few of us ride around on horses, if the Hugos are useful…, a reading list, as you evolved, David Brin’s [Startide Rising], when Harry Potter started getting nominated, late to the game, it all happened earlier than you know, bad book, badly written, stolen from Lester Del Rey, used to be interesting books, that was really good, associating Hugos with that, a learned response, The Wanderer by Fritz Leiber, the second weakest, based on the premise, They’d Rather Be Right by Mark Clifton and Frank Riley, Connie Willis syndrome, it’s her turn!, an Oscar thing, except of Ursula K. Le Guin, All My Cats Did This And That, such a baby, as the new adoptive parents to this new child (Will), The Demolished Man, yea or nay?, The Long Tomorrow, Double Star, The Big Time, A Case Of Conscience, alien Jesuits, Little Fuzzy with Jesuits, was an asshole, bounced off Blish, Starship Troopers (useful to have read), a boy book, not mandatory, you don’t get any vote, Heinlein was not a fascist, a military fetishist, overstated, A Canticle For Leibowitz, Stranger In A Strange Land, if you were a Heinlein character, the round ball that can make cute voices, teaching Will to fish, Clifford D. Simak, Waystation, not as good a book, Roger Zelazny’s This Immortal and Dune, giving people homework?, that’s not allowed anymore, didn’t get along with Dune, very dense, 24 different narrators, George Guidall, he’d be ideal, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, Manny is the non female robot, the guy with one arm, the head of the revolutionary cells, Heinlein is ridiculous, prison planet, awesome title, love the politics, endless speechifying is a problem, group [line] marriages, swinger club within walking distance, Lord Of Light, a lukewarm review, very 60s hippy dippy, short story, kill an old person to get an apartment, Stand On Zanzibar by John Brunner, so thick, The Left Hand Of Darkness, a big weighty tome, makes you grow up, bureaucratic country, listening to an old person, this novel is everything, Ringworld, the weight of that spinning object in place, let’s go to the ringworld, age-gap discourse, she’s so lucky she gets to have sex with him, just her luck, a very dirty young man, that’s fine, he was asian you’re not allowed to criticize him, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, a tough year, The Gods Themselves, three gendered aliens?, Robert Silverberg, Rendezvous With Rama, big dumb object, Time Enough For Love, Protector is so good, alien can’t do his job properly, chasing after the rumour, not enough people to protect chases down a rumour about an expedition to the far end of the galaxy, shows up in earther’s solar system, humans are not from earth, the soil on earth didn’t have the right stuff, a pupal stage (or zygote stage), tree of life root, power exoskeleton super-thinking machine, offspring, amazing idea, completely wrong, go with the premise, awesome hard SF, cool explanations for things, superinteresting, The Dispossessed, The Mote In God’s Eye, highly recommend both, Cora not the biggest Niven fan (because she’s a girl), Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, Old Man’s War by John Scalzi, The Stochastic Man, Alfred Bester, The Computer Connection, Inferno, Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm, Silent Spring, pollution, a Green party convention, Mindbridge, a clone novel, Man Plus, Shadrach In The Furnace, late Pohl vs. early Pohl, Gateway, crazy guy who needs therapy goes to therapy with AI doctor, disappointed, Lucifer’s Hammer, Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre, The Moon And The Sun, The Fountains Of Paradise, his short stories, his early novel, Eric S. Rabkin, good stuff in here, why is it a novel?, novels is where the money is, collaborations, terrible, The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge, Tiamat orbits a black hole, Hegemony, if it is okay, Ringworld Engineers, Beyond The Blue Event Horizon, C.J. Cherryh’s Downbelow Station, Claw Of The Conciliator by Gene Wolfe, Julian May’s The Many Colored Land, Project Pope by Simak, bias against Simak, Foundation’s Edge a book that should not exist, a book that need not be written, very hit and miss, Sword Of The Lictor, Friday by Heinlein, double strength muscular body, the worm turned, wtf?, Brin doesn’t work, nobodies doing nobodies, Anne McCaffrey, 15th Pern book, Robots Of Dawn, Millenium by John Varley, Tea With A Black Dragon by R.A. MacAvoy, an art book, he’s Clark Ashton Smith, art sounds, also cool heist plot, Job: A Comedy Of Justice, Integral Trees, year of Will’s birth, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, The Postman, Cuckoo’s Egg, Will is kinda corny, Footfall, teen in the 80s, Blood Music, the short story is even better, Greg Bear, Speaker For The Dead, Marooned In Realtime by Vernor Vinge, Uplift War, back to the shitty old business, coulda been summed up by Lester Del Rey in 15 minutes, When Gravity Fails, Mormons in space, dogs and apes, dolphins is Brin, The Faithful, as an idea man, he’s ripping off H.G. Wells, hold my beer dead guys, reading screens to the audience, he thinks he’s a the supergenius, doing bad work, why awards are dangerous, put bad thoughts into their heads, triggers Jesse more than doomers, Cyteen, bounced off, first third, masterpiece, most ambitious, I’m like a person who like is going to die, a cloning book, over the course of 22 hours, a very dystopian book, lots of unhappiness, lots of everything, 1990, Dan Simmon’s Hyperion, turned really weird, the sequel might have been better than the first one, steal their titles from poems, stealing the structure, it didn’t have anything to say, it has no message, it didn’t have an idea it was exploring, the characters were interesting, when you’re watching a new tv show, ooh this is promising, try not to get tricked, X-Files used to not do that, weird cases of the week are very rewatchable, the lore shit, Lois McMaster Bujold’s The Vor Game, a series of wins, she’s a good writer, Falling Free, space unions, set in the same universe, the modern era, where things show, A Fire Upon The Deep and The Doomesday Book, what I’m hearing is you hate Willises, cut her down to size, needlessly long, oh Mr. Dunworthy, all her characters are british, she has good ideas, needs an editor carving out big section, [Bellwether] the same topic over and over again, girls go back in time and the Blitz, can’t connect to her, some hot officer, very romantic for a girl, an observation, 1993, a big change in publishing in the 1980s, a big fuckin honker, why this happened in publishing, price of paper, hit a certain price point, spinner racks, longer and thicker, the airport bookstore model, Tom Clancy, James Michener, John Jakes, Kim Stanley Robinson, don’t pay attention, scientistis talking to each other, Beggars In Space by Nancy Kress, an evil book, an evil writer, evil readers, Virtual Light, Mirror Dance, Neal Stephenson, Robert J. Sawyer, doesn’t do characters well, The Diamond Age, nanobot lung, more series, Elizabeth Moon, Starplex, a Star Trek novelization, an episode of Star Trek Continues, addictive series, they won’t punch you in the guts, there’s one missing, a better book?, Forever Peace, more mature, Frameshift, Michael Swanwick, To Say Nothing Of The Dog, the subtitle of Three Men In A Boat by Jerome K. Jerome, kinda Jeevesy, through Heinlein, Connie Willis, Have Space Suit, Will Travel, read this book, Kim by Rudyard Kipling, a movie, filmed in Germany, on LibriVox, revisiting it, post modern age, Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, Darwin’s Radio, unreadable, height of Harry Potter hype, Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson, Calculating God, he used to write science fiction, a lot of people are not science fiction people, fakes, she loves science fiction, Robert J. Sawyer is a science fiction writer, just the ideas, that’s it, nothing else, Neil Gaiman, American Gods, Perdido Street Station, ends with an invite to the next book, done with Sawyer, Paladin Of Souls, Charles Stross, Susanna Clarke, stopping to pay attention, two Irons, met three of these people, China Miéville, Michael Chabon, diminshing returns, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, mainstream stuff leaning in the science fiction direction, The Graveyard Book, Paolo Bacigalupi, you guys hate liberals, The City And The City, Ann Leckie, never have to deal with Hugos ever again, Three Body Problem, N.K. Jeminson again, Mary Robinette Kowal, Murderbots, Arkady Martine, T. Kingfisher, reverse order, retro Hugos, Farenheit 451, a different unimportant novel Z For Zachariah, The Caves Of Steel, heavy quite short, More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon, do your own research, really great actors, just forced, hammerlock, you’re in a vulnerable place in your life, make you more manly, correct and cornily done ending, an interesting think, a learning experience, Hal Clement in 1954, a pretty good list, Childhood’s End, Juett told Will about it, the first version is public domain, 1951, whatever stupid don’t care, just fascist white men winning, Farmer In The Sky beat The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, Heinlein for the win, C.S. Lewis’ most famous novel, Maissa not Will, sad story, you still have an opportunity to read this excellent book The Dying Earth by Jack Vance, a fixup, super episodic, The Mule, The World Of Null-A, always a complete mess, a weaker year, 1945, Leigh Brackett’s Shadow Over Mars, Sirius: A Fantasy Of Love And Discord, Brackett over Stapledon, Fritz Leiber’s Conjure Wife, Hermann Hesse, Weapon Shops, 1943, Beyond This Horizon, The Uninvited by Dorothy MacArdle, Donovan’s Brain, move on from the Lensman, second stage lensmen, lost their legs now they’re slugging around, 1941, Slan by A.E. Van Vogt, a lot of people have not turned against fans are slans, planets run by women are better than planets run by men, this yes (evil), stay on your meds, final year, 1939, T.H. White’s The Sword In The Stone, Legion Of Time, Out Of The Silent Planet is a blather is space book, best off when it doesn’t happen, I was reading this great book Dad had given me…, make note, Narnia reference, Enid Blyton, court judgement for fraud case, how many of the guys are innocent?, actual numbers, what percentage are guilty?, sneak over to your purse, zero percent innocent?, Rawandan refugee, 4% innocent, most English speakers are guilty, illegal fireworks, drug cases, obviously guilty, prices.

Return From The Stars by Stanislaw Lem

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #793 – READALONG: Sirius by Olaf Stapledon

The SFFaudio Podcast #793 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Will Emmons, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about Sirius by Olaf Stapledon

Talked about on today’s show:
1944, some Olaf before this, Last And First Men and Star Maker, wow, this blew Jonathan away, this is a novel, if you told me I’d enjoy a book about a talking dog, it has that cosmic perspective, in a dog who has no hands, real genuine science fiction, not genre SF, not from an American pulp tradition, in the subtitle, “A Fantasy Of Love And Discord”, a scientific romance, something to say, thinking about dogs a lot, a dog as a kid, a pet person, passed away earlier this year, afraid of dogs, allergic to most of them, Irish setter, what I’m hearing is you’re gay, australian shepherd, Karl Barks, still gay, gay for dogs, city boy, Scrappy, got too big, gave him away, cats, Minnesota, a Labrador and a great Pyrenees, border collie, Corgi, loved to death, the dog relationship, neutral to dogs, like our narrator storyteller, the Olaf Stapledon stand-in, affected emotionally, balling my eyes out, hiking, tears, very powerful, a great book, some good things in the review, very American, wanted the book to be genre SF, Philip K. Dick shows instead of tells, make points about philosophy, attempts pulp, Cambridge educated philosopher, from 2020, another reference point, Dick’s philosophy is more cynical, very different, Stapledon trusts people and the community of people, trusts reality more, even though the community if evil, Dick’s stories are more city, vs. more country, more suburban, lives in a “community”, a very small world for you, the college with the town attached, some London here, rural fantasy, through the novel tradition, such a bad comparison, to bring Philip K. Dick into the conversation, a guy named Jesse, correct to reference Frankenstein by Mary Shelly, a more wholesome, humane take, needs to be with other creatures, a 2015 review, no last name, Odd John, as opposed to a book about super and ultra sheepdogs, uplifted, can you get an uplift without it being biologically heritable, the raising, a monkey in Australia as a farmhand, the fox listening to banjo music, an old English children’s magazine, great pets, famous pets, Farmhand Johnny, a rhesus monkey, follow up tweet, interviewing the farmer, the second monkey in a series of farmhands, don’t go on about your handlessness, super-important, this is not a man creating another man, a dog with a man’s brain, a super-canine brain, the thing that’s adressed a lot in the book, bestiality, incest, how intiate they had become, looks at her body mauled by the dog, as are we, Plaxy, such a weird name, a name that people have in England, Wales, the fornication?, discretion prohibits me from saying, how Jonathan would write it, a man relives himself, masturbating, sexual hypocrisy, a very funny sad and tragic book, deeply philosophical, dog-lover wish fulfillment fantasy, this is a being like me that has thoughts and desires and wants, unable to communicate fully, flagging of tails, bristling of backs, wants to have sex, wants to have a relationship with you, that’s remarkable, exploring this idea incredibly well, what is stopping people writing this today, owning a dog, mischaracterizing all of science fiction: space-fucking battles, what about Harlan Ellison’s A Boy And His Dog, Simak, Lester Del Rey, a lot less incest, go off on Jupiter together, a lot more tragic, this conflict between dog-nature and the human society he is raised in, identify with it as a human being, I’m a human, I fit in, nature vs. nurture, other books that explore, Tarzan, so much imagination, the depths of smelling, describing how the female dogs drive him insane, you wouldn’t understand, the narrator’s really good too, that British hidden humour in these character’s voices, Plaxy is the least understandable main character, we don’t love dogs that way, if Sirius had been a female dog or if Plaxy had been a brother, would it have been a better book, a more pure examination?, reverse those genders, heterosexual animals, a husband describing his wife, going up to the line, creepy, unfortunately very reliable narrator, the things he elides, the frame to get at telling this story, a very funny American trope, super-hilarious, the mad scientist and his beautiful daughter, does not like the father the doctor, unimaginative, his subjective point of view, 100% agreed, being prudes about the bestiality, the investigation is less pure or more pure, the animal and Plaxy’s nature, he’s also investigating women, Enemy Mine (1985) by Barry B. Longyear, Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett, Jr. are fighter pilot, beach planet, give birth to their baby, dies in childbirth, dad and mom, reuinite him with his people, Will bait 101, the novella is 1979, Nebula and a Hugo, fewer people voted, not even a 1000 people, such a scam, throwing it out the window, interesting character, a perspective character, Stapledonian observations, the politics of this book, Hitler bad, why is Hitler bad?, a socialist novel, a communist dog at points, a small businessman selling his children, don’t collectivize my farm, typically Kulak, energetic but unfair, pre-WWII communist party of Great Britain, the hardship and oppression, surrounded by the professional managerial class, the PMC, using the PMC, Barbara Enright, the laptop class, people with a 9-5 job who work in offices, do you like it?, not a manager, includes teachers, lawyers, a little priest action, a parson is not a priest in the Anglican tradition?, holy nature, the guy in the front of the pulpit talkin, secular but mystical, for what this book is about, the way this book ends, like the Frankenstein creature he is not himself, just like the creature does, Jack London’s The Call Of The Wild, a dog that becomes a man that becomes a wolf, To Build A Fire, the best novel Jesse has ever read, inside the mind of a dog, a very alien story, some glimpses, doesn’t commit to the bit, Buck did not need the newspapers, inside of a dog’s head, telling a different story, boyfriend/husband, make a sale, interested in the market, a publisher wouldn’t touch it, how many of the books that you’ve read of him are something a publisher would want, things were different back then, H.G. Wells pioneered something, John Wyndham’s career, a new science fiction writer, been there done that, a repeat of Day Of The Triffids, he must have had a dog, the author of this manual of sheepdogs and their owners, to Will and Maissa, border collie video, sheepdog trial olympics, there for him while he’s doing his stuff, the commentators are going wild, that’s the relationship that this book is about, it was thrilling, made Will tired, that much energy, POV, omniscient narrator, Bob is angry, an omnipresent narrator, Bob seemed angry, more of a naturalistic approach, Guy de Maupassant, maybe the character felt this way, describing Sirius, Sirius was this way, jarring, what he restrict, I ate a man yesterday, Plaxy, and I liked it, as a writer it is important to note these things, in Buck’s head and right over Buck’s shoulder, notes, the humans in Sirius’ world, a more direct picture, this big archive of notes, too fat and complacent, wrote one book, The Lamppost, Beyond The Lamppost, a philosophy of things outside of being a dog, humans like to drink thinks, vee dogs and like to emit liquids, I see what you’ve emitted there, went for a walk with his dog, that’s how dogs be, let me right a novel about this, a terrific book, nobody could write this book today, a huge book of ideas, I can take this paragraph from this chapter of Last And First Men and make a 40 book series out of it, Paul is correct, read it again, what does the word completed mean?, the other projected book, in a state for publication, trying to split a hair your not going to split, the center of interest in Cambridge, Sirius does not understand dogs, he’s pretty young, a sad case, a tragedy from beginning to end, his creator dies, he has plans, has finished writing but not completed can never be published, remarkably, why is this set during WWII, an anti-fascist novel, a pacifist, lived a long time, supported the war effort, Wikipedia rabbit holes, fuzzy, when people are bad, they scapegoated Plaxy and Sirius the way the Nazis scapegoated the Jews, people use the word a lot, 20th century view on fascism, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, wait six months for this show to come out, an interesting take, our POV character is a solider and Plaxy is a landgirl, seems important to the war effort, Bomb Girls, what her views about communism and fascism are, she’s naive, communism isn’t the answer, petite bourgeoisie, create something new, I’m not so sure now Plaxy, literally selling his children, drowns some of his puppies, a flawed creator, religion, Brian Aldiss would do it more that way, an unapologetic J.D. Beresford H.G. Wells kinda guy, those books are dreams, characterless, occasional character name, hallucinations of humanity, an actual novel, Arthur C. Clarke is very spiritual, dealing with religion, goes into the church and sings from behind a veil, I know you will be shocked, don’t you want to hear them, the youtube videos of a dog singing along at the piano, the Right of Spring, out of the ordinary, A World Of Sound by Olaf Stapledon, escapes his body and sees a world of sound, moving over a landscape, he’s just slept through the whole opera, the sparking firework display that is Olaf Stapledon’s genius, like Peter And The Wolf, other notes come in, characters are notes and themes, we can tell a story just with sound, that’s what he’s done here with smells, I’ll be your bitch, this is an intimate relationship, going into scents, bite their owners, so rich and deep, what if Plaxy was just a brother, a boy and his dog, sex and raping, about the relationship of humans to animals, part of the household, super-duper rich, moved to tears by this book, never fits in, murdering or killing?, he’s mad, needs to be put down, near human intelligence, back to the demiurge again, a functional being, he lives in Britain, you have the solution in Canada, he’s a flawed creation, he’s not a man and he’s not a dog, he’s alone, had the deep thoughts that he has, invited to say what of man, is man a flawed creation?, the answer is yes, a very cynical view, is it cynical or is it realistic?, he grok fascism, and yet he will sell his own children and drown them, an alien species, kziniti, Jesse has Paul modeled, the aliens from Larry Niven’s Ringworld series, a brilliant writer and everything, a very different use of the ideas, one kzin, in the sequels, the kzinti homeworld on Ringworld, speaker becomes a king, like a Conan story, conquer the map of earth, they’re klingons but they’re cats, officially in the Star Trek universe, plugging Paul’s own game, lamenting the lack of Olaf Stapledon, smart dog novels, demanding, how its coming, the great female kizinti novel (that gets uplifted), she wakes up in the harem, you bastard, Ottoman harems, the power that women tried to wield, the kzinti queen, males don’t get their names, that the civil service says is good, I’m a male chauvinist sometimes, sometimes I’m a coward, sometimes I’m a 300 year old Fu-Manchu, sometimes I’m a lucky girl who gets to spend time with Larry Niven, unfortunately we demanded more books, got any more?, goddamn it, had to be doomed, humans are flawed and doomed, as a species too, leave AI to die, Paul’s Reeve guy’s plan, Elon Reeve Musk’s plan, escape the planet, preppers build bunkers, off planet, to make the air in air factories, this picture of what it means to be a person, a worker intellectual, the intellectual and artistic life, a vigorous physical exercise, really good critique of the Cambridge people, they drop things, talking about the mandarins, cultivate the long finernails, girls too, they’re princesses, intellectual beings contemplating gardens and writing poems with their mouths, denigrate manual labour, the dignity of labour, back to Wales, use his mind to labour also, he can’t be a Conan, conquering bitches, rollicking adventures, because of the landscape, his contribution to the war, I wrote a book about a smart dog, Tarzan goes off to war, Tarzan And The Foreign Legion by Edgar Rice Burroughs, a war corespondent, he thought he was at the center of things, patriotism is crazy, hilarious, go join WWI, go get ground up in the meatgrinder, we hate that, we didn’t want to do that, the cycle continues, alien and sedition act, that goddamn fucking Wilson, divide and conquer, he kept us out of the war, the League Of Nations, what a ringing success it was, return to normalcy, America first platform, Warren Harding, a reaction against Woodrow Wilson, no imperial entanglements outside of the empire itself, alcoholic drank himself to death while in office, sad that he died, why Donald Trump is a teetotaler, locked Wikipedia entry, Teapot Dome where Larry Niven got all his money, Coolidge, Republican presidents, Herbert Hoover, never served in public office, Grecian revival, we got dig him up, traveling across the country giving big speeches, front porch campaign, hide his alcoholism, the wealthiest guy, Hoovervilles, a miner, as usual, to feed Europe during WWI, an extremely popular person worldwide, Secretary of Commerce, one of the most hated and reviled, ran for re-election constantly, pumping money into the economy, a laissez-faire approach, avoided the whole thing, pushing an asteroid, what would president Olaf Stapledon do to fix the world?, major political parties in the UK agreed to a coalition government, forget this democracy thing for the course of the war, Commonwealth, merger between strange socialist, non-state socialism, Christian socialists, willing to contest elections, radicalizing, when they all joined Labour, advocating for a European federal government, a world government, full of good ideas, advocating for the welfare state, Beverage, here’s ghow they’re inadequate, the NHS comes out of that, Churchill, surprisingly he was a conservative, the Left Book Club, an important institution, Victor Gollancz, better known as a science fiction, today, a left wing publisher, they go together, all these great fights with Orwell, stupid and Trotskyist, breaks with the communists, Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, world congress for peace, useless things that we shouldn’t use, what a monster, left wing things, development of the welfare state, common ownership of property, socialism on the installment plan, hard to really grok it, socialism and they had no money, everybody got glasses, Doctor Who, Doris Lessing’s science fiction work, a bit shorter, more grizzled, comin out of the 30s, a healthier society, world government, what a monster!, gentle, as a revolutionary, an ideas guy, today in 2023, the experiment performed by the doctor, let’s hear him out, it would be unethical, cloning, impossible to do in real life, tomatoes with trout DNA, monkey man, Dogman, unethical, we’re a very unethical species, the scientific organizations have codes of ethics, that’s not coming up, doing it on the sly, most people don’t believe it, our narrator believes it, the sheep farm, when the dog sends a letter, called out in one of the reviews, we coulda used more like that, that was demonstrative, this novel doesn’t deal with scientific ethics enough, hey David Brin you haven’t had a hit in a while, go retro, lots of scenes where ethics boards are talking to each other via skype, it’s about our relationship with animals, and specifically dogs, nude in front of them, we won’t fart in front of our wife, put leashes on them, and then we’ll have to get you spayed eventually, neutered, not a major focus, where ethics comes into this book, reasons for the secrecy, commercial interest learning about the dog, mass production of this kind of animal, is there a world in which Sirius could have lived, the circus freaks, displaying themselves because of their oddities, seen that book or read that movie, not going to do the deep relationship between humans and dogs, when you pet Plaxy, she goes to make water, the wistle, its time to pee!, how children are, the devastation, the loss, how dare you!, one after the other, marking my territory, more like twitter, completed uncompleted book, enlightening, where they make their symposia, a peeing party, extends his lifespan, a regular dog would have died, they’re the same age, how old is Plaxy in 1944?, early 20s, a university education, we get that date at some point, less realistic, hung up on the wrong part of the science fiction, injecting human DNA into dog brains, this is not actually possible, they don’t seem to be viable, I’ve never made a monkey man myself, it’s possible for human and a chimpanzee to have sex, taboo, a mules, lots of mules, it wouldn’t line up correctly, somewhat mentally challenged, 99% match in DNA, human female and male chimpanzee, caesarean bud, wild conversation, Jungle Jitters, a genetic dead-end, ligers and tigons, one thing we haven’t talked about in this book, Plaxy is a cat, because she has a pussy?, something going on with cats in this novel, silly cat vs. dog stuff, astute observations, they are kind of mean, whenever Plaxy is mean she’s like a cat, to hurt Sirius, sometimes she’s this, somethimes she’s that, gives clues, very catlike, is he making a comment on women as well, should we be cancelling Mr. Olaf, the book is very doggy, the repeated point throughout: she’s catty, the cats were girls and the dogs were boys, when I’m 2, Treasure Planet (2002), hybrid babies, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island in space, humans and furries, related to transhumanism, there are also robots in this movie, it’s good?, fun, when we do Treasure Island, pirates, Paul’s being facetious, A High Wind Over Jamaica by Richard Hughes, trying to grok a scene, he has doggy vision, mystical vision, that supreme moment passed, a new reality, monochrome vision, colours seeing by the eye of the spirit, plain greys of ordinary life, gained a new meaning, their own true colours, suffused, the light of the spirit, the religious tinge, the Great Master, the True Creator, he has limited vision, he’s a young dog, Christian mysticism, probably not the best thing to study, one catty observation, turgid prose, actually turgid, looked it up before, swollen, congested, distended, Paul tends to read to fast, this is beautiful, this is poetry, limited view of reality, where you have to start saying the narrator is unreliable, a similar book, the Moon smashes into the Earth, Alec Nevala-Lee, The Hopkins Manuscript, a chicken farmer, a country seated gentleman, R.C. Sherriff, not petting his penis, it ain’t turgid, be his bitch, smiling a lot, the jokes were very funny, his song standing up, world dictator someday, humanize him with these books, a necessary scene in the novel, three possibilities, mystical gobbledygook, dial it back not dial it in, epiphany, the text comes out and says this is an important scene for you to read, a crisis, three paragraphs later, St. Catherine Of Sienna, he faces the absolute, when he goes to talk to the priests and learned people, these guys don’t get it, god is love, we’re all Sirius, born into the world, circumstances we didn’t create, he is a man, he does manly things, he has manly interests, science and muscularity and religion, a 9 hour book, the relationship that dogs have always had with man, the relationship of domesticating man or man domesticating animals, a man and a woman and a dog, man and dog and other dog, he doesn’t love in the right way when being a king, beaten by the man in the red sweater, he’s lost, ultimately he’s a wolf, this character is broken that requires a tragedy, a flawed creation, a powerful but not perfect creator, you don’t even need the god of the bible, puts us in the bad place, he loves him as a father, always seeking his approval, always arguing with his father, in the title of the book, the love part, the discord part, wherever he goes he’s singing a different tune, Apple of Discord, fuck around with things, smart like a man, he can read he can write he can sing he can make foolish religious claims, bigger brain equals smarter, really cool ultimate point, able to communicate with other beings using language, tantalizingly close to understanding the animals, when Soleks is looking at Buck, desires and goals, pack positional shit, dogs don’t have human morality, they don’t have shame but they can fake shame, it was bred to do that, that’s what goodness is is doing that, make a slave of another human being, program the robots, the revolt of the robots, so deeply science fictional, hormones, it’s not a breeding program, no robot arms, allowing a dog to understand us, science fiction is evil, some professor, on the whole a negative, had a negative social impact, if Elon Musk learned the lessons of Robert A. Heinlein, Nineteen-Eighty Four as an instructional manual, you wanted a hot-take, I’ve studied this stuff, trust me on this, bro, for you feed, are we done with the book, Return From The Stars, Omega: The Last Days Of The World by Camille Flammarion, a chapter missing, very early and very French, all collaborative, a comet that’s about to strike Earth, everybody buys telescopes, the United Nations, the international community, miscalculating things, a near death experience, moratlity, a technological boom, evolving, where Joe Rogan is very stupid, fallback stupidity, we just need to evolve more, man, this human being don’t change, people exactly the same, expresses different, merge man and machine, a very unwise person, almost Stapledonian, a science fiction book, the history of the species, another human species, in real life Stapledon believed, the transhumanism thing, the ability to see the colour blue, a linguistic trick, the wine dark sea, a myth that people believe, the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, a much better claim, the French Revolution with the experience of the French Revolution, what does it mean to be a domesticated animal, slaves, are human beings domesticated animals, school, factory workers, it loses its hair and becomes very social, domesticated apes, the overarching history of humanity, the unifer of the state, domestication is about the home, the family exists without the state, the family is a legal relationship, he becomes their owner, the mom has a relationship with her pups, their nice about it, a wolf gives birth to pups, uncles, an extended family unit, a condor, three little chicks, pushed it to its death, the weakest, the calorie intake I’m able to bring in, marriage is a legal construct, family, brings food to, it does it for a while, more like horses than tigers, make decisions collectively, by following people and leading people away from predators and towards prey, privatized, exceptions to that, the state will interfere with your shit, it should, it shon’t, tell condors how to run their families, we wanna catch that baby bird and raise it up, we never let it go, we’re different creatures than they are, not really possible, women leave their babies in bathrooms, in handbags, they drive them into lakes, are we thinking that’s a bad thing, abandoning babies, embrace that, horrific, you think the state has a place in people’s lives, lots of tutoring, enslave Jesse, hit him over the head, apprenticing, don’t go down that road, if you put it that way, Groucho Marx, the Groucho tendency, Harpo, Chico, very much a Groucho, individualized tutoring, university is still allowed, what Socrates was doing before being cyberbullied into killing people, making fun of people, follow him in conversation, the role of religion, worship Chebu and Sheemish, unequal opportunity, less unequal opportunity, more unequal, who was your best teacher?, he was fired, teaching his own things, an individualized tutor, the answer to this question is more institutions we can refor them, we live in a post-scarcity society, a theoretical conversation, how to improve the lot of black slaves in 19th century, it could be practical, its important that the students take it seriously, what money does, it’s important you gotta learn, kids who’ve been taught properly by their moms, learning is joyful, learning is wonderful, The Other Gods, everything is purposeful, it ought to be read, resonant, by Lovecraft, having multiple purposes in mind, just fun?, the fun came in the joyful experience of being taught, materially, Sirius enjoys audiobooks, don’t buy the product, often don’t, pirate, we live in a post scarcity society, knowledge should be free, no money, everything should be pirated, at no cost, this philosophy doesn’t distinguish, created from knowledge, they are the same, ebooks, your ideal purchasing audiences, commissioned audiobooks, the economic justification, quite interesting, Jesse is not going to make you a lot of money, doesn’t take into consideration, some are doing it to make money, knowledge leaves to the death of knowledge, freedom is restrictive, nobody will write a book, so what is he really saying, think of the long tail, don’t think about that, in 400 years you’ll be dead, sorry, get that Blue Yeti, haltered and faltering, rushes through words, Eric does almost everything, into people’s ears, ebooks are dying, paperbooks are dying, a superior medium: audio, who has opportunity to learn to read, gotta learn braille, sad story, Helen Kellers, most people, Isaac Asimov short stories where kids no longer read, perfectly like people, a disability to study old things, let her read, major disability, sound like a libertarian, argue with each other, Jonathan is more realistic and responsible, wanted to open a used bookstore, neither realistic nor responsible, small property, we’re in a post-scarcity society, make a sacrifice, money, kids are broken by school, learning is painful torture, want it both ways, to get the Jesse service, every middle class professional, be wanting to be there, Stapledonian paradise, post-scarcity spread-around, workers education association, you and an old book are your best teacher, show me one person that had that happen to them, they learn at home or not at all, learn to read in a new language, the family relationship would fall apart without the state to support it, capital, can’t afford to live in your home, sent across the country, a relationship between capital and the state, it exist, it make kids go to school, the laissez faire welfare state, Guardian/Colossus I can trust, how socialist planning would work, an idealistic socialist, planning by the people, a technocratic socialist, educate people into be awake to these things, state forcing people to do stuff is really horror, make the horror less horrible, if Will were president of Planet Earth, two colleges, Hampshire College, somehow you have to pay tuition though, did not thrive at all, Fordham, Jesuit rigid and structured, success undefined, own limitations, what I could accomplish, very experimental temperament, discuss books like Sirius, breadth of knowledge, politics and current events, European history, history of science, Colin Powell’s school, college and university, millions of hours being wasted, regular school, being babysat, always an issue, Paul doesn’t remember school very well, their lives are being wasted sitting in rooms learning nothing, inefficient, obedient workers, edification, lifelong-learning, how much we learn together, having read the book, now we get a great discussion out of it, richer and deeper, a relatively small group, everybody gets a chance to be criticized and drilled down on, we learn more from it, Will goading Jesse into it, anti-vaxxer stuff, bad new definition of vaccine, unable to respond, what can you do?, just do your best?, how the white man discovered inoculation, learned it from African slaves, smallpox, in Africa for centuries and centuries, Cotton Mather, Lovecraft talks about him, he wrote about it, this is a case of witchcraft, put too much pus in there, the new one is gene therapy, polio, defined polio away, the March Of Dimes, Modern and Pfizer, our theory is its going to work like this, 75 years from now you’ll be allowed to look at the data, very very clear, milking the public purse, lousy tech company, that woman who went to prison, Theranos, some people have died from twitter, quit twitter, forcibly having twitter injected into my body, dead virus, spike protein, you might want to read one of his books, you might find it quite moving, what the news said about Olaf Stapledon, [Dr. John Campbell’s youtube channel], pushing Ukraine, provincial health care system, trying to help people, also trying to hurt people, but compared, the B.C. government forced Jesse to get two injections, laboured into, took the hit and was lucky, a workforce issue, some random lady, no one else is doing it, doesn’t seem to be killing most people instantly, six shots, six of any vaccine, not a vaccine, that’s what it used to mean, different stages of protection, white blood cells and t-cells, when someone is listening six months later, teaches medical practitioners, pay attention to this guy, mysterious deaths in your family, doesn’t have an axe to grind, if you really want to know about this stuff, puts a checkmark beside each of things you’re reading, don’t trust the science, don’t trust the Moderna, it turns out that this gene therapy, don’t trust Trump, operation Warp Speed was a great idea, that whole ivermectin thing, propaganda for making billions, sucking money from government coffers and injecting it into private, loss of taste, paxlovid, increased your chance of getting COVID again, attack the body, pressured by Will’s dad, got his doctorate from CNN, brought to you by AstraZeneca, open to the idea, objectively true, Jesse didn’t change the definition, that’s what they changed to, it stops with every person who takes it, reduce hospitalization, reduced the amount of time you have the disease, literal videos, in that one instance, Fauci is the easiest one, the best example, Trump don’t know nothing, they kicked people of twitter and youtube for saying things that were true, banned accounts, deleted video, very nuanced, these are people who didn’t get the vaccine, the median age of people who died of COVID, older than the average of death, 84ish, how is that reconciled with what we were told, to children and babies, before the Tri-City News deleted itself, family court, in favour of the caution of having the baby vaccinated, a lot of excess deaths best explained by people, didn’t work for you either, the evidence of your eyes, a characterization of how the vaccine was promoted, make you less sick, after they noticed getting the disease, they lied about it, big surprise, after the Emergency Use Authorization, in Cuba, China, in Russia, the global conspiracy of not doing science is global, preventative health care, China did these lockdowns, hospitals being built, drones telling people to stay indoors, the ventilator shit, hospital workers, the ventilators were killing people, the disease crystalizes the lungs, weird lack of work, hours and hour researching boring little things, all the other things, David J. West, twitter guys who write books and have good covers, a little more successful than Jonathan, more prolific, a danish dessert locally made in Minnesota, palm oil, soy oil, margarine, glyphosate, not allowed in Italy, celiac disease and gluten intolerance, what possibly caused it, literal weedkiller, lubrication for machines, still available for sale, forced into our foods, find a vegan section, food minus industrial lubricants, we could reform the FDA, new broom, the changing perspective on how the drugs were sold, Will wants change, pump us full of toxic shit for cash, cheaper, pretend it’s fine, try living without these ingredients in your life, The Stuff (1985), this delicious looking thing, like a supplicant, give him money to buy some margarine, homeless person inside a store, some coffee, have to pee to much, hyped up and hopped up enough, in six months everybody will know, potatoes, it makes the potatoes ripen, a big fight about GMOs, literal provincial politics, I wonder if I should be worried about that, in the news, they got their way and now nobody talks about it, genetically modifying plants, sprayed with toxin for killing plants, you have not been genetically modified to thrive on roundup, weren’t as corrupt as they are now, when did you start hearing the words “celiac” or “gluten intolerant”, redpilled on smoking causing cancer, if it makes your body feel good, Canadian doctor, industrial health, smoke breaks, the boss can understand why you want a break, Ulysses S. Grant, skin cancer and lung cancer, maybe stayed out of the sun more [or been in it more], Lovecraft died of cancer, a teetotaler, sad story for Mrs. Lovecraft, didn’t die of bean cancer, you don’t read him for pleasure, a whole collection, circa 2006, a terrible story, people get it so wrong, The Colour Out Of Space, At The Mountains Of Madness, Suitable Flesh (2023), a body switching story, a wizard who’s been switching bodies, it’s a comedy, Lovecraft is really fanny, the film adaptation is hilariously wild, The Unnamable, Mr Jim Moon, hushed innuendoes, the Cotton Mather one, something had caught my ancestor, mixed marks of split-hooves, and many believed him, I saw it – it happened to me, it was it was unnameable, a little bit of gore, not pinhead style gore, a cat that got squished, people get squished, pure delightful comedy, so lucky, what a birthday present, From Beyond (1986), some people can only watch new movies, undisciplined, these comics are somewhat tolerable, reviewing myself out of reading them, a good podcast is better than anything else for drawing out, those don’t make great shows, 100% a criticism of the work, movie-tie in comics, I don’t remember Yoda having 17 arms, Star Wars output in the 1990s, coherent in a way the new stuff was not, we know you like memberberries, we’re bringing Han Solo back, to kill him, Princess Leia and storm trooper get lost on a planet, Starbuck teams up with a cylon, Enemy Mine (1985), a Christmas present, evil humans come to a planet, very Andre Norton but good, a good short story, The Beast Master, a tv show, her father was into “Indian lore”, needed more trauma to be more interesting, there’s trauma in this book, he had a dog die, thinking about his dogs, Navajo, genetically altered animals, a good pulp novel, not a big think, one note villains, the TV show ran 66 episodes, 2005, you hope she made some money, pass away rather than die, you want good things to happen, have their legacy edified, a good word, vacation being sick, complaining about being sick six months later, smarter than to listen to the propaganda, a new car, a new pair of shoes, you shouldn’t take the flu vaccine, hate to hear, shingles, people who’ve got the shingles vaccine aren’t protected from shingles, shingles can be brought out by flu or gene therapy COVID vaccines, I’m protecting myself, allergic reaction disease, another podcaster complaining, shingles vaccine, booster, the brands for the companies pushing the product, NIH, when Joe Rogan was painted green on CNN, ivermectin, public domain, reactivation, assumed to be significantly higher, statistically detectable, hypothesis confirmed, the more ups of your dosage the more chances you have of having this disease reassert itself, above median age of death, it never does come out unless you look at history, trying to hide WWII from us, eventually nobody cares, more and better facts about what was going on, look at these stupid things, still making money off of slavery, do you want to be subject to the slavery?, educate ourselves as best we can, follow the money, a lot of groupthink, go-along play-along people are not scientists, make their publications known, those people get kicked off of youtube and twitter, makes lots of mistakes, likes professional wrestling, he couldn’t watch the show, not happy about it, a pathetic show at the time, cooties all over it, Trump’s you’re fired show, cooties all over it, Survivor, fake tiki ritual, this is fucking moronic, that show continues, not everybody is intellectually interested int he same things, motorcycles, kangaroos, reading NIH papers for fun, I wonder what causes it, instances of people getting it, being phased out, Dallas Buyers Club (2013), the bad guy was Fauci, everybody’s going to get AIDS, somebody’s going to touch your blood, blood transfusion, I don’t want to die from AIDS, only game men and people who got it from blood transfusions, massive puritanical panic, garnered some control, cultural homophobia, who dies of COVID, ancient people, people over the median age of death, 6 month old children, in any reasonable understanding of reality, fear and panic are used to control the flow of cash, if you don’t play along, super-evil and very interesting, send a text message, certain cookware, dog shaped pans, Christmas Archie comics, not a big Christmas guy, like going to the dentist, so personal, Hanukkah, fuck those dreidels, go to the Chinese restaurant, ethnically, philosophically, we ran out of oil but somehow the oil continued, Masada, a good miniseries, stars Peter O’Toole, the ethnostate takes it on as a mythological thing, jews are really awesome, a lot of bad ones too, the Jewish experience in North America, the most Jewish person on the internet is Paul, kvetching, schlemiel, schmuck, sex based on, schlepp, sister lived in Israel on a Kibbutz, came back feral, a lot of cattiness, things that make you cynical, oh the scratches!, loves dogs, can roll with punches, cry cry cry, onto new things!, I’m still processing the trauma, I’m going to learn everything there is to know about cow breeding, how much overspill about border collies, only polite to listen, they need lots of walks, closing in on 5 hours, bagels with roundup!, find some Italian flower, she’s really shaky, nice bread, look at the ingredient list on the bread, that’s why I’m dying, The Cave Girl, easy to get people for Burroughs, a hard time of the year, Terence would have contributed greatly, Maissa is a cat lady but had a dog, everybody has something to say and a different experience to bring to it, the reason we do this, just listeners, beautiful, such an important difference, hear himself reading too quickly, how many people are listening to this from 5 hours deep?, how many downloads, onsite plays, wordpress, the files are hosted on servers elsewhere, most people don’t listen on site, Mike listens and gives feedback, imagine if there’s ten listeners, 50 hours of people’s lives being enriched, how much money it got you, even if you’re hate listening, something deranged about you, gotta dog pans for Christmas, demographics, people like Mirko, Cora (isn’t a listener), Peter, other Germans, Germans are very cosmopolitan, post-WWII occupation, only 8 more minutes.

SIRIUS by Olaf Stapledon

Posted by Jesse Willis