The SFFaudio Podcast #891 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Lost Continent by C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

The SFFaudio Podcast #891 – The Lost Continent by C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne (9 hours 11 minutes) read by Alan Winterrowd and Mark Nelson for LibriVox, followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion are Jesse, Alex (Pulpcovers), and David J. West

Talked about on today’s show:
1900, the book public domain, one of the narrators abandoned it, it’s up on LibriVox, the last 5 chapters are by a different guy, Mark Nelson is a good narrator, an off day, suddenly became a different guy, the first narrator, in Virgin Planet, quay, not kway, it’s key, grandma was an english teacher, a big Q up there, interesting, people love this book, a great D&D campaign book, an amazing campaign setting, it wasn’t awful, describe this book to someone, not nearly as fun as it sounds, Goddess Of Atvatabar, way more fun, invade the inner earth, do colonialism, listings, here’s the art, more priests, castles in the air, imagination, you can just conjure, vr world, look there’s some cookies on a plate, fades away, all sorts of interesting stuff, the magic is more science, The Hunt For Red October catterpillar drive, atlantean technology, the victorian sensibilites, how many things he brought into it, it was serialized over six months, some revisions for the book publication, you can’t really smooth it out, another meeting with that priest, walking around the hallways, Lin Carter’s forward, something with a little more punch, the dinosaurs and the tech, the pulpy aspect, about that introduction, the Ballantine cover, the checkerboard at the base, a masonic book?, a really short foreward, other atlantean books, de Camp would have really enjoyed it, Clark Ashton Smith, not allowed to be, not involved, an excommunicable offense, recruited, not a joiner, part of a structure, in their recruitment, you have to believe in god, in the normal way, other gods as well, trying to expand?, aprons and such, is there any evidence in the book, at the base, if you go to London, the City Of London, checkerboard things, a youtuber who walks around London, hiding in plain sight, on the Metropolitan police, the tartan of the guy who brought it in, based on his career, that important in the UK, amazing skill, a long boat trip, a lot of power, buddy buddy, a conspiracy hidden in plain sight, the construction of atlanis, a giant pyramid, apparently not, Dean Ellis, got his remit by reading the book or being told what to paint, would have noticed, some amount of ancient lost knowledge, a Masonically influenced story, he destroys the evil at the end of the book, what’s in the ark, the secrets, the evil empress, immortality?, etc., this knowledge is lost, all the other cults, Rosicrucian, thoughts have wings, do you ever think you were an ancient god, maybe I was, Atlantis, cool man, the framing device, the occasional cave tiger fight, the very long and drawn out, some swineherd’s daughter raised above her station, sword and sandal lady, more like Zenobia in Hour Of The Dragon, pure of heart, the girls in this book, mess up the pronunciation, the twin sister, she feels like a chekov’s gun that never goes up, the chessboard pattern, the characters are very maneuvered, lots of pawns, an image from When Worlds Collide, the space ark, an ark in this book, the cover of one of the sons of Krypton, the story of Superman is basically that of Moses, put in the basket and sent down the river and becomes good, helps people, he’s a superguy, a big honking novel from the 1930s, Balmer and Wylie, as you would expect, coming from the bible, the earth is gonna get hit by a rogue planet, to save the people, a machine gun setup, trying to get on the ark, 2012 (2009), really good, great disaster movie bandwagon, the destruction of the world, earthquakes and lava, just barely manages to get through, this is a comedy, supposed to be laughing, took the remit, Star Trek, like every other show, Paradise, high ratings, the president’s been assassinated, underground bunker in Colorado, regular drama, Fallout, Silo, a spaceship, a generation ship, they’re in a bunker, an old Doctor Who episode, colonizing old Earth, a repeated theme and idea, a mechanistic book, priests being moved around, is this supposed to be that, we are above the fray, in a brotherhood, C.J. Cutliffe Hyne was aware of Masons, the first episode on Battlestar Galactica, is he a mason? 33, could be, numerology, the meanings of numbers, 42, 69, six seven, 69 Barrow Street by Lawrence Block, good for jokes, our hero, kinda stiff, sometimes he has a beard, they wrote him as this great hero uninterested in women, what is the point of writing this character, have you not learned to woo yet, if Conan was suddenly thrust into this book, you need to fulfill this role, Black Colossus, much more concise too, not the worst, Ben-Hur, a slow pace, 5 hour book maximum, to warrant all of the text, forbidden magic, the island sinks, the priests sink it, the negative culmination, she’s the key to unlocking why Atlantis sinks, what went wrong exactly?, upset with the priests, he’s a priest guy, they worship the sun?, Zeus?, not a random name, that stuff is not worked out, the high gods, references to a pantheon, 9 years in the jungle, stuff happens, why does the girl have a twin sister?, torn between the two, 2 identical women, a box to check, did nothing with it, more degeneracy, not a lot of showing it, the queen is psychotic and evil, the whole country became this degenerate, struck down for their arrogance, pushing in this degenerate direction, very casual slavery, enslaving all these Europeans, some kind of hubris, the sailors, an entourage, parading on her elephant, kill em all or whatever, out to see, such a hardscrabble life, take all his stuff, stab anybody, a viewpoint, these people are contemptible, way before the ark stuff, justifying the drastic action that happens, it didn’t feel new, our hero is very formal, when Hamlet comes back from school, investigate this and figure it out, I’m not gonna marry you just yet, mechanically placed, the game being played drags it out, and yet … cave tiger!, brontosauruses were recently discovered, a mixed audience, Pearson’s, interested in science, wireless telegraphy, astrophotography, ballooning, hero indian guys in Indian, a mixed general magazine, serialized novels in the 1890s, Sherlock Holmes novels, that thing holds up, tighter, basically forgotten, John Buchaneque thrillers, lots of interesting setups and no amazing gelling, a traditional gothic, kicks Sherlock Holmes out of the story, it can hold together, Agatha Christie was popular for a reason, Deucalion, son of Prometheus, he calls it out in the prologue, the introduction, the same trick used in William Hope Hodgson’s The House On The Borderlands, awesome setup, our two guys, lifting rocks to get his workout, Canary Islands, not a normal place to be, Canary Islands is connected with the Atlantis myth, boom we’re in the Yucatan, pyramids out there, colonies of Atlantis, weird hairy neanderthals, can I get some of that, every continent on the planet has pyramids, the one pyramid in Antarctica is probably just a mountain, Peru, St. Louis, a very stable structure, a very recognizable structure, really old, a tower is gonna disappear, many such great wonders, wandering around the pyramid, stabbing behind the curtain, a monkey in a cape, you never know, oh yeah it is a victorian novel, he’s not one of the famous names, cold sleep with our girl, her hair gets long, is she gonna come out of this okay?, a sleeping beauty, awesomely connected to anything, if it had been a surprise, 9 years go by, complaints, having read too many novels, enthusiastic, a good introduction, his own fiction writing, weird thread, some teacher of creative writing, I want to be a novelist, they can’t anybody, I don’t read novels, that never happened kind of events, that’s being ableist, I’m a novelist because I want to run a television show, comics being made to be Netflixes, not a good comics, a visual connection, a Robert E. Howard or a Westlake, Cowboys And Aliens, Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig, a storyboard, the audience is for the execs, Men In Black, more like the comics, how many sequels?, soft reboot, the images that stick, old Galaxy covers, a robot body, a showcase of tropes, fun things to see, playoff against the comedy, there’s something wrong with books today, a New York Times utube short, the edits, mass market paperbacks have died, very sad news, the substance of the piece, here’s Stephen King, sold the paperback for Carrie, $400k, that changed her mood, it was largely novels, the cheap paperback, that media, that medium, the physical size of that format, Tolkien wrote a book, 6 books, 3 volumes, 1 novel, James M. Cain paperback, the Ballantine ones, thinner than the thick of your thumb, that format is connected to the thickness of the paper, portability, games is the premiere medium, tiktok, mindless short form brain rot, movies position of primacy, short stories, little tiny markets for it, Clark Ashton Smith, A Vintage From Atlantis, maybe the book would be better if it had a map, random encounters, might be pterodactyls, rocs, corrupt empire, before the continent sinks, overthrow the empress, fail and try to escape, he didn’t set anything interesting there, this early in the game, bringing in the dinosaurs, the megafauna, touching on the witchqueen, older movies, not unvaluable, a good book not a great book, The Seed Bearers by Steve Valentine Timlett, murdering people left and right, occult matters, not that occult, how it touched on how the society as a whole, the ark is loaded with stuff, fan fiction, he’s British, very likely, more extreme on the violence and the sex, the cover descriptor, Atlantis, leg clinging a lady, exploded and split in half, new books in, grabbing this, tells you what’s going on, trilogy, the other two, take place much later, with Picts, Bran Mak Morn, the Taliesin series, weird elvish wizards, Stephen R. Lawhead, Minoan bull dancing, the pictish beast, the tin islands, water horse, hippopotamus, the unknown animal in all the carvings, pictish beast and regular horse together, very boneless, fossils, game name, PictishBeastTheories, the Loch Ness monster, longer neck, Kentucky cryptid, crypto-zoology, no online much, every animal, the mammoths, aggressive hunters, big herbivores, just put cave in front of it, do you find them in caves, a standin for dire, this island is kind of a death world, huge knowledge base, giant pyramids, superrich, rich farmland?, stable civilization, constantly being eaten by fish and flying birds, Deathworld by Harry Harrison, Jason dinAlt, erratic psionic abilities, everything is deadly, neurotoxic venom, planetary romance, drop the hero on the planet, cross the landscape and survive, not get eaten by the empress and what have you, Soylent Green (1973), Make Room, Make Room, a funny writer, find you something good, People Of The Black Coast, better to pair it with something, fun, light, thin, giant crabs, aviatrix, her personal aircraft, Miracle Science And Fantasy Stories, the brothers Dold, illustrations, the blind one, the author and editor of it died, Douglas, in Russia during the revolution, 1917 revolution, scroll threw the illustrations, very Dungeons & Dragons, anubis sort of god, in the temple, crocodile faced worshipers, page 59, the dead-alive face of Orne, they were turning him into a mummy, a guy with an ax choppin, holding a gun looking in, giant crocodile god, very much out a module, hidden group, the scans in the scans group, the PDFs are up, overhead map, page 29, The Valley Of Sin, grand canyon, mummy chamber, sealed door, sluice gates, this is the adventure you were waiting for, make you a mummy against your will, more weird menace, more shudder pulp, they’re all fun, but they’re pretty uneven, amazingly good, pretty good, the cat girl, the sins of the cat girl, not even a cat girl, the other animal she’s pretending to be, the concepts drag you in, an evil cult under the basement of this house, a followup tweet, novelists whop don’t read novels, write the screenplay you want to write, they only ever talk about novels, his short stories are much more coherent, they’re not meditative on a particular idea, more fun, the length is the reason stories suck, going to long, too many pieces to keep track up, make a girl go to sleep for nine years, suddenly we’re really rockin, Howard has an agenda, he has opinions about things, I’m angry about that subject, hated everything else done in that same vein, David and Edgar Rice Burroughs, the Gor book, the concept of Gor, bring samurais, bring mongols, make them all fight, I submit I’m just a woman, by book 3, liked the cover, suckers for covers, a sucker for interiors, the part they always show in the auction, beautiful Dold art, reading Weird Tales without having the art hurts your interest, The Uncharted Isle, a monkey man story, if only for the art, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, they’re not famous if they’re new, Fantastic Novels, great interior art, makes you want to read it, it has this, giant snake throne?, warrior with a spear and a shield, volcanoes, got the drama built right into it, if only it were that good, needed a Kull, are the gods real?, what is the purpose of a city, Kull introspecting a lot, it needed more, a placeholder for other things, the Malazan books, H. Rider Haggard and She, weird superqueen, degeneracy and evil, sort of abstract, she had the whole society backing that up, baboon buddy, even the servants, personalities, I am destined to be your lover, the Victorian aesthetic, feast your eyes, Brides For The Beast by Wayne Rogers, a mystery terror novel (28 pages) and it has a monkey, “A lust-mad scientist whispered secrets concerning her lover’s birth—to Minna Talbot while a mad thing, whose origin was unknown, brought terror to that mountain wilderness…”, a grisly experiment with a great ape, each chapter has a name, foul clutches, hate feeds, it’s gonna be rough, a guaranteed good story, an unguaranteed and probably not so good, see if it is worthy, the promise of the editorial introduction, he’s your brother, experiments with a great ape, maybe they mind swapped, we don’t have, historically they didn’t sell super well, more commonly known, how many Railroad Fiction magazine, G-8 and his squadron, all the love magazines, a Ranch Romance, we are narrowed by the Munsey Magazines, how a big a shadow, The Shadow and The Spider, a lot of fun, series, one and dones, maybe your a monkeyman and have to burn yourself, how much you love Brides For The Beast, eat breakfast, Wayne Rogers, author of Substitute Corpses.

The Lost Continent by C.J. Cutcliffe Hyne

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #870 – READALONG: Lord Of Light by Roger Zelazny

The SFFaudio Podcast #870 – Jesse and Scott Danielson discuss Lord Of Light by Roger Zelazny

Talked about on today’s show:
1967, a bunch of awards?, a Hugo, nominated for a Nebula, novelettes in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Jesse’s gonna have trouble with this one?, lotsa things, may have modeled Jesse’s mind properly, “like”, Nine Princes In Amber, pile of audio, digital pile, read by Zelazny, an author narrated book, Harlan Ellison, Lawrence Block, the Amber series, A Night In Lonesome October, good reason?, the new copyright when they reprint it, a performance copyright, he’s an excellent narrator of his own stuff at least, the guy for this was fine, one mispronunciation, Shiva, Mitra, Robert E. Howard lore, the politics, the suppression, the whole conceit of the novel, a colonization of a planet, pretend to be the Hindu gods, the whole caste system, the demons in the book, suppressing the people and running the show, accelerationism, do we tell all the people about this technology so their lives improve, if everyone is gods nobody will be, everybody on an equal footing, this way to be better than everyone else, getting reincarnated, moving their soul around to different bodies, flippin their genders, making up Nirvana, slowly working through Clark Ashton Smith and Lord Dunsany, Gene Wolfe’s The Book Of The New Sun, hard to read, looking at a super complex object, appreciate it on that level, that’s an interesting object, complex and cool to look at, obscured things, purposely not telling you things, revealing things, little infodump, really interesting, pretty well written, a style a lot of people aren’t gonna get along with, hard to model the people of the period, the least there: when he goes to a town and sees a bunch of people lined up to use a vending machine outside of a temple, a dig at religion?, is the book about religion?, in the Catholic Church, in the Church now, not with this Pope!, people in the past who have used the church for political power, what the church is, the Hindu deities, Hindu pantheon, sorta retelling things, fantasy or science fiction retelling, is the planet that these guys are playing Hindu pantheon Earth?, the answer is supposed to be no, our hero goes to a new town, how to do your prayers properly, played for humour, something smells like shit, that’d be all the shit I’m keeping in jars, new device called a toilet, backstory improving myself, playing a game with the reader, being a bit provocative, that attack Jesse is about to make, it isn’t just the Hindus, the Buddha, what analogy can I do, pick a religion that nobody cares about: the ancient Egyptian pantheon, worshiping Thoth, when did that end?, well documented, super-super-horrible, approx 1500 gods, very inconvenient, the Romans had about 700 gods, a god for every river, every day of the week, Janus, tons and tons of gods, used to control people vs. make your life better, valuable about it, it is helpful, true because helpful, the words of Jesus in this book, a Christian in the last story, a populist religion, topdownism, it wasn’t the king, eventually that does happen, stop viking, not how it started, a secret religion, contrary and opposite to the Roman empire and the Greek religion, they are controlled by their priests and scribes, you need to learn all of this magic, The Book Of The Dead, magic spells, the ancient Egyptian deep state, theocratic agencies, controlling the person at the top and everybody else, how lawyers run things, if you can’t navigate the laws, Augustus is chief pontiff, the head of the religion and the head of the state, the priests are running things, keeping the pharaohs in a dizzying state, subservient to this massive set of gods, we never get to see it from the little people’s point of view, the deep state fighting with itself, John Brennan, the guy with the mustache who wants to nuke everybody, John Bolton, thousands dying with their decisions, the worst example, I am science, Fauci, when they’re attacking science they’re attacking me, that is not how science is, that’s spellcraft, I am in touch with the gods and you have to go through to me, all mistakes, slight improvements and slight tweaks, peer review, Benjamin Franklin, jockeying between transhumanist elites, a topic of regular conversation, change your gender, become immortal, download yourself into an ai, handwavium, Fury by Henry Kuttner, elites controlling little people, interesting what he did here, looking at it the same way, an interesting object, same territory, admire a lot of the writing, mythic event stuff, Michael Moorcock with Elric, a zoomed out quality, Sam woke up at the beginning of the book, a moment remembered by history, paintings, this was momentous, we need to document this, The Sword Of Welleran, The King Of Elfland’s Daughter, a kid takes up the sword of Welleran, other statues, half an hour long, 8 hours, 350 pages, an interesting question to think about, should stories reveal character or show character growth?, the focus has swung, modern novel of science fiction, science fiction has become a setting, no character development at all, an H.G. Wells story, The Star by Arthur C. Clarke, describing the place that he’s in, not the stuff being produced today, the older stuff, you can’t be nostalgic for things 300 years before you were born, Yama, the Death God, multiple names, fighting the assassin, that entire fight was amazing, the aftermath of the fight was amazing, become Buddhist, against my new mindset or worldview, he knew he couldn’t win, profound, beautiful, good stuff, why people like this a lot, star quotes around you like, things to like a lot, oh yes, he’s doing the thing, page 239, borrow unavailable, the fresh bitten thigh of a maiden, one ought to read this subversively, if you don’t you’re a monster, I’m a Slan, no you’re not, Beggars In Spain, I’m one of the sleepless!, the enlightened one, the goddess of night, Tak the Ape, the coexistence of the animal and the divine, like Lovecraft, not the Sam part, snarkiness, smoking, in that direction, subversive, do they smoke Marlboroughs or Lucky Strikes?, treating it kinda lightly, Dick did the same, Dick is a lot like Zelazny, co-wrote a book together, a sequel to The Man In The High Castle, Dick doesn’t do series, not able to do it, super-interested in religions, writing to the Rosicrucians, instinct, too much garbage there, busy work, when you read the words of Jesus, not legends of angels, not genealogies, he never said he was a deity, perhaps some will not agree, monotheistic religions, more conducive to human value, you know who Odin is, and Thor and his brother Loki, the Marvel superheroes, the adventures they have together, they’re a lot like superheroes, The Avengers, tied up in this book in a footnote, the movie Argo, Jack Kirby, Fantastic Four, John Buscema, other artist, The New Gods, superheroes that are actually gods, instead of Vishnu and the elephant god, or the monkey god, they’re NEW gods, like aliens, when he switches to Marvel, The Eternals, too painful, why people love Roger Zelazny, the best things, massively, 24 Views Of Mt. Fuji, By Hokusai, the new five, much less complex, family oriented, very different, the prose, archaic, old fashioned, just talking to you, very familiar, the 70s, fairly direct, The Turning Wheel, eastern mysticism, eastern religion, traveling for religious purposes, controlling people, nothing good, sympathy for Jesus, he isn’t trying to sell you much, it isn’t about enriching the pockets, or putting you under thumb of someone else, harder to do today, the ability to read and read the words, the encyclical, local language, Vatican II, a good move, pro-Vatican II vs. anti-Vatican II, overall a reverence has been lost by moving it to vernacular, the posture of the priest, facing away, worshiping with us, an impersona Christi situation, South American country, the mass, people who can’t read, the magic has gone from it, a reverence for the language, Harry Potter, Our Father Who Art In Heaven, memorizing the latin, the pater noster, just sounds, a series of sounds, what the point of this is, thy will be done, they may be pretty, no intent, alluded to it, hatin on Poe, American literary critic talking to Lesley Stahl, shittin on Harry Potter, maybe it will lead to better books, go on to Hunger Games, literally better books, capable of enjoying them, take some students to go see Harry Potter movies, the spell scenes, just Latin, it sounds interesting and magical, we only partially understand, the priests in Rome doing their holy stuff, chant, music, sounds beautiful, a lot of randos, music knowledgeable, ska has no words, musical lyrics can be incredibly powerful, incredibly inane, Abba lyrics, why am I having this runaround in my head, makes you stupid, something intitally outside of you, advertizement jingles, brain colonized by Madison Avenue, The Space Merchants is a central work, Taylor Swift, numerous commentators, writes about breakups, she writes a song about it, men are horrible, Halfway to Texas, a crazy little girl, someplace new, trying to be strong, whole thing is wrong, you held me back home, this is inane, useless, if you get some benefit out it, that would be punishment, deeply grok them, too simple, lyrics do matter, Sting lyrics, stories that he tells, exceptions to be found, not everything is equal to everything else, monotheist as an improvement over polytheistic, less subject to loopholes, the definite word on this, chemistry, valances, the periodic table, its based on a reality, how they teach it in school, the supposed to be result was, you didn’t clean your test tube enough, the flame close enough, make you conform and get your marks, confidence in chemistry, metallurgy, charcoal nearby, based in a reality, actual science, macroeconomics, no progress in macroeconomics in the last 100 years, truths we won’t factor in, access to make the purse strings open or close, super-evil shit, what is my purpose here on earth, Jesus has an improvement over anybody in this book, sum up the plot of this book: this old system of the elites controlling things and pleasuring themselves – they’re evil fucks, exploiting and denying, a fantasy, an evil fantasy, it’s false, Robert J. Sawyer books, downloading yourself into a robot, make an ai sound a lot like you, chemical treatments, biofeedback, adrenochrome, it’s evil because its lies, religious trappings, people pretending, actual Hinduism, using this framework, the answer is no, the book would have hit a lot harder, a savage attack, science fantasy thing, Urth, not on Earth, uses a name for Earth, we came from this other place, what his purpose was, religions are this, nothing more than this, a really interesting take, Lord Neriti, an extremely violent dude, it’s not that Christian history doesn’t have armies in it, Sam is trying to subvert things, that Jesus speech at the end, taken into account, the words resonate, they’re powerful, back to the stupid Eternals movie, close to 3 hours or 2.5 hours, at least 10 actors, the guy with the gold arms, the guy from India, the guy from China, came to earth to stop some demons, a more positive version of this, a superhero has to fight a supervillian, fighting a bankrobber and you’re Superman, Batman has to fight an ever expanding assortment of insane people, all the horrible Marvel movies, human beings watching superheroes fighting in the sky, we become observers of these lords of immortality and bulletproofness, alien invaders, all silly and stupid, Daredevil is a little more sympathetic, maybe it’s Catholicism or lawyerness, Batman’s fairly broken, he doesn’t have, progressed to The X-Men, from an alien immortal who is invulnerable, to a guy who has no super-weapons, super-interesting, little little kid, never read comics, Green Arrow, never went to a comic shop, at the corner store spinner rack, buying paperbacks, 8 years old, when science fiction became a real thing, original Mr. Spock, Star Trek, tv guide, wake up to see that every single week, minor Star Trek novels, before that, Dolphin Island, a library in the school, an occlusion, at 8 years old, second grade, The Three Investigators, no comics, missed Robert A. Heinlein as a young person, isolated in love for science fiction, conversations in high school, a funny book, into fantasy, when Shannara started, that list of Ballantine Adult Fantasy books, craft, quality, Audio Realms, that audio version, it had music, a book on Genesis by St. Augustine, symbolism and things we lost as humanity, the Bible was our common story, a lot of them are Christians too, Marvel or Star Wars, Star Trek, see what tattoos put on themselves, money is the driving factor, should have stopped, Thunderbolts* (2025) is good, the story had an end, the end happened, Asmongold, who is that?, what is that?, skibidi toilet, these are not corporate, they might be corpratized at some point, Colbert is cancelled, The View is cancelled, on hiatus, not an audience enough for it, the advertizing revenue is drugs and health insurance?, the medium, listen to the radio, sport radio, country radio, a huge sports fans, all the stick games, all the ball games, the Cubs won, did the guy hit the ball?, The Last Inning by Nelson S. Bond, old baseball player, cut from the last team where he gets paid $5 bucks a game, wakes up in Baseball Valhalla, the games are always good, in full swing, Twilight Zone in 15 minute installments, it’s not a sport it’s a pastime, the best episode of Deep Space 9, football now has taken that over, a football game on Sunday nights, MMA, boxing, conversation at work, football is definitely king, dangerous and painful, fantasy football is huge, pickem games, bigger than any other sport, the up down thing, soccer is a bottom up thing, you can play soccer in your backyard, you don’t even need a ball, not as dangerous, basketball you need a basket, you need a rock, rocks are cheap, part of that is participatory, they played it, in the United States there’s a lot of people who really dislike it, comparative, fits American psyche, impatience, clocks, things like that, 45 minute halves, 1 to 0, why basketball is an American sport, Real Salt Lake, she is done, why do I ever want to watch this again, 3 hours of football in which no one scored, anathema, hockey with regards to soccer, a lot more dangerous than soccer, there’s fighting, NHL, a very Canadian thing, Canadian Football League, frozen lakes, see themselves represented in it, go out on the frozen lake, need a pair of skates a stick and rock, top down vs. bottom up, dressage, horse dancing, a horse, a stable, money, stableboy, saddles, riding lessons, you can’t just teach it yourself, polo, like soccer for knights, the stick is easier than the horse, a space bigger than an apartment building, common experience, could have been better had it been a short story, unless it is radically changed for this, Zelazny is a series guy, what like what we see in Amber, not 9 serfs in Amber, sword and sorcery, Brian Murphy’s favourite sword and sorcery stories, Flame And Crimson is the book, The Tale Of Satampra Zeiros, there’s a pudding, a bowl full of pudding that eats one of the guys, Robert E. Howard, Black God’s Kiss, Dragon Moon by Henry Kutter is public domain, The Tritonian Ring by L. Sprague de Camp, Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser, Ill Met In Lankhmar, David Drake, Charles Saunders, Conan in Africa basically, The Shadow Kingdom, Beyond The Black River, Red Nails, Karl Edward Wagner, at this stage of life, The Tower Of The Elephant, everything comes up except for LibriVox, so fucking broken, enshittification, well done Cory Doctorow, Mike Vendetti, just recorded The Hour Of The Dragon, 3 where he’s a king, I’m a do em all, Jesse, didn’t understand copyright, he can do it and he will do it, gets enthusiastic, Sinclair Lewis, The Broken Sword, that first novel in the Elric series, the Fritz Leiber ones are not mythic, way after, the development, Fritz Leiber reads Conan in Weird Tales, him and his friend as the main characters, taking that dungeon crawl you see in some Conan storties, a team, a team-up, D&D-splaining, the party is Tolkien, they get the fellowship, warrior, another warrior, elf, dwarf, thieves, tpk’d, total party killed, only one of them is killed, Lord Dunsany stories, really cool overlay, a sphinx, that’s awesome, he doesn’t say what he’s doing, who killed chronos, The Nightmare Tarn, The Tempter by Robert E. Howard, Howard at his most philosophical, at his most attack on the deep state, the progenitor of things like They Live (1988), really solid, weird that he’s doing kings, corruption from above, his letters with Lovecraft, civilizations become corrupt and evil, leans in and says yes, they’re evil and old and we gotta suppress this knowledge, a one way influence, his Solomon Kane stories, he’s a puritan, largely adventuring in Africa, voodoo men, this is pure evil, we must go fight it, occupy sounds somebody else’s body, here take the staff of Solomon, sort of part of my religion, a mode of that, a suspicion of magic, just fakery, People Of The Black Circle, a retelling of the Marco Polo story of the Hashashim,, reading things from 1000s of years ago, 1254-1324, a certain valley to be enclosed, every variety of fruit, most elegant, all covered with gilding, he kept at his court, 12-20 years of age, tales about paradise, just as Mohammed was wont to do, some four or six, the deep sleep, the state of stupor, delightful objects, lovely damsels, in Paradise, unwilling to relinquish, commands of their master, put death by these disciplined assassins, been exposed to the emnity of the old man of the mountain, fairly familiar, still in use today, it’s the guy who tried to assassinate Trump, evil company, super-evil, people still do this, government related, lonely needs a girlfriend, an operative paid by the government, let’s go blow up a bridge, 7 people in the van, the governor of Michigan, how do we end up doing this?, ply em with money and wine, this is how we’re told suicide bombings work, arrested, Robert E. Howard did a story on this, set in Vendhya (not India), sorcery circle, his magic is largely fake, all you have to do to survive the sorcery is not believe it is legit, a different way of doing it, fireball damage, Harry Potter wand, sumin exportorum, not getting wet, you have to play along, I’m damned, if you are not a believer, it’s an alien, kind of the same story as the book we read today, stapled to a couch for 1000 years, Howard’s a lot more grounded, The Vale Of Lost Women, a god from the outer dark, an alien, it can fly, it’s not human, not a Christian, what do these stories mean, what does it mean to wrestle with gods?, nice language he’s so good at in his poetry, less toleratnt for the stuff happens fantasy novels, a long way of getting to him being interested in this subject, playing a game with himself, readable as either science fiction or fantasy, his playing the game, starships and cigarettes, him breaking that, it depends, science fiction has rivets and fantasy has trees, science fiction that is not the same, hard Science Fiction, The Cold Equations, that’s not fantasy, a philosophical piece of fiction, we have to think about technology, most of them are completely fake, a vaccine for a disease that doesn’t exist, a spaceship that needs fuel, bootstrapped to get to John W. Campbell’s, power like it does, you can’t just magic everything away, the reason we love Star Trek II, the reason we love Star Trek III is Katras, planning, remember, double eyelids, all well and good, that’s series shit, that’s not the part we love, we set up a mechanical style problem and think about , a really awesome thread, the problem with screen addiction is we’ve always had this problem, a dialogue by Plato, The Symposium, people have always been addicted to screens, cave walls, shadow puppets, magic lanterns, illuminated manuscripts, movie screens, talkie movie screens, just like radio now with added screen, home video game screen, cellphones with screens, picture of the guy in the cave, always has been, your body comes with built in screens, when we look at a screen, early science fiction, visiscreens, they’re looking at a television, you can see the world, submarines do not have any windows, how can you navigate without windows, actually going to build the Starship Enterprise, there’s nothing in space to look at, when a romulan ship encounters a federation ship they’re both right side up, listing, it’s all metaphor, we’re told there’s tech, Day Million by Frederik Pohl, without all the religious baggage, deaging cream, get the botox, deluding themselves, technology is the reason it’s not magic, another axis to put this on, Star Trek: New Worlds, set in space, phasers, not magical phasers, dilithium crystal, the axis of bad science fiction, each individual episode needs to be judged on its own, the giant with the giant cigar, The Doomsday Machine, Kirk can do these infodumps, the writer knows, they built a weapon so terrible, they’re gone now, how do you know that bro?, in 45 minutes, an awesome idea, it works as a metaphor, nuclear weapons, it works in every direction, it is important that Decker try to blow it up, the shuttlecraft is not the important thing?, Star Trek is coming The Tempest, from Forbidden Planet, added a secondary hull and some tubes, things that look like a transporter, operates the same way visually, imagine The Tempest is a science fiction, the no Kill I episode, The Devil In The Dark, don’t kill all the Indians, very good, Spock has another girlfriend this season, some other girl, the cartoon, is it science fiction, some of it is definitely, pick an episode, everybody’s favourite, The City On The Edge Of Forever, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, what time travel can do, the good of the many outweighs the good of the few, let that lady die, hugs Bones, it’s philosophical, how time machines work, he gives an analogy, how do warp drives, bend the paper, snake oil to get to the story, if evolution is real and things go on as they are, the workers and the effete elites, that’s him making an argument, farther into the future, nothing really matters, a crab on the beach, back to earth, love is real, our time on earth together, two different things that are going on in there, three places in time, he leaves again, is he going to go see Weena again?, she ain’t that smart, not about time travel to the past, god show out of this, Lord Of Light, The Einstein Intersection, Aye, and Gomorrah…, heard about Thorns from Jonathan Weichsel, Chester Anderson, The Butterfly Kid, exists on Amazon, hippies had a new kick from outerspace, Reality Pills, pot smoking poets and musicians, lobster shaped giants from outer space, Peter S. Beagle wrote the foreword, poet, author, and musician, underground journals, new wave movement, Ray Bradbury, his good stories are good, the pirate site, Ten Years To Doomsday, reprint in 1977, an alien invasion novel, republishment, co-authored, misclassified him, probably not a book we need, a ton of fun, standing out as not having read, A Night In The Lonesome October, super-interesting, a request, he is pretty consistent, it’s pretty short, going to wikipedia or whatever, websites memorized, 31 minutes, something to pair it with, comparing the style as well as the subject, the Brian Murphy list, Eric Brighteyes, the main character, novella length, similar length to the Howard, The Barrow Troll, a comic, The City Of The Singing Flame, capital AND, Linortis Reprise, The Ship Of Ishtar, a show from 2010, podcast 091 – Oath Of Fealty, not a good book, the number one problem, 40 or 50 people, hear the idea, at least it wasn’t a huge book, Lucifer’s Hammer, Footfall, The Great Brain, ya, middle grade books, he was really smart, your Encyclopedia Brown, exist outside of Utah?, the first house to get a toilet, charge tickets, he’s gonna invite everybody over to take a shit, making fun of his own book, Salt Lake City, a Mormon thing?, how widespread is The Great Brain, famous illustrator, The Return Of The Great Brain, real books for real children, not Edgar Allan Poe, probably worth finding a copy and looking at it, at the time it was pretty exciting, who stole my wagon?, this person has motive, the two first episodes of Bookish, the setup is pretty good, asks for backstory, we don’t know each other well enough yet, viewpoint character, spinup theories, don’t trick me bro, tried to solve the mystery, setting it up, Nero Wolfe and Sherlock Holmes, who did the murder, a little to character heavy, the UK is going strange, a rebranded itv?, bathroom, save it in a jar, getting better, how am I supposed to take this book seriously?

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #848 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Magic City by E. Nesbit

The SFFaudio Podcast #848 – The Magic City by Edith Nesbit (7 hours 33 minutes) read by Ruth Golding for LibriVox – followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Jason Thompson.

Talked about on today’s show:
1910, read to me, talking about it on twitter, pretty amazing, working on my Dreamland role playing game, dreamland adjacent, Five Children And It, childhood library, didn’t have good art, really love it, Ruth Golding’s version, the audiobook will be up front, unless they skip to the end, not better known, Wizard Of Oz level, didn’t have 50 other books made after it, we start with the premise, a little boy who’s an orphan, his mother is his sister, he’s 10, one day they meet a man on the road, he offends in many small ways, determined to be mad at his sister-mom, introduced to the family of this widower, everything’s wrecked, very real, Isekai, portal world stories, annoying boys, jerks, he gets out of it, negotiates with the girl, it’s sweet, talking everything, to restate the whole premise, child protagonist, feels lonely and grumpy, honeymoon with her new husband, new step-sister, takes refuge in an elaborate city, toy soldiers, books, the nanny, what a mess, take all this apart, by moonlight, transformed, into the city, his sister pops in too, not just a magic city, the wikipedia synopsis, the magic world, a small part of this greater world, everything that he’s ever dreamed of or played with, other people are drawn into this world, reminded by the premise, The Lego Movie (2014), Lord Business, relationship between you your toy your world, bad relationship, through the course of the experience, avatar, a more positive relationship on the other end, really key, build something and the then play with it, couldn’t become the guy, being inside the buildings, building up a fantasy secondary world, The Sword Of Welleran by Lord Dunsany, another mode, just play, not just the story of a kid who builds a city, a new family being integrated together, emotional change, after they see the beautiful city, she shouldn’t tear this down, a coming together, wild imagination, The Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath, earlier modes of human behavior, past-toddler, a 2 year old and a 4 year old, superbaby, peekaboo, imaginative work, names for her toys, Setsee, literal names, the process, a mermaid named Seariel, every language was foreign, stodgy and literal, pretending to be things, a monster here, this is an ice cream shop, the floor is lava, his whole world and everything that he thought of, favourite line, for the second time, Philip the carpenter, a little progressive, idle dreamers, the people who build these toys, Mr Parent, how can you be here and at Amblehurst too, just a dream then, go through the dreams and come out on the otherside, the coolest concept, the most lame explanation, even in 1910, fairly silly, arbitrary, fetch quests, maybe written for serialization, no vegetables or fruits in this kingdom, pineapples are not considered fruits here, very profound, trippy, secondary world material, a cosmic feeling, the mystic sense, mysticism, drilling in the eight hours of day enough, contemporary politics, the laws in the Magic City, good laws and bad laws, Noah is also the judge, they’re convicted, put in prison, would you please escape, they exit the door, would you please escape, a task defeated, what the purpose of everybody’s job is, make beautiful laws, everyone should be nice to everyone else, Nesbit doesn’t delve deeply into this idea, SimCity, Civilization, your own philosophy, a peaceful city, a healthful city, chessboards and old books, will it be a kingdom?, crowned king and queen, this is a republic, please leave, play with the idea of what makes a building of a city beautiful and valuable, H.P. Lovecraft stories, the chalcedony and the thanes, impious leadership, very corrupt, how should they live there, gotta be conscious, the city is multi-ethnic, this person is brown, this person is Chinese, non-ethno state fantasy world, a reflection of the ideal, the boy builds it for escape, a very lonely life, wealthy enough to afford servants, play-friends, sister/mom playfriend, he’d previously done it, a practice of comfort, such a big grudge, so much investment he literally falls into it, Inferno by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven goes to Hell, reconstructing Dante’s Inferno from a hard science fiction point of view, how does the city work?, work out a history, meals made of cardboard, bowls for dessert, prophecies, make plot happen, while our hero has not been there, The Neverending Story, movie and book, the first half of the book, since you created it it has been here forever, module creation, set your players on a path, not hallucinate exactly, filibuster, once it has been said it is now fact, maybe the people don’t eat at all, fight the lions in the desert, the intent of the person killing them, so many great parts in this book, the hints of the political changes, Somnolentia, formerly Briskford, backtory, why are we changing the name, making the place better, healing exercise, you’ve got some trauma, talk it out, write it down, work it out, Halva?, more complex chess or go or Chinese checkers, before video games, before dungeons and dragons, toy shop, the Sears catalogue, Lando’s speeder, I can imagine it, you use what figures you have, why LEGO is so great, make your own toys, the guts to see though it, branded toys, an IP nightmare, make it generic, playing into the same, sloth vs. industry, something there, a slow person, very slow, sloth is a sin, what makes you suddenly creative, 17 different things going, on the phone, no creativity there, stress and things that gotta get checked off, today’s a slow day, early in the book, just because it’s raining outside that isn’t a day for lessons, punishment, much rather be playing, a day of laze-about, get out the pencil crayons, something starts to appear, the rule by the great sloth is something to be addressed, not working deep mines of anything, isn’t it interesting, impressed by the ending, the grand surprise, Julius Caesar to defeat the barbarians, imaginative stuff, everything is in the city, how they exit is interesting, they build their way out, they build their way in, the pretenderess, carried away with her own excitement, the Noah toy comes to life because of the tears, not a serious story, maybe it didn’t happen, The Fall (2006), artsy, listening to stories told by a stuntman, the story becomes darker, dark thoughts, helplessness and despair, all just a dream, oh please!, fantasy sequences, they don’t give you that wink, literal minded, establish that it’s “real”, pointing to it earlier, you go through dream through to reality, Ex Oblivione, chairs, horses, become one with everything that’s real, through the trauma of that plucking, as you grow and learn and experience, you recognize the things you once knew, dreams tell me about me and what’s going on in my world, if it has no consequence or value, the world is a dream, the Poe gloss on it, The Arabian Nights, literal mindedness, let me tell you another story, what’s the real?, equal weight as words on a page, we’re destablishing the reality of the frame story, get me back to the action!, what is the real reality, something you find in Borges, a story inside the Arabian Nights, what the particular story is called, a prophecy, meets a man and talks to him, something that he wanted, that man has had a dream, it’s a circle, The Circular Ruins, a man who self creates in dream, The Green Meadow, The Crawling Chaos, the landscape is a human body, it’s a skull, a man lying down in hospital, decaying and decrepit body, so interesting, the connection between mind and body, sick the last week, high fever, see many things, experiencing things that are not real, you can be in a waking dream state, the normal activity, faces, swirling, crazy outsider artist, devilish landscape, look up at the ceiling, painted in a pattern or lack of pattern, a cloud that looks like a dragon or a horse, the interpretation and the generation, real connections, a map and perception of the world, something that’s real outside of you, a piece of fiction, narrowing the reality to just the words, no reality other than the words, combined through the ears, the eyes or fingers, as real as a dream but more concrete, it’s cool, magic items, magic coming to our world, time travel, expand this out, headcanon, essentially in the Dreamlands, if the world is bigger than the city, his sister, the people who build the blocks, the collective unconscious, public domain, the dragon that was the key, wind up the dragon, largely lost, a kid’s nursery from 1910, the toy soldiers, Christmas presents, what it is constructed around, propagandistic toy soldiers and sailors, without the Jurassic Park or Star Wars branding, marketing to kids, blocks are handmade by the servant, the factory works, it really is the LEGO movie, it is good, whatever’s on the streaming service, curate everything, the Barbie Movie, addressing right away, doesn’t mention the CIA, Barbie can be any job that she wants, arch and meta and clever, that was for adult women and men and kids, H.G. Wells doing his Floor Games, collecting He-Man figures coming out today, his sister reappears in the world, not conscious of it per se, the husband is Julius Caesar, read it very subversively, childhood sweethearts, he’s got a kid he needs a mom for, an integration not a horror, the sister and not the parent, makes the resentment more, you’ve already been betrayed, you’ve already lost your parents, 17 brothers and sisters, how big a deal is it?, the more tenuous your relationship with your parents, mad at my father when he’s dying of cancer, it’s not fair, child logic just amps it up, he’s left alone, unless you work really hard, she’s whisked off to the honeymoond almost immediately, thank you, every two years or so, get well soon, this really fund story, better known, three other lives, the magic country, the magic land.

The Magic City by E. Nesbit - The Strand, 1910

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #837 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Mistress Of The Dark Pool by Russell Gray and The Cold Female by Dale Harlow

The SFFaudio Podcast #837 – Mistress Of The Dark Pool by Russell Gray (1 hour 3 minutes) from Terror Tales, May 1940 and The Cold Female by Dale Harlow (19.5 minutes) from Adam, January 1957. Both are read by Mike Vendetti. 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:
Philsp.com Galactic Central, can’t get google to work, a huge magazine index, Sgt. Bilko, all the magazine contents, mostly all there, non-genre magazines, Cora’s entry is wrong, Stephenson Paine, only has one story, flourishing in the 1950s, this issue of Adam, pseudonymous, fairly well written, Jack Casanova, K. Robert Howard, a funny magazine, internet archive, before Palestine, you taking down, LibriVox is down, people who throw , PulpCovers, killed the internet archive, hackers?, online activists, a DDOS attack, LibriVox, one of the files was corrupted, work on something else, in 7 months when this podcast comes out Gaza wont be being destroyed, save the best for last, Russel Gray, excellent art, attractive and a good premise, Mistress Of The Dark Pool is just way too long, the biggest problem, an hour and 3 minutes, very similar, lakes, mountains, people in cabins, every stereotype ever, food and supplies and information, Cabin In The Woods, titular cabin, titular woods, go in clear eyed, weird sacrifice thing, the knew what they were getting into, willingly allow the vampire into your home, Reading, Short And Deep, connection through Eric [S. Rabkin], find the hidden sex, much clearer, definitely had sex with that woman, May 1940, written 5 minutes before it was published, before the US is involved in WWII, it wasn’t important yet, isfdb entry, Bruno Fisher (Russell Gray) (Harrison Storm), interesting quote, these markets, weird menace pulps, living in Florida with my family, terror/horror market, just one day the market was gone, 150 Philip K. Dick, the market collapses, it’s Chinatown, Jake, if you shutter the business that distributes magazines, paperback distribution, early 1990s, censorship, legal issue, a history of this, might be war related, all the way through the depression, ramping up for war, gonna be a paper shortage, preparing for war, army approved pulp, Playboy, I read it for the articles, the Saturday Evening Post of a certain niche, a magazine like Adam, much condensed, more censoriously, lot less placing breasts in hands, less explicit, implied more, some birds started chirping, Eric Rabkin comes out of the forest with his hat on, waterfalls and tunnels, fade away, necking in the surf, how many beds are in that house?, obsessed with the idea, too much to read, both stories use the same word, wood nymph, scary stories to tell in the dark, fireside ghost story kinda things, a filler story in Weird Tales, read versus listened, Mike Vendetti, how seriously he took it, very believable, so broad, come on guy, must be the daughter, who could have seen this coming?, a more enjoyable experience, weird menace pulps, both sex stories, ghost women in the mountain cabin, author vs. engineer, the author is the bad writer, the engineer is the good writer, forgive a lot of the things, nice art, paid by the word, seeing it in the relief, salacious title, could be a horse, sounds like it could be a Conan story, all of his titles, the blank of the blank, the castle of the harridans, a collection of Russell Gray stories, actual print book, Monster Of The Purple Mist, all sound awesome, go at it bro, Hostesses In Hell And Other Stories: The Selected Stories Of Russell Gray and My Touch Brings Death: And Other Stories, a new cover, no interior art, the artists on the shudder pulps worked overtime, great art, the editorial descriptions are good, the mangy dog he called her lover, I vowed I would kill girl I loved, way more appealing, too many scenes, repetitive, wife steps up and saves his ass, cool character, he doesn’t deserve it, the spell is have sex with this sexy lady down the street, skip to the discussion, find out pretty quick, in comparing it, so similar, the one was made longer, would it improve the story, pretty groany, yard work, describing her breasts, I’m so cold, start snuggling, reacts as a virile man should, adolescent fantasy, male fantasy, dear Ghost Story letters: you wouldn’t believe what happened to me!, jealousy is a thing, modelling Tommy’s mind, the alcoholism, drinking happening, pouring the alcohol down his throat, rye whiskey, the first alcoholism bad movie, The Lost Weekend (1945), a drug to escape reality, this potent medicine, a poison that’s hurting our health, enjoying a fine cigar, not going to make you beat your wife or drive drunk, a good glass of wine, a single malt scotch, useful for cooking, wine into cooking, so much more of it out there, the whiskey didn’t effect me, playing Hamlet, Richard Burton, what happens if I suddenly get a phone call, pulled over, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, way too drinky, a beautiful wife he loves, battles with alcohol, easier to pack up into the mountains, pretty normalized, an older time, drinking alone, a bad marriage, a lesbian or was going to murder you, women definitely drank alcohol, sherry, champagne, The Thin Man (1934), a comedy, social, the way it appears in this story, using it like a medicine, an alcohol spiral, the husband comes to his senses, the good wife helped him, saved her even though he was tired, personal psychology, go to a cabin in the woods, a beautiful woman requires you have sex with her, a mangy dog, he kills it, I didn’t mean to kill that dog, what happened to Amos?, perfectly normal, they left her body by the cabin with ribbons of skin, a better ending, together they bury the body, throws the whiskey bottle into the grave, he buried his demons along with his demons, he doesn’t believe in witchcraft, the red herring that makes it longer, six chapters, chapter titles are good, Americans are weird about alcohol, marksmanship competition, shooting clubs, the king and queen of the marksman, so German, get a gun license, a nice plaque, such a German thing, 35 and 75, nobody minds, much healthier attitude, get really drunk at a wedding, an addictive drug, Prohibition, grain into liquor, profit per ton of cargo, sever chronic alcoholism, rampant, Ecuador, major problem, French wine, getting schnockered, liquid, symbolic, Eric hat, a lake is very different than rain, or a cup of water on your desk, you go into the unconscious, let me tell you about it, a woman who goes into the water, her fantasy, her desire is the theoretical explanation for why the, sexy witch’s daughter, harridan harridan harridan, a dark liquor, the more lost you get, when you go in the water, went swimming, needed to clear my head, he’s going away from his wife, he’s straying, a symbol for femaleness, his engineering projects, the Canadian Rockies, in the off season, to go fishing, the thing that came out of the lake, the woman knocking on the door is a neighboring cabin woman, abusive husband, it went supernatural, she needs to come out of the lake, she’s a witch!, a market for science fiction, unusual, running away from a killer, and now we’re on the road together, in the mountains of Canada, not the end of the story, she’s dead, died a virgin, a male fantasy, Edgar Allan Poe, I at least married them, comes back to life, at least 20 years, really old women that looked young, The Lake by Ray Bradbury, the season is over, drag something from the lake, sandcastle, he will always love this girl, looks at his wife, why is this weird woman here?, an adult version of The Lake, never grows up, he still loves her, struck by the similarities, better scripter, retro review, on a lot of high school reading lists, May 1944, no school is in session, a link, how young, this is going to get weird, 19, it didn’t matter, might be committing crimes, she’s 19, she coulda been 16, 14 now, teacher and student, power dynamics, no one bats an eye, 14 and 19 year old, eyelashes batted, what do we make the names of Hulda and Amos, is that a name?, a witch name, a prophetess, Mother Hulda (Frau Holle), the legendary creature, what makes our character Hulda evil?, she’s old and ugly, a mangy narrator, our stupid narrator, linked to Christmas and winter folklore in the alpine region, always resorting to alcohol, stupider, mitigate it, pushed off the page, he uses the word to describe the male husband, supposedly a writer, in the mountains to get his novel finished, such a bad writer, he makes the connection for us, it explained by his alcoholism, the audience shouldn’t be ten times smarter, a different name, Timerider: The Adventure Of Lyle Swann (1982), back to the future, he’s his own grandpa, raped by his gandma, Cyngne, he didn’t make the connection, they share a family name, 6 pages, 19 and half pages, five times shorter, is it five better?, three times better, with great art, an anecdote you tell your friend, woman knocking on the door, a fish story, no creepy pun intended, he’s showing propriety, having sex with a ghost, just kinda sad, let me tell you about my Canadian girlfriend who’s a ghost and you can never find, almost wholesome, my dead lover who I turned into a dog for reasons, a shape changer, a dog by day, hot and sweaty sex, with I could have sex with humans, attracted to the wife, you dog, now you’ll live like a dog, don’t make the story longer, skinny dipping, the dog shows up, so crude and simple and badly written, kinda like it still, honest in its stupidity and baseness, Robert E. Howard, pretty good money, get enough sex in there, the explanation for why everything was happening was bizarre and bad, married couples never had children, sex happens, not newly married, three years, undue for the era, if you don’t have children, young children would be with them, off at military school, kinda the point of getting married, having kids, married characters in weird menace stories, New York brownstones, feeds you someone from the asylum, you attracted to the opposite sex, it complicates it and makes it weird, if this couple had a kid that was with them, why is daddy acting so weird, The Shining, a terrible drunk, as time goes on, this is a story about a guy who wants to kill himself, a bunch of King, a thing he says over and over again: I’m a horrible drunk, read The Mist, possibility he’s gonna kill his family, right before rescue shows up, a fog, the alcohol you’re imbibing, reading into his personal psychology, an assignment sorta style, gotta have a witch and a pool and a cliff, Test-Tube Frankenstein also had a cliff, I like cliffs, almost being stabbed, 1930 Margaret Brundage, lesbian whipping scenes, they look like they’re dancing, lesbian witch cult, way less about personal psychology and more to male psychology, so streamlined, three characters in the whole story, no personality other than hetero, the anecdote that it wants to tell, is she a wood nymph, could be a wood nymph, naked woman in the woods, a fleeting glimpse in the mist, life is a lot more interesting, straight to dryad, too complicated word for the target audience, straight out of Dungeons & Dragons, sprite, hamadryad, C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, J.R.R. Tolkien, the entire Chronicles Of Narnia, super-famous British actor, Kenneth Branagh, Vanessa Redgrave, Patrick Stewart, the performances are incredible, Phantastes: A Faerie Romance For Men And Women by George MacDonald, they all died on the same day, a photo of the Doctor, at the Kennedy assassination, C.S. Lewis died, Aldous Huxley, Paul Chadwick, comic book artist, Dark Horse, Concrete, Harlan Ellison, a movie with that scene, that’s in a movie, a newish movie, The Most Reluctant Convert, converting to Catholicism, Lovecraft says to Robert E. Howard: You should become a muslim, Robert E. Howard to Lovecraft: I will eventually, sweet as a nut, The Horse And His Boy, my favourite, the best book in the series, Voyage Of The Dawn Treader, writing/publication, how does that fit in, The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, Magician’s Nephew, The Last Battle, for the retro Hugos, so terrible, an all volunteer pickup basketball, a cartoon adaptation, series on DVD, live action, a BBC version, Prince Caspian, Lewis is public domain in Canada, semi-professional Chrisitan audio dramas, consider that, before we lose Tommy, The Tower Treasure, a shelf of them, December 1st, blind spots, Nancy Drews, simple, hilarious, teen detective stories, Enid Blyton, Lilith by George MacDonald, Odd John by Olaf Stapledon, Symposium by Plato, Fury by Henry Kutter, Paycheck and The Weapon Shop, A.E. Van Vogt, more pairings, all the reading on Saturday, wouldnt be new, close to an hour, a William Hamilton Osborne story, The Haunted Corridors, able to clean it up, The Noseless Horror, always happy to do Howard, precedes pretty much everybody, Assyrian, in Egypt, talk across space, recorded on the farm, a twist at the end, quite different, in Portland, can’t turn down Howard, advent coffee, looking through ebay listings, a striking cover, calling the museum that has his papers, The New Jersey Historical Society, the idea seems very novel, a scientist and his beautiful daughter, a “machine”, more of a ghost story, the cover is great, the little hint, the machine is kinda like a cellphone, in a different time, to hear what they can hear there, listening through time, an audio podcast, two hours of homework for Alex, mostly reader, audio processing issues, listen to podcasts, full cast audio dramas, a whole industry, mostly one company, still alive, excellent people doing these, Big Finish Blakes 7, actors out from carbonite, a kindly elephant, a kindly witch, action oriented stuff, licensed stuff, Knightrider, that’s for you, He-Man, the German voice of Tom Selleck, Midsomer Murders, the Max Max novelization, The Terminator novelization, if they exist they’re probably very expensive, Alan Dean Foster, a novelization of Total Recall?, Terry Bisson?, Piers Anthony, Poul Anderson, novelized everything, marginal movies, Iron Eagle (1986), Kevin J. Anderson, Timothy Zahn, personality defects, Predator (1987), took that hate, especially censorship, Huawei phone, Terrifier 3 (2024), Wild Robot (2024), Ladyhawke (1985), let us rent it, The Terminator (1984) at a young age, had to watch Ladyhawke again, an assigned seat, 1 ticket vs. ten tickets, a lot to do with real estate, everything ties together, new tech, delisted, woke now, trains and WWII and Ukranian War propaganda, chicken breeding, once or twice, your dad’s station, dull people talking about politics, it was fun, a gothic romance novel, a beautiful woman with perfect hair fleeing a castle at night, Slaughterhouse Five, the sixties people, Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, Victoria Holt, Marilyn Ross, A Place Of Sapphires, piracy, governess, more Scooby Doo than Dracula, an immigrant, a reverse Dracula, female fantasy, Jane Austen, Bridgerton, romantic comedy, romcoms, gothic romance movies, Frenchman’s Creek, Jamaica Inn, The Birds, drug induced time travel, Marghanita Laski, she’s a ghost, very stylish and well done, moved to Italy with husband, Mona Farnsworth, The Three Sisters Of No-End House, completely forgotten, nurse novels, pen-names, Swedish adaptations, lesbian, from 1960, cliffs of Cornwall, past tragedy and present danger, passions overpower reason, evil lurks in the shadows, perfectly in tune, kicked off the boom, dismissed, Northanger Abbey, those are bad, commit to this, literally includes a castle with a high lit window, wearing a nightgown, retro toy and game, getting a better handle on human nature through fiction, what compels humans, Harlequin romances, daylight savings, I don’t believe you, a stupid idea from the start, China has 1 time zone, 1 time zone for the whole planet, you’re somebody, the twitter blocking thing changing, logging into an alternate twitter account, blocked or deleted, bluesky is where the writers and covid panic people hangout, threads has women obsessed about menopause, toy collectors, Lego minifigs, square format, photography, twitter as it used to be, oh well, plain gone, mad at Cora, not sufficiently anti or pro, all the time, you cannot post about your book, focused on the news, American election about to happen, a massive increase in depression, every second tweet is about Trump, if Trump is the worst thing that happened to you, in what sense is he terrible, Russia is never going to attack us, might try to sell you some gas, Anne Applebaum, Nordstream 2, they’re proud of it, set this thing on fire, so furious, hate Biden, terrible woman, spend lots of money to protect against the Russians, rat out my neighbours, it is horrible being occupied, 2 million people of Russian origin in Germany, grew up in Kazakhstan, they work hard, gardening is ex-Soviet people, paves your driveway, Jewish people, sorry for the holocaust, escaped Ukraine, communicating is difficult, so stupid to fall for it, endless amounts of weapons and money into Ukraine, weapons into hot-war zones, Israel, exporting weapons, promise not to use them to commit genocide, the weapons industry, subcontractors, specialized weapons manufactures, Airbus, the people who build tanks, Heckler and Koch, Sigsauer, Walther, submarines, campus, shipyards, superyachts for rich assholes, techbros, oligarchs, stories to tell about rich people being assholes, the Russian oligarchs are gone, taxpayer money, terrible headache, go to sealevel, 4 meters above sealevel, for dinner,

Mistress Of The Dark Pool by Russell Gray
The Cold Female by Dale Harlow

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #792 – READALONG: The Weirwoods by Thomas Burnett Swann

The SFFaudio Podcast #792 – Jesse, Will Emmons, Cora Buhlert, Jonathan Weichsel, and Alex [Cirsova] talk about The Weirwoods by Thomas Burnett Swann

Talked about on today’s show:
1965, 1967, DAW book?, ACE, Alex was a big fan, how come I never heard of him?, the audiobook existed, nobody had pirated it, special work, a list, why this particular one, the old Ace paperback, The Minotaur trilogy, most well know, Cry Silverbells, The Forest Forever, The Day Of The Minotaur, fun fantasy, a particular kink, good narrator, he was okay, the female voices, a female narrator, feminine language, same takeway, chapters 1 – 4 are perfect literature, seducing, the rest of the book 5 – whatever are imperfect, the flaw is in the plotting, go from one place to another, why does Arnth return to the town, Swann knows this, no real reason, Tannaquil, no motivation, well I escaped that net, a slave uprising, the weirones, a little more careful plotting, the language, the imagery, the themes, the worldbuilding, really magical, the naivete, that it had a plot, the kidnapping, enslavement, a sex fantasy, even the ones that are knowing we’re naive, erotic artwork, Pompeii, even cuter, traveling exhibitions, fauns and satyrs, Herculaneum, a classicist, a student of classic period, vast encyclopedic knowledge of antiquity, what if all of the myths from antiquity were literally true, a Dunsanian mold, why are they heartless?, they’re fairy creatures, they’re not human, they’re not gods, centaurs have two hearts, mythology, celtic mythology, the Christian god, god was getting tired late on the 5th day, fully antiquity, the meta-narrative across all of his books, the retreat of fey up until Christianity, The Gods Abide, early Christian Rome, because of the spread of the Christian faith, compatible with some other set of beliefs he had, ancient Etruria, UNESCO World Heritage protected, narrow to the exact year, the Rape of the Sabine, having happened, we can do it though, set in our world, panisci, the corn sprites, what about the fossil record, does that mean they don’t have bones, a weird kind of fantasy, set in our world, Robert E. Howard, urban fantasy novels, vampires or werewolfs, Doggerland, why am I even focused on this?, let’s talk about you having no heart, fossils, approaching this with hard SF bone, her heart starts beating, mostly what this book is is sex fantasy for everybody, chill and relaxed, until everybody gets killed, that’s a sex fantasy too, a Marxist with 7 cats, orgy of revolutionary violence lead by cats, making a claim about the past reality, everything we know about the ancients is true, science fiction brain, when they die out how do they die out, stopping having children, what do they do with their dead?, sarcophagi, buried archaeological things, temples underneath the earth, speaking of buried, our bear barely gets to do anything, Ursus, the eye-patched bear, he got a girlfriend in the end, dancing or trained bears, Eastern Europe, animal cruelty, the romance, that seduction scene, one of the most amazing things I’ve ever read, the central core idea of the book, French erotica movies, Emmanuelle (1974), have big passions, not remotely artistic, Sylvia Kristel, softcore erotica, late night tv, non-erotic movies, airplane accident movies, the decline or death of the fey, the macroscale, the meta-narrative, their encounter with humanity, tragic, leads to a little bit less magic, fey has to retreat, the resentment of the fey, kill all the fauns and centaurs, the sprite sorceress, costs her her life, a meaningful connection, temporary and passing, pure sensuality, feeling pretty bad, not that sympathetic, a violent guy, kills all these people, you only hate him because you didn’t know what he was or refuse to see it, throws himself on the axe, his own hands that do him in, homosexual themes in these books, a Biblical one, how are the mighty fallen, rubbing the wine off, sweet musician, just friendship, breaks him, fey people, pretty interesting, that Jesse is obsessed with, she becomes the thing she says she will never become, becomes obsessed with him, pure and innocent person with a real love and passion for her that she’s met, is this like a joke?, the heart of the book, our main character is not having sex with women because they’ll trap you, can’t bear his child, not the right class, playing with some interesting stuff, chronic white girl syndrome, my compassion will be reciprocated, magnanimous gesture for someone who is low class, these people resent her, she didn’t want him to be her slave, she wants to help free him, she’s shocked by the notion, once he’s murdered and their chains are off, give it multiple readings, a little wolf-puppy, grows into a wolf and eats the family, wicked and evil and heartless, she’s a spoiled rich girl, she’s so great, they rise up and kill her, the wicked slaves, the book intentionally gives these things the double meaning, the book intentionally doesn’t pick sides in these sociological debates, the sensuality, the food, the warmth, the cold, the bodily feelings, drinking the wine, the immediate attention to sensuality, Dunsany is ironic, cutesy, there’s no bent toward sexuality in Dunsany, Clark Ashton Smith, a celebration of life, and the joys of living, the rustic, the pastoral, the pastoral vs. the urban, an attention to the body, people’s skin like an otter’s skin, Sutrium is small, taste, texture, smell, every meal, the coziness of somebody in your sleeping bag, hammocks, can I sleep in your hammock, do we have to sleep?, assume this is throughout all of Swann, a particular fetish, really cute, his biggest influence is A.A. Milne, Winnie The Pooh, tea and honeycakes, 100 Acre Woods, everybody is fucking everybody else, Piglet and the sad donkey are getting it on, Kanga’s got a baby, Hobbiton, look there’s an elf Mr. Frodo, nobody in Middle Earth fucks anybody else, there’s no female hobbits, reproduction, incredibly focused on the sensual, visit Italy, a book of the mid-60s, early 20th century, Science Fantasy, Donald A. Wollheim, David and Jonathan having a relationship, a very specific kink, fits as fantasy, a writer writing what he’s interested in, literary, the magazines that would take him, fashion for retelling Greco-Roman mythology, out of time, read another one of these, barely a plot, stuff happening, sensuality and spending time with a bunch of fey in the forest, unique, doing something off in his own world, if you work on the internet, people who are passionate about Swann, producing these audibooks, doing reprints, the reviews online are hostile, 2 stars on audible, an audience mismatch, an American thing, very prude Americans, people just don’t understand the breadth of fantasy, sword & sorcery, a Tolkien clone, cosy sensuous fantasy set in antiquity, the sex element, depicting sexuality is wrong, this is the focus, tastefully hand, it’s beautiful, he really digs it, cottagecore, big push, fake cover, “everyone is gay for minotaurs and now you are too”, hampered, always 10 years ago, died way to soon, dying early is not great for being remembered, posthumously published, a body of work, the last handful of books aren’t as strong, a professor of English at the University of Florida, A Spell For Chameleon by Piers Anthony, a hero’s journey type plot, the late 70s, the good one, English language books, import book shop, Poul Anderson, set on actual Earth?, borders Florida, a magical border wall, exiled from the world, exiled to Florida, very cute, probably a good thing, Galactic Star, 55 years late, good that he won, a Hugo or Nebula nomination, the letter pages, because they don’t fit anywhere else, harmed, Good Show Sir, dunking on the covers, local independent bookshop, that book on that one cover, George Barr, Mark liked him so much, a brief biography, 1928, Korean War, Duke, Florida Atlantic University, literary scholarship, poetry, traveled extensively, WWI poet, The Not-World, DAW 1975, the last hideout, 2 centuries ago, the lore of the little folk, master of fantasy, one of his finest and most piquant, Thomas Chatterton, a balloon fight, Arachnae, spiderwoman, transposed to England the same sort of idea, against series, not a true series, some of the same characters, reverse chronological order, reconcile the differences, Cry Silver Bells, The Gods Abide, the final retreat of fey, The Green Phoenix, The Dolphin And The Deep, mythic Greek antiquity retelling of the Little Mermaid, will investigate his public domain status, mass market paperback, Wildeside, John Betancourt, a mix of public domain and regular, getting a narrator, never heard of him, writing really interesting books, why not, booking into the new year, Queens Walk In Dusk, the collected, a romantic type relationship, German fantasy author, Michael Ende, relationship with a minotaur, way too adult, Wonder And Whimsy: The Fantastic Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market, consequences, fucking a centauress, gender, consequences for sex, even more dire, reliable contraceptive, sensuous, a problem for human females, kinda weird that he chose, paniscii, not the product of dudes running around the forest having sex with animals, the most reasonable impersonation, dudes are having sex with goats, minotaurs, half human half animals, we are our own separate creation, fey, transposing, Greco-Roman mythology, tweeting about how Swann treats the morality of the fey, touch on it, an alien morality unto themselves, what humans could necessarily understand, spitefulness, chaotic, unpredictable, morality, moral code, when humans have sex, they just do it, a right interpretation, tapping into something, that’s really cool, one of the two main influences, A Most Exquisite Specimen by J. Manfred Weichsel, Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, etymologist capturing butterflies, human butterflies played by ballerina showgirls, take the pin out, little dance number, a different plot, August [2023], Fall or Summer issue, see you in cyberspace, a pretty good show out of this good book, Mildred Klingerman, a young woman and a minotaur, Shirley Jackson, modern trad wife, Galactic Suburbia writers, domestic stories, Zenna Henderson, post-war domesticity, Letters For Laura, 6 pages, using euphemisms and language, copyright renewed, unlikely to happen, sure why not, if this show gets taken down, delete you from reality, full speed ahead damn the torpedoes, one of those, Dear Mom, A Cupful Of Space, Ballantine books, time travel, Love, Laura, my breasts are displayed in the style of ancient Crete, not who but what?, that’s the trouble with books, ancient Crete, so the minotaur wouldn’t eat her, they’re not as prude as people think they were, super-mainstream, visual, quite prudish, Clingerman stories, women’s magazines, now they’re both hungover, sleeping it off, working on his stuff in the garage, birdwatching, a dream that an alien is birdwatching her, exposing her lady parts, bye bye hangover, not super-prudish, stories for women, stories for men, Kay Tarrant, kinda prudish, there for fifty years, excised the erotic stuff, children read the magazine, prude, Slow Season by Robert Sheckley, Clark Ashton Smith, The Prize Of Peril, Das Millionenspiel (1970), better if you are German, such a different attitude towards sex, 1961 vs. 1965, double language, if you’ve seen those pictures there’s no top, with English subtitles, famous German comedian, The Running Man by Richard Bachman, Richard Dawson, the problem is he’s young, Family Feud, 1 year old in 1987, a unique style, human hunting, Suzanne Collins, Battle Royale (2000), PUBG, violence, hangups about violence, Evil Dead (1981), a censorious country, voluntary self control, if Jonathan took that job: “good I can censor some films”, juche, very particular to the Korean peninsula, worker’s uprising crushed, relying on other countries, allies turned their back on them, starve for a decade, the craziest stories about North Korea, a crazy story, Yeonmi Park, always lying, had to push the trains, local TV station, engaged in Pyongyang, desperately want to be a normal country, millions of people, Ukraine War, free fire zones, no buildings standing more than two stories tall, they didn’t lose, that’s amazing, they don’t want to win wars, they just want to have them, Grenada, Iraq – Kuwait, Bush War 1, Bush War 2, heating up in Iraq, seems like things are pretty bad, they wouldn’t put you in charge, Jonathan is the great unifier, a radical centrist, in a podcasting zone right now, sleeping 16 hours a day, contribute around the house, a lot of comics, mediocre comics, Mœbius, Jean Giraud, The World of Edena, have to eat natural foods, we should go to that planet, get yourself very dirty and roll around in it, dangerous in Canada, Quebec is very insular, engagement outside of Quebec, essentially its own country, East Germany, lovely talking to you, Franco-Belgian-Dutch[-Flemish] comics, a thank you, great bookstore employees, something expensive, one day she’s going to grow up and have money, Eurocon in Rotterdam, Confessions Of An English Opium Eater, how many languages does Cora speak and read?, decent at Dutch, sell me on it, 19th century, most popular youtube video ever, an old book, LibriVox narrations, assigned at universities, the comments are interesting, Martin Geeson is the narrator, serialized in the London Magazine, upset and shocked by it, 1821, long walks, too happy to observe, humorous, interesting, drug literature, glorious imagination, acute speculation, Edgar Allan Poe, Jack Kerouac, Charles Baudelaire, Boston Blackie, barn full of books, The Lone Wolf, radio drama, the early part of next year, Valentine’s Day, go die now, drink some coffee, The Cave Girl, the Lawrence Block, a thin volume, feel better, get better.

The Weirwoods by Thomas Burnett Swann 1977

The Weirwoods by Thomas Burnett Swann ACE

The Weirwoods by Thomas Burnett Swann SCIENCE FANTASY, October 1965

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #789 – READALONG: Gilgamesh The King by Robert Silverberg

The SFFaudio Podcast #789 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about Gilgamesh The King by Robert Silverberg

Talked about on today’s show:
serialized, 1984, simple question, science fiction or fantasy novel?, how could it be, other than crude financial reasons, a novelization of the oldest epic that we know of in any great detail, The Road To Science Fiction volumes, an excerpt, claimed, adopted, annexed, interstitial material, fragments, and a whole lot of Silverberg, the major events are seemingly from quasi-historical sources, demystifies the fantasy, a rational explanation, the epic shares, the novel shares, the search for transcendence, brought back down to earth, losing out to imminence, immortality, Dickian, the basic formula for science fiction, come back transformed, wants and needs, wants a lot of sex, wants immortality, needs transcendence, the immortality is in the work he does, living out his life the way it can be shaped, who is the survivor of the flood?, Zeusasudra?, that guy presents, I didn’t say that, you’re inferring that, how not to die rather than how to live forever, 1984, maybe one day, that’s such an impressive statue or temple, passing from a living being into a mythical being and written about by Robert Silverberg, a bit of Ozymandias, fragments of the wall and the epic itself, we look up this book and despair at its length, writer and artist, other intellectual activities, 1.7 speed, unpleasant to listen to that fast, the first 3rd or first half, the part he invented himself, Game Of Thrones, more dynamic and less descriptive, 2x speed, he changes the story, the first third was painful, tedious?, a boring story, really dragged, this isn’t really, because we’ve done a number of Silverbergs, his beats are all out on display here, chasing after women, concerned with death, the solitude, The Book Of Skulls, a Charles Stross novel, when Schweitz showed up, Enkidu, comfortable garden, kicked out of the city, comes back, kinda like Conan as a king, bored on his throne, kickoff, the interesting bit, greater acceleration, experincing this book, a flashback to Hayy Ibn Tufail, raised by antelopes, wise with the wisdom of nature, a man coming out of nature, Tarzan, before all that, the granddaddy of them all, he resonated with the idea, this isn’t the only book into this series, Scott asked Jesse a question, the same Gilgamesh as Gilgamesh In The Outback, a road trip across the United States, not a hero as much as a drug user, Downward To The Earth, once administrator of, a lot of tourism, he sees himself as this character, pushes her breasts into his face, what, I’m six, autobiography, Gilgamesh believes but Silverberg doesn’t, a potion, he’s sprouting hairs, a placebo, rejects the teaching the of the religion, is she sincere?, the political subplot, his conjecture, makes the wrong decisions, the lens he looks at everything [with], a volcanic vent, it’s both, translating, one of the big successes, the difference between poetry, philosophy and religion, William Blake, really a volcanic vent, psychic perception taken too concretely, he’s got epilepsy, Gene Wolfe, head injury, he see the gods, Wolfe being Wolfe, meeting the same characters over and over again, the fantastic is supposed to be taken as partially real, a concrete example, the sick tree scene, three demons in it, making bricks and fuckin ladies all day, the leaves are all falling down, thing’s he’s wrong about, cuts off the sick branch, worst poison, pours it down the hole, the demon being a snake, all fun stuff, the concoction is probably manure and it fertilizes the tree, the three demon problem, what a shaman does, things in all directions, really there’s one thing in there that works, decoration, trying to impress people, his presentation is as the king, having sex with everybody, goes to far with that, loves the bricklaying too much, he abandons the city, he is Man, lessons for men, if you’re going to be a man, very Jordan Peterson, Inana, he thinks she killed the previous king, not fully fleshed out for her, why is her face fucked up in the end, a disease, venereal disease?, leprosy, of love, war and political power, Venus or Aphrodite, a bloody good time, psychologically, they’ll laugh at me, reason for rejecting her, he knows the story of going to the underworld, he’s afraid, points in the story, a showmanship part of this I’m not really a goddess, role model, a Candide naive adherent, he didn’t have a dad, the manly arts, doesn’t have a friend, wrestle and become best friends, ruled by affects, addressed in the text, we were not lovers, doth protest too much, all the women he’s having, we can’t read this on a subversive level at all, the bull of heaven, not an earthquake, the explanation is made to fit, a woman’s jealousy, mask off, what’s going to happen, obvious he was going to kill her, for the last time, he’s going to banish her, shuts her up in a hole, uh huh, yup, he’s the king, nothing complicated or delaying of satisfaction, ruled by his emotions, a foreign prince in another city, not subversive, writing from an atheistic perspective, very minimal, the closest we get is when he goes off to get immortality, the magic pearl was lost, feels like a fantasy, he goes off to Africa at one point, wooly haired, visitors, Yemen?, Qatar, China, placenames, this place used to be called that, guessed it, sort of saying, a rational explanation for everything or is there?, the science fiction aspect as well, the myth of the flood, no longer an immortal, tell the story like it is, a huge downpour, no ark, a miniversion of this book, a legendary story and so is this, “‘euhemerism’ 1. the theory that gods arose out of the deification of historical heroes. 2. any interpretation of myths that derives the gods from outstanding men and seeks the source of mythology in history.”, what if this actually happened, psychological stuff too, a modern novel, told first person, very reliable narrator, perceives in a different way, I, Claudius, you don’t need to bring the gods into it, two thirds god, it doesn’t make sense, a two father point of view, Lord something who is divine, two fathers and one mother, he’s not a demi-god, a step up, the god come into him, the ancestor of Hercules, Prometheus, Ulysses, doesn’t steal fire form the gods, a titan, he’s a builder, side note, a historical Gilgamesh, Civilization 6, don’t judge us, yes we can be friends, wrestling with him, that can save you on higher difficulties, demystifying, mostly historical alternate history straight, vampires and zombies, Zeusy, pocahontasy, Heroes In Hell, To The Land Of The Living, one of the fragments not included in the Epic Of Gilgamesh, his shade comes back, dirt farmer, preferred to be a fisherman and not a great scientist, hindsight is 2020, 0202, straight up, post-modernism, read an old text, what if this was real, Alan Moore’s Watchmen, zero irony, The Calydonian Boar Hunt, no situational humour, her boobs in his face, the sex is really enjoyable, not a normal book, too mundane, not wild enough, it doesn’t get crazy, becomes subversive and undermines the society that he lives in, needed a drug dealer, a subversive element, the premise is double, what if people really saw the gods and the world in this way, Julian Jaynes’ two hemispheres hypothesis, the right side of the brain, the irrational intuitive side, the left rational side, a dissociated way, people in 2023 talking about prayer, in a dialogue with god all day, students, what people meant by prayer, what does that even mean?, kneeling at the bedside hands in prayer mode, Gilgamesh is writing his own story, always on about, write an essay about things that are bad, self-dialogue and self-talk, I need to pay attention to mummy and daddy, it was you who was listening, I have a relationship with god, bizarre but real, more so long ago, secular mindfulness, Buddhism, very popular, journaling, accountability tweets, Carl Jung, what she says and what the wise old man says, get dialogues going, objectively, chat gpt is the god I ask to write up my journal, multiple personalities like we see in dreams, traveled around a lot, strange or exotic beliefs, believe in ghosts, seeing ghosts, ghosts are 100% real, you shouldn’t go hiking at 4 oclock in the morning, the fear of things, taking in data, the screen of reality, The City In The Middle Of The Night by Charlie Jane Anders, similar length, firs book in a series, Leonidas, Conan and Ted Nugent, learned so much from this novel, old myths of Gilgamesh, what the story was trying to tell me, baffled, mid-3 stars, the ratings 11,322 vs. 901 ratings, what’s your point?, people don’t read old books, the editor of iO9, this is an old book, people just don’t read old books, making an assumption, not sure that’s a proven assumption, audience is extremely online, Silverberg’s is older, not fully supported, just looking at one thing, this is not a famous book, the novelty of being new, what’s a good book to read?, a book I’ve heard of that’s good, go by author, a Clarke award, a Locus award, a Hugo award, thousands of good review, by helpfulness, how goodreads sorts its review, likes, probably some algorithm, everything is in 3 star range, Amazon bought goodreads with the intent of killing it, just strangle it, Luke Burrage, disable features, the science fiction book, Lord Of Light by Roger Zelazny, a higher high, the similarity there, when the god manifests in him, the power of the god in him, survivors of a space travel crash, the Hindu pantheon, wield an attribute specific to that god, a precedent, Dune, the got-it-all-wong hypothesis, the bene gesserit, manipulating everything, not exactly a messiah figure, a savior for the city, The Cosmic Puppets by Philip K. Dick, a male feminist, misunderstanding Anana, he’s paranoid, Gilgamesh is the misogynist, I don’t see it, full of the juice, had to go and break into the wedding ceremony, on my way to have sex with the wives, mentioning, sex scenes early on, five women a night, it’s not five!, lay on the psychology, really well done, plodding rather than tedious, walking along telling his story, set pieces, the tree, the demon in the forest, the meeting with Enkidu, the things that are special, getting his emotions, good inference in what’s going inside Enkidu, presume some jealousy there, sex once a year, nothing otherwise, temporal vs. spiritual power in the third millennium B.C., trying to kill him, he’s a bad king, abandons the city, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, trying to kill him out of jealousy, a smear campaign, trying to hell the city?, he was lousy, transgressing the limits, cleansed means killed, he is a bad king, his job is to fix all the city problems, the councils, I’ll think about it, who’s going to fix the walls, what the priestess wants, go out and build that wall or the temple or fix the tree, the reason he comes back, threatening to take away his kingship, A Time Of Changes, a life in business, that coming back is what he’s supposed to do, to Australia and to hell, Conan is a funny case, the problem with being a king, just like Kull, campaign against other kings, the domestic sphere, a tension built into the story of Gilgamesh, a man is domesticated, she gets more power, yes, sitting there horny, carousing with his buddy, a fundamental dynamic going on there, I’m going to have sex with you when you’re older, not a guy who believes in kings at all, he’s bad at it, he does things to much, your soldiers are exhausted, nobody has the strength you have, yeah I have a giant dick, but do be jealous I have premature ejaculation, the first time he leaves, almost identical scenes, the new king, he grew up in a cloistered environment, when he comes back to see his brother, this awkward meeting, the same emotional set, pock marks vs. worry lines, prematurely grey, busy being king, uneasy lies the crown, footloose and fancy-free, experience the depravity and luxury, the full exercise of being a man, that’s in the afterword, Leonidas, Gerard Butler in 300, an alpha male, an ursine manliness, manly manless, gave myself ten pushups, fun and entertaining, three times as many, comparable to a lot of Silverberg, still alive, there’s overlap, remarking on twitter, two Silverberg novels on LibriVox, pre-fifties, a break in there, throughout the eighties, putting em out, multiple novels per year, fairly unknown Silverberg novel, doesn’t compare well, we should focus on things that people can do anything with, learn how to pirate, put these up with the story, whoever happens to be familiar, make it as easy for as many people, rigamarole, all the affiliate links, all the links die, this website has been online, wasn’t a good idea, SFFaudio isn’t a commercial project, send people to the source if possible, a different Herculean task for another day, Passengers, really into writing, short light things, The Sword Of Welleran, if this hadn’t been assigned, not as high a high, not as sparky, very insightful, he did a great job with the worldbuilding, a lot of research, William Coon, quay, draught, he’s so slow, very early in his narrating career, speaking of friends of yours, Kevin Hearne, Iron Druid, Luke Daniels, many many great narrators in the world, the theme of death, I’m gonna die some day, the origin story of the Buddha, come back and do your job, the crazy religious stuff is killed at the end, hurt by Enkidu’s death, stumble into the underworld, Conan doesn’t have an Enkidu, the only consistent character is Conan, after Belit dies, a paragraph in the middle, the adventures, fights hawkmen, the Black River of Zarkheba, buries her with her treasure with a viking funeral, sad, ten second pause then back to it, it’s too dumb, the colour palette, a great story, slowmo, a brown filter, too much green screen, the story and the emotions are strong, in the Conan stories, more Kull, he’s more human than Conan, likes sex too much, works his men too much, get your head screwed on right, clean your room, a thematic thing going on, he plays it perfectly, he’s enjoying it, from Wikipedia, reception, Neil Gaiman, Imagine Magazine, David Langford, White Dwarf, a gaming magazine, explains the fantastic, you have to kill a friend, a celibate priest doing rituals all day, do the work, he did the work, Larry Niven, the Draco Tavern, the men who lived forever, our hero the bartender, make it worth enough, the premise is like the Lord Dunsany Jorkens stories, The Callahan series by Spider Robinson, hard SF jokes, Zaphod Beeblebrox style stories, Asimov did some too, Arthur C. Clarke, a fun mode of storytelling, scientific love stories, from The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, Ray Cummings, Cautionary Tales, Limits, good at mathematics, Convergent Series, the one with the demon, July 1978, hence the title, that’s gonna make Jesse into a pearl, the Russian movie made by two brothers, don’t usually click on what Jesse sends, the trailer is in English, subtitle auto-translation, an amazing plasticine animation movie about gladiators, two female characters voiced, 9-0 minutes claymation gladiatorial combat, super-solid, anti-Russian, a raging anti-Semite asshole, insistence, limiting in general, trolls, patently bullshirt, convenient, reach me elsewhere, the problem with Skype, pornbots, inundated, messenger, social media just twitter, but…, delete the app your done, pity twitter, Elon Musk did something bad, the controversy this week, anti-white hate, sue Media Matters, like Scott had, the fucking trolls, more hatred, until Elon Reeve Musk is gone, hurtful meme, an exercise in antisemitism and personal attacks, after five years, pinned tweet, the frustration, a lot of work, your handle remains your own, Charlie Brown, take him at his word, get a bluechek, cut out, a really sensitive arrow, reactived to deactivate with more courtesy, going to Australia, 32,000 words, weekends off, why open a used bookstore, like Harlan Ellison, nobody here, a destination right beside you, a yoga salon, nail salon?, culture isn’t an important thing here, X-Box, bowling, Black Box Theater, you need a date for that, spend money, play games, 2 or 3 days a week, when not eating or pooping, the desk people, on their phone, sit on the bench on their phone, watch a video, swipe up swipe up, filling the hours between grave and birth, weird fuckin channels, figuring out how to preserve laserdiscs, laserrot, the technical know how, weird shit, as a percentage, ripping it through the coaxial output, processing involved, special developer kit, an even better signal, straight to the analog, more fidelity than you get from your screen, the animal videos, here’s a puppy with a duck friend, very poor, not a wealthy area, New Jersey, where the servants lived, closed highschool, where they sent the black students during segregation, a third of the storefronts are closed, there’s no train anymore, just empty, a small performing art school for kids, state run, the park, a housing project, the people who are incapable of living on their own, walk around, an opportunity to build something, do signings, advertise it, build a local culture, a place to store your books, an anchor, the story of Austin, how horrible it was under covid in California, industry, a liberal democratic section of Texas, Portland Oregon, keep it weird, you need something like an anchor, 15 bookstores on the same street, live above the store, use it as your workspace, some weirdo gets lost on the way through your town, games with Yelp, the internet stuff, a hair salon, we are upen, English is not a language you’re familiar with, can you pay the rent?, the banks approve the loans, charge a higher rent, the whole scam going on in New York City proper, business vacancy rate, 17.4%, at least half empty at street level, some empty apartments as well, this artificial thing, a foothold, physical infrastructure, shifts with the sands, do they have bookstores in China, we have no serious emptiness in business, people moving in, the economy is not a total train-wreck, people don’t buy physical books except at Costco and Chapters, lifestyle shit, desperately trying not to be in the book business, in the used market, regional authors, you have to visit my store first, you have to do a signing, phone stores are popular, bookstores are not popular, how much is rent going to be?, set up an LLC, this is going to be on the podcast, a cafe, people like coffee, a latte, I wanna try this latte, brought into the 21st century, sells an addictive product, relatively inexpensive to make, a relatively high price, a couple towns over, they always are older, they got a rent deal a long time ago, move or go online, I would love to own a restaurant, all the signs point to this being a terrible idea, you cannot fix the country on your own, FDR fireside chats, he was speaking via radio to a specific group of people, Wall Street was against him, he was treated like Trump, Smedley Butler, he went on record, the wiped him from the record, totally true, that was in the past, like Caesar, his uncle was president, the deep state and the billionaires were against him, this is what you need to do, this new innovation, 40 different alphabet agencies, you can’t will your city into not being fucked up, most people’s solution is to leave, a hobby that’s going to fail, fit enough books in there, it would be good to have customers, Walmart killed that business, by 1998, ebay, we should start selling on ebay, Sears catalogue pickup, extra foot-traffic in, by 2005, that business was still alive 2 years ago, figure out a way to not have the rent be an extravagance, unless independently wealthy, the George Washington Bridge, it would be about bitcoin and supermodel asses, cat videos and making fun of celebrities, Elon Reeve Musk is a bad person, what they say about a Nazi bar, it’s called censorship, it’s not a bar, much more like a public square, annoying when people have different ideas, let me hear their story, walled garden, Threads, Bluesky, Mastadon, Truthsocial, Media Matters is an evil organization, a functionary of one of the political parties, David Brock, the people who donate to it, institutions are naturally corrupted, institutions are evil, what if you’re a tenured professor, a staunch institutionalist, Eric is an emeritus professor, The New York Times, New Jersey, the had a Ted Chiang story, still big, that goes for art, a received opinion, animated movie about a kung-fu panda, the same school as Donald Trump, Denzel Washington, Colin Powell, Rudolph Giuliani, army, they don’t want to hear dissent or questioning, literally did that, at least it’s not an Ivy League school, H.P. Lovecraft, the decorative ivory, the building is old, they like the way it looks, they trim it, old east coast university, a Jesuit school, if you think institutions are right you do evil, I’m outsourcing my decisions and actions to a thing outside of myself, pirates stabbing liches, controlling things from beyond the grave, pirates are anarchists, piracy, I don’t trust this Dick Cheney guy, but I’ve been in this thing my whole life, what will happen if I don’t shaking Richard Nixon’s hand, like Smedley Butler, the supreme leader of China, would you still call him a dictator, it’s just a slur, what makes him a dictator, not Roman position anymore, regime, just a slur, autocrat, the guy gets shit done, he forces his will upon people, 23 years, he arrests dissent, a whole January 6th thing, they forgot to bring their guns, Huey Long, a collective action, literally what happened to Caesar, guns on the assassin, Lone Star Planet by John J. McGuire and H. Beam Piper, H.L. Mencken, The Malevolent Jobholder, Woodrow Wilson, arrested his opponents, revered by the institutionalists, his 14 points, Julian Assange, nobody has repealed it, he railroaded that war [WWI], a fascinating guy, they called Trump a dictator, he modeled his speaking style after Hitler, a little folksy, Bernie Sanders with a more humorous presentation, become obsessed, maybe there’s a science fiction tie in, populist, socialist, his family, revere him as a hero, like Caesar, he gets his power from his army, the whole thing happens because of slaving and genociding, to overthrow the old order in a particular town, successor, still going to do slavery and all that but less civil war, on the right path of doing something good, Gerald Ford, the Manson Family CIA assassination group, the deep state in action, Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, somebody so dumb, speaker of the house in Canada, everybody in parliament was clapping for a literal Nazi, the Speaker resigned, his boss is the prime minister, he chose to resign, a cuck job, prestige in the states, considered equal, head of state, head of congress, add some balance, the speaker is a cuck in Canada, run things when the king or queen is not in parliament, they choose their prime minister afterwards, a little bit of reverse order but functionally identical, a machine that should work identically, if they force the vote they can choose somebody else, changed the rules, the guy who has an owl for a wife, Newt Gingrich, he quit, a brand new rule, rules they are imposing on themselves, owl shaking Trump’s hand, an isolated incident, Democrats were cucks for Democrats, what happened to the Squad, chose not to force the vote, a little bit of backbone, a rule for them, once a rule gets written, that’s a not a law, a mode of operation, a coup in Australia, refusing to do the job, a mask off moment for the United States controlling Australia, now you gotta resign in disgrace, had an unwritten constitution, make Donald Trump speaker, that would be hilarious, wrong, a sergeant at arms, to enforce the speaker’s will, an actual mace sitting on a table, when the queen’s not in town, a shooting in parliament in Canada, copied from England, kidnap one member of parliament, no torture involved, they have a hostage, formal formality shit, all cucks to the queen, how Hitler came to power, he was appointed, side with the rightwing nazis, didn’t realize it would sound bad later, Hillary Clinton on a talk show, she thinks she’s smart, a warning or a threat, fear is the best tool, if we don’t do this one thing something bad will happen, an effective tool, Ross Perot, had some good ideas, if you look at his charts, perfectly reasonable, a billionaire businessman, the conspiracy theory or the truth, left thousands of POW/MIA in Vietnam, the official line was the sonic weapon from Cuba, compensation for something that isn’t real, literal people killed in Vietnam, unrecovered bodies, eaten by a tiger, movies that would support that, Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), Missing In Action (1984), Chuck Norris, Uncommon Valor (1983), reignite the Vietnam War, weapons of mass destruction, re-invade the country, drops out of the race, still on CSPAN, all 12 hours of it, kind of a naive guy, the October Surprise, these terms, false terms, a bag you stuff an uncertain set of ideas, I feel your pain, what makes you think there’s a distinction, a heel and baby-face, I like my girls like I like my…, what makes somebody left wing or right wing, campaigning on it is a trick, RFK, Jr., take votes from somebody, these are theories I want facts, 100% in favour of war, traditionally republican, both parties believe that, siphon the money off, George H.W. Bush, except for losing the election, circular reasoning, a robot or no vote, electoral college is a separate thing, it’s all a scam, institution totally gamed, senators in Canada, all paperballots all counted in front of witnesses for any parties, recorded, this vote is ambiguous, voting machines, a stylus pen, an anonymous ballot, there’s never going to be an overage, seems like it’s way more gamed, 50 state elections, are there any paper ballot states?, vote by mail, Alaska is hand count and optical scan, a real point of weakness, ballot stuffing, the Kennedys, Edgar Allan Poe may have died from this, the Chicago political machine, still ongoing, there’s video, ballot harvesting, just the official elections, the party elections, cheating members of the party, not working very well, people are not very good at choosing candidates, in the 70s and the 80s, internal vs. formal corruption, Hillary Clinton cheated Bernie Sanders, Donna Brazile, she wrote a book, pledged to support, inside party politics, taking advantage and cheating, neutral arbiter, when leaked emails showed, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Seth Rich, the “hack” which wasn’t a hack, the company that did the audit, ex-NSA guys, this is impossible, it had to have been a flashdrive, an unsolved murder, Robert Muller, working hard to say this is 100% untrue, the Christchurch shooting in New Zealand, Hunter Biden’s laptop, The New York Post, the twitter account was removed, overt censorship of true things, if people thought Biden’s family was corrupt, very relevant, very interesting timing, given it wasn’t a hack vs. a leak, kinda boring, exciting movie style, what that whole House Of Cards, Kevin Spacey’s career went flush, just delete it man, a lot of audience on there, pornbots, women who joined twitter 2 months ago, clogging up followers, suddenly to get your message, in Hollywood, the talent, it doesn’t matter it is fake, the decision makers are so stupid, fake followers, if you enjoy twitter tweet, it has utility, the complaint from the girls was, thumbs up emoji, it’s not natural, make jokes and people get offended, a good scrap-board, becoming less and less useful, get off this hellsite, funny, a scenester, like an institutionalist for a scene, the SFWA scene, takes his queue, age gapped themed short story, makes himself a victim, a huge follower count, in the scene, its outside of the acceptable, on the downlow, prudish, beautiful naked women, paintings, Bettie Page, they tend to be beautiful, PulpCovers, a practicing Catholic, he’s very liberal, it has flipped, not libertarian, artistic representation of nudity, twitter is not the universe, politicians are on there, people who right books, Instagram, blogs were destroyed, Alex from Cirsova, what twitter is good for, sending files to people, all sorts of good things happen, where the people are, some who are leaving or have left, people are being crowded out by bots, there’s North Korean agents, people misrepresenting themselves, delete or not delete, Jack Dorsey, why twitter is good, seeing the video of the kids’ heads opened, the war in Israel, nice that it’s not being censored, there’s fake shit, just happened 10 minutes ago, also give out news, everything’s an op, more public domain books, good audiobooks, good covers, emotionally manipulative, if you want censorship, he doesn’t want to be confronted with opposing ideas, get’s really noisy, a jumble of information, a very reasonable number, an exodus, the consensus says you can’t be on here, I don’t want to give Amazon money, he’s angry, that sort of anger makes you not want to be angry, put on your Paul hat, believe in nations, personal sovereignty, large corporations, Bezos and Zuckerberg and the Virgin guy, rocket guys, having a lot of fun, Bill Gates, lives in a mansion, is that fun, lives in a little box, making bullet proof cars, MSNBC, humiliated, a pie in the face, trying to not be hated, own things, manipulate reality, fun and useful, electric cars are a scam, ethanol cars, he knows its a scam too but he’s having fun with it, he loves rockets, makes jokes about rockets, sucking off the government teat, he’s wrong in many cases, Starlink is very good shit, making internet not stuck to cable, provides it to Ukraine, providing it free, Boeing or Lockheed Martin, circumventing the US government, gives him decision making power, battlefield decisions, he’s very personally powerful, smoking Joe Biden, that genius who’s not demented, if you want to cow that military power, information power, computers, they go through the U.S. military, unilaterally decide, the enemy, it’s good that people can share shit, to guide rockets, the Russians have their own system, give Cubans the internet, more powerful than actual governments, whatever his staff tell him, quasi-state like, more powerful than many states, more powerful than Canada, the global world order, Eric did not like it, my favourite billionaire, Bill Gates is intruding into my apartment, Elon Musk forces jokes on me, he trolls me, he’s a threat, he’s dynamic enough, like Apple used to be, they need him, bring him to heel, whoever you’re saying the government is is super incompetent ignoramus and clowns who can spell, they’ll tell you your grammar is bad, institutions, amassed an enormous amount of power, states have armies, he has rockets though, amazing how well he’s been able to navigate that shit, we can be done, two hours of Jonathan and Jesse talking at the end.

Jim Burns art or Gilgamesh The King by Robert Silverberg

Gilgamesh The King by Robert Silverberg

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