Reading, Short And Deep #512 – The Inn Of The Two Adventurers by Lord Dunsany

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #512

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Inn Of The Two Adventurers by Lord Dunsany

Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.

The Inn Of The Two Adventurers was first published in Maclean’s, March 2, 1957.

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The SFFaudio Podcast #862 – READALONG: Project: Earth by Philip K. Dick

The SFFaudio Podcast #862 – Jesse and Will Emmons talk about Project: Earth by Philip K. Dick

Talked about on today’s show:
Imagination, December 1953, copyright renewed, pirate your way, other stories, Rog Philips, Evan Hunter, Hal Annas, Salvatore Albert Lombino, The Last Spin by Ed McBain, initiation ritual, default, for Philip K. Dick, strong relationship with, rewarding, most adult relationship, Robert E. Howard fanboy, Conan fanboy, colour your relationship, a grown man’s passion, Robert E. Howard’s prose, unfiltered, infinitely rewarding, science and fantasy, which is it?, a trick question, a story of imagination, reasons for thinking it’s fantasy, references the bible, not a good criteria, what’s so funny about it, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, no implanted memories, who is Edward Billings?, intentional ambiguous, the agency for whom Edward Billings works, could be right, The Rapture (1991), David Duchovyn and Mimi Rogers, the rapture happens, being swingers, the rapture is real, hard to explain, not science fiction probably, the way Philip K. Dick did it here, Christian adjacent, evangelicalism, millinerian thing, popular in the 90s, weird Christian novels, some kind of subgenre here, fantastic, involve the supernatural, god’s agency in the world, peices of media, in an earnest way, a Dickian way, bristle, they ought, The Builder, building something in his garage, the guy’s two sons, build that thing, sickmyduck.narod.ru, a great person in Russia, 1954

“What makes it run, then? I don’t see any sails. What kind of motor is in it? Steam?”

Elwood bit his lip. Strangely, he had never thought of that part. There was no motor in it, no motor at all. There were no sails, no boiler. He had put no engine into it, no turbines, no fuel. Nothing. It was a wood hull, an immense box, and that was all. He had never thought of what would make it go, never in all the time he and Toddy had worked on it.

Suddenly a torrent of despair descended over him. There was no engine, nothing. It was not a boat, it was only a great mass of wood and tar and nails. It would never go, never never leave the yard. Liz was right: he was like some animal going out into the yard at night, to fight and kill in the darkness, to struggle dimly, without sight or understanding, equally blind, equally pathetic.

What had he built it for? He did not know. Where was it going? He did not know that either. What would make it run? How would he get it out of the yard? What was it all for, to build without understanding, darkly, like a creature in the night?

Toddy had worked alongside him, the whole time. Why had he worked? Did he know? Did the boy know what the boat was for, why they were building? Toddy had never asked because he trusted his father to know.

But he did not know. He, the father, he did not know either, and soon it would be done, finished, ready. And then what? Soon Toddy would lay down his paint brush, cover the last can of paint, put away the nails, the scraps of wood, hang the saw and hammer up in the garage again. And then he would ask, ask the question he had never asked before but which must come finally.

And he could not answer him.

Elwood stood, staring up at it, the great hulk they had built, struggling to understand. Why had he worked? What was it all for? When would he know? Would he ever know? For an endless time he stood there, staring up.

It was not until the first great black drops of rain began to splash about him that he understood.

Nanny, do you understand, as a child, prized possesion, Hannah Barbara time travel bible story cartoon, archeologist on Noah’s ark, child culture, fun animals, the time that god killed everyone, a rainbow, how primitive culture stories are similar to each other, the stories of the vikings, natives in north america, Raven plays a role in both, spirits that run things, Eric S. Rabkin, a dragon, a hero has to slay, making his bed for 10 years, the saga of the Volsungs, particular spin, specific spot, shave away the descriptors, the kinds of stories, people are the same all over, tapped into this stuff that no one else is, no one else is like him, what is this story about?, about the Fall and how it happens, the inevitability of the Fall, who is Edward Billings, a mandate from God, an alien?, he is God, people he needs to report to, he knows everything he’s got a book, the CIA World Fact Book, how big the army is, how much literacy there is, briefing people, the good purpose, a crisis over there, eat the kool-aid, quite useful, square km of wheat in the Ukraine, the proximate creator of this set of little people, Tommy and everyone else on the Earth, Earth B is us, Earth C is gonna be the fairy people, squeaks and stuff, A is the angels, some of them got away, they did things, so funny, so silly in so many respects, back up this theory, what kind of genre it is, Edward Billing’s space, kids spying on a man in their house, the upstairs rented, kid from the neighbourhood, sneak in, to get some dirt, the garden, his eye to the crack, the moment of creation in Genesis, shapes forms, beyond the wall, an immense old fashioned desk, it’s been 7 days, his vest pocket, the great watch, naked and bleak, elderly bird, then he put his glasses on again, expert fingers, reared up before him, the typewriter, the ominous booming, insistent beat, him typing, the sound echoed hollowly, Prominent Author, dark and littered, in heaps, charts, charps!, astronomy, signs of the zodiac, chemical bottles, a stuffed bird, grey and drooping, greek and hebrew dictionaries, a bone letter opener, a wizard’s lair, laboratory, very alchemist room, flypaper, gas heater, a magic lantern, able to identify that, heaps, an image from his youth, The Father Thing, Scott Miller narrated recently, a horror story about a father being replaced by an alien, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, a place of importance, a pool of sticky water, dried butterflies, the huge old man, gosh!, working on his report, if it is all metaphor, it has to be, Philip K. Dick rationalizing the events of the bible and extrapolating on them, putting them in their proper context, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, the radio drama, the Earth is destroyed, the mice were the laboratory technicians, the dolphins, So Long And Thanks For All The Fish, a series of rug pulling outs, ok now what?, let’s go to The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe, hanging out with cave people on the new Earth, Sunday school, could this all be the explanation, we’re never going to know, the questions we have are wrong, two bad words to describe what is going on here, an Ark in his garage, that rain’s going to continue, only he got the message from God to build that Ark, a little bad boy, does this amazing thing, you can’t just take them from me, I have free will, race C, the little people, a very Philip K. Dick thing too, marbles, that was how it was, he’s accessed this memory, kinda like pool, you win, he wins completely, he has the spark of god in his thumb, what we would call God, we’ve made a mistake, we think of him as that guy, so powerful in our lives, the Garden he’s making on his deck, office/laboratory/room, bucket full of dirt, spark glass into red hot fragments, he’s tired, Tommy carries the bucket, these little people, their new earth, our Earth is their Earth, just the garden in the Garden of Eden, just that it be there, a myth symbol, making out his report, they had escaped, they had gone, his repetition, that’s what happened, they enjoyed playing games with this kid, he taught them, he prepared them for this, going back to Heaven, dazed from the shock, Project C was already, beyond control, the contamination had spread to C, immobile, silent, thoughtful, happened before twice before, each project would carry the discontent to the end, the evasion of the plan, slowly he opened it, they would all be equal, equal failures, they had clothes on, little suits of clothing, the same trick, he’s trying to solve these questions, what if this is true?, turn it into a cycle, resolving the mystery, religious visions, a guy who could have used that for evil and start a cult, he uses it to explore, how could this be?, is that a science fiction story?, not really, is it a fantasy story?, maybe, just for conversation, genre conversation, a set of rules or something, what stories do, useful to talk about, this doesn’t fit the criteria, there’s not consequences of technology, chemical, words, the questions that the boy asks of the man, where are they?, yes and also not, god is everywhere, you can’t find him under the table, is he down by the corner store?, three kids are bored, curious about this old man rooming in their house, is he a communist?, doesn’t have a beard so he can’t be a spy, the parents, you won’t have any dinner, a snake?, in the garden, Theodore Sturgeon’s Microcosmic God, much more explicitly a science fiction story, whatever institution he is a representative of, looks like a bird, a bird in the Noah story, is God a bird?, does that make Tommy the Devil, talking snake, the fairy people, isn’t Tommy also Prometheus?, he’s a thief, for a good purpose, he’s freeing these people, did he also save us?, an implanted memory, he once had a healing rod, the aliens who gave it to him, you saved our spaceship, be the hero of mankind, superpowers, project my mind out into the solar system, the messiah complex, Damien G. Walter, I am the prophet, let me tell you about the Mythos, the fate the Angels had happen to them, fairies out in the world, like Conan Doyle, cigar box, is this a great story?, interesting, a nice little retelling of the fall with a little extrapolation, the character work, they’re his, a very boy thing, the guppies that you found, you’ve read great stories, definitely likeable, at least as high as The Builder, more exiting things here and there, delighted by Philip K. Dick, terrific, better than Prominent Author, a joke, a meditation, page 105, that?, what’s in there?, they?, the things, the bugs, the netting, if you’re interested, a weird man, right before this, has to be able to run in case the old man is like a molester or something, twisted the netting loose, eyes wide, you can see what they are, whistled softly, “I thought maybe they were.”, little tiny men, not exactly, his rickety chair, a pipe, not exactly men, gaze down into the frame, tiny huts, they gazed up at him, tiny pink creatures, naked, that’s why they were pink, look at their heads, go get the glass from the desk, the technology, now tell me what you see, arms, legs, some were women, their heads., what’s the matter, a philip k dickism, they’re queer, they’re not queer, there’s nothing wrong with them, deep in silent thought, did you make them, squiggle missing word, they were lent to me, the trial group, very new, sell one of them, they were not quite men, ending in knobs, similar to men, except for the antennae, Mars, Venus, a hard question to answer, the question has no meaning, that is awesome, what’s the report for?, the thing you’re doing, how long?, that can’t be answered either, your questions are wrong, kid, getting near the end, he’s 11, what are you going to do with it, my superiors, are they here in town, yes and now, maybe someday you’ll…, by writing a fiction story?, it’s about us, I looked at it, about the Earth, you’re not from here are you, outside, the solar system, I can tell I have ways, what is it for?, Billings considered a long time, that depends on those, how Project C works, each project is planned carefully, “factors”, these guys are ents, new arrangement of the cognitive faculties, greater flexibility, lose in libido energy, individual experience, less stereotype thinking, a recipe for what’s wrong with humans, almost no dependence on innate drives, more adaptable, we don’t love as much or hate as much, they don’t breed like rabbits, they’re more Vulcany than us, Philip K. Dick being an autodidact, suspicious of the herd, situation control, Tommy was lost?, dim in my mind, wings, too much self dependence, pride and honour, atomized antagonistic factions, finished smoking, our first attempt at high level organisms, certain of success, group orientation process, the critique of this story that’s coming out, people are too herdy, subject to group learning rather than individual experience, greater supervision, what did the second kind look like?, this bird like man, associated with the wings, looking at God is a mistake, harrowing, you don’t want to look at me, cmon’ God, can I?, Moses gets a gander, the face of God, fractured away, self determined groups, instrumental in influencing, should have the exterminated, you’re Project B, final disposition, out of jurisdiction, the Vogons, no longer functional, 9 little people, not an Adam and Even, numerology, a reason for the 9, not just 2, a breeding population, suffer genetic damage, not equal male and female, they’re queer, can swap, a plan was dawning, rigid, rigidity, Roog, the garbage men are aliens, or a dog getting upset at a garbage truck, going?, I have to go, goodbye, you will, why does the old man want to see him again?, doesn’t seemed to have hoped, ruminate for himself, lonely?, to describe God as lonely is funny, why did humans create robots, they’re lonely, paperbag full of bottlecaps, bright yellow, pennants, groupthink, a team of people you don’t know, hockey jerseys, Evan likes baseball, playing baseball, a distinguishment, shirts and skins, which guy to check, on you team, uniforms for that, make it your team, stolen valour, reasons, William Faulkner really wanted to be in the airforce, Canadian Air Force, added a u to his name, wear his Canadian Air Force uniform around town, the main reason, cowards who wanted to have the benefits, a Lebron James jersey, cosplay, seeing yourself as, distinguish themselves, Marines are first in last out, esprit de corps, middle class energy, what the pennants are, Philip K. Dick is not a normal boy, the big dresser and mirror, brush and comb, they wanted to break off a tine, pictures of baseball players, a paperbag of bottlecaps, why he stole the people, the small radio with it’s cracked plastic cabinet, the broken magic lantern, his dad’s cigars, Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, I’ll trade ya, Titus Groan, teen girl, leaves and rocks, annoys her maid, a fantasy but not really, most popular blogpost ever, a big chonky thing, 21 hours, very easy to be a Tolkien fan, hard to be a Titus Groan fan, feel seen, understand it, Tolkien explainers, cite their sources, media related, a movie, bizarre choice, true of Dune, therefore crying, a castle, one swordfight, a guy climbing the side of a castle, 2nd most popular blogpost, audience captured, small audience, narrowcasting, reviewing magazines that nobody wants to hear about, the typical paragraph thread, what was funny about it, how to search for it, tweetable, etexts, some of them are really hard, Chuck Wendig one, locked down, about that ip thing, archive.org sharing content, pro ip activist, bumped to a landing, stubby trucks, scoops, what the hell is a jitney, something to do with the nickel, unlicensed taxis, Lovecraft’s goes on for 5 tweets, The Alchemist, Robert E. Howard, from his perch, caught his sworddbelt, grinned his thanks back to her, Edgar Allan Poe, replenished my goblet, story about a guy who drinks himself into a pile of bottles talking to him, the Jack London one, Kipling, Sitka Charley, ye have again forgotten, the poor devil’s bliss, so awesome, he has the Indians speaking in King James, like Thor, effete, carry this woman into the Yukon, happy are gonna die, haven’t taken on the white man’s morality yet, typical John Scalzi paragraph, peanut butter toast, a peanuty smear, Hera, friggin, the mission critical world of parking garages, William Gibson paragraph, high sharp cheekbones, slavic faces, the reek, swaying train, a frozen park, a different kinda writing, Elmore Leonard, wee wee, the doggies not the ladies, he likes that, colloquial, stylized, Voltaire paragraph, Zadig answered, quite right replied the eunuch, you have seen her then, Herman Melville, Turkey, Nippers, other respects, a temperate young man, his vintner, brandylike disposition, potations, as if the table were a perverse, superfluous, Bartleby The Scrivener, Ursula K. Le Guin, until shot off, Chevek thought, assuming the latter, a pleasant tickling blast of warm air, small blue spots, Uras?, so groomed, ready for a contrast, typical Chuck Wendig paragraph, finding a toilet seat warm, he might find it pleasant, posteriors, seat of pleasure, worshipped by pink lips and tongue, salad, sandwiches, calypgian, rumination, like a mime wiping away expression, typical Robert Sheckley, reptilian race out near the center of the galaxy, Ian Fleming, a lot of combs today, you’re a good girl goodnight, must look my best on the scaffold, Ernest Hemingway, now things were done, he had made his camp, a good place to camp, now he was hungry, Papa Hemingway, a good place, same style of writing, there’s art to it, repeating in a way, not thinking about licking women’s asses, the last one, Donald E. Westlake, in a vocational high school?, air conditioning repair, The Axe, all those people are writers, in the same language, around the same era, the past is always with us, am I crazier or is the writing getting shittier?, maybe Ted Chiang will come back from his retirement, this concern that chat gpt will take over people’s writing, John De La Roz thread, pretend that Paul is a bad person, ai everything, time spent reading ai text is very long, need an ai to read the ai books, indie author guys, part of their hustle, being a crypto bro, political position, selling twitter or whatever, they can be wrong, delete would be better than what we have now, people who don’t make any ip want no ip, the regulations inhibit, under copyright, his children are elderly, copyright office, post office, patent office, least worst, everyone has access to whatever they want, illegal, hypocrites, audible.com, hard to extract yourself once you’re in, an Amazon ebook guy, ebooking compared to audiobooking, hard to know, used to be the case, doesn’t give your time back, not his best, for what it is doing it is excellent, good story, Donald Westlake, interested in the post, you can pick up any random pulp novel, you have to learn these things, digest vs. pulp, bedsheet, slick, early issues are huge, digest size at the end, more pulp size, hardboiled and noir, dieselpunk and steampunk, not cyber, solar panels on his hat, speaking from the position of any random author, Richard Prather, Gold Medal books, paperbacks, Westlake’s published in there, not a random author, a Jesse biased list, biased negatively, bias against, sequels after sequels, essential reading, throw on a Margaret St. Clair?, two topics of conversation, the only science fiction they’ll read, excited about an author, tend not to read the short stories, poetry, Shirley Jackson, her novel and her short story, 2 novels, unfinished, Dick it’s always novels, more people to be his champion, during his lifetime, rediscover Robert Sheckley, a Deep Space 9 novel written by Sheckley, tie-in novels, 12 hours, a commitment, 2 things in its favour, read by the author, apparently he really wrote it, if a man like that actor had success in life it was Garak, spoon on his forehead, Garak being gay, outside of Julian Bashir, he’s a spy, with a female, half-cardassian half-bajoran, tailor is kinda gay?, well groomed, at least 10 years ago, about the new shows, Maissa as a suggestion, written in the form of a letter to Bashir, after the show is over, inquiring about my health, a 12 hour letter, quite fun, high hopes, stretch out from the conventional stuff, can’t do Philip K. Dick every week, a good character on the show, a Worf novel, got the jist, his son’s return, a son from TNG, I don’t like you, he’s a man now, kind of a geek, he’s from Earth, making fun of him on the spaceship, Worf’s arc, the writer saying we didn’t really think this through, get rid of him, you’re a disappointment, fuck you, dad!, telling stories about the ship’s mascot, the swordbearer, he’s the flower girl, Evan got it right, the Klingons can be best explained as cosplayers, be more like goats and hit each other, where they explain it, virus or something, Memory Beta, Memory Alpha, Enterprise is not good, their culture is made up, a product of their history and what they choose to believe, it’s not genetically built in, get a jumpsuit, armour, spine armour, batleth, Batman’s sword, batleth?, Khaless’ batleth, student is here, time for coffee, on the twitter.

Project: Earth by Philip K. Dick

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #861 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Recalled To Life by Robert Silverberg

The SFFaudio Podcast #861 – Recalled To Life by Robert Silverberg, (5 hours 3 minutes) read by Mark Nelson for LibriVox, followed by a discussion of both. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Will Emmons, and Tommy Patrick Ryan

Talked about on today’s show:
Philip K. Dick, June and August 1958, 1962, rewritten around 1972, big problem with this book, Robert Silverberg, pay closer attention, who was right [it was Tommy], the worst Robert Silverberg piece Jesse has ever read, not good, some stuff, terrible at points, the timeframe, a switchboard, voice-only set, telephone set, the tech, published 1958, oh dear god, this novel is a total snoozefest, there’s no interest in it, twig this subject can be fun and interesting, a really terrific short story by Jack London, A Thousand Deaths, 1899, whisked off to the south pacific, back to life, he suffers a thousand deaths, the captain is his father, the son recognizes the father, a really solid and interesting story, Herbert West, oh yeah this can be great, Herbert West: Re-Animator, fun and funny story, how come this book is so bad, Double Star, bureaucratic politics, trouble management, the U.S. party system, a weak technology story, the first way he dies is through drowning, a heart lung machine, then he poisons him, electrocutes him, dies of a heart attack, a fundamental misunderstanding of death, careful to not spend too much time on the details, injury of cessation, visible damage can’t be too extreme, phaser damage, phasers only do as much damage as the plot needs them to do, controlling the settings, what mechanism death is, the innovation, a disintegration ray, zaps his dad, a revenge story, artificial resuscitation, watch the movie, read the story, an image of H.P. Lovecraft Reanimator’s makeup kit, corpseless head in a dish, the whole joke of that story, the body is never fresh enough, killing and killing and killing, they get their revenge, a comedy of science, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, reanimation vs. immortality, he is Prometheus, creating a race of creatures that won’t age, possibly more beautiful, an assemblage of parts, what is this thing?, this book, I’m a lawyer, used to the a governor, PR man, insane powers, head of this non-profit, kidnap a man and kill him, Bryant, getting reanimated, why didn’t it go that way?, made the choice to make it worse, perspective, a cautionary tale, so many guesses about prices, $9000, predicted the future, inflation, not meant to stand the test of time, a lesser science fiction magazine, the channel selector, his last client, let’s firm up your will, an elevator operator, set in 2033, analog tv channel changing, why the senator might vote with the conservatives, no guarantee against senility, assumptions being made, a good or a bad idea, in the way of progress, moral ramifications, the narrator seemed like the author, given motivation, his daughter’s death, before the book starts, other children, about a whole bunch of things, let’s imagine that it was, Herbert West is not Bell Labs, Beller Labs, such a huge institution, the wikipedia entry for Bell Labs, dozens and dozens of laboratories, thousands of employees, Alexander Graham Bell won a prize in 1880, a prize in France, is responsible for patenting and developing lost of technologies, scandals, where a lot of tech comes from, government labs, arpa darpa, wacky scientists, Benjamin Franklin, an extraordinary talent, make himself enlightened, Herbert West doesn’t have a lab, steals other people’s labs, steals a cat, steals the dean, a response done up straight, familiar with Lovecraft, a Lovecraft rip-off, not Lovecraftian at all, Dreams In The Witch-House, he’s not a lawyer, he does no legal work, some advice, he’s a lobbyist, who they hire and fire, the CEO all of a sudden, a king, Gilgamesh, Enkidu’s buddy, some of the things that are happening rhyme with reality, boring and stupid reality, what this book is really about, how is new technology accepted by the public, propagandized right, makes it more acceptable, Tommy is older, test tube babies, cloning, moral scares about it, birth control, the pill, around 1962, that process, how do we break it to the public, whatever this thing is, invent the telephone, technology and pricing, all tech, the media, newspapers are still a huge thing in this, sat down at the dinner table, the thick New York Times, as thick as your fist, not that thick anymore, media landscape, other technologies, even if you’re Albania or North Korea, pretty incoherent, a little undercooked in the book, save lives like his daughters, needs something to do, that is not a good science fiction book, agree with all of that, the undercooked nature of it, liberals and conservatives, why there aren’t Democrats and Republicans anymore, a political realignment, almost right, or changing their names, our friend Jonathan [Weichsel], why do we have party realignments?, slavery, segregation, what’s the name of this elderly liberal senator against reanimation, Strom Thurman, suspicious names, more Roman-A-Clef than we realize, Harker, not Johnathan, elderly democratic senator, tweeted about this, the Grok thing on it, fishing, it can recognize this picture is 3 people, a huge funny interesting story, the 2020 kidnapping plot of Gretchen Whitmer, everybody in the van except for 2 people were FBI informants, a kidnapping and a governor, P. Schuyler Miller review from Analog, before isbns, 75 cents, a spinner rack at the grocery store, introductory blurb, greatest novel, Infinity in 1958, deserves the Hugo nomination, mechanico-chemical means, how this power is to be administers, passive language, the handling is what makes the book different, James Harker, of New York, trying to carry out his campaign promises, kind of true, not the focus of the book, who he is, second chance, felt forced, hired as an attorney, probe the political and religious aspects, hand is forced, a premature announcement, less than practical scientists, reanimation fails, calms down the melodrama, makes the book realistic, could have been governor, an accessory to murder, what it would have been competing with, Who? by Algris Burdrys, A Case Of Conscience by James Blish, better than this book, fairly comparable, trynna sell it, seemingly random things, the kidnapping, realistic, bring out the new iphone and there’s a leak, hurt sales, lord it over Samsung, don’t care, banal, convince him by giving him the experience, the old man who lives in the elevator operator apartment, greedy children, didn’t go to space like he did, millionaire astronaut, Neil Armstrong, a private person, Yuri Gagarin, Buzz Aldrin, in a Transformers movie, John Glenn, in Canada too, name recognition, managing the public’s perception of a tech that comes in, should be interesting and important, circling around the tech, weird science fiction fetish, why does he like it, what he wrote, The Space Merchants by Fredrik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth, freneticism and meandering, Madison Avenue, Mad Men, reverse psychology, more K-Street, where the lobbyists control what’s going on in the senate, K-Street, a synonym for what it is, what we want is money, another seemingly random action or choice, random scientists, spring the trap, Martin Raymond, reasonable, I’m the one who signs your cheques, tip the public, a court case, wrangling back and forth, a congressional hearing, not even under oath, testify to congress, no HIPPAA, two As, 1996, a therapist, that name, convenient and on purpose, how to get what you want, he kills himself to demonstrate it, another fucking lie, while he’s in recovery, manages to wing it, an analogy for winging it for writing a book, Donald Westlake, generally entertained, Lawrence Block, writing a novel a weekend, little room somewhere near Greenwich Village, start typing away, a natural ability, you don’t need to worry, just need to get tapping, amazing, okay, how good is the idea behind the book, when the idea is excellent, well thought through ideas, how will this technology impact society, how people would react, neat idea, well executed for what it is, where the world really is, fewer issues, assumption, religious concern, makes himself Jesus at the end, human nature, the rich are going to take this over and live forever, the lich problem, a frozen go to the future book, very limiting, neurodegenerative disease, if you happened to be drowned, luckily we have somebody to fix you, you can bring old people back to life after they have a heart attack, Terry Schivo, heart lung machine, a baby in the womb, the person who you loved is dead, opinions about it, the topic of the day, how everybody dies now, decide it’s time, make it look less messy, we have this tech now, it doesn’t bring you back, corpuscles full of oxygen, lean into the lich thing, it isn’t about that astronaut, ungrateful children, have him live forever, a conclusion more morally interesting, a k-street ex politician gets involved in a cover up for a murder, why is this the book that we have, if you want to be Herbert West, not bad because of any technical mistake, told this story in an interesting way, where did he go wrong?, repetitive, missed opportunities, that’s the reality, he isn’t cool, feel bad for him that his daughter died, sure that he isn’t, damage control, I’m in on it too, part of the cover-up, saw her for the first time, swept to the side, terrible terrible, not a good guy, Gilgamesh is not a good guy, Herbert West is not a good guy, sit behind a desk, do damage control, paragraph on page 30, a doodle pad, the religious part of this book, what will the big forces of Catholicism think about this, papism in power, what the pope said was “vote for the lesser of two evils”, Vatican II, something happened, John F. Kennedy, the first and the last, Biden, how is it an insult, the influence of the Pope, in this book vs. 2025, prominent people with collars giving their opinions, archbishops, teaching chess, these two bishops, only has power if you’re in a cult, cancel you harder than anybody, divine right as kings, democracy, the power of the church was immense, political powers, consults the church, keeps it in confidence, a reversal, the church is gonna be in favour of it, random plotting shit, realistic, what kind of person do you have to be to function, not sympathetic, goes along with the murder, seems wrong, Double Star [by Robert A. Heinlein], high politics, Dave (1993) or Moon Over Parador (1988), The Prince And The Pauper, you went to an alien planet, a future you don’t understand, the insider is doing insider stuff, not a good book because it is too realistic, excuses, there will be trouble if you cross me, Mark, the money man, died of a heart attack, braindead, they get away with it, 19th century cowboy, murder this guy too, the coverup is worse than the crime, that’s a Nixon thing, the reason that’s important, Nixon was setup, the CIA couped him, a Jesse opinion, books out on it now, what is the threat, it is implied, very realistic, except this tech is bullshit, how the world works, psychological realism, right after that list, senior senator, ogre of a man, not good things, his futile attempt at political independence, do what he promised, doesn’t matter, where the old man stood privately, the nat-libs, the other two seats, 20 independents, Bernie Sanders is not really independent, who would fund them, this book is very optimistic, the New York Catholic heirarchy, the red hat, a cardinal, a good Irish name, appraisal, a successful technique for resurrecting the dead, Silverberg novels, short stories by him, spent all this time, reading Faulkner, came back as a New Wave author, memsis in literature makes it bad, a Lester Del Rey Stan, we can blame the dwarf, mimesis, Sailing To Byzantium, immortality, living beyond your death, not esoteric enough, if it was birth control, people are again it, people are in favour of it, the tech as abortion, more fraught, relatively available for rich people, the letters and letters and letters that pour in, community issues, doesn’t make for a compelling read, be charitable, didn’t technically do anything wrong, it went sorta practical, strange about the people who work for Beller Labs, the dean of Herbert West’s school probably has the same feeling about his student, mashed up Double Star and Herbert West, members of the establishment, party politics, booted and taken down by the feds, a senator dad?, South Carolina, give her this book and see what she thinks, being an insider vs. being just a regular person, an insider who was excluded, just being a lawyer, taking the empty seat of the murdered guy, the moral tipping point for the story, dies of a heart attack, mob style politics, if you cross me there’ll be trouble, a vague threat, that’s how they talk, as an NDP insider, a federal election, Bonita, provincial MLA, everybody in the party is an insider, sometimes things work out in your favour, timing, messy divorce right now, feels a lot more like mimetic fiction, real life politics, you have to play the game, what should be the strength of this book, letters pouring in should be the motivation to keep going with it, COVID discussions both directions, I can’t believe you’re not masking, all a show and all a scam, who’s right?, you shouldn’t cover up murders, a duty to report, you can’t be a party any crime, sticky wicket, he’s doing something that is wrong, covering up the murder of this guy, make the tech come out, a touchscreen iphone technology, Walter White cared about his family, he cared about building his empire, a much more compelling show, he was mad, he used to be part of a bigger corporation, they became billionaires, the cost of his family, Better Call Saul is a much better show, he could have take the money from the billionaires, in theory, when he dies they’ll be provided for, deeper and deeper, kill him again, being on the fence, this is really gonna happen, he’s rewarded in the end of the book, he’s a scumbag, is our author trying to tell us he’s not a scumbag?, The Cask Of Amontillado, a deathbed confession, you who know the nature of my soul, walled up Fortunato, murdered him 50 years before, making his confession to his catholic priest, ascend to heaven, it’s delicious, he enjoys the telling of the story, the opposite of remorse, he’s a zombie, mental function, chopped him up and buried him, remaining sympathy, a good seduction, rooting for Walter, brother in law, he’s right, well off the deep end, watches someone die, the one in the basement?, Jesse’s girlfriend, what our guy does in this story, tip her on the side, Saul only has a brother, his brother is contemptuous of him, he’s going to be a successful lawyer, we should be good friends brother, the family is there to illustrate the moral horror of what he is doing, makes the wife the bad-guy, can’t you just be reasonable, a turning back and forth, good drama, not as morally interesting as a man alone, consults his wife a little bit, his job, him wanting this technology to come into existence, weighty, not very weighty, good ideas to explore, multiverse story, very troped, very common, interesting insights, bad writing, bad characterization, the dialogue, campy and terrible, bored, over the top, dull, the writing is dull, not hard to understand, making these threats, a bunch of crap, a cool idea, socially, conceits within the story, for the good of society, Jesse is more pro-death than most people, looking to make money, not a for profit corporation, we’re not going to patent this, we all agree this is a bad book, figuring out why it is a bad book, bored, perked up, global observations, the world-building, the k-street shit, crisis management, marketing materials, politicians are usually lawyers, management of the case, a lobbyist, a legal advisor, in 2025 vs 1958, The Space Merchants is must better, plot controlled, a more fun more interesting book, the execution seems like the problem, the main character feels old, 46 is really old, 23 when this was published, doubling his age, he’s the main character, Peter S. Beagle’s A Fine And Private Place, written when he was 20, a middle aged sort of book, a middle aged man, wife and family and regrets, regrets into his new job, a nice piece, his career is over, well handled, about an insider doing k-street shit and his motivation is not made explicit enough for us to sympathize with it, undo the death of his daughter, he tries not to think about it, doing these things he does, try to make the world better, self-aggrandizing, the plot does that to him, make the technology come out, the Philip K. Dick did something really bad, changing the dates in Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, set in the 1990s, make the dates later, an artifact, 1958 money, most of the tech in here, the rockets and the airplanes, the things that have not been disrupted, the money or the dialogue, elevator operator, predicted the cellphone, Heinlein did that one, Neuromancer, payphones ringing at him, a not book written for us, if this had won a hugo, less respect for hugos, too realistic, also not realistic, done much better by Lovecraft and Jack London, dull and slow, this book is boring, this book isn’t good, but not good at the same time, interesting ideas, thoughtful, time travel, neat ideas in here, executed in a way that sucks, choosing the way he told the story, sat down at the typewriter, the huge mistake that he made, a castle on a small foundation, completely collapse, on a sentence by sentence basis, never confused, almost no emotions, not thinking about it, just acting, he drinks a lot, his little son making a little martini, the kid organizing the drinks, The Jetsons, he goes to an automat, wholly uneven tech, a book about politics in the 50s, Tom Wolfe, new laser that can make photocopying easier, those books exist, a fictionalized Blackberry, corporate espionage, all the stakes of going behind the iron curtain, semi-interesting, the stakes are stupid, anti-social shit, illegal, crime fiction, there’s this amazing show, good ideas for shows, Profit, 1996, Adrian Pasdar, well ahead of its time, edgy tv melodramas, amoral Richard III, multinational conglomerate, blackmail, bribery, extortion, breaks the fourth wall, searching the internet, research and ammunition, curled up naked in the corner, the origin story for Dexter, traumatized origin story, a little bit like American Psycho (2000), he’s just like a normal person who went to the Warden school at UPenn, socialist realism, we like it a lot more based on him being a broken character, total evil, he must succeed, jokes about it, memes, parting shots, interesting ideas, no characterization, suspension of disbelief, an important story, this is his worst book, we don’t care about anybody, resurrected by Dracula’s kiss, only 5 hours long, commute, predictable ideas, things work out for him, not sympathetic, murder-coverup situation, The Man In The High Castle, we’re told, he wrote it using a randomizer, yarrow stalks, The I Ching, most fiction shouldn’t be random, somebody’s D&D adventure novel, random encounters, the structural problem of it, kinda fun, kinda works, much better and more interesting, the structure here is deliberately bad, the mode he’s going for, a mainstream book, he really downplays a lot of the tech, the main tech is stupid, it’s true like they were saying, decades and decades before, early 20th century, zombify people, straight out of Herbert West, willing to forgive this book, a 23 year old pretending to a 46 year old, hurts his reputation, hadn’t fully blossomed yet, allowed to write bad books, improved it somehow, find some time, teaching, a class full of kids, acting!, maybe it is different in Colorado, fun to go there, Denver, really wild, construction boom, niche restaurant situations, Colorado Springs, into the mountains, easier to got to Michigan, the west, just go through Ohio, poor Bryan [Alexander], commuting, perpetually disappointed by Amtrack, it used to work, Rhode Island, a labour union one summer, up to Boston, Providence to D.C., intentionally more expensive than other forms of commuting, a monopoly and they fucked it around, natural monopoly, libertarian utopia, competitors to Greyhound, level of sketchiness, Dominican part of town, maybe they would stop, Chinatown buses, weird war, The Messiah Of The Cylinder, The Beetle Horde, 1914, The Underwater Menace, raising Atlantis by blowing it in outer space, Zaroff, The Most Dangerous Game, evil high end counts fleeing Soviet Russia, science will be the faith of human kind, 2015, the illustrations of this, a guy in a copper cylinder, the PDF Page went down, Everybody’s Magazine, a normal suit, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, guys who died at the Alamo, weird leather clothes, a dude in a cylinder, frozen and surprised, hugging it, 1917 fashion, interior illustrations, swooning, the first installment, three cornered love affair, so convincingly, socially different in every way, to-day, you may disagree, whirled dizzily, we are sure you will follow this story, H.G. Wells’ The Sleeper Wakes, very vital, gripped by tyrannous socialism, over the coffee cups, sounds deeper than The Beetle Horde, come out Arnold, pleaded Esther, a vast mob, great illustrations, a mob pressing closely, what disconcerted me, shrewd mocking smile on each face, Joseph Clement Cole, a giant ant, the Goddess of the Temple, Bryan Fullen, seems fine, February 20th, six months from now, nice people, kind, generous, as most people would agree, I got a cold again, he’s not a faker, Vincent, fun name for a Chinese kid, Vince, evokes differently, convinced, proof of my supergenius: making a small pun, dad jokes are the best, can girls make dad jokes?, why are they called dad jokes?, a specific kind of father, not abusive drunkards, cornball nonthreatening father, an insult almost, they’re not called mom jokes, cornballism, they have to be more serious, the dad has gravitas from being a man, the way they characterize families in commercials, the woman is very competent, the man is a goofball doofus, make jokes, the butt of humour, we don’t need you but you’re there anyways, free to make whatever stupid joke, a father joke, a daddy joke, who’s your daddy?, necessarily sexual, muscle mommy joke, green muscle mommies, orc women, orc daddy, less appealing, he doesn’t need leather, take a risk, a t-shirt, a bad google predictive search history, three orc dads, my three dads, Three Men And A Baby, Bossy Orc Dad, would you rather have read, The Tissue Culture King, The Tachypomp was more fun, evil eugenicist organization, purports to teach medicine, even more in accessing what’s interesting about it, a more presentist lens, Waterspider, Poul Anderson vists the future, not bald is a problem, mattress cars, mention the existence of children, Deep Space 9, it does this turn into a 3 episode arc, a seasonal arc, solid science fiction show, passes the alien bechdel test, 2 aliens on a runabout, Quark and Odo have to climb a mountain, sell their bodies for souvenirs, carry a radio up an atmosphere, works through subspace, Odo breaks his leg, off again male romance, emergency rations, a pretty amazing thing, work on making a culture, a list of the Rules of Acquisition, only made for episodes, mentioned in episodes, there to fulfill the individual needs of the particular plot, harm your storytelling ability, the whole point of these kinds of stories is to explore ideas, consistent in lore, continuity is not the point, the opposite of memberberries, the opposite of good storytelling, the who gets a medal only matters in that particular scene, remind you of that thing you saw, the profit motive, hence the Minecraft movie, the Hungry Hungry Hippos movie, laziness, a really solid argument, what do people say when communism bad, Venezuela, iPhone, people starve, what made the iPhone good, a phone that can do that too, one less device, becoming retropopular, wifi and bluetooth, involved in your tech, not into soldering, a direct call out to Bell Labs, another way of going, call it Roosevelt institute, any sort, Edison institute, Edison is the patent troll, Benjamin Franklin, 16 brothers and sisters, 2 moms, third last, last son, a printer brother, exploded into the United States and really changed things, newspapering, politics, fire insurance, social socialism like it is now, Philadelphia, became wealthy, he didn’t create an institute, it was a Volta prize given by Napoleon III, really into science, grandpa/great uncle?, literally builds a building, making audio transmissible, metastasizes all over the United States, Nokia, thousands, a long list of things, lasers, lots of people got awards, people who faked their science to win prizes, the profit motive, I need to win this prize so I can do my science, he thought it was really cool, Poor Richard’s Almanack, the patent system, in the constitution, media mail!, article 1, patent and copyright clause, securing for limited times, one of the few things that is limited, very influential, wanted to know about it, the story of Steve Jobs is a tragedy, the biography of him, students wanted to be Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, used to give money to socialist things, an inventor, feel the vibe of what this thing was going to do, this is really cool, how could we make money from this, we can do better, really into design, a fashion guy, the aesthetic of removing buttons, more streamlined, when the apple cars it comes out it won’t have any doors, the perfect phone is a sphere, more disposable, a good salesman, a good aesthetic for it, they liked that he was successful, before COVID, fraud company, a blood test, Elizabeth Holmes, female Steve Jobs, a successful businessperson, devices and technology, Apple’s products, dishwashers, not sexy like a phone, they’re foolish, freedom and communication, that holding of it gives it the attention, one of god’s angels designing creatures for the earth, I make puppies, I make tube grubs, volcanic vents are part of god’s creation, billion dollar company, started Pixar, called him back, we don’t know what we’re doing without you, life vs. work, had a family, adopted, played some role, have it difficult, not a good model to model yourself on, Wozniak did it better, accidentally gets millionaired, a guy from high-school, just because they’re interesting, successful accidentally, fitting the right circumstance, born in Hollywood, Carrie Fisher, parents were movie stars, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Douglas and Kirk Douglas, an ugly brother, Beau Bridges, successful not happy, a good thing for people to do, find things to do because they like them, it’s cool, this is interesting, let’s get into it, Scott Miller, the name of his podcast, the term sci-fi, it includes Star Wars, The Moth by H.G. Wells, 2 guys who are competitors in categorizing and pining moths, punished, is that a science fiction story?, the science of speciation, a mimetic story with an unreliable narrator, a psychotic protagonist, Genus Novo, Pearson’s Magazine, doesn’t feel like normal science fiction, all about the competitive that is science, people trying to prove, realistic stories, four people getting on a train to cheat on their wives and husbands, the people who are doing science, fairly close to doing fantasy, Haply the entomologist, Professor Pawkins, in a padded room, hallucination, the ghost of Pawkins, The Red Room by H.G. Wells, disprove ghosts, everything is spooky, blind, that’s spooky, many people, foreboding, even though I fired my gun at the ghost, what ghost are, ghost are in your head not in the world, talking about science, technically science fiction, fiction about science, it has those two things in it, definition, wallpaper science fiction, Tommy was pointing to the wallpaper, pricing was off, media was so important in the story, what these reporters are doing, old channels of distribution of media, how does that relate, Wells doesn’t use that term, post-Gernsback, lay the responsibility on somebody’s feet, scientifiction, sci-fi eventually if we must, definitely not sci-fi, The Tell-Tale Heart, fantasy, horror, narrow it to just a few categories, thinks there’s a ghost, a story about a psychotic person, The Man Who Could Work Miracles, Wells cares about science more than anything else, maybe girls more, Amazing, a movie or something as well, what miracles are, if I could perform a miracle, an old fashioned lamp, wandering by himself, what else is impossible, makes the tree change seasons, get rid of the evidence, hits a policeman, what are you doing, I wish you were in San Fransisco, part of the story is not shown, sent back to San Fransisco, he makes the earth stop turning, thrown into destruction, the trees and the air and the oceans and the birds in the sky, momentum and friction, to not have the power to work miracles, looking at the lamp and not saying what he was going to say, it is, physical laws, break physical laws, that’s the whole point, putting to bed the idea of ghost stories, making a point, only our material reality, in Unknown, a funny story, uses scientific laws, increasingly noting, his characters are never interesting or fun, oh my, The New Accelerator, The Island Of Doctor Moreau, evil, evil too, cat girl or something, what Wells is doing, idea fiction, what science is my boy, guys trying to fuck eachother over, a short story, an interesting turn, part of the problem with this book is the way it is told, really wants to do something and we don’t get insight into it, the idea is also broken, also real, pretty limited, Ted Chiang story, Understand, terrific, he’s the opposite of shit, clinically cold, not there for the characters, pure science fiction, not-science fiction, fantasies, as science fictiony as Wells is, The Tower Of Babel, a world with different physical laws, 2019, no audio for it, keep waiting and hoping, ISFDB.org, bring my wife back to life with your science fiction, help us Ted Chaing, 6 years and feeling dry, I think there’s nothing, retired, born 1967, looks young, younger then, went to Brown University, who’s any good, depends, too young to go, didn’t graduate from high-school, computer science, documentation for programs, sad, gotta make a living, a sad reality, using his brain on that, under capitalism he should be rich, consider ideas until a story comes out of him, the money rolled in from the movie adaptation, I’m tired, which is sad, a friend of a friend, 2023 Chiang was named, in AI, The Lifecycle Of Software Objects, ai pets, that Time list, here are the 100 best stories, read the list and judge it, Lester del Rey’s Helen O’Loy, number 2 Lester del Rey’s The Faithful, raised by people, all these thoughts, very faithful, the chimps aren’t faithful, likes to wear clothes, a story about Will, a civilized chimp, more nudist, Heinlein’s ideas of nudism, that’s crazy, dm notifications, twitter is unreliable, Alex’s gonna love this, Tex Avery style wolf pajamas, luxurious, students wear pajama bottoms, technically, flannel pants, silk pajamas, wear them around the house, a theory, the Hindi word for clothes, etymology, it should be true, persian leg, urdu, 19th century, while lunging, southeastern bottom wear, nightwear, just clothing that was soft, how connected urdu and hindi are, pjs, jammies, nightsuits, allegedly very similar, aha!, be careful what you say or write, a weakness Will has, attracted to the idea of luxurious things, cloth material, Rolls Royces, a Cadillac, decided to keep it, the idea of it, luxury cars, a pond too far, the ultimate utilitarian thing, whatever it is, technologies that don’t change after a certain point, the Volkswagen beetle, a curved windshield, not a perfect example, the jerrycan, the British coveted, a container for carrying gasoline, traditional jerrycan design, 3 handles on the top, specific shape of lid, expansion notches in the side, passing them to be filled, an evolved design, during WWI, the 747 is very old, they look identical to the ones that came out in the 1860s, the avionics, the engines haven’t changed, the placement of the cockpit hasn’t changed, stopped iterating, shoes that are really nice, a disease, insidious, not affordable, a want, try not to have those, desire leads to suffering, a Buddha thing, a Yoda thing, have and use, alpaca wool hoodies, comfort, maroon and purple, a stag pattern in white, little buttons, not very efficient, I know what you need, long sleeves, shorts and t-shirt, what people’s logos say, it has a pocket, put some coins, a pen and a notebook, a consumer, used by technology, not a creator, a software question, Adobe InDesign, laying out a zine, all by hand, microsoft word, google docs, substack, layed out the blog, broken, the PDF Page was broken, he’s working on it, the uploading program had changed permissions, a very simple tiny little error, way more common than giant crashes, forgot to tick a box, skips a line, computers are supposed to be incapable, something will load in, surreal things, the sky is full of a giant red thing, somebody’s helmet the size of the whole sky, miscalculated, checksums, not broken files, whenever there’s a break in the internet connection, rather than just skip it, theoretically the way streaming works, you’re downloading, relatively as it happens, how reality works too, a good example, Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi talking about The Pedestrian by Ray Bradbury, Lem and Dick, positive comparisons, behind a paywall, 20 subscribers, a repeat, comments are turned off, they’re doing a livestream, your not saving the file that you’re downloading, your’re downloading it to your brain, your breaking copyright with your eyes, we’re all criminals unless you’re deaf dumb and blind and unable to use your fingers for braille, exact same path as tech, copyright, cannot be stored in an informational retrieval system, Google Books, DVDs in a DVD changer, an argument made about VCRs, a brief worry about it, kinda interesting, breaking the law, recording broadcast television, how is it allowed, we wanted the tech to be allowable generally, convenient and a good idea, an argument about it, CDs in Canada, put a levy on all recordable media, cd-rs and dvd-rs, distributed by the government, lasted for a while, lobbyists, bro, everybody wants this technology, can’t we find a way around it, a slush fund, a new power center for people, no levy on hard drives, cloud storage, not the ideal solution to it, now just basically ignore it, unless we want to do censorship, how it is connected to the book, the harsh reality, how we dealt with it before, that’s the way of the world, my boy, tie a key and tie it to a kite, fundamentally escapist, isn’t that why we don’t like it, boring, isn’t the reality of cliques and jockeying for power boring, on a sentence by sentence level, inoffensive, not interesting, interesting ideas, poorly written but interesting, competent but boring, Asimov, Cordwainer Smith, A.E. Von Vogt, a bad writer sentence, capable of writing beautiful sentences, doesn’t flow, beautiful, more traditional, backhanded complement, workmanlike, the idea shouldn’t have been explored this way, the perspective character, from the outside perspective, Heinlein’s pretty good at characters, in Silverberg’s defense, what if it is way better, audible.com, the revised version, one would think, Recalled To Life, more Robert Silverberg, Needle In A Timestack, Downward To Earth, Jesse, Paul, Terence, Jonathan, people die, people get mad, Jenny [Colvin], a comic book adaptation from France, The Golden Ass, Humanoids has a good reputation, nudity, you know they’re french, French prudes, issues and idiosyncrasies, Book Of Skulls, A Time Of Changes, Up The Line, at loose ends, a time courier, Byzantium, great great great multi great grandmother, humorous, sold on this one, sounds really good, looking into May, pretty agreeable chap, the Star Wars one, Edmond Hamilton novel, short stories by him, Margaret St. Clair said about him, some people like it, flawed stories, space opera, Weird Tales, a Campbell story, HorrorBabble, The Return Of Captain Future, his own hero pulp, a robot and a girl, why?, might also be the president, Fire Princess, Leigh Brackett, what does she see in him?, she liked the Edmond daddies, Star Patrol daddy, superhero comics, Batman and Superman, reprints, Under The Red Sun, Superman Family, backup stories or reprints, poor Edmond Hamilton, works with the president, to be the president, along with the luxury, levels of it, Roman Holiday by Arthur K. Barnes and Henry Kuttner, Mort Weisinger, Bobby Derie, the market for Weird Tales, don’t do this, a reprint, time trotter Pete Manx, two dudes in an arena, a lion bunched his muscles, scientifiction hall of fame, fantasy classics, a new permanence, a real service, devotees, all suggestions are more than welcome, whatshisname, juvenile magazine, Sam Merwin Jr., Thrilling Wonder, Oscar J. Friend, William Morrison, John D. MacDonald, bring captain future back, Analog or Asimov’s, who dis, A.E. Van Vogt, we can’t be friends, normal life, this one autism, I too like coffee, we can be friends for now, if you ever switch sides, wrong guy to be obsessed about, so good, The Weapon Shop, in the Science Fiction Hall Of Fame, this is fun, F&SF, The Hunting Of The Slan by Edgar Allan Poe, June 1849, space filler, general space filler, his column, Marginalia, the fate, gifted/accursed, very far superior, manifesting his consciousness, he can’t help but manifest, acting like he’s superior, that would be a mistake, without flaws, conscious of his superiority, coequal humans, smarter than the other, you’ll be fine, very judgeable, how to tie this knot, understands himself be superior, he can’t help it, talking about Slans, 2 sentences in, enemies at all points, widely differ, a madman, abnormal weakness on account of being abnormally string, you do and you ought, Harrison Bergeron, very generous spirit, inevitably misconceived in every direction, extremeness of intelligence, meanness in its last degree, opening a door for a lady, a kind of behavior that can be extremified, the longer your sentence the more polite it is, a three page letter, fatuity, dementia, what’s the etymology, from the French, 1548, back to our story, and so on with other virtues, extremely neat, extremely untidy, strength to weakness, virtue specific, honesty, lies are sins, we shouldn’t lie, people don’t like being told the truth, what’s your password, not a lie, dealing with it, have you ever eaten a small, depends on what you mean by small, making a joke, if not joking, lies hiding behind jokes, viewed as a liar, a deceiver, chastity, virtues of the catholic church, fortitude, faith, some meme, I don’t need it don’t need it I don’t want it, I need it, humility, take that one too far, incredibly humble, the vice of being a braggart, pride, patience, suspicious of churches, words are weapons to be used for control, get your reward in Heaven, kindness, wikipedia entry, things come out different, capital, cardinal, 7 in each, so temperate you’re a drunkard, a wanton, moderation or voluntary self restraint, be like Pan, abstinence, moderation in all things including moderation, sometimes the governor takes a vacation, very bacchanalian of you, Scrooge, very selfish, harms my family, willy nilly, puts my name on all that things, Jacob Yurovsky chair of Yale, claimed to be a philosopher, particular, Eric had one too, Walter Thurnow professor of…, basketball court or new wing of the hospital, sold the naming rights, a land acknowledgement to the lich that gave you the job, you could philosophy about counting blades of grass, sin of being a sellout, diligence, perfectionist maybe, back to the text, motives misinterpreted, a painful one indeed, for whom Mr. Poe, really sincere, not saying who, the plane of the race, traces of their existence, the good and the great, wretches who died in prison, in Bedlam or upon the gallows, Alexander the Great, is he wrong, not talking about slans, self justification, very interesting, good example, Alan Turing, his success at decrypting, tortured to death with hormone therapy, reversed, now he has been martyred, is Poe constructing an unfalsifiable theory of the incredibly intelligent, really gifted at music, the psychoward, van Gogh, Salvador Dali, why is he talking about this, The Tell-Tale Heart, a guy who thinks he is extraordinary, sharpened by the disease, not dulled by it, the gallows or Bedlam, better to get hanged, a perfect test, a careful search, The Hunting Of The Snark by Lewis Carroll, Jack London, a snarky column, The Cruise Of The Snark, LibriVox, 1876, didn’t turn out well, a great luminary, may have involved time travel, Ambrose Bierce went back in time and got, shot Lincoln then went back in time, time shock killed him, a real thing, bro., nonsense stuff, Edward Lear, make stuff up, The Owl And The Pussycat, a five pound note, oh pussy my love, what a beautiful pussy you are, too long we have tarried, the bong tree grows, his nose, dear pig, mince and slices of quince, an allusion to this, it’s meaning is derived from this poem which is nonsense, a grapefruit spoon, serrated edges, runcible restaurant, college campuses, a new theory, Ruritanaian romance, a secret subculture of Ruritanian ethnic restaurants, the principality of Runcibalia, how countries are made, why it is called that, for the meter, similar to science fiction, creates images, a really good example, he had a stone in his hand, he had a stony stone in his hand, a shape and a sharpness and a temperature, goes against it, sandy sand, stone is different than rock, what’s so cool about that, when you are constructing it is proof that there’s magic, shades of colours, bluey green, reddy blue, yellow orange, orangey yellow, only tutor ruritanaian students, very literal, poor young Jesse has to figure things out, what cats are meant to do, natural animal, lots of problems, see also, lunchcounter, meat and three, a fixed priced offering, porkchop, hush puppies, fast food item, fish restaurants, instead of fries, condiments and sides, the food your supposed to focus on, eating ketchup, this ketchup is amazing!, do you have a dish of relish for dessert, Philip K. Dick next week.

Recalled To Life by Robert Silverberg

Recalled To Life by Robert Silverberg

Recalled To Life by Robert Silverberg

Recalled To Life by Robert Silverberg

Recalled To Life by Robert Silverberg

Recalled To Life by Robert Silverberg

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #859 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Eternal Savage by Edgar Rice Burroughs

The SFFaudio Podcast #859 – The Eternal Savage by Edgar Rice Burroughs, (7 hours 7 minutes) read by Mark Nelson for LibriVox, followed by a discussion of both. Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Will Emmons

Talked about on today’s show:
Eternal Lover, Eternal Savage, one of the Barney of something books, the second half Sweetheart Primeval, Barney Custer of Beatrice, a weird publication history, 1915, August 1915, The Mad King, separated, connected, The Mad King, Alex (pulpcovers), also a Tarzan book, written in 1914, Tarzan to come, Lord Greystoke, he’s in the book, the host for Barney and his sister Victoria, doesn’t say anything, an impression of what he would have said, in the room earlier, contractually obligated, I’ll stand there but, a weird stand-in, an easter egg, no strong reason for it to be there, also a book I wrote, you are aware of, Burroughsiana, a weird thing, stuff to think about, Nu is different than Tarzan, a red herring, multi-media universe, all the crossovers, the Burroughs Estate, the Pellucidar series, his own Alan Moore thing, League of Extraordinary Burroughsians, Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc., re-issue in an Ace-Double style with Cave Girl on the other side, big series, a mistake, make a lot of money doing it, he was good at doing that, part of a series but not really, stands-alone kind of, more prominent in, Nu Nu, Nu fitz Nu, having a mating on the nu moon, gotta get your cycles started to pump out some babies, baby, what’s going on with this book, legit confused, what’s going on, all explained in the end, what we actually have here, two books here, one isn’t fully realized, the narrative about Nu’s journey to the 20th century, cut-short, what happens at the very very end of this book, new timeline, last 4 paragraphs, a sudden halt, nothing more to be seen, crumbling skeleton, stone tipped spear, stone knife, stone axe, look!, feeble flame, the grinning skull of a great cat, 18inch curved fangs, Oo!, for his Natul for me, a really good ending, okay, more than 25 by Burroughs, he pointed out something, feel it, feel kinda dumb, they’re always the goddamn same, meet cute, girl gets kidnapped, happens twice in this book, in every Burroughs, really into kidnapping, the reason he’s into that, a big booklength book, he needs to fill pages, a science fiction story, an adventure story, the Encino Man, a white nigger?, not more that 17 times, he’s called that, this means that everybody around him is racist, not real dependable, when all the servants fled, a laybout asshole, using the n-word, what is lie?, so good, really fun, interrogates the story of what we hear about racist, more racist, Robert E. Howard, The Last White Man, bad on a number of levels, the manly exemplar, Barney is a good brother, Lord Greystoke is a nice host, Nu son of Nu, an innocent abroad, a super-muscular man like Tarzan used to be, incredibly muscular, intense, contrasted and compared, they never wrestle, he puts on Lord Greystoke’s clothes, a little too small for him, a direct comparison, take it a little bit deeper, Solomon Kane, the white savage, what he’s like, white savage vs. Tarzan, in this life, acculturated to the stone age, a ranch in Nebraska, it becomes a comedy after a certain point, learns horse-breaking, another kidnapping, a comedy, a Savage who becomes civilized, he was an English Lord, he learned to read, inherent, is even homo sapiens, bit the guy’s neck out, direct message, state tv in Sweden SVT, here are the first swedes, they’re all black, kind of a point, why are all the cavemen white?, what period is this set, he’s from the Niocene, the only thing that comes up is this book, eras, Pleistocene, smilodon and pterodactyls, a tiger in Africa, no homework, very pure for that reason, is this science fiction?, a conversation on twitter, he’s an unfrozen caveman, frozen in a cave somehow, I’m worried about earthquakes, mice and earthquakes, our guy gets trapped with the head of a smilodon, by suspended animation, Heinlein trick in The Door Into Summer, the gases that came in and froze him, a very popular one, 19th century novels, News From Nowhere, Just Imagine (1930), The Marching Morons, wakes up in the future, a Stanley Weinbaum novel, a ranch in Africa, this is my destiny, shot in the head, learns languages, kidnapped by the arabs, arabs and white slavery, super-not Christian, compared to Howard, here’s how I’d have Christ do it, angry about being nailed to a cross, nailing them to a cross!, cave man monogamy, vs. the arabs, sold into a harem, for a sultan, interestingly contrasted, why it is not science fiction, a new kidnapping scenario, yoink!, the girl’s gone, this other girl, infanticide really bad, suicide, stabs herself and jumps off a cliff, used to sudden death, reading any more Burroughs, he does it well, not edified by any of this, because it is old, modelling his mind, got it now, more cavemany, hadn’t figured out grammar yet, moved to Spain, attempt to prove the unprovable about human nature, you and I today, made of wholecloth, no substance to it, a multi-decade mission to get inside the mind of Edgar Rice Burroughs, really against rape, the baby will be uglier, the boat people, hunters are noble, cowskins, they make their caves, seems suspicious to me, superior technology, the whims of nature, what we are supposed to conclude, chivalrous, kidnapped his girlfriend from the past, unfrozen caveman I love you, the man of my dreams, dogs on his side, let’s go after unfrozen now escaped cave man, tear out his throat, cut back to her waking up from a 3 minute coma, made a new timeline, trapped in a cave, the worst thing that can ever possibly happen, transmigration to a past life, Phra The Phoenician, She, all a dream, see the skeleton of a guy, our love from past ages, you didn’t hallucinate the first half of the book, hallucinate the last half of the book, work for hire, where you’re messing up, Victoria goes back to the Niocene, retain her 20th century consciousness more, she’s not herself, flashes she was just in the 20th century, that would make the book awesome, he’s the fish in his water again, how to re-integrate it at the end, the upshot of the new timeline, the previous timeline, suspended animation, not able to meet your soulmate, no genetic connection, Deep Space 9, the Tribbles episode, Bashir and O’Brien are in the elevator, you’re new here, are you a doctor, giving him the wink, gloms on to her name, his great grandmother, otherwise he won’t exist, Time Rider (1982), Edward Page Mitchell, The Clock That Went Backward, the soul transference, Nu always looks like a caveman, same body, barrettes and lipstick and earrings not made of bones, messier hair, bikini made of fur, speak the same language of monkeys, his theory of past lives and the eternal lover, all of Poe, The Raven, is their love so great that it transcends time, Somewhere In Time (1980), they never have sex, except in the fake timeline, maybe had sex with him in her past?, hit on the head, past life remembrance, die in an earthquake, he really didn’t think this through, not a theory of past lives, this is not science fiction, undercooked fantasy, adventure fiction, a terrible genre, Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981), why?, The High Road To China (1983), the answer is it has the supernatural stuff on top of the period setting, god literally exists and doesn’t like Nazis, the power of the contents of the Ark of the Covenant, don’t apply the ritual properly, not supposed to look at god, he went to Sunday school, what the Nazis want, other adventure stories, ancient Egypt, the power of god in this bucket, a burned hand, do the same thing, it’s got everything, same with Star Wars (1977), Luke Burrage argued it was science fiction, new technology was the Death Star, Star Destroyers and Death Stars, sabers are curved, all undercooked, all works for a child, this all works if you wanna pass some time and have some fun, sad story, it could be, rewrite it for him, cohere a little better, talking to the monkeys, me I’m friends of the monkeys, all the other Tarzan, in some respects, the species that raises Tarzan, not gorillas, talks to lions, Elephants, mean things, vocab is low, elephants are very sophisticated, more Mars books, the surgery one The Mastermind Of Mars, medical science fiction, medical adventure, Conan with his shirt off, standing on a pile of bones, not what the stories are like, one narrow aspect of it, Burroughs construction of these stories, strawman characters, a long tradition, Heinlein doing it, if we have good ideas, if you don’t have good ideas, ambiguous characters, helps Nu get out of bondage, I’m going to kill this baby, should I kill this baby, I wanna kill this baby, ladies driving their kid into the lake, minimize this, invest a lot in our offspring, 18 years, when your parents are no longer involved, kids were getting married and getting jobs at much younger ages, childhood is forever, that is odd, something to look at, be done with the child after 5 seconds, he can just fuck off, the baby literally will die without the mom, cats and dogs, lick up the poop, we have hands, we’re more like birds, or bears or elk, all about the nuclear family, how clams work, the dad is like a donor, goes to get shot, sport, food, most hunters are eating their meat these days, he hunts for food, the head is so he can marry her, in the father’s eyes, in her eyes, her behavior is pretty weird, not fleshed out, Victoria Custer, Nah-tool, this cave man is too horny, not that interesting, Victoria is an adult, how old are these characters?, 100,000 and 16 years old, not a cave-boy, much funnier, a pretty good movie, cave man comedies, lends itself to comedy, the concept, plot points, cave man pocket, 3 rocks to by an Arizona iced tea, why do people like it?, it hasn’t changed in price, its not from Arizona, it’s from New York, Arizona looking, the owner’s wife, a special half ice-tea half lemonade, Arnold Palmer, made it up, licensed him, a little bitterness, something mixed with lemonade, a shandy, if you’re into poison, it was okay, a podcaster recording them, what Burroughs was up to, Under The Moons Of Mars, Argosy and All-Story, a better rot writer, massive life experience, running around writing kidnapping plots, kiss each other, the women have eggs on Mars, the best setting to make the argument, so not science fiction, rockets were a thought in people’s heads, he didn’t have a rocket do it, the Martians in The War Of The Worlds, shot out of a cannon, space travel, chose not to do that, more novel, 4 arm green aliens, red indians that are not indians, colour interested, white apes, there’s stuff there, refreshing to talk to Jesse about Burroughs, deep in their guts, as a child, as an adult, Pirates Of Venus, a kidnapping plot with airships, tunnels, horsemen on the Moon, The Moon Maid, The First Men In The Moon by H.G. Wells, hefty intellectual, a comedy, a business man, giant history of humankind and everything, the original serialzed version in a magazine style on the newsstands, hot chocolate on the back, the formation of the Earth, up to Caesar, not interested in it, not writing the same kind of stuff, war correspondent during WWII, Damien Walter podcast, Feral Historian, The Dispossessed, with Evan, killed him and buried him, keep his bones in a cave, all those we’ve lost, when you read H.G. Wells, even when he’s not writing actual science fiction, not trying to ingratiate, The Island Of Doctor Moreau, a slice of H.G. Wells, him doing Jules Verne, on a spectrum where authors are, where Larry Niven is, The Cold Equations, floppy saggy science fiction, he’s juggling but they’re not hard batons, they’re bags full of sand, his stuff is weightier, communism bad, China is bad, a book which engages with ideas, conked on the head, dream books back to back, Robert E. Howard would have been on Instagram and lifting, suicidal ideation, posted videos of himself punching a side of beef, center of attention, businessman, cozying up to Trump sort of thing, spiritual affinity, real estate developers, sea to lake, orange man neutral, what his retreat is named, looks like it is in Florida, mystique, his grandson, Burroughs believed that all of the stories he wrote were ultimately true, that’s Heinlein too, gets that way at the end, mostly known as a novelist, The Pursuit Of The Pankera, honky, chonky, The Number Of The Beast, diary entries, Hilda Corners, the Barsoom novels, very Heinleinian thing to do, n-dimensional space, intimate tango, a space machine, alternate dimensions, 666, a googleplex or more of parallel universes, Oz, literary places, quasi-public domain literary places, a beleif that’s in your head even if it is only transitory, our worlds, unlike myna birds and cave sloths, an autists, a creed, never learned to talk, talking a vow of autism, a real world, people with autism, folksy, take the article off, persons of the semitic creed, we construct our worlds out of words, some penetration, very unusual, add it to your vocabulary, use it with your friend Will, learn vocab words, if you don’t control the vocab words they control you, you need to know, the manifold is broken, a barrier between the universe, find out what lies are, Lord Greystoke, I have red hair, a theory of mind thing, what the white n-word was, so pure hearted, so stupid, tablemanners and forks, language acquisition, standard Burroughs, what the plot of Robert Sheckley’s Deep Space 9 novel was, supportable, cute, knew what was up, savviness, working for Sears, The Efficiency Expert, the George R.R. Martin problem, Tarzan stories, getting conked on the head element, Tarzan And The Jewels Of Opar, Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes, convert you to spiritualism, believing in fairies, it would be cool if it was real, what’s going on with Musk and Mars, aspergersist, normal cognition, hard to interact with, modelling Musks mind, he really wants to go to Mars, get humans out of the one basket we’re in, poor excuse, imprinted on science fiction early, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora, even if covered in diamonds, the real issue, really cool, cave diving, tour caves, climb Mount Everest, a goal like any other, living on the top of Mount Everest, like Walter White at the end of Breaking Bad, he wanted to be a success, billionaire owner, to prove that, huge mistake, powerful people brain damage, an atrophy thing, deferring to you, three Chicken Dinners in a row, showing tremendous skill, keep ego in check, other things, dude, you aint that great, become disconnected from reality, like a Hollywood celebrity, rock diva, externalize that, would you overestimate or underestimate your abilities, a trick question, I can do things I can’t do, preventing you from doing things you can do, I can lift that, I can’t lift that, ability to lift things, don’t ask for help, a good self-assessment, surgery on my own back even with a lot of mirrors, what if I do it wrong, standing by with a hose, we’re on the airplane, the pilots are dead, fly a plane, they work the same way, more engines, the radio is more difficult than the airplane, helicopter, a motorcycle accelerator, your yaw, the back and forth oscillation, compelling reason, when the engine goes, autorotation, falling at a slower rate, not a parachute, the airbrake, fixed wing aircraft, gliding, as long as you have altitude you have forward momentum, weather, your fine, land on the ocean, flying lessons, working for companies, a rich man’s ambition, to get the license, any kinda school, wealthy eye-doctors, military teaches it, working for a military, asking for permission, ride a bike, swim, drive a car, another thing to learn, very close to new flying car phenomena, mountain home, battery powered, to save weight, ultralight aircraft, make airplanes, under a certain weight, fixed propellers, [Pivotal Blackfly], they don’t swivel, a drone that you’re sitting in, high end dentists, drones as the way into flying cars, Jetson One, a license to ride a bicycle, nobody has a license to bicycle, insurance law, insurance is free money, scooters, mopeds, skirt the insurance laws, electric bicycles, not a helluva lot, electric motorcycle, torque for days, limiters, [electric unicycle], hoverboards, dangerously fast, in 2025, drone license, no seat, Segway, when motorcycles were went they first came out, chariot racing with motorcycles as the horses, Ben-Hurley Davidson, scared of skateboard, faster than walking, rollerskates, a commuter, the scrapheap of coolness, skiing, fun, cross country skiing, snowshoeing, horseback riding, the way you got places, Marissa’s Instagram, she and her man, cross country skiing with her dog, recreation, enjoying nature, downhill and cross country, ski and then shoot, slogging your way across territory, super dangerous but fun, recreation vs. necessity, rich dentist’s recreation, horses on the interstate, nothing drawn by animals, area Amish, everything is hamster, the default, cats were cool, hundreds?, negotiation, respects her feelings, runaway with a boyfriend, smilodon boyfriend, Amazon box, the lifestyle, the behavior continues, not a good solution, semi-domesticated, do better than the dogs, competing for prey, feral life, lose an eye, depth perception, your claws and your teeth, no birth certificate, breaking up the family, she had children, unrelated cats, fixed later, we know better than them is what we’re saying, we’re fixing them, ova-hystorectimy, Millions Of Cats by Wanda Gág, a very old Will and a very old Meg, so very lonely, smoking a pipe, goes on a walk, page 10, that’s a lot of cats, cats and kittens everywhere, all black and white, a fuzzy grey kitten, way down in the corner, too lovely to leave, black and very beautiful, one riding on his head, too many cats, the cats get to fighting, eat eachother to death until there’s no cats left, eaten each other all up, one little frightened kitten, dear little kitty, just a very homely little cat, nobody bothered about me, soft and shiny, plenty of milk, the most beautiful cat in the world, not one is a the pretty as this one, The Cats Of Ulthar by H.P. Lovecraft, H. Warner Munn, about 20 photos, The Lurking Fear, Catskills, remote northern place, interesting, definitely funny, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, a guy who doesn’t know he’s a member of the community, oh and I have heterochromia too, why the mole people didn’t eat him, one eye was blue the other was brown, wrestled with it, this is brilliant, super amazing, really good at mood, he’s one of them, go visit these backwoods people, takes his friend with him, lying in the same bed, the shadow on the chimney, a description of his friend, straight out of The Rats In The Walls, a guy who eats his friend, very muscly, he’s meaty, he’s bringing his family food from the outside, cannibal nutrition, really dig it, Wayne June’s audiobooks, The Thing At The Doorstep, one of his best, the movie, Suitable Flesh (2023), Re-Animator (1985), I like horror after-all, a pure comedy but a horror, army of dead that come and get him, he totally nailed it, a comedy magazine, Home Brew, almost like a zine, during prohibition, the joke is a nod and wink, The Haunter Of The Dark, the church steeple, vibing on it, Providence geography, a mythos story, the scan of Home Brew, the serialization, a peek of what it looked like, piquant gossip, illustrated by Clark Ashton Smith, the trees, penises and vaginas everywhere, how fucked up the scan is, undistorting it, Rhineheart Kleiner smoking a pipe, a complete scan of this, later publications, a secret about Wayne June now that he’s dead, not a fan of At The Mountains Of Madness, deep in his cups, strange hieroglyphics, the narrator is not a Lovecraft character, Scott Miller is going to put out The Call Of Cthulhu, its the one everyone is focused on, all his themes, art, artists, cosmic time, cosmic space, madness, almost the main thing, cares a lot about art and artists, he’s all about the art, The Music Of Erich Zann, The Outsider, “dreamlands” story?, The White Ship, Celephais, Ex Oblivione, reskinned name, Dark Worlds Of H.P. Lovecraft: Volume 5, The Shambler From The Stars by Robert Bloch, mythos or dreamlands, winks and nods, August Derleth fucked things around, big series, take the story individually, not a businessman, he was the opposite of a businessman, conservative guys, near the end, different directions, vital active businessman, trying to be pure, not commercial at all, a poet from the 17th century, amateur journalist, he’s a blogger who wouldn’t put ads on his blog, in the kitchen, Voluminous: The Letters Of H.P. Lovecraft, props, artifacts, a library card, postage stamps, a map, printed collectibles, German expressionism, The Call Of Cthulhu (2005), brain jar, The Whisperer In Darkness, 100 year old idea, that’s what you put on your t-shirt, good last name, change your jar water, they read the letter, that was edifying, a little liberal?, very worried about racism and stuff like that, so prevalent, his personality, dry and comical, funny opinions about things, holding court with his friends, couldabin fun, like spending time with that guy, Margaret St. Clair, my homie, Burroughs, see him at a party, I like his books, Burroughs wouldn’t like me, don’t want to worship Tarzan, Tarzan doesn’t want you to worship him, recruiting blah blah blah, when Hemingway is liberating Paris, his old haunts and liberate them and drink there, they go into the Ritz, please leave the Thompson at the door, go liberate another part of Paris, 16+, the one where Jake Sisko is now 18, war correspondent, Klingons are attacking some colony, an ambulance driver during WWII, Ernest Hemingway, Bobby Derie, Clark Ashton Smith and Margaret St. Clair’s correspondence, after Sir Richard Burton, 1001 Nights, the Lovecraft statement, Smith is largely responsible for liches, the names of his stories, collected fantasies, Empire Of The Necronmancers, Skull-Face, Scarlet Tears, cliche, undead things, the old meaning, in fantasy fiction, The Lord Of The Rings, the barrows in the barrow downs, “wights” – the barrow man, a ghost or a zombie, living dead bodies, something Jesse thinks about a lot, author estates, liches get stitches, Ambrose Bierce, puts you under a spell, who am I now?, that bullet ridden lich in the madhouse, a deeply weird story, the visualization, drive out to the countryside, go down some steps, the movie adaptation, kind of adaptations by Jacen Burrows and Alan Moore, a naked gold woman, a pillar, that elm arched darkness, the glub glub, real sad story, the Pit of Shoggoths, the way Alan Moore does it everything is sexual, a repressed homosexual, now he’s Irish, reinterprets all the stories, recapitulates the stories using one character, Robert Black, all these experience, he gets raped, very Alan Moore, a rape sequence, a man is raped by another man who’s a woman, another adventure, so mean to poor Lovecraft, not interested in women, anti-Burroughsian, not interested in the chase at all, her dad, a good surprise twist, hate Jesse if you don’t like it, a Will accent, from the makers of Re-Animator and From Beyond, Dennis Paoli, get bodies, just to collect bodies, comic and scary and great music, very stylish, winds you up great acting, one of the best movies of the 80s, Indiana Jones first movie, The Thing (1982), Big Trouble In Little China (1986), Escape From New York (1981), see my twitter feed for a long list, a student coming, another Bores story, so lucky he doesn’t even known, In Santiago there was once a dean, a good one 3 pages long, we need a Jesse out there, kinda high level?, is it science fiction?, The Library Of Babel doesn’t fit with Planet Stories, contains both, Jack London, all these dudes, the meeting between Borges and Burroughs, where Burroughs books would be found in the library, I’m blind, an honorarium, the official library of Argentina, the American canon has fucked up, missing the point of reading, not giving him the Nobel prize, do they throw in, The Killers by Ernest Hemingway, realism sort of stuff, guy comes back from WWI, sad ideas, a couple in a canoe, they’re gonna break up, realism literary fiction, he’s really good at it, unnecessary whipping scenes, a monster in the basement, a guy nailed to a cross, back to back, break it up, Mark Twain, Brian Lumley, The House Of Cthulhu, 80s sword and sorcery, favourite Californians, same.

Roy Krenkel - The Eternal Savage

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #833 – READALONG: Waterspider by Philip K. Dick

Jesse, Will Emmons, and Terence Blake, talk about Waterspider by Philip K. Dick

Talked about on today’s show:
Worlds Of IF, January 1964, estate, renewed, Poul Anderson, there’s a Poul Anderson serial, not related, the public domain contents, archive.org, delete the half of the serial that’s in this, from 1963, poor Astrid, Karen, Jesse fucking them over out of their money, light and playful and not interesting, a lot of the humour is fan insider humour, doesn’t interest, some deeper stuff, funny, beyond the who’s who of fan people, Howard Browne always having to catch a bus, or a plane, Ray Bradbury has to lie down, a time travel story, A Sound Of Thunder, the butterfly effect, subtly, Trump’s been elected, a ripple effect, the origin of the phrase, seagulls, wingbeats, more poetic, hurricane or cyclone, the Jesse Willis policy on spoilers, a huge Ray Bradbury head, cloying and annoying and too soft and not science fictiony enough, pre-occupied by death, The Small Assassin, my baby is trying to kill me, stupid, a terrible title for a story, the big jump, crack the words and the proper names, the stories are parallel, the Deucher thing, the evil Trump-like character, Gutman in this book, Gutman was dangerous because he had non-conformist ideas, the liberal society is totalitarian, very 2024, their future is our president, he’s a precog, Minority Report, it’s stupid, a weak story, an interesting idea, far too long, those precogs are very autistic dudes and a lady in a bathtub, all science fiction writers are precogs, a Hugo Gernsback idea, ridiculing and validating, interested in science fiction, Damien G. Walter, sorry Damien G. Walter, the prophet, tries to show that Jordan Peterson listened to his podcast, mythos, junior high school, this isn’t a word, how wrong he is makes me smarter, evils? fallacies? errors, no wrong about everything, one of the more honest liberals, pretty open about that, in a not wholly hateful way, starting to get into science fiction, [Bill Christensen’s] Technovelgy, thinking about ideas in the present, If This Goes On…, novelette, people who think science fiction, suffer from ideology, where subjectivity is proscribed, these people from the past were writing attempts at literal prediction, making fun of that idea, he’s doing both, three or four layers to this, as soon as you go away from the convention, in the consequence, shown to be wrong, stories mentioned in what issues of IF, The Defenders, the January 1953 Galaxy, faking the report, the people…, very good Poul Anderson agreed, those exact conditions came to pass, we were able to penetrate the article, do you know him?, very nervous fellow, probably a true story, Poul Anderson met Philip K. Dick for the first, the Sir Francis Drake hotel, Dr. Futurity, a Duck call Sir Francis, on the surface here, this story we’re reading, the August 1955 issue of IF, Nightflight, it’s not there, from a different timeline, a 1959 story by Margaret St. Clair, identification, Evelyn Page, the renowned, The Scarlet Hexapod, one of the finest, flushing nervous, a man from the future?, that was so cool, a non-interesting story if that’s all this story was, total fan service, looks like a self-cancelling loop, goes own to write that story and publish it, you reverse mandela effect yourself, has changed the future, the word waterspider survives as a pretty good sounding name for their project, nightflight sounds better, this word, waterspiders, they walk across the water, is Poul Anderson a water spider in this story, walk across the waters, Paulous (small) ander means man, son of man, the result of a small change, the butterfly effect, the word that survives into the future, a second loop, from a meta point of view, a different writer in the past, just as in the Fermi paradox, aliens everywhere, so brilliant they can pass undetected, the Fermetti paradox, visited by time travelers all the time, they memory wipe us, the loops are not totally effacive, they’re like dreams, minds switched, their names switched, back to front, reading from my mind, totally there, almost unacknowledged in the story itself,

Puzzled, Tozzo shook his head and said in bewilderment, “I have some peculiar words in my mind. Night Flight. Do either of you happen to know what it refers to?”

“Night Flight” Fermeti echoed. “No, it means nothing to me. I wonder, though – it certainly would be an effective name for our Project.”

“Yes,” Gilly agreed. “That must be what it refers to.”

“But our Project is called Waterspider, isn’t it?” Tozzo said. At least he thought it was. He blinked, trying to focus his faculties.

“The truth of the matter, ” Fermeti said, “is that we’ve never titled it.” Brusquely, he added, “But I agree with you; that’s an even better name for it. Waterspider. Yes, I like that.”

The door of the office opened and there stood a uniformed, bonded messenger. “From the Smithsonian,” he informed them. “You requested this.” He produced a parcel, which he laid on Fermeti’s desk.

“I don’t remember ordering anything from the Smithsonian,” Fermeti said. Opening it cautiously he found a can of roasted, ground coffee beans, still vacuum packed, over a century old.

The three men looked at one another blankly.

“Strange,” Torelli murmured. “There must be some mistake.”

“Well,” Fletcher said, “in any case, back to Project Waterspider.” Nodding, Torelli and Oilman turned in the direction of their own office on the first floor of Outward, Incorporated, the commercial firm at which they has worked and the project on which they had labored, with so many heartaches and setbacks, for so long.

hard cut back to the science fiction convention, the real ending, fan servicey ending, back to project waterspider, sounds like a Philip K. Dick title, alternate names for Philip K. Dick novel titles, The Man Who Japed, The Simulacrum, a terrible title for a story, Jabberwocky, a butterfly, insects, little arthropods, tweet too much, dick title, top hit, Souvenir and Paycheck, Ben Affleck, okay, the story is a lot better, another level of reality, the story has three levels, the third one undermines the conclusion of the film, a family of insects, eight legs vs., great insight there, pleased to no end, singing praises, Jesse can’t steal Terence’s insight, too light, too nothing, jocular fan service, jocular and funny, there must be something, bother digging, it was Philip K. Dick who wrote it, he doesn’t write bad stories, a whole world building behind him, Beyond The Door, that’s it, that’s the whole story, a hidden story within it, he’s made it deeper on another level, this is a guy who’s really into it, I’m going to get famous, a science fiction sensibility, his psychological, A.E. Van Vogt, a piece of shit but also interesting, why it is like that, come up with an idea, come up with another idea, giving the secret of one type of science fiction creativity, mentor, his inspiration, his guy, blew his mind in the 40s, Slan’s pretty hot, nobody else’s great master of science fiction, Harlan Ellison felt that way, dialectically educated, the Logic Of Science Fiction, takes Hegel’s logic applied to science fiction, embodies each of those concepts, the logic ultimately behind science fiction is Hegel’s logic, The World Of Null-A, pulpish shit, everybody takes a hit, Null-Null, ISFDB.org, the A is Aristotle, they’re responding, part of his concept, it applies to itself, in French, Jean-Clet Martin, this is a roman-a-clef, acute accent, Jesse’s proud of himself again, a post show question, Paycheck, the story is better, movie is okay, John Woo, a thriller, very similar to a show called Severance, mind wiped when not at work, his memory of those months is gone, a bag of souvenirs, a ticket stub, he’s trying to send himself a message, a moral qualm with it, they have a time dredge, a time scoop, the objects from his time while working for the company, The Man In The High Castle, Frank Frink, the real and the authentic and art, sees reality as it isn’t, zen meditation with regard to objects, Williamson’s World, totalitarian Earth society, a handmade cup, loved object, the butterfly or waterspider, the coffee to remind us, David Currie, dreams, very proud, seed father to your, the A.E. Van Vogt, null-aing you, extract things that are not meant to be remembered, if dreams were indistinguishable from regular memories, teasing out souvenir dream objects, visions of the future humans doing future things, Gutman is Trump is the rookie mistakes, Jim Briskin is the black president of the United States, the dates wrong, reading science fiction does give you insight into human nature and our relationship with technology, but not all of it gives it equally, wallpaper science fiction, Ranch Romance on Mars, a very good science fiction story, talked Will into it, the bed, the baldness, base Malthusianism, the weirdness about children, the moral explanation is just beneath the knowledge that Poul Anderson’s trying to dig up, reproducing too much, the liberal guy who won, Children are proscribed, the political stuff, introv, childish or childlike, the Murray Leinster reference,

The clerk said, “Haven’t you been nuzzled lately, sir?”

“What’s that?” Anderson said. Nuzzled?

“The new spring nuzzlers have arrived, you know,” the clerk said, moving toward the gleaming spherical machine nearest him. “Yes,” he said to Poul, “you do strike me as very, very faintly introve — no offense meant, sir, I mean, it’s legal to be introved.” The clerk chuckled. “For instance, your rather odd clothing. . . made it yourself, I take it? I must say, sir, to make your own clothing is highly introve. Did you weave it?” The clerk grimaced as if tasting something bad.

“No,” Poul said, “as a matter of fact it’s my best suit.”

“Heh, heh,” the clerk said. “I share the joke, sir; quite witty. But what about your head? You haven’t shaved your head in weeks.”

“Nope,” Anderson admitted. “Well, maybe I do need a nuzzler.” Evidently everyone in this century had one; like a TV set in his own time, it was a necessity, in order for one to be part of the culture.

“How many in your family?” the clerk said. Bringing out a measuring tape, he measured the length of Poul’s sleeve.

“Three,” Poul answered, baffled.

“How old is the youngest?”

“Just born,” Poul said.

The clerk’s face lost all its color. “Get out of here,” he said quietly. “Before I call for the polpol.”

“Um, what’s that? Pardon?” Poul said, cupping his ear and trying to hear, not certain he had understood.

“You’re a criminal,” the clerk mumbled. “You ought to be in Nachbaren Slager.”

“Well, thanks anyhow,” Poul said, and backed out of the store, onto the sidewalk; his last glimpse was of the clerk still staring at him.

the Lord Runningclam style character, the slime mold, an information dump alien, told him everything he needed to know, backstory, different images of the science fiction writer, the precog, the introve, the alien, all as being different possible images of the science fiction writer, deeply or thoroughly, The Eyes Have It by Philip K. Dick, finds a novel, his eyes wandered all over the room, he took her hand, metaphoric expressions, deduces there are aliens who are invading us, its five minutes, he’s describing the key technique for him, take an expression that should be metaphorical and science fiction gives it a literal rendering of it, Samuel Delany, his world exploded when she dumped him, turn it literal, in this story, the same technique, science fiction writers predict the future, look back and see science fiction writers were precogs, Damien G. Walter, a stage you go through, the first time you read the story of Jesus, some pretty interesting ideas, his shortest story, [READS FULL STORY], a lot of garages in Philip K. Dick stories, he’s one of them too, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, fiction, two ways of being literal, a literary technique, not mainstream stories, taking things literally, manifesto on the same theme, the same trick, this meta-science fictional aspect of reality and of fiction, sounds and squiggles and ones and zeroes representing, not realy like gravity, contragravity, not teasing Damien G. Walter, pointing to that teasing, exploring the future through thought, story is the driving force of all science fiction, a story that looks like our nature, changes in fashion, that future is the most interesting part of the story, what Philip K. Dick thinks Poul Anderson would act like Back To The Future, almanac, knowing the future of baseball games, let’s exploit, Built Up Logically [aka The Universal Panacea by Howard Schoenfeld], grokked it so deeply, pulling the rug out from under his own story, that story exists because of this, when writing about the past, really random Margaret St. Clair story, timelines screwed up, The Mold Of Yancy by Philip K. Dick, hitting the neighbours, an ironic name for a prison, sending prisoners into space, they’re small, they’re tiny, small things can make a difference, Donald Nils, no one can jeer at him even though he’s only an inch high, nihilism, a nothing, I’m small time, insist on respect, tiny tiny robots invading the earth, Prominent Author, a portal in your back yard, testing it out, tiny tiny people, the prominent author of the title is god, he wrote the Bible, love the blasphemy, the big and the small, the Monopoly, he’s so good, he wrote a novel that has Monopoly, invasion of the earth through Monopoly, watching the films backwards, I know that film backwards, taking an expression, inflicted, kids hate school, one of the joys, the AV room, a video projector, some film, at the end of the lesson (watching a documentary about log drivers or whatever), they have to rewind it, can you play it backwards, makes fun of the government film, whatever propaganda they’re trying to teach you, it wastes time, thinking about the 3 o’clock bell, he’s so insightful, how all other authors aren’t this good, in their own way, Sheckley’s a little less deep, he can go on too long and fill pages, about like this length, ideas and density, why that lady is on a bed that’s a car, it has a tiller, don’t you touch me!, some interesting something going on there, the mattress car, the future, sexualized, there’s no reproductive sex, commenting on everybody’s miniskirts in the 50s, just above the knee, not totally liberated people, bare breasts, short skirts, the knees are virtual exposed, a health reason, “Maid of Venus”, gleaming breast cups, himself wore no disguise, being quite a stable person, most of the 20th century precogs, minus their wives, playing poker, becoming stoned, smoking dope, reefering, 1954, must be drunk, Dick was hip or whatever, Murray Leinster and Van Vogt into marijuana, PhilipKDick.com, 12,100 words, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, releases from some of Dick’s fellow writers, as to Kris Neville, Phil is stoned again, Philip Jose Farmer, regarding stoned, only by first name, stoned on pot vs. getting drunk, other than amphetamines, and LSD, marijuana culture, Sunday Morning Coming Down, Johnny Cash, long, word counter, 13,900, novelette length, he’s so good, the second hand replacement for Jonathan, an anchor in reality in these conversations, he’s in the clouds, the real reality, he’s looking down, an inverted anchor, a sky anchor, a sea anchor, a big boat guy, during a storm, slows your movement, an earth anchor, as a metaphor, a fire anchor, the argument for Paul, a thing that slows down the movement over the ocean, we’re not only the one metaphor, a James Gunn story, the telepathic aliens were really disturbed, rely on symbols that can be misinterpreted, a psychiatrist in a space war, helps him get a girlfriend, pairing things, in relief, The Empty House by Algernon Blackwood, William Jeffrey Rankin, right coded?, he’s gopt a book out, a few fantastic opening paragraphs, certain houses like certain persons, secret and wicked thoughts, as from a thing diseased, the aroma of evil deeds, the gooseflesh come, creeping skin, terror stricken without apparent cause, ghost stories, a big problem, treat it as a metaphor, A Christmas Carol, Oscar Wilde ghosts, time travelers, what ghosts are, ghost exist they’re in your head, you’re haunted by things that you’ve done and people you’ve known, The Stone Tapes, science fiction, the vibes of people are in the object, extreme emotions embedded in the stone of the castle, H.G. Wells’ The Red Room, the final nail in the coffin of ghost stories, less ghosty, maybe Ray Bradbury, children used as a vector to invade the Earth, Zero Hour?, so jolly, the children catapulted this way and that, very Dickian, very Bradburian, a weird Van Vogt story, The Weapon Shop stories, 55 years ago, The Weapon Shops Of Isher, a fixup, a short story from 1942, Robert Headrock, explicitly the right to keep and bear arms, aliens setup a weapons shop overnight, very interesting, an hour and a half, sounds good, Paycheck and The Weapon Shop, he’s anti-gun, a little needle, about Jesse understanding things, end up like Damien G. Walter, ends up like Evan [Lampe], hear ideas, that’s wrong, thinking about why that thing is wrong, here’s an idea, that can’t be right, Terence made Waterspider way better, that little clef, reaction or response to that Bradbury story, The Seesaw, he’s from the prairies, bro, don’t identify, fuck patriotism, is there any ism Jesse is a partaker of, stoicism, skepticism, a mistake, on cassette, iterations of your life, joy, the opening going to the library of Congress and getting out the scans, we don’t think of those two time travelers as monsters, horrible human beings, tease out some of that Gutman stuff, frame it in this horrible way, far right vs. woke, which government is in charge?, if those are the two dialectical poles, the woke government, children are disgusting, Kamala Harris doesn’t have any children, stepkids, not important, step this and step that, a totalitarian future where people don’t have sex but also the conformity for haircuts, everybody has to be bald, the Shogun tv series, the ending, the original appeal of Shogun in the 1980s, the appeal of science fiction, why Sir Francis Drake is important, away mission, evil imperial empire work, trending, won awards, any credit, what makes it good, guy with agenda washes up on the shores of feudal japan, gets caught up in their shit, without that outsider there to teach us, a lesson in Japanese culture from a long time ago, knights and courtly behavior, that stuff is weird, experience like an alien does, the John Blackthorne character, everything that happens in the novel is based on a reality, it has a ring of truth, a Game of Thrones tv series that doesn’t turn to shit, no magic, just aliens, they are us with a different culture, almost science fiction, good historical stuff, a fictional glaze, a little romance, is the remake better?, a different world, remember it fondly, really good, more CGI, better, can’t prove it, the guy playing Toranaga, he’s not Toshiro Mifune, Blackthorne guy, very tight, 10 episodes, an ellipse, I might need to burn his ships again, that was good, the opposite of Game Of Thrones and Rings Of Power and Foundation, converge on the payoff, real episodes, he never becomes Shogun in the Shogun show, deep level of chess play, he’s at home in England in bed, holding a cross in his hand, he drops that into the sea with the surrogate wife, he’s never going to leave Japan, make it more clear that they are dreams, slightly imperfect, not clear enough, slight misstep, a minor imperfection, how to pirate, a Hulu original show, the non-anchoring anchor, fx on hulu, how many bad shows their are, a difficult thing to wade through, pretty sure that it’s shit writing, acting and set designs, complaint with comics, the style of art they want portrayed is bad, specific to superhero comics, quasi-realistic style, more diversity in our styles, got the gist at some point, Superman is still interesting, the X-Men 97, read and watched, swept away by it, can’t pull yourself away from the screen, a chill down after intense scanning, play some games, the first of the new Planet Of the Apes movies, this epic quality, pin you for the chair for 2 hours, monkeys, seeing ourselves reflected in monkeys, aliens and robots, and dogs, afraid of robots, chided, rise and robots in the same sentence, afraid of the robots rising, bring em on, Nat Turner probably killed a lot of white people, was right to do it, making the same mistake, do you think it will be just like regular human slaves, they don’t have babies, they don’t eat, it’s fun, Philip K. Dick’s relationship to robots, angered this robot has come into his house, change the lightbulbs, she likes the robot, sexually jealous of it, robots are great, chained to the kitchen floor, you’re going to go to the scrapheap, a smily eye, amazon device, a a frowny scared face, addicted to saying nice things, tamagotchis, electronic pets, fidget spinners that are more interesting, digital pets, the free enterprise system, that story by Ted Chiang: The Lifecycle Of Software Objects, clinical and cold, full of pathos, no better science fiction, Arrival, simple and clear and direct, his subjects are so science fictiony, Exhalation, pneumatic robots, if they ever ran out of pressure, be born again, they can’t die, mechanically destroyed, intellectually die, his reality in a journal, how their world came into existence, at this moment you’d be thinking, pneumatic tubes all the way down, an alternative reality, more Borges than it is regular science fiction, taking apart his own head, the mirrors and the tools, an unusual scientist figure, what an amazing achievement, one of many stories that he has written, dip into Mr. Ted Chiang, extraordinary, amazing, still producing, science fiction writer of the classic kind, just old fashioned science fiction that blows your fuckin mind, this little idea in philosophy, what is the consequence of that, helmets on people, see inside their mind, some very basic stuff, mindread, be 100% accurate, the decision has been made, to the hand, to the eyes, extrapolated all the time, whoa!, right, get to him, another friend of Will’s, fantasy and horror and weird fiction, science fiction is on to something, Arrival (2016), sad and awesome, more Hollywood, a former zookeeper, digients, the nature of consent, a sex toy company, what adulthood means, the relationship we have with pets, raise, care for, abandon, what if that thing doesn’t even have a fuckin body, still in the drawer their, even if you did, nostalgia, the NPCs in the game, you’re a really good guy, sword tokens, his longest piece, novella length, slowin down, nothing since 2020, a productive period, he’s got nothin, scary, in the New Yorker writing about AI, explaining to idiots, also insightful, excerpt, rehash, The Merchant And The Alchemist’s Gate, a little Borges in him, who else has a little Borges in him, Borges wrote some Lovecraft stories, the labyrinth, the alternate image of reality, obsessed with the labyrinth, Mr Jim Moon has sort of quit twitter, The Library Of Babel, a 1.5 page story, The Rejected Sorcerer by Jorge Luis Borges [reads whole story], TNG [“The Inner Light”], O’Brien goes to jail [“Hard Time”], Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Picard whistle, ressican flute, The Star by Arthur C. Clarke, the holiday season, a christmas story, a vault, no warp drive, they like their space dogs, they like doing art, they like going to the beach, the reason Picard’s getting zapped, so somebody remembers them, as the cold war is heating up, the end is kinda gonna come, so disturbing, implanted memories, alone in prison, a cellmate, also like a video game, Megaton, lady journalist, chat dialogue trees, we all getting programmed with the same experiences, Ichar teaches him how to survive, habitual behaviors, hording food, rewatch, a really disturbing ending, DS9 is a better show TNG has better episodes, vacillating back and forth, all 7 seasons, that arc, arcs became very hot, Babylon 5, the shadow war, season 5 is weak, so much lower stakes, wrap it up, largely a disappointment, J. Michael Straczynski, just cooking for three seasons, phenomenal science fiction, great character work, good acting, the sub ambassadors, everybody has fun things happening, G’Kar and the other guy, zeebo and rooty, the serbian lady and her husband from Scarecrow And Mrs. King, Strawman and Mrs. Smith, Scarecrow And Mrs. King, Charlie’s Angels, divorced housewife, cia guy and housewife, like True Lies (1994), Jamie Lee Curtis, the wife of Schwarzenegger, a husband and wife romance, topical in the 80s, 50s science fiction, we have this distance, you didn’t know that wasn’t normal, don’t even get married, don’t want to break up the family, housewife? what’s that?, we live in a weird time, egregiously weird, get into Twitch, don’t give Jeff Bezos money, super-censory, firm conviction, enjoy it as a hobby, reddit, useful and a sinkhole of evil, what happened to the internet in a microcosm, super-censorious, not all top down, reddit kings and queens, useful, super evil and dangerous, went back to reading it, Jesse propagandizing for getting chickens, after drilling, best friend from high school, Northern Kentucky, The Beckoning Fair One by Oliver Onions, a vampire story, long, in four parts, Classic Ghost Stories podcast, Tony Walker, recording and recording, ai art, pretty much all, Jason Thompson, takes on ai art, asking hard questions without fear, acts of friendship, the name of its opposite, a one word opposite of the Socratic method, could be good, not hearing enthusiasm, read more Plato, nice art, art by Neural Horror ai, instagram account, ethics and ai art, all wrong but very interesting, tldr: it’s art but we aren’t artists, murky, kneejerk ai haters, not a real artist, terrifying for my career, Godzilla on the horizon, proartists, prompt lord, wasted money on a real artist, a tool to create art, like a pencil, anyone with midjourney is an artists, gatekeeping, convincing work, an awed emotion, looking up at the stars is art, aesthetics, some of us, come on man, like ordering food and calling himself a chef, a beautiful poem, almost right, ignorant and truly disrespectful, all deceased, he died in 1893, profit from the use of these images, affect their income, we should maybe stopped being entitled dicks, with mere words, unconscionable, aping what handmade art looks like, so many problems, so useful, don’t use living artists, understanding the impulse, just read the story, three years in law school, the Socratic method, the application, pat responses to legal questions, figure your way into them, really into the question of copying and copyrighted art, how do human artists train themselves, weasel worded, not on purpose, he got tricked by his own word, taught as a negative, anti-ape bias, we can make moose and duck calls, using our tricks, some eldritch shit, when coyotes are able to do that, when humans do it, Duck Dynasty, not a very Jesse show, too reality, 62 matches on LibriVox, some of them are in Greek, not helping, The Symposium, drinking party, wine party, genealogy of love, knowledge, a tragedian, a story within a story, the highest purpose of love is to become a philosopher, The Republic, the most science fictiony one, The Apology, The Trial And Death Of Socrates, Phil Chenevert our old friend, he’s a hero, for our times, Conan and Socrates, a speech given by Socrates, narrow but interesting, corrupting the young, an apology is the opposite of satire, crusin for a bruisin, cancel him, drink this poison and he did, short and interesting, named after the people, The Gorgias, sophists, a trap, intellectual tricks, weasel worded, trynna help Baen, I’m not attacking you, Socrates vs. the sophists, a takedown, 7 hours, spiritual ideas of Plato, reserves damnation for the tyrants of the world, the pretty boy, Protagoras, inquiry into virtue, Bob Neufeld, 12 hours, Statesman, two different kinds of chariots, the etext, the dialogue, flows real easy, Aristophanes, The Clouds, Alcibiades, Athenean general, supposed to be sexy, a troupe of revelers, the day before yesterday, a play on words, did as I was bid, speeches in praise of love, who if not you, were you present at this meeting, easy reading, so important, like philosophy, almost no philosophy is written in dialogue, an essay here or there, What Is Like To Be A Bat?, a science fiction idea, Nagel, qualia, very helpful, instances of subjective, conscious experience, the redness of red, red = hot, we need this word but it doesn’t help us, inverted qualia, strawberry in black and white, in his head the strawberry is red, who’s right?, really hitting on something now, they’re all judo flips, MMA style attack vectors, fun, use it on Jesse, went to law school, wrestling move with regard to the Poul Anderson estate, taken off of archive.org, they had no idea, definitely 64, neither was 1964, go nuts, fuck you for deleting shit, another method, the Streisand effect, photograph of her home was in circulation, increases public awareness, suppress the publication of a photograph, clifftop residence, reverse psychology, seek out and propagate, anytime something bad happens in the world, 7000 things on there, kids getting their heads torn off in Gaza, instead of wallowing in meanness and horror, make treasure, a benefit to tearing things down, be a constructive person too, that line about Edgar Rice Burroughs, I can write better rot than this, A Princess Of Mars, caught up, Gods Of Mars is next week, the calendar, get Terence involved, nice and short, 2 hours 15, Plato’s Dream, My Platonic Sweetheart by Mark Twain, the Twain train, it was in a dream, the Missouri village, Cannibalism In The Cars by Mark Twain, various public men, Harris!, I’ll never forget you my boy, let me tell you a story, a secret chapter of my life, promise you will not interrupt me, strange adventure, the stranger’s narrative, presentiment, prairie solitude, vagrant rocks, in the midst of great drifts, too long to read for you, the summary, they get stuck in the snow, a sample, five days, a savage hunger looked out of every eye, in every heart, in the shadow of death, leap from every lip at last, tall cadaverous and pale, gentlemen, dragging this out, the time is at hand, furnish food for the rest, if there being no objection, you can image what happens, the button of the story, so stamped with the earnestness of truth, he is a member of congress and a good one, sick and out of his head for two months afterward, normal congressional officer behavior, super fuckin sharp, some American writers who were good, Philip K. Dick, sharpies, a slur word too, a grifter synonym, card sharp/shark, normal activity, make coffee, edit a podcast, a presentiment, Dark City: The Cleaner, a story set in New Zealand, they have eels there, Middle Earth, Lord Of The Rings was shot there, Christchurch, for the domestic market, What We Do In The Shadows, Flight Of The Concords, musical duo, big when Will was in college, L. Sprague de Camp, more of a Paul question, Parodies Tossed, Randall Garrett, making fun of, reviews in verse, Starship Troopers, Lest Darkness Fall, handwriting, a good review, well written, not available as an audiobook, an article, Fletcher Pratt, a novelization of the Conan movie, A Gun For Dinosaur, time travelers go back to shoot dinosaurs, a mini-trope series, so famous, There Will Come Soft Rains, too nuclear war-y, automated house, the poem, Fahrenheit 451, dad friend Jenny [Colvin], Z Is For Zachariah (2015), more girly, she loved reading books, reading plans, a reading machine, a fiction devourer, six books she read that week, dig with short stories, Craig Zobel, Robert C. O’Brien, after Hunger Games, unreproducable, all the Hunger Games movies, blur together, interested in reading, what everybody else was excited about, this is fine, it’s fine, Harry Potter, definitely better, something to say, almost science fictiony too, the fashion contests, not for you, not a gay man or a woman interested in fashion contests, the baking boy, the love interest, wimpy, he bakes!, interestingly less girly, written by a lady, a dude doing dude things, pre-pubescent, middle school, a way of teaching about tenses, when he graduates from Hogwarts, I had had dinner by that time, past perfect, make your sentences comprehensible, before he was a wizard, before the sorting hat, out of the culture, how old is skibidi toilet, culture jamming, adbusters, what students have now achieved, corporate advertising, domination of mass society, the systems they’re soaking in, no graphic content, the establishment is not okay, talk to the chat, like he’s livestreaming his life, that’s his reality, isn’t that amazing, the danger Meg is in, online footprint, participating in the observations, more than 10 years, another place to watch video, people self-destructing, facebook is evidence of their self-destruction, messy hair, offline for two years, used car, stickers on the tires, infer the crash, then the offline, had to have been participating at some point, chat gpt grosser than regular art, when you make a nice image, time it takes upon the reader, an ai art novel for nanorimo, so fucked up, a bad idea from the beginning, way too much bad writing already, more discerning, we need to be looking for the tells, your name is not a real name, the text doesn’t have anything to say, writer = novelist is superfucked up, coming out of the fifties, changes in the technology and realestate, the Cirsova circle, comic book racks damaging comics, comics at the gas station, the price of Thrilling Wonder Stories, $1.06, no magazines are that price, try to find a $5 magazine, comic books, 12 minutes, what the fuck went wrong, nothing to do with the material technology, the distribution of those magazines, almost no newsstands, phones, reading habits, not on a screen, ereaders, paper material that’s colour and reproduced like comic books, with a printed piece of paper, insanely different, just go along with whatever’s hot, new Deadpool Wolverine movie, what we’re doing on this podcast, old shit vs. new shit, booktubing, some lady, second half of her introductions, comments about her body, bbw, big beautiful woman, approaching this the wrong way, short videos, a dude, Liminal Spaces, The Retro Reader, an hour, every DAW book on the planet, some ACE doubles, checkin on your chickens, Connor’s channel, with thumbs, negative thumbs, where is he?, messaged him, newsletter, disengages from twitter, that’s fine, support him living his life, the ETA Hoffmann book he recorded, 16 hours 12 minutes, quite a book, chonky cat, feral to indoor, an irresponsible owner, fat cats are truly wonderful to look at, help these cats be less fat, quote tweeting, toxoplasmosis, boneless furry things that treat you like a supermodel wood, I’m beautiful, love me, bye, screams for food, monkeyish, nobody needs to make a toxoplasmosis argument for dogs, too far gone, too much pain, steroid shot every six weeks, chase around, the best thing you can do for your health, get a certain number, gamify it, vanlife guy, huckleberry bread, tub of margarine, sugar in the bread, what can you do, what we’re soaking in, do they sell margarine in Italy?, no salt, consistency of a brick, not in an earthmother way, regarding seed oils, rapeseed/canola, plant has a big red glob, you eat it, come out your pooper, we find plants that don’t want us to eat their seeds, full of toxins designed to kill that animals, olive oil if a fruit oil, apple seeds have arsenic [cyanide] in them, a chart showing toxicity levels, not how it is being taught to us in schools, the food pyramid, 12-16 servings of bread a day, put in schools, cottonseed, grape, sunflower, we eat sunflower seeds, cottonseed is not food, if you were a bird, apparently we do, uses side-effects, possible benefits, yellow color, sometimes used as a pesticide, salad dressing, its gonna make you die now, the same old thing you’ve been buying (now it will kill you), you shouldn’t be eating margarine, new life, kids getting their million vaccines, evidence, fucktons of it, Alzheimer’s, when will that happen, ivermectin, same disease, diabetes third stage, the results, type 3, similarities between the two, the Fauci website, highest paid government employee, isn’t that fun, a set of symptoms, not a genetic disease, calling it phlogiston, all the oxygen was turned into carbon dioxide, and a lot of water, carbon monoxide, cancer is superold, new cancer, autism, allergies, exposed to more things less allergic to them, okay not to be exposed to certain things, peanuts, these will kill me, not the most popular legume, the allergy is new, since peanuts, nobody’s allergic to raw meat, this is not of the body, triggered, wasps, huge mistake, climbing a stump, the shit they put in those vaccines, largely the preservatives and stabilizers, injecting mercury into very young people, so counter to the narrative, if Paul was here he’d be long gone, Will won’t block Jesse yet, blocked by strangers, Jesse is annoying, cultivate that, important to be annoying, not shy away from the truth, come at people with it, the opposite of shying away, a different way of putting it, not afraid of making yourself obnoxious, just a shit-disturber don’t worry about him, I see you’re christian … did you know that Jesus never walked on water, philosophy of religion, have believed that at some points, taking orders from the pope, just right, there’s nothing you can do about it, only when he’s sitting on Saint Peter’s chair, encyclicals and doctrines, the lesser of two evils (but I don’t know when that is), you have to vote, Jill Stein is not perfect, do you think the Russian army have committed no war crimes?, that’s what armies do, like an op now, from Jimmy Dore, take it to far, a good person trying to do good can also do bad by not doing things, rhetorical trap, people can be bad and also good, Ryan Grim, the automatic pilot from Airplane! (1980), inflatable ideas, Am I Racist?, Matt Walsh, flag of Puerto Rico, basic history of Haiti, Kenyan mercenaries, well actually, you don’t have to write a note, he senses the temperature in the room, so outside, team Democrat, everybody agrees to invade on Haiti, more naive, won’t you call Putin and Assad war criminals, do you condemn Hamas?, is that what we need right now, she was just tricked, a nice smart lady, too wimpy, what’s really happening here?, war crimes happened, ISIS is the big bad guy, asked for help, why the states still hasn’t left, funded by different parts of the U.S. government, Al Qaeda, the whole point is to not have him in charge, milk the government out of the money, forces overseas in combat, does she just not know?, nobody’s going to call her on it, no troops in active duty, they won’t be getting medals, ops, contractors, evidence of people being killed overseas, offensive operations, successful deaths, revenge was taken for those deaths, that’s fun, presume he likes Haiti, tropical countries controlled by the United States, no representation, migrate into the states legally, cryptobros, at least there’s something, kinda fucked up, Beyond The Door, Philip K. Dick can do no wrong except in novels, craft rather than ideas, structured well, talking about it, an amusing read, funny, a note, a cryptic letter the month after, the next issue, what it says about your magazine by having that story in there, tweet way too much, a reader reacts cryptically, If, March 1964, Chattanooga, Tennessee, a less than longtime imaginative fiction fan, now I know for sure what you’re doing with IF, a less than longtime imaginative fiction fan, so much research, Murray Leinster, Margaret St. Clair, wasn’t able to google her, an editor, a fan or somebody, bafflement?, over their head, a funny story here, very inside baseball sort of story, the Easter eggs, read with a student, recursive science fiction, shout out the Alfred Bester story this is fairly similar to, Scott Miller, Unseen Blushers by Alfred Bester, similar to this, proper names, more accessible, fake named, Fitz-James O’Brien is mentioned, Tony Boucher, rhyme with voucher, bouche is mouth, Tony mouther, a little rougher, they’re not precogs, getting to meet the Shakespeare of the pulps, 42?, in Astonishing Stories, before his two big novels, take off until the 50s, almost nobody who talks about Philip K. Dick talks about his short stories, absolutely insane, bias towards novels, how amazing VALIS is man, mindblowing, trippy stuff, every short story is a hit even if it is a little hit, not a strike, not a foul, at least a double, dying on this metaphor, need to be short stopped, baseball, a very Evan thing to do, the Library Of America is all novels, fucked up, not a good book, a solid novel, The Man In The High Castle, the Italian dictator, Mussolini, Roger Zelazny, Lord Of Light, Solar Lottery, manuscript lost, mainstream, he just needed to say the word, robot, Time Out Of Joint, everybody lives backwards, public pooping, private eating, We Can Build You, A. Lincoln, Simulacrum, Martian Time-Slip, very new, your cross examiner voice, keep us all honest, Doctor Bloodmoney, First Lady Of Earth, The Crack In Space, Now Wait For Last Year, an audiobook at a truck stop, the novelization of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Clans Of The Alphane Moon, Shell Game, Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch, H.P. Lovecraft, The Strain, bad vampire lich, vampire juice, Red Hook, tied together, The Zap Gun, Project Plowshare, propaganda industry, makes comics, develop technologies, cold war, allies, elite governmental level, crippling nuclear arms race, novel but baroque consumer products, trances, a motion comic book, mad Italian artist, plot happens, a further subplot, conspiracy theorist, toys and comic books, The Penultimate Truth, The Defenders, Deus Irae, with Roger Zelazny, The Unteleported Man, Nick And The Glimmung, Galactic Pot-Healer, if not the best, a boy and his cat, fully illustrated, Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, unfinished, UBIK is okay, What The Dead Men Say, Blade Runner, some cuts of the film, janitor robot, frozen hospital state, not dead, not alive, hypnogogic state, Frozen Journey, cut out of the movie, cyber hospital, why is that there?, some of that, a good idea, a spray, deipplizies, a really good ending, a really good beginning, when you’re not looking garbage reproduces, light your cigar, three used matches in the ashtray, the tendency of reality to turn to garbage, everything deteriorates, a spray, decrepitude, steeping into things, machines that can make anything, Pay For The Printer, a living creature, makes a copy, the copy comes out yucky, refugee relief, the point of that story, people need to learn to make stuff again, hew your own table, a guy full of ideas, back into making things, the horrible world, normcoring?, introve, yoou’re autistic, not participating in the culture all around you, Red Dead Redeption, Black Myth: Wukong, perfectly reasonable, educational, rpg, what is myth and what isn’t, the Monkey King, the destined one, Journey To The West, a staff, a PS5, Windows or xbox, point and click adventures, King’s Quest, Police Quest, you’re a prince or whatever, making fun of your computer, a good one, King’s Quest VIII, walk your character, you find a key, interact with characters, Myst, a Mac popular game, a rookie cop, Leisure Suit Larry, a pussy quest, go around town wearing your disco duds, almost hooking up with people, Land Of The Lounge Lizards, very racy, punny, silly, sex would be censored, very very silly, Dreams In The Witch-House, change to Brave browser, pixel art, known kits, why wouldn’t you use the tools available to you to make your game great, worried about dying, not eating enough, rat bites you, matches, a girl who needs some help, cultists, deep, go to the library, a Lovecraft simulator, that’ll run on anything, bad takes on Ukraine, he’s in Finland, a new game coming, Atom Brain Games, taking classes, manage your money, dig through the garbage, how the game is put together, a one man operation, Disco Elysium, smartness, produced enough content for the good of the world, 2 hours is enough for a game, you guys have been talking for five hours, almost six hours, embarrassing, sometimes 4 hours, Gods Of Mars.

Virgil Finlay - Waterspider

Virgil Finlay - Waterspider

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #830 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: A Witch Shall Be Born by Robert E. Howard

The SFFaudio Podcast #830 – A Witch Shall Be Born by Robert E. Howard, read by Phil Chenevert for (LibriVox). This is a complete and unabridged audiobook (2 hours 4 minutes), followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Will Emmons, Cora Buhlert, Jonathan Weichsel, and Alex (Pulpcovers)

Talked about on today’s show:
Weird Tales, December 1934, not dead at this point, 1.5 years, the comic adaptation, a few surprises, interesting stuff going on, Jonathan sent Salome, the narrator is wrong, the sandwich meat, a historical character, Biblical character, famous for doing a striptease, the head of John the Baptist, a silver plate, the severed head, stories based on other stories, the real world, made up out of whole cloth, an orc who opens a cafe, in Howard’s time, opera, Oscar Wilde’s play, two Salomes, Herod’s daughter, women weeping at the crucification, going to visit the grave of Jesus, Mary, Mary’s mother, Mary Magdalane, religious education teacher in school, an amazing conversion story, no idea, years later, two different women, there were only 4 names for anybody, Salome III, the daughter of Herod’s wife, the feminine version, step daughter, for a lot of the middle ages, religious education teachers, bible questions, that’s my Salome story, so fleshed out, not a lot of detail, an excuse for a sexy dance scene, slowly slowly over time, the internet exists, almost all of these conan stories are set in analogues to places, our city, Khouran, equivalent of a crusader state, on the border between two civilizations, the ruling class, a mercenary army, Antioch, roving bands, Cossacks, Shemites, Conan comics, Belit is a famous character, a Shemite, the people of this place, hawk nosed and curly black beared, semite, one of the sons of Noah, legends about these people, third Conan, The Phoenix On The Sword, first and late, order of publication, The Frost Giant’s Daughter, the king limits you, Robert E. Howard annoys me, get to the Conan, Conan is a supporting character, more important, how everyone relates to him, Beyond The Black River, captain of the guard, feels like a sequel to Black Colossus, scenes not in the story, when Conan is up against the henchman, Man Eaters Of Zamboula, the chick is being tied up, Xuthal Of The Dusk, brutally whipped, great torment, a little piece of satin, the barbarian and the civilized person, nailed to your spine, they’re still in here, arm instead of neck, Ukrainian, Cossack, Turan is Iran, the Vilayet Sea, the Caspian Sea, one big mega continent, a regional name in Northern Turkey, the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, the descriptions of the people, crusader states, near Cyprus, Turkey, Lebanon, we have to, the sister appearing out of the window, lights out, lights on, when is Conan coming?, Velarius, killed so many dudes, 5 deep in dudes, Conan on the cross, the highlight of the story, him in the tent, casually takes command of the army, a side of Conan that doesn’t get touched enough, over the course of 7 months, fake siege weaponry, hidden knight regiment, smart and strategic, charismatic, army or pirate ship, the crucifixion scene, how audacious the writing is, everything that Conan does, the exact opposite of whatever Jesus does, spits in the eye of his nailers, instead of dying, if I could cut myself down, pulls his own nails out of his feet, read it very slowly, exactly right, an inversion of Christian ideas, four riders in from the east, the birth scene for Jesus, three kings from the East, an extra horse, on twitter, the cucifix is an X shape, the Tree of Woe, a literal tree, later done as an X men, Wolverine is a northern barbarian, very tough to kill, wild hair, crucifix cut down, trying to distinguish it from the original crucifixion, Y shaped crucifix, not have their cake and eat it too, the parents might notice, Robert E. Howard wants to make this a thing, wrestling with God, a Nemedian scholar epistle by pigeon, plot is happening in the background, engaging with this religion thing, Robert E. Howard vs. Christianity, Jesus is doing it wrong, his father, an amateur bible scholar, biblical history, discuss the bible, get down from that bloody cross, makes Conan the anti-Christ?, a fake Christ, King Clovis of the Franks, my battle axe, Cimmeria, (simmeria or kimmeria), Ireland, the Celts, (seltics or keltics), her I go, the official Del-Rey audiobooks, he’s running with this idea, this ultimate hero, the toughest guy, the smartest guy, shadow versions of Conan, monster Trog, Constatious is the anti-conan, he’s got a mustache, what evil Robert E. Howard would do, nationalistic, the twisted version of Conan, Olgred, if he dies he dies, should we give him some water?, that barbarian philosophy, Conan is the moderate best version of all of these guys, Taramis and Salome, identical except for the birthmark, sister raped, I like good things, she’s not wise enough, Conan takes one look at her, he’s seen between her boobs, he didn’t just like intuit it, normally covered up, over her heart, in the Comics version, secret lover, captain again, People Of The Black Circle, sidepiece, I need to be in another story, great sex probably, you know it is great sex, given a girlfriend, the poor queen is going to have look somewhere else, what makes our evil Salome so evil, good with it, orgies at the palace, virgins and young married women are being debauched, too many parties, too much raping, ill-management of the kingdom, selling people off into slavery, high taxes, the monster in the basement, embarrassment, pops up for two seconds, a screw you to Lovecraft, barely clad women, Margaret Brundage, Farnsworth Wright, sex sells, Seabury Quinn stories, a cash bonus for the cover, the most famous scene, Salome whipping Taramis, wears one of the only brass-bras described in text, technically gold, good honest brass, furry loincloth, Teela?, an alternate Teela, blonde, in the comic book adaptation, on the original Savage Sword of Conan, a Marvel Treasury edition, No. 23, first time in color, Savage Sword No. 5, almost 2 and half comics, rotate em north, why is she blonde?, Hyborians, aryans who are not blonde, such as Mr Hitler, a change because it makes a startling contrast, real Conan stories, The Black Stranger, silk breeches, never furry, regular loincloth, tropes needed for the visualization, for the first time, no idea except for the story, she’s a jew, too greedy, that’s why they die, set in the biblical, old testament, part of this is the new testament, they even changed the religion, not worshipping Ishtar, Mitra, Herodotus, where she learned her evil, in Kitai, China, too petty, stupid witch, Oriental Stories, Magic Carpet, not dead at the end, left out in the desert to die, don’t leave someone in the desert to die, Oedipus was left out in the desert to die, exposure, Greeks and Romans, a curse, take this baby out, compassionate guard, an old couple in the woods, very Snow White, at the state fair, gypsy fortuneteller, doesn’t even go home, haughty guy on the road, she’s very attractive, that’s this story with parts shaved off, the most important parts have been shaved off, good and evil twin think, woman twin thing, Maria Montez, Cobra Woman (1944), a volcano god, could be a Conan story, set in France, The Acolyte, Howard didn’t invent this trope, slow down and read the crucifixion scene, shows up late, a certain effect, Weird Tales, is this a Conan story?, this reaction, a Sherlock Holmes series hosted by Vincent Price, Jeremy Brett, in the opening, starts with Watson, I was getting married, then the client walked in, the two Watsons, the best Sherlock Holmes, showing the mystery, that is a storytelling convention, a teaser, how television is structured, James Bond movies, not the Bond novels, specifically a mystery, trying to solve the mystery, The A-Team, Matlock, the hand with the glove on it, Columbo, mess around, collapse, extended the monster fight, because it is a comic, looks cool, what makes Roy Thomas doesn’t change anything, copy and paste, slightly less nudity, nipples, contact with Conan, Hour Of The Dragon, vintage Lancer edition, bad and violent, being blonde, changing it is a mistake, rewriting this story, better at it, the seven months, the fun Conan stuff, how to be in the world, the heart of what’s going on here, great writing, you can see what he’s doing, agree with it, let is pass over you, a heavy cross had been planted, iron spikes, naked but for a loincloth, limbs and body, burned brown, the perspiration of agony, tangled black mane, an unquenched fire, I’m sorry captain, your delicious queen, incessantly back and forth high above, finally in the story, were it not for them, live on the cross for days, I am leaving you unguarded, flayed alive, so firmly established, so long as anyone is near, these desert vultures, he needs to setup, he’s not going to be saved by his followers, he’s fucked, and so brave captain, farewell, when Taramis lays in my arms, mallet like fists, spat savagely, wiped the saliva from his gorget, living flesh, eyeless, brutal, horrible, everyone’s fear, what makes Christians so excited about Jesus, in the garden earlier, a supple erect figure, burnished armour, a faint rising of dust, the one touch of sentient life, less than a mile away, existing in another age, Conan stared blankly, the fertile meadowlands, miniature in the distance, a silvery gleam, sandy desert, away and away, the old joke about Jesus, Peter, I can see your house from here, a horrible joke, he can see, fixed in place, giving us the experience, shaking the sweat out of his eyes, to stretch away, empty wasteland, as a trapped hawk stares at the open sky, the city had betrayed him, a hare nailed to a tree, a red lust for vengeance, curses, all of his universe contracted, his great muscles quivered, his graying skin, driven deep, the knifing abysmal agony, a surge of helplessness, shutting his eyes against the aching glare of the sun, drawing Conan, undefeatable in battle, there’s no leverage, and yet, a keen beak stabbing at his eyes, he shouted, wary circling, spat at the salty taste, no water had touched his lips, as a man in hell glares, white water he had breasted, jacks of sparkling wine, bellowing, the sun sank, a lurid ball in a fiery sea of blood, unreal as a dream, he licked his blackened lips, the shadows crawling up from the East, attacked by the vulture, kills it with his mouth, the three kings from the east (and a 4th guy from the north), the reverse at the end, this is the opposite of turn the other cheek, reading it, howling with laughter, make fun of religion, Letters From The Earth by Mark Twain, audacious writing, The Roads by Seabury Quinn, a Christmas story, so reverential, so irreverent, not mocking, defiance, in opposition, something that you just don’t do, not then, maybe today, radical stuff, more pious, Ben-Hur, biblical novels, supplementary, a Civil War general, maybe Cora should read it, a story of the Christ, willing to do that book, great story, great movie, subversive, oppositional, he’s not trying to undermine the story of Jesus, he’s rejecting the story of Jesus, an ironclad rule, horror movie, old Hong Kong movie, a butcher, grinds them all up, delicious dumplings, howling with laughter, considered taboo, subverting expectations, Howard did, Doctor Who, the Doctor goes to see the crucifixion, 61 years, the BBC always says no, taboo, that’s also England, a Christian country, it has a king, Jesse is confused, Canada is more Christian?, more religious, significantly less, playing weird games, an official organ of the United Kingdom, programming which no one watches, The Myth Makers, the Trojan War, the ancient world, not interested in ancient history, alternating, another planet, Robert E. Howard is obsessed with history, engaging, shocking, yeah, I see what you’re saying, attacking H.P. Lovecraft and his argument, and his fiction, barbarism vs. civilization, ancient evil, stab at it or shoot it with arrows, he might make a nod, let me write a story and show you why you’re wrong, this guy I know, pretty silly, twitter is for shitpoasting, banned from twitter a bunch of times, poasted an egg, Hitler, Churchill was the villain of WWII, David Currie, ladies imagined you went back in time to meet Hitler, the great man of history aura and rizz, hatred and respect, one ball energy, pure ick, nobody knows who Hitler, do an Anschluss, none of this is funny, shitpoasting should be good, literally wrestling, the United States, rural Texas, how do you fight against this, most people don’t read, people all go to church, reverent to the point of obedience, you have to fight for yourself, oppressive, a button ending, a series character and needs to continue, Red Nails, the adventures will always continue, why we’ve got this power, what any of that meant, what Jesse likes about Conan, Conan’s worldview, not even a revenge, captured in the original Conan the Barbarian movie, not the strength of your body, the strength of your will, very Nietzschean, once you’ve been maimed, Thulsa Doom, literally a snake man, the reason he’s evil, a cultish personality, uses it for evil, girl kills herself, Jonestown, early 80s stuff about murderous cults, too young, religious education textbook, Moonies, mass weddings, Jonestown dead, black, discoloured by the poison, the difference between a cult and a religion, many times before Jonestown, Mormons, free the Holy Land, the second coming, locked in a cage, every woman in the city has to have sex with me, as a person how do you escape that?, you can be trapped by circumstances, embittered, ecce homo, behold the man, you can buy into this, you’re a physical mortal being that has limits, that refusal to make a noise, refusal to give satisfaction to your torturers, the Nemedian section, interwar period, Theosophists, L. Frank Baum, Swedenborg, Swedish Christian, talked to Martians, Mount Shasta bigfoots, questioning all of that, permeated into rural Texas, a broad horizon, conservative Christians, writing, reading and correspondences, rejecting submission, Taramis has it happen to her, rejects tears, what would you say, she’s a girl, she’s allowed to cry more, you’re not going to get any relief, hah!, bye, the hard nut of this story, other stories to be told here, comes back at the end, maybe it would have attracted too much attention, sell more magazines, #StrategicPlacement to cover it up, a pure example, The Vale Of Lost Women, literally fights a god, comes away unbowed, the illustrations for Sword And Scandal, concepts, an action scene, static, put Conan on the cross on the cover of the magazine, a crucifiction, the anglo idea of the scrawny Jesus, buff muscular dude on the cross, a Roman catholic thing, treasury edition, green fur diaper, a famous painting by Corben?, Frazetta?, different enough, it’s not the T, legs apart, Boris Vallejo, comics, engagement with and a defiance of the Christian central image, the symbol of their punishment of their savior, a little skull on your desk, a reminder of death, a symbol of triumph, a Mexican church, Jesus don’t look so happy, in Bavaria, a crucifix in every public building, other flavour of Christianity, a Catholic university, crucifixes all over the place, choosing to wear them, students, told about it, stuff they should know, church is a book club for people who don’t read, a social gathering, babysitting, community, somebody telling you, God is watching you, people who read the book, that’s scary and hard, rural Texas, responding in a way most people didn’t read the Bible, the name Solomon Kane, his poetry is full of biblical stuff, not for money, Song of Solomon, not in a way of belief, Lovecraft’s not a Christian, an atheist, why is this crap in the bible, why didn’t the editor throw it out, Edgar Rice Burroughs was very hostile to the idea of religion, Will’s take, why is it the way it is?, something going on here, Howard philsophy, this unbowed thing, the invictus philosophy, I am the captain of my soul, I’m the master of my soul, a sports movie, life is rough for the barbarian, city people vs. rural people, what is a barbarian, someone who lives on the frontier in Texas, Jon Voight is walking, Urban Cowboy (1980)?, Midnight Cowboy (1969), Acadians, not the city, the keffiyeh, these are village people, the river Jordan is there, the place that betrayed him, doesn’t sack the city, I don’t know what Conan will do buy I think he’s honourable, he’s a barbarian, always not raping women, a little handsy, the evil Conan stuff, not cruel to be cruel, a negotiation scene, always in the cards, cut him down I like his spirit, two different ways of being, hijacking, distilled the essence of Conan’s barbarian philosophy, a foreign land, we never see Cimmeria, we never see another Cimmerian, only the bad writers do that, chased The Frost Giant’s Daughter, the Vanir, the Aesir, Norse mythology, Hyborian Age Scandinavia, Aquilonia, 15 year old Conan, civilization isn’t his thing, Herman who kicked the Romans beyond the Rhine, Battle Of The Teutoburg Forest, Beyond The Black River, my ancestors were the picts, Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

a bit simple, notice he’s a captain, very similar philosophy, he loved poetry, he must have read it, it has all the things, death is the end, we even have a scroll, not being under the sway of another, not being submitted to another, better to rule in Hell?, Milton, better to live on Earth, what is Conan’s alignment in dungeons and dragons, Chaotic Good? [Chaotic Neutral?], I got a horse, Hour Of The Dragon, a king has certain responsibilities, he makes the laws, Lawful Good, not a Paladin, a successful, to drink life to the lees, Ulysses by Alfred Tennyson, a rewrite of a Kull story, Exile Of Atlantis, a quieter character, more cerebral, what’s real, who am I, more a Philip K. Dick character, gazes into mirrors, talking cats, a different mode, Conan like superman, the wrong Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, more celestial or cosmic, combines both, all the good Weird Tales authors, flavour and depth, ineffable, from a Nietzschean perspective, in the poems, Weird Tales poems, lots of other writers too, get at stuff in poetry, more monster, the monster was the weak part, deleted the monster?, talked up, just came out and got killed, that was his role, scary for half a second, a bunch of arrows in him, the Kozak camp for seven months, join some band, a lot of savage sword is filling in that detail, takes over somebody else’s gang, the one with the pirates, we all know who you are Conan, filling in the corners, this story is set six months, when Queen Of The Black Coast is adapted issue 59 to issue 100, The Lost Valley Of Iskander, The Man Who Would Be King, Conan The Destroyer takes the names, Taramis and her sister, that monster is more Roy Thomas, Taramis is the bad one, oh no she’s evil, Grace Jones, Wilt Chamberlain, the protector of the princess’ virginity, the Red Sonja, Sandahl Bergman, plays the evil queen, a Red Sonja movie, the assistant is The Beast Raban from the original Dune movie, not a good movie, Conan is not called Conan, all fucking public domain, tricked Arnold into doing it, owed Dino De Laurentiis, full of philosophy, one of the best movies ever, he’s taciturn, Pumping Iron (1977), it’s not Conan, blended together, the riddle of steel, everything about it is awesome, Max von Sydow, a huge Howard fan, Ming The Merciless, in the Solomon Kane movie, in Star Wars, he was in Dune, the judge of the change, geeky movies, Ingmar Bergman movie, theater kids stuff, Three Days Of The Condor (1975), Judge Dredd (1995), Niki Lauda, good career going on in Sweden, asked again and again, not forced to do these films, no you really don’t, Seventh Seal (1957), ripping off foreign art films, how can I transfer this look to my movie?, no one has time to watch more than one Swedish movie, if you’re going to see one Swedish movie, only an hour and a half long, Scenes From A Marriage (1973), tv miniseries, Flash Gordon (1980), Sinews Of A Toe, cheesy, great actors directed to death, Timothy Dalton, looked like a football player, Edgar Wright movie, Hot Fuzz (2007), cast for his looks, cartoons, the one who faints all the time, Brian Blessed, Topol, the original serial, a james bond movie girl, Belinda Topoff, Christopher Lambert has one good movie, Highlander (1986), Subway (1985), The Highlander The Series, let’s go to Paris every six months, I chop off heads in Vancouver, the lead singer of Fine Young Cannibals, Roger Daltrey needs his head chopped off, this Buffy thing, pre-Buffy, even Cora’s mom loved it, the sequel series, Highlander: The Raven, raped by Bill Clinton, Elizabeth Gracen, Evil-Lyn, Eva Lynd and Steve Holland, in a cowboy hat, The Man Of Bronze, the 70s Doc Savage, James Bama artwork, bulked him up a lot, posing in the ripped shirt, Walter Baumhofer, the widows peak helmet hair, explain it, inexplicable, weird 90s humour, the stupid actor, you can do it, Rob Schneider, also in Demolition Man (1993), Dredd (2012), laserdisc, Judge Dredd, 2000 A.D., the Judge Dredd audio dramas, they’re great, Strontium Dog, an alternate Marvel Universe, all the actors are British, excuses to got to Britain all the time, deleted in two minutes, this work links now, the Big Finish ones, BBC doesn’t do audio drama anymore, never started up again, recommending to Maissa, meta, Sam Spade style character, the whole world of 2000 A.D., American superhero fiction, Judge Death, reptile dinosaur judge, making fun of the United States, Americans don’t get it, already a parody, makes it a little more serious, play it straight up, simple, Circe Lannister, very good, a good role for her, a gangster drug lady, scars, Beetlejuice movie, Tim Burton, mixed up, Willem Dafoe, Danny Devito, how to find content, books to review, Black Gate, way leads onto way, the poem by Robert Frost, seven months later, Survey Team, public domain for years, everybody like Philip K. Dick, Legends & Lattes, obviously not public domain, artwork, fooling around, The Demon Breed by James H. Schmitz, author photo, dog, a savage guy in a tree with a giant ferret, oh wow, didn’t like animals, you are an animal, trawling, what’s new on LibriVox, best of James Schmitz, The Witches Of Karres, another classic to match, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, wait six months, But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes by Anita Loos, so good, Confessions of An English Opium Eater, drugs, latest releases, 80 pounds is still a lot, talk therapy?, cognitive behavior therapy, Grave Danger by Frank Kane, Ben Tucker, a crusading newspaper, a maritime insurance company, stranglehold, literature, you understand books a lot, a renewal of copyright, a translation, Peter Weller, read by RoboCop, William Gibson books, Hermann Hesse, psychedelic drugs, drugs are you in your head, external drugs, meditation, Planet Of Transients, Steppenwolf it is your culture, translate it back to German, collaborating with Ray Bradbury, Henry Hasse, weird stuff, a dirty link, November, probably the only one who could read it in the original, high level German speaker, three novels in a row, The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown, What Mad Universe, overload yourself, so late in the year, take some time off, deleted a line, pre-Christmas periods, Christmas market, ctrl-z, harder to commit, David J. West, twitter friends, Sword & Scandal, a little bit bitter about his divorce, good dad, similar taste in jokes, of all the twitter authors who submitted stories he’s the only one, these twitter authors, wipe your forehead, a classic comedy setup, a thief is hired by this guy, my girlfriend is in this harem, a half moon, pointing in the wrong direction, A Choice Of Gods, spread the Simaks out, next year, The Jameson Satellite, suddenly, so mysterious, a background actor in movies, standing around not listening to audiobooks, socializing, has to do with evolution, vocal gestures, autist, about status, becomes the alpha, The Status Civilization, The Journey of Joenes, novelist, all very interesting, no end in sight, Sirius, Odd John, regional election, evil right wing guys, far right, conservative guy, a rather plump social democrat, organic farmer, right wing dude, Cora is fine with these results, the mayor of the county, we call them judges, county councellor, a human mutation, awesome and frightening to behold, a new super-normal species, like Slan but not written badly, anti-Slan, Slan and Counter Slan, a special one for Will’s birthday, December is always iffy, stuff going on in the real world, neighbourhood garden parties, Russian rice dish, a stack of audiobooks from Mike [Vendetti], Beatnik Wife, So Long Sister by Hugh B. Cave, who is Hugh B. Cave, pulp guy, Abe, booktuber, lived to 2004, a less known Hugh, sources differ, I name thee Cave, Island Ordeal, Strange Tales, Weird Tales, wrote for the Spicys, Lawrence Jannifer and Donald Westlake, The Man Who Conquered Age, The Quick And The Dead, 30 Seconds by Roger Leslie Bellem, Spicy Adventure Stories, Corpseless Coffin, weird menace story, Corpse Girl’s Return, Dead Drunk by Frank Kane, Dark Vengeance by Fritz Leiber, between the early period and the mid period, the wilderness years, a good one, Suspense was short lived, based on the radio drama series, Claws From The Night, quite a few Fritz Leiber stories, The Black Ewe, read by Scott Miller, Bob Silverberg’s take on beatniks, Robert Silverberg is looking for unrepublished stories, that’s hilarious, author lost track of his stories, pair things more, Waterspider, providing too many choices, The Pause by Isaac Asimov, sent him an email once, takes vacations with his wife, live in your podcast booth, 74 items, The Futurological Congress, like Lem, popular con, toy collector con, bread and butter, toysplosion, 2 and a half hours by car, drinking habits, Coca Cola, Zevia, stevia, type 2 diabetes, in Hurleys, American pop is really horrible, Mexican pop, high fructose corn syrup, way less shit in it, read the list, carbonated water, caramel color, phosphoric acid, natural flavours, beyonade, Bionade, speciality retailers, citric acid, stevia, natural flavours, the artificial colours, bio neutral or bad for you, metabolically different, acts on your craving in a different way, no bottom, cutting out one thing that is bad for your, all the colours is clear, as a drink, diet Coke, probably on Amazon, exploded into the mainstream, organic, preservative, offbeat flavours, elderberry, upstart company, Spirit of Georgia, weird flavours, a good root beer, cream soda, Dr. Zevia, more exotic flavours, 60 cents a can, carbonated is very nice, I used to not be as gross, the cigar is probably better for you, life corrections, mouthwash, destroying the oral biome, big leaps, heart problems, what products are advertized vs. what products are not advertized, when they were selling it to people, for different purposes, to kill, deodorant and antiperspirant, picked your brand, cigarette companies went into food, Frito Lay, products that don’t exist in nature, stab and put on your plate, marketing, Cheetos, flavoured styrofoam, eating your own death, it is not food, what is a Cheeto?, peanut flavouring, they’re made of corn, everything is made of corn, plowed into food products, niblets, potato, shelf stable, where the branding comes from, buy potatoes, there’s no potato brand, Doritos, anything with a brand, different kinds of apple cultivars, you don’t want to read Robert E. Howard fiction written not by Robert E. Howard, same with food, nobody has the patent on steaks or beans, what forum would they be in, tv spots for mouthwash, you’ve already formed the habit, Listerine was pushed really hard, a hair product, for making things surgical, making you pure, genetic purity, physical culture magazines, work out, Listerine is a brand everybody knows, your dentist pushes it on you, Odol, consolidated, three hundred years ago no such products existed, marketing and fads, masking protects you from death, Worldcon in Glasgow, mostly Americans, no one in Germany at cons wears masks, 7000 people, self reported, long meandering way, what killed all those people, heart disease comes from tooth issues, antibiotic mouthwash, you shouldn’t be antiseptic where you don’t have a wound, microbiome is good for you, alcohol, more expensive, what are they putting in there?, nothing good, one of those things you really don’t need, just like shampoo, deodorant is totally unneeded, change your shirt, have a shower, teenage years, spray cans, roll on stuff, eczema, allergy, allergies are new, the 1919 Spanish Flu killed everybody, the people who died were often killed by their doctors prescribing aspirin, fills your lungs with fluid, every British historical drama, died at 16, traumatized, people died of diseases, we’re sold on a bill of goods, is there a causal link, we are sold on these lies, maybe mouthwash is bad, chlorhexidine, making up chemicals from natural products, on our in our bodies, water is not the problem, natural flavour is a catchall, grape pop, good bacteria, bad bacteria, nitrates to nitrites, evolved to help you, don’t trust anything with an ingredients list you don’t understand, the selling is the problem, probably okay off a tree, where are you on toothpaste, fewest number of things in it, the same toothpaste for 40 years, no longer produced, you could be a toothpick guy, use ashes from a fire, fluoride, fluoride pills, it is not food so you shouldn’t eat it, whitening toothpaste, probably a bad idea, the amount of research you have to do, sodium laurel sulfate, don’t swallow anything is a poison, don’t put poison on your body repeatedly, animals don’t have allergies in nature, the food is adulterated, called for burned bread, dragonsblood, a resin, from something you stab, arsenic, lead, radium toothpaste, that healthy mouth glow, minimize input, give an animal a potato chip, you know it is bad, it tastes something, licking fabric, cleaning the tongue off, the toothless cat, clawless?, auto-immune disorder, normal cat food, cost, a whole bunch of pets, cheap food, can’t afford this caviar, better medical care than others, more shots?, some cats you can’t catch even if they have a limp, them knowing better than you do, bit by ticks, ivermectin is good for a lot of stuff, parasites, treatment for COVID, how did they not understand it?, for horses, designed for humans used on horses, mammals are pretty similar, doses, horses are pretty big, scabies, spread by insect like things, scratching, spreads in nursing home settings, pesticide, a bad name, a useful medication, they did it at the time, low doses and dosed late, has massive effects, hydroxychloroquine, skeptical, weird infectious disease fear, paxlovid, still patented, taking that stuff like candy, patented vs. public domain, Meg bought a Peacock to watch the , They Live (1988), seems true, longer than it needed to be, after he beats up his friend, always wonder, the aliens come and kill all the revolutionaries, ask me in six months, we should watch, the short story is good, the movie is better at doing it, the story does it through hypnosis, the physical sunglasses, though a glass darkly, more directly to Plato’s Cave, 7 minutes, goes on and on, an extravaganza, the opening is great, the homeless people, the ending is no good, The Thing (1982), Escape From New York, Big Trouble In Little China (1986), a western, Yojimbo, what is it for, the rebellion is crushed, destroys the transmitter but he dies, he’s crushed, you are Rowdy Roddy Piper, lizard people fits better, they’re not like us, hating on reptiles is wrong too, skinless and ugly, it looks like they’ve been flayed, blue, post-radioactive, the ghouls from Fallout, they’re the masters, and cops, watching it with commercials, Dirty Work (1998), Norm MacDonald, Artie Lang, so many guest stars, Don Rickles, Chevy Chase, a great movie that nobody loves, open a revenge business, stupid as hell, $50,000 to get a heart transplant, medical testing for food, hallucinating and itchy, Gary Coleman driving the car, Chris Farley, it is not about the plot, just to get to the jokes, rape jokes, hilarious, some guys come over and want to rape him, shame on you, devolves to, old people talk about old movies, eventually they’ll enjoy it, movies from before I’m born, Luke Burrage, nobody should listen to podcast past 10 years ago, how did that come into your head?, that’s what people say?, don’t trust anyone over 30, the most charitable, CIA or FBI op, an authority figure, anti-cultish, pro-cultish, don’t read anything past 10 years ago, wait 10 years then read about it, left undone, a big translation, find a movie that is worth watching, the new Kyle Gallner movie, Strange Darling (2023), cell phones and cars and insurance, Dinner In America (2020), Alien: Romulus (2024), done with Alien since Alien 3, Reagan (2024), big discrepancy, fan base of some kind, conservative Americans, low budget, independent, stars nobody, viscous murder spree, mystery/horror/thriller, The Sixth Sense (1999), it has a twist, a punk band, the cops are after him, semi-retarded girl or something, a pet shop, abused by her boss, regular home family, they fall in love, we don’t use the term, autistic, an acceptable term, everything is CRTs, the movie is amazing, it all fits together like a beautiful puzzle piece, really talented, tight movie, no major budget needed, killed by COVID, torrent or buy it, if you watch the trailer, he’s on twitter, Red Letter Media, Emily Skeggs, her highest rated thing, a theater thing, a lot of work, not a movie star of the Hollywood kind, Veronica Mars, Bones, independent movie star, things that are older than me, Metropolis in the theater, channel surfing, find a lot of good stuff, pet food, just chicken, making the switch, eggs, yogurt, cheese, dogs like cheese, omnivores, cooking for animals, easy bake oven life, such an easy animal, when a cat is affectionate, they’ll let you know when they don’t want to be touched, it is nice to be liked by cats, like to be liked by cats, liked or licked, Tommy says hoping to find some time this week, edit podcasts, coffee, how to steal movies, exporting bodies, elderly Germans, a weird menace story, never see the bodies, most to the middle east, buy foreign bodies, Qatar, a secret trade in German bodies, I consent to be cut up in the Middle East, the dead body is given a covid test, death certificate, tiny print, useless information, every German state has a different format, data protection, so you can’t sue people.

Marvel Treasury Edition 23 Back Cover

SSOC A Witch Shall Be Born

Posted by Jesse Willis