Reading, Short And Deep #395 – A Literary Nightmare by Mark Twain

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #395

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss A Literary Nightmare by Mark Twain

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.

A Literary Nightmare was published in Atlantic Monthly, February 1876.

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The SFFaudio Podcast #742 – READALONG: The Many-Headed Hydra by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker

The SFFaudio Podcast

Jesse and Evan Lampe talk about The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, And The Hidden History Of The Revolutionary Atlantic by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker

Talked about on today’s show:
2012, 2000, influential for Evan, written up, dirtied edges, moldy, learned to appreciate, first big look into history from below, political history, conventional narrative history, the power of the approach of history from below, understanding Lovecraft, vernacular networks, those ideas are rooted in here, turned you into a radical, social history and labour history (vs. theory), daily life, new wave labour history, E.P. Thompson, Herbert Gutman, religious traditions, English working class radicalism, Baptists and Methodists, pirates, maroon communities, opting out, Typee by Herman Melville, William Blake, William Morris, social pariah, they haven’t read this book, pen is mightier than the sword, undermines a lot of go along get along takes, the heroes vs. the villains, Francis Bacon, this is not science, team evil, Colonel Despard, paraded through every street, 2nd hand, that scene on Jefferson’s estate, the words are compromised, turning that metaphor on its head, surprising insights, actually used as metaphors, upper crust living off the pain of the poors, poors and riches, those with weapons and those obeying until they don’t, very insightful, Villains Of All Nations, which chapter was written by Rediker?, 1741, the Slave Conspiracy, Outcast Nations Of The World, the Hydrarchy, a conspiracy!, rule over water, everything is flipped, the royal navy, left swipes, bottom up order, how wikipedia works, a bunch of CIA guys, recreationally, they’re not personally making money from locking Wikipedia accounts, life purpose, no actual work, competing ideas, some people’s pov, opressed all over the planet, Africa, North and South America and Europe, an other and later story, Bligh and the breadfruit, blackbirding, where capitalism was made, 16th and 17th century, why we have the world we have today, capitalism is fueled by sugar and slavery, the capital is being accumulated, the movement of people to serve the needs of capital, Gandhi, there’s a story there, heroes amongst the horror, repressed and excised and not promoted, Jesse’s twitter profile, all jokes, ruritarian romantic, drawer of roof bears, huer of colour, Canadian history, a youngest, Diaries Of Susana Moodie, its really hard living in the forest, chop down trees and wear high heels, interbreed with the locals, the Hudson’s Bay Company, that little building used to own this entire northern part of the continent, people in Europe wanting hats, Fort St. James, Fort St. John, Moose Factory, cut-off from this history, discovery and settlement and fast forward, Belize, from a previous period in time, independence, iron rule, most people don’t know Belize exists, they have no idea, it doesn’t serve the interests, the chamber of commerce, this book is very subversive, Mestizo, Metis, Creole, culture mixing, our mosaic, radicalized by the hydra, became radical by them, the Putney debates, Smedley Butler, the Businessman’s plot, he wasn’t executed, too much like Daniel Ellsberg, he gets a pass, Julian Assange, 1741 conspiracy, the official line, we created racism to divide the poors, now racism is used only by the bad people, keep the institutions, slave labour in us prisons, post-racial, white washing, a substantial point, slaves who were not black, indentured servants, morally reprobates, what are Australians taught about that in their schools, avarice, keeping the population of the central prairies, this labour thing, in the 17th century, you could own their contract, that could be traded, treated similarly, death rate, legally there was a distinction, the 1741 uprising in New York, the slave port of last resort, the triangular trade, the defective product, Virginia, the rebels, those who could not be seasoned, breaking them through threats of violence and death, sold them cheap, really radical slaves, we need a line between whites and blacks, after Bacon’s rebellion, give whites land, racism is a product of conscious decisions to suppress the working class, blacks used as strikebreakers, scabs, a deliberate technique that develops, am I racist, I don’t think I’m racist, homosexuality, am I gay, I don’t think I’m gay, it doesn’t seem to be the case, individual racists, primarily a system, Critical Race Theory is based, is that what based means?, the problem is institutional, its the institution that’s sending you to it, the class teaches you the history, is that what those classes are?, flagellation, root out the sin within you, not the intention, in favour of this book, progress online, online classes are terrible, Brer Rabbit, Uncle Remus, an old black man, probably an ex-slave telling stories to a little white boy, interrupted stories, background information, what the boy would know, stories of how to behave so as to survive in a system of slavery, Brer Fox, reverse psychology, using the of stuckupedness, double meaning, good morning or get beaten, the writing down of the vernacular tradition, the horror that is being a slaves, the awesome style of writing, phonetic, what was good and what was bad, salty language, fuck and shit are really good words, they are valuable, your only adjective should not be fuck, make your arguments better, people at the top say don’t listen to those sailors, big surprise, swearing and cursing, if you keep hitting me, we’re not allowed to do either, always do what the authority above us tells us, school is abuse, keep the factor workers from organizing, I just don’t want to work all the time, the Barbados thing, you learn about Virginia, The Tempest by William Shakespeare, a strong limb of this many headed hydra of a book, this book needs subsequent books, we need a whole Despard book, Peter Linebaugh, The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and Commons For All, Stop, Thief!: The Commons, Enclosures, And Resistance, The London Hanged: Crime And Civil Society In The Eighteenth Century, something on E.P. Thompson, unfortunate, The Slave Ship, Red Round World Burning Hot, Kate and Ned Despard, emphasizes women in his writing, they need to make the babies, plead the belly, women criminals, plenty of time to get pregnant, Mexican jails, you can’t execute them, the depository for slave nobody else wanted to buy, Moby-Dick, repressed?, we don’t want this book to be popular, gatekept!, various institutions, The Fearless Benjamin Lay, the black dwarf, Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates And The Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700-1750, the movie?, Amistad movie, the Adams’ are good guys, propaganda, an Adams descendant was president of Raytheon, ambassador to London, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., Abigail Adams, the Adams, a group of people on the right side of history, sacrificed his presidency to stop a war, Jimmy Carter didn’t start any wars, people fall in line, very interesting history books, a horror show, the book is good, looking at resistance to the slave ship by white sailors, tricking sailors, disease, miserable experiences, prison guards, euphemisms are a horrible, to not know they are going to Africa, mutinies on slave ships by sailors, bold women, interracialiness, alternatives, teleology, makes the current world inevitable, the Indian Ocean trade system, the spread of Islam to East Africa, Arabic is the lingua franca, Arabic innovation in the middle ages, capitalism, corporations that are global in scope, connections, trade, that’s indoctrination, it doesn’t create wealth, there’s no wealth created, someone is being screwed from trade, production, turning that tree into that table, mahogany trade, Belize, the plantation, the ship being a site of production, the origins of capitalism, blackbirding in the 19th century, just after the time of Melville, the copra trade, massive effects, Jack London, like Star Trek, a strange federation of Romulans and Klingons, getting tricked, be slaves and die, Maoris in Vancouver, The White Pacific, Nazis moving to the states doing Nazi stuff in the states, the unknown story of this books, we found something!, labour history remains suppressed, the labour historians labour in obscurity, the world history turn, the East India Company, this history of the world in 10 drinks, Tom Standage is the author of all those books, simple, peppy, and they don’t threaten power, The World Is Flat kinda stuff, a refutation of that, the hydra is global, separation into races and nations, white supremacy is the counter revolution, a specific lady, Kimberlé Crenshaw, you’re this you’re that, she really knows what she is, she knows what she wants, very simple, you want to have boys like you, you want to be chaste and chased, this gives you both, critical marriage theory, evidence of it in literature, very modern traditional religion, alcohol, smoking, per-marital sex, a vampire/werewolf book to express the ideas of a teenage girl, land rovers, Robin Hood is a cleaned up version, how to live within your very narrow, cottagecore, keep a nice little house in the forest and you’re a hobbit, setting up your perfect, trad pre-wives, nostalgia for the medieval, collapsing the commons, when the working class was most radical, agrarian settings, the jungle meatpacking plant, this is not what we signed up for, the Stono Rebellion, the New York Uprising Conspiracy, Africans, worth it because we have iphones, nice slave phone AOC, breakage along the way was a shame, Stephen Pinker, the meme the bomber dropping bombs with different paint jobs, CIA ads, I’m an agender black disabled lady, anybody can drop bombs for the CIA, kind of a progress, getting fat, there food has additives, their babies are getting poisoned, the problems are changing, a dearth of labour, you need to coerce people into work, all that land, people would have come and took land, German immigrants, given land, we need to produce sugar/tobacco, homesteader, now we can have a UBI, the obesity epidemic, the back end of production, promoting physical fitness, relaxing immigration, a more easily exploitable working class, some black man got a piece of real estate, why did he tear it down?, instead of becoming a factor, what are you going to use this for, unused land is a sin, jubilee and letting things lay fallow, stores were closed on Sundays, 7-11 was open 7 days a week!, the Diggers, New York’s commercial space is all lying fallow, all the malls are empty now, there’s no land reform, apartments, housing is not affordable, developers never choose affordable housing, the plot of Mr. Robot, F-Society, delete debt, delete the records of who owns what, that would F the system, wild spaces, mountain people in Southeast Asia, a religious revival, geographical solution, a homesteader is a petty bourgeois selling your jam, no geographical solution for capitalist, what happens in games, the streamers and all the people who want to be them, a new phenomenon, sharecropping for Jeff Bezos, he sets the rules, it infects peoples brains, that desire is significant, people want to opt out of traditional, play video games all day, streams are not that interesting, it doesn’t work, it can’t, a colonization of a virtual, what Meta was supposed to be, new spiritual geographies, the internet, this shows people want out, their daily life might be better, coal miner pay, pathetic little podcast, we’re not covering the right things, the homesteading thing, a horrible homesteader, larp, import some immigrants have them work the land for you, why does Indiana Jones have a bullwhip?, a sinister meaning, cattle rustlers, an 80 year old man being de-aged, for swinging, The Dial Of Destiny, WWII action again, the girl from Temple Of Doom, married, Shanghai, Short Round is a teenager, anti-Japanese resistance, Chinese gangsters, he’s old, a history lesson of the early 20th century, insight into those weirdos doing those weird things, artists and humanitarians, the least interesting characters, the Russian Revolution, great documentaries, artist movements, The Outcast Nations Of The Earth, a counterexample to everybody sells out, I’ve been radicalized, you didn’t know that, he did it his way, he’s a hero, and his wife too, from the aristocratic class, siding with the workers against the capitalist class, JFK, murdered by the Dulles brothers, what about Caesar, his power comes from the loyalty of his soldiers, threatens the establishment order, his college buddies stabbed him, in the play, talk to Paul, Evan regrets Paul not being here, open his eyes?, many-headedness being democracy vs. a guy talking about “democracy” but who can cut cheques, how young do you have to be to be radicalized?, liberty university, trump university, reading history did it, away from theory, Marx and anarchist theory, coming back to philosophy, social history, rationalism vs. empiricism, that doesn’t seem to line up with the theory, never joining a political party, focusing on religion after becoming an atheist, now Evan is sympathetic to religion, what’s going on in the text through music, the British experience, counter cultural, anti-monarchy, dissenting churches, right wing churches, being religious outside of a religion, internally puritan, a space of resistance, one of the heads of the hydra, in the same paragraph as the witches, pirates, Matt Christman, Chapo Trap House, we need community again, sympathetic to religion, a space for radical transformation and alternatives, we need something else, we want something real, human experiences, long, but useful, never a dull moment, maybe the best we can hope for, the foundation, sit down and talk with people, come over our collective social anxiety, the progressive era, lived community, moving to cities, creating new instituions, Lions Club, Elks Club, Boy Scouts, used as a cudgel, Murray Bookchin, if freedom is a tree, the best you can do is become a streamer, fuck this shit we’re going to burn down New York, website problems, being very helpful, making community or whatever, problems not caused by big tech, creating “content”, generally buried and forgotten, 1000 podcasts, old posts, anything from about 10 years ago on YouTube approx 75% is gone, sad/boring comments, turning performance art into, give tips to the actors while they’re playing the play, they’re all terrible, extraordinary weirdos who are good at clicking, the worst sort of outcome imaginable, larping your jam, sitting all day, sitting too much, a new dystopia, Elon Musk buying twitter vs. making it open source, new free public engagement, he has the right enemies, a lol cow, read some more Rediker and Linebaugh, The Magna Carta Manifesto gets pretty wild, he’s braver, commentary on these themes, a very good revolitonary book, very insightful, insights into Lovecraft, when we look at something old, things we don’t know they knew, so happy teachers don’t know the contents of these stories, this is a sex metaphor, asses being stared at, these are all fart jokes, so rich, made richer, Shakespeare bad man (but also good man), holding stock, Stephen King knows the problem but can’t take that last step, Blaze, having sex with some lady, that farmer doing his best to help you, the way it should be rather than the way it is, a hotline in some boiler room, weird streamers like Stephen King, everybody can be like me, try to buy a lot less shit, games are full of virtual goods that are artificially scarce, all new games are free (pretty much), battlepasses, get skins for your character or car or gun, there are places for capitalism to go, a horrible place, consuming the public sector, Amazon still rests on producing things, ebooks are essentially skins, audiobooks are essentially skins, sometimes derived from labour, wealth generated by investments, other people’s labour, William Gibson is a shitlib, The Peripheral, disabled people in drone bodies, a place to expand to, go knock on doors and ask do you answer the phone?, a great book, 16.5 hours, the narration, too much of a boomer, Evan has come to terms with his boomerness, Evan is out of touch, YA for adults, that Rite Gud show, a retelling of a Jane Austen but late 19th century Cinderella, so not interested in class consciousness at all, so old fashioned, just Jane Austen + Cinderella as a YA, written for adults who never graduated to something that challenged them, technically well done, cinematographers, reading the subtitles, that’s the actual dialogue, if this is about my soul take it I don’t want it without you, maybe I’m crazy now, voice over narration, is it possible that there isn’t anything sane and normal at all?, Italy for some reason, Virgin airlines, Marry me Bella, GASP!, the credits roll, so cute, so spot on, we’re getting poisoned, which vampire or werewolf to choose, so funny, mass phenomenon, watching the world cup, people going back and forth, Slack is Evan’s twitter, when Qatar got the world cup, using slaves, not allowing beer, my team is my nation, the crimes are done, reparations schmeperations, soccer is not fun, basketball, volleyball, baseball is much more dynamic, cricket, nobody knows how it works, football has strategy, people like running, very simple, games are fun to play not fun to watch, your kid is involved, in solidarity with you kids, car racing, gladiators, MMA, it doesn’t have the clock, moments of great tension, makes better movies, good baseball movies, Major League, The Natural, The Sandlot, For The Love Of The Game, Field Of Dreams, more charm, pastime, a game of leisure, hockey, learning to skate, why soccer is popular on poverty stricken planets around the universe, running around, some sort of vague interest in that game they used to play, the elites care about the prestige, a bottom up thing, I am this powerful, I can pull this off, a poor kids sport, crazy for soccer, running around and kicking, Evan is not the only annoying person on Slack, the help desk blew up, complaining about things, urgent student issues, to do your ranting, friendly and non-work related, shitposting on slack, Tolkien universities, friendly and relaxed calm and peaceable, no J.R.R. Tolkien hate, orcs!, a Tolkien creation, spelled the same: orc, a more subversive reading than calling them black people, Rings Of Power, the creation of Mordor, an orc nationalist subplot, Galadriel is just a fuckin racist, no apologies, a horrible racist, we lost the war, we just need our place, no, you all have to die, a beloved character from the book, trolling on purpose, that longstanding criticism of Tolkien, all the good guys are white people, Richard K. Morgan, Altered Carbon, an essay about two orcs talking to each other, a fox takes note of something, attacking Tolkien in a very narrow way, a fantasy series with a gay protagonist doing gay sex, noir, dark, The Steel Remains, Market Forces, combines Mad Max and Wall Street, conflict investment, on the drive home from work they do car wars, satire sort of thing, an ESL tutor in Turkey, had some kid and fucked off, solid books, Black Man aka Thirteen, a bottom up approach, the ideas tend to be pretty good, Svudu is now Wealthy Genius, seeing it from the orc’s pov, Sam overhears, kidnapping Pippin and Merry, underorcs, discipline, our lot is misery, why William Blake is so weird, he has strong feelings, Jerusalem, undeniably powerful art, they made it a hymn, some Phil Ochs song, nice looking ladies holding hands, The Tyger is almost impenetrable, the final lines of this book, hard to understand then?, some whimsy if not power in his art, the Pacific, the ancient sign of navigators, the wanderers of the planets, some Typee for you, Thomas and Lydia Hardy, tried for his life, the globalizing powers, the planetary wanderers, Seattle, 2000, during the Battle of Seattle, 1999, the rhetoric of the 1990s, peace and trade and progress, a significant chunk of a lifetime ago, worse off now, the hope of a radical, 1997 APEC protests, authoritarian countries, I put pepper on my steak, why is everybody upset, they’re coordinating their laws to fuck us, reading the student newspaper, 2nd World is the Soviet Union, euphemism treadmill, 3rd world is more radical, it means poor, a third path, so much propaganda, poo on Jesse’s head from Evan pooing on him, lazy thinking, the truth can be exposed, you need to not be soaking in propaganda, on the ferry to Vancouver Island, Adbusters magazine, an anti-propaganda magazine, Biden on one side and Zelensky on the other, two critical takes, yessir yessir how high sir?, Megan Markle and her husband are getting a Netflix show, the number one show on Spotify, celebrities that are kings and queens, Obama and a musician had a podcast, content-less, too many books to read, 75 episodes for Mark Twain and 100 episodes for Heinlein, people who should know better, angry at the queen or the other kid for being, mostly not propaganda, a fine place to dwell, analyzing, exposing it, out from under, Jesse’s thinking of Paul, let them be in their blanket, its not Evan’s job to save everyone, do Poe eventual, the Poe wish, stay healthy, losing weight, one pack a week, anti-smoking, a week long group project planned out, deliver content, dynamism, ESL students, read these pages, answer these questions, work in groups, a private school that’s trying to make money, lecture, present this, without Slides (PPT) you might as well be speaking in a foreign language, when the bosses walk by reading at your desk, teaching taking place, devestated by lockdowns, this is going to perk you up, you’re not engaging with this amazing Lovecraft poem the way you should be, why are the kids fucking off?, some structure, a more traditional idea of academic achievement, girls do better, hard on the boys, they’re Evan’s clan/tribe/race, don’t let them embarrass us, their acculturated to do better in those class, boys in person, wooden swords and hack at each other for 45 minutes, then talk philosophy, run around for a long time, able to absorb things, pumped up with lack of sword fighting, it could be javelin throwing, less upset, less restrained, PE is not the solution, nobody cares about the grades, bad grades in gym class, kids love dodgeball, gladiator stuff, you want to do this?, of course!, Philip K. Dick Volume 1 letters, letters to his mom, Mom send my pills!, Mom I need a doctor’s note, doing bad at math, poor Philip K. Dick, terrible spelling, 1940s and early 1950s, letter to Anthony Boucher, Susan Cooper, The Skull, The Moon Maid is about communism on the Moon, centaur, a lady riding a male centaur, foreign teachers could have Christmas off, Life On The Mississippi, Lifeline, Misfit, it pisses off the insurance companies, The Man Who Traveled In Elephants, Tenderfoot In Space, Rocket Ship Galileo, the podcasts are broken, a thousand episodes, boring lame necessary (unpaid) work, Patreon stuff, she loves business shit, hey, this book’s cool!, literally gonna run out of juveniles, a theory of Philip Dick, a theory of Lovecraft, Heinlein’s thesis is he’s American (but not the way the government means), For Us, The Living, Shadows In Zamboula, roaming cannibals, a fearsome strangler, marred by including racial stereotypes, specific blacks from Darfar, profiting from cannibalism, it sounds good, near southern Egypt?, kushites, a love letter to Paul, The Golden Slave by Poul Anderson, The Venom Business by Michael Crichton, Evan can out American Jesse, people mad at him for global warming denier, ended his career sort of, he can never be a good boy like Stephen King, what about his blank book that has a blank in it, no, you’re ruining it!, a strong theory about westerns: ketchup and mustard, #KetchupAndMustardGetup, it means something but probably not anything important, pulp style covers, blues and whites, yellow and red for clothes, snowing.

The Many-Headed Hydra

Europe Supported By Africa And America by William Blake

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

“The web lies broad in the weaving room.

(Fly, little shuttle fly!)

The air is loud with the clashing loom.

(Fly, little shuttle fly!)”

There was a brief pause in the melody, then:

“Year on year have I woven here.

Green earth, white earth, and autumn sere;

Sitting singing where the earth-props mold;

Weave I, singing, where the world grows old.

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

Time’s a liar, but the web is real!

Hear my song and behold my web!

(Fly, little shuttle–!)”

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

ad for The Heads Of Cerberus by Francis Stevens from The Thrill Book, August 1, 1919

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

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

The Heads Of Cerberus by Francis Stevens from The Thrill Book

The Heads Of Cerberus by Francis Stevens from The Thrill Book

The Heads Of Cerberus by Francis Stevens from The Thrill Book

The Heads Of Cerberus by Francis Stevens from The Thrill Book

POLARIS - The Heads Of Cerberus by Francis Stevens

POLARIS - The Heads Of Cerberus by Francis Stevens

The Heads Of Cerberus by Francis Stevens

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The SFFaudio Podcast #738 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain


The SFFaudio Podcast #738 – The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain – read by John Greenman for LibriVox. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the novel (19 hours 23 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Trish E. Matson, and David J. West.

Talked about on today’s show:
Or The New Pilgrim’s Progress; Being Some Account Of The Steamship Quaker City’s Pleasure Excursion To Europe And The Holy Land; With Descriptions Of Countries, Nations, Incidents and Adventures, As They Appeared To The Author., Paul’s thesis, 61 chapters, Palestine is the heart of this book, visiting the holy land, places from the Bible, putting his weight on things, casual racism, Samuel Clemens wasn’t super-devout, religious experiences, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, centers of Christianity, Rome, Notre Dame, Europeans by extraction, ancestral stomping grounds, bestselling book, he knows his audience, fairly well off, the ticket price: $1250, $28,000, a cruise of that intensity, a Rafael painting, he’s joking, his beautiful house in Hartford, 1867, Tom Sawyer is decades later, rolling in flow, he’s hanging out with the rich, pretending to be like him, Fletch (the Gregory Mcdonald character), fraudster, not a thief, we’re making apologies for this character, a reporter/investigator, not as ethical as Fletch, dry and reserved irony, sneaking off to the acropolis, gleefully robbing a vineyard of its grapes, villains and ruffians, villainous epithets, taking without compensation is theft, Paul’s not gonna like that, out-and-out targeted uncasual racism everywhere, chipping pieces off monuments, ancient temples, appalling, they’re hypocritical, keeping the sabbath, every church in Europe has part of the crown of thorns, enough nails from the true cross to fill a keg, destructive, leave only footprints, take only photographs, the only petrified tree, a giant fence, this is what we are like, he doesn’t think he’s better than them, chip off a piece of the Sphinx, humans come around, whole continental shelves are falling off, he knows that we are the problem, plastic Eiffel Tower ornaments, pink blobs, the focus on taking the picture, journaling, everybody was journaling, you could sell it for a million!, I wouldn’t write it for a million!, making fun of everybody, a meta-travel book, he’s going to tell you how things strike him, salt crusting over his skin while floating in the Dead Sea, how one should perceive it, the Grand Tour, a long gap of time, a rock from Versailles, gravel to replace other gravel, doing more good, breaking quarantine, Trish didn’t approve, the vandalization, the world has decided to yolo, mask in most public places, all the ports, untreated diseases, did this actually happen?, the ugly American, these people are monstrous, the emperor of all the Russias, his kid’s palace, it was really what it was, rich people traveling around Europe, naming every servant: Ferguson, naming unpronounceable cities: Jonesburg, he’s so honest, so ugly and stinky, colourized the incidents, buying the kid gloves, imagining this scene happening, Gibraltar, you’ve clearly worn kid gloves before, what an innocent, only a gentleman of great class and experience, he takes that pain in and writes it down, super-charming, I love this guy, he’s hilarious, this is the thing I wanted to read this book for, the trains powered by mummies, these peasants burn very poorly, bring me a king:

I shall not speak of the railway, for it is like any other railway—I shall only say that the fuel they use for the locomotive is composed of mummies three thousand years old, purchased by the ton or by the graveyard for that purpose, and that sometimes one hears the profane engineer call out pettishly, “D—n these plebeians, they don’t burn worth a cent—pass out a King”

some famous architecture, literally burning their history, did they actually do that?, they did it with the poor mummies, H. Rider Haggard’s She, surprise, drawn from real life, graverobbing, respecting the past people so little, speaking to the poverty he’s seeing, mostly taken apart Colosseum, and Paul’s like, the Hagia Sophia, Justinian did that on purpose, 12 obelisks, your god lives with us now, that’s the Christian religion, Jews are sitting in Israel enjoying themselves and then some Greeks say “he’s ours now”, super-fully illustrated, they didn’t do much dancing, a civil war blockade ship, sidewheeler, screwtechnology, steampowered, you want to have your propeller under the water, just over a year after the Civil War, we gotta have a vacation, vicarious travel, travel writers, food guy who killed himself: Anthony Bourdain, experiencing the very expensive thing of travel, newspapers had content back then, Poet Lariat, not white haired, feathered pen, wired telegraphy, we are very lucky to have this artifact, in a tradition already, The Canterbury Tales, the start of tourism, the 18th century grand tour, the poor people doing it, I need to visit, amongst rich people, a guide for the non-guided, travel broadens the mind and takes away your prejudices, he calls a lot of people ugly, sexism, everyone is dirty, everyone is dishonest, he compliments the railways and roadways of France and Italy, the men kiss each other because the women are unkissable, red indians, straightbacked, generally complimentary, definitely not, Tahoe, grasshopper soup, those degraded savages, an extinct tribe that never existed, helped them steal cattle, I would gladly eat the whole race if I had a chance, playing to his audience’s prejudices, playing to racists attitudes is practically indistinguishable from racism, very bad, Paul concurs, anti-Indian racism, Trish doesn’t like it, start the ball rolling, make people think and talk about it, I helped them do illegal things, wait what?, think about what he’s saying, it starts the ball rolling, how racist the times were, Twain was anti-racist, Huckleberry Finn, getting free, language that people will object to, his natural ability to sell books, understanding his audience, in liking him, liking his ideas, this was written at a much earlier time, less sophisticated in his ideas, he hadn’t evolved to that point, pretty racist, despise people for being poor and not having enough water to wash with, the baksheesh that never ends, dirt poor, polluting a sacred spring, the city that is full of water: Damascus, poor people are disgusting, blind people, staggering poverty, he’s making light of it, diverging into stories, the book of teenage Jesus, punishment for teachers, its clear that he’s anti-racist throughout, they literally were ugly and dirty, covered, some guy bathing nude, without being moved by their plight, not so sinfully ugly, so mean, the meanness, a real experience, if it happened on tic tok, she’s so sinfully ugly she broke the sabbath on a Saturday

“She was the only Syrian female we have seen yet who was not so sinfully ugly that she couldn’t smile after ten o’clock Saturday night without breaking the Sabbath.”

his meanness is kicking people while they’re down, he did a horrible job of it, confirming people in their prejudices, these dirty foreigners, he knows that, let’s dodge the racism thing for a second and look at it through the lens of the animals, the horse that had no tail, slandered dogs, grinding horrible poverty, the tourism is needed to reduce the grinding poverty, stereotypes about foreign animals, one of their horses died, skin and bones, the saddle sores, why is that happening, grindingly poor, showing the reality, these people are so incredibly impoverished, he makes it tolerable with Twain humour, no malice there, make sure you look at this, it sticks with you, why is she so ugly, the Sunday school grapes, they’re guarding it from each other, not being a tourist city, Paul agrees, roots to tourism, the word itself, a guided tour of a museum, a path established, cruising, the cruise ship industry, excursions, the picnic, picnicers, an overnight bag, a field near some cave, the ages of the passengers, born in the 18th century, the middle of the 19th century, The Love Boat, pleasure trips, baksheesh vs. alms, very different, a religious act vs. a straight giving money, infernal chorus, what are those people saying?, give us bribes, in need of charity, bribe, giving to the poor is not exclusive to Christianity, soliciting alms, mentioned in Dracula, the Bosporus, where Jesse got triggered, spending time with royal people, dead in 50 years, 1917, southern palaces in Crimea, Twain lived to see that?, Halley’s Comet, he’d go out with in, no citation, age 42, all the old people, five men dancing and three women, he’s so mean, the women wore little scarves on their arms, ageism, he’s so funny, there’s no plot, things happening, a journey, the idea of the sequel, shared experiences, Jesse laughed so hard, complaining about the coffee, would you try this from my table, okay tea, some really bad tea or really bad coffee, he does it to himself, Pompeii, the fountain people put their lips to, Paul touched that fountain, this was a thing back then and it is still a thing, no Eiffel tower yet, what a tourism map looks like, emblazoned, symbolic pilgrimage, the Arc De Triomphe, a cartoon map of Europe, the Milan cathedral, a really nice cathedral, why Sydney opera house stands in for the entirety of Australia, opera? who even cares?, kangaroos, Paris has four or five must-see destinations, what does New Zealand have? Lord Of The Rings, sad story, Lynn Canyon Park, suspension bridges, Whistler, whales, the sky needle, what keeps people out?, Olympics, push all the homeless people aside, tourism is a big deal, obviously some crusades, millions of Americans, walks the streets of Jesus, sharp perceptions and human interest, digressions, the stories that people were telling, agog, Heloise and Abelard, a compelling case, you can have ideas about what you’re going to see, as matters of fact, that’s straight out of the book, the point of the title, the lies they were told in Sunday school, when they go to a bar, we ferreted out, our general said, “we”, a stare and a shrug, suspicious of the vigour, this didn’t happen, the uneducated foreigner, a stone fence or an earthquake, a wicked impostor, Santa Cruz punch, 1885, you’re just wrong, Jesse, pan-galactic gargleblasters, a regional thing, these people are completely out of their depth, very Westlakian, spreading hands, the movie adaptation, an American Playhouse version, PBS was into Twain in the early 80s, what a weird idea to do a movie about, this is not a fiction book, The Prince And The Pauper, is there any precedent for that?, compelling, dramatic, funny, make fun of ugly Americans, Roughing It, sections of it were borrowed for Bonanza, written in 1870, daily dispatches, the opening and the closing, in reading what I’ve just written…, sections of the letters, presumption might lead to failure, this book took Jesse’s whole week, a bit of a slog for Paul, a chore, Paul’s bucket list, unduly dismissive, so funny, handful!

At all hours of the day and night the sailors in the forecastle amused themselves and aggravated us by burlesquing our visit to royalty. The opening paragraph of our Address to the Emperor was framed as follows:

“We are a handful of private citizens of America, traveling simply for recreation—and unostentatiously, as becomes our unofficial state—and, therefore, we have no excuse to tender for presenting ourselves before your Majesty, save the desire of offering our grateful acknowledgments to the lord of a realm, which, through good and through evil report, has been the steadfast friend of the land we love so well.”

The third cook, crowned with a resplendent tin basin and wrapped royally in a table-cloth mottled with grease-spots and coffee stains, and bearing a sceptre that looked strangely like a belaying-pin, walked upon a dilapidated carpet and perched himself on the capstan, careless of the flying spray; his tarred and weather-beaten Chamberlains, Dukes and Lord High Admirals surrounded him, arrayed in all the pomp that spare tarpaulins and remnants of old sails could furnish. Then the visiting “watch below,” transformed into graceless ladies and uncouth pilgrims, by rude travesties upon waterfalls, hoopskirts, white kid gloves and swallow-tail coats, moved solemnly up the companion way, and bowing low, began a system of complicated and extraordinary smiling which few monarchs could look upon and live. Then the mock consul, a slush-plastered deck-sweep, drew out a soiled fragment of paper and proceeded to read, laboriously:

“To His Imperial Majesty, Alexander II., Emperor of Russia:

“We are a handful of private citizens of America, traveling simply for recreation,—and unostentatiously, as becomes our unofficial state—and therefore, we have no excuse to tender for presenting ourselves before your Majesty—”

The Emperor—“Then what the devil did you come for?”

so Twain!, punching down, Paul prefers the punching up, how incredibly diseased people are, implicit acceptance, that’s just their nature, Spaniards are just naturally awful, the pitiable state of poor children, any excuse for that condition is rare between, these are not people with names, describing an entire race of people as despicable, time spent in Gibraltar, some beauty in there as well as comedy, disease, dread of cholera, our friends the Bermudians, these are like us, the very last image in the book, a cigar, smoking, fini, it’s backwards, the ship image, briefly in the Hatian navy before being lost in a storm, good podcast listening, an experience, lots of really funny bits, lots of revelations, trying to imitate Mark Twain, he’s the genuine article, pastiche your way, he comes at things from strange angles, he’s like a standup comedian before standup comedians, who is the earliest funny person, ancient Greek plays, Shakespeare’s pretty funny, some caveperson?, black humour, this blood eagle is funny, utterly relatable, Edgar All Poe has humour in him, Eric S. Rabkin, H.P. Lovecraft’s Alethia Phrikodes, his most cosmicism poem, later published, without the opening and closing frame, heroic couplets, orientated towards food jokes, when you’re reading H.P. Lovecraft you don’t usually say he’s a really funny guy, The Unnamable, Herbert West: Re-Animator, in the context, we gotta laugh, looking at the darkness can be alleviated and being playfully funny, deep and dark, a good sense of humour, inherent humour, Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, structurally funny too, I prefer not too, Bartleby The Scrivener, Typee, the cannibals are always in the other valley, the same punchline over and over again, the tragedy of life being alleviated by comedy, maybe Hamlet is not very funny, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, ’70s Doctor Who, The Talons Of Weng-Chiang, Abbot And Costello, R2D2 and his co-equal, a previous episode, Tonto and The Lone Ranger, buddy comedy, Martin Riggs and the other guy, Shakespeare’s the buddy comedy inventor?, Gilgamesh and Enkidu are a comedy team, re-read it to find the humour in it, comic misadventures, To my most patient reader, this volume is affectionately inscribed, his wife’s brother, issued by subscription only, not the way we do books now, eh?, Jane Austen, kickstarter today, 20 books to 50k, the sell-it-yourself model, looping back around, only one publisher, Simon & Shuster & Tor, there’s no big secret, marketing, this is what Jesse is saying, when you run out of stock, Audible, Downpour, boxes full of hardcovers and shipping, up front costs, if it has any legs, you did all the work now you have to pay more, when the author is buying his own cover, narrator friends, when Audible makes a change, the new Audible return policy, soundcloud?, maybe somebody made some money from it once, Jesse is welcome, Jesse’s aged mother, around xmas, next July? [June], five months, solicited in February, Jesse is not a big fan of cholera, Jesse might be baksheeshing himself, would Jesse be a companion to Jon Pertwee?, David would go in 1867, some risk, risk adverse, Corfu, sidetrip to see Palmyra, destroyed by ISIS, Jordan, mainly on topic, Paul is melting down over twitter, despairing, Conan The Adventurer (the cartoon without violence and blood), amongst the dross, Tower Of The Elephant aka The Master Thief Of Shadizar, a red-caped monkey, shurikens made of starmetal, Conan has a shield with a baby phoenix living inside of it, Conan™, barbarian in a fur diaper, WrathAmon™, Isle Of The Iron Statues, The Red-Brotherhood, no lasers, no lost city, mostly clothed, more reasonable piratical, I steal from no-one!, what should we do to these guys, Vilayet Sea, Shadows In The Moonlight for like a second, Shadows In Zamboula is a story about tourism, mummy fuel, Edgar Rice Burroughs, a tiger in the first Tarzan book?, like Kipling, the guys who never went anywhere, the most imaginative, The Moon Maid, find out how the centaurs live, wings on the moon, a [callforward] to The Menace From Earth, when H.G. Wells died, they have to go together even if they don’t want to, enriching, 20 hours richer or poorer.

Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad

Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #736 – READALONG: Blaze by Stephen King

Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Evan Lampe talk about Blaze by Stephen King.

Talked about on today’s show:
Richard Bachman, the intro and/or an interview, 170 pages and rewriting the first 100, a lost book, kind of a cool story, the least interesting Bachman books, the original when he dies, 300 years later, they’re going to find that the book is radically different, Thinner, Stephen King wrote that book and not Bachman, the reason he was outed, it was easy for people to tell, 8 hours 15 minutes, Ron Mclarty, obvious it was written by Stephen King, so pessimistic, gangsters, Roadwork, optimism in the novels, 35 years, 1972/73, 2007, Rage, The Long Walk, The Running Man, the things that he’s done to make it updated are very odd, The Smurfs, the updated version of The Stand, when a new Donald Westlake book comes out, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, updating the dates, the estate doing it, adding in cut pages, it’s inconsistent, the world seems of the 1970s, what year is it set?, set in the present day, all the profits from this book are going to a charity, sad house for boys, rich guy who wants to do good, Hard Case Crime, they don’t pay on time, maybe he cares?, why does he have to update it?, he needs to update it, something changed, salvageable material here, saleable, contemporary radio announcements, to make it more present, orphanages, the backstory vs. the frontstory, the present vs. the past, a fifty year gap, a kidnapping plot, Child Heist by Richard Stark, Jimmy The Kid by Donald E. Westlake, Parker, Dortmunder, Stark does the dark, Dortmunder finds a novel, follow this recipe, George created the plan, Blaze fulfilling the plan, the old Richard Bachman vs. the new Richard Bachman, redeeming Blaze, he loves the kid at the end, good question, very King, he almost kills the kid a few times, Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck, is it supernatural?, his son is smart, he shines, he’s actually not dumb, he’s been convinced he’s dumb, Charlie from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, George is the superego, don’t masturbate, displayed intelligence, there’s a wisdom in wash your hands, he’s not retarded, he’s just slow, bad at math, the hand of Stephen King vs. the original hand of Richard Bachman, he gives his full name, slow vs. stupid, why did he do that, you wanna get caught, raising the kid, keeping the money, going to someplace warm, we’re going to Disneyland!, that marketing phrase didn’t exist in the 70s, a much grittier book, afraid to think about it, the kid dies, the rewrite that saves the kid, comparing it to Mice and Men, George kills Lenny, too damaging to rabbits and ladies, he doesn’t know his own strength, the dustbowl, hobos, interesting characters, this only exists because of the rewrite, page 49, a pile of newspapers, raged about the redneck republicans, the republicans hated poor people, that goddamn wet in the Whitehouse, page 160, dumb shit, the republican national committee, page 125, a republican senator who had taken a bribe, 173, rich asshole republican millionaires, page 161, replacement republican, fuck those rich republicans, page 80, how the republicans fuck the poor, fat stupid republicans, “right wing”, who are we supposed to root for, we feel sorry for Blaze, he can’t be doing it to help the story, throw in HIV, the feeling is still in the 70s, the whole counter-culture narrative, hippies vs. the man, no need to think too much about it, he couldn’t resist, it doesn’t help the book, at the end of the book, the baby name, another junior, a cut on his forehead, forehead damage, trying to make some connections between fathers and sons, how a state raises a child, what we should do, what we should think, this little baby’s not going to have a scar, Blaze is snuffed out, especially for Lenny, if the town gets to him, Lenny is dangerous, societal problems, Fondly Fahrenheit by Alfred Bester, a disabled person, George tells him so, he’s sympathetic to the kid, raise him right, he’s incapable of it, this book’s message is unclear, he’s doing it AGAIN, a recurrent drumbeat, the politicians are taking bribes, campaigning for the Democrats, he can’t help himself, organized crime, in the machine, more cynical, zone out that stuff, like the boobs in Philip K. Dick, it has a woman therefore it has boobs, this is a tremendous tragedy, social programs, the orphanage, the schools, the prison programs, Bluenote the farmer, very Bachman, our institutions no longer function, that’s how capitalism works, The Running Man, why the society broke down, the best part of the book, at the local town meeting, they’re having sex!, it’s consensual, stealing stuff, leads to babies like Blaze, good upstanding Republicans, don’t beat your children, I’m going to take you on, not being a kidnapper, stealing sweaters, kidnapping is wrong, Bluenote is actively trying to fix society, his lecture about capitalism, the god of this book kills him off, direct message, The Philosophy Of Stephen King, positive reviews, of course, 50% is Dark Tower content, 25% shining related, nothing about IT, big into philosophy, the philosophy of Donald E. Westlake, in setting patterns, in some certain details, resignation is a kind of philosophy, how to be an individual within a society, Bluenote is the most Stephen King like character in the book, he kills him, why?, Bachman writing the story, in the end, a tragedy, if Blaze had stuck on the farm, his adopted son, a nice spot at the table, the farm supervisor, no poker, he’d be good at it too, that closes that door to Blaze, for this book to exist, to have him go down the path, wrong ideas in the history of humanity, evolution is a ladder, evolution is a bush, technology is progress, trying to make things less worse for some sometimes, what went wrong?, no social programs for people like Lenny, full of social programs!, you can’t own this kid anymore, send me a picture of you, major tragedy, trying to get his shit together, if I can get that money, a big hammock for me, a little hammock for him, the stereotype of the Democratic answer: throw money at welfare queens, he kills off the characters he can’t fix, an inheritor of capital, that Lovecraft trope that Evan identified, hide the past, kinda bleak, mostly right, King would have been better off, Bachman is dead, The Regulators is basically a King book, he shouldn’t have rewritten it, he should have published it with Hard Case Crime, a very 70s book, ever cover is shit, Blaze carrying the kid, the girl in the blueberry fields getting fucked, the saleswoman at the baby store, he’s fucked up this book, break into the university library and make a photocopy, more authentic, this feels inauthentic, because it was a Bachman books, more short stories, very brutal, very Bachman, what does that society mean, an allegory for life, not my life, live longer than me or not, it’s horrible, almost too easy, a baby being spoonfed, we don’t feel like Blaze is wrong, he kills the dog, he kills the old lady, when he kills the FBI agent, a movie agent, play up the FBI angle, the George angle, supernatural, the movie of Thinner, a gypsy curse, curses the lawyers, nice body horror, lizard skin, fuck you man, they meet with him, pass the curse on to someone else, cursed cake, fuck it I’ll eat the pie too, a bleak ending, Friday The Thirteenth: The Series, Red Letter Media on Creepshow and Creepshow 2, Ted Danson and Leslie Nielsen, The Raft, a very different thing than a novel, for an anthology series, a Twilight Zone with a harder edge, isn’t that strange, isn’t that a reversal, the worst part of The Mist, the religious lady, King’s point, we can’t actually get along, but is he wrong?, in The Stand too, once the government is gone we’re all going to kill each other, ruined for King by Bachman, The Running Man, They Live (1988), a politically active story with a solution to the problem, operating on instinct, George is an inconsistent character, when he’s a ghost, kill the kid, I don’t want what Bachman wrote, George is not mean to the kid, George is a different kind of dumb, what can you do?, this book offers no solutions, one of those Fugitive movies, he was innocent the whole time, I don’t care that you’re not guilty, Blaze goes to the paupers field, his kid is gonna be a football player, very dissatisfying, Stephen Kinged out, Fairy Tale, the pictures, the reviews are quite good, not very many good reviews, Pauline Kael, what Evan is doing on his podcast, a bunch of theories, what exactly is Evan doing, reviewing vs. writing a review, this podcast is not a review podcast, a two hour discussion of a book is not a review, some amazing insights, It is too long, The Stand is longer, 7 books, 4000 pages, an investment of time and energy, another one like Revival, it dug pretty deep, Firestarter, a daddy daughter adventure, the mom’s dead, kinda sweet, The Night Flier, The Mist, Rage, Roadwork, Revival, Everything’s Eventual, Danse Macabre, the big house book: The Shining, Pet Semetary, 90s stuff, playing with ideas, before he was injured, high concept stuff, Dolores Claiborne, Bag Of Bones, his twitter account, people he’s following, he doesn’t follow many people, defunct TV shows, using twitter as a way of journaling and sending messaging, you can’t read that many things, what does it really even mean, Stephen King plays Bachman on Sons Of Anarchy, he’s the cleaner, 80s preferably, he’s a cool motorcycle man, fun character fun scene, off the air for years, he’s not interacting with probably half the people he would see, people who tweet at him, is it not a bubble, Jesse is in a bubble, 24/7 interested in rescue animals, desert running, 10,000 or more following, 10,000 or more followers, dog about to be put down send money now, actively trying to save the world of rescue dogs, vote and give money to charity, clearly what Jesse is doing is not solving it either, drink more beer, smoke less cigarettes, in the genre space and as a person, sentimental and squishy, fun fact, very disciplined, eating less is hard, other sins, Evan found food kinda boring, half Polish and Ukrainian, cautiously exploring the food of Vietnam, how was it Paul, [TIME TRAVEL HAPPENS], the changes didn’t help, what Smurfs?, an issue with King, Cell, engaging with the ideas of cellphones, stupid but kind of interesting, Samuel Jackson, a zombie movie with cellphones, transmit the virus by having a phonecall with somebody, a new collective consciousness, a science fictiony idea, no tech, a payphone, he fucked this book up, he’s gonna wait five years, I can fix Rage, I can fix the school shooting book, he can’t fix that book, a pretty funny project, make Stephen King fix rage, Misery, Cujo, I’m going to break your legs unless you fix Rage, I need sequels, writer friends, writers being threatened by fandom, Misery is pretty good, the captivity and the torture he endures awakens creativity, a very meta book, hardcover Misery, a Hard Case Crime, there’s life in this character, if you bully the author enough, appreciated, send Evan an email, a genuine listener to Evan’s actual podcast, a quiet listener, a year of Mark Twain coming up, a total Mark Twain readthrough, 7 or 8 volumes, Cosmic Computer/Junkyard Planet, regular time, a [Larry] Niven story, a political point about the lefties, Stephen King and Larry Niven should write a book, the Dungeon series created by Philip Jose Farmer, he can’t even write with himself, Bachman’s dead, Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain, The Many Headed Hydra by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Skull by Philip K. Dick, jetlagged and no wifi, The Story Of Civilization, the origin of capitalism, Shadows In Zamboula by Robert E. Howard, Prince Alberic And The Snake Lady, Bartleby The Scrivener, Black House by Peter Straub and Stephen King, to honour him, Ghost Story, they’re all 22 hours, he bulked it up, thin volumes, writing in the modes of [James M.] Cain, [Jim] Thompson, and [Richard] Stark, Wisconsin people like long books, Sinclair Lewis, highest per hundred person presence of bars, not a lot to Wisconsin, man, the scenery, the longest most brilliant books of the 70s, August Derleth, Robert Bloch, is Joe Hill the baby in this book?, literally the kid in Creepshow, Cabinet Of Curiosities, like an issue of Weird Tales, the new you skin, a horror story for girls, body horror, she kills her supportive husband, so bleak and dark, based on a webcomic, the Lovecraft adaptations, the Pickman, Popeye’s accent, they fucked it up, The Dreams In The Witch House, a bad choice, Gilman, The Graveyard Rats, The Hound, the practical effects, relies on CGI, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, necromancer, cliche Lovecraft, they’re all period pieces, Lot 36, a new star even tho he’s old, Tim Blake Nelson, a Cohen Brothers actor, Watchmen, punished, traditional, The Autopsy, Michael Shea, infodump is bad, exposition is good, The Outside, a comedy, so gruesome, morally disturbing, putting the goop on, The Murmuring, The Walking Dead, The Viewing, a 70s period piece, how big Black Mirror was, two stories from Weird Tales, movie based horror, weird fiction, the whole point of the weird, Lovecraft [isn’t] a horror writer, a science fiction writer, a good example of weird fiction example, the relationship between students, “Dicky”, a class based thing, an age based thing, the colloquial language, “dropped him”, Arkham, the subways, Boston, Salem, that annoying plot, the immigrant woman, her families heirlooms, cliche end, EC Comics is not weird fiction, a realm of knowledge beyond you, the way it was done, the hopping never pays off, NOTHING, focusing on the can of TAB, bad direction, bad editing, a prisoner in Vietnam, the class analysis was fucking awful, this guy is racist so he should die, listening to right wing radio, hate listening, “right on”, we’re supposed to hate this guy, after that monster kills him, the whole thrust of this story is to see a deplorable destroyed, having debts, spite, selling him lots on the sly, he’s punished for being an asshole, in a Lovecraft story, punished for his ancestors, Jesse is politicizing the story, they had the same problem, physically attacked for debts they owe, a gambling problem, David Hewlett, this is very cool, most people wouldn’t do it that way, chopping up rabbits, I’m glad I’m not a woman, try to appreciate it, Brown Jenkin, underrated masterpiece, see you in two weeks, don’t disturb me.

Blaze by Stephen King

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #733 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Nudist Camp by Orrie Hitt


The SFFaudio Podcast #733 – Nudist Camp by Orrie Hitt – read by Evan Lampe. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the novel (4 hours 21 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse and Evan Lampe.

Talked about on today’s show:
1957, paperback original, Evan’s falsetto, a fun one to read, an interesting guy, 150 or so books, mostly public domain, disposable, available to read, available to be narrated, title wise, Never Cheat Alone, Torrid Wench, each was easy pickins, lovers kissin, crime novel adjacent, “sleazecore”, a science fiction novel but the genre is different, stupid-interesting entertainment, an adult at the time, the drug store, the spinner rack, behind the counter?, well written, fluffy, the plot makes sense, fetish for sex, ideas in my science fiction, talking about the fins on rocketships, fetish books for men, romance novels for men: talking about guns, Executioner and Deathlands novels, some hard man walking through the Mad Max world, extended mag, books for dumb people, really interesting things in this book, Brother And Sister by Donald Westlake, real estate obsession, Levittowns, rising middle class, who owns property, an easy go to plot, a marriage breaking up, men who went overseas, Iceland vs. Germany, a poor girl from Iceland, an Iceland slur, bojack?, bohunk, making up Iceland like an alien planet, the cultural stuff, interesting if true?, am I learning something about Iceland, the hotsprings, the brief summers, it being poor, some Viking culture that somehow survived, a very small population, one of the smallest european countries by population, taken over by the British who handed it to the Americans, you’re free now, apparently they don’t have a Swedish accent, Paul didn’t want to do this one because of all the nudity, all the violence, all the wife hitting, abusive, get back together at the end, they reconcile, we’lll go with Ed being the badguy, scamming people, taking the photos then blackmailing people, the hotel room, the film, get the property from her, the ex-husband comes and saves the day, not a classic, always Jesse’s story, an archaeological stratum, this fossil, what other fossils are under there?, floating around in people’s minds, learning about nudism, granola crunching islands, religious colonies, summer camps for various church organizations, fearful of falling under their religions, weird festival people, real life experience of weird nudists, Allan Alda’s character in MASH, nudism magazines, photographer magazine, he liked women, Corporal Klinger, 50s aesthetic, The Door Into Summer by Robert A. Heinlein, spending time with a nudist, their philosophy, a thing in Germany, the whole theory of nudism, he doesn’t get more serious, trying to separate nudism from sex, supposed to titillate, the opening scenes of the book, looks at herself in a full length mirror, a smut book but very educational, seems kinda of tame, very little penetration, very few pearl necklaces, the good organizer, the speech, the lecture, it’s about health and our natural state, body positivity, one step away from a pure smut book, a scene that should turn you off, ugly flabby lady, gut over her thighs, boobs like pendulums, that was a test, is this about sex?, not identical with being a swinger, related?, Heinlein did both, your average person picking up the book, from the woman’s pov, our Icelandic gorgeous lady and her abusive husband, they’re rich in land, she has a maid and a gardner, an interesting subplot, the pregnancy, an ethical gloss, written quickly, “Sometimes the whole world stinks”– Orrie Hitt, the King of Tri-State Sleaze, Apocalypse-Confidential.com, Orrie Hitt’s mythos, that’s amazing!, Lawrence Block, easter eggs, always the same movie playing in the movie theatre, you’re getting a secret history of the united states, all the sex shops, punanyi train fan , Orrie Hitt is on the rise, good to hear, EAP aka @punanytrainfan [account deleted] on twitter, literally read it aloud, a thousand year old book, Ḥayy Ibn Yaqẓān by Ibn Tufail, a book of philosophy, Daniel DeFoe, raised by a gazelle, Aristotelianism filtered through the Arabic worldview, Avicennan Aristotelianism, building the whole system from scratch, building capitalism from scratch, a short book, a few things he’s working on, Mark Twain, hinted at Heinlein, just teasing Jesse, excusing with the Library Of America, every book, taking Heinlein in doses, doing it with a Hugo in mind, Jesse’s Tom Godwin cold equations told as a star trek episode, the plot of Mudd’s Women, a bajoran slave girl, race jokes on a federation ship, it deserves a hugo and a nebula and a seuin and a master of fantasy award, the atom award, does it come with a rocket ship, a carbon atom, throw them in a garbage, awards, just play the games, put your pronouns in your bio, a lot of laughing, psychopath laughing at yourself, too pale, too male, looking at the lists, not impressed, consistently poorly researched, Jesse wants to learn something, entertainment, back to Orrie Hitt, not called nudist colonies anymore they’re called nudist camps now, a counterculture, a separate state, go for a week, summer camp, a nudist colony in the winter, why they like the location, set in New Jersey, hidden away, not bothered by the locals, not going to happen in the winter, Florida, what do they do?, standing around naked eating hot dogs, swimming, croquet, let’s go to the nudist camp!, like minded body positive people without hangups, written just as a non-sex book, the sex stuff in it, have only couples come together, don’t take singles, the subplot, blackmail, keep coming to the camp, not a very good sex book, subplot, a chaste proper good relationship, 1950s morality, she gets pregnant, a morality tale, Della has this new boyfriend, after she breaks up with her husband, not ethically suspect, we’re titillated, putting her bra on, fit in with the crowd, she gets shot in the leg, defending nudism, on the cover it is a sex book, a crime novel, genuinely surprised, we’re supposed to be suspicious of him, seemed legit, we were surprised, do you blame her for getting back together with him, wraps up the plot nicely, getting back together with, Stephen King wouldn’t be able to write this book, the woman has to escape, he’s got too many hangups for this book, could Bachman try?, the wrong kinda traumas, a nice person, very sympathetic, as an immigrant story, tricked into marrying a German whore, a cloud over her, a poor Icelandic waif, a golddigger, reputation in the community, one scene in the hotel, the pornographic film, the bank, the lawyer, learned a lot about the 1950s, experiencing it on the periphery, why Hawkeye likes nudist magazines, the nudist philosophy vs. wanting to see naked people, very clear about that, a legit claim, born nude, practically naked, shorts and short sleeves, not being over-clad, getting vitamin D, having a tan making you feel mentally better?, not enough sun, given our species previous history, we probably get too little sun, a funny phenomenon, not allowed to show boobs unless they’re natives, nude foreign women, a british or Irish, the page 3 girl, how do we explain this phenomena, a racy thing, what makes it racy is the prudery, creepy to see a creeper, scary old bodies, herniated bodies, a book all about bodies, their experience through their heads, the injury to her leg, getting pregnant and thinking about that, why is she saying these things about this baby, you don’t need to get an abortion, in most of the sleaze books, sex doesn’t necessarily lead to worries about pregnancy, begging for a baby from her husband, more smut books, more sleazecore books, more to them just sex, here too, the time?, self-censorship, doctor labels, The Naked Lunch supreme court case, what happened to comics neutered comics, defending it to your wife, the study of strange women who do strange things, she’s super hot in the shower, fat bodies, another bait and switch, pick that up for the incest, a horrible suicide and insanity ending, real estate calculations, the shame is different, a shame book, she’s a poor girl, essentially raped in Iceland, a traumatized person she’s pretty strong, pretty fucking terrible, Paul would not like how this book ends, what are her options?, not highly educated, what marriage is so popular for, real estate, big in China, she’s rock poor, she marries a middle class guy who thinks he’s going to inherit wealth, squanders the money, ends on a happy note, gives her a baby and becomes a doting father, be good Christians and believe in redemption, what are her skills?, he knew how to build a big house (with full length mirrors), look at her assets, run a little business, something she can do with her life, reveals himself as the bad guy, what can she get from Ricky?, adopt that baby, partners, all the men betrayed her, Ricky saved the day, in “Sleaze Camp Part 2”, a good moral camp, what the future’s going to be like, set in the 1850s, the photography stuff, if it was the 1750s, a guy behind a curtain sketching quickly, civil war portraits, still images, sunbathers, it is a tech book, pre-birth control (the pill), a tech thing, what makes this non-mimetic fiction is that it is somehow is like a piece of science we can explore, look what people are worried about, an after WWII Iceland plot, we don’t know much about Orrie Hitt, seems to be thoughtful, as book every two weeks at the prime of his career, six sex scenes, explaining to Scott [Danielson], agreeing with a J.K. Rowling, you’re going to have to put TERF in your twitter bio now, why people like her books, set pieces, very movie like this big battle, this cute scene, that cute scene, a plot in the background, the ride, titillation throughout the book, attentive to the plot, the first Harry Potter book, it read like a movie, not that much internal getting to know the character, this is an intellectual experience, didn’t get hard at all, Lawrence Block and Donald Westlake, not heavy on the sex, Netflix everyday, the covers/posters/cards, The Reader, a nazi woman?, an illeterate woman?, Kate Winslet in her pajamas, the strategy is still there, two naked guys on the card, a lot of prudery in the states, no explicit sex on Netflix?, on the newsstands besides the explicit, science fiction, westerns, romance, nice to look at, more titillation on the covers and in the descriptions, Hustler, sex letters, Penthouse forum?, letters about free speech!, reading a magazine with a nakedish woman on the cover, like the HBO of magazines, less censored things that people are interested in, Jimmy Carter had lust in his heart, rather than the lie they do all day, Obama’s exit interview, Joe Rogan’s interview with the founder of Rolling Stone, way less censored than everything else, shitlib former hippie, upset and worried, now that Trump had won, I’m not really interested in lying anymore, softcore interview, a formality, the shitty answer and the truthful answer, being more honest, a weird sleazecore book, insight into, a good prose stylist, clean and easy to follow and interesting, unaffected, he reminds us of her body every few pages, experiencing interest, a big enough sample, read a romance novel, anything of value, tiny little bit of sex, as tame or tamer, slim romance volumes, Blaze by Stephen King, A Night In Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny, less mad as time goes by, thinking of Jesse as the star, Harry Turtledove, Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain, why Evan is not a fan of tourism or travel in general, why travel sucks, Michael Crichton books, Grave Descend, Easy Go, super consumable, very solid writer, maybe that was never true, “science fiction books”, not natural writers, Stephen King is a natural writer, Neil Gaiman, Ted Chiang, Stephen King, Andy Weir, The Troop, near the bottom, just body horror, the lowest level, the gross out, fewer of those, idea based stuff is really cool, Cosmic Computer/Junkyard Planet by H. Beam Piper, The Heads Of Cerberus by Francis Stevens, The Black Stranger by Robert E. Howard, seven John Lange books, fairly thrilling at times, Hard Case Crime republished them, a reuse of a failed hard case crime spinoff [Gabriel Hunt], Hunt For Adventure, The Spider, The Shadow, Indiana Jones, an adventure book series, churn out a series character, Binary, Eaters Of The Dead, he’s really playful, amazingly good at transforming thought into words in the form of a novel, after Blaze, its long, spending 20 hours with Mark Twain.

Nudist Camp by Orrie Hitt

Nudist Camp by Orrie Hitt

Nudist Camp by Orrie Hitt

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!