Tag: Michael Crichton

The SFFaudio Podcast #893 – READALONG: Congo by Michael Crichton

Jesse and Alex (Pulpcovers) talk about Congo by Michael Crichton

Talked about on today’s show:
1980, watch the movie?, skimmed through it, segments, the etext, a giant works cited, the audiobook from 1980, people who mess with books, 4 versions of Congo, an abridged version, commercial cassettes, the book for the blind version, stuff at the beginning, we know you’re blind, a regular person, we’re gonna give you everything, the chapter names, the appendices, Mr Michael Crichton is a bit tricky, a faker, a hoaxer, Eaters Of The Dead, checking my footnotes, I made it up, hoax yourself, the Egypt one, Sheba, a lost world sort of book, the John Lange books, The Venom Business, a snake catcher, Scientific American articles, hanging out with his old friends, what’s bad about it, everybody in the book is venomous, they’re toxic, they’ll poison you, more of a bookstore and docks guy, toxic rich people, familial stuff, the people they knew, an extraordinary person, well researched, world traveller, thoughtful, good writer, the way this book was made, it was gonna be a movie, a movie maker, book writer, he created ER and wrote the pilot episode, 15 seasons, a book we should do, The Great Train Robbery, great movie, starred Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland, fun and funny movie, a modern version of King Solomon’s Mines, the great white hunter role, this book is a book, when it came time to make the movie, Jurassic Park blew everybody’s brains out, we have the right!, when it came out, I don’t hate it, it is not a good movie, a flick, forgettable, the fake gorillas, fairly well done, CGI today, couldn’t do hair yet, Bruce Campbell, a small role, Ernie Hudson brings a charm, the highlight of the movie, his accent almost makes it better, keeps it mostly, I’m your great white hunter, movie is fairly accurate to the book, the differences, Amy stay with the gorillas at the end of the movie, less than six foot tall woman, gender flipped, Michael Crichton’s the woman, engaged, have the diamond thrown away, so boring in the is movie, just there to be eaten, an assistant, Tim Curry, nothing like him is in the book, a weird accent, the same accent in Red Alert III, the premiere of alternate steampunk Russia, trying to be a comedy and also be Jurassic Park, play it for humour, married to Kathleen Kennedy, a power couple, if it is based on the book, he’s great, Looker (1981), MK Ultra, people lose time, Zoolander (2001), real stuff, his pattern, his big breakout novel as him was Andromeda Strain, his version of The War Of The Worlds, very clinically vs. a personal narrative, Frankenstein, The Terminal Man, Elon Musk’s brain chip, tin foil cap, the creation of a new being, aiming in that direction, this book is King Solomon’s Mines, references H. Rider Haggard, an after action report, psuedorealism, it’s a solid, Eaters Of The Dead, he leans into the tech, the most dated part of the story, enough metal in the earth, up the megabytes a bit, he tags it in 1979, slightly in the future and perfect cloning technology and rotary phones, a good read, pitch an idea, in 1991, please make this into a movie for us, 20th Century fox, asked James Cameron to do it, there are scenes in this book, badly paralleled in the film, basically the plot of Aliens (1986), a rescue mission, the smart gun scene, the greys are attacking, maybe deleted from the main Aliens movie, another way to get in, they’re smart, as smart as a monkey, Conan and Thak go on an adventure, the grey gorillas as a Conan reference, very smart and psychotic, excited about talking monkeys, popular science, history and archaeology and old books, world travel, high tech computers, at the end of the book, let’s bug out, the volcano, shaped charges, the hippo attack, not have Ross be at fault, her psych profile, the female lead has to be perfect, the final scene, the hot air balloon, she hands the male Amy tickler, so forgettable, could you throw this away for me?, the laser, blowing up a satellite wasn’t enough, we need this emotional catharsis, we need to have the guy have something to do, they made the corporation be the bad guy, life insurance policy, in and out alive, take no more risks, they’re not slave drivers, very charitable to the mineral exploration unit, a Hollywood thing, you can’t get nuance in film, lay it out for the reader, this character is heroic and this character is a coward, puts the diamond in the laser, setting greys on fire, brutal compared to what’s in the book, some sympathy, the clapping on the head, the rock paddles, Michael Crichton is way better than Hollywood, even the jungle looks fake, second unit out to Africa, Costa Rica, the Zinge city was okay, if they had done it in the sixties it would be a really nice matte painting, ruin, a lost city in the modern day, plausible, the gemstones are gone, industrial diamonds are still there, a cool driver for the plot, explain, backstory why his idea about computers needing these things for WWIII, his focus on the importance of tech, satellite communication and analysis, repurpose it for translating, a lot more work, it all comes down to the real stuff with Koko the gorilla, in the text, 10-15% of the book is just that, up to speed on what they’re doing, the night goggle, what kind of growth, a lot of this in Brazil, lost ruins everywhere, all these mounds, this used to be a cultivated land, some sort of civilization, the idea of a lost world, the Hyborian Age, Archeron, Younger Dryas, Queen Of Sheba a real lady, cities in Africa long ago, a Robert E. Howard or H. Rider Haggard style story up to date, racial memories, a theory come back with MK Monarch, they’re designation, mind kontrol, people trying to make wind up assassins, we seem to have a lot of, genetic memory of where to go and what to do, generational trauma, the CIA and DARPA spent a lot of money, remote viewing, based on reality, a guy had violent seizures, put a chip in him, detect an oncoming seizure, Mengele style experiments, not from the killer’s POV, control his kills, this has racial memory, they had what Amy had done to them, I like tickles, become an attack dog, control these slaves, prevent people from stealing, this goes back to Thak, taken away from his parents, weren’t much of tools and clothes, under the control of a local billionaire, sympathy for the grey apes and the regular apes, Amy?, Munroe is fun, the competent one, so much action, the war starts, jump out of the airplane, river rafting, the Michael Crichton website, he went after, he was a mountain climber, a scuba diver, a real adventurer, a funny scene, when the hippopotamuses attack, the trainer/tickler, he looks over at the female form of our heroine, a moment later he sees the sweat on her back, that desire passes, Travels by Michael Crichton, selected part of his life, guru training stuff in the desert, drinking too much, hanging out with movie stars, went to Belize with his sister, almost died down there, wasn’t dead, an immediate desire to have sex, that was really fucked up, I resisted, basing your writing but on your noticing of your interests and then projecting, he overplays that, the excuse to get the lost city of Zinge, looking around the area, Dian Fossey, as it happens Sigourney Weaver, Laura Linney is a housekeeper, blast these aliens with the laser beam, put them on the endangered species list, Love Actually (2003), brittle smile, Delroy Lindo, the guy from Oz, Crichton loves the side characters, delve into the Kikuyus, time spent figuring out what Amy is thinking, we only get her words, a power glove, speak and spell, Amy Love Tickles, kind a goofy, this book being a science fiction book, a Canadian author, [Peter Watts’s Blindsight], this is there place, these invaders come in, walk around the place that’s our, a microscopic colonialism, this far and no farther, stone clappers and our culture of skull crushing, they’re meat eaters, they also killed gorillas, a weird half-civilization that stood apart, co-developed, once they got up to speed with language, they develop a culture, got a visit from Robin Williams, she’s still in the zoo, I want to be a mother, I wanna be a mom, they gave her a kitten, another one, treating these creatures equally, wish fulfillment, everybody gets happy, doing monkey things, we’re taking over your expedition, runs out of money conveniently, closer to the book somehow, more like Aliens and Terminator, fragile smile, Linda Hamilton, a soft girl a hard woman, Cameron does girls well, one of his wives, the lady who made No Escape (1994), Ray Liotta, just gang war, very b movie, the greatest b movie every, Deep Rising (1998), Wes Studi is amazing, The Last Of The Mohicans (1992), so evil, motivated, very specific revenge, nephew loves it, Dance With Wolves (1990), you don’t need 7 movies to be a champion, the epicness, the way it is done, the story proper is fine, why are people shitting on him, who wants to hang out with rich assholes, the weirdest Michael Crichton book, of an age, volunteering in the library, teen service hour, the new one was Airframe, the plane goes haywire, lands successfully, something went really wrong, the TSA investigation of what happened, basically Boeing, dueling conspiracies, a fascinating book, aircraft incident investigation, the pilot let his son come into the cabin, that’s the end of the book, it seems to not fit the pattern of the books prior, on the other hand, a mix of real life interests and a literary version of that, Zero Cool [Grave Descend], a tropical island, what is going on here?, Michael Crichton is his books, deep dive, we see these airplane disasters, every couple of years, Gander, Newfoundland, coming back from Suez, supposedly doing peacekeeping, Lockerbie, Scotland, the ideas are better, Binary, a tv movie, an assassination of republican presidential candidate, some hacking going on, mind modelling, think like the killer, Manhunter (1986), Michael Mann, going on airplanes with liquids, make a bomb, he’s come up with an interesting idea, Easy Go, getting in behind character, The Andromeda Strain, a crying baby, we don’t care, old man with a stomach problem, very busy saving the world, the Artilleryman, round up some women and go underground, what kills the aliens, the common cold, a twist, fat actor, used to be thin, kid dies in airplane accident, still producing, monkey hybrid book?, State Of Fear, the one about climate change isn’t real, after he died, he completely wrote that, Pirate Latitudes, Micro, Dragon Teeth, posthumous publication completed by James Patterson, a Shadow novel, a modern take on The Shadow, The Phantom (1996), Billy Zane, I want to do a Spirit movie, the 2nd RoboCop movie, Frank Miller, perfect enough as it is, Rising Sun, a little horror of the Japanese, that period, RoboCop 3, a samurai robot, Black Rain (1989), Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia, they kill his partner, when James Bond goes to Japan, some Japanese version of Michael Douglas, yakuza, Crocodile Dundee, fish out of water, a Neuromancer for Apple, hard to adapt, the plot of Neuromancer, living in freezers in orbit, grubby, war in Russia, ai just wants to be free, putting a team together, heist itself out, the mindwashed special forces guy, the Turing police, clearly terrifying, rogue ai, we’re blowing everything up, our viewpoint character, Case, the guy who wrote Vampires, John Steakley, Armor, both main characters are named John Crow, I have a limited set of skills, over emphisise Molly Millions, strong female characters, her backstory, instagram whore, an onlyfans worker, giving herself claws, be an ninja, razor blades in my fingers, Case is in her body, gives Case a thrill, full of sparks, cohesive plot, the opening line etcetera, what they do with the sky, gonna be blue, grey, omit that scene, kind of the problem, what colour is the sky, even referencing television, the cold war stuff, an alternate history, Cold War II, which one would it be?, Pirate Latitudes, Dragon Teeth, Sphere, The Abyss, except for the aliens, Timeline, Paul Walker, rock and role jousting, Heath Ledger, blonde white boys, his version of The Time Machine, A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court, Connie Willis books, she always won the Hugo award, a professor, studying a certain period of time, The Domesday Book, way to long, WWII, the Blitz, bellringers in the blitz, very much a girl, girl book, King Of Attolia Megan Whalen Turner, good to make babies with?, middle age Greece if Christianity never happened, some Italian kingdoms, France exists in some flavour, weird mix of Byzantines and Persians, flintlock weapons, the old pantheons, fantasy world, late medieval Greece, the Invaders, some version of Rome, functionally, very little of magic, freaks characters out, the guy with his hand cut off, a really clever guy, constantly underestimating this guy, how did he manage to make himself king, cut his hand off, married to a Zenobia who cut his hand off, Elizabeth I, in charge, the cold queen, well written, all about the same length, is that a bad book, if you don’t enjoy it is a bad book, he crossed the border one time and the border police beat the shit out of him, convicted of assault, reprimanded or something, give people lip, keep him in detention, really good and spark and very hard to follow, Greg Bear books, Superstring?, amazing short stories, difficult to understand, Darwin’s Children, Foundation novels, Blood Music, a grey goo problem, plasma based, his writing is hard to follow, he explains what’s going on, a hard to follow Larry Niven, an interesting phenomena of science, The Wind From A Burning Woman, so different from each other, walking cities, kill the earth, it’s hard, hard ideas, hard science fiction, wild, not tame, not controlled, they know what they mean but they didn’t write that, making things clear, your awesome idea, intentional desire to struggle with the text, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Man Of The Crowd, playing chess with a guy who’s better than me, The Gold Bug, one of the few ones with black characters, an actual bug that’s gold, ciphers in there, a treasure hunt sort of thing, A Tale Of The Ragged Mountains, the M. Valdemar story, hypnotism, M blank, stories set in the future, they tend to be humorous, many Poes to still be investigated, School For Virgins, Timeline sometime, Black Cannan.

Congo by Michael Crichton

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #889 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Travels With A Donkey In The Cévennes by Robert Louis Stevenson

The SFFaudio Podcast #889 – Travels With A Donkey In The Cévennes by Robert Louis Stevenson (3 hours 51 minutes) read by Patrick Wallace for LibriVox, followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion are Jesse and Maissa Bessada

Talked about on today’s show:
1879, blanked out on the Cévennes part, a CBC ideas, travel writing, a Mark Twain, couldn’t do the show, abandoned the book, sad sad story, travel literature, living in Egypt for two years, everything is different, letters home, describing what’s happening, bringing up baby, Bringing Up Baby (1938), exaggerate a little bit, Travels by Michael Crichton, private about a lot of the stuff, public about a lot of the stuff, travels with his sister, before he died, a bunch of things that happened to him, picked from earlier and later things, his parents, what income bracket they’re in, guessing, early stuff is all travel stuff, exotic locations, Spain, very good writer, extraordinarily thing to write down, scuba diving, the bends, not enough air, lucky to be alive, I had to resist that quite strongly, an incredible thing to say, in the desert, elide the relationship, some movie start, a spiritual retreat or something, not a super-spiritual guy, nobody understands, profound effects, hike Kilimanjaro, tall, weird, super-smart, a wealthy background, might have been CIA, lot of people’s dads were CIA it turns out, more like a memoir, not exactly travel, being in medical school, attitudes towards corpses, young horny guys who think they are able to cure all diseases, resisting that, The Terminal Man, writing on the side, instead of being a doctor, more of his stuff, that’s definitely true about him, travel incident, Paul Theroux, The Old Patagonia Express, Eric Idle, travel writing, A Year Off by H.P. Lovecraft, does this sound familiar, a grand tour, really?, a travel guy, so expensive to travel, it fits, the poetry of it, over the top, he’s so cheap, he’s a dreamer, the dream, an inheritance, a small budget, Let’s Go Europe, Let’s Go Central America, a cheap place to eat, you’ve got to if you can, travel broadens the mind, going everywhere, much cheaper: read about those places, we don’t always agree on everything, animal abuse, I’ve made Modestine my slave, it has to have been, he’s much softer that the average person, he felt guilty, he’s in love with her, he had the good manners to cry about it as he’s selling her, wait a minute, I’ll cry now, a new boss, locked herself out of the school, she had her bible group there, a rumor about Jesse, show a student something inappropriate, wallpaper, Mort Kuntsler painting, no nudity, a painting of a woman, offended a student years ago, Predator (1987), just 3 years older than me, go down the street to the bookstore and read the novelization, books don’t have literary restrictions on them the way games do, in this book there’s a scene where Robert Louis Stevenson after a cow, he calls them sluts, referring to Modestine, her faults are based on her race and sex, it’s hilarious, disparages women left right and center, a word for female women, [wench], other than a physical journey, a lot of religion, the least religious parts, going through time, donkey pilled, donkeys are cool, cat pilled, dog pilled, a she ass, a jenny would be the right word, jack and jenny, second in his estimation, even though the wife can read and the husband can’t, they’re inferior, second class citizens if even citizens, up and down stuff, catholic vs. protestant, non-christianness vs. christianness, geopolitical landscape, I’m a lame woman who can’t get out of bed, go next door, it’s like time travel, he’s alive while we’re reading the book, casual sexual partners, a woman with low standards of cleanliness, going into a monastery, not converting, very reasonable, finest set of wrinkles on her face, we won’t meet again because I’ll be dead, my man is completely ignorant of everything, these are all real encounters, shades of his interpretation, just 12 days, felt like months, the audiobook not in the original, it doesn’t fit the book very well, it is not the journey, and now the book is starting, reading with your eyes vs. reading with your ears, following characters, from moment to moment, a section that really caught me, some thoughts are the most beautiful things and then they vanish, wow I love that, so beautiful, “vanish”, more deeply, an atmosphere of pleasure, so disposed my spirit, in another country, in a different time, done me good, scan their features, a god travelling by our green highways, ope, the lighter about our business, I dined with a pair of Catholics, captivated by him, the one that everybody knows, Doctor Jekyll And Mr Hyde, a guy who’s one guy who’s two guys, transforms like The Hulk, all the superhero stories are derived from older stuff, nothing that isn’t, Silver Surfer, Galactus is god, Spider-Man, Superman is the most simple, he has no characteristics, he’s from space, his wife didn’t like it, he threw it in the fire, you could have fixed it, he wrote it again, the sparks of his wife, it was supposed to be a surprise, go in with no spoilers, The Sixth Sense (1999), oh he’s a ghost, not art films, fell asleep while watching the movie, the little boy’s saying: I see dead people, Bruce Willis and the kid, it’s dark, slow paced, a build up, the whole point of the movie, so heavily on the twist being the thing that makes it good, you know who the hulk is right away, the origin story is just to get to the thing, unassuming New Yorker, tension there, with great power comes great responsibility, they’re the same guy, that was the sensation of the book, doing something nobody had really done before, reading Edgar Allan Poe, The Black Cat, axes his wife and burns down the house, The Tell-Tale Heart, murders in the domestic sphere, it’s a parody, he’s making fun of something, a guy who drinks too much, out of perversity he kills his cat, the cat comes back the very next day, a curious colouration, who owns this cat, he kills the cat a second time, that’s the question: why does all this stuff happen, you drink too much, it’s about teetotalling, what is The Tell-Tale Heart about?, feeling so guilty, the narrator, he’s so upset about what he’s done, he’s hearing the heart under the floorboards, a powerful piece, we interpret him at the end, they can hear the sound of the beating heart under the floorboards, nervous very dreadfully nervous, the hidden thing inside of Poe, late last year, it’s about his adopted father, disowned him, John Allan, Poe and his older brother, orphaned, father disappeared, mother died, this one child, they broke up the kids, explains so much, of this famous actor pair, stage actors, adopted mother who loved him, was jealous of him?, win back their relationship, the richest guy, fucking around with Poe, Poe was a handful, a lot of stress, a great artist, I have to be forgiving, a professional writer, they traveled to Scotland when he was a child, early 19th century, wouldn’t fund his education, gambling debts, why the psychology is so awesome, he has massive passions, gave nothi9ng to Poe, his illegitimate children, enmity, some trauma, The Cask Of Amontillado, revenge for something never stated, people’s interpretation, all coming from the personal, hwy he’s going anywhere, an affair with a married woman, trying to walk it off, still living with his parents, get some life experience, Fanny Osborne, adopted the son, Jack London revered Robert Louis Stevenson, makes total sense, Jerry Of The Islands, Call Of The wild but in the South Pacific with a Terrier, boat life, Brother Of Jerry, a Pacific guy, Japan’s invasion of Korea, massive success, big career, very short, Wolf ranch, he buys a boat, many other science fiction stories, he goes to where RLS is buried, Tahiti/Samoa, traveling for his longs, a weak constitution, consumption, photos of him old, 44, brain hemorrhage, a lot of coughing, not good for ya, he wrote a ton, a few famous things, A Child’s Garden Of Verse, age 7, young man, wearing a fez, huge 20 hour biography, précis it, Requiem, by Robert A. Heinlein, the starry sky, poetry of them, almost the people were the problem, sleeping inside, outside with his stars, oh here’s the desk, we don’t use it, the horror of this book, causing so much strife, strife between people, an ultra-right wing, crazy woke leftist, not religious at least in clothing, 1 protestant region, a lot of governesses, their religions are compatible, peaceably together, exporting their people, the means of dividing people, the one paradigm, things are happening in the world, that guy is a demon, he’s just demonic, doing demonic things, if you literalize things too much it clouds your thinking, the way to escape this, alternative points of view, not hiding things from your kids, not allowed to DM any more, keeps kids out of trouble, creates love of vocabulary and reading, positive things, explore morality in ways that are safe, ruinous, never lie to them, tell the kids about stuff, etymology, pencil, pen, peninsula, a male body part, that’s the root of it, penne pasta, it is cool, whenever we’re talking about vocabulary, not bird or bark, metaphor roots, understand, misunderstand, not as things to memorize, a list of SAT words, not designed to last, inscribed, cut into written into, epitaph, euphemism, Phemie’s not a name, well spoken, a name from 6000 years ago, number one and number, I gotta go, misinterpret, the word piss pisses people off, the letter, the letter p has now become a word, caca, don’t mention the t word, the trump word, manupulae comprehension, banning words, banning speech, correcting people’s speech, without censorship, the word “nigger”, the offensive word, changed it, censorship is a kind of manipulation and control of people, a good person in a weird time, in the religion discussions, changing words for other words, that was beautiful, he’s insightful, I learned a lot about a dead donkey, her and her personality, she’as pretending it is too heavy, giver her a switch, times in the book where she’s running, approaching something, sharing his meals with her, not just master and slave, words in the book, horses react to spurs, that’s why spurs exist, give it the heel, the programming that you want to communicate, they enjoy running, if Will were here, girls love being chased more than boys love being chased, little girls, “chase me”, why?, boys want to hit each other with sticks, jungle gym, jumping over rivulets, not going to disagree, it’s built in, knows how to stand up, books allow us to communicate not just by modelling our parent’s but with the ancients through codexes, naughty girls, in the context of it, tripwires for people, how much has things changed, I have a goad!, a pinpricking stick, that’ll make it go, almost nobody rides horses anymore, a famous streamer shocking his dog, shock collar, it wasn’t, it’s not a shock collar!, to stay on the bed, part of the set, a very horrible person, those shock collars are legal, enough pressure, relatively unpowerful, animal abuse, shocking part, for training, prevent them from doing damage with their teeth, contemptible, dogs are tools, protection for our animals, comfort creatures, we are in a strange relationship with animals, 1878, definitely different, haven’t touched a real animal, Alex (Cirsova), the farm animal part of the zoo was the most popular, books about cows and pigs and chickens, that screen, a farm in the middle of Toronto, kids want to see these things, we live in light pollution, behind screens, screens and screens and screens, a donkey braying, go to the feed store and pet the cat, we need to and we don’t, most of them don’t have pets, most people didn’t have pets until the 20th century, menageries, a collection of pets, Poe in The Black Cat, monkey, birds, a cat, an attack on teetotalling, drinking is bad, the love of animals, central, cat moms, fur babies, a little overboard, oh yeah, Cévennes, not super far from Spain, what we know about the world, only partially correct, French wasn’t one language for a thousand years, small languages that came together, English has changed significantly in that same time frame, England invaded by the French, Norman French, right near Paris, the borderlands, North of Nice, more towards Andorra, a country between Spain and France, a valley, a little valley, kinda related, the first modern nation state, the borders of France as they are today, let’s get everybody on the same system, meterize gods, the god of justice, the French Revolution, a pretty simple language, a funny thing early on in the book, in the Scottish, answer a question with a question, a hippopotamus or a alligator, I just need to know where I’m going, the water your swimming in, the people of Quebec, still a colony, evolved somewhat, old France, not wholly frozen in time, a time capsule, a colony cut off from the empire, when they import French teachers to be their tutors, also twice removed, the Acadians, regular French, the accent’s going to be different, the culture, an effort to rationalize French, that French rationalization was much harsher, a fashion to add new words all the time, kids fighting against that, the official discipline of it is pretty strong, recreate his his journey, the prequel part, floundering, the kind of book you need to be with it, nice and short, more and more and more, I really like this book, went on a journey with it, probably should be excised, why some things should be excised, The Sinking Ship by Robert Louis Stevenson, Fables, half shaved, to the philosophic eye, she is settling fast, the expression is a strange one, time is only relative, in Davy Jones’ Locker, by parity of reasoning, the position of the ship, spoken like a good officer, the spirit room, there is nothing new in our position, he’s predicting his own death, struck by lightning, something inside you might burst, eating dinner, money in the savings bank, too far gone, or whatever it is, getting drunk since they came aboard, an old salt, good god cried the captain, as she were going down, nothing new in our position, a man’s handsome fashion, hope to be eternal, omit to take a pill, or doing anything at all, perfectly conclusive give me a cigar, a glorious detonation, really really really great, his parents get a doctor, might as well start digging his grave now, find a lady to like me, to lie under the stars with me, where did this person come from?, all of my eggs when I was born, she came into existence around the time of the big bang, I don’t think you take my meaning, the captain has a philosophic eye, his trainee, the wine dark sea, the new day is always rosy fingered dawn, a mental trick to fill time and remember what happens next, Homer is not the author, a beautiful morning, the next day, once upon a time, Brothers Grimm world, When tigers smoked, bad arguments, greeks not having the colour blue, a metaphor, the sea tosses you left and right and makes you a drunkard, when you drink too much you vomit, it’s all metaphor, the effect of drinking unmixed wine, drink wine at parties, put a lot of water in it, tipsy and fall over, snoring on the couch, the host’s duty, mix the wine at the right amount, fell out of fashion, drinking as a vice, a way to make your water purer, we can’t have nice things, when gin came into the UK, blasted drunk, small beer, reading something a little bit older, a lot wiser, bible study, you need read to more than one book, don’t just listen to the one guy’s interpretation, stories from the bronze age and a little later, stories about Spider-Man and Batman, a really good character, trouble in the world, Superman, good hearted, pay your taxes, circumspect, your relationship to the good, old books making think good thoughts, out of the horror of the current thing they want you to care about, a way of engaging, be honest all the time and damn the torpedoes, a man condemned to death, I’m still gonna be me, blowing up early, fits both ways, or do anything at all, convinced by the argument, everything is shaped by what you know, don’t know what cancer is, making really scary faces, smoking causes cancer, the propaganda was, the message little Jesse received, misinformed, skin cancer, what you put into the minds of little boys, looking at it for a long time, schizophrenic, in order to make him less schizophrenic, calmed it down?, afraid of it, a little shaky, gives us a little buzz, a little speedup, largely afraid of alcohol, mothers against drunk driving ads, be a control freak about things, addictive and expensive, if you mix your wine properly, heavy marijuana users, positive effects, chill me out, medical marijuana, stop vomiting, you can sue when they spike your shit, a grow house, filters on cigarettes, a half measure, tar in cigarettes, the disease was solved by having woodsmoke in your home, peanut allergies, exactly, celiac disease, gluten intolerance, glyphosate, why you can’t have any bread, the poison they put on it, our food is contaminated, if you go to Italy, genetically modified wheat, blame autism on Tylenol, when your baby is growing inside of you, folic acid, a good diet to begin with, how did people survive without all the supplements, sold a bill of goods, what happened to consumption, name a guy who isn’t Doc Holiday or Edgar Allan Poe’s wife, the diseases get less worse, at Christmas, with this last name, alcohol drinkers, smokers, 6 uncles, drinking was dangerous, smoking was a bad idea, sailors smoke, everything is explained by looking at the backstory, abstinence from alcohol, get rid of this scourge, husbands to beat wives, cheap alcohol is a tech, fix itself by giving it enough time, China was addicted to opium, a revolution against their occupiers, fentanyl, smaller, cheap spirits were the problem, from too much gin, alcohol poisoning, nobody’s going to be talking about it in 1000 years, maybe we’re talking about, teams and brave talk, our telepathy works fine, cursing you, had faith, chose right, in 2 weeks for a Dortmunder book, space brain, Misha Burnett, Killing Time, this book is great, reading it again, so easy to read Westlake, see the hands spreading apart, audio drama, aphantasia, do you think the way I think, in dreams, see when I’m dreaming, look at the blue ocean, there is a sea, an ocean, rosy fingered dawn is just breaking over the horizon, the sea is wine dark, what colour is the sea, imagine it, good at drawing?, draw a boat, a rowboat, a dinghy, a fantastic artist, another guess, no, do you see things in dreams, the same part of your head, you don’t have conscious access, pink, the colour of wine, the darkness, its deep, hiding its contents from you, why it is evocative, Pulpcovers recorded Rogues In The House, full of colour, a very angry gorilla, takes his cape, I am the master now, monkey see monkey do, a red caped monkey, why is it a red cape?, little red riding hood, all subject to metaphor, monkey men are men who act like monkeys, what’s the difference between us and an animal, a Simak recently, The Visitors, kinda like War Of The Worlds, the invasion of the Earth by slabs from 2001, obelisks, colonizing the planet, bales of cellulose, have a fantastic day.

Travels With A Donkey

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #878 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain

The SFFaudio Podcast #878 – A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain (15 hours 33 minutes) read by John Greenman for LibriVox, followed by a discussion. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Scott Danielson and Cora Buhlert.

talked about on today’s show:
1880, western Europe?, France, Switzerland, mostly Germany, 6 travel books, the semi-official sequel, Innocents Abroad, 1869?, the answer is none, Paul [Weimer] and Trish [E. Matson] and David J. West, a really good book, tipped hand, the audiobook, washed over, some gaps, non-fiction, pick it up again wherever, not so much a cohesive story as a series of coorespondences, Travels With Charley by John Steinbeck, very first cruise ship, the start of modern tourism, 9 years later, in full swing, pilgrimage, requisite Grand Tour, 1878, Switzerland, the hotels, makes fun of the German language, difficult to learn, pitfalls, he’s Twain now, much more interesting, Baden Baden, from the South, exaggerations not lies, student swordfights, fraternity, young men, suspicious, still have swordfights, the swordfighting section, Otto Skorzeny, Hitler’s commando, non women at the time, all men, the elites, dueling scars, what killed off these fraternities, post-WWII education reform, people from different areas, left wing liberal, 1848, pro-limited democracy, conservative, 1960s-1980s, own events, steal the caps, a bounty for every cap stolen, much diminished, 2024, just boys being boys, 1933, epee, goggles, nose protection, went into the brain, old universities, student prisons, they still exist, German-Polish border, graffiti the students left behind, that scene is illustrated, smites, very proud of it, so you could see it, that’s why they’re doing it, showing off their manliness, Bismark in prison, writing on the wall, RACHE, means vengeance/revenge, A Study In Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle, a carving in blood or red paint, the police are baffled, Rachel, a red herring, Conan Doyle was an avid reader, where he’s stealing stuff from, stealing from Poe, how dare you compare me to C. August Dupin, very interested in foreign affairs, things outside of London, the KKK, the Mormons, A Scandal In Bohemia, guy from India, rip stories from the headlines, to Reichenbach Falls, Easter Germany, Czechoslovakia, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, this specific, the Bond movie, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), George Lazenby, San Fransisco Chronicle, daily correspondence, people tuned into the newspaper everyday, what is this funny guy doing, very sequential, everything is incidents, a travelogue, a diary, bluejays for 3 chapters, whatever strikes him, local legends, the Lorelei, no nymph, no statue, the way the best understood, hilarious exaggerations, close studies, highly accurate, plays it for fun sometimes, an immensely close recreation, the next chapter he’s in France playing the second of a duel, the funniest thing you’ve ever read, the contrast between the two, a journalist, he’s playing it for comedy, choose your weapons, Gatling guns at 15 yards, attendees, apologize and hug each other, some grain of truth at the bottom, climbing Mount Blanc, all the things they bring, tobacco and beds, 138 umbrellas, mountaineering, reason to climb, outlaws fleeing the law, pay a yodeller, endlessly entertaining, stumbling around in his bedroom, a whole chapter, this is what people are paying to read, what’s so striking about it, through movies, he’s Hamburg, Germany gets its sense of identity by what Julius Caesar said about the Germans, this is us, only a united nation for 7 years, small kingdoms, dukedoms, so clean and so nice and so new, in about 2000 years, describe Switzerland to the Swiss, a foreigner coming in, everything that he writes in this book, unimpeachably true, a guy named Harris, in really fun and good American literature, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, a travel book, there’s no way to have that experience and be able to write about it, the aftermath of a party in a room, how it looks, what must have happened, these soap bars, journalists, cars haven’t been invented yet, the train, rafting, very Twain, a steamboat guy, Twain was a civil war officer for the South, they’re best friends, John Jakes’ North And South, anti-slavery, his unit disbanded promptly, went off to Nevada, San Fransisco, Travels by Michael Crichton, very different people, romp, tramp, a good genre, pilgrimage to Spain, the medieval pilgrimage, Anthony Bourdain’s show, quality of the narration, the street food, a vacation through the stomach, Michael Palin, Jeremy Clarkson, infamous, popular, what they have in common, the populace likes them, with airs about it, the finest restaurants, the kitchen, German coffee, chicory, a giant vat of boiling water, here’s your coffee sir, real coffee, fake coffee, malted grain, has to be imported, Heidelberg, the coffee ports, Bremen, they have to carry it by donkey, trains, a real guy, Goethe wrote a play about him, the iron hand, fight with an archbishop, he may lick my ass, this book in mind, a radio show, brief in the book, the Lion of Lucerne, carved into this cliff, this is something to see, there it is across the water, a wound in it, dying or dead, in memory of some event, to see it, a tourist destination, a kind of a secular version of pilgrimage, recreating Byron’s life, that book is inspiring, an activity, Antarctica, At The Mountains Of Madness, you hate cruises, literature, how powerful it is, there are countries created out of fantasy, Israel, Germany, the second German empire, what to include, why Austria is separate, the Prussian king, keep Austria out, weird south east European places, into modern Russia, minorities, a book set in Antarctica, Edgar Allan Poe, the act of imagination, William Dean Howells, A Traveler From Altruria, a commune, the secret is that books are incredibly powerful, I would like to go to Europe, Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Karl Mai, an early cosplayer, read for generation, hike the mountains, Kurdistan, why the obsession, why do you go to Baker Street?, a museum, destroyed in WWII, answers letters to Sherlock Holmes, humans are monkeys, monkey see monkey do, tictock dances, I wanna be a cowboy/astronaut, you’ve found your identity, Foundation by Isaac Asimov, archaeology, sociology, a chemist, Paul Krugman, Newt Gingrich, Osama Bin Laden, one of those books, it will wreck you at the right age, travel agencies and cruise operating, free copies of At The Mountains Of Madness, a few other things that are striking, the American who has the same conversation with everyone he meets, what ship did you come over on?, is this your sister?, that personality, you meet people like this, a character sketch, in the previous one, he went into a church, gave a blind woman a gold coin, steals it from her hand, that incident, visiting again, the Acropolis, broke in, climbing over fences, chasing after them, if you’re an animal, see food you eat it, read another of his books, so personable, so relatable, whatever he’s thinking, not crass, what was actually happening there, is this a prostitute?, very young girls, he doesn’t take advantage, Dorothy Quick is great, encouraged her to write, her friendship, they were friends, a really good incident, looking at a woman, how old is she?, are you 18, I’m so glad you came over, how is this person, what did you name him?, not admitting the truth at the beginning, delightful and breezy and easy, still tremendously enjoyable, laughed out loud several times, the essay on the German language, I attack them, so funny, convincing one of the guides to jump off the cliff with the umbrella, let someone else do it, a giant extended joke, how credulous can you be?, he is funny, an appendix on portiers, extinct by now, the American way, giving everybody tips, concierge, high end luxury hotels, the Ritz, Singapore, such a weird thing, still has these, New Orleans, Arthur Hailey’s Hotel, the courier, in chapter 32, courier du bois, the tradesman, this job has disappeared, find some natives, load up with furs, come back to the fort, how Canadian history works, eventual shipment to Europe for hats, not for furs, something else, chocolate coloured, still it was worth it to inquire, ask for the price, above all not to reveal, it’s a hundred francs too much, broken German, a pleasant surprise, please do not let your courier know that you’ve bought it, I do not have to pay you a percentage, 100 francs, twice or thrice, both get a percentage, getting ripped off, travel without a guide is completely horrible, the guides get lost, Philip K. Dick, the assumptions, pulling the rug out from under us, never a maliciousness, not even mean, what he’s doing, it works everytime, met the pope, there was a guide, exactly what to do, get close to the aisle, had bad seats, extremely helpful, knows all the rope, tour guides, a different name now, on the Neckar river, barge, travel within the United States, the air b&b route, a neighbourhood, living like the people who live there live, how to do the research?, people to meet, local guides, a seminar conference, looked up online, see this, see that, an uber, extremely easy, there was a book, Let’s Go Europe, Let’s Go Mexico, Ford Prefect, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, gets a percentage, canny, a travel agent, cheap the whole way, the cheapest whatever, when the museum is free, largely replaced with online stuff, a paper map of the city, a painting in a museum, on the Rome trip, St. Peter’s, a guided thing, they hired somebody, a historian, spent the whole day there, get around, if you live in a place for a couple of weeks, vs. passing through, the ideal way of doing it, commenting on all sorts of different experiences, schoolboys fighting, get involved, white hats, how many boys fight per day, French honour, very present to whatever it presented to him, take him on a certain ride, disappointed by something, becomes very memorable, the squalor and poverty of the people, the animals, starving to death, very old, a hotel like that, it was a grand hotel, pay the full freight, it doesn’t come across as mean spirited, Edgar Allan Poe tried to start a magazine, she was rich, his hobby of a magazine, died right before the wedding, just wait, 15-20 years later, Mark Twain becomes wealthy because of the popularity of his books, being honest, a savage critic, he would scalp you, he would let you know, the guy who hated him Rufus Griswold, puffed everybody, no matter what you write you get puffed, this crypto-bro scheme of becoming writers, selling on Amazon, 20booksto50k, if you don’t play the game, to not offend anybody, completely non-offensive, the recipe for success, thoroughly entertain everybody, they thought it was bad, kept investing in things, what a great writer, his major stuff, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Joan Of Arc, a funny book for him to write, The Prince And The Pauper, Poe mostly wrote short stories and a lot of criticism, as a journalist, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, Cannibalism In The Cars, senators eating each other, the sense of humour, the reverence for experience and life, why do you want to go on a trip to Europe?, experiencing these things, that is what he is seeking, that delight, just the pictures, half the men are smoking, weird old-fashioned pipes, something we pass over now, the same software, there’s no electricity, there’s no electric anything, impressed by the gaslight, what happened to the hotel, entranced, the discourse on Wagner, nobody likes Wagner, you get to like it, the longer the better, serialized chapters, comes at you in waves, go out and pick specific things?, wouldn’t you pay?, they stopped hiring Mark Twain, on tv sort of, Netflix, the personality of the deliverer, also dead, Herman Goutmann, a slightly different personality, an abrasive personality, a witticism for everything, Hermann Gutmann, Dave Barry, The Ultimate Melody by Arthur C. Clarke, every wedding, Lohengrin, pyromania, opera house, sweaty, Angela Merkel enjoyed it, sweatspots, stuffy, talk about Twain for a minute, never fell anything by him that fell flat, whatever he does is super-reliable, the guy you can always turn to, there is a Mark Twain I haven’t read, every book has worked, how he came to do it, very episodic, it’s not the coherence that matters, A True Story by Mark Twain, laughing on the front porch, servant/cook/maid, there is no funniness in it at all, making fun of the maid, she’s making fun of them, that man is alive in that text, a man who’s still with us, this is a living man, Shakespeare, very excited about maybe Shakespeare isn’t Shakespeare, as Borges points out, he’s thinking about how people are actors, players, wherever Mark Twain goes he’s right there, she’s illiterate, all he does is transcribe what she said, it’s not a fossil it’s alive, reading good books, kept comparing, what it looked like in the 19th century, German and American education system, very accurate, university is very specialized, listen to lectures, more school-like today, go in line with, somewhat like this, a lot of freedom, you could not attend a lecture, it’s different now, school-track school-system, gymnasium, academic track, very well educated, more than a U.S. high-school diploma, college in the U.S., the kind he describes, ancient Greek and Latin, 1970s brutalist school, still require Latin, take Latin at school, a year from now?, Following The Equator (More Tramps Abroad), The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, a reason to keep reading, good book, learned a lot, reduced to Huckleberry Finn man, mean true things about the German language, more John Irving and Anne Tyler, if not the greatest, Westlake, sad story, Two Much next sunday, Simak the week after, Phantasties, Travels With A Donkey.

A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #876 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Tower Of The Elephant by Robert E. Howard and The Tale Of Satampra Zeiros by Clark Ashton Smith

The SFFaudio Podcast #876 – The Tower Of The Elephant by Robert E. Howard (1 hour 23 minutes) read by Mike Vendetti and The Tale Of Satampra Zeiros by Clark Ashton Smith (31 minutes) read by Tommy Patrick Ryan, followed by a discussion. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Scott Danielson, and Cora Buhlert.

talked about on today’s show:
Smith’s 1931, 1933, paired, Weird Tales authors, big 3, big 4, thieves stealing things from places, things not going according to plan, a tweet, art from both, who thiefed it better, Howard, had read the Smith before, 25 years now, maybe more, a few other things too, badgering about Conan, really good, over the last 4 years, sword and sorcery, really liked it, good introduction to Conan, a good story, with one caveat, no girls in it at all, more interesting character, Red Nails, People Of the Black Circle, Queen Of The Black Coast, old fashioned language, perfectly harmless Conan stories, stray racism, stray anti-shemitism, pro-cimmerianism, trying to cancel Astrid Lindgren, Pipi Longstocking, great children’s book, the audience for that Star Trek babies show, isn’t quite what you were expecting, of these two stories, which one is the science fiction story, literally an alien, stapled to a couch for 300 years, other planets, not surprised, if he was less Cimmerian he would question his sanity, the tones are very different, a pair of thieves into a forbidden building, one of them dies, with no great jewel, a horror story, a cosmic horror story, Tsathoggua, an inklings situation, an Inkling situation, Seabury Quinn is the big fourth, correspondence, Robert Barlow, Frank Belknap Long, H.G. Wells was in Weird Tales, Tennessee Williams, the people on the cover, Clarke would be one of the big 4 of something else, takes the cover, doesn’t have scantily clad women, Galactic Journey, Margaret Brundage covers, got quite grumpy, naked woman on the cover, strategically placed, less than 5%, scantily clad ladies, all academics, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, Texas, California, Rhode Island and New York, except to go to Mexico, and New Orleans, re-qualification, San Fransisco, using the mail, reading each other’s stories, corresponding, not exactly an inklings situation, C.S. Lewis, writing for money, elderly and sick parents, stuff in the 1950s, a pulp story, chapters, the whole last chapter of the book is a nice delicious infodump, the fight in the bar, what kind of men are men, Gundermen, a city of thieves, Yara is a thief as well, a pot bellied Nemedian, Taurus, Poland maybe?, Zamora, Turkey?, Hyrkania, Russia, Ukraine, an analogous, the tower, our guy who’s bragging, to teach women stealing, a Kothian, hooked nosed shemite forger, he wants to sell a particular woman to a shemite, a slave of another race, he stalked her and got her, a big story about bragging and what being a man is, why has no one broken into the tower, the conflict, Howard doesn’t do this, semi-unconsciously, getting into a fight with Lovecraft about what’s going on, civilization vs. barbarism, Howard is massively affected by this, a completely corrupt city, carry swords openly, a beef, the only killing Conan does of a human, a Nemedian who’s already on the job, inaccessible towers, with winged people, pre-cataclysmic land, lions, tries to betray Conan, Conan figures it out using Sherlock Holmes style techniques, what eventually is not a pay-off, escape the city with a bag of gold, what do we come away with?, he doesn’t walk out with a gem, some insight into Conan, a mercy-killing, compassionate, Yag-Kosha, torturing him, blind, drugged stupor, he helps Yag-Kosha, a man of a certain thing, The Ten Commandments, very biblical, Solomon Kane, old testament characters, physically gets the Staff of Solomon, this proof of God’s power, A Song Out Of Midian, Mt. Sanai, Christianity, civilized long settled people, intricate and complex, formulas and rituals, simple and understanable, Crom was their chief, gloomy savage god, gave man courage at birth, kill his enemies, literally engaging, the perfect god for atheists, The Vale Of Lost Women, lovecraftian monsters, from the outer dark, essentially miracles, fights the god, that is victory, man can fight a god, he isn’t writing this because he’s trying to make a philosophical point, he can’t help but put his stuff in there, a minor debate in Conan The Barbarian (1982), a haze of bewilderment, all touched in the head, low tolerance, ideas about life, I live, I love, I slay, I am content, sits around and listens to philosophers a lot, how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, shaking your head, up their own navel, religion students, teachers of religious education, translated 500 different times, what’s going on, which is the better story and why, the Conan story, very enjoyable, a mythic depth to it, it’s cosmic, a Lovecraft feeling, came to earth in China, Ganesha, this is what I need you to do, take my heart out, squeeze the blood on this gem, ancient ancient stuff, in The Odyssey, Tim Powers’ On Stranger Tides, instructions, strums the guitar strings, biblical and beyond biblical, from the depth of the human consciousness, differing philosophies, read both before, deeper, more mythical, a great story, funny, what happened was, got on the internet, excited to meet other people, an early forum, Scott Lynch, The Lies Of Locke Lamora, KGB Bar, Asimov stories, rude, that’s true, way to stupid, a collection, appreciate it more, the executioner, dark but hilarious, some guy who was a jerk, ultimately you are on team Conan, an incredibly important story, rogue thieves story, definitely important, Boston Blackie, Dunsany, the first one in fantasy, the template for Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser, we like the Conan more, the different philosophies, engagement with the world as it is, having that idea, rug pulled, The Mirrors Of Tuzun Thune, a much gander aspect, race and borders and stuff, how to be in the world, except for the story and the experience, we come out of the story with a greater awe, comes out with a missing hand, meets a monster, a genuine monster, into a circle, the same temple, things in particular, 3rd person, the author giving his opinions, that’s a mistake, all sorts of clever, early in Conan’s career, The Frost Giant’s Daughter, the names of the characters, he treats his characters very disposably, usually keep the main character, background characters always change, Turuz Oomphalious, Tommy [Patrick Ryan], what kinda accident, sounds like a real name, both of these are jokes, less than zero, omphalos, navel, also a circle, they’re thieves, thieving to be luxurious, fur bikini, enjoying the thievery, that drunkenness, decadence, a repeated motif, loves describing the colours of the materials, the materials themselves, the sensual experience, literally lost his hand, writing with his sinister hand, the story as it is, the tale of everything, the shrine of the god, the jungle taken suburbs, hyperborean rulers, one giant sentence, what kind of guy, violet juice, rubric, on strong vellum, made of the skin of the mastodon, some lying legend, a warning letter, the colour of the ink, he is an aesthete, pleasure seeking, touched in the head, a response, a little more like Taurus, he enjoys the spoils of his takings, the king of thieves, too much rich food, drunken burglary, own everything nice, The Hound, they steal art, they make art, their art is horrible, hounded to death, go in to steal something, round and round, lives to tell the story, his lesson was not learned at all, why we love reading Clark Ashton Smith, Conan’s motive, a very good question, the whole point of Conan, the viewpoint character, we want to be him and we want to have this experience, they’re doomed, the characters don’t survive, the luxuriant growth, as you approach it, snakes, other animals, and bats, a doom, walking towards their doom, they’re fools, Conan is Robert E. Howard wrestling with the world, people would come at Jesse with religious stuff, figure out what’s going on, how do you defend against their arguments, comes in cynical but open, asks his questions, a famous line in this story, that’ Heinlein line, armed society is a polite society, from outside the city, the Karen mentality, grateful and thankful, the thing we hate in ourselves, we need to be a certain way, in the end he comes away with a broader experience of the world, that is the payment, a young Conan, newish to civilization, very curious, an atheist, he’s anti-religion, a religious region, books about theology, he’s doing his own research, he’s arguing with them, A Witch Shall Be Born, crucified and survives, a betrayal story, every movie, even the Solomon Kane movie, he’s a philosopher, he’s wrestling with something, it’s not always Conan but it is always Robert E. Howard, women shouldn’t trick you into wanting them and then take your money, his takeaway, what if everything’s fake?, literally wrestling with things, Xuthal Of The Dusk, The Slithering Shadow, responding to gothic fiction, rejecting it, how to avoid becoming weak, he came to earth, a rebellion on their planet, jungles of China, the names are not great, his apprentice, oversteps, builds the tower, a story of betrayal, I have to stand on my own two feet, own bootstraps, ultimately we know what happened to Howard, don’t do that, pay his bills, caregiver for his mother, a double funeral, his father, slow to pay, trapped in this house, his girlfriend had gone off to college, is she really dying this time, he wanted to kill himself, the excuse, untenable, let’s be careful, a long life, he drank a lot, got married late in life, stepchildren, he did his art, he cultivated his garden, this amazing vocabulary, very strange for thieves, the stand-in for these characters, trying to make art, the putative author of the story, it’s navel gazing, he knows what he’s doing here, sensual pleasure, the problem of existence, existential philosophers in the form of sword and sorcery stories, steals to survive, jewels he kept, find yourself a husband, crazy socialists, civilized lands, next to warehouses full of grain, cuthroat capitalism, super loyal to his friends, young thief, mercenary, pirate, he’s everything, the man in full, 16-mid40s, a mistake to think about how Conan is, what is this character come away with, a sense of awe, wow, how are we supposed to feel about this mercy killing, honourable and terrible, Robert E. Howard’s position, frontier guy, dogs and horse being shot, too injured to continue living, a hypocrisy there, one of the pacific island wars, head blown open, what do we do?, the cameras are here, of course you’re going to shoot him, everything that happens is horrible, you sorta need to have a reason external to you, what it has to be is anti-dogma, thou shalt not kill (thy self), he’s trying to do good in the world, harms all of us, his friends are all sad, not gonna make you happy, a choice between these two stories, we are told to reject the story by Satampa Zieros, that’s why it can’t be compared, much tighter and more complete story in terms of unity of effect, what Poe would be talking about, it nullifies itself, it tells us to reject it, there are immense possibilities, first fighting dinosaurs, a nested dug in on itself society, the sun’s bright, how different they are when they’re really quite similar, why do Sherlock Holmes stories work for us so well, crusaders stories?, why do we like his writing so much, of they’re not stupid ideas, so distinctive and iconic, even though he’s great, he’s always going to be third tier of these guys, his ambition, tend my garden, make things beautiful, the colour of the wine, all surface, all pleasure, older than Robert E. Howard’s, at least one word he made up, abroad already in the half light, the poisonous looking fruits, malign attention, he is a thesaurus, adamantine, pecuniary depletion, it means purple, his vocab is better than everybody’s, he literally didn’t forget his words, come away with vocab words, Hyperborea, a place of his, greek for far north, Averoine, Poseidonis, Zothique, Ziccarth, he get’s a second story, absolutely isn’t, a pretty weird one, The Sword Of Welleran, The Theft Of The Thirty-Nine Girldes, chastity belts, elephant revenge, 1,001 Nights, The Black Diamonds, two kids grow up in Baghdad, always meals, has them have lunch, he’s playing with himself, his own version to 1,001 Nights, his imagination is running wild, Spider-Man or RoboCop or Peacemaker, Abdul Al Hazred, towel on his head, cosplaying, pretending to be a pirate, spears, he had a lot to live for, he would have been wealthy, H. Beam Piper, lived into the 1980s, he’s funny too, the humour is in the boxing stories, Breckenridge Elkins, the only book is on LibriVox, a mountain man, he’s so strong, exaggerated fun stories, Sailor Steve Costigan, not a bright guy at all, an amateur boxer, there was a demand for boxing, railroad stories, Action Stories, Fight Stories, a better market, more Howard, space em out, $0.99, they’re all the same, they’re all good, when Lovecraft reviewed the Clark Ashton Smith story, very Dunsany-like, The House Of The Sphinx, we come into a middle of a scene, there’s something out in the woods, a 1 page story, the house is falling apart, what is he doing in this story, a bookstore, in the lobby was a sphinx, Egyptian sphinx, designed to prompt you to figure it out, being very playful, to be playful, the connection, comes away different, enjoys the names and enjoys the joke, the luxuriance, it’s soapstone, wealthy aristocrat, no electricity, not selling to the same magazines, the author and their art, Michael Crichton, a literary connection, Travels, The Andromeda Strain, dedicated to Arthur Conan Doyle, engagement with literature from before you, Atlantis, Lemuria, trying to engage with the ancient, out of the bible, out of other stuff, mediocre writing that comes and goes, engaging with tropes, the save the cat formula, enemies to lovers, really popular, modern writers, they’re not engaging, they liked Firefly, you don’t have to read this old stuff, they draw on everything they’ve read, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Greek classics, took Latin, Caesar’s Gallic Wars, religious education classes, same five parts of the bible, quite annoyed, don’t ask questions, it should be, pulp authors, literature, mythology, religion, made teenage Cora go to religious education, Jezebel, transliteration issue, stole a bible, they’re designed to be stolen, here’s a question, walking around to hotels, leave a copy of the Robert E. Howard’s stories, an amenity, if you look at his manuscripts, backs of hotel paper, paper is expensive, designed to be stolen, hotel shampoo, the sheets on the bed, towels, pocketed stuff, everybody is a Clark Ashton Smith character, not going to happen, whoever the Gideons are, public book shelves, compare the translation, crime novels, little free libraries, in demand, other books were still there, crime novels, two crime stories, Midsommer Murders, NCIS, speaking of crime, reading Howard as a teen, how dare he kill that Brythunian, read a western, everybody is out to kill everybody, some piece of media, horribly immoral, they’re stealing as they go through the countryside, everybody in the city is a thief, when Conan steals, people who can afford it, poor farmer, from wealthy people, terrible people who have deserved it, human trafficker, deserves is not the way of Jesus, violent American trash, complete nonsense, a transgressive thing to do, Conan, Rambo, and Rocky, fifty years old at the time, sympathy, Nancy Kress’ Beggars In Space, reject it, what is being promulgated is evil, doesn’t happen very often, not connecting, a visceral this is evil, Slan is kinda evil for the same reasons, put sympathy in the wrong place, I am better than you, evil stories, on a podcast about it, refuse to watch shows, the death penalty, never watching this show again, 24, torture, a terrorist somewhere, children committing murder, Adolescents, radicalized, ahistorical, age control of the internet, see weird things online, atheist can’t have evil, how are you defining evil, god as the source of morality, dragging this out, important, as written in the move, not really a commandment, you have to, pre-the Israelites, virtuous pagans, a graven image, the KJV, some are uncontroversial, describes the Ark of the Covenant, of heavenly things, strange gods before me, take the name of the lord god in vain, remember the sabbath day, the same one, days of the week, the next one, honour they father and mother, respectful unless disrespectful, thou shalt not kill, armies kill, just war theory, you shalt not murder, when he gets married, thou shalt not steal, rob from the rich and give to yourself, Robin Hood, apparently not, the way they get out from under Pharaoh, fine get out of here, curse on the first born, lambs’ blood, we all know what steal is, when Blackrock does it, the number one, don’t lie about what people did, thy neighbour’s house, thy neighbour’s wife, set up these stones, the turn the other cheek stuff, old testament times, Jesus himself was asked, he didn’t say all of them, love god and love each other, a condensation, ordering your life where god is first, from that ordering of your life, this turmoil, this chaos, this idiocy, evil, makes the rest of it less important, in the proper ordering of things, willing the good of another person, jealousy fades away, good for you but also good, that’s a bad idea, causes strife, people living together well, in-groups, monotheistic and abrahamic religions, Hindu or Buddhist, pretty universal rules for living together well, Edward Page Mitchell, the best early science fiction writer, a fantasy, a Bangsian fantasy?, the rapture, a scene in it, pile up all the gold that they have, the heavens shakes, the roof comes off of the world, lit on fire, Moses is up on Mt. Sinai, down in the valley beneath, a golden calf to worship, revelry, Moses comes down and he’s really mad, throws the tablets at the golden calf, it zaps, elide it, got the tablets back, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, is that the same gold?, if it is, it is more interesting that way, a whole lot of different stuff to explain the story, 30 years of Moses’ life is absent, putting it all together we have to do a lot of inference, it’s immutable but very mutable, Edward G. Robinson, that’d be good right?, the Judas of the group, motivated by gold, we fell enriched, but we literally get nothing, we should raise money, nothing on tv, they pull open the drawer, a faith in the book, a faith in the word, the word remains, something fun about that, a notch deeper than that, Jesus is the word, bored in hotel rooms, single rooms, parents’ magazines, parents’ books, micromanaging commandments, when and how to have sex with what, giggle giggle, indulge Jesse, semi-interesting story, this one church has the Ark of the Covenant in there, exposed, maybe it is radioactive, we did our own raiders of the lost ark, [iodine] fight the radiation, how much does that effect us, translate it, we decode it, thous shalt not own a Tesla, surprising!, draw human blood, older fragments being found, the Gospels, the older fragments match, controversial content, what books included, what books aren’t, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Judas, the Christians have got something cool over there, an argument or a possibility that is always out there, the oldest existing, when a new translation comes out, Hebrew or Greek, as accurate as possible, interpretation, different readings of passage, better not to have the tablets, imagine we have no doubt that it’s the actual tablets, that’s impossible, what’s really true is the story, as a film, Moses is put in the river by his mom, the prophecy for Oedipus, very similar, the ending is the Israelites leave Egypt, not a destiny doom thing, by the power of God, why is that so central to the idea, the parting of the red sea, a series of coincidence, read this as mythological, the Greek response to reality, the innovation that makes it powerful, Lewis’ conversion to Christianity, Tolkien had a part of that, these stories are mythological, this is the myth that’s true, the more interesting reading of it, these are not supposed to be read as actual events, scrutinizing the videotape, scripture only, the genesis story as literal, these stories were orally told through time, the details are not long there, the important points are hit, wowed the audience, Bros. Grimm stories, relating actual events?, yes, anything older than Abraham, the story of Noah, a cool movie to see, this is what it says, Noah (2014), a spiritual aspect to them, god helping you through tribulation, the historical aspect, the story they told themselves, Egyptian records, historical characters are in there, black Americans in slavery, the story of the Israelites being freed is a big deal, a deep thrumming, a Jenny (Colvin) word, either or both, Augustine goes through Genesis, meanings, in the year 300, these days aren’t literal, the number 40, a poetic word, a lot, many, not the conventional way, to sophisticated for how stupid we are today, important to understand what was being written and to whom, lamb of god, meant something specifically to the people of the time, we don’t have the symbolism, if we understood the symbolism, the story would make more sense, a cat on a rooftop in the Hansel and Gretel, very specifically a bird, broken by modern interpretation, Cinderella, a corruption to turn it into princesses, the original Grimms, the original grizzly versions, obsession with stone babies, cautionary tales for young women, why doesn’t the wolf eat the girl in the forest, and her lunch, he get’s into the grandma’s bed, what was the woodman doing there?, retold for a modern audience, very artificial sounding, Bros. Grimm: Demon Hunters, young women, nurses and nannies, aimed at girls and young women, The Iliad, Yul Brenner, Moses, his accent, The Magnificent Seven, Westworld, while he’s sitting on the throne, Priam from ancient Greece comes in, the King of Troy, we can get a timeline, Hollywood edition, smart and educated, a strange film, Cecil B. DeMille, a narrator throughout, and then this happened, Charlton Heston’s hair, an easter egg for us, Trojan War, the Jews are doing this over there, Midian, how would he know about that, very cool, much more interesting and public domain version of the MCU, terrible language, The Fantastic Four movie, Mythopoeia by J.R.R. Tolkien, fun as heck, when next are we three meeting again?, the links are there, science fiction and science fiction, hiking, full on the weekends, if not then, then, spread em out, did we ever do anything by C.L. Moore, we did a big show on it, Stefan Rudnicki, Skyboat let us use one, bye.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #875 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Undying Monster by Jessie Douglas Kerruish

The SFFaudio Podcast #875 – The Undying Monster by Jessie Douglas Kerruish (7 hours 56 minutes) read by Ben Tucker, for LibriVox, followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Alex (Pulpcovers), and Tommy Patrick Ryan

Talked about on today’s show:
Monster?, before 2014, her publication in famous fantastic mysteries, pretty good, not super well known, did you write it, different spelling, different lady, here’s a big novel by me, 8 hours long, a full novel, 3 and half hours is novel, people disagree, unplug and plug back in, decent, you liked it, good points, inventive, where to get there, that one’s not great, the recording, he’s got a British accent, most of the voices, competent, Ben Tucker is good, an interesting choice, a lot more acting, did you manage to see the movie?, this last week, last night, driving to and from some stuff, spoiler alert, a good werewolf story, Luna, more obvious, the werewolf is attracted to the moon, for whatever reason, fasinated by shapechangers, werewolves in particular, the druid class, into wolves and bears, Diablo, a werewolf or werebear, Brandytook?, lifted from Tolkien, our favourite hobbits, awith a swing of his stick, inventing the game of golf, the shapechanger, turn into dragons, D&S or Pathfinder, forgotten everything about this book, all the pictures, a hand of glory on the cover, scenes from all sorts of different stuff, the drivers died, irritating, big loss there bud, missed out on the etymology, fascinated by skinchangers, skinwalker, a [novel] approach, 4th and 5th dimension, a very strong personality behind it, the Saga of the Volsungs, oh yeah, skipped throughable, the video on YouTube, on archive.org, sort of worth watching, the book is quite different, 8 hrs vs. an hour, the last line of the movie, wait a minute, a weird joke to put in a murder movie, this book is all sorts of things, Oliver and Swanhild, she straps on her brother’s service revolver, WWI, driving almost everybody to kill themselves, the shaw, either Doyle, Professor somebody, or that lady, Doyle is Conan Doyle, with so much baggage, the subtitle of the book, Hound Of The Baskervilles, a reverse gothic novel, early Scooby Doo, old man withers!, the supernatural thing is always fake, inheritance scheme, condos, what shaw is, old english, a thicket or copse, what it is, context it makes sense, this weird dark cave, forested, a coppicing, a copse of trees, a forest cultivated for making charcoal and home heating, sticks of the right size, for making faggots, walking sticks, wand, a little tree branch, you can just substitute the moors, with the Doyle reference, a mystery, supernatural stuff, documents, the legend, a doctor showing up at Sherlock Holmes’ residence, the legend of the Baskervilles, extraordinary evidence, a response to that, a story by Barry Pain, The Undying Thing, contemporaneously, turns out it was first published in 1893, a chain, a feudal house in some part of England, the old English manor house, a family in decline, the setting is great, cool old things, secret rooms, mounds, guys who live in cottages, Holmes, Dracula, vampires, a series of RPGs, larping, Vampire The Masquerade, weirder, give me all the rules, five phases of werewolves, krynos form, the wolfman, almost pass for a really hairy dude, a dire wolf, loup garou, Norse mythology, unexpected but welcome, the twist, the dog is dead, maybe he’s not a werewolf, the first ancestor, still hiding, the Magnus guy, all turn into wolves because of crazy, if you have the knowledge when you are in the womb, before he had sex to make you, encoded in your genes, racial memory, scanned through it, as soon as she’s out in the wood, how come I know that, forgotten the movie, noted on a tweet, really funny audio drama called THE MONSTER HUNTERS, retell old movies as their own, 1970s groovy monster, Heir Of The Dog, a game on Steam, gold car, ache in my back, she’s playing with the record player, they are attacked by a werewolf, this is what inspired that, the tropes are there, scared to death, when John Baskerville comes, connecting these altogether, incest, old English families, keep it in the family, Swanhild is also in Eric Brighteyes by H. Rider Haggard, 1883, maybe it starts with a g and ends with an l, ghoul?, such a werewolf nerd, a rundown of the Saga of the Volsungs, the race of the Volsungs, an edda, the translation by William Morris, 3000 years later, reading Edgar Allan Poe, you fool, this bird is not a Raven, yeah, we don’t care, where Gandalf came from the dwarves of the hobbit, Smaug is not in there, Fafnir is a talking dragon, talking dragons are also shapeshifters, there’s just talking dragons, talking fish, dragons are men, they shapeshift because of their behavior, sit on piles of gold, kidnap maidens and keep them for themselves, a good king doesn’t sit on his horde, he has 1, if you are a bad king you become a dragon who should be slain, werewolves are something you do, you put on the mantle of a wolf, the skin of a wolf, something you put over yourself, you become a wolf’s head, becoming crazed, about to be eaten by her brother, the way the family will prosper is by eating somebody, conk on the head, The Fall Of The House Of Usher, brother sister creepin, Roderick young comes to visit, falls into a black lake, the background for what could have happened, heroine, really good at hypnosis, the gal Kate, still alive at the time, wasn’t dead yet, I’m a normal man now, did kill that lady, alone with only one other person, a thin explanation, believing in the rules of the thing, a GenCon viking guy, vikings and dwarves, beards and culture, the land of the ice and snow, Immigrant Song, really fun, links, the setting that it’s pulling from, a neat exploration, is it well written, cheesy stuff, the movie ends abruptly, the natural ending is about an hour before the ending, the lady detective wrap-up, some more hypnosis, better in its parts than it is in its whole, the giant man overlooking the estate, the first image in the PDF, made of the shaw, sort of symbolic, the giant man of Dannaou, ancient chalk carving out, horses or men, the horses are well regarded, genitals exposed, looms over the whole story, you’re Danish, I knew it, sloppy, convention stuff, a terrific Lovecraft connection, The Alchemist, an early one by him, little boy raised in a castle, near Spain?, no mirrors in the castle, part of the castle has been condemned, some kids point over at him, maybe he has a dragon head, this ancestral curse upon the family, the men in the family will die before the age of 30, they die from accidents, earning immortality, he has cursed the family, by literally staying alive to kill them, in the background of this, Paulo Coelho, The Lurking Fear, respect Lovecraft as a humorist, a journalist who goes to investigate Thunder Mountain, a family up there, under the right conditions, one of these cannibal people living under the old house, a big burly friend with lots of meat on him, CHUDS, Lovecraft is hilarious, Re-Animator, same joke five times in a row, so many cool touches, our lady detective, she’s there but she bakes some taffy and they make fun of her, not really the same character, she’s the star of the show, a Madame Blavatsky, her aunt, her lesbian lover, not a lot of homosexuality in here, this threat of incest, vibe based, you don’t remember incest in there, Stapledon, the guy who made the hound luminous, he’s married to the love interest, he wants to be the heir, he gets really mad, that’s find, simulated incest jealous, a kind of a clue, the Baskerville race, the Usher race, a brother and a sister, alone together, she has a boyfriend fiancee, we’re out of duty to not being incestuous, a childhood friend of the family’s, we were in the war together, another male character, to do some lifting, made the change, hears the howl, going through the moat, the secret room, he was much more dedicated to his fiancee, the fake arm thing, artifical arm, Thorin Oakenshield, Bifur and Bofur, Zipper and Zoffer, son of, Swanhildsdotter, fake arm saved his life, the movie doesn’t represent the book very well, too much to adapt, she’s such a great investigator character, Murder She Wrote but paranormal, he’s got a crush on her, such a Mary Sue for this book, she is having so much fun being the smartest one in the room and the love interest, her hero character, she brought in herself, kind of a witch, weight as much as a duck, extracted from the PDF, wit, knit, Hammond’s race shall live and thrive, espieth, dieth, worse than death shall be his lot, you should kill yourself, why did the grandfather kill himself?, he saw the monster, The White Ape, Facts Concerning Arthur Jermyn And His Family, when we do a show on Congo, Michael Crichton, King Solomon’s Children, an Amazon delivery from Africa, kerosene, as you are a Lovecraftian investigator, the box was his grandma, sorta looks simian, he couldn’t live with the knowledge, racial horror, my grandpa used to work in the circus, restart the call, super bad joke, packed delivered, which is worse, in this book it tells you, a break, why that racial memory stuff needs to come in, under control when they had the knowledge, they had to kill, we just gotta eat somebody, attacked before the book started, the poacher, the butler’s worried, she grabs his pistol, reading it into it, laying it down, weird, fun, you shouldn’t marry your sister, on board the not marrying your sister train, a lot of characters, the least interesting character is our werewolf, our dude’s name being Oliver, Oliver Reed played a werewolf, 1942 movie, 22, 24, the reprint, 1948, Ben-Hur, a 23 hour show and a couple hours of talk about it, back to the werewolf book, a twist on the genre, the racial memories were weird, Danish Norse mythology, lycans is Greek, in Roman times, man in saxon or something, werebear, werecat, manbearpig, Saxon is German, Eaters Of The Dead, Beowulf, Grendel!, a good twist, hate parties, flapper dancers, false trails, a viking longship in a mound, the sword hilt, the background, the evidence that this is all true, complete bullshit, she does a lot of things very well, a preconception, word association, revealed, this is actually, false memory shit, demons, recovered memory, almost all of this is fake, hypnosis ads, quitting smoking, any phenomena that exist in society is either a threat or a tool, it’s not what we think it is, it’s not Mesmerism, the phrase hypnotic ability, a hypnotic disability, the performer up on stage, dancing like a chicken, those are plants, one way of understanding, cold reading, guy pretends he has psychic powers, begins with a G, he loved you very much, a scam, assistants, who travel around, fill in, become actors, a little bit like dinner theater, if you can’t juggle, often involves dominance of personality, the most interesting person in the room, the non-Vichy France, De Gaull was the tallest, if tall promoted more, you need to be seen, hire a dwarf, a commanding presence, submit your personality to that person, to regress him back through his ancestry, you want this to be true, confabulating, I didn’t want him to make stuff up, familiar with hypnosis, through hypnosis, the book is really good, an interesting departure, refind it again, cool, but incongruent, a little hard to follow, impressed, 40 minutes of the last hour, viking hypnosis, taking away his trauma, we’re all gonna watch Ragnarok together, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, all this viking stuff, the rainbow bridge, the Norse myths, just watching the Thor movies, God Of War videogames, out of Greece and into Norse myth stuff, Neil Gaiman, Beowulf script, stuff going on with him, not sure we like him, he’s a good narrator, super-impressed, a good writer, Lemony Snicket, instead of Tim Curry, a retelling, having that knowledge, the reference to Wagner, Ride Of The Valkyries, tapping into the same stuff, the Ring Cycle, retelling, nothing new under the sun, all variations, quite similar to it, she has done a little thing, what I imagine Seabury Quinn is like, remixes popular things, Murder On The Links, Poirot on a golf course, nobody reads him anymore, not true of Holmes, The White Company, Professor Challenger, 4 or 5 of them, When The World Screamed, drill to the center of the earth, the earth doesn’t like it, a really good Doctor Who serial Inferno, turning people into werewolves, green werewolf, a mirror universe, under a fascist regime, eyepatch, just like the Star Trek Mirror Universe, they destroy the world, Stan Lee, they’re different, much more like a werewolf, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Bruce Banner, cosmic, get a werewolf costume cheap, acts like a werewolf, transformed by contact, scary and fun, how it ties into this book, in the tradition of this Hammond family, the possibility, the accept it, they don’t cut down the trees because they’re not cowards, it’s a trait, they’re leaning into it, Teen Wolf (1985), Teen Wolf Too, dad’s a werewolf, terrific, he has it under control, keep that anger under control, Nazi Germany, werewolf units, fight to the bitter end, hide out in the mountains, run NATO for us, Operation Gladio, unwilling to submit to others, dangerous between the cities, like Robin Hood but in a bad way, turn werewolf, the North American wendigo, the same idea, you do this by having eaten human flesh, killing a person in the way you kill an animal, acted wildly, play on the basketball team, otherwise you might become a wolf, metaphorically, vampires work that way, a Star Wars reference, Wendigo in Marvel Comics, Alpha Flight, werewolfesque, Beast, female werewolves, types of mutants, Shaman, Puck, Sasquatch, a man of the woods, bigfoot, werewolf adjacent, an uncontrollable thing, starlight and pine trees, a lack of control, they don’t even realize, I didn’t realize I was a rapist, Seth Green plays a werewolf, interesting to think of how people handle werewolves, the player was in complete control, a special attack, he’s hairy, he heals, outdoorsy, he’s short like a Wolverine, 5 foot 2, the inbetween a man and a werewolf, the claws come out, Hulk 181, Ginger Snaps (2000), Brotherhood Of The Wolf (2001), a frogdog, ERB enterprise, a six-legged frogdog from Mars, Odin’s horse has eight legs, a regular horse, in about 10 years, rural wild dog attacks, suburban?, clawed by one of these dogs, transformed, on her next flow day, the period cycle, not an expert on women’s periods, on the moon’s cycle, doesn’t track the calendar exactly, in men’s bodies, most animals have a season, she’s just a girl trying to go to high school, 2 sequels filmed back to back, solid action werewolf movie, you can do a cool variation, Wolfen (1981), a review of how good it is, the audio drama of A Princess Of Mars, $90,000, Bruce Boxlightner, Tom Baker, Sean Patrick Flannery, Tim Russ, nice and short, all 18 books, start another Burroughs series, submarine, lost world, The Land That time Forgot, Beyond Thirty, airship/submarine, savage ladies that need to be saved, The Monster Men, artificial men, he’s really good, Tarzan Of The Apes, The Return Of Tarzan, first went full Burroughs, his origin story, in America, follows Jane back to America, Clayton, still engaged, gets on a steamship and runs into communist spies, gets to Paris, a Rue Morgue thing, maybe it is you King Of The Jungle, an Arab princes, a stolen stallion, lion hunt, pirates, a lost colony of Atlantis, women are super-duper-hot, a lot of treasure, super-hot sacrificing priestesses, the craziest novel, heavily serialized, The Cave Girl, a nebbish guy, just read books, from Boston, she’s adopted, washed up, French baroness, under her tutelage, they’re all good, back a little bit, wrapped up with a bow, he torches her career, she hid evidence right from the beginning, the most cringey scene, that makes you better, that meme going around, that meme going around, the male fantasy, the female fantasy, the midwit, the idiot and the supersmart guy, Strange Tales magazine, two ladies asking for Robert E. Howard, what’s supposed to be male fantasy, you just have a good enough lens on this, this book is so girl, too long, there’s a lot going on, the archaeological dig, let’s look for papers around the house, stuffing out of the couches, funny stuff, you can’t put it in a movie, described in some detail, offstage, some couches, got his dictionaries out, swam in the moat, they’re treating it like its a serious mystery, a very self-aware book, a little bit like they’re in an RPG, literally how Dungeons & Dragons came to be, I want to have my own character, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are D&D characters, big into D&D, walking home from school, storytelling and coming up with interesting scenarios, the diceless part of it, some of the funnest fun books, Choose Your Own Adventure, theater of the mind D&D, this level of detail in the narrative, remember the time we tore these couches apart, as a pure narrative, she needed an editor, novel length, one aspect of the book, the scurrilous journalism in the background, and tourism, they sorta solve it, the sister gets a telegram, a substantial sum, laughin, I hate being a celebrity, the paparazzi I hate you guys, the girl psychology is hilarious, a popular author for a period, in her time, she was not a Doyle, female fantasy, an interesting perspective, there’s a woman in danger, man, don’t run into the woods, dummy, the good reporter, recording seance, it was him along, the seance people, from Chapter 5, golden calf in Sussex, over the breakfast table, inflexible monosyllable, Providence, unless those poachers get involved, the Daily Speculum, funny newspaper name, afflicted family, taken in dense fog, larger than sacred edifice, mainly boots and blurs, portraits of the Monster, heavy type, bandied about, argued about in coffee houses and bars, their exact meaning, spicy murder or divorce, the Sussex Horror, Stop Press, snub them all, the drawing room, playing up the book as being exciting, everybody’s talking about you, influencers, fairly high tech, threw it back, horses, more Victorian, you don’t need that for the story, only if it helps the story, if it is a red herring, female service, being famous, they’re vampires, a really good find, the hand, missing his hand, the hand of fate, the hand of glory, learning about energy exchange, an energy vampire, sending out vibrations, a drug, fame and fortune, reporters all over the grounds, a much more literal thing in today’s society, any level of famous, people who work for youtubers, carry the camera, show off the new makeup, how is thing a thing?, that’s the world we live in now, a pretty fun book, two thumbs up, a solid B, book club, more critical, what’s wrong with this one, some Arthur C. Clarke, put yourself in the shoes of highschool you, The City And The Stars, where it went, the worldbuilding is incredible, a sad ending, ate Luna, we can never be together, maybe contraception didn’t exist, the Anglican church’s the Lambeth conference, gonna do two Robert E. Howards, pair them with other things, 2 desserts of the same ingredients, spirituality and emotional healing, move out of summer, other events, The Tower Of The Elephant and The Tale Of Satampra Zeiros, out all of October, Too Much by Donald E. Westlake, John Jones’ Dollar by Harry Steven Keeler, the first episode of Red Dwarf, White Dwarf, a Jupiter mining ship, 2 lower deck guys, eating from the vending machines, put into suspended animation, three million years later…, everybody’s dead, everybody died from a radiation leak, the last human alive in the universe, piles of dust, back from hypersleep, lonely and going senile, like Douglas Adams, a comedy, full of science fiction, the story should be over, back as a hologram, his own roommate back, every kind of science fiction there is, the shipboard computer, 2 pounds six pence, because of compound interest, Futurama does that, drilling to Hell, so lucky, you can watch Red Dwarf for the first time, some capacity in October, is this great literature, a good read, concerns, tropes that happen, inventive, the 4th and 5th dimension, human consciousness, she’s crazy, I’m a sensitive, I’m a supersensitive, Call Of Cthulhu style investigator, on the level, laughing along with what she thinks is very formal, playful, the most important person in my life, progress.

The Undying Monster

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #869 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Assassination Bureau, Ltd. by Jack London and Robert Fish

The SFFaudio Podcast #869 – The Assassination Bureau, Ltd. by Jack London and Robert Fish (4 hours 32 minutes) read by Tatiana Chuchilla for LibriVox, followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Maissa Bessada.

Talked about on today’s show:
1910, 1963, Jack London and Robert Fish, a physical copy at a used bookstore, surprisingly PUBLIC DOMAIN, years went by, a movie, how fortunitous, read by a human, Titania somebody, favourite LibriVox narrator, Ltd., the end papers on the PDF, the movie a fair amount, as it went along, very much didactic, a lot of exposition, as it kept going, softened towards it, a different perspective, the movie was so fun, a different mindset, appreciated it much more, the movie’s better, lightens it, they play so much more, the book is not designed to be funny, a little bit arch, helps tell the story, deleted one of the characters and replaced that character as the love interest, son-in-law-be, Diana Rigg, we fall in love with Dragomilov, different ending, 237 page PDF, page 231, Jack London’s notes, Charmain London, London died in 1916, when is it set?, automobiles in it, the movie does a better job with picking a period, is this a science fiction book?, something close to it, because of the concept itself, fiction fiction, airship in the movie, not practically apparently, they’re always coming back, pick a scab, the flying cars exist (almost all in China), just prior to WWI, all the little vignettes are of a silent movie type, Yul Brenner, the other bald guy with the mustache, who loves ya, baby?, Oliver Read, Kojack, Telly Savalas, the newspaper owner, vice-chair, all bald guys look the same, he’s not Captain Picard, your head is so shiny, distracted by the mustache, create WWI, killing all the heads of Europe, as that didn’t happen, alternate history, or a secret history, makes it like a cartoon, the book is much closer to Around The World In Eighty Days than anything else, Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes is close to science fiction, it’s not H.G. Wells but it is very close, the extraordinary character of Holmes, Watson is us, a minute late, the appeal of Back To The Future (1985), we like spending time with Doc and Marty, the plot is helpful, spill the beans, the relationship between Doc brown and Mary McFly, an avuncular relationship, Marty is the nephew and Doc is the uncle, explaining who Marty is, trying to get his mom and dad to hook up, Doc Brown is science fiction, Marty McFly is the reader of science fiction, Marty McFly likes to play guitar, to get yelled at, it isn’t about formal schooling, extracurricular activities, after midnight in the mall parking lot, in the movie of this book, we are Diana Rigg, giving a lecture so that she can get a job, now we’re with her, Oliver Reed, this is a romance, what have I done?, the book is pretty weak, by the end it picked up a little bit, it sewed up its ideas, why is it a novel?, why Jack London didn’t finish it, closed it up, new book by Michael Crichton and James Patterson, Eruption, Michael Crichton is dead, he shouldn’t have don the second one, his legacy has turned into, the estate wants some more cash, James Patterson he’s well known, mostly series, airport books, Along Came A Spider, a spy guy, Alex Cross, Maximum Ride, many standalone thrillers and novels, why would you read these, really mainstream, Tom Clancy, long dead, finishing somebody else’ book, 4-0 years later, 1910 – 1963, the key thing, Jack London was a writing machine, Sinclair Lewis, joke writers, buy them from other comedians, we’ve seen this story done better, Goliah, a secret organization to try to change the world, so many years ago, 1910, it posits a kind of privatized CIA with morals and ethics, explained in the film, overexplained in the book, short for a novel, not tight, Goliah is 13 pages, only 20,000 words were written by Jack London, 5000 words is like a half hour, pull all the threads together, abandoning it, malformed it, too many characters, a similar scene in The Sea Wolf, a long dystopian novel, 800 shows you might have been on, The Dream Of Debs, Paul and Will, a candidate for president jailed by [Woodrow] Wilson, The Scarlet Plague, a tribe led by a guy named chauffeur, the preservation of books, a biography of Jack London, The Red One, Thee Star Rover, visits other times while in a straight jacket, The Iron Heel, bad relationships, people lecturing each other in each other’s homes, the film much improves it, instead of 80 days it is a year, all the deaths are comedic, no blood, eat poison very slowly, is there vanilla in here?, escapes, I see a comedy here, some really cool stuff in this book, the movie helped Maissa like the book, very interesting, what separates us from the animals, he accepts the assignment to kill himself, better in the book than in the movie, the rationale fits, montage, explosions, framesetting, overlay, all fun, very old fashioned film, it feels like one, very definitive, its before this, its not after that, set in the future or not, one line, one of the people who was assassinated was Bertrand Russell, lived until 1970, he really is in this book in the philosophy, be politik in the world, what are we to do about about anarchism, why he couldn’t finish it, a hard topic, by making it a farce, walk out of the movie theater, go get some coffee, two years later, one of the lines, salvation must come, the filmmakers, thinking about it, why the bureau cannot work, we can’t impose this, from the world, not bound by religious morality, his own code of ethics, Robert Fish is involved, some of the material in here is clearly London, relfect on what’s going on in Goliah, getting rid of the oligarchs, bend to my will and do better or suffer the consequence, all this poverty, a socialist and a millionaire, my wit, my strength, posit this assassination bureau, a fun comedy, they didn’t get what I was trying to say, not enough lectures and looking at bookshelves, less dynamic that it should be, a feeling of The Call Of The Wild, fleeting little scenes, humans vs. animals, everyman is worthy of death, we need to scrutinize you more, an inversion of Jesus’ every person should be saved, the birds and the beasts and the slime molds, the killing of animals for meat, moral judgement, the best thing we can do is follow our ethical code, a book about killing people and being ethical, the reason he must die is he accepted the contract, the son, can take over the assassination bureau, make the world a better place, was an anarchist, billionaire socialist, continue without assassination, dissatisfactory, The Sea Wolf, the paradise of slaughtering seals on the beach, the old sailor (the Jack London stand-in), [Wolf Larsen], an Eden, there is that, a Hawaii guy, this book doesn’t feel like a Robert Fish book because it feels very Jack Londony, preserve as much of the material, don’t delete things, a miscarriage, not a miscarriage, we can sell this baby, cyborg parts, Londonisms, an Irish Terrier, what terriers are for, for vermin, after rats, ratters, go into holes, big rats in Ireland, all the snakes are gone, a very cool book by Jack London, fully Jack London, set in the South Pacific, Jerry Of The Islands, as opposed to being in the arctic, a little dog for being on boats, a dog lover, really strong with ideas, ratting the thing to death, shaking it out and seeing what’s there, all of his short stories are better, good ideas, mad at another guy in a room, some sort of thing that happened to him, who is Jack London arguing with?, his bio-dad, disappears before he is born, arguing with himself, he’s also the young guy, I’m better than you think I am, dad, the fun of the idea, the movie is better, better executed for the idea, looking at the bookshelves, the opening of the book, bang, they’re all bad, Buck is the viewpoint character, over the shoulder right beside him, the man in the red sweater, Harrison Ford was one of the last owners, took 20% of the book and expanded it left and expanded it right, what makes a story good is what materials you were working with, the purity of the materials, good ideas in this book, memorialized war heroes, early chapters, the law of tooth and fang, violence, glorified, the basic law, reason and ethics and morality, instead of following gravity, trying to do good in the world, a crazy idea, if I kill this one person, it’s too hard a question, where do you stop, where do you draw lines like that, the short story instead, the premise sticks, doing it not to punish people but to make the world better, who are the people who are doing this?, rich business men, punish their rivals, kings, people in power, no women assassinated, missing from the book, ripe, make light of, the Ruthenians, central European, slavs, between Russia and Germany, the Assassination of an Arch-Duke, happened in 1914, this is a real phenomena in the world, bomb throwing anarchists, start writing, rich fat cats who’ve lost the moral code, murder for profit, in the book everybody’s ethical, published in 1963, sell it to film, spicier for that purpose, Sinclair Lewis deserves some credit, Guy Boothby’s The Woman Of Death, it has not crashed, it will cut us off, continue, prolific novelist, sensational fiction, the Doctor Nichola series, a Victorian forerunner, gothic egypt, supernatural revenge, Rudyard Kipling, George Orwell, bottled humuculous, a secret society, the suicide club, a dueling society, they all wear masks, a veil over their face, for rich dilettante guys with no jobs, direct plays in the park, got no writing or acting skills, a secret dueling society, Donald Westlake, Lord Of Light, The Hour Of The Dragon, Killing Time, private detective, a PDF, heresy to say it, corruption, better than Hammett’s Red Harvest, Otto Penzler, Tim Smith, his little black book, should be good, Scott loves Westlake too, not super famous like he should be, Lawrence Block is scarier, his comedic stuff, sparkly, The Spy In The Elevator, sparky and cute, big darkness, tells a funny story, great with the gestures, Dogs in the South Pacific books, fun chat, good movies, 4 in person rehearsals, doubled up, storylines are similar anyway, why he does that, why is Back To The Future (1985) such a good movie, too popular, talking about Star Wars is easy, talking about Sorcerer (1977), Stephen Spielberg, science fiction, fun characters, music, a tight story, his sister has so many boyfriends, Burger King, the truck he wanted, polishing the car, go to the lake, spark as a the kiss happens, it makes you want the sequel, more of the same, he drinks a lot, abusive to his ex-wife, the warning signs, recapitulate the final scene of the first movie, what about Jennifer?, turn out to be assholes, where we’re going we don’t need roads, a spray in the eye, they wrote her out of the movie, they want to do the same movie, Marty at home, children are all played by Michael Keaton [J. Fox], don’t say a word, another invention, another scientific invention, some of the Weinbaum shows, The Worlds Of If, avuncular relationship, likes girls, old professor friend, Doc whatever, this new machine, each incident is a different machine, The Ideal, dating another girl, Professor Von Manderpootz, Star Trek, a different planet, a different scientific idea, a different alien relationship, planet of the gangster, time travel episode, some of them are really bad, back in time to the 1960s, a lady who can turn into a cat, tiny insects, terrible terrible, protagonists are insects, the Horta, the Teri Garr one, Bewitched style, Ferengi’s go to Earth, they’re cartoon humans, capitalism made cute, somehow figure out this is a bad date, speed dating, 15 people in 15 minutes, awkward five minutes, do you like to read books, I’m a vegan, here are six nice things about me, I don’t brag much, we have to do that with authors, Terry Pratchett, other people should marry him, Douglas Adams, a double date, it is literally spending time with somebody, the movie was good, we got something out of it, Frankenstein, she was the girlfriend in Tootsie (1982), Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977), Goldie Hawn, both blondes and bald people, Mr. Mom, The Conversation, Oh, God, The Black Stallion, Assignment: Earth, not a lot of dogs in Deep Space 9, in a virtual game, interesting idea, Jake and that woman who’s a psychic vampire, a B plot, an A idea, Captain Sisko has found a space anomaly, the way TNG, back on deck 2, hits higher highs more generally, talk about Star Trek again show, the French movie, Mars Express (2023), very science fictiony, too much available, mostly crap, easy, do the work, so fulfilling to do it, Reading, Short And Deep, Ball Of Fire (1941), Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck, one of eight professors working on an encyclopedia, newsboy, gun moll, fuddy duddy professor, changing their loves, its really fun, Double Indemnity (1944), the guy who dies in the end of a Charlton Heston, Soylent Green (1973), Edward G. Robinson, lonely widower, I really like you and respect you, murder her husband, its love, framed by a dictaphone recording, the whole story in the middle, her curves, she’s just a woman, her presence on screen, she commands the camera to look at her, she was huge, way bigger than Helen Mirren ever was, a lot of westerns, her later career, becoming a movie star, Barbara Stanwyck is this movie, Wild Robot (2024), The Iron Giant (1999).

The Assassination Bureau

Posted by Jesse Willis