Jesse and J. Daniel Sawyer talk about The Cat Who Walks Through Walls by Robert A. Heinlein
Talked about on today’s show:
A Comedy Of Manners, walking the earth, a goodbye to everybody, 14 hours into the 16 hour audiobook, throwing it across the room, the abridged version, read by Robert Vaughn, amazing as a voice actor, The Man From Uncle, maybe that’s not true, the George Wilson narration, Tom Weiner narration, the 1999 cassette version, how difficult it was to get audiobooks back in the day, why everybody is very frustrated with him and his later books, All You Zombies with a lot more pages, promising to be a murder mystery, on page 7, murdered at the table, very unusual for Gwen, lie doggo, why thank you my dear, a treasure beyond price, if I plotted a story, in its classic form, aka the rest of the novel, aka this chapter, right at the end of the book, eight times, so annoying, page 387, anyone who would kill a baby kitten, I despise you, they might be back, Gay Deceiver, my bean gun was exhausted, I explored her handbag, even into battle, the tardis, 12 chocolate bars, 8 in the clip one in the chamber, four darts were still in it, Heinlein!, so frustrating, jerking his readers around, a smart guy, why science fiction is so incestuous, the answer is it should be, it is necessary for good writing, all the different timelines, reconciling his timelines, the future history, a grand unified theory of Heinlein, Podkayne, Variable Star, To Sail Beyond The Sunset, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, other stuff, Guy De Maupassant, George O. Smith novels, super reliable, always gives you Heinlein, a John Sladek parody of Heinlein [Engineer To The Gods – in Fantasy & Science Fiction, August 1972], ai versions of people, sample writing, didn’t think about very much back then, more than once, the problem of this book, repetition of scenes, as big and sprawling as it is, a great roadtrip book, a series of short stories in between, wait thirty words, same voice, different kind of book, incestuous, almost all dialogue, Jubal Harshaw, Stranger In A Strange Land, six other guys, the promise of the book, we were tricked into reading the whole thing, Golden Rule, dystopia/utopia, a very good look at what the Moon looks like, slang terms, they’re culture, time corps, time patrol stuff, a book that bootstraps itself into existence, Bill is the pet for the first three quarters of the book, the Twain line, the villainous nature of the thing, the bullies from the juveniles, the old Heinlein we know, most annoying, doesn’t quite work on its own, in terms of narrative structure, philosophical ideas, snap into focus, The Number Of The Beast, New English Library, spans the front and back cover, The Pursuit of the Pankera, a particular set of glasses, a grimoire, the same character, later in the timeline, the Burroughs family and the Long family, the opposing team is the Time Lords, an anagram of Heinlein’s name, the big bad in this book, the meta, it’s on page 7, the Galactic Overlord, retiring him, By His Bootstraps vs. All You Zombies, solipsism, mispronounced by the narrator, Heinlein teaching, Heinlein haters, you do need to read Heinlein, politics outside of your native bubble, grew to hate Heinlein, they teach Starship Troopers, if they taught Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, good values, very fruitful, the one everybody wants to respond to, weird things, dirty old man Heinlein, dirty young man, dirty middle aged, they don’t edit like they used to, the bestseller’s list, the sexual revolution of the 1920s, Alexei Panshin’s hit-piece, a conservative fuddy-duddy, going off in the woods with your boyscout master, going to Yale, becoming an officer, if you read a Heinlein book long enough you’ll find a transgender character, Mike and Michelle, so much sex and gender stuff, a gay sex scene, all water brothers, a fuckton of sex, never does explicit sex, doesn’t describe the anatomy, an icicle, discuss sexuality frankly, Valentine Michael Smith doesn’t see it, part of that book, the POV character engages, relax and enjoy it, wakes up in bed with Galahad, David Gerrold, male homosexuality is spiritually inferior, very gay, people hating on Heinlein, the Our Opinions Are Correct pair, model minds, anti-Heinlein, what you find, alive on twitter today, might have a trans-flag in his bio, you can’t perfectly model a man’s mind, being associated with group, Quebec by reputation, don’t salute the king, not hurting other people, what does hurting other people mean?, shame or bullying, he’s dead, he cannot fight back, no children to get offended, some advocate there, you might be wrong about what you’re saying, what’s so cool about Heinlein, read his texts, a man who thought all sorts of things, changed his mind, appreciate it differently, I like kittens too, the pitons of the claws of the kittens, not being as tight a novel as it could be, a book worth reading and worth revisiting, vast and sprawling, really excellent, running around on Luna, describing, fresh-looking or red-headed, too many characters, that incestuous ouroboros thing going on, Fritz Leiber’s snakes vs. spiders, Poul Anderson, Asimov, Back To The Future (1985), the closed box paradox, the moral education of Marty McFly, the worldview destruction of Richard, interesting parallelism, cruise ship, a resort version of Babylon 5, Universe, Common Sense, of value, some of the Heinlein greatness, very frustrating, hard science fiction, predestination, freewill, masculine and feminine, community and isolation, he’s teaching himself about how to be a human being, playing with those themes, a different take that builds on each other, the deep alienation endemic to the human condition, a plaything of fate, not having agency, finding peace in the face of a hostile universe, the supposed smart people who run the world, Ray Kurzweil, Robert J. Sawyer, consciousness uploading, rejuvenation, he’s the least interesting Heinlein character, his avatar, Jubal Harshaw, E.E. “Doc” Smith, Murder At The A.B.A. analogs for real people, Darius Dust, a really angry short guy, Harlan Ellison, modelling a real person, he loves Dejah Thoris, Rudyard Kipling, new poem by Rudyard Kipling, fifth Blue Yeti, fiddle with it, the thickness, 16 hours is small by today’s novels, 9000 words an hour, a lot of Michael Crichton, the editors and the marketers, 1985/1986, book club editions, ebooks are big, audiobooks are huge, asking for longer, the economics of publishing, the typesetting costs, optimize the price, an every changing recipe, what do people actually want to read, about the same length, a tight narrative, Mike and Manny and Wyo and Prof, using Marxist tactics, Heinlein defies the categorization of the simplistic, happily cancel for any slights, dressing up as a Japanese lady, a black main character, white hair, how many times does that happen in the juveniles, Tunnel In The Sky, Starship Troopers, Rocketship Galileo, okay bro, okay Heinlein, whatever Heinlein, I’ll allow it Heinlein, how many books aren’t referenced, Pete is not Pixel, the same idea, the same cat, Glory Road, Castor and Pollox, sold themselves into slavery, having too much fun, too self-referential, an experience we’ve never had before, the bad relations with the management, a cruise ship in space, for the shareholders, the fresh new stuff, get Mike back online, natural sequels, Requiem is a sequel to The Man Who Sold The Moon, the spacesuit stuff in here, he cares about how spacesuits react to vacuum, the Philadelphia Naval Yard, a couple of black and white photos, where was he prior to WWII, Leslyn was a scriptdoctor, Destination Moon (1950), George Pal, alcoholic psychosis, Colorado, altitude sickness, a driving book, settling in Santa Cruz, world tour, one world government, H.G. Wells, we’re here now, nationalist, anarchist, pragmatic compromises, writings ruined by selling out to becoming scriptdoctors, Joe Eszterhas, Basic Instinct is not a high minded thing, crappy genre, sex-thriller, James M. Cain, name a book The Postman Always Rings Twice, brutal psychology, borderline personality disorder, appreciated it, being a writer, the model for the style of this novel, wrote confessionals under pseudonyms, he had to have done that, girl sex books, Forest Ackerman’s dead, work for hire, the materials were probably not renewed anway, textual analysis, pretty easy to tell Heinlein, the great secret of the pulp era, comfortable living, true confessionals, pseudonyms, the number of titles that Westlake and Block and Silverberg wrote, dozens for each of them, Michael Crichton novels, adventure novels, a rich kid, the residency, structurally impossible, the setting of Golden Rule is excellent, a reminder of how engineering based science fiction Heinlein is, orbital mechanics, was their Volvo sabotaged?, Nil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, insanely readable, the throw it across the room book, compelled to play at the casino, contrary to initial expectations, a break, For Us, The Living, read between 13 and 22, 2006, Variable Star, a collaboration, he had a podcast, his wife died, Bowen Island, a residential island, the Travis McGee books, thrift store, 20 of them, John D. MacDonald, god that guy could write, he did science fiction, the same way Westlake, throw science fiction across the room, they’re one true love, Heinlein tried to get into mystery, They Do It With Mirrors, an ideas guy, a genre other than science fiction, I’m metafiction now, I’m god, that’s the problem and why it is funny, super quotable, floatin around, the good ones to pull, Notebooks Of Lazarus, *Women And Cats Will Do What They Do*, an a to z quote, a little research, give up on your account, prole feed, algorithm bait, not here for the processed pablum, quite subtle, wrapped in this murder mystery at the beginning, the epigraphs, violence never solved anything – Genghis Kahn, what he’s aiming for, a meditation on hypocrisy, If This Goes On, the entire edifice of western civilization, older and wiser, approach death, Saki, he is one of those people who would enormously improved by death, a gay deceiver, The Story-Teller, a confirmed bachelor, an aunt and nephews and nieces, doesn’t know the answers to anything, “don’t”, “why”, a gentleman’s garden, the kids have questions, he takes the story and inverts it, “horribly good”, introduces a wolf, cowering in a bush, she gets eaten, Saki you’ve done it again, The Interlopers, generations long battle for this land, mighty cold under here, best of friends, their wolves, god’s cruel joke, a funny god, a good bit of fun, it’s good in the sense that it’s good fun, a great read, not a good novel, frustrating, there’s so much in it, the fez, the hat, the shriners, the freemasons, what they are, what they were, he knew a little bit more about what’s going on, pot-bellied and balding, less sinister than could be presented, worth having sex with, a different creed, a fraternal organization, the science fiction future, 2188?, Hazel, Space Family Stone, The Rolling Stones, colonel, doctor, senator, could be another Thorby, a quasi-villaian, why is Tree-San a character, a bonsai tree gets more lines than Bill does, living in the hallways of this dystopia, a kill mission, never resolved, I’m not sure I can believe in a god, Thomas Paine, the internal cultic workings, hermeticism, sun-worship, a way to get your corruption under control and move up the ladder, benign and sinister, a Hells Angel rather than a Freemason, you become part of the system, The Man Who Would Be King (1975), Sean Connery and Michael Caine, a first contact story, stealing a Shriner’s hat, a secret society that’s out in the open, a Masonic hall, a Hells Angels clubhouse, benevolencey drives, landscape terrorism, do their lawns, anarchists of free-association, the officials who operate outside of that, don’t know how to use to apostrophes properly, when you do you have to abide by the rules, what’s his get along to go along, he has no agenda other than working through the ideas, super-fuckin waste, probably the last time that got assassinated, doing something noble?, things that Heinlein gets wrong, drugs, an armoured car heist sort of book, before the show, not super-long, a paperback, marketing to paperback, the library system, the content of the book, astounded to learn, scribner’s juveniles were all hardcovers, illustrations, Nancy Drew or Tom Swift, Starman Jones, The Star Beast, Time For The Stars, Waldo And Magic Inc., when we lose materials it’s a loss, psychology is real easy to understand, what the words actually say in the book, a Jack Finney story called The Love Letter, time-travel romance, Somewhere In Time, a love body to nobody, another hidden drawer!, Jack Finney wasn’t writing in the 1990s, 1882, 1994, they just updated it, you can’t fuck around with people’s words, he was gay enough as it was, don’t delete anything, easy to understand the importance of the primary text, it was okay, influenced by Heinlein, you can respond without lying about it, The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, Orson Scott Card, conventional, cutesyer, disturb the world he comes from, a frisson, the internet, the forums, the most sparky, helps tell the story of the world in a really interesting way, Ender’s Shadow, not a sequel guy, his worst are also excellent and better than most, more pure of heart, less incestuous, necessary for the form, might as well allow it, the late 1940s, writing mythology, ancient myth, archetypes, origins and generations and whatnot, thematic weight, explicitly on the exandry hunt, from far away, okay you go girl, all fun and fine, “other better writers”, male on male gay sex, what age is appropriate, ‘husband height’, leaps around, ‘husband high’, how people get reproduced, the very idea is disgusting to most people, Amish Planet, the pneumatic amish internet, when kids were getting married, in the Ozarks, the last holdout of child marriage, a subject of scandal, a social crusade on the part of WASPy culture, Jerry Lee Lewis’ shenanigans, not old enough to vote you can’t have children, fuck you on your on-high, Edgar Allan Poe seemed to really love his 13 year old cousin/wife, her death killed him, a perpetual alcoholic delirium, John Wilkes Booth was a freemason actor time traveler, John Allan, a lot of anti-Masonic stuff going on, might have been killed by the masons, a prominent critic, lawsuits with people, at least two stories where it’s very clear, one of the Masons, very chummy fellows, it was like a war in the 1840s, they ran the whole show, a potent political force, the nature of secret societies, the populist instinct, The Cask Of Amontillado, the guy he kills is a Mason, bricks him up in the wall, set in Italy, really choice, the whole thing is a confession, a deathbed confession, Montressor, my treasure, the villain of the piece, Fortunado, lucky, his family motto, why does this story exist?, they are not just for us, a political treatise, discover of something, The Raven, he is denying its, what bird does, it’s a psychopath, get out my fuckin door, surely she’s up in heaven waiting for me, negative answer, it’s only stock-and-store, an awesome piece, The Philosophy Of Composition, not show the bird, presented to us so young, on The Simpsons, freshman English, Annabel Lee, A Rose For Emily by William Faulkner, a nested narrative, The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, contraposes that beauty, radiant maiden, my bride, kids, it’s not consummated until its consummated, always a maiden and always dead, an eternal theme, immortality is worse than love and death, a mighty theme, he’s back again, a man confronting god, this giant sea creature, homosexuality, married to Queequeg, squeezing out a lot of juice, the interactions of the themes, as an intellectual exercise, works the theme out, a happier cable, The House Of The Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a nice old lady, you can mash it up, cheap and fast, you can share it, the restricted market where it was hidden, The House Of The Seven Anne Of Green Gables, an occult cookbook, the empty, Tennyson, an investigator named Charlene Dexter Ward, a great narrator, Very Bad Deaths, John Dortmundery style, the chronology, the seeds of the different novels, early in the juvenile era, girls of a certain age, Hadrian’s Flight, The Wolf Of Venus, Secrets Of The Heinlein Juveniles, mildly dyslexic, if it is dense enough, The Outsider by H.P. Lovecraft, excitement and joy, they don’t trust, a Borges non-fiction, his poetry’s not very good, his anti-Masonic story, Death And Compass, reviewing King Kong when it was in the theatres, he wrote a Lovecraft story, Heinlein stops reading after a certain point, stopped reviewing publicly, the subtitle of the book, where the book goes wrong, Rubaiyat Of Omar Khayyam, killing is more of a hobby with me, long talks between meals and sex, six Heinleins all in the room, in most Heinlein, bathos and pathos, Pixel dies off-screen, the bit right after they break up in Hong Kong Luna, Walker Evans, a secret society, it has no meaning, it’d be like not knowing who Marilyn Monroe was, the most iconic photographs of the Depressions, he lives with a poor family, having sex with the wife, there is no Walker Evan, a message, a code to remind me of a debt, one of the mighty themes of this book, the setup is so good you need to have it paid off, it’s a closed circle, looking at your old photos of you in previous decades, living in the 1930s, carrying his own tools, Drinkwater, Saskatchewan, J. Daniel (Jim Gifford), A Reader’s Companion, The Heinlein Society, Mr. Pulpcovers website, a little New York Times blip, wrap it up, almost Heinlein length, excited, Heinlein and he met, a champion, he’s still great, Rah, Rah, R. A. H.!, a Canadian liberal, American draft dodger liberal.
Posted by Jesse Willis
