The SFFaudio Podcast #508 – TOPIC: Piracy

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #508 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Evan Lampe talk about PIRACY

Talked about on today’s show:
Paul as Simplicio, not just of the swashbuckling sea-kind, the music-kind, audiobook-kind, YOU DON’T HAVE A RIGHT TO THAT, stuff that the FBI Warnings on a VHS tape, forced DVD screens, forced threats, all the crimes I’m going to prison for, a deterrent, easier than ever, easier for some and harder for others, how podcasts work, subscriber only podcasts, Mr Jim Moon’s Hypnogoria podcast, the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast, “please don’t share this with anyone else”, a bonus vs. a big stick, opposite of seeking profits, Econtalk, transaction costs, not monetary costs, the time it takes, easier than ever (but you have to know how it is), a torrent client, ThePirateBay proxy, “CONSUME” media, making PDFs, all about the sharing, a thread Paul was participating in (about pirated ebooks), pirate editions, a drain on the market?, losing, with academic books, the research library model, the Marxist history library, the academic model, publisher XYZ by author A, the end of author A’s career, changing names, data entry job for entry, The Hook by Donald Westlake, once you get in the system, a book about not being able to get a book published, the ratcheting effect, “I’m gonna screw the author so hard”, intent, the effect, that’s the world we live in, How Music Got Free: A Story Of Obsession And Invention by Stephen Witt, the collective nature of the theft, the RIAA targetting random individuals, history of copyright changes, Democracy of Sound: Music Piracy and the Remaking of American Copyright in the Twentieth by Alex Sayf Cummings, player pianos, machine based, sheet music, human readable, MP3s, a CD, a record, a magnetic tape, patent, loophole vs. rule, licensing any piece of music for a nominal fee, the transaction cost there is horrendous, the move to YouTube, full of piracy, YouTube ads, what percentage of creators on YouTube make a living off of YouTube, Jesse’s account was demonetized in 2018, exploiting creators, almost communism, ‘from each according to their abilities to each according to their needs’, library logic, curation, finding a massive archive of cultural history hidden from the mainstream, old television shows, never released on DVD, the actual principals, why is piracy a massively good thing? vs. massively a bad thing, the preservation of a cultural legacy, facts about The Beatles, did you know The Beatles’ had a racist version of Get Back, an anti-immigration song, racist?, how come that’s not on the official albums, the sanitized version, Apple Records, when iTunes got The Beatles, a big deal, they couldn’t make a deal with Columbia or Decca, a bootleg, fascinating, on December 17th 2013, an official bootleg release on iTunes, so they could secure their copyright, it’s about control, The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates, copyright is (for) kings, a printer’s license, playing cards, a license to print playing cards, copyright is a monopoly, why the White Album is called the White Album, a tribute to the bootlegging with white sleeves, a very famous Bob Dylan album GWW: Great White Wonder, under the cultural consciousness, the medium changes the way people act, most videos are 10 minutes, NETFLIX, HBO, what libraries are supposed to do, oink’s Pink Palace, the complete catalogue of music, preservation and scholarship, chat roulette, millions and millions of things in the public domain, trying to lock down everything forever, an arcane and very complicated copyright system (with ever extending terms), orphaned works, the 1968 and 1968 Marvel comics, this issue of Daredevil matches exactly the Netflix, when Foggy Nelson was running for D.A. (50 years ago), cultural value vs. monetary value, people forget everything, the importance of preservation, the proof is in the song, you can hear how they said it, you really need to have good access to everything if you want to understand the world, wanting to control the message and control the history, VPNs, moving to America, they don’t know what’s there, Youku (aka Chinese YouTube), making a mistake as a human species, a show with Wayne June, a Wayne June Patreon, the voice of Lovecraft, “do you happen to have…”, its all about preservation, the music industry is about screwing artists out of royalties, bootlegging vs. piracy, why people bought bootleg albums, Paul makes a confession, the way Paul rationalizes it to himself, especially with the Poul Anderson(s), now Karen is deceased, at some point it has to fall into the public domain, review copies of books, please do not sell, what are people doing?, smuggling out of CDs, the majority of piracy, “camming”, live concert recording, breaking the encryption, they’re doing it because they love it, a sense of accomplishment, 5,200 PDFs, its not about money, I love movies, Disney’s The Song Of The South, Brer Rabbit, white black folklore, Joel Chandler Harris, Uncle Remus, delightful stories, the perception is that they’re racist, a black main character, “problematic”, Archive.org, they can’t officially release it anymore, Taylor Swift’s Picture To Burn has been sanitized, a very Soviet thing to do, Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land, the lefty version, sharp social critique, oh my god this is so valuable, Jesse is happy to admit, Halmani a propaganda film about treating newcomers as human beings, excised from reality, Worldcat, pure goodness, that will be gone if I don’t preserve it, emulating what Napster did, RNS, from the invention of MP3 to how torrents work, a history story, Eli Whitney and the cotton gin, profits from the mechanism, the survival of American slavery due to the cotton gin, what a bastard!, the law of unintended consequences, predicting the automobile but not the traffic jam, another story from history, Doctor Who (classic), private collectors recording off of television, recording audio, to reconstruct episodes of a TV show that was absolutely beloved, KVOS in Bellingham, Washington, that activity of being a fan, cheating the BBC out of its massive profits, preservation of the good, Carl Sagan’s cosmos, Babylon 5 is a better radio drama than it is TV drama, The Prisoner, all 17 episodes, you evil pirate! you monster!, where Paul draws the line, Evan Lampe’s Philip K. Dick And The World We Live In, after Evan updates it we’ll find a narrator, the audiobook-man, lister Mike, review it in essence, give it, torrent site, the wrongness, would Paul have done something wrong, you’re hurting Evan by not following your better instinct Paul, libraries are pirates, don’t they hope 100s of people read it?, the YouTube model, you don’t put the genie back in the model, Justin Beiber was a YouTube star, making money from touring, “merch” is like totems, a totemic purchase, to acknowledge this artist has done great work, people wanna hear Philip K. Dick stuff, Mr Jim Moon’s Patreon, Luke Burrage just started a Patreon, his 2009 International Juggler video, a higher rez version, an amazing video to watch, Paul envies Luke a lot, Skyrim, Fallout, Origin and Steam, says the PUBG fan, Fallout ’76, Battlefield 1, a lot of it has to do with money, 2 floppy disc drives and a friend with a box of floppy discs, the low cost of Netflix, more television than you could ever watch, when they start deleting things from the Netflix Originals, is there a DVD version of Netflix’s Marvel shows, all about preservation, keeping the cultural history, not getting yourself photoshopped out of history, the Obama inauguration, Aaron Schwartz, JSTOR, transaction costs again, there’s no research done anywhere by professors that isn’t publicly funded, Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows, The House On The Borderlands by William Hope Hodgson, control and power and knowledge, information is power, its not wrong in general, wouldn’t socialism just solve this, The Soul Of Man Under Socialism by Oscar Wilde, that’s scary to a lot of people, charity, liberatory for an artist, the insurance companies are sucking off profits, there is no access to the stuff that you want, the alcohol bootlegging, a digital copy cannot be consumed, we are in a post-scarcity environment, this is what kings did, the Michelangelos and the Donatellos, or the church, the common good, Civilizations, an R-L thing, the complete works of Mozart, chamber music, religious music, court operas, on the dole of the king of Austria, catering to popular tastes, Japan, art for the masses, Monet, we don’t have Mozart’s stuff otherwise, everybody gets to be a king, I’m poorer than everybody, I’m helping, oh so sad somebody’s grandchild isn’t going to, a fucking waste of time, the Eli Whitney education fund, invention, the steam donkey, the whole patent system, a desire to maximize, a turbo charger on invention, patents are still relatively short, the most free-copyright state in the world, Dickens was mad about his losses, William Hope Hodgson, securing an American copyright, the great grandchildren of Robert E. Howard don’t exist, rent-seeking, who has the copyrights, Robert E. Howard holdings (Conan Properties International), Conan™ trademark, Red Sonja™, Marvel is reviving Conan in 2019, missing Philip K. Dick stories, a story published (maybe) in a Rogue 1963 issue, patents, in a conceptual bubble, a bottom up order, insisting, Lesson is the author of The Invisible Hook, working class people, collectors, invention and art, building off the collective knowledge of humanity, the ethics of this, science is a collective act, that’s the Royal Society’s whole shtick, what made it not alchemy, math is not science, Halley and Newton, science in action: two guys fighting about who is right, Newton and Leibniz, Euclid, remixing and adding, David Hume, basically we can only remix and reorganize, does the same thing apply artist, Everything Is A Remix, the wrinkles of observed phenomenon, new and better tools, people are in dialogue, Robert A. Heinlein leads back to Jerome K. Jerome and Rudyard Kipling, this is all public domain (morally), its all collective, the moral case for it, a value added tax that goes to a creator, pressures thanks to NAFTA renegotiation, you’re great great grandpa wrote something as a kid and now you get to reap the rewards (but you probably don’t), James Burke’s Connections, so fast, Avatar is actually a Poul Anderson story and also a couple other things, The Terminator, a Harlan Ellison, Alien, A.E. van Vogt, there’s nothing new under the sun (just stuff you don’t know about), Dan O’Bannon, its like sex, the critique of Malthus, what the copyright “industry”, trademark, patents, rentseeking, a quote from Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, beware of he who deny you access to information, why Alex Jones should not be pulled down from anything, what you start locking down what people can say then you’re on the path to tyranny, the killer nail in the coffin for me: the Tolkien Library, the pirate edition of The Lord Of The Rings:

The infamous Ace Books “pirated edition” from 1965. The opening salvo of the “War over Middle- Earth”.
A very nice Near Fine matched set of this notorious edition.

This is the only paperback ‘Lord of the Rings’ to be printed based on later printings of the 1st Edition.
All others were based on the revised editions.

Houghton Mifflin, seemed to have been in technical violation of the law by having imported too many copies printed by Allen & Unwin.
Ace Books took notice of the sales and overseas production of the books, (which are marked, ‘Printed in Great Britain’), determined that LotR’s had fallen into the public domain in the United States, and launched their own edition in spring 1965. {Hammond and Anderson, pg 104} So to secure their American copyright, Tolkien was asked to submit new material to create a new Edition, and so secure their copyright beyond question.

Tolkien wouldn’t allow paperback editions, the reason Tolkien became popular in the 1960s, “I want you to read this story to me daddy.”, you could go to the library and lug around the hardcover around on the bus, a U.S. service edition (WWII pocket paperbacks), Arkham House put out a Lovecraft, sitting in the Ardennes waiting for the Battle Of The Bulge to begin, why Lovecraft is the name he is today, what makes something culturally relevant, why piracy is always a good thing, there are many schemes to help artists, you can’t sell this book in a used bookstore, Dan Carlin tells me all the time “you own this forever” you don’t own any of your Audible audiobooks, until we accept that fact we’re never going to agree, traditional pirates, navy’s were really mean, impress you, hazing, abuse, rape, bad pay, Herman Melville, William Hope Hodgson, should your son join the Merchant Marine, HELL NO!, the navy was pretty hellish, how democratic and egalitarian pirates were, he comes at it from a cultural bubble, rational actors who are self-interested, having the best sex, the individuals were not rational but the things that happened were, the quartermaster and captain were elected positions, Marcus Rediker, The Devil In The Deep Blue Sea, The Many Headed Hydra, the Chicago school influence, a pun on The Invisible Hand, music bootleggers, fans, obsessive collecting, gotta catch ’em all, where the rational part comes in, motivated by revenge, FUCK YOU ESTATE!, they had done copyfraud, literally whole sheets of fraud, photocopies of the hand written submissions, bring that truth out, if you became a pirate you were dead in two years, 2 years free as a pirate or 10 years a slave, anarchism is bottom up order, a revolution against your master, decades before the U.S. constitutions, Fred Heimbach’s pirate nation in The Devil’s Dictum, Edgar Allan Poe needed a Patreon, Charles Dickens had his own magazine called Once A Week, Madonna started her own label, you become the industry, Robert J. Sawyer, The Quintaglio Ascension, tidally locked, a retelling of Galileo and Copernicus, Wake, Watch, Wonder, neanderthal ones, one of these copyright maximalist guys, old material and new material to his patrons, like Greg Bear, extracting value from the old system, pulled down off of Gutenberg, the first half was not copyright renewed, writing books that aren’t for me Quantico, chasing after a different market, the bigger money, Tom Clancy name is a rubber stamp, that old system is going away, the original pirates were still in a scarcity economy, monopolies all over these stories, in Canada almost all the lands were controlled by the Hudson’s Bay Company, sugar and other commodities, mercantilism, exclusivity, they misunderstood what profits were, if anyone else benefits then it hurts me, the same kind of thinking, Spain’s wine and Scotland’s sheep, those sunny hills of Spain and Italy, reducing scarcity so everybody benefits, attention is the new scarcity, the wherewithal, Patreon seems easy compare to that, trying to make money from my awesome website, supermodel asses and cryptocurrency, 19th century poetry is not super-interesting for most people, being employed outside your job as an artist, what academia, a basic income show, a Mack Reynolds novel about guaranteed universal income and the problem is not enough satisfying work, we need stuff to do, the 8 hour work day, what we will, two weeks of holiday, no vacation since childhood, They Live (1988), marry and reproduce, two groups of people, the straight up bums and hobos, the Italians who go to work at 10 and go home at 2, what am I gonna do if I’m not working?, the end of work is not so worrisome, tracking hours spent with daughter-time, the DINS, no sex, where we’re all headed, rolling coal, The Quiet Earth (1985), Paul has read the book, we can lose our focus if we have nothing to do, salaries or points, in this capitalist world if we get a paycheck for it’s valuable, Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaningful Work and Play by James C. Scott, the Hmong people, the Doukhobors, protesting by becoming nude, everybody flees to the west, a non-violent way of showing abasement, a way for Christians to preserve a simple stateless existence, nudism as a tool, The Year Of The Jackpot by Robert A. Heinlein, the world is so big wide and varied, they’re all around us these people, you can’t flee from Japans culture by staying in it, they’re cultural strength is hurting them as a population, Korea recently committed to massive English learning, advice for Taiwan, learn English legalize gay marriage and let in immigrants, making English an official language, the Great Wall covers hundreds of thousands of bodies, regular industrial imperialists, the Great Firewall, deep down they’re really Chinese, a fun theory about why so many Anglican ministers are atheists, this is how you do it, labor protests in the south, worker power, what communists have been saying for a century,

Moral Pirates

Pirates' Planet from CAPTAIN FUTURE, Winter 1942

M. Humpfris illustration for A Ladybird Book About Pirates (1970)

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #358 – READALONG: The Simulacra by Philip K. Dick

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #358 – Jesse, Paul, and Marissa talk about The Simulacra by Philip K. Dick.

Talked about on today’s show:
1964, Simulacrum vs. Simulacra, Dick is right in complaining about the title, Ace Books, what this book is about, “The First Lady Of The United States”, in the background, a tiny little hint, are chupas androids?, a closed-circuit-like passing spasm, who and what are robots, simulacrum, undercooked, best novel or worst novel, the audiobook, well-crafted, juggling, so confusing, a populated novel, psychoanalyzing Philip K. Dick, the settings, a complex complicated world, the Warsaw Pact, Poland, the Soviet Union, jalopies, why is the world the way it is?, der alter = the old man, Philip K. Dick saying…, my wife is my boss, changeable husbands, my emotions aren’t real, a fine idea for an SF novel, Queen Elizabeth II, the society is profoundly different, they don’t have books (or knowledge about anything), projecting into minds, your one chance, mass psychosis, societal control, a caste system, “the Ges”, the USEA society, education?, hobbies, “Let’s Watch Nichole”, it was nightmare world, passing the social studies test to keep your apartment, deep sea divers, knowing the numbers, a glimmering seed of an idea, revisionist history all the time, busywork, having political correct terms for everything, a Stalinist version of this story, the New Pravda, Wikipedia, “the euphemism treadmill”, what sounds like attack words, the word shit is a shitty word, toilet, escape to another planet, there’s always people going off-world, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, when you leave Earth, service simulacra, a worker of your own to help you, a warm jacket and a packed lunch, quick divorce, “I divorced my wife last night”, the Frontier Thesis, Frederick Jackson Turner, space as the new frontier, “the artificial worlds of Philip K. Dick”, the default, “the final frontier”, colonizing the solar system and the universe, other countries, Canadian bacon exists, moving to another apartment complex is a huge deal, what will the kids think?, a satire, the latest season of Homeland, an unprecedented, American television is very strange, House Of Cards, has there ever been an American television series set in another country?, not a Netflix show, tricked Americans into seeing another country, increasing America, the Berlin Airlift, JFK, the Philippine conquest, and Cuba, Germanophile weirdness, time travel is very easy, why always with the Hermann Göring in SF?, “he looks like he’s having fun”, he knows how to use power, Caligula, monsters, you have to have dinner with someone in the Third Reich, To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer, why is Hermann Göring in this book?, a transplanted plot?, looking to change time, palace intrigue, a time war, hilarious, more of everything, he’s running into himself, Sir Francis Drake, Time Pawn aka Dr. Futurity, apartment complexes, The Man Who Japed, fear of the pop-quiz, history isn’t neat, from democracy to totalitarian hermit kingdoms, baroque weird alien things (from the outside), it hangs itself (together), jug bands?, “Jug Band Plays The Whitehouse”, Richard Congrosian believes his body odor is lethal, Chick, chupa, the way Dick’s mind works, she’s so mean she can’t be a robot, that explains my lack of emotion, palupas are fake, am I invisible?, nits?, the crawling advertisements, they shoot the adveritzments to make them shut up, the reason Richard Congrosian thinks he stinks, I’ve had sex with 755 women, I’ve met three presidents of the United States, the default response, brainwashing, Jesse is sensitive to scent, Tide laundry detergent, gender equality vs. not touching door-handles, Paul’s superpower is he can smell ketchup from a mile away, Jesse thinks the general public is brainwashed by clothing cleaning products advertising, soap operas, Gain laundry detergent, advertising a product can create a market, fake creation of desire, the pets, my sheep’s not real, like the Dr. Bloodmoney, psychiatry, Mars, neanderthals, political factions, mutants, he just read something, The Crawlers, “more evolved” isn’t really a thing, a group of sad-sack mental deficients, what circumstances would allow you to enjoy a future that is grim?, he wanted vegetables and they gave him a coin, if they were the simulacra at the end, waiting for their time to rise up over the humans, the neanderthals will inherit the earth, this (novel) is a stew, not the best meal he (Dick) has served, electic music enterprise, do they have any ethnic music before you die?, funny digs, German conglomerates, Dick seemed to enjoy writing this, the next thing you know you have twenty characters and ten plots, it’s all held together by Dr. Egon Superb, Strikerock, Wilder Pembroke, National Police, one of his biographies or an interview, other than being a psychoanalysis of his own marriage, Dick never came at it from whatever the dominant view was, sometime in this period…, communists, the FBI came by and interviewed him, a locked filing cabinet, bikers, drug addicts, the FBI, or he did it, he became friends with one of the FBI agents (who taught Dick to drive), Donald A. Wollheim, in the paranoid phase, I’m gonna help out, no matter what novel there’s only thirty or forty people in the entire society, eventually their in the crank file, when you see the NP men, the Secret Service, an insight, when Philip K. Dick is at home he’s at work, all grist for his mill, when he isn’t writing novels he’s writing letters to the FBI, a terrible Philip K. Dick novel but a pretty good science fiction novel, fun and funny, a prism, that’s okay, sometimes you get stuff that’s okay, was there boobs?, “she had high-rise breasts”, 90-year old breasts, no quivering breasts, they were poking out every now and then, “her breasts protruded divinely”, we have marriage we have boobs, somebody is drinking coffee, you can see his life, so true, so familiar, just hanging out with Philip K. Dick again, random Germans, he likes Germans, hanging out with Philip K. Dick.

ACE Books - F301 - The Simulacra by Philip K. Dick
The Simulacra by Philip K. Dick - Illustration by Ed Emshwiller
Chris Moore illustration of Philip K. Dick's The Simulacra

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #339 – READALONG: Vulcan’s Hammer by Philip K. Dick

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #339 – Jesse, Paul, and Marissa talk about Vulcan’s Hammer by Philip K. Dick

Talked about on today’s show:
1960 novel, 1956 novella, the Goddreads reviews, Reddit, re-listening, very visual, John Mcclane at the end of Die Hard, conference room scenes, vague characters, awesome ideas, three Philip K. Dick stories that could have inspired The Terminator movies, no time travel, Doctor Futurity, Skynet, the drones (the hammers), UAV style drones vs. terminators, drone technology, there were drones in WWII, remote controlled bombers [ex. Operation Aphrodite], almost nothing “invented in SF” was actually invented in SF, infiltrators, Jesse has become a Terminator geek, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Screamers (adapted from Second Variety by Philip K. Dick), two battling computers, humans as pawns, both computers are in the same building!, proxies, the Internet is missing, Vulcan 3 is building the Internet, Skynet’s drones, Skynet doesn’t have central control, when Vulcan 3 is controlled, Vulcan 3 as a baby, creepy, at the periphery of the plot, the education sub-theme, a little red headed girl, being raised by a terminator, such a fanny show, the movies are recycling scene and catchphrases, at the school, a non-conformist school, Philip K. Dick’s kid is in school, regular school crushes creativity, meritocracy, nepotism, an unfinished thought, cronyism, technocratic government, getting through by hard work, was he an A.I. controlled by Vulcan 3, “hey the system works!”, sociological ideas, how un-Dickian this novel is, a relatively straightforward mystery, no weird obsessions (like with infidelity), the obligatory black haired girl, the president of the world comes into the world takes a little girl out of school and takes her home?, WTF?, the teacher’s okay with this?, the classroom, the concentration camp in Atlanta is a psychology camp, the conformist world in A Wrinkle In Time, Marissa learns Science Fiction, a planet of complete conformism, “you let them play an unstructured game?”, stifling of independent thought and creativity, why was the teacher killed?, reading Lolita, secretly reading forbidden books, is Philip K. Dick improving the books when he re-writes them (consensus is NO), two cults, a cult of reason and rationality, why is that rebellion group called the “Healers”, like alternative medicine, the worship of the computer, Greys, blue collars against the white collars, “we shouldn’t undervalue people just because their skills are in their hands and in their fingers”, vaxxers vs. the anti-vaxxers, back to Dr. Futurity, Vulcan 2 in the novella, piecing Vulcan 2 back together like a damaged hard-drive, the data is recovered aurally, listening to the broken thoughts of Vulcan 2, not just white noise in between the broken sentences, a groaning of ghosts, psychology, weird and interesting, absolutely NOT what anyone else does in Science Fiction, the Butlerian Jihad, because… Skynet, nobody says actually technology is really quite useful, 43% of the Earth’s resources?, the paragraph, maintaining the computer, the “lesser order of human needs”, some sort of metaphor 43 percent of calories go to the brain?, a biological parallel, making the decisions, making the policy, a subtle allusion to Plato, the greys the technician class are “guardians”, denying a brain data (big mistake), The Just City by Jo Walton, Athena sets up Plato’s Republic, automatons for physical labour, seeing the connections, The Republic, Socrates, like the old Atlanteans, the Gold the Silver and the Bronze (ditch diggers and truck drivers), the Silver (the police, functionaries, tax-collectors), the Gold (the enlightened, the philosophers), Vulcan 3 is the Gold, the T-class (experts and specialists), these books are all being suppressed (due to copyright), a pretty good title, Hammer shaped robots?, Vulcan (aka Hephaestus), the ancient Greeks and Romans, Hephaestus built a robot for Athena, the Greeks were really into automata, metal beings, the Talos of Crete, Vulcan as the wizard of metal, a Philip K. Dick conference lecture, when the Greeks thought of gods they thought of A.I. (sort of), these atoms over here have desires, intelligence in non-living things, a little bit under cooked, what about Vulcan 1?, or does it?, maybe Vulcan 1 is hiding, in a degenerate state, Deus Irae and The Last C., tactical nukes, a lot of weakness but it makes up for it, a bit of paranoia, that’s usually what causes the problem, self-preservation, when Saddam Hussein is threatened, the emotional computer, pleading only as a human could do, “We can come to an arrangement!”, shades of 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a microcosmic version of Vulcan’s Hammer, several Star Trek episodes, The Ultimate Computer, Star Trek as a metaphor for American foreign policy, The Apple, they kill the computer that regulates their society, they killed the snake but…, vegetarians are now hunting, put some controls on this, as a metaphor for society, a rebellion against pain in the body, the mind as the government, living in a post-WWIII world, WarGames, the Russians had a battle computer called “The Dead Hand“, a dead-man’s trigger, WWIII was looming in 1956 and 1960, so good even though its not that good, Dick loves blue collar workers, Father Fields, making something out of the air-conditioner, a dropped thread, a completely weird metaphor, The Borderlands series, Scooter, a technopath, The Variable Man by Philip K. Dick, “he fixed things”, a great tagline, “I don’t got Philip K. Dick for action”, living in a disposable society, everything is disposable, is there a TV-repair shop left in North America?, modern cars, only 5.5 hours, zoning out, cool predictions, the paranoid artificial intelligence, Sam Harris and Joe Rogan, caging an A.I., setting up honey-traps, Jesse thinks that’s not going to be the issue, Neuromancer all A.I.’s have digital shotguns strapped to their heads, “the smartest man in the world”, Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, worries, better as a metaphor than as a prediction, we shouldn’t be unconcerned, Colossus: The Forbin Project, it isn’t 1s and 0s on a screen, seeing inside a burned diary, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein, Mike the computer (aka Mycroft Homles), what’s missing from Vulcan’s 3‘s life is a friend, kids want to know, I think you guys are liars if…, kids are going to get into everything and that’s not a bad thing, more information is better, Vulcan 2’s decision, Occupy, Black Lives Matter, you are totally welcome to prosper if you are willing and able to play a certain kind of game, the push-back is caused by the masses rejecting stability, the adventurer class, “more concerned with gain than with stability”, the phrases: “life is cheap”, big gambles, the Netflix series Narcos, communist guerrillas living in the jungle, if you are living in a corrupt society you get a lot of gamblers, the striking opening scene, “can’t you get a better picture?”, they all wear the uniform of their class, another theme, destroying stability, going back to entropy, it is kind of Philip K. Dickian after-all, undercooked or maybe overcooked, the same with Time Pawn, this is my worst book, Dean Koontz’s 1973 novel of Demon Seed has a rapey robot computer, with the rewrite of Demon Seed Koontz has mellowed out, writing for the market, even after his death, Puttering About In A Small World by Philip K. Dick, everything’s always better with a robot wife.

Future Science Fiction No. 29 (1956). Cover Art by Frank Kelly Freas
Vulcan's Hammer by Philip K. Dick interior art
Vulcan's Hammer by Philip K. Dick interior art
Vulcan's Hammer by Philip K. Dick interior art

Vulcan's Hammer by Philip K. Dick - FRENCH

ACE - Vulcan's Hammer by Philip K. Dick

Vulcan's Hammer by Philip K. Dick - German

Vulcan's Hammer - preliminary art D-457

Kelly Freas cover art for Vulcan's Hammer by Philip K. Dick

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #159 – NEW RELEASES/RECENT ARRIVALS

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #159 – Scott, Jesse, Tamahome, and Charles Tan talk about recently arrived audiobooks, new releases and more.

Talked about on today’s show:
Charles sent to World Fantasy, John Scalzi’s Fuzzy Nation is a reworking, Is WWW: Wonder by Robert J. Sawyer YA?, three from Angry Robot, Giant Thief by David Tallerman, Empire State by Adam Christopher is superhero noir, free comic book day, The Shadow comic by Garth Ennis, listening speeds, Dead Harvest by Chris F. Holm, Bolinda Audio from Australia, Dreamquake by Elizabeth Knox, YA is big, Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, “scare the crap out of little kids”, The Novice by Trudi Canavan, cozy fantasy, Dark Is The Moon by Ian Irvine, Hemlock Grove by Brian McGreevy, being developed for Netflix, polarizing, Angels Of Vengence by John Birmingham, futuristic Clancy?, White Horse by Alex Adams, Into The Black: Odyssey One by Evan Currie, ebook first, “I’m getting refreshed”, Jenny would like Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente, not Genevieve Valentine, Welcome To Bordertown edited by Ellen Kushner (Sfsignal interview) and Holly Black is all-new, “these stories are too wet”, A Handful Of Stars by Dana Stabenow is an older book, “Alaskans in space”, The Outcast Blade by John Courtenay has vampires, “well that’s disappointing”, how about steampunk?, the splitting of Warriors by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, Legends by Robert Silverberg, Scott thinks Far Horizons should be an audiobook, Agatha H. And The Clockwork Princess by Phil and Kaja Foglio, Girl Genius comics online, Dante Valentine series by Lilith Saintcrow, Clockwork Heart by Dru Pagliassotti, “clockpunk”, Nightfall by Stephen Leather, soul legalities, “God is the ultimate scammer”, Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Infamous, paper books, Comedia Della Morte by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, usefulness of blurbs, The Company Of The Dead by David J. Kowalski, end of Scott’s stack, I didn’t know 8 Million Ways To Die by Lawrence Block was a book, lots from Audible Frontiers, Gregory Benford’s Galactic Center series with multiple narrators, Planet Of The Apes by Pierre Boulle, think of the movie inverted, “take your damn dirty hands off me”, Terry Bisson’s They’re Made Out Of Meat, Charles is reading the Shirley Jackson award nominees (horror and dark fantasy) to prepare for interviews, Peter Staub’s Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff, “it scared the pants off me”, where’s the John Joseph Adams anthology audiobooks?, Kim Stanley Robinson audio short story at Lightspeed Magazine, 2312 stays in the solar system, Mars trilogy if you like science, tons of new Robert Silverberg on Audible, The World Inside will be an HBO series, Scott liked Book Of Skulls, a bunch of Connie Willis, what’s on the horizon?, Existence by David Brin, Red Mars was a marathon, A Short, Sharp Shock by Kim Stanley Robinson, what kind of fantasy does he write?, John Scalzi’s Redshirts, bye Charles

The Shadow cover

Posted by Tamahome