Reading, Short And Deep #388
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Chronicle Of The Year 1850 by Anonymous
Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.
This story was first published in The Columbia Magazine, September 1786.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!
The SFFaudio Podcast #741 – The Heads Of Cerberus by Francis Stevens – read by Christina Fu for LibriVox. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the novel (6 hour 14 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Maissa Bessada, and Alex
Talked about on today’s show:
The Thrill Book, August 15 August 15 1919, Polaris Books, the opening illustration, found and enhanced, three persons, two men and a woman, described for the listen, suits and ties and coats and pants, grey dust presumably, a topless lady in a dress at the center of the web, about an hour into the book, Ulithia, she’s not wearing a badge, the warning voice of the land of illusion, she’s a weaver, she’s a spider woman, she’s a spinner and a snipper and a weaver, the Fates, the Mori or the Norns, a long and detailed plot summary, E.F. Bleiler, 1990, in it everyday, a story summary of every science fiction story, Science Fiction The Early Years, densely packed, a typewriter, like a wikipedia of ancient books, like reading goodreads, authentically focused on giving summarized thoughts and a plot description, tricky to summarize, taking it seriously,
Questions of reality in the form of science-fantasy,
shading into both true science-fiction and supernatural
fiction. * Philadelphia and an other-world.
* Drayton, a down and out, unjustly disbarred lawyer,
breaks into a house, intending to burglarize
it, and is caught by the occupant, a former close
friend (Trenmore). * Trenmore has no hard feelings
about the intended crime and is willing to help his
friend. After some general conversation he shows
Drayton a novelty he bought at an auction, a small
glass vial with a metal cap formed of three canine
heads. Labelled “Dust from the Rocks of Purgatory,”
the contents of the vial were supposedly collected
by Dante, while the container was Benvenuto Cellini’s
work. * The friends pry open the bottle, a dust
swirls out, and Trenmore disappears. While Drayton
is standing in shock, Trenmore’s sister Viola bursts
in, accuses Drayton of foul play, and also disappears.
Drayton, an honorable man, decides that he,
too, must die, and deliberately inhales the gray
dust. # He awakens in a strange land, curiouslylighted,
littered with ruins, along with Trenmore
and Viola. Judging from an inscription the land is
called Ulithia. It is peopled with fantastic beings,
perhaps supernatural, who urge them on their
way. * After passing through a moon-shaped door they
find themselves back in Philadelphia, but with a
difference. They are arrested almost immediately
for not wearing numbers, and when they resist, are
beaten unconscious. * Background: The new Philadelphia
is a separate nation encompassing the former
Pennsylvania. The year is 2118. The land is run by
Penn Service, which permits no knowledge of the outside
world. Technology is about the same as in our
world, but the political and social systems are very
different. The masses of the people, who have no
rights j are not allowed to have personal names, only
numbers. They are also forbidden to read books or
newspapers, and are completely under the authority
of Penn Service. * The administration consists of
two groups, a hereditary aristocracy called the Service
that controls the land, and executives called
Superlatives, who administrate. The Service is composed
of decadent, degenerate capitalists of the
most vicious sort, while the Superlatives are crooks
and flunkies. The Superlatives have titles: the
chief of police is Quickest; the high judge is Virtue;
the head of the lawyers’ guild is Cleverest;
while Loveliest is a figurehead woman ruler with
little real power. * The Numbers (the masses) are
allowed to conduct their businesses as they wish—
the monetary unit being a work unit— but Penn Service
can seize what it needs or desires. Protest or
rebelliousness on the part of the Numbers is treated
harshly, with the ultimate, often-used Pit of the
Past, a spike-lined pit containing a mechanical monster.
* The Numbers are also kept down by the state
religion, which venerates William Penn and focuses
on a red bell that hangs in the great Temple (our
City Hall). The official belief is that the land
will dissolve into nothing if the bell is rung.
Most of the officials consider this dogma to be only
a superstition useful for controlling the masses. *
To return to the story: When Drayton and Trenmore
regain consciousness, they are hauled before Mr.
Virtue, who offhandedly sentences the men to the Pit
and awards Viola to a fellow Servant. It looks like
death, but the earth people are saved by two other
Servants who want to use them for their own plots.
The Superlative Loveliest has developed a passion
for the Herculean Trenmore, while the scheming Cleverest
hopes to use Viola to overthrow Loveliest.
He also lusts for Viola’s beautiful body. * The
mechanism for fulfilling these plots is the Contests,
or the Civil Service Examinations, in which
contestants can challenge incumbents, the losers
being thrown into the Pit. Loveliest wants Trenmore
to challenge the current Strongest, and Cleverest
wants Viola to challenge Loveliest for her office.
The earth people decide to go along temporarily, but
intend to double cross the Servants. * The Contests,
which take place over the Pit, are supervised by Mr.
Justice Supreme, a vile and vicious old man. As the
comrades should have guessed, the tests are rigged
and proceed according to the wishes of Mr. Justice
Supreme and his nephew, Cleverest. * How the contests
might have ended is never told, for there are
disruptions. First, there is a small rebellion of
the Numbers, bloodily suppressed, then Drayton’s
escapade. He wandered off, entered the forbidden
library, and learned not only the prohibited secret
history of the land (which emerged out of crooked
contractors and gangsters), but its precarious existence.
The legend of the bell is true. A twentieth-
century scientist, who discovered how to destroy
matter by means of resonances, embodied the
resonance of the land in the bell, which is the old
Liberty Bell recast. Its vibrations can destroy
Philadelphia. * A melee follows. The comrades escape
for a time, but are trapped, facing certain
death, when Trenmore, desperate, strikes the great
bell. The land dissolves, and the comrades find
themselves back in their own Philadelphia. * As a
subplot, a fourth twentieth-century person was also
present in the other Philadelphia. This was Bertram
the burglar, who accidentally followed Drayton and
the Trenmores into the other-world. More adaptable
than the others, he survived unobtrusively until the
dissolution of the land. Indeed, he even started an
affair with a local young woman, Miss 23000, who
survived the dissolution and came to our Philadelphia
with Bertram. Unfortunately, she disappears
when she loses contact with the vial. * Explanations
are in order, and they are offered in plenitude
by Mr. Scarboro, a collector who desperately
wants the dust and is caught sneaking about the
house. According to Scarboro, the dust is not ancient,
but is the discovery of the great modern
scientist Andrew Power (whose name is familiar as
one of the founders of Penn Service). The universe
is filled with parallel worlds that interpermeate
and are separated by vibratory rate. Power’s chemical
changes one’s vibration, moving one to Ulithia,
which seems to be a necessary staging area and
common ground for such worlds. After Power left to
explore various parallel worlds, Scarboro carried on
his work; while he does not know how to make the
powder, he has worked out a controllable means of
returning, which Power does not have. * Scarboro
continues in somewhat contradictory expansions of
what he has just said. He turns the parallel worlds
into the whims of superbeings, and then claims that
the worlds do not really exist. He further attributes
the corrupt nature of Penn Service to the corruption
in the minds and hearts of the three explorers,
who projected their own flaws into the land. *
Highly imaginative work, one of the classics of early
pulp fantastic fiction. While the characterizations
are pulp simplistics, the cynical anti-authoritarian
note in the description of the culture of
Penn Service is refreshing. The final destruction
of reality or rationality is a fine anticipation of
the work of Philip K. Dick.
The Cosmic Computer by H. Beam Piper, Vulcan’s Hammer?, Eye In The Sky, the Bevatron, paranoid communist world, a similar mechanism, one alternative world, not including the staging area, setup for sequels, like a role playing game, grey powder, The Strange, Monte Cook Games, more about those otherworlds, I wanna read that book, chases Power, there’s a book here, there’s a book under there, her premise is awesome, the premise is stronger than the center, the Dante dust from purgatory, it’s actually all mad science, I liked the ancient powder, she loves mad scientist, half-Japanese and half-German, get as many of the axis powers in, The Curious Experience Of Thomas Dunbar, the first superhero, bitten by a radioactive spider, superpowers, Samson, 40 years too early, comics hadn’t been invented yet, 2118, the cab looks like a 1918 cab, she explains it away, the same uniforms, the same sheets, not a simple time travel story, pulls the rug out from under us, metafictional, bought at the drug store, strange experience in another world, these no-readers playboying about time, explaining to Scott, this burglar and another burglar, that’s cool, totalitarian universe, she’s having a helluva lot of fun, how imaginative this lady is, anticipating Philip K. Dick, there’s no more timely science fiction story than E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops, the system is falling apart, skype calls with people on the other side of the planet, damaged relationships, very very timely, Howard’s End, a mixing of genres, pre-the word science fiction or scientifiction, it’s not H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, not fantasy purely, scientific romance, she moved to Philadelphia, the husband was a treasure hunter who died on an expedition, to pay the bills, sick mother, whatever this is, a five year period, really really good at it, Sunfire, 1917-1920, a few novels, a good handful of short stories, it’s fun!, a fun book!, very peppy, a secret plot, the bell of doom!, powderland, you create the world out of your personality, right at the end, true but not in the book, none of their personalities seem to match, Miss 23000, I say she but she was nothing, the metafictional aspect, an excuse, our hero murdered an entire country of people, you destroyed an entire world, they’re on a train reading a pulp fiction magazine, after, The Goddess Of Atvatabar, more 1890s than 1920s, 1884, the year she was born, totalitarian and dystopian, Penn Service Philadelphia, not 1984 world, not Brave New World world, theater?, no more school!, abolishing all grades, dance halls and free movies!
“And they–the grafters–set themselves up as masters of the city under threat of its complete destruction. They called themselves the Servants of Penn. They curtailed the education of the people as needless and too expensive. When the people complained, they placated them by abolishing all grades above the primary and turning the schools into dance halls and free moving-picture theaters.”
you’ll end up a number, what almost makes it science fiction, a pulp style cover of Nineteen-Eighty Four, anti-sex league, I’m going to sex you, the signet giant edition, I wanna visit that dystopia, security guy BDSM, the trick to get you into this world, a movement afoot, the illusory universe we live in, less interested in prurient things, ban pornography, Everyone Is Beautiful And No One Is Horny by R.S. Benedict, enemies to friends, interior Pennsylvania place, great friend, you’re from Earth too!, villain of the week, villain light, I like kimchi you like kimchi, a petty thief, not even his house, everybody in the house except Martin, some subtle stuff, mirror mirror song, time’s a traitor but the web is real, liar/lyre,
“The web lies broad in the weaving room.
(Fly, little shuttle fly!)
The air is loud with the clashing loom.
(Fly, little shuttle fly!)”
There was a brief pause in the melody, then:
“Year on year have I woven here.
Green earth, white earth, and autumn sere;
Sitting singing where the earth-props mold;
Weave I, singing, where the world grows old.
Time’s a traitor, but the loom is leal–
Time’s a liar, but the web is real!
Hear my song and behold my web!
(Fly, little shuttle–!)”
Francis Stevens moving the typewriter carriage return, very focused on making it all consistent, the four people, Robert E. Howard’s favourite character: hulking irishman, a giant!, he’s the strongest, sent in superlatives, cleverest, the most beautiful, only 19, this criminal, two win the superlatives, aha!, ooh!, very pulpy, plot twist, weird scientific explanation, phantasmagoria, bookended, Voyage To Arcturus by David Lindsay, that was unexpected, lacking colour, the three colours of the buttons, rolling up your D&D character, sorcerer, a D&D party, a setup for RPGs, storytelling like this, 40 years, rolling dice, telling stories, facing threats and being heroes, dealing with what you’ve been dropped into, collaborative storytelling, fantastical situations, literally a Shakespearean style comedy, marriage, shocked about it, interesting and early, Atvatabar was tedious in many spots, pacy, a day of listening at work, it didn’t flag, reseeing these characters, now you need to read the next book, cinematic universe, nickname was “Skidoo”, corny old fashioned, kale, a gat, he pulled a gat, gangsters wreck America, Buck Rogers, sleeping for 500 years, Killer Kane, a queer kind of totalitarianism, seeing it from a particular scale, badly then well treated, as Skidoo did, where she came from, found her at a whorehouse, introduced to her parents, at a dancehall, 1918 scolding has become their religion in 2118, Brave New World and Soma, kept ignorant, the forbidden library, Logan’s Run (1976), don’t trust anybody over 30, youre dosed with alcohol, pre-genes genetic engineering, making people deliberately dumb, our big handsome irishman, Trenmore, did he win the lottery?, homeless, a gold cigarette case, a pulpy version of The Time Machine, the Eloi and the Morlocks, effete cute, delicious elven people, descendants of coal shoveler and engineers, their food product, not objects of sexual desire, only into the future, a bunch of different futures, the dying earth, strange symbols adorn a garden world, the gatherers of the Eloi, make them clothes, bizarre, collars to cows, hobby horse, we have a class of people who are useless, the gentlemanly class, other people who know how things work, a hereditary class, the singing contest, new kid sounds great, condemned to the pit, making an argument about government corruption, the mob running the city, a fear of mobs and organized crime that has been lost culturally, over there, drug cartels, the gangs were going to take over the whole things, The Warriors (1979), and they have, not mafia, gangs have taken over politics, do crime on a large scale, CIA running drugs, geopolitical scale, movies exposing this to the public, the whole genre of pulp magazine, Scarface (1929), gangland movies, Goodfellas (1990), Casino (1995), more like [Richard Stark’s] Parker, taking scores, The Score (2001), biographical, The Godfather (1972), Black Mass (2015), he played it bald, Leonardo Di Caprio and Marky Mark, The Departed (2006), Pain And Gain (2013), Ed Harris, Tony Shaloub, muscles big and robbing, such a light touch, he’s been naughty, woodshed, masculine storytelling, A Princess Of Mars is light, male wish fulfillment, the pallyness, they liked each other so much, a woman’s imagination of men’s relationships, oh my dear boy!, a boy who likes a girl, a lesbian woman, had never been a teenage boy, probably true, similar in intensely different ways, the new PDF Page, how many exist, three possibly missing things (possibly 2, maybe 1), the description doesn’t match, 11 items total, The Labyrinth from All-Story, July-August 1918, Behind The Curtain, a cute little mummy story, Serapion, Argosy in 1920, Claimed, Friend Island, The Elf Trap, Unseen-Unfeared, that’s not enough, a magic dust to take us to her laboratory, when she got remarried?, gave up her daughter?, the biographical details on her are very bad, Gertrude Barrows Bennett, two pictures come up, people didn’t know that she wasn’t A. Merritt until the 1940s, okay at best, Dwellers In The Marriage, The Moon-Pool, The Ship Of Ishtar, LibriVox, poor and poorly sourced, dubious, discuss, an illustrator, invalid mother, 1917-1920, the kinda citation, moved to California, death certificate, the Social Security Administration, the woman who invented “dark fantasy”, Aztec temples, most of her stuff is much more like science fiction, a scientist who we never meet, materialize certain eastern ideas, a scientific process, Spider-Man is a super-science story, weirdly undercuts, not even set in the future, a weird hell, that’s what would happen to you, their descendants become numbered people in a weird corrupt society, The Last Ship, everybody’s dying, reestablishing the American government in Missouri?, the new White House, regional leadership, the backstory of this, dystopia/utopia, a secret group, who those people are, who are they?, special badges, this planet that doesn’t really exist, weird totalitarian differences, Sliders, everybody’s a cat planet, Soviet America planet, not knowing social norms, what science fiction does, the book as written, something like proto-science fiction, this future was Andrew Power’s fault, fuck all of you, the borders are closed, I’ve heard of him, changing all these different places, he made the dust, he’s the changer, if we read the next book in the series, diminishing returns, the ice cream store, so many options and flavours, with ideas, as a premise is exhausted, as the ideas are wrung out, the idea of series comes out, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Sherlock Holmes, the biggest series ever, Dracula II, stick around for more of the same, really creative, she’s drawing on her experience of moving to Philadelphia, not hard science, the social science is exploring social norms, a pulp package, missing people, here’s a woman, our loss, when the next one comes out, we’re going to have to treasure it, LibriVox, no requirement, Christina Fu, a really great title, Benvenuto Cellini, autobiography, his Perseus, Alexander Dumas, Rolex, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Lois McMaster Bujold, Ian Fleming, How To Steal A Million, Nick Carter’s stiletto, Killmaster novels, Randolph Carter, The Punisher, airport books, Executioner, Deathlands, gun polishing books, tough guy in dystopian, fucking off across the United States, Clive Cussler, Nelson DeMille, non-book people, oh I see you like books, really good, Jesse doesn’t know everything, Lion’s Game, good books by people you’ve never read, an airport novel, the main character is sarcastic, a thin read and thick book, this guy is really fun, enjoying reading it, Reacher, Lee Child, character driven fun plot stories thing, need to read other books, feel the need or market demand, a great sense of loss, a tragedy, The Elf-Trap was a long time ago, pre-pandemic, 553, a couple hundred episodes ago, November 2019, hang on Maissa!, a major book, out, a good book, revelations about reality, the skill of a fantasist, connecting with somebody from 100 years ago, what she’s trying to do, far enough away for time to pass, staying in hotels and other people’s houses, what an imagination!, fly away Friday, The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper, The Skull by Philip K. Dick, most close for The Terminator, blackmailed into The Moon Maid, Shadows In Zamboula, Space Viking by H. Beam Piper, she loves a good libertarian, percentages of libertarians who are women, Ayn Rand is the only one, H. Beam Piper and his no-wife were libertarians, the Traveler RPG, bros pumping iron and robbin banks, the Swat Team are clearly post-9/11, space soldiers, The Last Ship, nautical stuff, little bit like Star Trek, 10,000 refugees, The Cosmic Computer, Excalibur, sword worlds, legendary swords, one day a starship rediscovered…, space vikings!, this boy book, a bit boy, scarred from The Cosmic Computer, good H. Beam Piper, more actiony, sit around creating economics, two-fisted, Poul Anderson, The Golden Slave, a sword and sandal book, sold!, hungry homeless pagan tribe, 1960, barbarian in chains with a lady on a divan with really nice hair, whipped by a lady, Esther Friesner, Chicks ‘n Chained Males, a chick in chain mail and a guy chained up, the puns got worse, I hear baby, players calling, a thundering novel of conquest and vengeance, a dude in a fur bikini chained up, the lady has some grapes, lines, Vancouver Island, wrecked the business, as new kids come…, that’s the hope, some people are not mask-obsessive anymore, masks recommended on BC Ferries, hairnet is fine, do something to society, wrecking the tutoring business (as an in person thing), online is not as good, share a drawing, share food, treating them like humans (to be feared), harbingers of doom and gloom, clearly likes it to commit to three cows, from chickens to cows, an old disabled retired lady, a picture of cows, 9 chickens, 3 cows, 4 dogs, farmhands?, milking, a spring thing, how long does a cow gestate, raising for beef, commune with the cows, Maissa and Will, Will must be in a depressed mode, handsome cows, funny looking, furrier, spottingness, hobby cows, what they think of themselves as, happy cows, there’s a Joe Rogan episode, a Spotify person, a cattle guy, regenerative farm, chemicals and hormones, beef for eating, learn a lot, wrestling or whatever, an apiary lady, sadly no apes, a bee lady, Erika Thompson, her heroes were Jane Goodall and the ape lady (Dian Fossey), pr, full time bees, a tiktok star, a bee problem, the bees have taken over, more suitable for everybody, practical stuff, bee stuff, what their society is like, bees are not like humans, that hive-mind things, the queens are the sex organs of the superbeing, how are queens made, is the queen in charge, the drones are all females, the males don’t do anything, really fascinating, interesting questions, interested in interesting things, talk about bees for 3 hours, Joe Rogan gets a lot of shit, how the smoke works, “drowsy”, the smoke prevents them from detecting alarm pheromones, a shield, interesting people talking about things they’re interested in talking about, book focused, some person who wrote a book, popular with guys, depending on the subject, fighting stuff, a commentator, working on Fear Factor, some farm somewhere, until they sort it out, fight to the death, individually bees have no intelligence, as a collective they act like a big organism, the sad life of a male bee, when your skin cell falls off, not important, give it royal jelly, a collective consciousness, neurotransmitters are outside their bodies, school fucks up, hanging out with the bee lady, school doesn’t teach the right things, sad story, interesting podcast, go for a walk with the bee lady, kitty litter, cream, fear of black coffee, after a good podcast, tea, absence makes the stomach go fonder, just enough, playing it close, cream on the regular, milk her cow, eggs, enjoy your walk.
Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!
The SFFaudio Podcast #658 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Scott Danielson, and Trish E. Matson talk about Dancing Aztecs by Donald E. Westlake
Talked about on today’s show:
mid-1970s, questions, longest novel, why it is so weird?, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1965), Westchester, Pennsylvania, a bold claim, a huge collection, Rat Race (2001), this quasi-genre is called “epic comedy”, The Cannonball Run (1981), Aston Martin DB5, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr., a diocese in California, a really stupid movie and really good, atypical for Westlake, a huge cast, funny as heck, ever scene is very Westlake, overall the picture is unWestlakian, 40 people and a hawk, omniscient point of view, chapter titles, the structure, he’s a master at this terrible genre, entertaining, light, Somebody Owes Me Money by Donald E. Westlake, a problem somewhere in New York, Westlake showing us New York, a member of this neighbourhood, everybody in New York is looking for something, the second day of the search, fifteen hours from South America to New York, the inferred bar fight, so good, you could put this right on film, Westlake movies, very filmic stuff, in novels characters would never do this, the master of the novel form, at the height of his writing powers, he’s using his powers for simplistic movie comedy, Cannonball Run is trash, super-cute, he’s enjoying himself, self-indulgent, Farrah Fawcett, they’re inherently bad for you, The Good Place, The Cannonball Run II (1984), Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines (1965), Those Daring Young Men in their Jaunty Jalopies (1965), Wacky Races, Dick Dastardly, a plague we’ve gotten through and over, the Harlem Globetrotters on Scooby-Doo, mid-60s into the 80s, the Scary Movie series, parody movies, a cast of famous actors in Airport, the airport sequels, Airplane!, big cast novels, The Gods Must Be Daring (1997), a wonderful assemblage, leaning on ethnic stereotypes, bigoted stereotypes, n-words and other ethnic slurs, how it was back then, we should do better now, Harlem, in the parade of truckbeds going by, a chapterlets from the point of view of the two kids watching the parade, in dialect, the Brer Rabbit stories by Joel Chandler Harris, Uncle Remus, Brer Fox he lay low, Brian Holsopple, dynamism, no restrictions, all out zany, so wide so broad, hanging out with Pedro is a book by itself, ravished, so many people end up happy, there’s only one winner, they all had fun in the race, all in the journey, the best episode of Deep Space Nine is about a crew of Vulcans and the Deep Space Nine raggamuffins, they don’t win they declare victory, go back to Quark’s and have a raktajino and enjoy they’re muscles being sore, the familiar plot, the setup, The Fugitive Pigeon, The Maltese Falcon, the Westlake Review blog, The Mourner by Richard Stark, how Westlake often does something, how he created Dortmunder, a comedic scene, derailing your hardboiled protagonists, cozy versions of Stark plots, back to Paul’s poll, side series, sidekick heisters, a criminal job at the airport, he’s a wonderful guy, only the hawk isn’t criminal, so much meta writing, as a professional writer, always looking for ideas, when he hits on an idea, how the aztecs are genuine, how many scenes where suddenly the action stops, a Sherlock Holmes story, The Adventure Of The Six Napoleons, the strange circumstances that brought about these events, a squash court for a certain park, congratulating themselves, “I believe my subject is bewilderment”, bewildered by reality, how it could possibly be, sixteen Dancing Aztecs, why are they moving like that, they have a reason, heisted from an ATV by Americans, a British coup in Antigua: Under An English Heaven, Kahawa, a coffee train heist book?, hustling, gritty, only New York, decades ago, Robert Moses, a sense of place, Westlake’s job is to go out in the city and observe and say “wow”, two travelers, places to go in New York, amazing experiences you can have, the real treasure of Westlake, a sanitation worker with a big route, the park on the weekend, the beach in the winter, a billion corners of New York, how many nooks?, various spots that need pooping on, an archaeologist looking at the mid-1970s, the father in Somebody Owes Me Money was always working on the insurance papers, gimme twenty books and only one was written by Westlake I could find it because of characterization, the bewilderment scenes, he must be a private eye, the private eye said, weird glomming on, the mom smells like a tomato, at the park with his kite (on fire), he’s got a B.B. gun, almost like magic realism, you can’t say no to it, the wry affection he holds for most the characters, gentle fun, Jane Austen, “the hero”, he likes them all, gold, how all the different statues got broken, a twist at the ending, 150 pages earlier, the wrong statue, a sleight comic novel of skill and craft, Westlake at the height of his powers, an unreliable narrator, the Westlake review writer is very expert, an FBI agent who had been fired years ago (but thought he was under very deep cover), throw a monkey wrench in, create scenes, Robert Redford is a thief, The Hot Rock (1972), Sidney Potier as an agent trying to stop him, absolutely zany, a filmic only genre translated into a book, something that is difficult to do in a book, the power of his amazing characterization, Westlake showing off, the answer is yes, pretty impressive, Bank Shot, Smoke, The Spy In The Ointment, in dialogue with other authors, Lawrence Block, past comic novels, Art Dodge’s greeting card company, Two Much (1996), Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas, the V.S. Goth Cab company, like Edgar Allan Poe the French love Donald E. Westlake, an unauthorized Stark adaptation, big in France, Drowned Hopes is Westlake’s retelling of The Colour Out Of Space by H.P. Lovecraft (kinda, not really), Smoke by Donald Westlake, The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells, audio doesn’t get archived on the Waybackmachine, ground out of the internet, forever is not as long as we though it was, Travelers Far And Wee by Donald E. Westlake, this explains all the traffic in New York, something that’s easy to miss in Westlake is that he’s very philosophical, he’s surprised he’s an author, the fake publishing agency, its a fuck book, Westlake wrote those, the market’s not there (the Science Fiction market), they all have day jobs, less and less reliant on getting that publisher, where there’s a demand to be an author there’s going to be a scam, these comic crime capers are all about himself, they’re all getting scammed, the wonder, the absolute bewilderment, its unbelievable what people ill trick themselves into doing, calmer and calmer the more they fight, he likes being a cuckold, the other Oscar, best adapted Screenplay, Jim Thompson, The Killer Inside Me, one of the joys of this podcast, re-reads, the secret of what podcasts are for: its , The Curse Of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold, everybody needs a good excuse, Larry Niven, allowable as long as it is homework, a mental block, assignments for podcasts, how many podcast has Scott got going?, two readalongs per month, all in good fun, a Luke Burrage show, Amazon and Google searches have greatly degraded, use an adblocker, adblocker browsers (Brave), the central Andes, the maximum extent of the Aztec Empire, a fictional South American country, what research did he do? his whole life, a Richard Stark novel set of the coast of Cuba, Lawrence Block’s novel Killing Castro, a very political time, he’s really good at hiding the politics, his weird personality, very different from most SF writers, Robert J. Sawyer makes his full time living as an SF writer, wife with a job, lives in a condo, no kids, hundreds seeming thousands of TV writers writing terrible shows and making very good livings, seemingly no interest in books, the history of the 20th century, the Teapot Dome Scandal, all the other people in the family that amounted to zero, billionaire, Elon Musk did something interesting with his money, putting a car in orbit of the earth is stupid but cool, Joachim Boaz writing about Larry Niven’s inheritance “at least he’s honest about it”, stuff on the moon, expanding the Dortmunder world, the recent film adaptation of The Colour Out Of Space, the HPLHS, The Voluminous Podcast: The Letters Of H.P. Lovecraft, little Auggie Derleth, C.L. Moore, the redemption we all wanted him to have, mea culpas, his political transformation, if this is what a conservative sounds like sign me up, economic philosophy, more people of the elite class need to have that feeling in order to change, he thinks he’s better than everyone else, and he’s failing at school, writing a newspaper column as a teenager but can’t finish high school, straight from the source biography, the destruction of Uncle Hugo’s bookstore, the website, H.P. Podcraft has a patreon, Houdini, more professional than premier prestige podcasts, what a triumph their podcast is.
![A New York Dance [interior dustjacket] by Donald E. Westlake](https://www.sffaudio.com/images20/ANewYorkDanceByDonaldE.WestlakeINTERIORDUSTJACKET565.jpg)
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The SFFaudio Podcast #513 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Bryan Alexander, and Evan Lampe talk about Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown.
Talked about on today’s show:
1798, Wieland: or, The Transformation: An American Tale, first novel, the first author who got paid for a living in the United States, a weird first big novel, a weird country, a founding document is a strange book, Bryan’s thesis, connectivity issues, Bryan’s dissertation, Edgar Huntly, the doppleganger as a motif, the romantic era, British poems, not allowed to include Americans, teaching, the gimmick is sleepwalking, murder, Indian war, Skywalk: The Man Unknown To Himself, talking to Americans, in and out of fashion or focus, prefering the manly nature stuff, freakishly bizarre, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, and H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror In Literature, James Fennimore Cooper, The Last Of The Mohicans, American muscular exceptionalism, written for women, a female protagonist, a horror story, violence against women, murder, Natty Bumppo, waking up in a cave, like Rambo, violent novels, religious violence, nature, nature worship, nature is terrifying, incinerator by divine pyrotechnics, American Writers: 100 Pages At A Time, dense, super-high level vocab, distancing from the events, the whole back half, a very strange recommendation,
Of Mrs. Radcliffe’s countless imitators, the American novelist Charles Brockden Brown stands the closest in spirit and method. Like her, he injured his creations by natural explanations; but also like her, he had an uncanny atmospheric power which gives his horrors a frightful vitality as long as they remain unexplained. He differed from her in contemptuously discarding the external Gothic paraphernalia and properties and choosing modern American scenes for his mysteries; but this repudiation did not extend to the Gothic spirit and type of incident. Brown’s novels involve some memorably frightful scenes, and excel even Mrs. Radcliffe’s in describing the operations of the perturbed mind. Edgar Huntly starts with a sleep-walker digging a grave, but is later impaired by touches of Godwinian didacticism. Ormond involves a member of a sinister secret brotherhood. That and Arthur Mervyn both describe the plague of yellow fever, which the author had witnessed in Philadelphia and New York. But Brown’s most famous book is Wieland; or, The Transformation (1798), in which a Pennsylvania German, engulfed by a wave of religious fanaticism, hears voices and slays his wife and children as a sacrifice. His sister Clara, who tells the story, narrowly escapes. The scene, laid at the woodland estate of Mittingen on the Schuylkill’s remote reaches, is drawn with extreme vividness; and the terrors of Clara, beset by spectral tones, gathering fears, and the sound of strange footsteps in the lonely house, are all shaped with truly artistic force. In the end a lame ventriloquial explanation is offered, but the atmosphere is genuine while it lasts. Carwin, the malign ventriloquist, is a typical villain of the Manfred or Montoni type.
is the next book about x-ray specs, the Binding of Isaac, based on a true story in upstate New York, your local history, Washington Irving, Anthony Boucher’s They Bite, the cannibalism aspect, religious fanaticism, Carwin is a bit villainous, a thing going on with the maid, a genealogy of religious madness, an unreliable narrator, quite unhinged, a very Lovecraftian theme, inheriting the sins of the father, forbidden knowledge, ancient French protestants, this sounds like Lovecraft, half buried in dust and rubbish, his eyes were not confined, seek and you shall find, connection to madness, looking for her father’s old writings, Carwin in her closet, don’t read the book we’ll interpret it for you, teach the Indians how to be good Christians, his own personal religion, twice a day without fail, craziness and religion, really strange, early American history, the American Revolution, The Peopling Of British North America by Bernard Bailyn, America as a Marchland, a marquis, slavery, new religious movements, cults, no established church, a weak echo, Netflix’s Wild Wild Country, the Albigensians, not having a positive view of religion, religious frenzy: the end, a more traditional religious education, an unhinged freethinking frontier religion, the argument of religious authorities, Augustine, the best thing for humans is a good theocracy, Sunday School, mandatory belief, a Comics Code Authority Stamp, if you don’t like it I won’t write any more, William Godwin’s Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams, anarchism, what’s the lesson here besides beware of ventriloquists, she isn’t as naive as she sometimes seems to be, a transformation from the brother into Carwin, a rustic friendly atmosphere, science and astronomy, traumatized by nightmares, a nightmare story, her savior is a rapist, I said I was going to rape you because it seemed best at the time, it feels so gothic, throw your voice to get out of dangerous situations, throw your voice to the garbage can behind your muggers, that’s bullshit, The Secret Of Ventriloquism by John Padgett, written for a Thomas Ligotti fansite, 1943, “Benders”, the Kansas serial killer benders, that father was insane, god was talking to him, so full of coincidence, Clara is not reliable, a sign of mental illness, the case that inspired Wieland, we could almost diagnose, showing up at a neighbor’s house naked, not just genetics but also disease, Guy de Maupassant, Who Knows?, The Horla, burn the house down, the brother is definitely insane, the father has been insane for a long time, voices attributed to a stranger with Spanish characteristics, Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, charms for protection against vampires, a castle in an American forest, a temple, mysterious stranger, the father’s death and spontaneous combustion, a state of insensibility, his imperfect account, bearing a lamp, a blow from a heavy club, an imperfect tale, half the truth has been suppressed, how it ends, the divine ruler, the religious vs. the rational explanation, the boyfriend, the uncle, a professional, the voices, the original kills in New York, struck by lightning, both natural and supernatural, a sound up on the temple, a pistol discharged, a blazing light, a very striking image, a cloud impregnated with light, a burning bush, ball lightning, naked and scorched and bruised, clothes removed and reduced to ashes, never explained, so devout god visited him and he saw god’s sideboob, Poe is dealing with Radcliffe 50 years later, what’s going on up front, Mulder and Scully, crucial to the Gothic, Gothic explicae, The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis, Scooby-Doo, the final chapter, making sense of real phenomenon, lets find out what it is, H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man, the temptation of the Ring of Gyges story, a temptation to intervene, always rationalizing, past tense, for those people who want to know what happened to my family, this is her Stormy Daniels book, an essay in Vanity Fair three years later, no one would really write this that way, written for our benefit this way, putting it in the best light, I was paying her, what else is going on, the children, the maids, an upper class family, playing musics and discussing philosophy, suffering from syphilis, paranoia, hearing voices, a psychotic break, Lovecraft’s dad, a gang of men are raping my wife, went to the hospital, a hushing up, can this be rationalized without modern disease theory and modern psychology, In Cold Blood, so familiar, Gary Cole, Fatal Vision, a gang of hippies, Charles Manson, threat of the week, a narcissistic sociopath, Pleyel’s experience, “drifter”, he’s the Rasputin of this mess, lets have a secret meeting, no you idiot, don’t do it!, maybe I should, he’s hiding in your closet, let’s split up, a horror movie trope, drawn to the flame, the implications towards incest, transformed into a Spaniard, Carwin, this non-Spanish crypto-Spanish dude, some guy who doesn’t like me in Ireland, the British Gothic tradition, the Catholic South is very sexual, Othello, every Radcliffe novel, a ritual thing to do, a classic geographical imagination, part-time Spanish part-time English, Germans and Scotch-Irish and Jews, an inherited move, what Jeffrey MacDonald told the investigators, high heeled boots, “Acid is groovy, kill the pigs.”, the American Revolution angle, hostile to hierarchies and institutions, the corruption of old Europe, Saxony, Chapter 5, the good king, the Prussians, the horrors of war, which eventually happens, Thomas Paine, views on marriage, gender politics, the final scene, no general critique of institutions, a normal life, happiness in France, a Lord in Saxony, The Rats In The Walls, why they moved to the U.S., the Delapore family was murdered by one member and then praised by the neighborhood, the secret of the family was passed down, his family seat, the whole cycle of horror, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound Of The Baskervilles, the Canadian who comes into take the Baskerville estate, returning to Europe where the sins were ingrained in the family name, start a religion afresh, principled and thoughtful, rigid thinking, too rational, what could have caused this?, a pair of aunts who married a pair of brothers, hints of incest, she’s expecting her brother there, “that’s weird, man”, emotion and passion vs. rationality, a movement driven in part by the Enlightenment, violent, slavery, siding with reason, mental illness, the scene of this contest, a duel, a malignant figure, I leave you to moralize on this tale, Robinson Crusoe goes hunting in Spain, a problem with pagination, a double-tongued deceiver, if only they had gone to church, you gotta think this problem through, a Kantian answer, an 18th century chestnut, the human brain is a pretty good machine until the passions wreck the place, frailty, Robespierre and the Goddess of Reason, The Dunwich Horror, Providence by Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows, who is he talking to, these are your idols, Hyperion by Dan Simmons, a horror book, you don’t wanna go that way, one take on America, American Culture 101, the spontaneous combustion, horror movie scenes, don’t do it!, don’t go down in the basement, hewing trees, where you keep the monsters (the basement), most of the horror takes place upstairs, closets, when did basements become popular?, cellar, I lurked through the day, a trap door, a storm cellar, so strange, so weird, so foundational, the opposite of James Fenimore Cooper, William Faulkner, Pierre by Herman Melville, all the heads we’re driving over, Melville’s gone nuts, overblown writing for 200 pages, frustration, speaking to something that everybody knew about then, why was Poe obsessing about premature burial?, fake news, preserved like the bones of a dinosaur, historical criticism, a Gothic dream of factionalism, the Civil War, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House Of The Seven Gables, Young Goodman Brown, The Minister’s Black Veil, disconnected from religion but surrounded by people who are connected, swimming with the church team, freezing rain, Quaker meetings, another set of friends, the Philosophical Society, equal in extent, very much of the enlightenment, a biloquist, all the voices were Mel Blanc, digging graves in your sleep, astral projection, The Facts In The Case Of M. Valdemar, the biggest hoaxer of them all, Channel Zero, creepy pasta, Candle Cove, the tooth monster, about grief, a mobile haunted house, almost perfect, uncanny, a rundown Rustbelt city, modern folklore, a local legend, ventriloquism, that’s so weird, sleepwalking, Rutger Hauer and very meaty, infecting my dreams.
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #512 – Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown, read by Karen Joan Kohoutek.
This UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK (7 hours 28 minutes) comes to us courtesy of LibriVox.
Wieland was first published in 1798.
The next SFFaudio Podcast will feature our discussion of it!
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #352 – Jesse, Mr Jim Moon, and Prof. Eric S. Rabkin talk about doors, gates, and portals (and rubicons)
Talked about on today’s show:
thinking about doors, individual phenomena, a phenomenological way, white and purity, water, Edmund Husserl, an intensional act of consciousness, the conquistadors, when did WWII happen?, what kind of a phenomenon is a door?, doors are artificial, Narcissus and the lake, a boundary, passages for the whole body, windows, two-way passages, quicksand, horizontal movement, four qualities, the story of Oedipus, the riddle of the Sphinx, man -> mankind, the founding myth of Western culture, Aristotle, from one world to another, Eric in his professorial mode, the word world, were = man, the age of Man, in the world of…, the social domain that human beings create for themselves, prisons, doors as phenomena are artificial boundaries between two different worlds, social changes from one side of a door to another, doors as a phenomenon represent changes from consciously defined worlds, outdoors vs. indoors, inside and outside the gingerbread house, the morning thesis, the idea for this show, windows as opposed to doors, The Wonderful Window by Lord Dunsany, wanting to turn windows into doors, a rich example, sliding doors vs. sliding windows, in Science Fiction…, Robert A. Heinlein, defining the writing style of Science Fiction, the ideal Science Fiction sentence, Beyond This Horizon, “The door dilated and a voice from within said ‘Come in Felix.'”, wasting energy, one little change makes it a Science Fiction world, Heinlein invented the word “slideway”, Friday, from the reader’s armchair world it the fantastic world, folklore, liminality, crossing rivers, wandering into the forest, a wild world with gods and monsters, agrarian rural society -> industrial living, the wardrobe, The Door In The Wall, The Gable Window by H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth, Dreams In The Witch-house, a locked-room mystery, The Secret Garden, a Wellsian door in the wall, what’s behind the door could be anything, mythical monsters, vampires need your permission to cross your threshold, Dracula comes in through the window, defying gravity and the phenomenology of windows, an instant subliminal marker, ho ho ho, Murders In The Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe, the lore of changelings, leaving the house by the chimney, Little Red Riding Hood, “dispatched by typical female means” (cooking), Alice In Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass, Alice is fantasizing before she leaves the bank of the river, the river side is a liminal domain, dazing, daisies, crossings, protective imagination, opening the door for a sequel, Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, a girl named Door, London’s underclass, being homeless is living outdoors, a hunter named Hunter, Door’s father is Lord Portico, a door back into Heaven, another rich text, worlds within worlds, the word hinge, ideas hinge upon something, stiles aren’t like doors, stiles don’t have hinges, lichgates and side doors to churches, the dead enter the church through a different door than the living, The Superstitious Man’s Tale by Thomas Hardy, shades of everybody, fourteen saints, a holiday in Germany, the blood of a sacrificial lamb, Exodus, keeping death from the door, all saints day, Jack-O-Lanterns scare off the returning dead, nature, walking through a gate, spirits pass through, how do gates function in keeping out the spirits of the dead, gates as territorial boundaries, “you come in through here”, the laws of territoriality, a keeper of the gate, the gate is the cover of the book, the door is what we cross “Once upon a time…”, “the second page of the first paragraph of a famous book”, why round?, why the exact center?, why green?, Eric’s eyes are green, The Door In The Wall has a green door, magic doors are often green, The Magic Door The Green Door (aka The Little Green Door) by Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman, horrible and messy and smelly, fundamental jokes in the Shrek series, Shrek is green too, kids love farts, About Time (2013), Domhnall Gleeson going through doors, “doors are amazing”, The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, the Chinese Scholar’s garden at Snug Harbour cultural center, moon gates, gates post signs, gates offer viewpoints, from The Haunted Palace by Edgar Allan Poe:
And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes, whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch’s high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn!—for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
And round about his home the glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.And travellers, now, within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a ghastly rapid river,
Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh—but smile no more.
the mouth as a door for voice and wisdom (and later a gate for flies and maggots), orifices, doors are artificial, eyes as windows, windows as natural, calm water as a window, the night sky as a window into the universe, window = wind and eye, a metaphor switching meaning, a heart is like a pump and a pump is like a heart, Babylon 5, star-gates, the Twilight Zone show inside Futurama: The Scary Door, Fredric Brown: “The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. there was a knock on the door.”, William F. Nolan’s the door problem, a seventy-foot bug, the imagination trumps revelation, film, Shiley Jackson’s The Haunting Of Hill House (in the book and the film), banging vs. knocking, the unopened door, the end of The Monkey’s Paw by W.W. Jacobs, The Psychoanalysis Of Fire by Gaston Bachelard, “fire: fine servant, horrible master”, poor little rich boys, the ultimate irony: Arbeit Macht Frei, an open gate, the phenomena interpenetrate, Rubicon (lost and found), The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin, “h amount of fuel will not power an EDS with a mass of m plus x”, uni-directional time travel as a kind of rubicon, Julius Caesar’s crossing, Alea iacta est (“The die is cast”), suicide, Jean Paul Sartre, Rip van Winkle, rubicons are natural, driving in Los Angeles county, counties and shires divided by rivers, the mouth as a (mostly) one way door into the body, Protector by Larry Niven, the tree of life root is a one way door (a rubicon), The King In Yellow by Robert W. Chambers, The Ring, the River Styx, ancient heroes and gods crossing back and forth across the river Styx, biological machines, Jesus Christ’s tomb door, a locked room mystery, doubting Thomas, The Cold Equations as a demarcation between materialist SF and all other kinds, rejecting the premise of the story, two kinds of laws, “Marilyn willingly walks into the airlock and is ejected into space.”, myth vs. hard Science Fiction vs. soft Science Fiction, The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams, a few examples in literature, The Pied Piper of Hamelin, seven gates to Hell in Pennsylvania, Hell, Michigan, Audie Murphy’s To Hell And Back, a rubicon as an irrevocable choice, The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman, Will cutting portals to other realms, “the ability to create portal given to someone on the cusp of puberty”, age 21 (given the key to the door), Key to the city, garter -> gate, barbicans, walled homes in the northern Mediterranean, doors within doors, protected by the laws of the city, the freedom of the city given to military units, Janus -> January, a two faced god and the god of doors, the doors to the temple of Janus are closed, open cities, Brussels, the locking of doors, growing up in New York you’re never fully at peace, living in Strawberry Point, Iowa, wifi open vs. wifi encrypted, wardriving, keeping the door open, the subspecies, dutch-doors, squeaky hinges, a door that opens up, China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh, “falling backwards into a world in which a consciousness extends infinitely in all directions”, “the phenomenology changes the epistemology”, ontological differences, The Star Rover by Jack London, a portal to other places and times via astral projection, even in confinement one can find ways out, The Demolished Man The Stars My Destination, Hypnos by H.P. Lovecraft, the restriction of the coffin of the body, jaunting, The Count Of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, The Twilight Zone episode The Hunt, a country bumpkin -> a rural American, all dogs go to heaven, gatekeepers and doorkeepers, porter, the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, wine drinkers and beer drinkers, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, was anything down that hatch on Lost?
Posted by Jesse Willis