Peter Watts – SFFaudio

The SFFaudio Podcast #916 – READALONG: Planet Of Adventure by Jack Vance

Jesse and Alex (Pulpcovers) talk about Planet Of Adventure by Jack Vance

Talked about on today’s show:
4 novels, between 1964, what did you think of this book, scanscope, waggling my fingers, “interesting”, three things that come up endlessly in these 4 books, Adam Reith and his motley crew, experience, one good big novel, a very good book, The Moon Moth, a murder mystery, all the things that are in here, a long short story, other series, the dude wrote a lot, really part of a series that’s one big book, clearly in the middle of a story, a natural final completion, the strength and the weakness of this book, designed to make you read more, a big side quest, almost gets the ship launched, only three, tries to steal a ship, loops right back to where he was, delay tactics, that could be the idea, frustrating, a perverse thought that would be really awesome, goes into the endless, eternity, just livves there forever, turns into a statue, still sits there today, frozen forever, about this book, where it comes from, and other books in this mode, The Green Odyssey by Philip Jose Farmer, a series by Mike Resnick, hero guy says “interesting”, gets out of his problems using his alien mind, thinks differently, hows he gonna get out of it?, a mode of science fiction, appreciate and frustrated with, Ringworld, luck is skill, bred to be lucky, such a fun idea, a little bit Mars, two moons, the cultural stuff, soft science fiction, it has to be handled well, in the tradition of, four alien races, pnumemen, a greek term for knowledge, strange society, throw it away and move on to the next one, the saving grace, it should be read as a whole, a modern novel, get you back up to speed stuff, it flows very well, which do you like the most?, the gold rush town, The Most Dangerous Game, the only way to get them, sentient tiger things, all the sequins that you can carry, biological?, mineral, geodes that grow in the soil, strange mushroom, nodules, geological nodule, like bitcoin mining, claim jumpers, what book is Casino World?, the eel racing, more than one thing going on in it, at least two big things, book 4, a girl in every book, I’m a princess of Mars, some adventurer who saved her, a sack of gold, be on your way, a big change from the expectation of the first book, most radical discontinuity, the love interest is excised from the plot, more freedom of adventure, kidnapped again, Zap210, Karina 429, employing the techniques of the odyssey, today at the typewriter, it was very tawny, old and boring looking, worn out, a direct reference to, that whole genre, from the late 60s, vintage sci-fi, when Burroughs was at his peak, 1912?, going on sixty years, that double gap, does it really well, doing it earnestly, no tongue in cheek here at all, there’s some of everything, a planetary romance, kinda stinky, mystery religions, the mysteries of some female anti-sex cult, the bitter old feminist sex-cult, fairly misogynistic, the main character is a male, he is heterosexual, underdeveloped female, I’m having these strange feelings, that’s how the species gets reproduced, very solid, weird sex cults on earth, cutting their boobs and dicks off, do it just for the art, a science fiction setting, was Jack Vance a seabee?, a photo of him on a boat, the start of the premise, the way a Star Trek episode would start, space navy, competent, we don’t know which one is going to be , nobody wants a bald short guy, Paul Wander, such a good name, Adam Reith, humans taken from earth and made slaves, getting back to Earth, the boat journey, Robert E. Howard style plotting, one damn thing after another, coincidence, what he’s written before, about the map, abandon the map, continents and islands, every time he goes to a new culture, a reskin, this is clearly Venice, Norse barbarians, merchant marine, essentially the same thing, you get off the boat, they have a different culture there, primitive people as you bulldoze their forest to make a landing strip, Thailand and Hong Kong, both Asian, not the same, what makes something taboo, puts a female mask on Zap210, orgy, the emblems, your emblem is you identity, keep with the Austrian accent, why people get tattoos, figure out their identity, what Jack Vance’s science is, how weird people are, the extreme of the underworld, a little bit like Weena and the Time Traveler from The Time Machine, made permanently child like, the whole point, the Eloi are the aristocracy, we don’t know how our car works, we’re definitely gonna eat you, she herself was a teacher of the young ones, decorum, don’t be boisterous, that kind of transformation, the only identity she had, girls inbetween, immediately kills, trying to get off the planet, a really bad villain, the worst villain ever, Wooldiver, avarice, the collection of money, his religion, he wants to be a Dirdirman, heresy, the big egg, sticking baby Chasch in the brain, chemically castrated, its all culture, this is how things are, I’m only level 4, a key to understanding, he becomes king of a city in book 1, I don’t have time for this, have to make reforms, I don’t especially care, he’s got adventure, king of that one small town, that extraction, the narrator is really good at making him evil, alive or dead, put in the glass box, presumably he’s dead, all wrapped up eventually, he and his remaing crew, some kind of a report, where it ends, a sequel, an epilogue, little Adam Reiths running around, pretty tame, not a sex adventure, Gor-curious, better written, a 25 book series, The Demon Princes, The Star-King, one damn thing after another and no resolution, you have to sell the book the way it needs to be sold, a four season show, the themes and the chapter breaks all fit together and hang together as a nice whole, not wrong, motivations, Predators, that human hunting stuff, mad Pnume, nighthounds are the same thing, walking on four legs upside down, as an ecosystem, not as thorough as Dune, worms up and down, one species planet, using that background to enrich the alienness of The War Of The Roses or some such, pilgrim plant, a restaurant, restaurant in Bankok, this is spicy, this is very pickled, grow to enjoy, a different set of taboos, cultural morals, the experience of adventure, Lieutenant Gullivar Jones: His Vacation, visit to Mars by magic carpet, legless children, the bitter feminist cult, an organ made of men, everything moves on, who thinks of that?, Elric of Melniboné, Melbourne, the sword who drinks, a sash, a hat, a way of hiding your hair, the ferry, very Charon on the ferry, the most modern of the books, eyes are free, almost all of them are zombies, cigarettes off the sidewalk, we’re not zombies like these other people, seperate from those zomies, trapped in your own algorithm, you block people, Brave New World, the soma, the only one that’s sweet, clever and so insidious, hunt escapees, really solid, compared to Ringworld, for such a big dumb object, in the first book, hard science fiction, engineering, superstrong string, technology stuff, everyone’s got spaceships, the scanscope, doesn’t know anything about physics, the hulk, it was cool to the touch, because it’s iron, what it can do, those strange markings, do not point at sun, Luke’s binoculars from Star Wars, a fantasy world, wooden sailing ships, D&D on this planet, everyone knows there are spaceships, yep yep, yes it is, hunting for food for a spear, learns a language by kissing a girl, they’re bitcoin mined, rhymes with stuff that happens on Earth, when you read Jack London, lots of horrible cultural shocks, temperature shocks, how assholish people are, telling it from the point of view of a dog, many many such, a liberation there, faithfulness, very frothy, apples are really delicious, the same reason that they float, this book is not a dense stake, that crunch sound, if you hold an orange, juicy, mostly fluff, I would have more of this, three books called the Alastor, three books, cluster of 10,000 stars, loosely under the control of this dictator, the Whelm, the weird Jack Vance culture, the dictator, shows up in disguise, lowly bureaucrat, giant space battleship, pops in and likes to observe his planets, Tales Of Dying, that’s what we read, a French version, it takes longer in French, Lyonesse, To Live Forever, get your level up high enough, trying to solve his own murder, Big Planet looked really good, more out of print stuff, the Vance Integral Edition, a matched set, limited print, 60 books, brown leather, collection vs. reading, makes it unappealing, a nice pulp cover, $1500 in 2003, $14,995, 47 volumes, cheap paperbacks, a successful author, Stephen Leacock, My Financial Career, Stephen Leacock’s house, Mark Twain’s house, a massive beautiful home based on telling lies, so many cases like that, nobody you’ve heard of has a writing castle in Michigan, the premiere medium, movies were just coming in, as a writer you were the source and the sole employee, you could do it, E. Phillips Oppenheim, Howard had a typewriter, a carbon copy, a big market for fiction, so many magazines, then hardback market, paperback market, audiobook ebook market?, audible makes money now, stretch your legs into some E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros, majestic romance, should rejoiced, the many mountained demon land, a literary event of the first importance, there is a map and illustrations, 15 hours, 520 pages, appendices, somewhere down the road, last weekend of September, Tolkien or C.S. Lewis, A Voyage To Arcturus by David Lindsay, has two heads, a girl, astral projection, same way as John Carter, magic carpet, you don’t need oxygen, the symbology going on, everybody’s retarted, the language has got so much simpler, that literary voice, the dumbing down of pop culture, the producers insist they recap what’s happened, oh that just happened, don’t make them work for it, the themes are shallower, an endless fetch quest, the difference is that is an excuse to get the next culture, to have the next adventure, Metropolis, 2001: A Space Odyssey, static scenes, the exact right mood for it, 2010 is a great science fiction movie, Brave New World, gets you into the mood of what the book is going to be about, a really good painted cover, That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion at a Werewolf by Kimberley Lemming, World Without Men by Charles Eric Maine, weirdly fascinating, that’s it, contraception, government conspiracy, shoots down the jetliner, its fun, ideas, the last man on earth, all these lesbians who hate him, very 2026, the first male child in 5000 years, look at this we created a male, enforced lesbianism, a supercomputer that runs the world, a fun read, Mr. Adam by Pat Frank, everybody’s sterile, inspecting a lead mine, we need to study this, we must study you, we have a sperm gap, the Chinese have seized him, Canada’s like we will play along, a mockery of American government and bureaucracy, a mocking satire, all these guys coming back from WWII, using science fiction ideas, the fun stuff, if it doesn’t have robots or androids or supercomputers or vampires it better fuckin have a murder, maybe an Agatha Christie, not as a steady diet, conartist in space, Deathworld by Harry Harrison, a good space opera, Deathstalker by Simon R. Green, weird urban fantasy, giant decadent space empire, farm planet, a sexy mistress that he bought from the concubine store, declared an outlaw, start a rebellion and overthrow an empire, plot reasons, swordfights and blasters, corrupt decadent courts, handmaidens with brains burned out, no one can say no, this is what happens when you put women in charge, and the adventure continues, a chonker, two weeks to read four books, other genres, military science fiction, subset of space opera, big dramatic galaxy changing, subverting tropes thing, invading this planet, this unit trapped somewhere, Honor Harrington, Horatio Hornblower in space, the big dumb object, bio-science fiction, Peter Watts, Greg Bear, Project Hail Mary, The Martian and the other Martian (Odyssey) by Stanley G. Weinbaum, Artemis, anything still being talked about 100 years later, Orville Prescott, its not as big as Shogun, old books still being talked about, 100 years later, an introduction by big movie collection, Forrest Ackerman, my Slan friend, skyscraper is a reference to a sail on a ship, the moonraker, Moloch, the heart machine, the human clocks, the mole world, a ruler as ruthless, the Seal of Solomon, supermundane science, Hugo Gernsback, I don’t want to be him and I think I am him, set in Novembro 2026, The Cosmic Courtship by Julian Hawthorne, Cirsova, illustrations, some collector had the issues, to do the OCR, they didn’t release those scans, Mary Faust, a brilliant scientist, an evil sorcerer, Jack Paladin, her love, swashbuckling, 1917, a gutenberg text, so many scans coming in, Black Canaan, how to pronounce Ouroboros, adventury book, it went down easy, a big investment is fine, more people should be readin Jack Vance, born in 1916, Showboat World, modern author biography, wrote a bunch of crappy books, cattlehand, mercenary in South Africa, joined a cult in the Himalayas, admit when a story is good, a story published in Chatelaine in 1983, a good story, called The Metaphor, a really good English teacher, flamboyant, teaching grade 7 for 16 years, my dog is a big fluffy cat, my mom is a cold austere building, do you need to talk to somebody, attracted to boys now, finally spreading her wings, a little older, just as flamboyant, the students all make fun of her, hit by a bus, how important you were to me, it was a murder, that is most of the mainstream literature that teachers push on kids, they went into creative writing, their upbringing, become a dentist, now reconciled with you brother, every single Disney movie, the working class playwright, Monty Python, broad country accent, coal mining is an honorably profession, more to life with gala lunches, nailing a lot, the people in the DSA, in favour of the working class but they don’t know any, LuluLenin, people aspiring to that sort of class, a lot of money for a mug, there’s something there, probably helped their writing, rich kids that did good, Larry Niven, Michael Crichton, a really solid paperback from the 70s, it felt complete, hit it big, moving on, very much a John Lange, bigger projects, The Great Train Robbery, he directed the movie, an excellently funny film, when you’re watching a 70s movie, The Black Hole (1979), the hot Maui sun, Deep Rising (1998), 80s movies, 60s movies, great westerns.

Posted by Jesse Willis

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

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

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

Congo by Michael Crichton

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #329 – NEW RELEASES/RECENT ARRIVALS

The SFFaudio Podcast #329 – Jesse, Scott, Jenny, Tamahome and Paul talk about new audiobook releases and recent audiobook arrivals.

Talked about on today’s show:
ecomic, The BOZZ Chronicles by David Michelinie and Bret Blevins, Dover Publications, Iron Man, The New Mutants), a “plucky prostitute”, Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson, the Guardian Podcast, a tyranny of circumstances, The Cold Equations, The Coode Street Podcast, Interstellar, interestingly depressing, Ali Ahn, Hachette, this is all Paul, City of the Chasch: The Tschai, Planet of Adventure, Book 1 by Jack Vance, interesting language, strange customs, fun books, Blackstone Audio, Resurrection House, Reading Envy, Archangel (Book One of the Chronicles of Ubastis) by Marguerite Reed, beasts, military SF, on a planet?, she’s a mother, Terpkristin, Octavia Butler, Dark Disciple: Star Wars, Marc Thompson, Random House Audio, sound effects?, The Year’s Top Ten Tales of Science fiction 7, Infinivox, read by Tom Dheere and Nancy Linari, Bryan Alexander, Elizabeth Bear, Robert Reed, Alastair Reynolds, Michael Swanwick, Peter Watts, The Flicker Men by Ted Kosmatka, Keith Szarabajka, scientists in labs, Robert J. Sawyer, FlashForward, Blackstone Audio, throwing on a throwback, Thorns by Robert Silverberg, Stefan “the great” Rudnicki, Skyboat Media, from 1967, Ultima, Proxima Book 2 by Stephen Baxter, wild galaxy spanning stuff, Tantor Media, Per Ardua Ad Astra = by struggle to the stars, the Xeelee books, “Traditional Fantasy”, no homosexuals or gender swapping, Fool’s Quest by Robin Hobb, lots of fantasy, she writes books people really like Queen of Fire by Anthony Ryan, read by Steven Brand, “urban or contemporary fantasy”, The City And The City, Three Moments of an Explosion: Stories by China Miéville, WORKING FOR BIGFOOT Stories from the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, Buffy, American Harry Potter?, James Marsters, The Fifth Season: The Broken Earth, Book 1 by N.K. Jemisin, secondary world fantasy, post apocalyptic fantasy, City Of Stairs, Deceptions A Cainsville Novel by Kelley Armstrong, The Tale Of The Body Thief, Anne Rice, The Undying Legion by Clay Griffith and Susan Griffith, The Conquering Dark: (Crown & Key Book 3) by Clay Griffith and Susan Griffith, read by Nicholas Guy Smith, paranormal romance, Earth Bound (Sea Haven #4), Christine Feehan, horror/suspense, Finders Keepers, Stephen King, audiobook exclusive, Drunken Fireworks, a sample of Tim Sample’s audio narration, THE BLUMHOUSE BOOK OF NIGHTMARES: The Haunted City edited by Jason Blum, The Geeks Guide To The Galaxy podcast, Joel and Ethan Cohen, The Purge, Ethan Hawke, Eli Roth, Alive, Scott Sigler, Empty Set Entertainment, the warping of society, contemporary criticism, nonfiction, Humans Are Underrated: What High Achievers Know That Brilliant Machines Never Will, Geoff Colvin, could our jobs be replaced by robots or computers?, Tam is their pet, Ex Machina is idea heavy, audio drama or “Audio Dramer”, an Idahoan accent?, And the Sun Stood Still, LA Theatre Works, Dava Sobel, Nicolaus Copernicus, Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, how do we get access to plays, television seems insane to Jesse, there should be a Broadway channel, new podcasts: the Black Tapes podcast, SERIAL, NPR-style audio drama, fake pop journalism, The Great Courses’ The Torch podcast, Eric S. Rabkins course, The American Revolution (Great Courses), Neil deGrasse Tyson’s courses on Netflix, the GENRE STOP! podcast (a readalong style podcast), Ancillary Justice, The Martian, engineering fiction, applied science, readalong style, The Writer And The Critic, The Incomparable podcast, Read-A-Long, “when you hear a chime turn the page”, Books On The Nightstand podcast, The Readers podcast, Booktopia, Readercon, Fourth Street Fantasy, deep discussions, book centric panels, reader centric panels, a Roger Zelazny panel, a Jack Vance panel, Anne Vandermeer on Reading Envy, The Guardian Podcast, whooooah!, paperbook: The Dream Quest Of Unknown Kadath And Other Stories by H.P. Lovecraft and Jason Thompson (adaptor/illustrator) The White Ship by H.P. Lovecraft, Sergio Aragones, Groo, the marginalia in Mad magazine, page composition, J.H. Williams III, Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim, the final episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, a map of the dreamlands, it’s a map man!, illuminated maps,

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #285 – READALONG: The Girl Who Was Plugged In by James Triptree, Jr.

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #285 – Jesse, Scott, Luke, and Jenny talk about The Girl Who Was Plugged In by James Triptree, Jr.

Talked about on today’s show:
Alice Sheldon, why no audiobook?, how James Triptree, Jr. died, the award, the Virginia Kidd agency, the PDF version, who owns it?, James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon by Julie Phillips, Her Smoke Rode Up Forever, she was a spy, Racoona Sheldon, a murder/suicide or a suicide pact?, nearly blind, what would Seth think of that?, Huntington D. Sheldon, OSS -> CIA, Cordwainer Smith, Jesse is glad “new wave” is dead, re-reading, you must pay close attention, grammar, a potential audio version, caps and italics, Scott’s proto-cyberpunk, story summary, holographic TV, a “waldo” system, product placement advertizing, the 1998 TV adaptation for Welcome To Paradox (was very faithful), emotional, internal, the weird framing style device, is it NEW WAVE?, J.G. Ballard, an ancient version of the singularity, the reader needs to do a lot more work, Day Million by Frederik Pohl, who is the narrator talking to?, “Listen zombie, believe me…”, the truth is in question, Scott is falling down the Jesse Well, Evel Knievel, media and money, someone goes time traveling, the sharp faced lad, Luke goes biblical, why do we need firm ground?, P. Burke, a media controlled dystopia, post-modern stream of consciousness, its set in the 1970s, “Nixon Unveils Phase 2”, a loopy temporal anomalyizer project, bringing the horrible future into being, investment opportunities, what do people do in this future?, the Wikipedia entry on product placement, “gods”, media consumers, Kyle Marquis @Moochava tweet: “Yearly reminder: unless you’re over 60, you weren’t promised flying cars. You were promised an oppressive cyberpunk dystopia. Here you go.”, dystopic is this?, reserving the word dystopia, “a bad place”, Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, a world community, “the world is a dystopia for poor people”, buying into it, required consumption, a softer opt-in dystopia, Wool by Hugh Howey, the lack of truth, the six people in the GTX tower, Rupert Murdoch, government control vs. corporate control, biography of Anonymous, Wikileaks, Amazon.com, PayPal, MasterCard, Visa, Russia, Jony Ive, Jeff Bezos, Google, this one person, this relationship, the emotional part of the story, a suicide attempt, “her eyes leak a little”, the godlings, media stars, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, the family and the fourth wall, a tax-dodge marriage, the narrator is full of contempt for everything, a soap opera and the show around that, Jean Harlow‘s story, the actress in that movie vs. the person in that life, her Prada bag, her Jimmy Choo, her iPhone 6, the meta-story, the movies remind us why they’re famous, South America, they’re just shows that happen to love soap (not soap operas), another allusion, Green Mansions by William Henry Hudson, Rima the Bird Girl, Audrey Hepburn, tragic end, “your brain is a dystopia for you”, tragedy, what of the empty body?, the best expression of the system, a plastic brain, a red herring?, was she trying to kill her biological body?, plugged in emotionally, I Will Fear No Evil by Robert A. Heinlein, old man becomes young woman, grandfatherly lust, P. Burke thinks she is Delphi, The Matrix, if this is the start of the technology, The Beautiful People by Charles Beaumont, Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies series, vat-grown avatars, Wii miis, World Of Warcraft, Team Fortress 2, unique trumps beauty, the second smartest man in the world, scars are cool, trans-humanism, did anyone enjoy this book (story)?, Jenny loves this story, Scott liked it, the value of short fiction, James Triptree, Jr. writing is not like other people’s, it feels like an artifact, hey you daddy-o, Luke is the dissenting voice, Luke doesn’t like short fiction very much, Rudy Rucker’s Software and Wetware, Cory Doctorow, the futuristic patois, Luke doesn’t like the punk in cyberpunk, “it kind of just flops there”, KCRW’s Bookworm, Reading Like A Writer by Francine Prose, using people, “the real hairy thing…love?”, the narrator’s cynicism, Isaac Asimov’s thoughts on New Wave, New Wave as the literary version of SF, style over content, what Rudy Rucker was doing, what is the first cyberpunk book?, Anne McCaffrey’s short story The Ship Who Sang, what it’s not, who wants straightforward?, addressing the reader directly, Peter Watts, infodumping, “As you know Jim…”,

On this day I want to tell you about, which will be about a thousand years from now, there were a boy, a girl and a love story. Now although I haven’t said much so far, none of it is true. The boy was not what you and I would normally think of as a boy, because he was a hundred and eighty-seven years old. Nor was the girl a girl, for other reasons; and the love story did not entail that sublimation of the urge to rape and concurrent postponement of the instinct to submit which we at present understand in such matters. You won’t care much for this story if you don’t grasp these facts at once. If, however, you will make the effort, you’ll likely enough find it jam-packed, chockfull and tiptop-crammed with laughter, tears and poignant sentiment which may, or may not, be worth while. The reason the girl was not a girl was that she was a boy.

“There’s a great future there”, All You Zombies by Robert A. Heinlein, it’s not a time travel story?, newspapers, typewriters, telegrams, has writing gotten worse or is it just evolving?, brid -> bird, Luke thinks it’s all cyclical, this is just another princess, this is Princess Diana’s story, we are complicit, the message, everyone should have to read the news in a second language, being two steps removed from current events, the value of the short story (it’s short), speed dating books, good luck.

The Girl Who Was Plugged In by James Triptree, Jr.

Rima the bird girl

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #284 – NEW RELEASES/RECENT ARRIVALS

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #284 – Jesse, Jenny, Tamahome, and Seth talk about NEW RELEASES and RECENT ARRIVALS.

Talked about on today’s show:
accent on the new releases, The Abyss Beyond Dreams by Peter F. Hamilton, Liviu’s Goodreads review, four dark Jack Cady novels, Jenny‘s Star Wars tweetfest, less chattering and battles, Scott Westerfeld’s Afterworlds, Westerfeld’s Uglies inspired by Ted Chiang, Hardboiled Wonderland And The End Of The World by Haruki Murakami, A New Dawn: Star Wars by John Jackson Miller, “Is this Firefly?”, the new canon, Marvel can make a movie about anything, Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, Luke’s unstarred review of Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book, Jenny liked Blackout/All Clear, A Slip of the Keyboard: Collected Nonfiction by Terry Pratchett, Future for Curious People by Gregory Sherl, mainstream or sf?, Puttering About in a Small Land by Philip K. Dick, it’s mainstream, Fairy Tales From The Brothers Grimm: A New English Version by Philip Pullman, Tex Avery’s Red Hot Riding Hood, Baba Yaga, Mage’s Blood by David Hair, What is a starred review?, Goodhouse by Peyton Marshall, Tales Of Terror Collection, The Best Ghost Stories, The Scarifyers 09: THE KING OF WINTER (audio drama), “winter is coming”, Devoured by Jason Brant, A Walk Among the Tombstones: A Matt Scudder Mystery and Defender of the Innocent: The Casebook of Martin Ehrengraf by Lawrence Block, put out his own audiobooks, Man of Two Worlds by Frank Herbert and Brian Herbert, Echopraxia by Peter Watts, same world as Blindsight, it’s got a lot of references, books with “day” in the title, This Perfect Day by Ira Levin (author of Rosemary’s Baby), Far Futures edited by Gregory Benford, they list the stories and describe them!, The Sound of His Horn by Sarban, Wild Hunt, The Rolling Stones by Robert A. Heinlein, Edge of Tomorrow (All You Need Is Kill) by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, where is the Full Metal Bitch?, Groundhog Day, Steven Gould’s new Jumper book Exo is inspired by Heinlein, Geek’s Guide interview, the cool first page, Darin Bradley’s Chimpanzee audio drama?

Posted by Tamahome

The SFFaudio Podcast #217 – NEW RELEASES/RECENT ARRIVALS

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #217 – Jesse, Tamahome, Jenny, and Marrisa VU talk about audiobook NEW RELEASES and RECENT ARRIVALS.

Talked about on today’s podcast:
Hammer Chillers, Mr. Jim Moon, British audio drama horror anthology, Hammer Films, Janette Winterson, Paul Magrs, Stephen Gallagher, the official physical list, spaceship sci-fi, Honor Harrington, David Weber, Audible.com, Horatio Hornblower in space, broadsides and pirates, gravity propulsion, Steve Gibson, a telepathic treecat, Lois McMaster Bujold, Luke Burrage (The Science Fiction Book Review Podcast), David Drake, S.M. Stirling, 90% of Lois McMaster Bujold’s sales are audiobooks, Sword & Laser, a girl writer, Prisoners Of Gravity, religion, J.R.R. Tolkien, George R.R. Martin isn’t Tolkien deep, secondary world, The Curse Of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold, Blackstone Audio, Paladin Of Souls, Miles Vorkosigan, low magic vs. high magic, high fantasy, Westeros world vs. Harry Potter world, the Red Wedding (and the historical inspiration), the guest host relationship, John Scalzi, Redshirts, Agent To The Stars, The Human Division, The Ghost Brigades, Old Man’s War, William Dufris, Wil Wheaton as a narrator (is great at 2x speed), snarky comedic Scalzi stories, Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, Kirby Heyborne, Fuzzy Nation, Andrew L., Starforce Series, Mark Boyette, military SF, Legend: Area 51 by Bob Meyer, Eric G. Dove, traditional fantasy, epic fantasy, conservative fantasy, elves princes quests, fewer tattoos more swords, Elizabeth Moon, Graphic Audio, truck drivers, comic books, westerns, post-apocalyptic gun porn, Paladin’s Legacy, Limits Of Power, elves, simultaneous release, Vatta’s War, horses in space, The Deed Of Paksenarrion, Red Sonja, non-beach armor, Elizabeth Moon was a marine, sounds pretty hot, Any Other Name, the split-world series, Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, The Assassination Of Orange, Terpkristin’s review of The Mongoliad Book 1, The Garden Of Stones by Mark T. Barnes, books are too long!, books are not edited!, cut it down, self-contained books, find the good amongst the long and the series, Oberon’s Dreams by Aaron Pogue, Taming Fire, Oklahoma, urban fantasy, Blue Blazes by Chuck Wendig, Adam Christopher, blah blah blah quote quote quote, “Wow I’ve never read anything like this before!, a head like a wrecking-ball, cool artwork, Lovecraft sounds like the book of Jeremiah, Net Galley, a Chuck Wendig children’s book, Under The Empyrean Sky, The Rats In The Walls, “two amorphous idiot flute players”, Old Testament Lovecraft, Emperor Mollusc Vs. The Sinister Brain by A. Lee Martinez, lucky Bryce, Legion by Brandon Sanderson, we have sooo many reviewers!, Deadly Sting by Jennifer Estep, Jill Kismet, Flesh Circus by Lilith Saintcrow, Nice Girls Don’t Bite Their Neighbors, a vampire child, B.V. Larson, The Bone Triangle, Hemlock Grove (the Netflix series), True Blood, Arrested Development, House Of Cards, House Of Lies, The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu, Angry Robot, the Angry Robot Army, a complete list, Peter Kline, in the style of Lost, The Lost Room by Fitz James-O’Brien, Myst, Simon & Schuster, Random House, Joyland by Stephen King, Hard Case Crime, Charles Ardai, HCC-013, Haven, The Colorado Kid, setting not action, mapbacks, Iain M. Banks died, the Culture series, Inversions, Player Of Games, Brick By Brick: How LEGO Rewrote The Rules Of Innovation And Conquered The Global Toy Industry by David Robertson and Bill Breen, Downpour.com, At The Mountains Of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft, Edward Herrmann, Antarctica, Miskatonic University, The Gilmore Girls, M*A*S*H, 30 Rock, The Shambling Guide To New York City by Mur Lafferty, New York, great cover!, Spoken Freely … Going Public in Shorts, Philip K. Dick, Edgar Allan Poe, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Turetsky, Xe Sands, The Yellow Wallpaper, The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes, a time-traveling serial killer, Chicago, Jenny’s Reading Envy blog, fantasy character names, Ringworld by Larry Niven, Louis Wu, The Shift Omnibus Edition by Hugh Howey, The Wool Series (aka The Silo Series) by Hugh Howey, a zombie plague of Hugh Howey readers, why is there no audiobook for Fair Coin by E.C. Myers?, The Monkey’s Paw, YA, Check Wendig on YA, what is a “fair coin“, rifling through baggage, dos-à-dos, The Ocean At The End Of The Lane by Neil Gaiman, Coraline, The Graveyard Book, Odd And The Frost Giants, The Wolves In The Walls, Audible’s free Neil Gaiman story, Cold Colors, Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar, Audible download history and Amazon’s Kindle 1984, the world is Big Brother these days, George Orwell, dystopia, BLOPE: A Story Of Segregation, Plastic Surgery, And Religion Gone Wrong By Sean Benham, The Hunger Games, Philip K. Dick, The Man In The High Castle, alternate history, Antiagon Fire by L.E. Modesitt, Jr., William Dufris, what podcasts are you listening to?, Sword & Laser, Dan Carlin’s Common Sense, Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History, Sword & Laser‘s interview with Lois McMaster Bujold, ex-Geek & Sundry, Kim Stanley Robinson, KCRW Bookworm with Michael Silverblatt, The Geek’s Guide To The Galaxy, Writing Excuses, A Good Story Is Hard To Find, the Savage Lovecast, WTF with Mark Maron, depressed but optimistic, Maron, Point Of Inquiry, Daniel Dennet, Neil deGrasse Tyson, S.T. Joshi, how do you become a Think Tank, a weird civil society thing, Star Ship Sofa’s SofaCON, Peter Watts, Protecting Project Pulp, Tales To Terrify, Crime City Central, the District Of Wonders network, Larry Santoro, Fred Himebaugh (@Fredosphere),

Stan
Beyond the valleys, green and grand,
Peek the frightened eyes of the weak colossal Stan,
the giant boy of infant lands.

Stan grasps with Herculean hands the pinnacle peaks,
Clutching feebly with avalanche force.
It’s azure bulky hides his enormous and titanic hulk
From the frightening lights of the big small city.

Stan’s fantastic feet,
Like ocean liners parked in port.
His colossal thighs,
Like thunderous engines resting silently for a storm to come.
His tremendous teeth like hoary skyscrapers shaking in an earthquake,
like a heavenly metropolis quivering beneath a troubled brow,
above a wet Red Sea of silent tongue.

Stan, insecure in his cyclopean mass,
Feels fear for his future beyond the warm chill range of the bowl-like hills
That house his home and heart.

Stan fears a fall filled with
Judging eyes,
Whispered words,
Of mockery and shame.

How could city slick students stand Stan’s pine scented skin?
His dew dropped pits dripping down in rivulets turned to rivers!
And what does a giant know of school and scholarship?
What can mere tests, of paper and pen, say
For the poor and friendless figure who quakes and sighs
Behind the too small mountain looming high over
A big small city to which young Stan has never been?

SFSqueeCast, vague positivity, Charles Tan, SFFaudio could use more positivity, Hypnobobs, Batman, weird fiction, Peter Cushing, The Gorgon, Christopher Lee.

Stephen King's Joyland - Mapback

Posted by Jesse Willis