Tag: piracy

The SFFaudio Podcast #753 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Golden Slave by Poul Anderson

The SFFaudio Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #753 – The Golden Slave by Poul Anderson – read by Mark Nelson. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the novel (7 hours, 29 minutes minute) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Trish E. Matson

Talked about on today’s show:
1960, Avon Books, reprinted in 1980, LibriVox, hey this is started to get interesting, the final twist, ringing a bell, when he had his eye taken out, I sacrificed it for wisdom, that guy with the hammer, should’ve seen it coming, the only thing he ever talks about: Scandinavian mythology, Scandinavian history, he did a trick on me, a secret fantasy story, historical, something special here, details were new, Speed is not a good movie but it gives surplus value, an elevator action scene, a bus scene, every Marvel movie, an L.A. Subway scene, underground horizontal, more like Spartacus, working for some other king, a historical figure, something else, spilling over the premise of the cover, a sex book, role reversal, other characters are sex objects too, unusual for Poul Anderson, very tame, a veil drawn over it, sex happens offstage, a little bit of voluptuousness, rub one out to it, given the cover, a very poor sex book, historical adventure, historical exploration, terrible pornography, if that was what he was aiming for, coming into a seaport, smells and sights, sweaty sailors and spices of the market, good at description, on plot, meandering, he knew where he was going, not an intricately plotted spy novel, doesn’t leave dangling threads, easy competent well done read, Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur, pre-that, the Roman emperors, The Storm Before The Storm by Mike Duncan, Julius Caesar, Mike Duncan’s The History Of Rome podcast, the Revolutions podcast, throwing a dart and getting close enough, the Norse myths, our guys are always swearing they’re under weirds and trolls, the days of the weeks gods, the Edda, 1222-1223, well after the events of this book, pretty fun, twist ending, tricked Jesse the whole way through, enthusiasm for Poul Anderson novels, meandering journey, highlights of the era, Marius, a servile war, done way to much?, if you know you know, Paul was delighted, Sulla, the wars against the Cimbri, nice descriptions, smells and sunset and oars, quite good things, Mithridates, a very interesting character, our godly hero, interacting and learning, this pulled it off in the plotting department, we have to stop this Iliad, oh that’s clever,

In the time that followed, Phryne had horror to do. Twice she stopped—once to cast up at a certain sight and once to change her blood-stiffened gown for a tunic. It was hot and foul in the ‘tween-decks space; the groaning and gasping seemed to fill her cosmos. Her temper began to slip—having held the hand of one youth and smiled on him, as the only lullaby she could give while he died, she heard a man screaming as though in childbirth, and, seeing he had a mere broken finger, she chased him out at dagger point. Otherwise it was to wash and bandage, cut and sew and swaddle, set and splint and fetch water, with no more help than a ship’s carpenter from Galilee or some such dusty place.

oh, you cute little guy Poul Anderson, we don’t know about that guy yet, she’s Jesus, that was a setup, deifying these characters, a clever book, a clever guy, future allusion, some really nice writing in there, speaks badly to Jesse’s not always happy with Poul Andersonness, kinda impressed, Three Hearts & Three Lions, The Broken Sword, it has to speak to something inside you, handing this book, a mystery series, Roman children solving mysteries [The Roman Mysteries], the Marcus Didius Falco series, tricking, deceiving, trick or treat is fun, hearing trick as a negative, hating magicians, I sacrificed it for wisdom, Jesse likes getting tricked, set the word trick aside, trick ourselves, make it so you can’t do that, just a regular mind trick, we cultivate these things, do a podcast every week, therefore I should read more books, hey this is a pretty good book, more to say about it?, the treatment of women in this book, ’50s and ’60s books being very sexists, women as props, what the women are saying, Cornelia and Phryne are very different people, just as objects, have more thought for a what a woman must be thinking, the stated perspective, a free woman of Rome, manipulate or plead with the men in her life, when Flavius is talking to Phryne, the slave brand is upon you, toothless at 40 years of age, in a peat bog where it always rains, the lot of nearly all women in that time, women who are complex, women are just crazy, just humour them sometimes, he gains wisdom, the narrator’s perspective is not the writer’s perspective, as close to a god as a person from that era, hey have you heard of Mithridates, something about poison, he died old, a very historical piece of fiction, all fun stuff, Spartacus retelling, kinda characterize this guy who is so famous, his relationship to his vassal states, fictional characters interacting with him, putting Julius Caesar on stage, thinking about his empire, Poul Anderson pulled it off somehow, gender here, the final scene where they find a shitty house made of rocks, a half-wild dog, a squalling kid, an old woman dressed in rags, the fate, they burn their crops and give them money, the battle happens, get into the heads of the ancient Scandinavians, dragons are bad, they’re stingy, a lot of compensation, it was wrong, in a land where violence is law, the strange morality of the Scandinavian gods, shield-maiden, they’re not slaves because they’re female, not relegated to second class status, in the Roman system women are second class, males can be sex slaves, so reminiscent of the Spartacus television series, are the named characters are historical figures, interpersonal relationships, getting you into the slave mentality, born a slave, I was well treated, my grandfather was free, chasing after a person who’s motivation we don’t know, stuff for girls and for boys in here, adventures through whatever the men are doing, agency and action for the women, Cutthroat Island (1995), always streaming somewhere, pirates don’t bury their treasure, Mary Read and Geena Davis, Anne Bonny, Matthew Modine is charming, a higher or a lower mode, this is very realistic, now it is a mythmaking thing, the mirror, zig-zags across the Mediterranean, die on the ship, a very wily Roman, Paul appreciates a wily Roman, drives a spike of conflict, fosters the rebellion of the slaves, they don’t do pirating right either, not quite the roman lake it is later, Egypt, to get away from Rome, they’re headed south, one pirate raid, the book turns north and keeps going, splits up a family, city home and country home, we have a sense of why it happened, so he could get that divorce?, a bastard child, he got exactly what he wanted there, the Spartacus movie, brutal and amazing, seeing what slave relations are like, if one slave harms the master all the slaves die, break up families, absolutely routine, if you’re obedient, he’s not a king exactly, a chieftain in his own land, thinking about motivations for characters, you might want to kill yourself to deny your master, in dissuading future slaving raids, greedy not to kill yourself, if you don’t deny them, the hope of reuniting, to control, an insidious evil kind of control, the slave hierarchy, kindly treated slaves, what roman life was like, if you’ve got a frozen city, graffiti, literature, shopping bills, documentation, giving us the lived in daily thing, bamboozled, a Roman sex book, the visuals of the movie 300 (2007), sexuality in slow motion, an undercurrent, sexy slave time, when Princess Leia is wearing the slave bikini outfit, a trope, leaning in, what does this really mean, a checkbox, a great visual, what would this really be like, a prized object, good for you, the master is fine with it, what if you can’t perform anymore, he’s got a whole lot of game going on, Trish unmuting herself, what’s “comps”?, comparisons, The Persian Boy by Mary Renault, Emperor Darius, Alexander’s boy/lover, discussion of slavery, be pleasing to your master, history in it, court life in Persia, Underground, secret emancipators, some of the complexity of slavery, two “recs”, secret website, a goodreads thing?, a line in here, not a sexist book, out of context, “A few months of giggling Eastern wenches had shown Eodan how sheer tedium could drive so many men to catamites”, some guy who propositioned him, a power relation that’s bad, more complex than that, shipboard slave rebellion, these two women are mine, pent up sexual energy, staking his claim in order to protect, not just that he wants to own them, documentation of early piracy, the Julius Caesar kidnapped by pirates story, come back and kill you all, political rumours, early diplomatic missions, become the catamite of some eastern potentate, if you’re the bottom you’re trash, the attitude of the time, Eutopia by Poul Anderson (in Dangerous Visions), the Odin myth, The Sorrow Of Odin The Goth, Behold The Man for Norse mythology, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ I Am A Barbarian, pungent comments about the decadence of Romans, 1967, pitched as a free translation, Canadian public domain, Burroughs doing I, Claudius from a slave POV, Burroughs doing Rome, researcher, Burroughs is fun, a great prose slinger, Burroughs is very possible, he wrote a lot of books, 26 Tarzan books, four westerns, the beginning of [A Princess Of Mars], people who liked the cover of this book, a science fictional story, a man who is slaved, The Last Hawk by Catherine Asaro, Ascendant Sun, the promo materials, Lucy Lawless wearing a carnal dress, a succession of harems, book 5, back in interstellar life, the other evil space empire, good books, jump in on book 4, don’t be put off by the numbers, set in the same universe sort of thing, she wrote a lot of books, Gabe Dybing’s review of The High Crusade and The Golden Slave on Black Gate, he’s so wise, he’s well trained in speaking well, Paul is a Romanophile, what if he was telling the truth there?, my wife is needy, I’d like her to have a sexy northern barbarian, why don’t you come over to my team, he’s not a dumb evil, we never get a reveal, he’s manipulative, you flip it, the Flavius story, from his POV, tattoo on his forehead, he’s got an agenda, is he a liar?, you would read the other side of this, Netflix’s Barbarians, so many TV shows, since Vikings started up, quasi historical shows, Caroline Lawrence, half-hour [episodes], August 79ad, kids running around Pompeii, the fun kinda time travel where you spend time with people, the Falco series is a game that the author is playing with us, Marlowe style lines, strange ship docking in the port, a Children’s tv show, like Hardy Boys in a different period of time, aimed a little longer, deep on YouTube, Thieves Of Ostia, The Assassin Of Rome, The Twelve Tasks Of Flavia Gemina, Plebs, here student take this book, a fairly fruitful discussion of this trashy sex novel, no and no, Avon, kind of trashy, Jesse likes trashy, bildungsroman, books that are designed to kill time, are they ever get off this farm?, sneaking in, written in bursts?, repeated words, an artifact, when he left for Rome, sometimes there are bursts of movement that are not documented, the setting and the rising of the sun, if you don’t give up on it, leading publishers of romance fiction, not high status, Slave Girl comics, the Avon Fantasy Reader, designed to be cheap trashy entertainment, had he been available, Fabio would have been the golden slave, not exactly what it says on the tin, leans into the whipping, an aberration, the epilogue, had he left it off, it wrapped stuff up with a bow, in case you didn’t know, not being told, historicals with his wife, other novels, a mystery novel, he did make a living, his only job, 11 Time Patrol novels, Shield Of Time, the publishers wishes, give me 10 more like this, did his own game with it, a small percentage, he’s written a ton, a gap plugged, glad we read it, how many pseudonyms?, any?, Gardner F. Fox, a writing machine, Four-Day Planet, Odds On, The Venom Business, too long, off this Crichton train, hit too many potholes, Breakthroughs In Science, Star Born by Andre Norton, the animal one [The Beast Master], The Poison Belt by Arthur Conan Doyle, the comic book adaptation of Downward To The Earth by Robert Silverberg, alien elephants, Footfall, French, The Glory That Was by L. Sprague De Camp, time travel fantasy?, introduction by Robert A. Heinlein, dedicated to Isaac Asimov, its all been down planet from there, Jerry Pournelle/Larry Niven joints, the arcology one is shit, Oath Of Fealty, When Worlds Collide, Lucifer’s Hammer, Vulcan’s Hammer by Philip K. Dick, the terrible Andre Norton: Star Hunter, Space Viking, relatively short, Paul hasn’t updated his PUBG, a new map, the intense mode, very quick, Jesse is not a looter in games (only in real life), H. Beam Piper’s ghost is joining us?, Terence is retired so available for podcasting, Pirate Enlightenment too, to be a game master, when you’re making your own campaign, very chipper, 20 sessions,

1 hour 9 minutes

The Golden Slave by Poul Anderson

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Ascendant Sun by Catherine Asaro

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The SFFaudio Podcast #734 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Black Stranger by Robert E. Howard


The SFFaudio Podcast #734– The Black Stranger by Robert E. Howard – read by Connor Kaye. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the novella (3 hours 30 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Trish E. Matson, Connor Kaye, Alex, and Cora Buhlert.

Talked about on today’s show:
with changes, Fantasy, February 1953, Gutenberg Australia, some art, is that supposed to be Conan, always cleanshaven, he has a knife so he would have shaved, buck naked, a great costume, Conan has a hat!, Conan cosplays, a blue jacket with silver buttons, a lacquered hat, researching hats, 100 years out of date, a pirate hat, the Del Rey edition, Gregory Manchess, Irene Gallo, the comic adaptation, an adaptation of the L. Sprague de Camp, he never gets the hat, inferior version, more authentic and more Robert E. Howard, pirate sword, broadsword, Villains Of All Nations by Marcus Rediker, piracy in the golden age, Howard doesn’t care about piracy as much as storytelling, how terrible De Camp is when he puts his hands on Conan, respectful of the lady’s title, not within his character, he’s not a classist, protective not deferential, Gary Gianni, the pirate sword, full pirate, his hat is a girl named Tina, tricorn hat, not recognizable, not normally naked with a loincloth, armour, Conan doesn’t have its own look, fur diaper, barechested, entering dynamically into the argument, the manor house is the ship wreckage, not a cutlass, par for the course, a hundred years earlier sword in Conanland, well worth getting, original typescripts, great illustrations, introductory essays, the title, Treasure Of Tranicos, the appeal, which is the more Howard Conan title?, not evocative, Swords Of The Red Brotherhood, slowly over the course of a week, who the Black Stranger was, think of how many times some stranger shows up, also refers to Conan, three pirates, the busiest beach in Pictland, so full of coincidences, what? who’s this?, built this castle, there’s a black stranger on the beach, a whipping scene, some Pict’s head comes flying out of nowhere, black hair, black skin, Thoth Amon, gladly excised, a drinking party where everybody’s frozen, he’s having fun, he’s pulling a Rings Of Power, is this hobbit Sauron?, left as an exercise for the reader, he is the author insert, his clothes are described awesomely, stepping out of the shadows, Conan, who else?, Blackbeard, famous pirates stepping out of history, that’s the gimmick is going for, all after the treasure, the misunderstanding of what Howard is doing, I can fix it, a very abrupt ending, the comic’s ending, a bag of jewels, that’s when men of civilized lands want, the speech, I’m gonna go be a pirate again, the demon has been destroyed, finance a revolution, his Conan chronology, the story doesn’t need this, Howard didn’t care about the myth arc, it weakens the story, strengthens its position in the myth arc, de Camp is good if he does his own thing, he cannot impersonate Howard’s writing, his rewrite detracts from the story, a weird twist in Conan’s story, Beyond The Black River, he feels ready, maybe somebody needs to go fix this, maybe a year, runs through the Pict wilderness, off we go, carefree younger bloodthirsty pirate Conan, why he thought that, didn’t fit his character, a line of paperbacks he wants to push, numbers on the spine, collect them all, a way for him to make money, it’s better now I improved it, Jesse the Cimmerian, the Black Vulmea version, you might get sued, perfectly legal, the name change, Verezano, what August Derleth did to H.P. Lovecraft’s writings, all the stories are separate, the milieu, loosely connected, Jules de Grandin, a reference back to an earlier, “complete in this issue”, the promise, a Varney the Vampire, I hate waiting that week, anthology series vs. the appeal of series, sold out that week, massive problems finding copies of Weird Tales in Cross Plains, loose series, what happened so far, they’re the thing that keeps your reading, 3.5 hours, a substantial chunk of Weird Tales, Famous Fantastic Mysteries [or Fantastic Novels], too long, Red Nails was split, the whipping scene, Howard specialists, Bobby Derie, how absolutely terrified, an urbane cultured individual, a descent into madness, not very weird, supernatural elements, a historical story, a straight pirate story, unsold Kull stories, relistening to prepare, where Conan really enters the story (at the 2 hour point), The Cromcast, Rusty Burke, their pre-chat is at the beginning, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, in real-life pirates never buried their treasure, their whole deal, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn were wrong about pirates, Blackbeard’s Ghost (1968), they live a brief life, they want some earthly pleasure, a very unrealistic portrayal of pirates of the golden age, Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser, they wenched, it they drank it, the ISIS flag, found family vs. war against the world, anti-slavery, becoming a free man, they’re going to want to have me as a captain, a captain is elected, democracy and everybody having their share, they need me for navigation, Conan is not a class guy, he’s a race guy, in Queen Of The Black Coast, we get it wrong, she rules the seas, worshiped of the goddess, Valeria is another pirate, like Mary Read, a classic ancient roman dictator, The Isle Of Pirate’s Doom, quartermaster, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Master Of The Ballantrae: A Winter’s Tale, playing a game like in The Slithering Shadow, a gothic novel, supernatural seeming events, a giant slug monster, frog-monster, black heart, A Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare, a coming together, sack of gold very small, woman on the arm, Tina is the hardest to explain story character, a prophetic gift, uncanny, what’s going on the beach, she sees, more plot device than character, a whipping scene, child characters, he liked children (not that way), Solomon Kane, The Moon Of Skulls, a kid he knew?, a Nathaniel Hawthorne sort of story, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a story set in a witch worried land, in the wilderness, the conception of a daughter out of wedlock, the scarlet A, why is that?, just a way to pad out the book, he’s read a book, what can I do with this, about men, our Duke runaway, civil war, no matter who wins the house and the land is saved, a lord who has runaway from his land to escape a demon, manifested, two demons, the collapse, Thoth is the black man, he sent the demon, in the comic book adaptation, a silver candelabra at the demon, in the original it is a silver bench weighing 100 pounds, what makes this a weird story is two things, the frozen men, the poisonous air, playing a role as in Nathaniel Hawthorne, the idea that people think there are supernatural elements, demons in the woods, Arabian Nights, folktales, the Mary Celeste, The Oval Portrait by Edgar Allan Poe, eerie circumstances, Beyond The Black River, just a great story, tacked on, otherwise Farnsworth Wright, sold into slavery, a juju man?, African voodoo priest, the central character, the game he’s playing, who is the central character, the count’s story, after he’s hung himself, the demon made him do it, tear him apart, if this was The House Of The Seven Gables, a a mouthful of blood, a curse on the family, something you internalize, externalize the demon, a slug/frog monster in the basement, an amazing scene, it might all of been in his head, kicking him into the fireplace, a superstition barbarian, knew the Picts pretty well, the shape of a man but the shadow was not that of a man, very against the Picts, he would kill us but he wouldn’t leave another white man to die amongst the Picts, the mythology and lore, in a cage in an toucan or eagle tribe villages, listening carefully, they’re neighbours, ancient rivalry, the Hyborian lands are basically Texas, in league with the Picts, you don’t understand , a feud older than the world, you know your enemy, traded from one to the other, tangling with each other, the Atlantean, geography is very important, Aquilonia is France, Nemedia is Germany, Zingara is Spain, Shem is Israel, Stygia is Egypt, do you have a map of the Hyborian lands, every issue of every Conan comic, a little splash of blood, just fucking terrible, Koth is south of this place, Bossonian Marches, and Poitain, a giant forest, a temperate rainforest, David J. West, bring to me your grey squirrel knowledge, a jungle off of France, it’s all Texas, get drunk and have sex with women, New Orleans, Tulane University, Cimmeria, Dark Valley, lots of trees so depressing, you bring your depression with you, buckskin, Hawkeye, Natty Bumbo, The Last Of The Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, Mark Twain, the difference between Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft, jokes written for an individual, not meant for publication for everyone, same stories same ideas, Robert E. Howard is like a sponge, his ideas, he’s doing somebody else’s work, Thunder River, a very Texas names, toponyms, character names, he doesn’t care, how much time did he spend on that map, exactly straight lines, why does the German border with France look the way it does?, it used to be the ocean, it helps dictate so much, one of the first nation states, the ancient inhabitants of Scotland, his overall attitude is exactly the same as the timeline, is the story good?, indistinctness, a really nice fantasy story, the maps in books is a newish invention, it’s Tolkien, the timeline, that timeline, The Phoenix On The Sword, don’t read them in order, Conan Of The Isles, a finite amount of time, so many adventures that happened, there can always be more, it’s mythical rather than historical, Conan is an old guy in a tavern telling stories about his life, I was king of Aquilonia once, listening to old frontierspeople, P. Schuyler Miller’s Probable Outline Of Conan’s Career, savage sword is in this, very broad strokes, and then an age of man passed, story notes, Almuric, a massive infodump, four or five pages of explaining, the decamp rewrite, connects us to the next story and the next book, extrapolation, in the fur diaper every single time, slightly different breeks, he’s hard on his clothes, The God In The Bowl, just stepped out of the cradle, climbs up a tower and kills an elephant and buys a drink and a hat, Afghulistan, silk, knee-breeches, a gay pride parade, made up by Frank Frazetta, he was really good at it, Margaret Brundage’s Conan looks malnourished, default D&D barbarian, we forget how little people read Howard, a long stretch where he wasn’t a thing, Frazetta, De Camp, and Lin Carter, the comics, a little Gnome Press, Lancer and Ace, the comics define that image, as opposed to the text, how excited Savage Sword Of Conan readers, the Conan movie is coming, he’s got a broadsword, a fur diaper, his super-hero costume, the S on his shirt, the underwear, and a cape, cowl with ears, serial, something we never see in American television, Doctor Who, film serials, The Lone Ranger, 52 episodes a season, they never connect, Batman (the Adam West TV show), two-parter, 77 Sunset Strip, Babylon 5‘s serialized arc, Twin Peaks was a weird fiction soap opera, a soap opera, hyper-reality, sexual molestation, deep horror, heavy for today, a father molests his daughter, L.A. Law, a crime drama, final exam, eating crisps, back to the story, the things that make this story work, how stories should be, people think that they can fix it, let me tell you how to open a story, before chapter one, the log walls of the manor walls he had built, his hard earned security, where the darkness seemed thicker than elsewhere, limp with damp sweat, a bluish glow, even in his swoon, what does that add to the story?, Conan fans, oh, it’s a conan story, having Conan in it, Beyond The Black River, Wolves Beyond The Border, Valeria, The People Of The Black Circle, posthumous collaborations with Robert E. Howard, August Derleth’s career, a tension between the audience, a fan petition to reshoot the ending of a movie, what we want from Conan or Robert E. Howard stories, all the arguing and infighting, two different pirates, some kind of code, what is a truce?, I have a ship, how are we going to resolve this, the cabbage, wolf, and sheep, other people reacting to Conan, I don’t want you on my ship, you will to turn my ship against me, preconceptions, the Schwarzenegger movies, three terrible people, fascinating characters, Black Colossus, weird intrigue, Yasmina, doesn’t want to fight a bunch of wizards, letting go of your preconceptions, different than in other stories, more raw and less sympathetic, willing to take advantage of other people, is the character always like this?, The Hour Of The Dragon, written after, similar personalities, really cynical, not very sympathetic, you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, not sad about it, even the women and children massacred at the end, the young man and the dog, not even a likeable dog, a terrible dog, collect some Pict heads for the dog, the character we’re getting, younger, more selfish, the oldest Conan, among the first written, Zenobia the slave, a noblewoman, he needs to flee, go without me I’ll just slow you down, I’m gonna come back, I’m going to remember it, this honour, another adventure, that sense of responsibility, come back for them, the ladies of his court are being debauched by Nemedians, being King pushed him, The Phoenix On The Sword, this weird dream, I don’t care about all this king stuff, absolutely furious, horrible stuff happening, why the barons are not taking responsibility for it, did his personality stand out?, Queen Of The Black Coast Conan, he’s in pirate mode, they’re all in the game, the wildcard, who else am I supposed to root for?, sweep the board, Knives Out (2019) Robert E. Howard style, he never tries to take advantage of them, not very honourable, Pool Of The Black One, he’s done it before, washes up on a pirate ships, take over pirate ships, he’s first mate, Iron Shadows In The Moon, slave mutiny, go back to your villages, myth busted, Connor’s thesis, women and children without names, fairly innocent people, they’re all foolish because they followed this mad count, why it’s his story, that’s how we shouldn’t read it, the Jeremy Brett adaptations of Sherlock Holmes, they opened almost every episode NOT with Sherlock Holmes, consultation, when Conan Doyle gets tired of Sherlock Holmes stories, weirder, where Watson is almost the only character, The Hound Of The Baskervilles, 221 Baker St., we see some weird things happen, that preview is saying “this is the important part”, what makes series popular, The Twilight Zone, an amazing afterlife, as the reboots have shown, a serialized mystery murder series that sustained, an Alan Moore style iconic character, a professional entertainment show, we don’t criticise the author on stage, editing it for television, good writing, where Conan is reintroduced, two other pirates have shown up on the beach, being Weird Tales readers,

A man strode out from the hangings that masked a chamber door, and advanced toward the table without haste or hesitation. Instantly he dominated the group, and all felt the situation subtly charged with a new, dynamic atmosphere.

The stranger was as tall as either of the freebooters, and more powerfully built than either, yet for all his size he moved with pantherish suppleness in his high, flaring-topped boots. His thighs were cased in close-fitting breeches of white silk, his wide-skirted sky-blue coat open to reveal an open-necked white silken shirt beneath, and the scarlet sash that girdled his waist. There were silver acorn-shaped buttons on the coat, and it was adorned with gilt-worked cuffs and pocket-flaps, and a satin collar. A lacquered hat completed a costume obsolete by nearly a hundred years. A heavy cutlass hung at the wearer’s hip.

‘Conan!’ ejaculated both freebooters together, and Valenso and Galbro caught their breath at that name.

‘Who else?’ The giant strode up to the table, laughing sardonically at their amazement.

Conan The Salaryman, the favourite pronoun for Conan, the thrillpoint, those amazing reveal scenes, that word “stranger” comes up 18 times, “The Coming Of The Black Man”, a pretty good story, the best of the unsold stories, The Vale Of Lost Women is better, Conan fights a god, The Frost Giant’s Daughter, Niord, Amra, The God In The Bowl, he’s playing games with literature, it’s time to do a detective story, Conan does Agatha Christie, an investigator, this mysterious murder case, a locked room murder, Mary Roberts Reinhart, the snake did it, The Speckled Band, Rogues In The House, Edgar Allan Poe’s Rue Morgue story, the monkey did it, sardonic, having fun making his own version of somebody else’s story, L. Sprague De Camp in fighting against the story, read the stories individually on their own, the order they are written, Man Eaters Of Zamboula, the best story of all of them, Red Nails, ambitious, it’s got a dinosaur, it’s got lasers, the laser wands are hard to beat, decadent, doing black lotus all day, a practice run for Red Nails, one big thing that shocked Jesse, railing against, pirate ship lay at anchor (full sails), always put gunports, we get this line, saw them drawing barrels of wine, if I had a hundred men, there goes a rocket from the red hand, they have rockets!, part of the argument that had been made, redone as Conan, part of the argument, the video comments, [Karl Edward] Wagner, magic or alchemy, even if they had black powder, a very modern term, feels kind of jarring, weird glowing gems, radium, radiation sickness, one city that developed way to fast, his version of The Time Machine, Morlocks and Eloi, evolution is real, shaking me to my core, a rocket from the red hand, Black Colossus, a practical pirate ship, a rocket store, Rocket Outlet, rockets imply Gandalf, the rocket passes with the sound of an express train, a football, Tolkien, a clock on his mantle, evokes westerns, The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre, the Picts are Indians, moccasins and tomahawks, Normandy or Brittany, toucans are not a European bird, grey squirrels are not a European squirrel, The Brain Eaters by Frank Belknap Long, the Mi-go, Robert Bloch, The Were-snake, a famous piece of art from Weird Tales, Clark Ashton Smith, The Isle Of Pirates Doom, a Poseidonis story, A Voyage To Sfanamoe, super-scientists the only island of Atlantis that has yet to sink, naturally, blind and deaf mute slaves, they fly off to Venus, they map Earth before they live, old men with five foot beards, evil twins, Dr Seuss like animals, one of them sprouts a flower from his hand, die painlessly, the whole story, they die horribly, The Forbidden Forest, becomes enflowered, monster flowers, the evil garden, organs turned into plants, he’s gone, a new Robert E. Howard story, wow this is amazing, Conan By Tweet, The Country Of The Knife, El Borak, Complete Stories Magazine, August 1936, every chapter has a title, a Jane Austen and Cinderella ripoff, super-classist, Keeping The Castle by Patrice Kindl, a YA, 2012, very well done, hate the stepsisters, some over the shoulder stuff, a feature not a bug sort of thing, Disney princesses, his character doesn’t matter very much, her unique goodness, the prince is faceblind, matrimony choices, she’s short, a weird feature if it is a feature.

THE BLACK STRANGER facsimile typescript

The Black Stranger - art by Orban

The Black Stranger - art by Orban

The Black Stranger - art by Gary Gianni

The Black Stranger - art by Gary Gianni

The Black Stranger - art by Manuel Perez Clemente

The Black Stranger by Robert E. Howard

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #726 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Isle of Pirate’s Doom by Robert E. Howard


The SFFaudio Podcast #725 – The Isle of Pirate’s Doom by Robert E. Howard – read by Connor Kaye. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the novella (1 hour 24 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse, Connor Kaye, Alex, and Cora Buhlert.

Talked about on today’s show:
1975?, this story did not sell, 50 years after death, 2025, who has the copyright?, nobody the fuck knows, how can you claim to have copyright if you are not the artist, the author, I have copyright over something someone else wrote, Fred Malmberg would happily take your money, you would be surprised, unauthorized games, Queen Of The Black Coast audio drama, Red Nail, they changed their mind, this is the grift of the copyright system that we have, some corporation is sitting on the rights to insulin, all out of patent, a fairly little known story, willing to take the heat, Sailor Steve Costigan, Mark Finn, because it was rejected, the U.S. system is weird, when did Ambrose Bierce die?, stories that exist, Treasure Of The Sierra Madre, B. Traven, half the stuff of Midwood, she shared a name, a werewolf story, reminiscent in plot, recycles plot, The Fire of Asshurbanipal, 1927/8, Patrice Louinet, get into some new markets, Blue Book, Adventure, Argosy, in terms of its content, an adventure story, romance angle, it’s simple, reading it in context with the Valeria adaptation (in Savage Sword Of Conan), he didn’t put a bunch of research into it, a fight scene, the background lovecraftian horror temple is pre-Mayan/pre-Aztec, Mogar, Gower, not finished for sale?, Almuric, size wise, but more polished in some places, there’s something weird about how simple the temple scene is, trap-laden temples, the lesser Conan stories, Shadows In The Moonlight, Queen Of The Black Coast, with the gender flip, the POV character is following the badass around, a formidable female character, Novalyne Price Ellis, Dark Agnes, C.L. Moore was selling that sort of thing, she’s masked here, she’s a fop, pulls the motorcycle helmet off, the curls!, drama, very modern, adversarial, win each other’s respect, emerging as a trope in stories, a competent woman in a field that men are dominant in, something we can largely attribute to Robert E. Howard, Anne Bonny and Mary Read, not proud of their virtue, Valeria is not Valeria from Red Nails, Valeria would not cry, not about that, I have lived a man’s life, Black Amazon Of Mars by Leigh Brackett, Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth, question my virtue, a very narrow thing, not having sex with all the men on the ship, Conan adjacent, beautifully illustrated by John Buscema, surprisingly close, rocks and knives with flintlocks, making valeria cry, I have no birth control, Conan, why her virtue matters, how immature Howard was, Mettalus, Island Of Pirate’s Doom, a “merchant” sailor, an owner of the ship, a mate, Robinson Cruseo, contempt for pirates vs. fear of pirates, a little naive here, the story we’re getting from Connor, guy in a tavern tells a story, two and a half days, careful not to sleep in the same place, gotta keep her virtue, write to market, not a spicy, Spicy Adventure Tales, how Belit is marketed, nude, a hat, a big coat, breeks, the sun be strong, the rapier she’s got, not doing that research on the temple, pirates don’t bury treasure on islands, pirates take their treasure and spend it, Blackbeard’s Ghost, Elsa Lancaster, bail out these old ladies, we spent every bit of that in one week in Jamaica, Klaus Störtebeker donated money for salted herrings, Robin Hood, a lot of heads, a great story, every north German kid thinks he’s really really awesome, Indian tribes did hide treasure, the temple here is awesome, more backstory, Fire Of Ashurbanipal, the rumors, the legends, cool backstory, a mechanism, metal, Iron Shadows In The Moon aka Shadows In The Moonlight, in the Vilayet, iron gods, the pre-carib elder race, waiting for the Lovecraftian, polished up that idea, why is there revenge working out that way, the blood, cracked through the altar stained with blood, the gem, when the blood comes down and gushes out of them, one last blood sacrifice, not enough setup, walking up to the gallows, Queen Of The Black Coast, booby-trapped altar, two endings, the weird version and the desert adventure version, snake bite vs. actual demon, a Weird Tales version, pump up the Cthulhu element, the vengeance, the anger, the hatred, they through their gems into the sea, they’re shiny, pirates want them, you’re a lich, that’s your reliquary, feather from an alien space god, Yag Kosha [Tower Of The Elephant], the work being done, a different kind of story at the end, pretend to be my sister, I need more adventures, she’s 20 years old, old enough for marriage, he’s not doing enough work to explain this island, the writing is solid, the motivation, why didn’t you make it an Aztec temple?, a new market, hot markets, long established, Spicy Stories, Fight Stories, Action Stories, he leaves himself open for more stories, the Helen Tavrel series, Steve Harmer, some other character, trained as a doctor, wounds being treated, written over a couple of days at most, the name “Steve” main character names, eight individual Steves, two Steve Costigans, Post Oaks & Sand Roughs, the most explicit example, when you see Steve he’s putting himself into that character, re-written and patched up into a much better story, a few off things in the ending, The Gods Of Bal-Sagoth, poetic irony, crushed by a statue of a god, setup and paid off, he played with it, it has to be a more important, the setup has to be better, to better effect, the payoff, Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1981), uncovering the Ark of the Covenant, close your eyes, don’t look, we watch, should I close my eyes?, Nazis killed in various ways, one burns up, the reveal that there’s this jewel, the two heroes look away, their bonds are mysteriously cut (by God?), God was really nice, Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom (1984), Metallus/Steve, a much better payoff, a legend about a curse, Steve Harmer has been on this island a few days, a Robinson Crusoe setup, a nice ship, easy coincidences, a meet-cute, skating on his good writing skills, what would have made it something special, conked on the head a couple of times, disabled in one arm, a way of doing things, kicking ass, those Conan stories, the dynamic of Red Nails, a little back and forth, a mass murdering pirate, sleeping with the whole crew, feels kind of juvenile, he would have been 22, sexual experiences, a story problem, a good story, when people poop on Vale Of Lost Women, it cooks as a story, the implied raping, horrible slavery, an outline of an ending, gross racism, super-strong images, very very visceral, I’m not going to force women into sex, Conan doesn’t rape women, what he put into it, if we think of this as the research, this is the necessary work, The Pool Of The Black One, giants, a green pool, a stream of death, a strange Conan story, on the island of weirdness, “Conan, I was swimming”, the adaptation, a big ream of paper, they don’t have the firearms, they’re not from Spain, Zamora, Argos, where she’s Valeria and she’s talking about Conan, her adopted father, a sexual jealousy, who is this Metallus guy, Roy Thomas fucked up, if you put Conan in that role…, makes Valeria make no sense, you can’t change the relationship and not have it no difference, pre-Red Nails, it’s post Red Nail, it should have been Valeria backstory, the Red Brotherhood, Valeria likes adventuring too much, talk to my pirate dad, making Metallus a merchant, Roy Thomas misunderstanding, what makes Roy Thomas a good writer is he’s a copier (and we like that about him), bad decisions, he’s not a Robert E. Howard clone, from a mate to an owner of a ship, one is a hired worker and the other is a guy and a try to make business, why he got beheaded, Hamburg and Bremen, a hired hand, join the pirates, he should become a pirate, Valeria should have contempt for merchants, not enough research on pirates yet, he likes it, Belit’s a pirate, you have to learn about pirates, how Howard loves pirates, an essay about pirates, a biography of Howard, what happened to pirates when they were caught, a photo, a great spike driven through his head, this gruesome picture, sailing under the skull and crossbones, tried to runaway to sea, Robert E. Howard was an only child, he had a duty, everything is explained, Howard didn’t really like authority, gone Steve Costigan, he likes the romance and the adventure, the reality is something he doesn’t like, a good romance, the research for other stories, its better than this, there’s a girl, kidnapped by these pirates, the weirdest of the Conan stories, what’s the deal with this island, stuff happens, pirate Conan stories, The Black Stranger, L. Sprague De Camp, The Treasure Of Trancios, bizarre Conan, Black Vulmea’s Vengeance, a strange Conan story, discussing the character, the main quote, gigantic mirth and gigantic melancholics, his personality is weird, almost sadistic fun, very intelligent, Conan The Socialist, he’s very very intelligent, he’s a schemer in this one, Nudist Camp by Orrie Hitt, the climax, temple collapses, taken up to 11, Riptide by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, the treasure is the sword of St. Michael, this huge underground cave dome, that’s the end of the book, they get one coin, Oak Island, so crazy, its all based on the premise that pirates bury their treasure, zoom out a little bit, no x marks the spot ever, Captain Kidd, innumerable theories, where it could have come from, Vikings!, viking theories, they’re gardening, there’s something down there, 16 seasons into a reality TV show, you can’t admit there’s nothing there, why do you go to the moon?, do you want to make that your particular purpose, could you find something else to do, digging at oak island, that work, that obsession, proof you don’t need any payoffs, here’s a hairpin!, a literally sunk costs fallacy, bankrupted dozens, pretty good, a very Alex movie, Uncharted (2022), checks a lot of checkboxes, rootkits on movie CDs, action adventurey around the worldy Indiana Jonesy, Swordfish, a helicopter with a bus, they do that with Magellan’s ships, Magellan personally circumnavigated, still intact somehow, boarding actions, all special effects, passable entertainment, the kid who plays Spider-man, game lore, the guy on the beach is the voice of the main character, cargo nets and cargo boxes, run over in the sky, well put together?, Nicholas Cage has to find the constitution, a little lighter than National Treasure (2004), a 500 year old ship in the tropics, worth watching, just pirate it, Alex has read every Dirk Pitt novel before Clive Cussler died, goofy, Winston Churchill sold Canada to the United States, definitely not James Bond, amazingly goofy, lend-lease realism, Sahara (2005), evil billionaire, underwater archaeologist, vintage cars, 1929 Dusenberg, John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee books, a TV show, a private detective sort of setup, people love the series, a colour in the title of each one, The Girl In The Plain Brown Wrapper, Lawrence Block was a fan, people obsessed with the writings of John D. MacDonald, technothrillers, Tom Clancy, Matthew McConaughey and Penelope Cruz, Abe Lincoln was kidnapped, the murder at the theatre was a coverup, ship full of gold, The Da Vinci Code but fun, clones Nazis in Antarctica, streak of ridiculousness, Ghenghis Khan’s tomb, a lost Viking colony, a lost Hawaiian island, weird cult living underwater, Pacific Vortex, The Mediterranean Caper, written with his son, born in 1931, Night Probe, a secret base on the Moon, the Nazi base in Antarctica, Sam Tripoli, Newschwabenland, Klaus Schwab, making everybody eat bugs, a grain of truth, Admiral Perry, did they find a Nazi base there?, no matter what it is, serpent men, George Bush’s back, no matter what it is, its always been written about in fictional literature, The Shadow Kingdom, why George Bush and his friends are all lizard men, its so true, its a metaphor, what resonates with people as being truthful, it resonates because it is true, passed along as a fact about the world, the description of aliens, glowing beings, the greys, H.G. Wells, a little piece, drawings of what man will look like, absorb our nutrients in a bath, he’s making fun of it, the newspaper makes fun of his making fun, 20 years go by, here’s my theory on aliens, The Red One by Jack London, an ancient alien spaceship in the South Pacific, how did that mega-structure get built, space helmets, focused on heads, shrinking heads, a giant ball impacted on this South Pacific island, a literary antecedent that comes out as a conspiracy theory, when we hear something we like we pass it on, watching Stark Trek, a retelling of Plato’s Cave, a retelling of The Tempest, steal from the best!, make some real cash, Connor has the adjectives for us, we find a lost Conan story written by Robert E. Howard, a retelling of Red Harvest, A Fistful Of Dollars and The Maltese Falcon Conan, Conan The Rogue by John Maddox Roberts, steal from the best, classic noir with Conan in the middle, a remake of Yojimbo, a redoing of Red Harvest, the Bruce Willis one Last Man Standing, prohibition era, the only thing that’s missing is the girl, brass bra no less, the new S.M. Stirling Conan cover, The Peshawar Lancers, the British Raj in India in the year 2000, a Russian cannibal cult you say?, cannibal culting is the way to go, not a series!, a standalone!, the audiobook exists, 17 hours, is it 17 hours good?, Space Cadet, Ministry Of Disturbance, Adventures Of Tom Sawyer, Easy Go by Michael Crichton, Drug Of Choice, almost a Philip K. Dick novel, a Hard Case Crime reprint, patients in comas with blue pee, Hollywood Scientology cult, soma, sex island you say?, Jeffrey Epstein island, it’s all in your fuckin head!, super suggestible, do you have tennis, sandpaper your elbow, shitty food you think is delicious, Klaus Schwab: you will own nothing and you will like it, down for At The Mountains Of Madness and The Mysterious Island, a quite long fairy tale, dedicated to the Rani of Sarawak, the super gay guy: Oscar Wilde, Black Priestess Of Varda by Erik Fennel, you’re going to love Nudist Camp by Orrie Hitt, a seething novel, to worship nature, sunbathe unclad, strange sect, voluptous Ada Holden, began to love nature a little to passionately, she-devil, her own glorious body, this is a smut book, Brother And Sister by Donald E. Westlake, Almuric is out tonight!, the second Cora show, time flies, see you on twitter.

Stephen Harmer art by Stephen Fabian for Isle Of Pirate's Doom

Helen Tavrel art by Stephen Fabian for Isle Of Pirate's Doom

SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN - Island Of Pirate's Doom

SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN - Island Of Pirate's Doom

SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN - Island Of Pirate's Doom

SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN - Island Of Pirate's Doom

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #707 – READALONG: Villains Of All Nations by Marcus Rediker

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #707 – Jesse and Evan Lampe talk about Villains Of All Nations by Marcus Rediker

Talked about on today’s show:
Atlantic Pirates In The Golden Age, 2004, the narrator, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, And The Hidden History Of The Revolutionary Atlantic by by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, a lot of overlap?, the hydrarchy, dueling powers, bottom up, from above, the authority of the sea, abolitionism, the Putney debates, sailors are the threads, not the best scholarship, a concise argument, struggling with evidence, where the sources are weak, correct conclusions, a longer book, right on almost everything, a claim in the introduction, women went into piracy and discoursed on gender, a means to discuss those things, class, race, gender, the dual terrors, really convincing, to talk about terrorism, the Noam Chomsky arguments, state terrorism, the War on Terror, something not mentioned in the book, the Jolly Roger, to make the icon on twitter, the colour, the black flag, the black standard, 2014, 2022, the ISIS flag, 1716-1726, the last phase of the golden age, the barbary coast, book piracy, Captain Phillips, the excuse for Djjibuouti, corporations from all nations, not just contrast, these are not satanists exactly, not conforming to Christianity’s authority, why Roger is so jolly, the second meaning: fucking, making merry, what the pirates want to do, party, dancing, getting drunk, merry Christmas, a warm glow, happy fucking, death is coming, a momento mori for the whole ship, they know they don’t have long, as an extended slave rebellion, fly away from danger, and fly to party houses, take their stuff and go party with it, an intellectual history, how liberty and the French Revolution (and the American Revolution) coming out of it, Black Sails, 1715, the Bahamas, declaring war on the whole world, Charles Vane, John Rackham, Mary Read, Benjamin Hornigold, Blackbeard is not what you think, a prequel to Treasure Island, pirates don’t bury their treasure, an egalitarian society, an adaptation of this book the themes of democracy, maroons, runaway slaves, one of the best arguments, revenge, they purposely went after the slave trade because they despised it, they hated slavery, they slowed down the slave trade, and what caused their persecution, hurting them where it hurts, modern day connections, the propaganda against pirates, Cotton Mather, we gotta not send our children to sea, sea conditions are so bad, pressure against regular against internet piracy, Kim DotCom got raided in New Zealand, so much piracy has been domesticated, the Napster stuff, albums in the 90s had one hit song, I can just get the one song, how this becomes tamed, you wouldn’t steal a bike, everything its on youtube, spotify, ads, streaming for movies, 50 different streaming services, a wave that won’t go away, the Azov battalion, Ukraine has a Nazi problem, they’re on our team, the propaganda against pirates is needed because they’re attractive figures, Robin Hood is a folk hero, he and his merry men are there to have fun and make hay while the sun shines, figures to be made fun of, gallows humour, the church is something you can’t trust, Ivanhoe, everything bad is King John, free men hunting in the kings woods, outlaws, wolfsheads, making outlaws our outlaws, ‘Al-Qaeda is on our team is Syria’, the U.S. is funding Al-Qaeda in Syria, strange bedfellows, this book is about power, one of the responses to Rediker, pirates were petty capitalists, making a separate social order, a more rational marketplace, when markets matured pirates weren’t needed anymore, same propaganda to tame them, rock and rollers, so rich, Neil Young and Spotify, a monetary move, apply pressure, Joe Rogan’s ruining the world, if we think of rock and roll connected to be being merry and piratical, siton your treasure, he never was a punk, Lipstick Traces, counterculture, punk was never that mainstream, an ability to sell-out, they’re not gathering funds for a mortgage, cruelty from the masters, low pay, bad food, sickness, disease, a revenge principle, Nietzsche master morality vs. slave morality, the romans worshiped power, being cruel to your slaves was moral, a new religion coming from the east, Greek tutors, turn the other cheek, rotting in hell vs. living in heaven, the way of peace, the whole state apparatus, a capitalist realism way, a more sophisticated tool, Christian pirates (nominally), put them in slavery, kept them sick, injured, not enough alcohol, I’m a devil worshiper, inverse slave morality is no respect for authority, our only god is death, our only god is making jolly, not sustainable (they lost), a human lifespan, the particulars don’t kill piracy (just this golden age), without ourselves against those who wish to control us, you need to pay for my profits, not getting what you were (supposed to be) paid, a revelation to see it as a slave rebellion, the main plot point, Captain Flint, a particular treasure ship, dissatisfaction, ahistorical, quartermaster emphasis, Rackham was on Vane’s ship, fuck Treasure Island?, Starz, Spartacus is very class conscious, focus on sexuality and human bodies, the children’s book, where it veers, Flint’s overall goal is to negotiate with the capitalist system, I will be your king, the most ahistorical part of the show, it shocks the boatswain, there was no alternative to kings, there was no country without a king, Holy Roman Empire republics, England was the most democratic place on the planet, Florence, on the Roman model, the rise of empire, consolidation, Italy being turned into a country, when Germany gets its shit together, the way the Prussians thought about it, they way we’re teaching historical narratives, new interpretations, critical thinking, why do we make our narrative a history of states, progress, why is that the case?, France becomes a nation state by repressing local culture, the same propaganda, speak the same language, the Yiddish Press in New York, super-socialist, anarchist, communist, teach them English, that’s happening today, imposing a state on the sea, brutal violence, public hanging, pardons, the power dynamic is not as monolithic as it is here, suppression, lockdowns, kicking people off platforms, George Galloway, a former Labour MP, RT has been banned, Russian State Affiliated Media, Ed Schultz, Abby Martin, Chris Hedges, no Russian content at all, interviews with Cornell West, interviews, commentary and criticism, nobody gets a pardon anymore, applying to faceless corporations for review, African slave trade, the Royal African Company had stockholders, hope for their ship to come in, make new laws, this will solve things, sea-raiding, a pardon for all piratical activities, a free pardon, the buccaneers and the privateers, state mercenaries, Europe was in constant war, now you’re a warship, letters of marque, part of the defense budget, how it works with Al Quaid, stingers, 9/11, Osama Bin Laden, bad dirty feet on our holy soil, declaring war on the most powerful, the invasion of Iraq, disband the army, ISIS, let’s focus on Syria (what’s important right now), we’ve got a pipeline to put through, the pardons are not publicly stated, those guys were Nazis ten minutes ago, deathsheads on their uniforms, the ADL say they’re not Nazis, whipping gypsies in the street, a critique of capitalism, the origin of Capitalism, an expansion of one chapter, the share system, pay vs. shares, pre-money, the Romans, constant war and expansion, paying their troops with slaves, land too, but mostly slaves, fucking around in Gaul for a decade, enriched by the slaves, a co-op, the CEO gets paid more than a line workers, pirate charters, 1.5 shares for a captain, captains murdered by their crew, reading and navigating, reading, the quartermaster, the connections to the tribune, a stupid system in Canada, senators are appointed for life, party loyalists, tenure, untouchable by federal party in party, senatorial removal, 9 supreme court justices, a super-reactionary institution, political appointees, a quartermaster as a balance to the captain’s power, states on a ship, in battle they are at war, the articles are their constitutions and the captain is not their king, writing that first constitution, tradition, Artistole, the Athenian constitution, the Iroquois, “on account”, bandits and pirates, Eric Hobsbawm’s Bandits, an escape valve, providing hope, releasing the pressure a little bit, redistribute the wealth a little bit, stickin it to the man, the signing of the articles, I never signed onto the constitution and I never will, signing up for the Boy Scouts, a non-sea shanty, an implicit submission in that song, the U.S. founding fathers worried about this, Thomas Jefferson, re-write the whole thing every seven years, after the Civil War, repealing prohibition, voting rights, getting rid of slavery, defining citizenship, signing on, churches are even better at this, a class, confirmation, the age of consent, by reading from the Torah, confirmation for Christians, 13/14, at the beginning of your adulthood, adult baptism, children can’t consent, Jesus was baptized as an adult, re-baptized, born again, anabaptists, the Quakers, the puritans, religious nuts, strong opinions, the Putney Debates, debating class, authority, aristocracy, the New Model Army, spread these ideas, these tendrils of knowledge and discourse, across the Atlantic, carried by the sea, in H.P. Lovecraft, The Call Of Cthulhu Castro, a weird cult that no-one in the straight society likes, the interview, Cthulhu promises us freedom in this world and revelry, we’re not going to be slaves in this world, we’re not going to mortgage our lives, Cthulhu is beyond good and evil, same with the Deep Ones, immortality, kings under the sea, freedom in the sea, the same language, Robert E. Howard’s pirate stories, The General History Of Pyrates by Charles Johnson, disrespect for hypocrisy, the Voluminous Podcast, Howard was offended, how crime works in the South West, wanting to have children do better, pioneering, moving to get away, gun culture in the USA, keeping guns to keep the king honest, you better not come into my house, the fear and escalating via swatting people, we need to be able to crack down, Black Panthers are getting uppity, open carrying weapons, Paul has respect for the state in the way that Jesse does not, the police are there to keep order (or as the unfair captains of states), not sharing with the workers on the ship of state, having access to the ship’s store of arms, the Roman dictator, going to a frontier, the tradition, relinquish the power and currency and disband their army, not bringing armed troops into the city, to keep the state afloat in the right way, thinking of nations as something of value, everybody has a blue and yellow sticker in their twitter bio, a good person always trying to help things, people are suffering, teaming up with one state against another, inescapable capitalist realism, a badge or a patch, swearing to obey, submitting to power, if the captains hides information, the incident with the dresses, no guard on the shared hold, how dare you, to be sold at auction, a hint in the opening episode, John Silver, a cook, hiding something of value from the crew he’s joined, open up the books, if you can’t read, we have to rely on our representatives, in collusion with the captain, on a small ship of state with a black flag, connecting with the creation of the USA, the John Locke connection, the provinces, Providence, the state of Massachusetts, the spread of these ideas, writing fiction, show grammar, a thinly veiled description of the Boston Tea Party, dressing up like Indians, we are the natives of this land, we are protesting, we are barbarians, what January 6th was about, British provocateurs in the Boston Tea Party?, the etymology of the word strike, sailors striking the sales!, is Evan super-jealous?, Pacific history, blackbirders in the South Pacific, logbooks, not many mutinies, the Bounty mutiny, near mutinies, someone was beaten, put in irons, protesting to the mate, its really tense for a moment, a non-shitty captain, Captain Bligh, near-mutinies were common, worried about the competition?, how upset would he be that Jesse pirated his book?, he can be upset if he wants to be, Peter Linebaugh is more openly political, May Day, the commons, outwardly political, The London Hanged, dense and hard to read and wonderful, violence against the working class in England, theft over a pound, transportation was the out, pleading the belly, on account I’m pleading the belly, Newgate, Belmarsh, Neal Stephenson’s The Baroque Cycle, a right-winger?, a believer in tech, tech salvation, gaols vs. prisons, commerce, prostitutes could come in, I’m a young woman, I steal a bunch of silverware, a capitol offense, wink at a guard, the name of Evan’s book: pleading the belly, Jack London’s south sea island books with dogs, Jerry Of The Islands, Goliah, such a great story, a huge book, The Call Of The Wild, a terrier’s pov, blackbirding, slavery by another name, The White Pacific: U.S. Imperialism And Black Slavery In The South Seas after the Civil War by Gerald Horne, John Barleycorn, Michael: Brother Of Jerry, this amazing place, Robert Louis Stephenson, Treasure Island, pre-homework, Tahiti, wife and step-kid, not an asshole, pretty cool, Travels With A Donkey in Spain, pirate charters, Daniel Defoe, Captain Charles Johnson, The General History Of Pyrates, fun names, Vane is a fun name, famous pirates, the two lineages of pirates, two families, jolly rogers, the final form, the dinseyfied version, the hourglass, skeleton, black background, paintings from the Middle Ages, Cockaigne, highly literate and oversexed monks, the land of milk and honey, hanging out with the nuns down the street, the dork version of pirates, making memes about what would be fun, waifu pillows, breaking out of the monastery, taking the ship of state and going a-pirating, cheese raining from the sky, a hilarious thing, a bottom up thing, something that comes down to us from such a long time ago, an interesting connection, all brothers of the sea, some sisters in there, not racist when thinking about freeing slaves, recruiting, make more liberty, make more merry, doing piracy today, the US military rules the seas, there literally in the Black Sea, the Red Sea, they’re on every sea, Aral Sea, the US Coast Guard is off the coast of Iran, maroon communities, places to run to, aggressive behavior, new society, new rules, the seas were a wild place, the taming of the wild spaces, where does piracy move to, this ethos, Jesse James, the outlaws of the old west, the Frank/Younger gang, the underclass, every man’s hand is against them, shot in the back while hanging a portrait, bounties, shooting outlaws, that outlaw spirit, crossing oceans, into boats, loading stuff on, an ability to trade and get things, you need to follow the more experienced person, how to navigate, before public GPS, how to tie ropes to the docks, you need to learn how to swim, like school, farming, harvesting, less fraught, the weather, time of day on the land, running your ship afoul, a need for skill, a need for respect, the pay is low, disconnected from most people’s lives, an anchor tattoo, a writer, a gay man, the merchant marine, a thing that profoundly changes a lot of people, the sailoring business, bully and bluff, a fight with Houdini, how terrible it was to be a merchant sailor, Luke Burrage, cruise ship, the talent vs. the crew, Philipinos, Malaysians, the global north, bullshit jobs, engaged in production, resistance is more significant, how we started this conversation, author and editors doing all this work for free, writing fiction for tiny audiences, late capitalism, teaching, our jobs exist (teaching) because of higher institutions, the byproduct of teaching is learning, the veins and the arteries, preying on the slave trade, railroad workers, the great railroad strike, Starbucks workers unionizing, the resistance and dismissal of the Truckers, the lack of acknowledgement of the yellow vests, blocking access and refusing to tow trucks, seeing Justin Trudeau, a war measures act in everything but name, seizing people’s bank accounts, Greta Thunberg, gas prices, ordering from Amazon, buying dog food through the mail, there aren’t that many independent truckers, the land problem, the original Mad Max (1979), two stories, the story of the toe-cutter gang, road pirates, reduced government power, incompetent government?, the life of the merry, disrespectful, the legend of the Night Rider, his scag, he falls apart emotionally, threatening communities, drunken, lascivious and rude, pirate swearing, a call for non-decorum, conversation in the discourse, some words are not allowed to be said, people with callouses on their hands, this is bullshit, the word bullshit is taboo, the constant replacement (euphemism treadmill), increasingly few kids at the grocery store, a kind of discipline on the crew, disciplined for expressing dissatisfaction, oppression from above, collegiality wasn’t written into the pirate codes, if we have a beef we have it out on the shore, formal and ceremonial and more accurate, somebody did some homework, making war on the world, we have this set, bringing all those sailors who are watching it, a lot of money, the right move, not enough sea-action, they don’t like sailing they like partying, sex and drama, Spartacus did it better, four season, Spartacus is so smart, Blood And Sand, the psychology is brilliant, my identity is tied to my , internalized their slavery, their favourite baseball player, a fraternity of players, what a big deal, when Wayne Gretzky left the Oilers to go to the L.A. Kings, emotional trauma, Edmonton is just so great, so naive and dumb, extreme loyalty, Any Given Sunday (1999), all about class, class solidarity, loyalty, I Am Spartacus, embracing his slave identity, we don’t know his real name, Batiatus, Crixus, the drama with the wife, the psychology behind being feted and respected as a slave, a star football player and criminally underpaid, baseball lockout, on the team with the guy with the tool in his hand, The Many Headed Hydra, Will would be get on this, Milton, literature connections, William Blake, Tyger Tyger, a radical anti-capitalist interpretation, horrible scary awesome creatures, the hydra metaphor, the hydra was the good guy, Hercules, the state has to be Herclues, on the side of the monster against the gods, Thungerb challenged her parents to lower their carbon footprint, becoming vegan, upcycling, giving up flying, popular with a certain set, Naomi Klein’s argument, we need to dismantle capitalism, a kid, George Galloway, Ed Schultz, Thom Hartmann is not a threat, running a political party, Jeremy Corbyn, being a bad pirate, a progressive, a left wing democrat, Predator guy, I ain’t got time to bleed, Minnesota, Jesse Ventura, state affiliated media, opposed the Iraq War, I will always speak out against war, there’s a lot of pressure to suppress, youtube, twitter, facebook, The Thing In The Woods, the author of the Velveteen Rabbit, a werewolf book by an American, something freaky about that book, it being a stuffed animal, stuffed animals trying to kill Evan, ideas for making money, a stuffed dragon with tiger print skin, Peter Rabbit, a horror story, Mr McGregor’s garden, a big white beard, god chases him around the garden, the bold one, he almost dies, Margret Williams, can you tell by looking at someone’s behavior that they have Asperger’s?, is Evan aspy?, is Eric Rabkin aspy?, spectrum diagnosis is very suspicious, always missing the context in direct messages, here’s somebody’s tweet and here’s my response: Jesse “I know other people are starving and unable to move out of their parent’s homes but I’d really like to quit my office job and write full time”, Jesse: “speaking of which, have you seen Hunter Biden’s meth mouth?” Evan: “He used to lick milf pussy. Sad.” a reference to Trump, laptop pictures, him with the milfs, lady on a chain by her hair, the president’s son whose existence was a non-entity until we find out he’s getting paid $50,000 [a month] for a no-show job in a country the United States is trying to steal from”, Jesse: “watched first episode of Moon Knight”, Evan: “does Squirrel Girl show up?”, Jesse: “not so far”, Evan: “Pity. She’s hot. I think she’s autistic. Can she be hot? She has a tail. Butt plug with tail. That is a thing.”, Jesse: “Wow.”, Evan: “watch more documentaries on porn hub”, Belmarsh Prison is in the latest James Bond movie, I was glad James Bond was dead, where they’re keeping Julian Assange, a previous Bond movie had a Julian Assange character, an evil program, smartblood for no reason, still talking about documentaries on PornHub, I can’t pay my rent, do they still have stories, why pornos still have stories, theories of story, stories are about conflict, Clifford Simak stories, conflict in the universe, Waystation, seeing things revealed, a slight misunderstanding for a minute, what stories are at core, you order a sausage pizza, that is a story, it doesn’t have any conflict, that’s a display (not much of a story), why do you need that at all, go right into the fucking, a forty minute scene, Emanuelle (1974), a full length feature film, tags, stepsis, same stories again and again, Jesse needs to study more, researching later.

Villains Of All Nations by Marcus Rediker

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #555 – READALONG: Shadows In The Moonlight by Robert E. Howard

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #555 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Terence Blake, Mark Finn, Alex talk about Shadows In The Moonlight aka Iron Shadows In The Moon by Robert E. Howard

Talked about on today’s show:
trademark, registered, copyright, Vale Of Lost Women, rattle Mark’s cage, red caped monkey, more construction, more constructed, barbarism vs. civilization, propagandizing this idea, the middling Conan, formula, Rogues In The House, the beginning of the greatest hits album, if he were Aerosmith this would be “Walk This Way”, touchstones, essential elements, the damsel in distress, bloody trail of vengeance, piracy, savage ape, supernatural menace, what do you want from a Conan story, a representative story, there’s wizardry, dream magic, this is what Conan is all about, this is what Conan does, if there was a snake, squirmed an burrowed like a snake, the comics, it starts similarly to Red Nails, the end of the beginning, fruit, giant monster, alone in the wilderness, why did you run out of this jade palace, the Garden of Eden, Queen Of The Black Coast, monkey monsters, a forbidden place, working through, this is what manly men act like, this is what a man is, where Olivia looks at the two jungle creatures, how they’re alike, Shah Amurath, barbarian in response, a Cimmerian vs. the Cimmerian, a response to what he and Lovecraft were arguing over, Howard thought Lovecraft was smarter than him, test those theories, page 30, was there a serpent in..?, PulpCovers doesn’t want to be PC, without judgement but with a pattern, unashamed of being a manly man, pirate costumes, carrying a gun around, chivalrous towards women, Lovecraft is a gentle-man (a gentlemen), what a man is, Terence territory, a pre-philosophy for manhood, the way men love Conan, doing ablutions, iron thews, a male and female gaze, ewww gross, powerful, Tweets Of High Adventure, tweet length prose, every sentence has the language, art, unashamed, its all pure, Vale Of Lost Women is “problematic”, a distilled essence, no casual Conan readers, in for penny in for a pound, this masculinity, did he have a choice in Texas in the 1920s?, acceptable work for a man, vocational training, taking a day job, begging letter, worst fucking human being ever, the boxing stories, bareknuckle boxing, intellectual conversation, never about particulars, newspaper stories to back up their thought processes, news clipping, the only way to run a city, the story in the boat, in the prose, we don’t sell our children, stories of Comanche, a warts and all presentation, ethnic cleansing, riding with the Cherokee, a mindset, an ideal, there are no rules right now, Gertrude Hemken loved Conan, studying philosophy, Nietzsche, John Milius and Oliver Stone, Conan The Barbarian (1982), a through line, sitting in the agora listening to the philosophers, life is an illusion then I’m an illusion too, Solomon Kane is the religious philosopher, scenes of melancholy, a debate on masculinity, a constructed virtue, the body or the mind, the idea of the wild and nature, Lovecraft’s wild, you’ve got the wild inside you, human beings , women are shapely, every muscle is supple, pantherish, his scabbard purrs, it comes from silk, a relationship between what shah Amurath vs. the ape vs. Conan, toxic masculinity, I’m a barbarian buy I’m not a monster, a king of Akif, Turanians vs. Hyrkanians, Hyrkanians are a race and Turanians are a nationality, the Persian Gulf vs. the Caspian Sea vs. the Black Sea, maps of Hyboria, Vedyha is India, Khitai is China, the islands of Mu, filling in the historical record, a starting place, walk these things back into the Hyborian age, analogs, she’s a devi not a rani, he needs a Mediterranean, adventure locations, a pirate this week, the Kozaki are the Cossacks, the Mongols, Red Sonja vs Red Sonya, her sister’s a real person, her father’s a real person, Haws Of Outremer by Robert E. Howard, Mark wrote the afterword, the Punisher in armor, the Cormac Fitzgeoffrey stories, the same emotional space, riding out on the steppes, Oriental and Middle Eastern adventures, Flesh + Blood (1985), Rutger Hauer and Jenifer Jason Leigh, the Dark Horse Comics adaptation, the art, Olivia doing the narration doesn’t make sense, 2 and half days, the confrontation in the reeds is one of Howard’s best scenes, you really hate that guy, when he’s getting chopped to bits, Olivia has two dreams, when Conan’s rowing and the other in the ruined temple, a prologue, what her dream is, the negroes who aren’t negroes, not-kushites, black and made of iron, what does it mean?, expressing their otherworldliness, black statutes but not statues of black people, an artificially baroque language, some sort of race thing, the golden youth, possibly raped, the sky reflected in the water, both a sea and a lake, one third the salinity of the rest of the oceans, flying through the sky, she’s describing it to Conan, she’s supposed to be telling Conan’s story, we shouldn’t be inside her head and not past tense, he can’t hold down a job, pillage a few towns over, holding out for a management position, wear sandals to tread the jeweled thrones, the blue of the sea, mirrors of stars, a phantasmal oarsmen, a quiet slumber, his iron thews, that female gaze, shying away from Robert E. Howard, annoyed by the mire, unmanned by bugs, how far a man can throw a stone, showing off his thews, testing his theory, she’s traumatized, a princess laid low to the status of a slave, a couple (at the end), not telling fairy stories, men and women equally tough in a fight, Ronda Rousey, women are subject to male violence, a romance (an adventure) out of horrible circumstance, we’re not used to today, Yemen right now, 70-80 year old text, a historical basis for women adventurers, easy to gravitate to, Joan of Arc, the women pirates, women doing what men do, he’s not pulling this stuff out of his butt, Howard’s historical stories, Conan was a commercial endeavor, pulp era titillation, why Margaret Brundage did those covers, Seabury Quinn, when he comes back, the women have changed positions, evil queens, swordswomen, a shift in agency, in the Dark Horse adaptation, in the actual story it’s all her, saving him in order to save himself, Valeria is competition for Conan, Red Sonja’s character is mostly that, equally wily, Olivia is just a regular person, crawling into that den of pirates, how tortured they have been, the male version of Olivia, Conan knows everybody, Sergius, a boss fight, the TV tropes for this story, three point landing, divine right of kings, Conan the rules lawyer, Tim Truman’s Dark Horse comics adaptation, a defense of the switch to Olivia’s POV, the thing that Conan did, the guy in the story that everybody’s heard about, getting into it, Conan’s perspective, the disembowelment, seeing that same scene again from that POV, the Roy Thomas adaptation is not to add any words, Roy Thomas is amazing when he captures Howard’s prose, the new Marvel travesty (Conan The Barbarian and Savage Sword Of Conan) “ass” is used twice in July 2019 issue, cur, dog, slut, special language, Island of the Temple Statues, why that change, it changes the dynamic, hard not cruel, quartering, “quarter? I’ll give you quarter!”, Olivia’s really active, this formula, beautiful babe in distress, check off those boxes, you can take my stories or leave them, playing it up, why the text feels so weird, three set pieces, don’t forget the giant ape, strung like beads on a string, Conan on a weekend, they should hire the person who runs Conan The Salaryman, how it resonates with Paul, flipping your desk, Thor: The Dark World (2013), adjectives attitude and viewpoint on the world, Frank Miller’s Sin City, Conan in a noir story, just a crazy guy (with a code), code vs. philosophy, a personal moral compass, allowing for an exception, Conan is his own arbiter, there’s always an angle to be played, we can take Conan at his word but nobody else can, Olivia over his shoulder and he’s running away, high heels vs. mountain cat, the only thing that can unman me is mosquitoes, a supple ass, those outside, too nice a guy, Gertrude Barrows Bennett, faces and asses?, girls like prepping, men like to be thought of as competent, how to be, how to be a man, the right attitude, its more like…, why does Howard never take us to Cimmeria?, the whole point is to see a man out of his element and see how he should act, those roving feet, something powerful about that idea, how to be a man, “what’s real, man?”, it’s good to have skills, the prose is gorgeous, the unnamed monkey, we need to talk about the parrot, bad biology, if this is near the tropics, New World parrots are colourful, a thousand year old parrot, Jesse wasted his time, the parrot as the harbinger, the chorus, we got the idea, if Howard had seen a parrot, Da Vinci’s Demons, the communist memes, some Nazi left over from WWII is giving a speech, justifications for tweets, macaw, why he put it in this fantasy world, research is hard, fantasy world, letters to Harold Lamb in ADVENTURE, it’s so good, a fruit they’ve never seen before, there’s a dinosaur in it, getting snakes wrong, a failure of the work, a fringe moment, the new Age Of Conan Belit comic is shit, a ship at full sail in a storm hidden in a harbour with gunports, Baggywrinkles by Lucy Bellwood, a sailor’s story should be written and drawn by people familiar with ships, Lovecraft defends him as a poet, his poetry is beautiful, 700 poems!, the complete poetry of Robert E. Howard, Cimmeria, some great lesbian stuff, the alliteration and rhythm, the lull of the rowing, he was fantastic at it, how he did it, looking at meters and couplets, Howard intuited, his prose has that richness, scenes of horrible violence, kings dying from poison, beauty in the savagery, why nobody has been able to write a convincing Conan story, the vocabulary and the rhythm, Howard was able to write Lovecraft stories, a different disposition, The Black Stone, The Challenge From Beyond, Queen Of The Black Coast, the language is the main character, the checkpoints could be seen as mechanical, a complex story, an inspiration to early Dungeons & Dragons, mixing and matching, skill checks, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, not enough angry monkeys, Giant Ape, kobolds, why does he like monkeys so much, is Howard wrestling with Darwin, Thak, Moon Of Zimbabwe, he doesn’t like to come out of the forest, gorillas, base emotions, Howard’s stance on mankind, cycles of history, that backslide into savagery and barbarism, Thak wants to be a man, a ladder you can climb, Gulka the Gorilla Slayer, gorilla as a stand in for the lecherous intentions of people of colour, to refute Darwin and prop up racism, that wonderful willful disconnect to justify a bad belief system, using the stories of the bible and the trappings as a weight of authenticity, The Murders In The Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe, from the monkey’s POV, the sailor who brought him to France, dragon, flying monkeys in Queen Of The Black Coast, a thing in culture at the time, King Kong, The Uncharted Isle by Clark Ashton Smith, the Hippocampus Press documentary: Clark Ashton Smith: Emperor Of Dreams, Dagon, a per-Atlantean civilization, babies sacrificed to a gorilla god, an Atlantean dream story, monkeys are in the air man, The Wizard Of Oz, a phenomenon, everybody got gorillas on the brain, gorilla suits, a course correction after the 1970s, Planet Of The Apes, Sailor Steve Costigan stories, an animal reflection, using natural terms, why Solomon Kane is always a wolf, El Borak is fast and deadly, hawk noses, vulpine eyes, connecting to a larger natural world, sacrificing something superior to them, the psychological basis for bullfighting, suppleness vs. strength, he wins with dexterity as much with strength, he’s upped his wisdom, his constitution, he can lie in a snowbank, the Tibetan monks, the yoga of inner heat, pro-nature, Conan is a part of nature, Lovecraft as a nature as a scary other, nature with gambrel roofs nearby, how much was Howard out in boats, a rural existence, hiking and camping, New Mexico, Carlsbad Caverns, Galveston, Texas, how he writes about stuff, the Walden variety of gentlemen on holiday, longhand letters, the things some writers will do not to finish a story, going back to it vs. being out of it, getting past miscegenation, deep ones, Cthulhu, shapeless formless, slithering shadow, in Howard’s world, the last of their kind, the end of the age of megafauna and megaflora, he’s still working on his monkey ideas, fringe science, discredited anthropological stuff, one of the greatest magazines ever printed, a whole series about the Kozaki, a fight with Yildiz, making whole connections by people who can capture the voice, The Scarlet Citadel, this guy’s lived a life, I’m gonna git Conan, we can fill in that stuff for ourselves, the best thing about Conan, he’s the least asshole asshole in the room, why he’s in a bad mood, I already told him I wasn’t going to do it, Black Gate blog, Hither Came Conan, The God In The Bowl, the one with the snake god, barbarism vs. civilization, the reason why you have them in so many of the stories, Farnsworth Wright, in the first 11 Conan stories, issue 21 of the Dark Horse series, the reason Olivia was sold, the Queen of Ophir, undercutting the idea, ABlaze‘s Conan series, Jesse will fight that monkey god, Terence doesn’t hang out in the French comic book stores, more spare more simple, a feminist ending, I want to sail the seas with you, I will bring you with me, Conan, “I will make you the king of this inland sea, Conan”, it ends with the parrot, scorch king Yildiz’ pantaloons, John Bolton anti-Iranian propaganda, People Of The Black Circle, the Persians as the bad guys in western history, Howard’s sympathies, “Oriental Adventures”, the El Borak stories, throwing the Brit under the bus, every man has the capacity to be a shithead, shithead or victim, the compass needle, the course correction, melded with a dark god from an ancient tomb, Conan as the antidote for too much corruption, where the politics comes in, Conan The Cimmerian, Tomas Giorello, you gotten soften, unexpectedly cheerful, if this was happening in the 1990s, the Del Rey Conans, disengage the De Camp and Lin Carter, pop-culture Conan fighting pop culture Wolverine, Savage Avengers, the onramp, CHiPs , you’re sullying the legacy, deeply understanding and respecting the prose, how the fuck can they get away with this?, an editorial failure, she has the voice in her head, that it’s funny, we need thews and no ass, the recipe, Red Sonja with Roy Thomas and Esteban Maroto, it will get cancelled, By Crom, Shel Kahn’s Conan Is My Spirit Animal, attributed to Genghis Kahn, what is best in life, coffee, women lamenting, pulp magazine philosopher, Philip K. Dick as a paperback philosophy, what these weird guys spread across the United States, everybody should be lucky enough to have access.

Boris Vallejo cover for Iron Shadows In The Moon

Mark Schultz illustration for Iron Shadows In The Moon by Robert E. Howard

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #535 – READALONG: The Pirates Of Ersatz by Murray Leinster

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #535 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Maissa Bessada, Julie Davis, and Terence Blake talk about The Pirates Of Ersatz by Murray Leinster

Talked about on today’s show:
The Pirates Of Zan, translation, there’s no planet named Ersatz, inferior substitute, pirate planet, a terrible pirate, a great pirate, a successful pirate, replacement pirates, Darth pirates, actors, so fun, The people of Walden are pirating themselves, Zan pirates, regular boring farming, he wanted adventure, cover with a slide rule in his teeth, he wanted to be an engineer, climbing into the boat, a stun pistol, Jesse read it 10 years ago, forgettable fun, comic novels, The Incomplete Enchanter by Fletcher Pratt and L. Sprague de Camp, Space Viking by H. Beam Piper, between the two poles, Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding, a road trip, a means of pointing out flaws in society, “audiobooks are books, Paul”, back when Jesse was angry about stuff on the internet, the same Kurt Vonnegut story: 2BOR02B, where the PDF Page came from, The Aliens by Murray Leinster read by Julie Davis, Forgotten Classics, you’re welcome for the audiobook, the Astounding book, a nominee for the Hugo, Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein, Sirens Of Titan, definitely written for John W. Campbell, the competent man, a comedic novel, The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison, Deathworld by Harry Harrison, there are better con-men novels, with less infodumping, his tricks, not cheating as much as we might guess, Jesse is not an electrical engineer, everything is wirelessly charged, this is all very plausible (in theory), everyone is getting cooked with microwaves, magnetic coils, how romantic, a Tesla thing, a wireless radio without a battery, the radio waves themselves are the power, Julie wants no more details, the central problem and its resolution, a “death ray”, being set-up, an unintended consequence, he wrapped it up nicely, virtually in suspense, the political/sociological heft, a little too pat, the ambassador and the grandfather are the Heinlein characters, the mental wisdom for Hodan, oh yeah, gotta bunch of wisdom to instill in this kid, Walden Pond, here’s what comes from too much peace, stasis, civilization, the most civilized planet, frontier mentality, tranquilizing society, taking Oxycontin in their main hobby, the Captain Kirk of their society, an agent of chaos, he facilitates, some more of the embassies, the kind of Earth empire (not even a confederation), a larger universe, central authority, feudal chaos, different polities, a space patrol, The High Crusade by Poul Anderson, green-skinned aliens, the Krishna novels, fauna and flora, legalistic arguments down to a fine art, culturally sophisticated, the lord of this and the king of that, the bride of our hero, “this is the woman for you, dude”, the angriest woman in the universe, Chekov’s gun, Netta, the glamour of being associated with a pirate, cowing the barbarians, she wants to make a nice girl out of me, speaking of gender, the Gendered Text Project, suddenly everything’s different, when Bree Hodan…, she was a delightful girl, the weirdest one, it changes the feel, a basic romance, non-binary, Bryn, hir room, zee went to bed, hir ambitions, zee’d be well to do, such prospects made for good sleeping, grandPARENT, what does this do to the original story, kind of like a Conan story, the fools all around them, a softer Conan story, a very weird concept (with that in mind), the male version of the book, Thor is female (or was), a female Wolverine, a novel of a capable man, a capable woman (a Mary Sue), unlikeable, fun and helpful, what happens to your perception, Derek was almost like a female character to begin with, backing into the piracy, originally funnier, who wants to go off an be a civil engineer?, messing around, a new company comes out, ebooks, the Adult version of Harry Potter, Harriet Potter, does that inform your writing, copyright laws, we need a new clause, Indian films, Ghajini (2008) is the Hindi version of Memento (2000), non-creative, zero-respect, the point of writing a book, nyah nyah nop eugh, Julian Assange being taken out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, shelter, citizenship, citizenship revoked, “crime”, the science fiction romp frothiness vs. realpolitik, could that fictional embassy possibly exist?, how striking, shimmying down a rope, heat guns, a very Cory Doctorow thing, flashmobs, an ad on Craigslist: white wig and blue shirt, 10,000 Julian Assanges, embassy intrigue, not that kind of science fiction (really serious about politics), an adventure story, razed in a day, England and embassies, not so much pirates, Pirates Of Darth, the Danegeld, some viking will take them up on it, semi-civilized, William the Bastard, invading a neighbouring island (England), the really fun part, the homeless people are his fleet, sense of empathy, he’d been cheated, so angry, with the insurance, the bonuses, it’s his character, a soft-hearted pirate, why’d you come to a poor place, the poor will give you everything, the underclass, high fleet admiral, against the elites, the Walden society is fucked up, Robert E. Howard’s theories about civilization and barbarism, built-up capital, addiction and getting servants in to pick your crops, a built-in establishment likes they way things work out for them, not everyone is equally powerful, cops vs. judges, a critique of 1959 USA, a lot of lines like this, a lot of frothiness, the background buildup in the philosophy of the world, in cahoots, in support of that system, from the fourth paragraph, good writing, quite pretty, the highest in the Nurmi cluster, a supply of tranquilizers, the tigers aren’t after us at this very moment, blackbears aren’t super-dangerous, a bear up stuck in a tree, wealthy humans getting excited about a bear, so few bear skeletons found in trees, would they notice with one hand clapping?, straight thinking is a delusion, real things aint simple, aint clear, make it as complicated as you can, isn’t that the way, we’ll just do this to do that, that bit of wisdom, how politicians get out of hot water, death ray vs. he literally fell out of a tree, tying everything back in, luring them into understanding how it works, using them as a means to his end, in dealing with other peoples problems you can solve your problems, a helluva lot better neighbour, its not your business, US public healthcare would force Canada to go left, Jagmeet Singh, the US government can’t administer Medicare very well, corruption, we have to up our game, Jesse is not wrong, Canada defines itself in opposition to the USA, Nice, France, from the outsiders outsiders point of view, how clear that question was, 42, Twitter as a medium of links and pictures, Gilles Deleuze, the grandfather’s idea, piracy is good for the economy, things only work because they break down, piracy is a good think, a timid introverted poor student from Australia who went to France, a powerful thinker, what old guys thought might make sense, that history of failure is fascinating, see where someone else made this mistake a long time ago, 1987, an English teacher in a technical high-school, terminal, a couple of hours of philosophy a week, six or seven hours a week, general culture, written in the 1950s, this depiction of piracy, stasis vs. disorder, a product of its time?, relative stability, would people go for it?, a precarious situation, does this novel work today, Frederik Pohl, P. Schuyler Miller, adventure yarning, of piece of lightweight for entertainment purposes only, sneaks up on you, something funny about the names, Hodan like Odin, Bran, brain vs. brawn, Darth is dearth, things with the names, order and chaos, no longer applicable, capitalism is based on producing as much disorder as possible, Crim is the ultimate capitalist, Walden is sublimation, full of crackpots, for spite, a subtle sort of hidden intellectual side to the story, spot on, John Clute, “a competent but unremarkable space opera”, a series of planetary romances, The Odyssey, picaresque, Penelope isn’t delightful so he goes back with Circe, coming to mind, stasis vs. richness, Jesus: feel sorry for the rich man, a cyclical need, Jesse wants to read more of these, other Leinsters, The Forgotten Planet, A Logic Named Joe, Journey To Barkut, William F. Jenkins, one of the earliest science fiction writers of the pulp era, making a living, Police Your Planet by Lester del Rey, Badge Of Infamy, The Green Odyssey by Philip Jose Farmer, humans are pretty funny, a smelly barbarian queen, he delicately disassembled, a very nice sweeping line, one could spend a lifetime, absolutely true, industriously reading pirated books, so important, torrent site, not available in his region, deathbed conversion, sin-eater, something real about the piracy thing, the title is already a parody (of The Pirates Of Penzance by Gilbert and Sullivan), making fun of the romantic idea of piracy, the pirate nation known as the United States, Fred Himebaugh’s pirate novel (with Blackbeard as president), USA maintains a shit list, yo ho ho and a bagful of books, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, Laughing Shall I Die: Lives and Deaths of the Great Vikings by Tom Shippey, viking is a verb, you get a song out of it, heroic lifestyle, the Wild West, threats vs. warnings, we need an audiobook of this book, the last John W. Campbell story, angels, Alec Nevala-Lee, philosophy as a sort of science fiction, people are complex numbers existing on an imaginary axis, a last joke, Campbell’s definition of science fiction, non-philosophy, he’s gone beyond everyone, September 1971, On The Nature Of Angels, a pun, the really sad part, adhering the copyright law is hurting people, playing a little bit fast and loose, makes sense, a “sample”, pirates are nice folks, generally helpful, helping the insurance industry, Walden to the nth level, sad story for them, romance adventure and derring-do, The Runaway Skyscraper by Murray Leinster, stf = scientificition, Jules Verne, Edgar Allan Poe, H.G. Wells, 40 years later, 1919 – 1959, LibriVox, on the lam, The Creatures Of The Abyss, good basic pulp-type story, Sidewise In Time, passenger pigeons are back, pulpy goodness, alternate histories, Star Trek, First Contact, here’s an idea, poor Tom Godwin couldn’t write his way out of a wet paper bag, thick accent that infests every sentence, getting more Leinster up.

Ace Books, 66525, The Pirates Of Zan

The Pirates Of Zan, 1974

Kelly Freas' The Pirates Of Ersatz

Piratefleet Over Darth

ACE Books D-403, The Pirates Of Zan

The Pirates Of Zan, 1989

Posted by Jesse Willis