Tag: pirates

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Conan has a hat!, Conan cosplays, a blue jacket with silver buttons, a lacquered hat, researching hats, 100 years out of date, a pirate hat, the Del Rey edition, Gregory Manchess, Irene Gallo, the comic adaptation, an adaptation of the L. Sprague de Camp, he never gets the hat,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

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The SFFaudio Podcast #729 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain


The SFFaudio Podcast #729 – The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain – read by John Greenman for Librivox. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the novel (6 hours 42 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Trish E. Matson.

Talked about on today’s show:
1876, conflating some with Huckleberry Finn, the whitewashing of the fence, the whole business with the caves, the pirate incident, pretending to be dead, the business with the graves, Injun Joe, why people thought they were dead, play pirate, engaged, bosom friend Joe, what’s with his cousin, Sid, half-brother, Aunt Polly, single parent families, Judge Thatcher’s wife, Huck’s dad, gone, because the civil war, pre-civil war, set in the 1840s, disease?, pirates?, re-written as a science fiction book, there’s no outside communication with big cities, time placement with technology, lucifer matches, middle ages tech, St. Petersburg, Missouri, newfangled, no slavery we can see, the absence of industry, so kid oriented, so kid focused, a traditional plotted book, a bildungsroman, a picaresque, Twain’s first novel, incidents, a memory of growing up in this place at that time, not plot driven, Hannibal, Missouri, a made up town, the Illinois shore, going downriver to Illinois, he’s not making a mistake, we are making some misunderstanding, I had eleven toes, the bottom right hand corner, a fictionalization of his geography, an island, a sandbar, detailed fantasy map, how the cave system works, karst topography, mid-19th century American stuff, Ballou’s Dollar Monthly, right after Poe and before Twain, Atlantic Monthly, contemporary fiction magazine, a bent towards the fun, An Adventure Under Ground by W.D. Harrington, blooming for the grave, a story about a treasure in a cave, afeared, no companion Huck Finn, a body that has been covered in limestone, almost Lovecraftian cosmicism, stalactite dripping, a robber completely covered in limestone, turned into a statue, externally fossilized, locked inside of a tomb of limestone, a waterfall, the treasure was the escape, The Beast In The Cave by H.P. Lovecraft, Becky Thatcher, turned into a troglodyte, a C.H.U.D.?, a ghoul, The “Minions Of The Moon” by George L. Aiken, highborn noblemen rapists, pirates vs. robbers, the red handed, why he has to keep going to church, foster mom, you have to be a nobleman to be a robber, ancient tropes from the penny dreadfuls, Robin Hood, a Saxon nobleman, a lowborn local hero, pirates raid the triangle trade, pirates of the Caribbean, ex-slaves, Our Flag Means Death, unrealistic fantasy elements, Stede Bonnet, the romanticism of piracy, be and do that, all the fantasies that Tom and Huck have, what we remember vs. the majority of the book, fantasies interrupted by real events, keeping the guns in the cave, haunted house, adult versions of Tom and Huck are evil, actual robbers, murderers, low class people, absolute pronouncements, he’s read the books, overhearing adults, getting engaged, what’s consistently proven, blood oaths, children always report on each other, Huck’s rich!, when the beans are spilled, when Sid rats him our several times, a tattletale, preying on his conscience, jailed unjustly, the trial scene, “stealthy” or “stealthily”, I stealthily left the river, an interpretation, hiding behind a log, making silent agreements, things that would upset stories, when the murder quarrel sprung up, graverobbing, hidden agendas, through Tom’s eyes, protecting their own, strange dynamics of adults, male adult role models, judges, a source of awe, the senator isn’t 25 feet tall, a prize for excellent trading, an excellent businessman, so Twain, we’ll draw a veil over the rest of this, the meta-materials, that blue covered bible, Gustave Dore, that book didn’t exist yet, pre-Civil War, Mart Twain was in the Civil War for a brief period, when you read Mark Twain, using these racist epithets, this is not a racist book, the low class people use the n word, nobody but an injun, everybody who listening to this, the lack of racism with regards to blacks, one half-breed in this book, he’s about to name Injun Joe as the murderer, escapes into the wilderness, revenge, free range, whatever, free ranging, greatly disappointed, she thought of him that way before, a hanging crime, testifying against a murderer, move towns and change your name, all sorts of crazy things we can’t imagine in our society today, missing kids, a known murderer escapes, casual and expected daily beatings of children, it is unbelievable, historical fact, if this were a fantasy novel, corporal punishment, distasteful as a reader, conflict, love, punishing for the good of his soul, spare the rod and spoil the child, Sid breaks the sugarbowl, refuses to apologize, her conscience reproached her, parallel with Becky, the noblest lie, George Washington and the cherry tree, how interesting Twain as a man is, Stephen King’s It, sympathizing with children, not a trauma book, the adventures of not the travails of, Tom has Agency, very 19th century thing, a politeness/impoliteness contest, if you cross this I’ll beat your head off, two soldiers confronting each other, two medieval knights, some random kid, equal contemporaries, is Huck Finn a little older?, how old are these boys?, a timeless age, not older than 12, his interest in Becky, a kiss, chivalrous love, no vestige of sexual attraction, a wife, girls are yucky, he’s too old for that, Tom gets it, Huck’s not there yet, what are girls good for, when you’re a high class robber, Huck Finn doesn’t hate that idea, when Becky and Tom are missing, they’ve run off to the cave to have sex, they’re dead, between 9 and 12, how much death is a part of life, orphans, drowned in the river, stabbed by a half-breed in the graveyard, he’s so funny, they trade everything, a rat on a string, you can swing it, weird superstitions, incantations, spells, step on crack you break your mother’s back, step on a line break your mother’s spine!, witches, pictures himself dead in great and loving detail, fantasize, when I’m dead people will appreciate me, part of the fantasy, I’ll show them!, coming back in the middle of the funeral, too strong a coincidence, bury a dead cat as a cure for warts, special spell, works great!, a kitten with one eye, my cat with one eye, a knife that doesn’t cut things, a doorknob, a piece of blue glass, I’ll trade you my tooth, if you were an alien, a little kid on the playground, getting clout, telling lies that could be true because they’re so authentic, complete lies all the time, not exactly hypocrisies, taking sweetmeats and apples is hooking vs. stealing a whole ham, piracy vs. stealing, what is going to keep Tom and Joe from becoming Injun Joe and the other guy, found dead, the whole town wanted him hung, they want to pardon him, eating bats and candles and dying of thirst, The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, black racism, the plot intrigue, figure out the throughline, the plot, the resolution, the description of how he’s died, the unspoken thing, the natives: where are they?, its sad but they were savages, a most horrible thing in this book, they don’t exist anymore, he’s not a specific kind of indian, what was the reason Nigger Jim left with Tom, he’s a runaway slave, Huck’s conscience torments him, that’s stealing from the owner, friendship or basic respect, a love story, a fellow human being, Hook vs. Huck, another pirate story with children, living in barrels, he’s Diogenes, living in a hog’s head, somebody adopts him, he’s a homeless kid who loves the lifestyle of being homeless, all the other kids admire and respect and wish they were him, he can swear and smoke, he doesn’t have to go to school or church, no chores!, grotesquely and lovingly described clothing, the seat of his pants is empty, ultimately respected, good at tricking people into doing things, the famous fence scene, completely free, he had to do this he had to do this, I’m way more free than he is, I have to have a job, he gets money from his parents, childhood psychology, fantasy reality, beautifully and classically, three or four sequels, Tom Sawyer, Detective, League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, timelessness, anywhere and anywhen, he understands kids, one of the best books ever?, a very good book, so American, easy to fall into, completely immersive, Paul was a kid again, the world through Tom’s eyes, adult insights, “work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do”, a classic for sure, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a more “important” book, Huckleberry Finn has a greater standing, a mighty theme, Moby-Dick, autobiographical, To Kill A Mockingbird, white knighting, look at it in its time, rewrite the book, maybe it is wonderful, it’s not one groups job to not write a book so another group can, who is To Kill A Mockingbird for?, who was it written by?, written by a white lady for a white audience, it’s a movie for a white audience, a book (and a movie) with a message, the message is don’t be asshole, help people when you can, that weird metaphor, killing of a bird vs. killing a rabid dog, a symbol, we don’t have anything like that in this book, an axe to grind, it has a huge axe to grind, more adventurey, much more memory, there’s no growing up, how do you end a book about children: they grow up and get married, Tom Sawyer, Abroad, bringing his experiences to this book, fun and funny, appreciating it as an adult after reading it as a kid, too young for Paul?, quite to the contrary, go back and listen to it, four different comic adaptations, caught up in the fence painting scene, in the trailer, a very personal memory, health problems, a stroke, visiting the hospital, reading the whitewashing scene chapter, she was crying, feeling nostalgic?, it moved her, a generational book, shared thoughts and feelings, thematically less important, a cliche, a trope, reverse psychology, why it is so iconic, it’s the trope maker, a lot of classic literature is dreck that got carried over, considered every now and again, “careful, Jesse”, she hid these signs with a forced gaiety, what her sex call a “good cry”, some things humans have that other animals don’t: language, thoughts that can’t be formulated into words, infer she wants water, yes and no, we are not just talking communicating narrative characters, we are also animals, moved to tears in a positive way, a funny scene, hanging out with Mark Twain is just delightful, Mark Twain’s relationship with Dorothy Quick, old men and young girls, a special empathy, a young person who thought he was amazing, he is his own character, a transatlantic crossing, a correspondence for the rest of his life, what makes this book so special, he’s mighty good at what he’s doing here, a pretty good narration, Nick Offerman, Mark Nelson, Becky Thatcher is barely in the book, quasi-fantasy, a Jules Verne spoof, across Africa, a long great writing career, delightful to read, The Curious Republic of Gondour, Robert A. Heinlein, Missouri boys, Heinlein’s cute not funny, wrote a lot of juveniles, Heinlein’s juveniles are 13 to 20ish, an octagonal writing shed, a podcasting shed, soundproof it from the dogs cows and chickens, John Greenman is pretty good, first novel thought to be written on a typewriter, a printer’s apprentice, super-interested in technology, inventions, running out of money so he wrote books, Tom Sawyer Abroad by Huck Finn by Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer is three people I know, he’s Becky Thatcher as well, Mark Twain is not his real name, a pretty good job getting in Becky Thatcher’s head, the very sympathetic Aunt Polly, how she feels, punishing for the wrong reason, that logic holds, Mark Twain thinking as an adult, an empathetic guy, he would have been a great dad, a troublesome husband, two daughters, A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court, Innocents Abroad, chunky, 25 hours!, how is this longer?, Grover Gardner, The Mysterious Stranger, what is existence really?, an unfinished collection, a supernatural character, No. 44, translated from the jug, The Mystery Of Edwin Drood, get Maissa or Evan.

The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

Classics Illustrated - The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

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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

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The SFFaudio Podcast #721 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe


The SFFaudio Podcast #721 – Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe – read by Mark F. Smith for LibriVox. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the novel (11 hours 14 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse and Connor Kaye

Talked about on today’s show:
The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver’d by Pyrates. Written by Himself., April 1719, the first English novel?, this particular style, it’s its own thread for reality, comic book adaptations, the 1997 Pierce Brosnan adaptation, kids versions, why its so popular, popular with adults and kids, it’s fantasy, a certain cozy and comfortable feeling, vicariously satisfying, This Old House, a whole television genre, buy houses and fix them up, cooking shows, making fun of some things or earnest?, some combination of both?, things they tend to leave out is how fucking evil and racist everything is, shocking, he’s a slave, then he is freed, then he enslaves other people, profits he’s making and gifting are slave profits, you got all your money in McDonnell Douglas, how christian you are, part of the appeal of this book, he builds a fort, the ultra-competent man in the Heinlein novels, largely paranoid and insane, gunports, a stockade wall, then another stockade, then another then another, the cannibals, the cave, the bottleneck, a legitimate fear, not really a legitimate fear, cannibalism in the Americas, of the catholic variety, I’m hungry for man-meat, people went a little chewy, cannibalism is a metaphor for slavery, 90 minutes, changed to a Scotsman, Pierce Brosnan wants to play the bagpipes?, not needed for the story, the actor playing Friday, that nice point in the late 1990s, sets, no CGI, lower budget, a comfy film to watch, a forever published book, still not a draw, a curiosity, so old, 100% sure it was public domain, most people don’t know how public domain works, if you’re in any doubt… Robinson Crusoe, it always sells, Maissa Bessada and Alex from Pulpcovers, The Martian by Andy Weir is essentially this book, shipwrecked on a planet all by himself, eventually rescued by space pirates, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, a character dressed in goatskins talking about providence, an Easter egg, nautical adventure books, islands named after Robinson Crusoe, the fame of the book, Alexander Selkirk’s island, a pretty great story as well, this fantasy novel vs. the reality of Selkirk, a picture of Crusoe at Alexander Selkirk’s birthplace, conflated into the same guy, Chile, double bang for the buck, fiction and history, remote weird islands, craters named after science fiction writers, the Moon, Mars, the same is true, French South Antarctic Islands, Jules Verne names, a Jules Verne island, the pen sure is mighty, transforming geography in the mental space, Tarzana, California, Edgar Rice Burroughs, mixing of fiction with reality, shipwrecked, sea-sick, marooned, cut out a piece of the world, make a name and a man of himself, a dog and 17 cats he’s murdering, horrible farming practices, the woman is a man, god gave him providence, a tiny version of that, puts his master’s foot on his head, a story going woke, getting his just rewards, Robinson Crusoe is such a horrible human being, he’s the hero, the mindset of the time, there were servants and there were masters, how it is, some people are superior, Frodo and Sam in The Lord Of The Rings, Sam likes being a servant, he’s dedicated to his master, the Gaffer, teaching him how to read, just a kind action, Upstairs, Downstairs, the same kinds of problems, disciplined by the head butler, make people know their place, she’s LARPing what she wants to have her life be, being half French, trying to be better than you are, an honorable servant to a good master, pregnant and out of work, sex out of wedlock, don’t talk about the baby I left there, you eat this lie and put it inside you, learn their Christianity, my master is a good master he only beats the lazy slaves, Australian society, working class people, don’t go to university, turning your back on us, a bizarre mindset, isn’t he a good guy?, he lies to Friday, a good movie and a bad movie, an unfaithful adaptation, we as adult human beings in 2022, friends and co-equals, master and slave, the master is kind to the slave, my name is Master, I lied to you, can’t we live on this island together, what the book gives us, a fantasy of the New World, escaping middle class life, July 29th, 2022, John Scalzi did a tweet: behold my fearful power, culture war nonsense, not even kidding, the white males are the lowest difficulty setting, a very John Scalzi-ism, lowest difficulty setting is about capitalism, the colour of the bandaid, crayons, if you have enough starting capital, what does he have in terms of capital, two fowling rifles, a brace of pistols, a cutlass, so much powder, a lot of tools, a dog, cats, bag of seed for fowl, providence and God, rice and corn and wheat, investment capital, this is a story about capitalism, using your, it’s attacking Jesse personally, a fantasy element to the capitalism, keep growing it and growing it, the ship’s captain, advice, tradeable goods, two gold shillings, silver, hides it in his cave, like a moral lesson about capitalism, like Monopoly, how to do great in capitalism, pro-firearms, Walter Matthau and Robin Williams, survivalism is now preppers, your go back, acronyms, bug-out bags, all fantasy, zombie shows, unironically making weapons to kill zombies, the instinct to like this book, a secret base, cups, a knife, some magazines, traps!, for when the zombies happen, nuclear war, make work, incredibly satisfying, prep harder, prevailing winds, its endless, a fantasy of their real life, accumulating capital, I did the work, Jack, handing out dispensations, he’s the hidden governor of the island, he’s playing god, he was born to it, a crazyman covered in goatskins, organizing fighting forces, legitimate lies, no pants, bristling with weapons, a paranoid madman, killing sprees, what makes them evil?, they exist, right in front of us they’re eating men, Captain Cook, put your head under my foot, they showed him for a while, lessons in the book, how you should act, written when he was 60, conduct literature, pamphlets on how to act, a crazy life, the cherry on top, Crusoe and his father, going against his father’s wishes, if he had just listened to his father, the happiest place in the world is where you are, struggle like the working class, dissatisfaction of the upper class, bad stuff’s going to happen, listening to your parents, religious conversion themes, raving religion, his only book, so thankful to his lord, investment properties, two surrogate sons, the British lord, the other he sends to sea, tops up the younger son, his conclusion is both, the sequel, the further adventures, and a second sequel, back to the island, India, in the Brazil, whose side I’m on, they’re going to do some slaving, the pirates are the badguys, in real life the pirates are anti-slavery, pirates are literally the good guys, they probably fart on you, team human, team liberty, everybody gets a share and their shares are equal, dispense justice, insight from this special book, obedient to god, obedient to me, tongue in cheek, done unconsciously, there’s no evidence, Voltaire, terrible adventures and learns nothing, life can be hilarious, made to suffer by God, a garden of Eden story, he brings capital, the cosmic joke aspect, when Eve shows up she’s a dude, you’re my slave and I can’t make babies with you, Swiss Family Robinson, a Canadian TV show filmed in Ontario and Jamaica, dangerous animals, cheetah stock footage, they build a treehouse, every episode they have adventures, more family friendly, Christians, action adventure for the whole family, a creepazoid story about a madman, whole sequence with a bear, Friday fights a bear, tempting the wolves, a true narrative, a conduct book, how to build up your capital, being born an Englishman, if you picture it in your mind it’s superfuckedup, fortress, his parrot, killing the cats, obsessively counting his stock of sultanas, so unrealistic, after 28 years he comes across some Spaniards, if he could even talk, sign language, speaking Latin, a complete freakazoid, its like he’s mentally ill, raving capitalism, what kind of art does he create?, his journal, no poetry, in line with Crusoe’s nature, everything is practical, constantly building, he builds a canoe, then another, invaders!, how much time he spent building this thing, for what purpose, for didactic purpose, this is how you attract employees, a manual for how to not waste your capital, the culture war is lets focus on the race, these people are inferior because they’re cannibals because they’re not Christians, bears in Brazil?, Columbia or Venezuela, take this horrible story of a guy who couldn’t get along with anybody, William Dampier, scientist/explorer, piratical daring do, avocado barbecue and chopsticks, breadfruit, first to eat flamingo and manatee, less of an insane monster Selkirk, a privateer, the ship is about to sink, a stubborn bullheaded guy, did Dafoe meet Selkirk?, the cats, tropical islands covered in rats, invasive species, a plague of rats, keep the rats down, goats, his clothes rotted away, 4 years vs. 28 years, he could barely speak, trouble forming sentences, what it does to your, solitary confinement, devastating, regained his speech, fairly okay mentally, never as happy as when he was solitary, a minor celebrity, recreate his lifestyle, institutionalized (without an institution), he’s a Heinleinian character, indomitable, Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, the horse people, Planet Of The Apes, so elegant and refined, the very noble horses, they Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos, taking care of horses all day, an attack on general humanity, a response to Selkirk’s situation, books in dialogue with each other, shipwrecked many times, increasingly improbably places (including Japan), 1726, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, what’s actually happening in this book, a story that everybody knows, a family that’s shipwrecked, the resultant product of that environment, a famous pulp hero, Tarzan!, shipwrecked off the coast of africa, ape mom, ape family, king of the jungle, talk with the animals, The Jungle Book inspired Tarzan, a guy from Europe who becomes the master of the forest and jungle and is super-racist, a competency family, an accumulation of personal capital vs. actual capital, investment in the new world vs. how to be a fantasy man’s man, animal friends, Tantor the elephant, instead of having a physical capital, a knife is all he needs, just a loincloth, a beautiful Eden like place, super-literate, just from reading his ABC primer books, in the minds of people in the times when Tarzan was being written?, Swiss Family Robinson with a kid, superman, more fantastical, bound to capitalism, Christian values, family values in a Christian context, Tarzan is religion free, being a superior being, wrestling with apes, super-muscles, the term that people hate, the phrase “noble savage”, this evil phrase, the noble part, they live like nobility, they don’t have horrible work hours, they have lots of free time, post-scarcity, doing art, totem poles, artistic endeavors, dance is not held in record as well, post scarcity in terms of food, building up capital, trading parties, very post scarcity, the leadership is these guys are old, they want to give us advice, not a top down system, move the lodge, how to deal with other people over there, slaving was done to do exogamy, not to accumulate human capital, build up stuff to give it away, a famous case of a European at Nootka on Vancouver Island, on the other end of South America, he gets the seasons right, a narrative you can imagine being a didactic popular book, they bookend the 1997 movie, you’ve got to write up Dafoe’s story, I must write this up, what does that opening do?, A Princess Of Mars, the movie adaptation, Edgar Rice Burroughs is the nephew, the effect of that frame, modern filmmaking theory, unnecessary, the fight for the sweetheart is not in the book, some reason to want to go back, Castaway is Tom Hanks as Robinson Crusoe, his Friday is a volleyball, product placement, Wilson basketball, FedEx, he makes art (puts a face on the ball), that framing device, the front of the book, pirates with a y, an advertisement at the end, not a true story, a true tale, when we’re watching the movie, a film camera looking at a guy reading a book, the conflation, to remind us this is a not a real story, maybe that’s the point, Daniel Dafoe is just a photocopier, slightly bizarre, a good editor would have chopped it out, a fan of Dafoe, essential to the film, kill their darlings, there’s no logic to it, good and stupid, an overturning of expectations, it kind of fixes the book, why are you doing that book, to make money?, play, who wouldn’t want to be Robinson Crusoe, be scared of cannibals, less racist and less Christian, random passages from the Bible, a religious ecstasy, changing names, Crusoe’s name and Dafoe’s name, a German Brit, Eurotrash headed to South America, dispense justice, very redeeming, the Prodigal Son, hat in hand [but hat full of jewels], the ending of The Odyssey, killing people, he sees his dog, he sees his slave, treated well by his wife, a bad slave, killing spree, about colonialism, a very interesting artifact, a product of the mindset, [manifest destiny], all of this stuff was made for us, we are the stewards and also the owners, a slave rebellion in South America, the right to do whatever the fuck you want, a president who ran on war with Britain, “54-40 or fight”, the Columbia River, the Oregon Territory, the Hudson’s Bay Company, Columbia (a Goddess walking to the west with settlers behind her), we will take this last, we will make it manifest, from Ontario to British Columbia, most Canadians live near the border, wrapped up in these phrases, what made Canada look as it does, Canada is defined by the existence of the United States, eastern states are natural borders, British colonists, nominal British control, no treaties, a slave rebellion in Guyana, sugar or rubber plantations, the seigniorial system, overseas timeshares, group buy a piece of land, managers, the enforcement of their will, people are highly encouraged to invest income in the stock market, causing externalities without knowing about it, a slaveholder who doesn’t know it, AOC’s phone, “nice slave phone”, superannuation funds, fossil fuel, giving money to secure their future, you don’t want to know, you just want the money, a slippage between what people want and what actually happens, I like chocolate, employing slaves, make the prices lower, the slave beaters, bad business practices, this is justified, working as a prison guard, most of them didn’t have a trial, rich people don’t have this problem, slave labour, they were jerks because they were criminals, a slave becomes a slaver, the reports I’m getting…, charity money, educate the natives, god says charity is good, did he hate being a slave?, Pocket Classics, Meanwhile I began to think deeply, who am I?, who made the world?, 1823 slave revolt, “Bachelor’s Adventure”, “Success”, get rich quick schemes, absentee European owners profiting from slavery, the Demerara rebellion of 1823, 2 days, poor treatment, a widespread mistaken belief, Jack Gladstone, their church group, John Smith, the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, every property holder has equal access to the water (for shipping), we’re all working together, imported from another continent, it is all about human capital, people who’ve had it hard or easy, without the crayons, equipment and tools, not your skin colour, the natives are ugly, a prejudice that little kids have, actors who are objectively acting, there is no fact of the matter, when we get to know people, more handsome or more pretty, a face generated by a brain, getting hung up on the skin colour, the justification for how you became a slave, his job at the beginning of the book, these people were legitimately enslaved, this is not a stolen good, I did work to get it, a rationalization to the self, the enslaving processed happened but it wasn’t done by me, he’s not even thinking about it, a natural thing that happens, I am master, you are slave, a way to divide the working class (the poors), Apple and Raytheon, a technique to divide the working class: talk about race, they’re lacking capital, I could just take the bus, cheaper to take your own car, the time investment, a lot more time, time is money, times is capital, there are people who are racists, what keeps you from becoming a bookwriter, no time to do any art, hone your craft, a lot of leisure time, that noble savage thing again, extracting value in a different way, farming the sea, good returns on their fisheries, the externalities like we’ve done, shipping across the planet, kiwi fruit from Australia, nitrogen from Europe, a product of the unthinking capitalism, Scalzi’s point, American-centric, based on how things are in America, completely relative, different ethnic groups, exploiting one another, we’re feeling our way into this, May 15th, 2012, how life works for them, privileged, a very Scalzi sentence, your average straight white men, all the times slavery has happened in the world, one group of people marketing another group of people, North Africa, race is a modern thing, in the old days people didn’t think skin colour caused slavery, the temperature of the place that were raised, Egypt is warmer than Macedonia, growing to be lazy Egyptians, Varingian guard: lazy like these Byzantines, take prizes, to bring prizes home to sell at market to get rich, this one can teach my children, acquiring and bringing capital in, music and theater, get decadent, the obsession today is a technique to divide those without capital, their third yachts, uninsightful to itself but explains how we got here, reading something from 300 year hundred years ago, spending so much time in it, strange to us, squeecore is about reinforcing the elites, its okay to be the goblin emperor because goblins, gender neutral emperor or empress, transgenders for emperors, how about pirate ships?, why not that?, reading this book is a valuable experience, how did we get to the point we are, society now, hereditary nobility, wealth is hereditary, more hereditary in the past?, works his way up, at least equal to his father, a brothers, a landlubber, romanticism, go out and make my fortune, the story of the British Empire, go off to Canada or Australia or India, white privileged there, the taking of one’s own fortune from the empire, the silver had gone, he had to rub it to make it silver again, capital not being used, from middle class to upper middle class, not being profligate, don’t be the Prodigal Son, choose your marriage wisely, measure your money, insurance, providence providence providence, the luck of God, how come I’m the only one to survive?, almost nothing happens, because deus ex machina, Crusoe never reflects too much on slavery, talking about God on the island, charity, he delivered himself, the opportunities came, more than competent to meet the situation, the fortification aspect, his stockade is a prison for some mutineers, the book works better in the beginning than in the end, setting up the sequel, not the core of the fantasy, Space Family Robinson, competency porn, we can science the shit out of this, listening to disco, disco becomes his god, part of the capital he keeps on his shipwreck, comes to see the beauty of disco, really tapping into the core idea of what we like, the difficulty of being castaway, living outside of and within society, the fortitude, Dafoe: a human triumph story, Swift: a human foibles story, horses are the only thing of value, the nobility of the horse, people claiming to do science, putting energy from the sun into cucumbers and extracting sunlight from the cucumber, ridiculous experiments, floating above and dropping their shit on people beneath them, a hilarious guy, women: don’t fart in front of your man, don’t romanticize marriage so much, a very thoughtful reasonable thing, you both have work to do, marriage is work, how to make Irish babies for dinner: A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift, a reputable friend in America, its going to make everybody rich, are you serious?, yes, I’m serious, trying to convince you of its rightness, Lone Star Planet, everybody from Texas, Texas sized planet, supercattle and superbourbon, inspired by an H.L. Mencken essay from the 1920s, Prussia’s special court for government officials, the punishments were worse the higher up the chain you are, murdering politicians is legal, a law of taxes, a slap on the wrist, a very Texas book, so American, The Malevolent Job Holder, pull his nose, cut off his ears, how vastly more attentive he would be, how polite and suave, vain fellows, brilliantly remembered, a dozen such episodes, the jails bulged with his critics, a cauliflower ear, a black eye, a scar over his bald head, political appointees, specifically for politicians, this will keep government small, the libertarian Prometheus award, a magazine column, growing corruption in government, how primitive societies made fun of people who wanted to lead, armed society is a polite society, the Uvalde case [the Robb Elementary School shooting], arresting the parents, an instinct to not cede the authority of violence to incompetent job-holders, they might get fired and get a job in a neighbouring town, who is going to arrest them?, power imbalanced, the sequels, a hefty book, to capitalize on his success (ironic), one of the secrets, reading very old books, capital from Jesse’s grandparents, comics, leftover capital, all really good books, an infinite number of public domain books (not really), sits on a shelf for thirty years, the capital is available, sitting around in a house that Jesse had access to, people listening, I’d like to read Treasure Island, usually older than Tarzan, Moby Dick, Poe, decades of accumulated wisdom, whatever book that came out this week that somebody got a Hugo award for, maybe it’s going to be a classic for the ages, thousands of fiction books every year, not too many, read old books you’re more likely to get a profit from it, accumulated a lot of brain capital, human development, edifying, make yourself greater, instruct or improve someone, moral or religious knowledge, uplift, to improve someone’s mind, we are edified by great books, a rip-roaring book, they start copying and making fun of him, 300 years later people still doing it, 300 years later, 4,000 years from now, direct brain stream, 2 robots arguing on other planets, still be able to make fun of ourselves and Robinson Crusoe, he’s such and asshole, I’m glad we met him, why is he the hero of this story?, more books that are lifts from Robinson Crusoe, nautical themed, lists of books, Jesse feels proud of himself.

Robinson Crusoe - illustrated by Walter Paget (1891)

Robinson Crusoe - illustrated by Walter Paget (1891)

Robinson Crusoe - illustrated by N.C. Wyeth (1920)

CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED - Robinson Crusoe

Pocket Classics - Robinson Crusoe

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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

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The SFFaudio Podcast #675 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Jetta Of The Lowlands by Ray Cummings

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #675 – Jetta Of The Lowlands by Ray Cummings – read by Richard Kilmer. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (4 hours 5 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Evan Lampe, and Will Emmons

Talked about on today’s show:
a serial in Astounding Stories Of Super Science, Sept – November 1930, The Girl In The Golden Atom, The Diamond Lens by Fitz-James O’Brien, antisemitism precedes other forms of European racism, 600 stories, avoiding Cummings, full of shitty writing, the assistant to Edison, Huxley’s lab assistant, learned science from Darwin’s bulldog, science science science vs. invention, very pulpy, not awesome pulpy, filler, why is it this long?, the reading doesn’t help, the setting is interesting, is the setting that interesting?, it should be, a South American country, ecological disaster, bandit planet, a dull read, why pulp gets a bad name, the characters, a terrible book, acknowledging an error, how do you know?, should Ray Cummings be canceled?, not interesting enough to cancel, the years have canceled him, for those who managed to struggle through the audiobook and are now listening…, reading from E.F. Bleiler, science fiction and weird fiction, Science Fiction The Gernsback Years (page 87), entry 298, economic espionage and intrigue, 2020, north of Puerto Rico (dry sea bottom), Nerita, almost any word you can think of is a village in India, the National Detective Service, a lowlands bandit, mercury smuggling?, Spawn, Debeer, the ending is predictable, pure adventure, super-radio, light rays bent by magnetic fields, the lowland concept, more on this economic relation, a thug of the powerful state, colonial setting, there to take a child bride, Harry Turtledove, Down In The Bottomlands, set in a dry Mediterranean, a geographical lesson, where are the rivers, the seas, the lakes, what does this do to the rainfall, radioactive mercury, just a gimmick, its filler, get out from under Hugo Gernsback and get out under John W. Campbell, uncontroversial, I want you to think harder about this, getting tied up every few pages, a western movie serial, helicopter/airplane, secret gear, he fights science pirate, going to the kernel of the concept, better Ray Cummings, Phantoms Of Reality, different worlds at different vibrational wavelengths, you go to a weird little planet and weird little things happen, dies 1957, not able to adapt himself, about 350 1945-1942, 750 stories in all, a whole bunch of awesome concepts, three or four interesting ideas, like South America, an enforcer of empire, Jetta’s not even sexy, half mermaid?, she’s illiterate, when did the seas go down, a mercury rush, no Indians at the bottom of the sea, no displaced mermen?, what caused it?, one story and one book, Til A’ The Seas by Robert Barlow, a last man, pretty well done, H.P. Lovecraft helped polish it, the imagery is beautiful, Jack Vance’s Dying Earth, Olaf Stapledon-y, set at the bottom of the ocean, one of the biggest writers of the period, Cornell Woolrich, read him because you like tension, H.G. Wells, E.E. Doc Smith, the action sequences of Star Treks, lots of beams, wrist controls, they just invented force fields, Scotty trying to invent force fields and warp drive during the battle, Ted Chiang, Larry Niven, a lot more like Stanley G. Weinbaum and a lot less like John W. Campbell, the deGernsbacking, there was no sense that the reforms were needed, make me a serial out of it, why pulps get a bad name, Buck Rogers style serials, everything’s weird and there’s a lady and he needs to adapt, Flash Gordon, the slicks did it with essentially Superman’s origin story, Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie’s When Worlds Collide, the exact same plot as 2012 (2009), everything is cliche, a Wonder Woman fetish person, the electrodes on the skin does it for Will, he’s getting a little tingle, that black knife, if it had been 1 hour long, somebody other than Ray Cummings, we learned something, there’s a reason he’s receded, what made pulps disposable, fiction magazines are sort of gone, alternate history, time travelers bring Kalashnikov to South during the U.S. Civil War, Adaptation by Mack Reynolds, how bad John W. Campbell was, a communist getting purchased by a fascist, a red brown alliance, not actually a fascist, Black Man’s Burden, Samuel Delaney is not a John W. Campbell writer, ornate?, do you believe a man at his word, he vibes with Mack Reynolds, colonial Africa, not trying to praise the white man, deep in his dementia, more New Wave than science fiction of the kind Weinbaum was doing, competing theses, a think piece that doesn’t and does resolve, a goofy concept, chill out for a few generations, the Aztec level of civilization at the time of Cortez’s contact, the Italian city states (late medieval early modern period), the Pedagog, state socialism or free market capitalism, the power goes to their heads, the natives run them out of town, a planned economy vs. a free market economy, it argues with the idea that only American style colonialism is good, productivism, forces of production Marxism, the natives appreciate, we’ll consider joining you, the capitalists and the socialists team up, free nations, science fiction writers for an against the Vietnam War, Howard vs. Lovecraft, the origins and the results and what it means for human nature, barbarism vs. civilization, Robert A. Heinlein, is barbarianism our natural state?, competing in the same pages, this story is my argument, we’re after mercury and its being smuggled, why?, don’t care, the only woman at the bottom of the well, that’s why I’m going on this adventure, radiumized!, the Star Trek, Kirk on a motorcycle, Red Matter has nothing to do with science fiction, not idea struggling, what did Evan say about this story?, contextualize it for us?, empire maybe, Wizard In Glass: Dark Tower 4 by Stephen King, an agent of a declining state, fantasy Mexico, a 14 or 15 year old sexy and brave character, the concubine of the mayor, a frontier region secretly in rebellion against the Empire, cool Stephen King stuff, criminal frontier full of bandits, smugglers, science pirates!, lots here about technology and the state, Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by James C. Scott, a letter, Ray Cummings should stay in Ray Cummings’ grave, a Lovecraft explainer explainer, explaining Lovecraft to his or her liberal friends, Lovecraft Mythos explainer, this phenomenon, dig up the bones of a guy who was dead before their grandma is born, The Painful Threshold: Why We Can’t Stop Flogging Lovecraft’s Dead Bloated Corpse, why Lovecraft Country is good and Lovecraft is bad, fox spirits, a new Netflix series with a Henry Kuttner and two H.P. Lovecraft stories, Graveyard Rats, Cool Air and The Statement Of Randolph Carter, Guillermo del Toro, missing the class analysis, Bobby Derie, Jesse has never met a racist reader, what was his cat’s name, hahahah, at the end of the serial of Jetta, the Invisible X-Fliers, October 1930, 2021, the Anti-War Department of the United States of Department, the defense department, mechanical invisibility, many men, great scientific discoveries, a new combination of older seemingly impractical knowledge, steal all the right stuff, making the inefficient efficient, almost no role in the book, bending of light rays, the cloaking device from Star Trek, the Martel Effects, two real kinds of currents, pseudoscience technobabble, camouflage style invisibility, Jack London’s rip off of The Invisible Man, Discover is Star Trek and Star Trek is science fiction, warp drive, not totally void of ideas, spore drive, warp drive, transwarp drive, transwarp conduits, the journey to get to the story, The Devil In The Dark, the last of her kind, mining some shit that doesn’t exist, silicon based life form and can we exist with a native population are two radical ideas, mind melds aren’t real, “NO KILL I”, Konglish, bringing in the Klingons again, bringing in the Romulans again, as if Spock is a traitor, who cares about Romulans?, there’s nothing there, we’ve dug you up we’ve had your cadaver trial and found you wanting, she liked to look at pictures in a book, I don’t know about this reading stuff, he’s black (with no skin and a republican too?), Todd McFarlane, blew up the comics industry, too obvious?, no secret keys to the name, a Volkswagen named after the character?, designed to be disposable.

Jetta Of The Lowlands by Ray Cummings

Jetta Of The Lowlands by Ray Cummings

Jetta Of The Lowlands by Ray Cummings

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