The SFFaudio Podcast #857 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Ben-Hur by Lew Wallace

The SFFaudio Podcast #857 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Ben-Hur by Lew Wallace, read by Mark F. Smith (22 hours 49 minutes). The discussion includes Jesse, Alex (Pulpcovers) and Tom Pace.

Talked about on today’s show:
A Tale Of The Christ, 1880, Daylight Savings, fall for a story too good to be true, very embarrassed, no one will know how stupid Jesse is, integrity, feel contempt for, “determined to do his own research”, Robert Ingersoll, not a true story, sounds to good be true, agnostic, civil war union officers, Battle Of Shiloh, there’s no substance to it, an 1874 letter, too good a story to not be true, a giant apology book, you should believe in the Christ, an argument against Ingersoll, The Greatest Story Ever Told, The Ten Commandments, suffers from not having Yul Brenner, kinda similar, the guy he was raised with he grows up to hate, Jesus adjacent, if this was a book written 1000 years closer to Jesus, when they show Jesus it’s from the back, reaction shots, the deturion, so many emotions, no water for him, best performance on screen, the 1925 silent movie, the 2016, 4 by 3, the sea-battle, real triremes, bloop, the music, the intercutting, the chariot race, one of the greatest movie scenes ever, Mad Max II, chase sequence, spectacle on screen, coulour and ultrawidescreen, best not to bother, script problems, make it shorter, the poster, in the chariot leaning to one side, farther into the narrative, wins on one wheel, go up on two wheels, adaptations help clarify, why am I loving it, to Rome with his adopted father, pretty short for a Ben-Hur movie, Areus is not on board the ship, just kind of escapes, this is really important, a story about love of the Father, a theme, God, reaction shots, when people meet Jesus, pays him back, almost like Jesus is your best gay friend, caressing the body of Jesus, if you didn’t know it was Jesus, they’re not gay for each other, a barrier breakdown, one of the themes, he ultimately rejects his adopted father Rome, he rejects Judaism in favour of Christianity, a Roman villa, he does become a Christian, a fulfilment of his Judaism, I’ve left the religion of my fathers, a sect of Judaism, a Greek influenced sect, almost all set in Palmyra, he does race in Rome, a lot of time skips, works against it, everything that it is doing is very well done, how they condense the 23 hour book into a 4 hour movie, shortly after the chariot race, vengeance didn’t give him what he wanted, greater than vengeance, ties better as a theme, 5 years in the desert, no longer directly connected, in the 1925 movie, putting that gladiatorial training to use, they dump that, it is kinda wasted, the Judean uprising, Masada (1981) tv miniseries, Joseph For The Temple, a band of young men, a revolution happening, protect the temple, a militia, the temple burns down, can’t stop history, a slightly outside perspective, dig deep into the story of Jesus, a very well put together book, Balthazar, on a separate quest, the three wise men, almost like a parallel story, that connection, the brother story, you feel his betrayal in the movie, a little bit older, great actors, take him away, that sneer, arrogance, Heston acts the hell out of that, fury, betrayal, golden age of Hollywood acting, the heart of that movie, the heart of the book, overwhelming need to love Jesus, bestselling American novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, slavery is bad, Esther and her dad, Egyptian, a devotee back and forth, in the background the Moses story, a prince of Egypt, the name, the name Hur is in the bible all the time, that fictional line connection, a land captured by the Romans, explaining religion to Chinese kids, they don’t grow up with Christianity, the New Testament, stories about Batman, Joker, Riddler, Catwoman, Joe Chill, stay outta Crime Alley, the backstory, the batsignal, commissioner Gordon, Robin, you don’t have copyright, Spider-Man or Superman, a bunch of apocryphal stories, back broken by Bane, the other Dick, Nightwing, the non-canon stories, Iron Man’s story, whatever superhero, believe it like an adult, religion book club on sundays, a scene from that book, relevant to out lives today, in a different way, in a novelized form, action, betrayal, leprosy and healing, a lot of meat to think about, the premiere of Ben-Hur, Lawrence Of Arabia, Spartacus, based on true events, Quentin Tarantino shift of historicity, Christ Pulp Fiction, accused of being pulpy, in used bookstores, panned the book, wasn’t the best book, why are books so influential, in 2025, Gaza holocaust, Nakhbah part II, getting Israel happening again, Ivanhoe, The Count Of Monte Cristo, Sir Walter Scott, your family has been buried in a tomb, quest for vengeance, the Jew and his daughter, roasted over a fire by the evil Norman, King Richard, Robin Hood, like super-man or batman, Ivanhoe adds to that narrative, emotional change, back from a foreign war, to his father’s house, alternative girl, knightly towards, represents Romans, conqueror’s class, the opening of the book, etymology, how English has multiple word for pork, swines and pigs and pork, also about slavery, huge in the South of the United States, offered a good picture of what slavery was like, a swineherd and a jester, the Rotschilds family, the Napoleonic Wars, baronages out of it, defeated the ottomans, let’s have this zionism thing happen, Americans in favour of Zionism, Jews need a homeland, traceable back to Ivanhoe, Christians in the United States and Britain, prior Ivanhoe, positive descriptions of Jews, racism, racial stereotypes, positive racism, interesting, loving money, a heroic race, the Sheik Ilderim, played by a welshman with shoepolish on his face, a surrogate father, the history of these horses, stars in the sky, astronomy, arabic names, the mother of the horse, connected to his family, connected to Judah Ben-Hur, weird in 1959, Palestine, parallels the story, powerful but disrespected, a little bit like the Mongol trading empire, if you have a pass, get the khans against you, he comes across great in the book, especially in the movie, brings the arabs and the jews close together, semitic races, leaves his father, until Areus dies, becomes the heir, time with the emperor, the movie improves in some ways, before we got to meet Ben-Hur, 4 hours in, the Nativity story takes so long, where isn’t this biblically accurate?, how is it told?, second person plural, hey reader let’s walk over there, a palace in Antioch, a paragraph of description of what is not described, the book isn’t trying to push through to the chase sequence, doesn’t drag much, a magazine serial about the wise men, available separately, a cool series of stories, it became Ben-Hur, LibriVox, Jesse wasn’t raised Christian, Melchior, Balthazar, and Gaspar, the answer is no, basically the same, thought to come from this place, in scripture, assumed to be 3, the magic number, three chairs, three bears, three beds, three wise men, for convenience, adoring the baby at the same time, two separate incidents, makes the detail really vivid, had the effect, when Avatar came out, went to their therapist, I want to be a blue person swinging from vines, blue Tarzan, 90 minute movies, books were the immersive reality of the 19th century, between the book and the first silent film, huge chariot races live on stage, the medium has fallen greatly, the new media spotlight, totally play the fuck out of a Ben-Hur game, Ubisoft Assassin Creeds, collect tokens, the cutscene when Jesus shows up, then hair, your character’s face, the chariot scene, the galditorial scene, if a church isn’t trying to raise money, an immersive experience, the Message, render unto Caesar, ends the same way?, married with two kids, Egyptian princess, turns out he was jackass, no satisfaction, the race goes on, Masala, a very biblical thing, the competitive brothers in scripture, taken on Roman values, those are real, Roman values vs. Christian values, Nietzsche, slave morality, turn the other cheek, interacts in the modern era, times of conscription, conscientious objectors, into battle without a gun, an alternative way to go, really powerful to see unarmed people hit by police, makes them stronger, give them a pass, Nixon being a Quaker, not that kind of Quaker, deep into that, not a very funny joke, how many of the 13 adaptations you’ve seen, on YouTube, that Jesus stuff being born, shows back up over and over again, the thread that connects and reflects, the 10 other adaptations are The Fast & The Furious, sucessively sutpider, Point Break with cars instead of surfboards, DVD VHS combo players, a viscous circle, could be the same character, blonde Keanu, it’s all about family, hot girls and cars, Antioch drift, we love racing, suped up horse, can’t we have it all, join the FBI, that series becomes a cartoon, cars in space, becomes hot-wheels, Ben-Hur doesn’t do that, two videogames, PS2, Circus Maximus for X-Box, Chariot Wars, Blood Of Braves, big in the movie, not very big in the book, a big climax, another third of the book, movies and books are different, interior scenes are less good, unparalleled, Aureus, sees the rowers, attack speed, battle speed, ramming speed, all these sweaty men, pass out, a parallel scene, another test, this is the background for the Conan The Barbarian movie, killed, goes to a mill and become strong, a little bit of background, this particular rower, his body being symmetrical, why is he doing that?, he’s Jewish Conan, gets the revenge that he wants, loses the girl, being taken away, surviving slavery, coming into the full power, bloody vengeance, Conan has two dads, William Smith and James Earl Jones, snake dad, the body you have, that was me, I’m your father, almost buys it, Robert E. Howard’s Conan as a rejection of both the Roman system and a rejection of the Jesus path, Conan doesn’t turn the other cheek, he’s not duty bound in the same way, master mentality, inference in the book, he’s bought into the Roman system, the peace of his childhood, a brother to this family, why he’s doing that, adopted the Roman values, power is everything, I am the determinant of what is good and what is wrong, when he does it it is not rape, when a goddess messes with his head, The Frost Giant’s Daughter, striking, ultimately Robert E. Howard is not a Christian, never belonged to a denomination, generically protestant, Episcopalian, Baptist of some flavour, not sure about all of this, a great story, Batman’s cool, don’t buy the Batman merch, Superman, Indiana Jones?, gonna have to be me, being Batman, how many guys have been Batman, what are the notes that Charlton Heston committed, Judah Ben-Hur, portrayed 4 times, not all the plays and musicals, because it was biblical, printed and pronounced, Encylopedia of quotations, King Solomon, Ben means Son, Ibn means Son, The Thirteenth Warrior, William Wyler, Marlon Brandon, Rock Hudson, Burt Lancaster, Paul Newman, Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, the supportive slave, a gay scene, thought to be gay, in the closet, the sexiest man, women were very disappointed, The Vikings (1958), rotoscope for The Secret Of Nimh, two rats are fighting, Tony Curtis, Jamie Lee Curtis’ dad, generational, Michael Douglas, young people don’t watch movies, they haven’t seen Ben-Hur, on laserdisc, ultrawidescreen, Lawrence Of Arabia (1962), one of the best things in that media ever, the power of Ben-Hur as a book, Nativity scenes, they have fully adopted one set of values of this son of god, powerful arguments, through Esther, they’re all blending together, a parallel course with Jesus, a regular person (a prince), trials and tribulations, navigate through, a shocking thing, how strange the healing is, he healed a woman in a wheelchair, she had long COVID she’s feeling much better, uh-huh, more faith in Jesus, legitimately healing things, in the 1925 movie, passing the mother and daughter, an in camera tehcnique, a different coloured light hits them, an in-camera effect, red welts, red filter, the wounds disappear, it rains and the storm washes away their leprosy, pilgrimages, a huge part of what’s going on, ache in my shoulder, not for healing, people do it, sometimes things happen, very mysterious, theology properly speaking, the framework of Christianity, divine authority, perform a miracle, the reason the miracles happen is to validate their claim of authority, the loaves and the fishes, not like a D&D cleric, cure light wounds, to be able to forgive sins, I’ve seen him do these miracles, anyone there, a narrative testament story, someone’s account of it, when Jesus was walking the earth, different sets, Dead Sea Scrolls, what’s in the canon for Batman, is he really an alien?, was he raised in Smallville, Kansas town, Metropolis, not New York, not Philadelphia, buying into the story, look at the values he’s espousing, can you emulate those values, as cool as Batman, as independent as Batman, swings, beats up badguys, dressed up as a Spider-Man, what would Spider-Man do?, knows and understands, with great power comes great responsibility, the value set, mysterious ones, contradictory seeming ones, I come with a sword, Matthew 10:34-36, not peace but the sword, what happens to him, dividing people, not everybody believes turning the other cheek is the right way, love your enemies, crucifixes, Hero (2002) with Jet Li, separation is only one part, a transformative system, conjunction, hermetic philosophy, togetherness, Ecclesiastes, the meek will inherit the earth, alchemy, the union of the family, the rebus, a multiplicity, the combination then separation, discipline, the hostile brothers, he divides the house, Judah saved Masala’s life, the falling of the tile, what caused the tile to fall, the worst interpretation, added in zealots, anti-Romans, shot the new Roman governor, the sister leans on one of the tiles, Ben-Hur takes the rap for it, not God exactly, supervise the repair of the roof, Masala investigates the roof himself, he knows what he is doing is wrong and does it anyways, getting into Masala’s head, becomes wealthy, steals the fortune, works both ways, extortion, very mafia like, you pay up you pay down, why Joseph is taking his cousin/wife to Bethlehem, the Nazarene, small town Saskatchewan, the story for the background, a manger, a cave, 4 hour detail, ah ha, mm hm, the key to the success of the 1959 movie, in reflection to Ben-Hur, you’ve become Masala, I doesn’t like that at all, Jungian shadow work, why you something bothers you, Michio Kaku talking, you evil fuck, they don’t care at all, you evil fuck, be the opposite, almost irrational hatred, hatred for Masala, adopting the course of the Prince of Peace, attracted to the story, reflective of real experience, that doesn’t sound like The Prince of Peace, what’s happening in the story, the sister and the mom not wanting to be known to be alive and lepers, they love their brother and son, funny and very Jewish, God cannot be everywhere so he made mothers, suckled and swaddled, this guy in the garage, more hands-offish, a bicycle, you’re going to learn to ride, the god that is your mom, more standoffish father figure, same for girls and boys?, to the maximum extent, in the 1925 movie, when Mary looks at people, people really change, on that donkey, lifts her veil, Mary Pickford, a slow smile, a kindly look, swept away by this divine face, the melting of hatreds and false beliefs, how can we have this effect on people in a magical way, the attraction of seeing Christian charity at work, acting out their beliefs, in a narrative, why this book was super-popular, in the States, sales overseas, Gone With The Wind, Harper Bros. claiming copyright over it, you can tell the story of Jesus because he’s totally out of copyright, anybody can write about it, great ambitious books, the Left Behind books, rapture books, very popular, Tyler Perry, Dollar Parton is a billionaire?, Dollywood, a subset of black people, why is he in this movie, he’s massive, a certain subset of people on earth, The Phantom Menace, podracing, the story of Luke Skywalker, betrayed by his uncle Ben?, there might be something to that, George Lucas as a hack, pick interesting things, steal from the best, everything worked, The Dam Busters (1955), they’re kendo swords, sounds cool, looks cool, what happens to Luke, dangerously overthought, Joseph Campbell Hero’s Journey thing, a mistake, free HBO, pirate television, as a young person, Luke is visiting Yoda, you gotta stay with me, you haven’t done your training, a selfish little twit, following the formula, the refusal of the call, the Campbell arc, forcing it on there, back to that falling tile, divided before that, the breech that breaks them apart completely, the straw that breaks the camel’s back, you’re not the man you need to be, my tool in my new job, one becomes obsessed with the other, condemned to the galleys, within the Conan movie, Thulsa Doom isn’t thinking about that little boy at all, for him it was a Tuesday, younger days, steel was the important thing, you’re not narrowing it down, make money, enslave the children, passes from hand to hand, a Vanirman, buys him from the mill, gives him training, pit-fighter, wins and wins and wins, precataclysmic Genghis Khans, to hear the lamentations of their women, living off of Conan, one night mysteriously, unexplainably frees him, the sheik with his horses, weird freedom, the snakes facing each other, now he’s got something to go do, that is another adventure, this is why these stories are powerful, the “save the cat” books, something very fluffy, let’s do heists, one last adventure, that last Indiana Jones movie, go find a really old book, Dial Of Destiny, we got what we wanted, we wanted more of the same, find other books, reading Robinson Crusoe, as you get older, some decision that we make, Fast And Furious 10, catharsis, go to the book, looking at my books, have you done an episode on them?, Gustave Dore, Pilgrim’s Progress, Thomas Merton, a fantastic book, a philosophy, read the old stuff on the shelf, take a photo of it, thrift shop, a book or two a week, two things, The Eternal Savage, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Recalled To Life by Robert Silverberg, The Tissue Culture King by Julian Huxley, son of the science guy Huxley, Edward Page Mitchell’s The Tachypomp, a time traveling clock, The Senator’s Daughter, a Chinese-Vegetarian party, 1879, a nutzo story, everything about it is science fiction, Return Engagement by Margaret St. Clair, freedom, The Eternal Lover, inter-equal, unfrozen caveman, that Pauly Shore movie, Encino Man (1992), Mark Nelson, Nu son of Nu, sabertooth tiger, Tarzan’s in this one, primitive man against, comely cave-woman, the volcanic horizon, Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf, Cora, wild primeval wolf, bourgeois values, carefree elusive Hermoine, the year we’re on?, Steppenwolf, cowed and comfortable, severe dysfunction, thoughts, alternate realities, if people really want to do it, 1877-1962, a possibility of actually doing it, a show where nobody’s there, this amazing ai thing that just happened, google assistant, google lm, generate a podcast discussion of it using ai voices, in real time, it’s not bad except the analysis is crap, NPR voices, that’s a really good point, unbelievable how good it is, kind a scary, it uses a bunch of tricks, makes us question our everyday lives, rhetorical tricks, make it into a Dr Seuss poem, really great insights, Ben-Hur into an epic Dr. Seuss poem, a lot of text to process, 2 followers, so I met this guy, Arrius adopted son of Arrius, WWII in tweets, a great gag, too obscure, in the 2016 movie, played by god, Morgan Freeman, he’s a moor, the Gladiator 2 movie, in reflection against Gladiator (2000), a grudge against Rome, the plot of Gladiator 2, worthwhile, ships in the arena, mock trireme battles, Maximus’ son, the kid from the first Gladiator movie, Blood And Sand, Spartacus, a prequel, kept going on, goes through that cycle, adopting the Roman mentality, the morality of Roman excess, Batiatus and Xena, so good, so evil, Lucy Lawless, act the hell out, sleaze paperbacks, you killed my family, should I take pleasure in this, rebel against Rome, the war against Spartacus, no super-natural elements, the servile war, happened multiple times, more sexy time, consequences for it all, silent, research and fun, trivia pieces, the score, a chunky book, riding bicycles around the set, The Fall Of The Roman Empire (1964), El Cid (1961), Christopher Plummer, Richard Burton, girls liked Cleopatra, Where Eagles Dare (1968), super-smart and the opposite of evil, the podcast out tonight: Gentleman Prefer Blondes, huge at the time, her personality as we know it today, she’s nothing like that as a person, she plays that character for the rest of her life, the book is not a curse, the movie is a curse, Jane Russell, at one point Marilyn Monroe pretends to be Jane Russell, supersubversive, everything she wants in the end, innocently conniving, be a book reader, Skype is going away, a daylight savings day.

Ben-Hur

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #502 – Triumphs Of A Taxidermist by H.G. Wells

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #502

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Triumphs Of A Taxidermist by H.G. Wells

Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.

Triumphs Of A Taxidermist was first published in The Pall Mall Gazette, March 3, 1894.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #814 – READALONG: The Fearless Benjamin Lay by Marcus Rediker

Jesse, Will Emmons, and Evan Lampe talk about The Fearless Benjamin Lay by Marcus Rediker

Talked about on today’s show:
fellow creatures, historian who fails to read, big long subtitle, “The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist”, his thesis, thesis proved, a revolutionary abolitionist, disrupting existing systems, I think slavery is bad, moral arguments, centuries after, Fredrick Douglas, big long excuse, don’t worry, doesn’t have many sources, well sourced book, the one book that Benjamin Lay published, Quaker records, newspaper accounts, maybe met Voltaire, knew the same guy, a figure for which there is a fair amount, describing every inch of the portrait, not a first hand account, major quibble, promised a dwarf who lived in a cave, not a cave, Will’s household, a science fiction fantasy podcast, not Evan of late, The Many Headed Hydra, Villains Of All Nations, Madagascar, Pirate Enlightenment by David Graber, the other enlightenment, pass the whip, not ducking, a preamble, a lot of people read science fiction the wrong way, they think it is about space stuff and people who live in the future and that’s not what science fiction about, science fiction is about ideas, and when it isn’t about ideas it’s not good science fiction or it’s just like an entertainment, Evie in the title, what’s the percentage chance, last man on earth, a joke science fiction, maybe 7 or 20 or 50 pages, dealing with some idea of science, physics, geology, chemistry pretty rare, when you stray away from that, leads you naturally to mystery, Sherlock Holmes, deeply connected to science fiction, about perceiving reality, history is like that, holodomor, does it have the story in the history, backed up by evidence, gender and sex, reaching back in time and making a connection, goes into the future, making suggestions about human nature, shoot Jesse with a phaser, you and Rousseau, I’m just in it for the lols, Ray Bradbury, mostly connected to childhood, obsessed with how did we end up here, specific parts of America, Ohio, America as an idea, not a phenomenon, most people don’t read, all the shaming, a powerful reader, it was important to read this, talking about the just produced play, a play about Mr. Lay, he attended too, mostly about Quaker politics, mostly attacks Quakers, Quaker records, beefs with various Quaker churches, around the edges, services of other denominations, listen and disrupt, a real shit disturber, wrapped up in Quakerism, the English Civil War, Gerrard Winstanley, Book of Revelation, William Blake, the diggers, seekers, New Model Army debates, an important chaplain, a man named Dell, apocalypse, important to our own times, radical Christians, ultimate confrontation, ruling class of England divided, things seem possible, we’re in this crisis, what crisis are we living?, the 20th century crisis, falling rates of profit, smell that around, globalization, the fall of a huge empire, some kind of feudal system, youtubers, the 17th century crisis, climate change, declining birthrates, Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century by Geoffrey Parker, post-war liberal order, China, Russia, “rogue state”, Putin’s gonna ride over on a bear, creeping towards, two little wars going on right now, Israel killing Gaza and Ukraine, not many men left to fight it, that’ll decline your birthrate, college in the 90s, graduate school in Fall 2000, a class on globalization, Francis Fukuyama, how quaint, the end of history, Battle of Seattle, 1999, Zapatistas, China joining the WTO, impute a singular idea, trick people in the west, Jesse is the most grounded of you guys, studying Mao, just a workin sailor, Mao was just a librarian, a war against the Japanese, all undergraduate, not interested in the paperwork, there’s always a level of academia sniffing its own farts, mainstream media, people of a certain class, what the academics are telling us, controlling the popular narrative, making trouble in his own church, this guy is important, making people talk about him and his ideas, living the virtues he claims to think are important, lays out people who have made counterarguments, general theory of how things work, bottom up, history from below, the personal aspect, this dwarf guy is a lot like Evan, vegetarian, an anarchist rather than a Quaker, he didn’t learn his learning within the church, to be the radical he was, living in Barbados, mistreating a thief, he came to his own revelation, he used the church as his vehicle of disturbance, hoping Fred would be here, religious thinking, Jesse can’t submit, if you’re a Quaker you don’t have to submit, as a child you have to go to church with your parents, how this institution works, holding the threat of hell over people’s heads, hell and temporal punishment, slave holders should be put to hard labour, the Puritans, the Methodists, rebellion against the church of England, E.P. Thompson’s The Making Of The Working Class, a lot of power in religion, it has gone away largely, 17th century Quakerism today, grows out of rebellion against the mainstream tradition, compared to Socrates, Diogenes, living in a pot, making friends with animals, making you impure, if you’re bitter you’ve probably been eating toads, he was a troll, he had some juice, Alexander, get out of my sun, serve him some chicken, I’m your servant Benjamin Lay, he’s a hobbit, doesn’t wear shoes, Socrates’ argument with religion, he’s treats these as forces in the universe to be understood, seems to be a religious zealot, the best way of being on Earth, he helps them kill himself, Benjamin Lay isn’t martyred, canceled a few times, he didn’t have any kids, she was 41 when they married, also a little person, ladies make nice more than guys, the women like Benjamin more than the men did, he was cute, a marginalized person, trying to convert people to the best way to be, his message is meant to be a universalist one, the records are all Quaker focused, these people took records, abuse a word, Christian ontology, understanding of the nature of reality, gotta get back to Eden, insufferable, speaking on behalf of the benign creator of the universe, a little more milquetoast than that, George Fox’s counterrevolution, colonizing project, associating, like a Mormon community today, he has the same values as we do, not a Richard Nixon Quaker, “friends”, Cornel West, a disarming technique, disingenuous sometimes, going along to get along, if he was alive today, spinning his own cloth, making his own shoes, he can’t go to Starbucks, red mollusc shells, vegan, honey was his sin, drank milk, the secret there is it is religious, not a codified religion, body purification, vegetarians are very out of fashion now, Gandhi, liberation from colonialism, liberation of enslaved people from their slave masters, wear vegan shoes, abuse of humans, and animals and bad, you’re bad because you’re eating meat, riding horses, flax, he loved his sheep, severing our relationship to our animals, clothing, meet, love, eat, a good connection we have to animals, unconscious grazing animals, not even gathering, just grazing, they have no baskets they’re naked, a concept not totally explored, the lamb’s war, during the English revolution, libertarianism dot org, a science fiction novel set during the English Civil War, the Baroque Cycle, the King was appointed by God, 18th Brumaire, the colours of the revolution that came before, man can make history but, deists, self-determination, genocide, free Palestine, from the river to the sea, Genocide Joe, a meaning, the word holocaust, bombing not burning, getting very literal, dip into the Book of Revelation, convince people within his own church, what other language would he use?, Quakers seem nicer than some, fewer slaves, involved in the slave trade, make other people do work for you, the relationship with alcohol, got a pass for selling alcohol, in this religious mode there is a lot of abstaining from things, veganism is not a political movement, an economic shift towards servicing this group, banning meat, the animal liberation front, setting off nail bombs, Nelson Mandela was a terrorist, people willing to do crimes, do violence, seems legit, freeing pigs and they ate a guy, we want to eat them and they want to eat us, let them fight, powerful mammals that eat both meat and veg, the love wallowing, will get as fat as you let them, get pretty feral, in favour of the megafauna, a period of crisis, Bryan Alexander tweeted climate change, apocalyptic thinking, a lot of electricity around here, they’re expensive, it’s all a sham, if they really cared about climate change, the Nordstream Pipleine, fighter jets flying over Ukraine, the cynicism of the ruling class, all modelling, modelling what the future is going to be like, it never works, Alien Nation TV show, George Fransisco, predicting horse-racing and football games, too many variable, how important fear is in controlling people, what if the communists take over Vietnam, is that’s what’s happening, liberation from colonialism, try to stop horrible things, the fear factor, fearing God’s judgement will be on you, how god will judge us, any reply?, 17th century crisis, decreased growing seasons, it wasn’t planned starvation, bad weather for a little while and incompetence, people don’t build bridges properly, people do all sorts of terrible things, that’s a planning crisis, people making mistakes, squirrel away enough food, read Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything, very different narrative, temperature shifting, people are moving around, lots of reasons, the Sahel is expanding, supposed to plant your garden in May, now earlier in the season, April, fruiting plants, the systems we have now, dealing with lots of human beings moving around, dignity, beggar thy neighbour, immigration?, a factor in climate change, 1.5 degrees Celsius, killed a third of humanity, Tokogawan Japan, the Thirty Years War, unless you have no atmosphere like the Moon, by telling them facts, why would they stop, find out what’s true and act as best you can, El Salvador, do they have a bad government, very innovative things, crime is way down, meetings that are all filmed, independent prosecutor to investigate all of us in this room, a bitcoin economy, investing in bitcoin is not the plan, unable to daily transactions, debasing the currency, things getting more expensive, becoming less affordable, the populists wanted to devalue the currency, lower interest rates, we should be having jubilees constantly, how to get that to happen, always a bad idea, why would China want a cheaper RMB, pouring that money into the hands of people, mortgage length, being a gold bug, unfuckupable, we can’t just go out and find more gold to dig up, it doesn’t send people to the Yukon, a standard for trade, uses to many electrical cycles, Greece’s problem, whatever will be beneficial, show me one doing a good job, what is the benefit of switching to bitcoin, their bitcoin wallet is not seizable, where’s my quantitative easing, El Salvador, people moving out of the United States, where are they moving to, El Salvador, Costa Rica, cost of living, many Americans have moved to Canada, people are looking for better lives, where’s your stat for that, Belize’s currency was pinned to the USA, let’s help people and not hurt people, essentially just the gold standard, not an external commodity, taxation, tariffs, a form of taxes, forced labour, voluntary labour, buy war bonds, people would take their savings, unconvinced by, giving up your monetary sovereignty, many other countries don’t, isn’t that interesting, isn’t that another way, many countries use the United States the US dollar, a means of transactions, to promote exports, push employment in China, deficit spending, who is made the whim of these actions, affecting many people, University Of Central America’s public opinion, a successful experiment, it makes you independent, gold mining is very toxic to rivers, industrial gold mining, electrical cycles, causes global warming, coal, wasted cycles, people play games, it can’t be regulated, ban it, this is officially banned, it’s like torrents, data between computers, we’re doing that right now, China is a worker’s state, build socialism over the next 50 years, bitcoin within its borders, some Chinese man is kicking a dog, should a worker’s state be able regulate its currency, a stupid question, you cannot ban it, if we turned out all the computers and internet connections, an impractical idea, it’s stupid to question, Jesse’s favourite government, the B.C. government is pretty good, nobody is perfect, some is way worse, [Javier] Milei guy in Argentina, why would china want to ban bitcoin, it’s an alternative, a fiat currency is a good idea sometimes, get the good results, waving my hands too much, what’s BRICS going to do?, their own Euro?, officially banned, Cuba has three different currencies, trying to fix problems, North Korea has a big neighbour, you can only do so much, Cuban pesos?, good things and not bad things, less censorship, a climate crisis, you should pay attention to the climate, cynically selling, another Stephen King story, 11/22/63 by Stephen King, Isaac Asimov wrote for Gallery, now just a porn website, a bunch of essays about the John F. Kennedy assassination, all deleted links, at what point are we all going to agree it was just the CIA, what people say in school, Jesse got in trouble, looking at her apple watch every few minutes, drinking from her Starbucks, too much nudity in some piece of art?, some sort of religious offense, annoyed, just be careful, all above board, our beloved comrade Benjamin Lay, the scholarship in this book, historical evidence and how we use it, Christopher Columbus, a historian made a claim, Columbus started the first transatlantic sex trade, facts that historians collect, Rediker is incredibly careful, Columbus’ journals, condemning the Spanish treatment of the Native Americans, this is the author’s claim, this is the evidence we have, interpretation, what makes history fun, understanding reality, a claim: President Biden is demented, we can document stuff and ask if it is a valid claim or not, All Slave Keepers Apostates, why did he leave his printing company’s name off of it, this guy was really important, one of the first Quaker dwarfs to really shake things up, a biography of Warren Chase, a religious nut later in life, free labour, making a more socialist argument for equal distribution of land, a pro-free love book, arguments against marriage, the model would be this book, when people write biographies, three volumes on Lyndon Johnson, H.P. Lovecraft, the challenge of a book like this, even if the claim is overargued, when he’s speculative he’s very clear, it becomes a little repetitive, a commonplace book, could be read backwards to forwards, reading Philip K. Dick, maybe Philip K. Dick had an autistic son, in a story like Progeny, something strange is going on here, latest Heinleins, it’s going to be the trial at the end, the dad had a basketful of money, I want a spacesuit, Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men In A Boat, Kip is probably Kipling, same ideology, stories to understand reality that aren’t about kings, what battles were won what alliances were made, semi-important, an interesting cross-grain, more about spiritualism, a dark path to go down, a traveling lecturer, spiritualism, utopian socialism, Wisconsin, homestead exemption, women and black to have the right to vote, personally upsetting, people are getting tricked, they wanna get tricked, a good chunk of humans, everything can be explained by history, harbinger of the Occupy Wall Street movement, 2011, an occupation of the Wisconsin state capital, a huge protest movement, slabbing, you take a comic book, a vhs tape, and put it between plastic, ridiculous and odious, everything is becoming valueless, when the new money comes, Weird Tales, December 1928, buy some meat or veg, that’s a radish sir, silly and amusing, more difficult to get scans, protected from rain, do they fill those slabs with nitrogen?, study deeper the process of slabbing, for some purpose, widely distributed, when the servers go down, the richness we need to be focused on, that’s how we improve our lives (and also land reform), another speculative commodity, alienation of just being a worker, bitcoin speculators, what creates value is labour, a medium of exchange, we demand trade in that product with this dollar, the scarcity in my car’s gas tank, bitcoin has no inherent value, at virtually no cost, all become gangsters, we gotta fight where we stand, personal reflection, somebody on Facebook, take personal offense, enjoys collecting old magazines, quality of copy, that “objective” standard pinned on the front, legit, small potatoes, a dying breed, a bunch of old white guys with white hair, not interested in the preservation of the hobby, collecting as a strange phenomena, comic book speculation, the rate of profit to fall, new investment properties, the art world, a big scam, these comics and pulp magazines have stories in them you can read, money laundering, you shouldn’t be upset, if a mink breaks into your farm and kills a chicken, rethink the concept of farming, when all these dudes die, warehousing, 300 books, we’re lucky to have what how few copies we have, drawing a copy of this, the next ship, and we found it in that city, very good at limiting his claim to what is known, people still talking about him guerrilla theater, anachronistic, he’s good, and so should Evan, a useful contribution, plainspeech statement about doing your homework, ye doing ye homework, ye should read a book on bitcoin, end of midsummer, Podkayne, Stranger In A Strange Land, the longer version, Farnham’s Freehold, then we go wild with Number Of The Beast, 2010, an expanded version, a trad sized, small sized but new, Ace, more on sex, Smith’s sexual revolution, a woman seducing jubal, all good, not good, I’m sex him up, the ending for Podkayne, restored original and the editor’s suggested one, the few stories I skipped, Puddin’ was the prototype for Podkayne, feels like a juvenile, frozen fetuses, younger sister frozen longer, indefensible, vocal minority, the fascism, you go do the math for your homework, natural deductive logic, symbolic logic, sounds good, completely useless, New York, general semantics, that’s bullshit, history of moral philosophy, the controversial part, a vague memory of Heinlein supporting the Vietnam War, Michael Moorcock, “Starship Stormtroopers”, rationalization, why they call him a fascist, Joseph Campbell vs. John W. Campbell, Mark Neocleous, anti-communism mixed with anti-englightenment, a little to friendly with bad ideas, theories, the reason you want voters to be veterans, makes sense in a certain way, warhawks who went to war, grunts, in cognitive decline, this war is different, mainstream media, the next six months will tell, bottom up focus, Star Trek is a navy, Miles O’Brien got demoted, there’s no infantry, there’s no marines, we’re going to focus on the grunts, ascends the meritocracy ladder, the movie, goes deep, fascist propaganda, not much in the book, almost no propaganda in the book, naming the ship Rodger Young, Fort Currie, M.I. by Rudyard Kipling, nice and short and illustrated, both worth reading, a little more imperialistic, Gunga Din, from grunt’s POV, slip himself into that mode, the navy is a bunch of braggarts, from a Pacific War, reinvade the Philippines, the navy did that, what the army was doing in new guinea, intermilitary rivalry, unsuccessful in China, 80% of the military budget, 1941, Will to do more history stuff, throw some non-fiction in once in a while, literary non-fiction, The Aeneid, The Iliad, The Odyssey in reverse, ends on a really nice noir note, so much good stuff coming on LibriVox, The Green Queen by Mike Vendetti, Margaret St. Clair is really good, a man who somehow does science on his girlfriend, a few weeks ago, a ton of Ace Double d-176, 131 pages, Mistress of Miracles or Puppet of Super Science, his atomic puppet was out of control, his brain child became a full grown Frankenstein, Viridis, radioactive world’s atomic shield, destroy the girl he loved, under another title, copyright, nobody gives a shit, pulled down even tho legit, arbitrary and evil system, mostly a short story by her, she’s a girl, she comes at things from a girl POV, she was witch, she liked gardening, a weird nudist California, raised dachshunds, informed by science fiction, a girl angle, Heinlein is trans but not a girl, would he have the rainbow flag in his bio, thinking about it a lot, wishfulfilment story, The Inhabited Men [copyright renewed B00000306198], she’s usually creepy, Meem, these people are immortal, immortality, they live again, standard twist on immortality, a cultural practice, a cult following, no kids, estates, pretty grabby, movies really propel that shit, Asimov’s reputation is in massive decline, dude, it can’t, The Fun They Had, you can have a tiny little influence, Margaret St. Clair will have her day in the sun again, Agent Of The Unknown, why is Ursula K. Le Guin hugely popular, compare her to John Brunner, when he was alive, like Octavia Butler but longer, fashionable to read black people, breadth of work, people aren’t as obssessed, a hoighty toit, Omleas, why liberals like playing with it, couple of randos online, 10-15 tweeters, stories published in men’s magazines, men’s magazines are full of riches other than boobs, a feminine perspective, Leigh Brackett and Andre Norton, in decline by the 50s, not as popular as you think she is, a Raymond Chandler novel?, August 11, looking at colleges in the midwest, North Dakota, scary?, strong science program, weather and geography, culturally, Fargo, pirate sister?, other sister, too much property, financial aid, a house that’s almost paid off, parent’s house, disown your daughter, no parents, no inheritance, readopt her, North Dakota wants people to stay, please don’t go, good schools, top 20 universities, until WHO?, The Loved Dead, The Journey of Joenes, The Not-World, Attitude by Hal Clement, The Triumph Of Evil, pirated audiobook of the Mad Max novelization, audiobooks of the damned, recorded in his car, Why?, What?, Huh?, When!?, Gentleman Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos, illustrations as well, LibriVox, she’s a whore but she’s not explicit, you love her, she’s so funny, not stupid, not smart, everybody in it is stupid, an amazing comedy and very entertaining, racoon situation, around during the day, food available, a nursing mother looking for extra food, feed rats like Benjamin Lay, feral rats, in this very house, pet rats, tumors, it’s not humans that are cruel, the universe that is cruel, we live in hell, we have to make some compromises, not so glorious, predator eats prey, cute animal videos, extraordinarily picked out, videos of lions and people together, apex predators don’t usually go after each other, what cats can do, less domesticated, tigers, wolves, think less about wolves, equally present, fear controls people, coyotes, wary rather than concerned, fighting against fear, fear generated in order to control you, the biggest task, what if works so well, what if it is a tumor will, how they milk the moneys, you need that insurance money, open up a clinic, when you’ve got a lump, a passing thought, what if you get COVID will, many people died from COVID, what if the climate gets bad an people are unable to eat, getting worse, mitigation measures that line the pockets of people that are not you, current set of political leaders, fear is the way to do it, being the supposed incompetence with regard to the “invasion” at the border, get rid of the physical wall, new “biometric” border, in the digital business that never ends, a subscription to microsoft word, offer you servers, the CIA loves that, the NSA loves that, milk the cow, only cream for those in the know, ads in the feed, bussing, a legit fear?, not exactly what they want, also voting doesn’t matter, all hand ballots, counted electronically, scrutineers, the political parties are worried, stand around and observe the elections, human eyes, poll watchers, in the room?, Rhode Island, putatively non-partisan, retired people interested in helping democracy, so fucking boring, there’s no scandals, prevent communication of election results, because Ontario and Quebec, livestreaming, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, you are very bad, used to shut down the phones, if your legitimacy comes from democracy, a weird combination, vote strategically, any blue will do, prevent Trump, ensure Trump, Joyce Carol Oates, literally a professor a Princeton, not a political science professor, crazy and crazed, you have to vote and strategically, swing state, brainwashed, cutting off voting after 55, because cognitive decline, have you met these tweeters, less diseased when younger, Stephen King, drinking too much, too much cocaine, what was he angry at?, he’s come to love big brother, a Red Sox fan, a normal New England trait, Pet Semetary, a major cultural touchstone, names of actors, bookwriters, in the storehouse but not near the front, a less trustworthy voter?, swing in different directions, not vote, BC’s government is a lot better than it was, a toll on a bridge, get rid of bad policies, no more MSP payments for anybody, means tested, making changes to pharmaceuticals, dental, a problem with Justin, as close as they’ve got to leverage, Jack Layton, a moral figure, the liberals are sad when he dies, beloved doesn’t get you changes, romanticizing leadership, big mistakes aren’t being made, is the response solving problems, “my team”, how you end up like Joyce Carol Oats, orange man bad, bad president, in terms of killing people, a numbers thing, renegotiated the free trade agreement, the copyright law, after NAFTA, it sucks, less stuff that can be legally archived, legacies, a freeforall, millions of things, an active estate or an active corporation, people want to share it, it’s just about keeping your treasure and trying to sell it to some corporation, become grabby, you’re sixty years old your dad wrote a story in the 50s, selling to Hollywood, sold a public domain story to Hollywood, the studio lawyers aren’t doing their job, Adjustment Team, Adjustment Bureau, there’s no money in books, bro, aborted abortion that was the Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams show, random pig people, some of them are unrecognizable, The Impossible Planet, a bersmirchment on Philip K. Dick’s legacy, his reputation, Screamers, Peter Weller smoking marijuana cigarettes, terminators pretending to be little kids, Second Variety, Jon’s World, two Doc Labyrinth stories, The Man In The High Castle sequel, his brain is too disorganized, George R.R. Martin big plan, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, strong opening scenes, he know how to pull off endings, as a ploter, his hour and a half sort of ones tend to be a lot of running around, the market is for novels, snobs, I read Hugo winners[novels], novelettes, snobbery, Mysterious Bookshop [Otto Penzler], incoming selections, big titles, paphlets with short stories, magazine, anthologies don’t get the love that novels do, collections, The Virginia Heinlein Estate, the 12 Heinlein Juveniles, sell them at Costco, massive incompetence, people are asking for them, those would be nice gifts to give, Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys, other things to read too, Tom Swift, $1400 for the complete set, riddled with typos, leather bound, shit covers, Jesse fact checking himself, $2200 or $4000 for the special edition, $1300 complete works, correspondence and screenplay, designed to do the opposite, milk the cows they already have, ebooks on Amazon, Mother’s Day, Heinlein fading out, mid-century science fiction, mostly by and for men, by men for boys, now for old men who have a lot of money, new books are for adult women, books in general, not just science fiction, some females read and some don’t, cultivate a group interesting in reading old shit, 2017, history for men, mainstream books, dad books, the YA getting published, adult women who like to be teen girls, 1.5K library, RAH’s fans are dying while we wait for the paperback edition, your herd is not doing well, very interested in what if we banned wills, after you die you don’t get to live any longer, you made claims during your life, you’re dead now, you don’t get to say what happens, rule people’s lives from the grave, focus on being alive, the estates for the estates, the Virginia Heinlein trust at the heat death of the universe, vague feeling we gotta help the wife, help the kids, what about the grandkids and their kids, a reactionary, supposed to be a slur, he’s a reactionary, the Jerry Pournelle book, if there was a revolution he’d be on the other side, recent Heinlein show, this doesn’t seem very fascist, a man of his time, some overlap there, he’s wrong about some stuff?, caught up on any word, opposing social liberation or reform, rightist, ultra right, blimpish, reactionary and radical, we operate in different intellectual spheres at time, communism is not left, MAGA communists, most people think it is left, personal freedom, do I think I should embrace personal freedom, we have to know our limitations, programmed robots that are self-programmable, gender dysphoria, is that a real thing?, a diagnosable thing, Dirty Harry, a man’s got to know his limitations, you have to know you’re unable to fly without a helicopter or jetpack, take hormones to get wings, feminine secondary sex characteristics, paint a mustache on your face, a female mustache, chemically enhanced, MRNA shots that, more [Ian M. Bank’s] Culture novels, change their sex at whim, Day Million, a post-human future, they travel to other stars, sorry, Paul, we’re not going to develop warp drive, where’s the evidence for that, the path to immortality, lots of counter evidence, Herland, fear death, don’t stop existing, more permanent, made no objections, stomp on your corpse, the community may object, fly here and kill me?, people getting conned, Weimar Republic days, pre-nazi-nazi days, no followup, Jackson Hinkle, a hormone clinic that got burned down during the Nazi period, lot of Nazis who’d gotten treatment there, a blue costume, he liked paintings and art, that’s not exactly trans, Ernst Röhm, gay Nazis, jstor, wikipedia, gay men under the nazi regime, officially ant-gay, exceptions, Netflixs, secret gay reactionary line of thinking, so-anti-gay because day, whoever smelt it dealt it, PUBG, a good way to interact with people not in Jesse’s intellectual circle, they died, blame other people for their deaths, sometimes legit, Old White Beard, speculating, he will type, an airdrop, crashed my airplane, he would have said what he was doing, blame is a really big mistake, avoiding responsibility and trying to fix problems, that’s not the way to win, stay out of the fight, maybe we go on to victory, a charge against being called a newb yourself, a long setup, an objective way of winning the game, it says on the screen, comparisons and strategies, people not playing the game to win, gain social acceptance, loser thinking, not good thinking, a reasonable point of view, people acting mistakenly, do you think blame is helpful to your life, a former employer, losing time on it, find out what the problem, was avoid that path, minimize that interaction, whatever current set of problems, Meg you idiot, what have I done?, now you sound like my therapist, how to prevent the milk from falling out, just an ice cube tray, low stakes, a carton of cream, burn the apartment down, just enough cream, in the blame game, resentment is something we should never have, how do we avoid it, avoid generation of resentment, can’t afford to have it be unpredictable, budget for that, earn or steal more money, cultivating behaviors that prevent resentment, expectations not fulfilled, what’s the opposite of resentment, being treated unfairly, you order french fries, enjoying my tea, they got eaten, mistakes were made, the bullet interacted with the child’s face, neurotic and consciousness, seems like you ate all the french fries, a big beef, am I resentful?, not as big a deal, a lot of myself in this short guy, makes trouble and annoys people, part of why he resonates differently, excuse me, give you my opinions about Trump or whatever, calling things out makes you unpopular, he liked books, down with Diogenes, public urination, normal dude behavior, how public is public?, in the public pool, for Jesse’s own well being, a hilarious situations, not say that, wait until after to tell one of their friends, tell their friend but not tell Will, a recipe for mistake, a lot of trivial conversations, shitpost in dms, jokes, more than at the surface level, I like her hair, that lady has nice boobs on this cover, #LegCling #HeadCLing, a wrestling magazine, a wrestling lady, articles about wrestlers, not exactly sex symbols, a realm culture, that culture was really interesting and very real, participatory, playing a coordinated tag game, wrestling, on TV, Gorgeous Ladies Of Wrestling, fun, how much C.M. Kornbluth have you read, hard to understand, very smart, The Advent On Channel 12, mediated through Frederik Pohl, they colabbed, if there is a guy who can present, this is not an August Derleth H.P. Lovecraft situation, deep collaborators, friends too, from a young age, Pohl’s memoir, tight in the 30s, how goddamn smart this kid is, didn’t live very long, 4 pages, this will blow your socks off. Money was tight in the land, certain bankers who sate in New York, let Poopy Panda up periscope and fire all bow tubes, cursed be the day, feature length cartoon epics, nabes, devilishly splice, flop negatives, lo these beast and birds are like unto us in their laughter, mountebank, Poopy Panda Land, sandbagged by thousands of catchpenny engines, a child of my flesh, Remember boy, his heart was sore, addle the heads of children five hours, in the book of Space Merchants, spherical trusts, Motivational Research boys, the little bastards, untalented, Otto Clod, a sex fantasy for the more precocious girls, a liturgy of opening hymn, to coax and urge, sore amazed, this is the bleeding end, flipped their wigs, an old animator, from Winnie the Pooh illustrations back in 29, and Ben Graffis fired him, let it be so, a special film, enhaloed, Poop poopy poopy, it is definitely a tv first, he did go to the bar, a great gag, Who sate behind His desk, capital H, Poop poopy poopy, holy gee this is awful, an operator of marionettes, Poop poop poopy, 36pp, to even understand this story, the Mickey Mouse club and the power of Disney, Disney Plus, the bankers killed our poor C.M. Kornbluth, machine gun, driveway of snow, called out, he cut straight through all the bullshit, what is this phenomena and what does it mean, Disney is alive and well and means nothing except extraction, Annette Funicello all grown up, cuttin’ it right to bone, this is not impenetrable, that’s funny, he goes on to do something with it, too smart for his own good, Idiocracy (2006), The Marching Morons, a powerful story, a dangerous story, misanthropy, went through some shit, see his friends slaughtered, the good war, mostly talk about the Nazis, one empire fucking around with another empire, what are we doing in Hawaii, or Taiwan, a little piece of Taiwan attached to mainland China, heat up a war between China and Taiwan, fuckin evil, people buy that shit, heatin the pan, but nothing’s cooking much in the bowl, so cynical now, just focus on Trump right now, grocery store.

The Fearless Benjamin Lay by Marcus Rediker

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #812 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Soul Of Man Under Socialism by Oscar Wilde

The SFFaudio Podcast #812 – The Soul Of Man Under Socialism by Oscar Wilde – read for LibriVox by Martin Geeson. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the essay (2 hours) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Evan Lampe, Will Emmons, and Terence Blake.

Talked about on today’s show:
the individual, therefore maimed, Martin Geeson, productions up on audible.com, some public property I can privatize, hundreds of contributions to LibriVox, almost all of it is poetry, about art, how to flourish with your soul, why Jesse likes Oscar Wilde so much, amused, a student for an hour, grammar, a deck of cards, images of various objects, leaves and bowls and roses, write a story in seven minutes using six sentences, a really good story, a king, a comb, and a snake, a lot of merit, “IT WOULDN’T WORK BECAUSE…”, a blind king who needed a wife, some tasty food, a mystery, there’s beauty there, Circe, Medusa, the missing card, works in many ways, no intended audience, central to the essay, problems as an ideology, that’s what he’s like, Oscar Wilde is also a fairy tale writers, an essay by Lovecraft’s wife, Commercialism: The Curse Of Art by Sonia Greene, she has the write idea, a case for socialism, the duty of society to liberate the audience, the audience for art, what the audience for a theater’s responsibility is, if the works of Shakespeare were presented as if new, Macbeth, counterarguments, long and rambling and strange, appreciated it, lasting impact, a good intervention, historically useful, by Wilde’s own metric, whether a work of art is useful or not, stories are incredibly central to human beings, society has a huge duty to the artist, he bends the stick too far, messaging the Che Guevara wikipedia page, Bill Maher, annoys in the right way, man can subsist under moral incentives alone, the new man, typical revolutionary, work 36 hours a day, student protests, what they’re protesting about, grieving, girl claims to be stabbed in the eye, shirt that says “Jew” on it, Che Guevara wasn’t, keffiyeh, huffington post, full of slurs, start drilling down, good or not, to tell a story that supports his point of view, we’re not socialists in America, a tenant that was talking to his landlord, the messaging has gotten through, we don’t live under socialism, everything is upside down, an interesting guy to read, in the context of a rich country, imperialist value chains that make British wealth possible, make a transition to socialism, socialist state builders in the 20th century, an immediate end to poverty, if we end poverty, through new machines, the William Morris book, News From Nowhere, a much more compelling story, whether essays can be artforms, designed to convince, an attempt, a try, not be prosecuted for your art, British vs. the French, a control of language on the cellular level, News From Nowhere is not plausible at all, how we got there, a pretty nice way, women do fabric art, men make wallpaper, an essay, his only political work, story is how people adopt, asked to teach essays, only the most insufferable people, the slandering of Che Guevara, A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift, undermines bad argument, functions like a story, within it are stories, best fricasseed or make a nice ragout, a series of plateaus, organized with a theme, crime and punishment, motivated by pleasure vs. pain, clusters of ideas, very Žižek in that sense, new paradigm, you can’t argue, counter-intuitive leaps, Terence spoke beautifully, agree entirely, very aspirational, quite beautiful, influenced nerdy graduate student Evan, do history, do podcasts, write it my own way, very juvenile about that attitude, the media, not just accepting the media’s interpretation about what art is, solipsistic, films and series, dumbing down, making everything consensual, why does popular art have to be bad, a democracy of individuals, ignorant schoolmaster argument, he’s in a knot, if this was the only thing we knew about Oscar Wilde, compare it to what happened to him, success and punishment, being publicly gay, physical punishment, a powerful lord, sent into prison, H.G. Wells, doesn’t get a sir, tried the wrong lady, royalty, it’s expected, previous conspiracy, a pretext for sending to prison, non-straight sex, Bill Clinton, he didn’t get punished for his art, lightfootedness, the Popes, the power of kings, a king with artistic sentiment, Voltaire, the curse of the public and their interest through journalism, successful, pandering to an audience, A Picture Of Dorian G[r]ay, a gap between, the abolition of property, the means of production, independent wealthy, a theme that’s in here, kind of, wealth and private property, Lord Byron, they’re not separate, he jumps around, you have to share your toothbrush, doesn’t really define it, the long section on how wealth is a burden to the wealthy, [Andrew] Carnegie’s gospel of wealth, that’s the legal system, entirely about private property, a warehouse is an amazing awesome technology, keep the rain out, books, pencil crayons/coloured pencils, keep your paper dry, personal property but not private, an apartment complex, no idea of transition from here to there, we got there somehow, this great possibility of free expression and individualism, he’s read [Peter] Kropotkin, crafts, automation, nobody should sweep, throw a fishnet into the water all day, quotas of fish, a serious problem with this essay, Will has intellectually warped himself through Marxism, the media does this says this, for what reason, what class do they represent?, the public’s ideas bad?, during the French Revolution, tear down the Bastille, all answered, this is not acceptable, a previous story which controls them, if that story is bad, suspicious of human nature, people progress, people change, how fucked up it was, starving peasants fighting for feudalism, The Third Revolution by Murray Bookchin, bottom up democracy, monarchy, liberals, Jacobins, sections of Paris, met in monasteries and churches, 1792/3, suppressed during The Terror, bottom up faith, Maoist epistemology, communists don’t make history, the masses make history, Wilde finds the masses to be repugnant, their condition, the rebel is good in some way, the thief, those who don’t believe the ideology, resentment is something that makes you ugly, living in squalor and full of hate, accept the squalor, more sympathy for the thief, you should be rebelling, it is right to rebel, it is right to rebel against reactionaries, Chinese factory worker be careful, the western interpretation, who one the Cultural Revolution in the end, too soon to tell, the Lost Decade, vaccination rates, two distinct periods, different factions, boring history, the developmental stuff, chaos, more chaotic than, Wilde’s views about what one’s duty to society is, volunteering to do more work, the barefoot doctors, is that so bad?, extremely useful, artists should be allowed to flourish, what the purpose of artists is, that’s why he’s wrong, all art has a class basis, to paraphrase Mao, the innermost kingdom of the bourgeoisie, who is the audience, the artist is the audience, onanistic, oppression, why this is not a great piece, art or light under socialism, giving you the feel, exactly contemporary, Christology, fun, religious group of people, what makes us so religious, is Wilde speaking to an audience that is Christian, he loves Christianity’s beauty, Catholicism for the aesthetics, Lutheran, the liturgy, aesthetically, a cultural christian, a slap in the face with a fish, Jesus, currently accepted ideology, before the socialist experiments, non-authoritarian, before Freudian type, pain and pleasure, very Nietzschean, robot slaves,

“For it is through joy that the Individualism of the future will develop itself. Christ made no attempt to reconstruct society, and consequently the Individualism that he preached to man could be realised only through pain or in solitude. The ideals that we owe to Christ are the ideals of the man who abandons society entirely, or of the man who resists society absolutely. But man is naturally social. Even the Thebaid became peopled at last. And though the cenobite realises his personality, it is often an impoverished personality that he so realises. Upon the other hand, the terrible truth that pain is a mode through which man may realise himself exercises a wonderful fascination over the world. Shallow speakers and shallow thinkers in pulpits and on platforms often talk about the world’s worship of pleasure, and whine against it. But it is rarely in the world’s history that its ideal has been one of joy and beauty. The worship of pain has far more often dominated the world. Mediaevalism, with its saints and martyrs, its love of self-torture, its wild passion for wounding itself, its gashing with knives, and its whipping with rods – Mediaevalism is real Christianity, and the mediaeval Christ is the real Christ.”

on the road to get healed somewhere, conversations with wives of Bath, a reflection of what artists are doing, a symposium of art making, by one’s self, music, one guy with a saxophone on a mountain top, pretty strong, his heart is in the right place, he himself wants his efforts to count towards social reconstruction, the overman is Caesar with the soul of Christ, one of his passions, art, science, politics, manual labour, craft and crafty, fishing, a self-help manual done right, come together in groups, very individualistic, kinda Ayn Randian, against business, against private property, against class difference, everyone a poet, as capable as him, been lucky, everyone can become creativity, more artists, better art, Roger Ebert, frustrated reviewers, easier to be a critic, snobby, Zack Snyder probably says that, why does he bloody show his movies, show to [Denis] Villeneuve and no-one else, a guy recording in his bedroom, stack of DVDs, free passes, free stuff, free audiobooks (that used to be expensive), becoming twisted and wrong, journalism feeding into bad behavior, cultivating an audience in a theater, utube is very big, hate bait, how to breed chickens properly, in that openness, feeling free to not have a popular channel, more ability to share, sharing is something he’s not fully thought through enough, so focused on oppression, the soul of man is art, whatever a soul is, why socialism is important, free us from the oppression of the property relationship, actual physical repression, the relationship is the oppressive thing, the freedom to comment, the freedom to review, if you don’t have your own printing press and your own distribution you don’t have freedom, mimeograph machine, the internet today, hard to find, the system is gamed against it, how bad google is, there but unseeable, virtually free to do that distribution, drowned out, ai art, an imperfect essay, handwaves a lot of this, the first line, we’re individualists in socialism, not making a program to get there, we’ll be freer individuals under socialism, we need other people to get us there, libertarian socialism, charity is the problem, amusing the poor, the accelerationist argument, the homelessness problem, people trying to solve, you shouldn’t do charity, the majority of people spoil their lives, he comes for the charity people pretty hard, this essay has such a humour to it, slave owners being kind to their slaves, let this outrage happen so the revolution will occur, in his back pocket, a program here, not detailed, it’s not for the masses, bourgeoisie cease charity, charity as a virtue, he’s for sympathy, for human feeling, otherwise socialism is going to be set back, it is immoral, the institution of private property, a personal program, under socialism this problem will no longer exist, places to organize, do what you can, Jesse might actually be right, Jesse is always wrong, a half sentence, the people who do the most harm, the charity degrades and demoralized, “Charity creates a multitude of sins.”, a hard argument, on French TV, presidential elections 30 years ago, equal time on TV, the marginal groups are marginalized even further, a Trotskyist, we are plundered, stealing everything from us, a star dancer at the Crazy Horse, stage name, as close to nudity as you can get, discovered by the head of the Crazy Horse, made her the star that she is today, the Marxist, I’m against charity, running for president to bring about the revolution, something sordid about this poor person elevated to stardom, patriarchal manipulation, charity vs. sympathy, property is theft, stealing $2 in the morning, Spider-Man should bite everyone to give everyone radioactive powers, with great property comes great responsibility, the logic of superheros, superheores are trying to stop the revoltionaries, Doc Oc, always some guy who wants to change things, Superman never zaps the president with his eye, judges shall not be impugned, questions in congress, happened for TikTok right now, you cant be super without lots of subs, sub-supers, The X-Men, homo superior, sympathy for Magneto, The League Of Evil Mutants, the oppressed group, the oppressed group, the oppressed individual, no one will have to seek approval, what’ll make somebody an elite under socialism, harvest more wheat?, an asian Soviet with a pipe [Semyon Nomokonov] who notched the number of nazis he killed on his pipe, 9 children and 49 grandchildren, not allowed to have open factions struggles, a war hero, a different sort of examples, Robert Sully Sullivan, played by Tom Hanks, whuffie, the congressional medal of honor gives credit to living people, Ulysses S. Grant, all the previous guys were all WWII veterans, you can’t give that status, Bush I, you’ve fucked up, can you have an elite, people’s who’s paintings you like, sweeps really good, tending to defer, a different kind of culture, this guy’s teepees are the best teepees, this collective, multiple elites, the stupid utube model, unbeleivable popularity, lowest common denomenator, flaming gold Ferrari, attract most attention for revenue, focusing on repairing fans (the things that you make you cool), Jordan U, why does he have 17th phones in his house, paintings on the wall of the warehouse, people who show off their rare book collections, Will’s greatest sin, scanners live in vain, scanner printer combo, the printer industry is superevil, Brother, Martin Geeson doing what Oscar Wilde is saying, unfortunate that Jonathan Weichsel doesn’t like Martin Geeson’s voice, the way to be popular, distracted by the whole socialism thing, a lot of people don’t get it guys, usually advertized without, its right in the first sentence, judging a book by its cover, talking about oppression, censorship on a basic level, people who can’t use words that they want to use, humanreadable, at symbols and upside down 3s, how much more could he say before he is thrown in prison, if the mood was wrong in the country, they chopped off the head of their monarch, restored the monarchy, Oliver Cromwell, if it weren’t for the Irish, Lord Protector, all cavaliers, now, a true leveller, entry points for people to grok things, start with what materials you have, making things easy for people is difficult, Martin Geeson is choosing interesting books, great voice, soul of an artist, valances with Sirius by Olaf Stapledon, the conditions of the people in England, under some social programs?, bankrupting the empire!, sold everything to win that war, the dog with no hands, the soul of dogs under socialism?, similar philosophy, an individualist quality, thinking together, working together, a particular novelist, Meredith, who that guy, Charles Kingsley, an immoral novelist, George Meredith, forgotten, didn’t have any science fiction books, just read Scalzi, The Three Body Problem [by Liu Cixin], The Dark Forest, Damien G. Walter, boycotting the book, the shows, why you have to do homework for this podcast, this podcast has homework, his sinophobia is facile and dangerous, too positive a view of the Cultural Revolution?, bad for science, the traitor to humanity girl, she meets up years later with the three women who lead the criticism and physical action of killing her father, privileged, before they joined the Red Army, able to better themselves a little during the Cultural Revolution, more complex than his propaganda, so empty, goes on and on, 2 hour things by him, you have to go to your death knowing that, did and didn’t, John Vervaeke, we need a new mythos, trying to determine what is in canon, you can’t do that unless you’ve read a lot, more of a media guy, an article, a list of all the women authors of science fiction not usually talked about, working through the canon, Mildred Klingerman, Margaret St. Clair, Judith Merrill, a great tastemaker, seems all right, writes really interesting stuff, leaning on make sure you get your diversity quotient in there, Madagascar science fiction, the same perspective, you can live in Bali, more about American literature, women writers and black writers, percentage, James Baldwin, first queer writer, Herman Melville, obviously super gay, if the stick is wonky, a qualitative judgement, compensating, black writers and asian writers and women writers, because he’s funny, being obtuse on purpose, Evan’s colleagues, eurocentric, teaching cohort, early modern history, too lazy to learn this stuff, we can tell the history of the world through European eyes, teaching world history, not just white European men, not about seeking out a quotient, not being ignorant about the world, people look for excuses not to read, because its propaganda, we all have to winnow, a bunches novel series ever written, Discworld, stuff without depth, not everything is showworthy, Tales Of The Gold Monkey, Indiana Jones pre-wwwii nazis, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century in the South Pacific, an ex-flying tiger, set in 1939, it’s impossible, no active duty until 1942, a hot lady in a hot tub talking to a nazi dressed up as a priest who wants to have sex with a native named Tiki, skin colour, sounds cool, what they called lived experience, their mom and dad were nice to each other, hung up on the wrong things, they’re all books, nobody talks about those, people need excuses not to read, Fearless Benjamin Lay, can we get more diverse than a Quaker abolition vegetarian dwarf who made his own clothes and lived in a cave, bend the stick to far against the liberals, what’s the baby, official commitments to anti-racism, why do you have a police state, the Deep State replaced Richard M. Nixon, the origin of policing after reconstruction, slave catching patrols, police hitting teachers, the philosophy professor being dragged off, sad but hilarious, I can’t breathe, she’s doing a callback, making an analogy to another situation, political correctness way of protesting, arrested and died, knee on the neck, oh you’re all right, fluids to make him calm down sir, heart massage, CPR, if somebody looks dead, we notice he looked unconscious, Evan is missing out all these amazing, give you you shittiest take, twitter is not good for Evan, talking about Reconstruction, the freedman wanted to be slaves again, quite good at governing themselves, Wilde in conversation with Mao, the greatest socialist intellectual of all time, something Damien G. Walter needs to read, Ursual K. Le Guin has a dangerous philsophy, The Dispossessed, not a lot of amazing art happening on that moon, a position of scarcity, post-scarcity, maybe Cuba has great art, musicians, health care, scarcity, internal production is not as efficient, a very small country, is Le Guin doing the same thing to criticize our man Oscar Wilde?, could be in dialogue, libertarian socialist, more liberal than anything else, attitudes towards copyright, for overthrowing the government, people don’t pay attention to what she says, near the end of her life, given an award, speaking about capitalism, a poem quoted in full on BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow had to take it down, The Master by Ursula K. Le Guin, the passing of knowledge and the mastery of tech, how to learn the slipstick, copyright in China, the argument that is always thrown against China is they steal patents/copyrights/trademarks, a serious problem, there’s a long story about the Tetris game, an ideological opposition to censorship, copyright is a form of that, Mr. Shitlib King, breaking copyright, not in favour of censorship ever, socialist/communist society, what’s the difference?, a communist society vs. a socialist state, a good place to be, philosophy of mugs, a really nice mug, spouse, a cute mug, bad shape for a mug, mugs should be functional, spoons, mug with hole in the bottom, a mug, an indigenous mug, made in an anti-imperialist country, handwashing, a mug is a device for delivering liquids to your mug, a cute mug, hence the drips, take a photo of it then get rid of it, emotional sentimental value, not broken yet, Mao would call that liberalism, use it often and carelessly, you should not be upset when it breaks, point in the direction, deception is allowed, the right shape, efficient, homeless guy who masturbated in the public square, Diogenes, u need a lamp, some onions, Louis CK, stoics, in a mugshell, one mug, thank you for everything, thanks for all the mugs, What Mad Universe by Fredric Brown, a novel, Lawrence Block had a book come out, a writer that Block appreciated, a way of getting into that relationship, a halfway important science fiction writer, a writer’s writer, Mack Reynolds, not his great novels, the fuckin system, after 1963 fuck everybody, copyright for 7 years, so it can be useful to multiple people, works in translation, a holdover from the imperial period, he’s cute, he’s funny he’s smart, a science fiction novel about science fiction, another case for the Baroque Cycle, interesting, long, as a long as a story needs to be, sometimes things need to be longer, this essay didn’t need to be 2 hours, why do we have long books, the cost of a credit, subverted, not why Stephen King writes long books, what censorship, he would never be censored, self-censorship, he’s not following the market, he’s 7 and a half feet tall, he’s not Spud Webb, most people who write long books, unnecessary sex scene, fetch quests, Evan went wild, a popular podcast, Geek’s Guide To The Galaxy, side quests, find the G.E.C.K., representing the game, defending it, The Stand, awkwardly updated the setting, the tone, this is here to sell more paper, he’s living life under socialism, he’s rich, people who are wanting to be Stephen King, writing novels, 7 sentences in 7 minutes, they’re wrong, you have to fill a certain number of pages, you have to have a cover, self-identify as a writer, not a real person, a class of people who aspire, doing a disservice by trying to make shorter or longer, when TV shows are about an hour are not confined by a hard number, when not helpful to the story it shouldn’t be followed, longer is better, big fat fantasy novel, wanted to live in that would, what Paul would say, room to breathe, he goes by instinct, develop a philosophy, make an argument, give me an example Will/Paul, favourite really long book Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh, doorstop books, a person’s whole life, a big Russian novel, wheels within wheels, Dune by Frank Herbert, a lot of plot, long for the period, every sequel by other hands, an important density in there, it isn’t room to breathe, it’s long because it has a lot in it, the Baroque Cycle, characters, packed with ideas, denser, despite being that long, the origins of capitalism, money, the scientific revolution, abolitionism, Anathem, Player Of Games, people who love Culture, don’t need Dune Messiah, bring Duncan Idaho back, that’s stuff happening, the guy has no name, the servant has no name, the lady who it is about has no name, ideas can’t exist in characterization, apple show A Man In Full by Tom Wolfe, an idea in it, military SF is more about gun polishing, ideas are central, fully explored in a short amount of space, the writing quality is less important than the idea explanation, the density, how many books I could read in the time I am reading this book, like Evan with women, build up the body count, women are the opposite of ideas, the people who like Dune too much, being immersed in the world, gets your juices excited, he isn’t heavy on ideas, The Colorado Kid, Mike suggested we do The Flitcraft Parable, a scene in The Maltese Falcon, chapter 7, like a fist when you open your hand, when processing it to consider it, Eric S. Rabkin, a really solid book, 196 pages, didn’t need to by 700 pages, Sam Spade is having sex with Archer’s wife, he’s one of the suspects, mysteries are an interesting parallel to science fiction, exploring our reality, in his rambling short book about the Flitcraft Parable, the length is appropriate to the idea, From A Buick 8, complain about his endings, life just sort of goes on, sets up characters as dominoes, eucatastrophes, shinings, the house forgot about its own boiler, not servicing fans?, intimate relationship with his fans, hurried to finish the Dark Tower, an old woman writing him, shitlibbery caused by a desire to please his audience?, Joyce Carol Oates, not normal for people to be liberals in our society, fucking suffer, can’t have a house, can’t have a wife, people are suffering, his fans are not all boomers, an Xer, Marissa likes him, it doesn’t define him, a 70s vibe, he feels the need to be relevant, comes off awkwardly, the Bachman book that was in a drawer, counter-culture vibes, hippie commune vs. the nazis, so not relevant, this old black lady, just show up, talk to the fascists, eucatastrophe happens, they’re mean and short, they have an idea and the character dies, The Running Man, Roadwork, Rage, The Long Walk, weary, just life, this oppressive thing the state is doing to them, questioning the purpose of life and why we’re here, droppin’ dead, a metaphor for life, an oppresive state, about school, the military and conscription, Carrie is nice and short, The Dead Zone, Firestarter on the backburner, in the zeitgeist, boomerness, what does Joyce Carol Oates represent in the zeitgeist, irrelevant Princeton professor, middle age guy, Killdozer, Marvin Heemeyer, Stephen King when still drinking, Thinner, gypsy curse seems silly, experimental in the 90s, the idea idea idea thing, one series, very meta, not like Hunger Games, a fast reader vs. a slow reader, you have to be in the right headspace, The Alleyman by Philip Jose Farmer, COVID doesn’t help, two boosters once, don’t accept injections unless literally dying, flu vaccine, now is the time to do Jesse’s epistemology, he’s a skeptic, have a police incident happen to you, it’s about that for everything, Sextus Empiricus, sense impressions, what’s a heap, suspend judgement, a lot of baby words, retweet a lot of far right things, show me one, nothing, heterodox, Jackson Hinkle, 1776 revolution, liberating Canada, absurdity, already captured, no need to invade, shampoo, how many of the words on the ingredients list can you pronounce, syllables, sodium lauryl sulphate, if your shampoo has more than syllables your children will have autism, putting all this shit in u, why do people do this?, a little discourteous, we know how long people have been smoking, spike it, most people who smoke don’t get lung cancer, that’s the weird part, a Philip K. Dick story, body parts you need to replace, if you can’t pronounce it why are you getting it in your body, there’s a lot of things I can’t pronounce, cancer too, NaCl (sodium chloride), end up in a whole bunch of cults you don’t know you’re in, dem vs. republican a cult, tribal thing, partisanship, demented tribal leader vs. demented cult leader, more cult like, Biden is in control, obviously he is not in control, reading the parts he’s not supposed to read, just defer to better him than Trump, against team bad, you should be against things that are bad, some sort of use for some shampoo, how an average consumer can know, a silly test, properly fund an independent agency that can check, it’s been corrupted, we’re left with the label, the Food and Drug administration is corrupt, Plato, you have feet, you don’t have the document in front of you, the documents exist, evidence all around you, assume corruption is the default, moms abuse, that doesn’t get us anywhere, there’s a mom over there, she’s doing, the shampoo supply is not safe, the stuff injected into your body, you have to buy food, flu shots, they don’t work, they’re full of chemicals, mercury, a chemical, salt is fine, know what the words mean, reading labels, margarine is not human food, lubricate objects, define mayonnaise, chlorine, basic chemistry, who put this shit together, something for sale, preservatives, calcium propionate, water that comes out of the faucet, no industry, there’s nothing, coast mountains, metal pipes (not lead), perfectly good to drink, bottled water full of plastic, advertised to, there water is terrible, the water in Taiwan, boiled water and bottled water, water dispenser, Coca Cola, drink the tap water, water are the ingredients, do what their parents do, who you probably assume are corrupt, maybe his graduate research, follow all his footnotes, bit the bullet, you could question everything, reasonable suspicion aroused, start questioning, bad puppy, cook that puppy, shot that puppy in an ethical manner, we all have to give up our inquiry, big flashing warning signs, recreate all these experiments home, this tub margarine has been sitting in my fridge since 1981, it doesn’t rot, food rots, alcohol is a poison, designed to kill things, sugar doesn’t rot, this is an industrial lubricant sold to us as a replacement for butter, seed oils and vegetable oils, a food product, you can eat industrial lubricant, your mom gave you butter and it seemed good to you, butter is really good for you, you need fat to live, asparagus fats, is this important, she makes a good point here, anything that is not super old, animals, see if they’ll eat it, when set of grandparents, switched to butter, poison that’s for sale, not human food, the coal butter, that’s what shit is, carnauba wax, employed in food grade polish, making food out of it, see you on twitter.

It Wouldn't Work Because by Jesse

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #796 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Cave Girl by Edgar Rice Burroughs

The SFFaudio Podcast #796 – The Cave Girl by Edgar Rice Burroughs, read by Gerald Moe (for LibriVox). This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (8 hour 18 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Maissa Bessada, Will Emmons, Alex (Pulpcovers), and Cora Buhlert

Talked about on today’s show:
serialized in All-Story, 1913, whatever, The Cave Man, 1917, a single book in 1925, Dell Mapback, can we all guess where in the book where the cave man begins?, a chapter title, end of Part 1, went on an on, dizzying, when the Cave Girl takes over the plot for a while, recover the jewels, I guess we’ll leave, the family shows up in the plot, less interesting, here’s the question that will spur anger and debate and make rage quit, classist, racist, or other ist?, really hated Germans too, WWI had not started yet, he likes the French, nasty stuff in some of the Tarzans, classist, no matter what, that race is bad, our heros always have to be Thurston Howell III, the doctor from Boston in MASH, literal count or royalty, every fuckin book, immortal warrior, an officer in a country that doesn’t have an official class, Smith-Jones isn’t even his real name, David Ogden David Ogden Stiers, reestablish the aristocracy, these are my peoples, dallies with primitives, “the main character is a mommas boy intellectual with weak muscles who washes up on an lost island full of cave folks – he disdains muscles, but there is a nude cave girl with a nice smile, so i think i know what’s gonna happen”, contessa in a cave, pirates, The Cave Contessa, just Tarzan, gender flipped Tarzan raised by cave people, rich white boy becomes man in six months, tuberculosis, his cough, the excuse for visiting the South Seas, Robert Louis Stevenson, non-specific cough of death, miserably died, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, Robert E. Howard’s mom didn’t man up, king of the Cave People, doing your way for 1000 years, sharpen a stick, we’re not living in caves anymore, do some fucking farming, limited wars are over bud, obey the king, we slaughter our enemies, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, At the Earth’s Core, the Yale, cannibalistic lesbian pterodactyl people, Waldo Emerson, the advanced peoples, he a momma’s boy, a living father?, wealthy widow, not good enough for her very precious son, luckily he preserved her chastity to impress her mother, hot for him for years, we have to do this properly, turned them all into versions of themself, Nadara, full title, illiterate, sign the book, what’s sign, literally a cave woman, a high grade wife, French countess, brown skinned, that’s the tan, their babies will be white, the white goddess, wearing a skirt at the end, Son Of Tarzan, runs off into the forest, girl rescued from arab slavers, she was French the whole time, no no jesse you stupid fool, of course she’s a countess, Ralph Waldo Emerson Smith Jones, important characters, not of the upper crust, phrenology, sloppy skulls not good for learning Shakespeare, a series of villains step forth, I’m Blow Blow the killer, Flatfoot and the other guy, I was going to kill you a minute ago, I’m a cave man, 20 minutes left, fast friends with a random pirate, what kind of pirates are in the middle of the South Pacific?, 3 ships show up randomly, blackbirders, trans-pacific pirates are not a thing, grow copra all day, cannibals are very romantic, yes, coincidence and pure fantasy, Monster Men, think’s he’s a creature, a girl he thinks he’s worthy of, his genetics are not monster men, genre classify, definitely Edgar Rice Burroughs, anthropological science fiction, the anthropology is really bad, a patriarchal society, women and caves are property, cartoon cavemen, what hunter gathers were like, The Old Way by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, The Origin Of The Family, Private Property And The State by Fredrich Engles, take issue, we’re gonna shoot your dog, do it straight up as a comedy, don’t change anything, the book is funny and fun and totally ridiculous, repetitive, he did no research, he could have researched, Typee by Herman Melville, not a single dinosaur in this book, a lost island, the fantastic element, all the coincidences, Caprona and Pellucidar, not a lost world, just a plateau in South America, did we get the coordinates?, FadedPage, degree, lat 10 south long 150 west, deliberate blanks to obscure the guilty, historians maintan the true answer is lost, Nagula, the earthquake and the monster in the woods, laziness?, pure Burroughs, internal mythology, the only other culture we get, a sewing kit for the sewing bag, sewed a costume for himself, grandma’s grandma remembered the earthquake, adopted parents, the lady in labour, that’s their culture, I am the strong one, King Kong at the end, the whole island sank, an atoll tho, all that’s left after the earthquake, just south of Hawaii, eat raw fish, a whole Mexico south of Hawaii, not a volcanic island, caves, a steaming volcano, used to be volcanic, how did you like the book?, fun without being great, you should check that out right now, The Mad King, lesser Burroughs, the one with the gorgeous Michael Whelan cover, fur suit, what colour is her hair, should be raven haired, if it’s not raven its not right, just a stick, a very very short spear, he’s got a shield, they throw rocks at him, cudgel, hide over a wicker frame, fire harden it?, cave men are very soft, the dialogue tree is very minimal, I’m wearing nagula skin, the morality is very simple, lesser Burroughs, some random person, a place great to get things, Burroughs ought to have a place in literature that’s taught in schools, don’t involve schools in your argument, Tarzan, this argument from twitter is overstated, the professor was a little bit like, travel narratives, yellow cover, Michael Herring, what scene is that though, grabbed on the foot, there’s a scene later, she hits him in the head with a rock, by accident, the cannibals worship her, confused, agreed, suddenly Stark shows up on the scene, need badguys, the random encounter table, a lazy book, especially because of the publication chapter, several years to be serialized out, what happened this chapter?, had to be closer, I gotta finish this thing, from the back, washed ashore, thought his life is over, staring desperately out to see, dark and mysterious interior, savage cliff dwellers, a tiny spark of bravery, with the help of the beautiful cave princess, stripped away, emdash, jum hum hum, Burroughs writing a coward and a weakling, that was funny, the Boston families all had two last names, the tell in 2024, we are very enlightened now, people are marrying money to money, the reason you have that famous last name, that money or status, changed the law, double name, politically active green leaning person, did the husband take the double name?, Saxe-Coburg, legal for a long time, marrying money, call me by my first name teachers, married the heiress of a factory, the reason people do it today, last name is Jobs, Bezos, last name was Boner, more of a left leaning green leaning tell, aspirational, all the activity that the upperly mobile middle class people, mirroring stuff from a long time ago, simulating rich people having servants, it’s a Disney ride, cleaning lady, alcohol decanters, east europeans, literal lawns are that, glass decanters, you’ve got a cask of Amontillado in your basement, or whiskey, the alcohol store, look in the mirror, what you’re doing is insane, the readership of this book, I wanna be a rich guy who marries a countess, lower class people striving to be in the upper class, that’s the fantasy, where is Heinlein showing royalty, go farm in the sky, Heinlein is not a classist, idealistic view of America, kind of a myth, striving for that, political dynasties, Bushes, Kennedys, Clintons, Adams, president of the European Commission, highest ranking person in the EU, minor aristocrat, Angela Merkel, if you’re going to canonize Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess Of Mars, once you start teaching books in school, this book has no answers, given to read vs. forced to study, Mark Twain is great, you’re on a podcast about vintage science fiction, All Quiet On The Western Front, an important book, honour kills his daughter, Nineteen-Eighty Four, Brave New World, the prison guards in that institution, punch a clock, abuse, the canon of school, the Library Of America, some sort of non-profit, funded by the US government and the Ford Foundation, let’s imagine they’re the canon, some of them are public domain, a good list of science fiction books, American science fiction from the 1950s, a Burroughs volume, for people who are Americans, Ralph Waldo Emerson, why did he choose that name, that New England feeling, sickly rich kid, politically different, named after a famous author, academic nerd, George Washington Carver, telling name, Smith-Jones makes it a this is your story reader, you asthmatic nerd you, Charles Atlas, you to can be a strongman, the sales pitch is it sells itself, slings and arrows and pointy sticks we stab into this book, page turning good writing, super-frothy and light, still a good book, read it within 24 clock hours, making things exciting, 15 20 minutes with teenagers, The Mad King, a king had died, a son had been locked in a tower, the mad king had escaped, the horse had bolted, car and horse chase, all go off a cliff, what was that, 15 minutes in, it’s on LibriVox go grab it, Edgar Rice Burroughs should be put in cars (not schools), still fun, just pick up a different Burroughs, Lexington, Kentucky, Ohio, Lexington Green bookstore, visiting family, some big road, Target, cross a road, the exact road, stupid, look at all these bookstores, pedestrian crossing, Caroline Island, the Dell Mapback, nobody living there at the moment, crime novels, murder mysteries, scarce, She, too expensive, Del Rey books, DAW books, Ballantine Adult Fantasy paperbacks, book club editions, stuck with them, coffee table books about ships and WWII, the Hornblower books, shitty women’s fiction, anything left to squeeze out of this very frothy book, his name means naked, did he know what he was going to do with him?, the old crew, William Stark, Burlingame is the captain, taciturnity, martinet, that half of a sentence, the non-cave man badguy who gets the most screentime, go rescue the kids stuck in caves, the real monsters were the civilized people all along, European villains too, a strict disciplinarian, named after the whip, hair cut in not short enough, this makes him a badguy, the sailors don’t like him, ethic common immigrants, the rich guy from Boston, rumors about this old mill, the rumors are always true, clannish religious whackjobs, ignorant, sees his big fishy eyes, Lovecraft protagonist, ready to swoon, any other author, would have been done first person, waking up on a beach, how’d I get there?, who am I?, what makes it funny, unreliable narrator, tries to rape our girl, punched her unconscious, got lusty, inside cave people’s heads, pointing sticks inside their heads, rocks, Nadara’s POV, I can’t marry you now, marrying doesn’t just involve grabbing your hair and dragging you to my cave, funny interaction, prudish, not-religious, doesn’t ever go native, not from the upperclass, fearful of cannibals, life is way better on shore, little work, lots of food, and sex available, made up earthquake, a leopard in the words, has a happy ending, what a classist, his mom dies, forced back to Earth, wife is laden with eggs, getting broody, just makes you get the next book, The Gods Of Mars, if that’s even a word, tied together, anglo-saxon and gallic ruling classes, seven novels in 1913, stinkers, Warlord Of Mars, The Mucker, The Mad King, at the typewriter labouring, he was The Efficiency Expert, the American dream worked for him, he wasn’t begging Farnsworth [Wright] for his cheque, harder, the millenial, he was web 2.0, PayPal guy, Charles Ardai, I’d like to be a sharecropper for streaming, your account is deleted, we’ve demonitized you, you have to, even if google downranks you, Eyes Left, 30 retweets and 1000 views, a huge account, turned off in a second, truth social!, all my devices, Bluesky, If This Then That (IFTTT), calling it like it is, in the bubble, we’re in a bubble, COVID is not over people, Ukraine and Russia crap, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner daughter, focused on her watermelon shirt, Palastine flag, wearing a mask outside, a celebrity daughter, a search, weirdos who take these pictures, always wearing a mask, that’s the story, an OCD trigger, people who have problems, a security blanket now, I’m a good person, she’s not going to die if she get’s COVID, it’s either she’s hiding her face or she’s triggered by it, wearing masks together, mental trauma thing, always COVID people, Trish Matson, outdoor party on the patio, vaccination status, the vaccinations don’t work, sci-fi conventions wear mask, all the killer virus stories we wrote, Glasgow worldcon, vaccination status, get bullied, allergic against these things, at a grocery store, yelled at in an empty room, murderer or something, dropped off on a primitive island, get their health up, cooking?, she made fire, Burroughs didn’t do the research, just eats those fruits he doesn’t even name, crabs, sashimi, fish out of the river, oysters, a girl in the forest he’s afraid of, he’s handsome, skinny rail 6 foot 2 guy, confusing tall for handsome, he runs away, gets his courage up, chases her, end it now, you’re the strongest man I’ve ever met, mischaracterized, perception wrong, I can work with this raw clay, his bumped up forehead, showed it had a brain inside, incompetent, she builds up his confidence, so many nagulas, I’ve never bothered to count, runs away like a coward, build up my muscles, she’s mad at him, he ghosted her, becomes unjustifiably angry, fully justified, dumped her with cave people, I’m right behind you, kidnapped by airpirates, drag me by my hair to that cave over there, unacceptable, needed to have the proper ceremony, honeymoon in Hawaii, fantasy wish fulfillment, gone native, what’s her name for him, Thandar!, Thundar, a Lin Carter name, the brave one, barbarian sounding name, sounds good, the beautiful one, the one with the high forehead, The Outer Limits, a Charles Beaumont story The Beautiful People, perfectly normal looking girl, it couldn’t have been like that, deformed, forehead is too high, Burroughs can’t play that game, he can’t play it, girl gets kidnapped, the same recipe every time, a great recipe, Lester Dent pulp fiction master plot, cut out all the racism and classicism, engage with the classicism, his dad turned out to be ok, the mom dominated the baby, all the languages, compose greek and latin poems, the mom fucked him up, the other girl fixes him with Burroughs, having a nice girl who can give you nice babies, the Burroughs fantasy, they don’t have kings before he shows up, Robert E. Howard had written this, civilization is bad, barbarism is good, have his book learning be useful, if L. Sprague DeCamp had written this, Mark Twain, explicitly a comedy, funny, funny on purpose, always does the same thing, American goes to Mars marries princess, Tarzan was a British guy, goes to Venus marries a princess, in the margins, his mother was an Earth astronaut, John Carter in reverse, this is also Donkey Kong, save the princess from the monkey mother, Super Mario Bros., he’s lower class, a Japanese thing, everybody knows only Americans can go to fantasy kingdom, you work with your hands?, not even an anglo-saxon, fake princess, half-breeds of whatever, not cool with it, make some friends, Woola, maybe that is why they don’t do as well as Burroughs, romance, maybe Will knows, romance is actually for men, men are more romantic than women, a romance for men, a meet cute, standards he is putting on himself, things that don’t make it romantic, maybe there are some kinds of romance books, if you look at what’s going on, Robert E. Howard stand-in, having a buff body so they can be suitable for a trad wife, Michael Crichton’s Travels, fantastic!, Tolkien, H.P. Lovecraft, Frank Herbert, Michael Crichton, right wing tradition, conservative, Howard’s not on the list, his fanzine, anything published before 2010, far right coded, farmers protesting, sympathizing with the farmers, unapproved people are daring to protest, useless rich kids who glue themselves to streets, heirs of tobacco dynasty, will is fuming at this statement, issuing paper, smeared as nazis, reichsburgers, more interested in romance than women, an older idea of romance, situate this, trad dudes who follow you in twitter, they didn’t exist, a mainstream audience of the working man, factory workers, marrying the rich dude, Cinderella, chunky Cinderella, adventure for sure, we do have to constitute it, this might have a grain of thought, men are much more romantic than women, is that really true, makes a very strong, 1912s, as a pragmatic woman, women have to be, a male romance, would appeal to that sensibility, 1913, more appealing, Jane Austen, contrast, which of these brooding men are most secure for my offspring, which of these cave women, a lot of dudes to kill, a lot of missing people in the female department, which of these families that are suitable for me to marry into, Persuasion, of the six, Mansfield Park, the focus, Jane Austen is to women as Edgar Rice Burroughs is to men, lower upperclass, upper middleclass, trying not to be lowered, Napoleonic wars, always stuck with the baby, always the case, baby out of wedlock, a meme, REH people, trad wife and chad, guys with beards, no NPC guy or Wojak, women and children into the lifeboats, CHADS: Yes, more problems, from the Titanic, the first class women, setting aside class, difficult, men saying that, men know they’re disposable compared to women, some other dude’s going to have to raise my kid, built into the men, romanticism, not very practical, giving insight into why it strikes the chord of popularity, class does matter because it is connected to money, a brainy boy, looking down on Nadara, little does she know, I’m going to do something I’ve never done: apologize, The Gilded Age, HBO, Cynthia Nixon, literally not important, his coping mechanism, the dad from Pride And Prejudice, dotty, Harvard or Yale, wealthy family from Boston, died because he couldn’t swim, how did he survive the shipwreck, act of God, act of Edgar Rice Burroughs, three guys went overboard, a huge endowment, every student should know how to swim, prove that they can swim, Columbia university, take a swim class, the 3rd class steerage kids, engineering classes, how many lifeboats a ship should have, lifeboats based on tonnage, added extra lifeboats, capsized at the pier in Chicago, inland waters, the great lakes are their own kinda thing, free shipping, just a highway, a line in this book about that, he looked at the map and saw these trade routes, tramp freighters, the Pacific is kind of big, real world experience, grandfather was a captain on an east Asia liner, the timing, an extended one into the forest, six months, a year, the elapsed time for the book, Gilligan’s Island, Robinson Crusoe, makes capitalism happen, a cross section of society, movie star, scientist, only one worker in this society, makes things out of coconuts, Thurston Howell III, trad wife, Mary-Ann, the movie star, boss, whatever the society tells him to do, a commentary on America at the time, what does it say?, stuck at Atlanta airport, all Cora’s stories: unaccompanied kid, a black woman reading romance novels, Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch, a whole sociological different thing, endless loop, TVLand, close it with the Robinsinade Gilligan’s Island connection, he’s king, trying to reverse the American revolution, the elected king, wanted Washington to be King, a Fredosphere idea, the United States as founded by Pirates, a King Washington descendant in the White House, palace rather than a house, how would things be different, DC surrounded by the Versailles of courtiers, ruled by an upperclass, wouldn’t be that different, kick out King Washington, the slavery question, gone the way of the British monarchy, figurehead, ceremonial head of state, speaker of the house, prime minister, a twitter conversation, I’ve been drinking, the fig leaf of our democracy, you can vote, if the demos had power you would get what you want, the myth staves off revolution, German democracy, blockaded on his holiday, take a helicopter back, she’s gone, the trains are striking as well, overthrow this horrible democracy in Germany, family owned farms, family estates, pork, schweinefleisch, fresh local produce, they should be revolting if the government is fucking up, gynecologist, surname, a dashed name, married to a pig farmer, super-happy, married outside of her class?!, what a scandal!, hate her husband, a small town in Canada, very catty, the green voters, upwardly mobile middle class academics, on the side of the farmers, new stuff added to the schedule, The Seventh by Richard Stark, 1st Sunday in Lent, you have to give up things you love, besides meat, give up smoking, start smoking so you can quit, you can still have fish, a bigger thing for a week, no meat, no twitter the second week, no screens would hurt, can’t get in your car sometime, 2 short stories, Weinbaum/Simak, Return From The Stars by Stanislaw Lem, he was a committee according to Philip K. Dick, W. Scott Poole book, a Connor show, we’re signing up for something, Confessions Of An English Opium Eater, a copyright strike from CBC, the closing credits of the John Carter Of Mars movie, a big nasty take-down strike, watchalongs, music playing in the background, 1821, about a guy explaining his addiction, drug memoir, pre-drug hippy style people, a bit of lingering death, a bad case of death, Lovecraft uses the pleasures and pains, The Mad Planet, a Maissa Will joint, Lucian’s True History, 2000 year old quasi-science fiction from the Roman Empire, What Mad Universe by Fredric Brown, The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown, The Triumph Of Evil, Such Men Are Dangerous, ill, get back in bed, doesn’t really matter, was it covid?, what difference does it make?, attacked Bernie Sanders, working from home, I’ve got COVID I’m sure glad I got those vaccines, DefiantLs, 2 tweets juxtaposed, not being ironic, what the hell dude, you should rest, six weeks of rest, the laptop class, Paul Kavanaugh, a pseudonym, a Florida Key island, not able to have conversations, two drinks every day, he’s gotta list, I want you for a job, hijack nuclear weapons and sell them for a profit, The Last Spaceship by Murray Leinster, interplanetary teleporters, steals the last spaceship, human read, William Sky (Stories From The Sky), a romping story, great old fashioned space opera, the pause at the end, a silent gap for five seconds, let the story sink in, Putin in his power, never read the comments, sell you on The Mad Planet by Murray Leinster, first global warming ever written, human beings have descended into savagery, are their dinosaurs, Burl has spent his entire life, post-apocalyptic nature writing, June 12, 1920, 30,000 years in the future, various forms of fungi, giant insects and arachnids, toadstool forests, you had me at giant spiders, what makes it a Maissa-Will book, Will is a fun guy, listen to the narrator, if you need a sleeping age, wait for the next version, it’s a long life, if we can hold out, long novella, short novel, giant spiders, satire of outlandish tales, presented fantastic of mythical events, travel in outerspace, I doubt it, Gilgamesh is gonna have it, would Hugo Gernsback call it science fiction, he has a good definition of science fiction, trying to sell magazines, satire, parody, only an hour and half long, swallowed by a 200 mile long whale, a sea of milk, an island of cheese, deliver a letter to Calypso given to them by Odysseus, in the original latin or greek, A Witch Shall Be Born, where he gets nailed, one of the most famous scenes, gets crucified, every illustrator does the crucification scene, two semi-naked identical nude women whipping each other, female body inspector, cimmerians are all like that, the only screen adaption of a Howard story, a Red Nails was in production, a fan version, Conan The Adventurer, three TV shows, Kevin Sorbo’s Kull The Conqueror, better than the Conan reboot, would have made a great Conan, the Solomon Kane one, devil worship and shit, good scenes, good costumes, get a writer who likes the material, Max von Sydow, Max von Side-Eye (@SvenTystnad), The Last Of The Last Of The Mohicans (1992), lotta Hawkeyes, fuck the book, Daniel Day Lewis, My Left Foot (1989), Lincoln, this movie is awesome, a very male romantic movie, Edgar Rice Burroughs with noir and real villains, West Studi plays the meanest indian, Magwa will put the greyhair under the knife, a good cast, Madeline Stowe’s the love interest, Natty Bumpo and Magwa, I’m stealing your woman, let’s run through the forest for six hours, a dude movie, so romantic, great ending, Heat (1995) is almost too good, Pacino and Deniro, checkmate, Collateral (2004), Thief (1981), Miami Vice, style, substance, just out of prison, back in the business of being a thief, the mob come to him, I’m out, Willie Nelson, no you’re not you got a girlfriend, so she’ll never love him, burns his house down, before going straight, Jim Belushi, Dennis Farina, a man expressing that extreme level of independence, very Jesse vibe, the Conan thing, I’m not going to take your shit, you have to inform on your friends, may have grabbed a sword, their mistake was letting Conan in the building, Manhunter (1986), very solid, Silence Of The Lambs (1991) came out, did too good a job, William Peterson looking cool, nerd, filmed in Florida, Public Enemies (2009), very 2009, banks are evil, here’s a guy who fought the banks, noble bankrobber, Ferrari (2023), semifactual racecar movies, The Insider (1999), they made the 60 Minutes crew the heroes, The Aviator (2004), they played brothers, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? (1993), The Lack podcast, how many podcast do you listen to?, audiobooks more than podcasts, listening to Damien G. Walter’s podcasts, interacted with him online, poor you, before he was a digital nomad, a columnist for The Guardian, he’s a prophet my dear, people are saying, he prophet greatly, he has takes, deeply ideological, the philosophy is wrong, his takes are bad, he prophet so it doesn’t matter, Sad Puppies hate him, little known writers, fantasizes about killing him, a deleted tweet from Cirsova, thought better of it, grey checkmark, wearing a plastic bag and a mask and a respirator under the mask, it was covid, minutes away, the only crime that occurred on J6, that’s violence, “storming”, revolution, I wish, they had no weapons, defend your lack of liking this deleted tweet, the person who was killed was shot by a cop, the narrative is that it was insurrection, they didn’t bring any weapons, the Capitol building, idiotic protestors, politicians were scared, caused a mess, a Christian holiday, if you drill down, deaths of 9 people, 5 people involved by direct cause, 4 capitol police officers caused by suicides, people don’t know, Ashli Babbit, fatally shot in the upper chest, Brian Sicknick, pepper sprayed, strokes the next day, all that transpired played a role, died of amphetamine overdose, naturally from coronary heart disease, eating margarine, in the days and months that followed, died by suicide, misdiagnosed concussion, in July, found, 15 were hospitalized, some with severe injuries, this is 9/11, the means vs. the ends, a protest, violence is bad, you should allow yourself to be killed, I don’t like these people, what shapes the narrative, flipping over our government, the government doesn’t care about you, fantasy of collecting social security one day, you can make our old people poorer and work longer, the damage done, when you put tear gas at people, furniture, Nancy Pelosi’s lectern, lady climbing through a window, an interesting life, people who have the time to go protest in Washington, D.C., the current president, even saying he has a claim is silly, the words coming out of his mouth, not the majority of the people there, or in Canada, the truckers, these are lies, all the farmers are Nazis, starve to death, buy mangoes shipped in at a huge cost to the environment, look at this, a class things, points his sidearm towards an attacker, tell the story please, broken glass, that guy is pointing a gun at a human being, roving gangs of avengers, super-powers the only way, strong young men from Boston, as only they can, like Tarzan, nosy old ladies in charge of these things, policing in Cuba, weaponize those nosy old gossip ladies, use judgement, a real gossip hound, digging up the boring dirt that is not a threat to our society, makes her really sad, recognizes it in herself, can’t we all just get a long, can’t I talk you down from this, give out a lot of tickets and do what the bosses says, a call center worker, old ladies, couldn’t sell them anything, something very benign, in house magazine for a government funded, Jesse was always at the bottom, not pressuring these old ladies more, Jesse just get off the call, call more people, impolite, Edward Bellamy, the society of the future, restaurants are horrible, a server, a greeter, hostess, that’s security guard, they’re old people, its just like a camera, a living camera, they find you a seat, part of the fantasy, American restaurant, just leave me alone, the ability to increase your wages by getting tips, feeds into each other, automat, a cafeteria, cafeterias in the future, access to a kitchen, this kind of mustard, how many kinds of mustard do we need?, dijon, honey, yellow, visible grain, thomy mustard, comes in a little tiny mug, blue lid, a literal mug, sometimes they’re not good, Bavarian classic mustard, mustard connoisseurs, #MustardAndKetchupGetup, one of the few Chinese words, sauce, tricking people into eating rotten tomatoes, Heinz family, descendants of German immigrants, curry ketchup, currywurst, gypsysauce, a bad word, gyp, sauerkraut, common here, everyday glasses are mustard jars, Hengstenberg mustards, Landsberg mustard, an export brand, other than spicy mustard, questions about Worldcon, Glasgow, what happens at worldcon?, masking, dealer’s room is good, panels, readings, signings, a gaming room, pronouns happens, old bald dude he him, pronoun stickers for your badge, cosplay, guests of honor, fantasy writer, British, Prometheus Award winner, they’re gonna take your Hugo back, take it back, they think they can revoke, don’t read Heinlein!, how dare you, listed on Wikipedia, that could be changed, withdrawn, removed, demoted, panels are a pretty normal experience, a podcast but boring, even a good panel is bad, run out of time, assuming no knowledge, not very much time, way off topic, potentially spicy, frowned upon, a moderator, to keep people from hogging the panel, someone who doesn’t talk, two podcasters who talked a lot, of Tor books, what does Teresa Nielsen Hayden have to say, podcasters don’t usually have a problem talking, kind of hates Cora, muted the thread, hyphenated, all hyphenated people are muted, not spicy enough, the usefulness of the Hugo awards, the trustworthy ones, for the best science fiction and fantasy, what role do they play, they don’t roll much, N.K. Jemisin, T. Kingfisher, Connie Willis, put Hugo after your name, a lot of misses, a lot of hits, became classics, David Brin, Hugo winner, Jesse is a total awards nihilist, bigger audience, following on twitter, pushed over the 3000 mark, meet more people, gets easier, how much did you get paid for the story, how many digits, in the 2 digit range, $2000 a year if they’re a famous writer, a cheque for $78, worthwhile exercise, a worthwhile exercise, a flash story, $25, answer the question, Cora, it depends, use it as a reading list, used to, quite miserable, fine with several of them, hated all of the books but one, Ken MacLeod, probably a lovely person, shitty people and you love their books, nice person and you hate their books, what else you got Will?, keeping up with it [short stories] in a meaningful way, top 15 nominees, just missed, crowdsourcing, big fanbase, goes to every con, great filkers, the nominations for 2023, LadyBusiness, you can add something, very democratic, list of podcasts, American Writers 100 Pages At A Time, Paul, Androids And Assets, for the Star Trek one, a YouTube, Cerebro, Chrononauts, Crafting With Ursula, Doctor Who Verity, Ex Urb Ad Astra, Fanac.org, Filkcast, Hugo Girl, Hugos There, Seth Heasley, cancelled for the Campbell reference, with David Agranoff, If This Goes On, J. Miles Explains The X-Men, vaugely science fiction related, Just King Things, Kalandi, a YouTube, SFFreader, gush about, Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast, second wave, Literature Science Alliance, Are Human, Octothorpe, One Flesh One End, Onyx Pages, Our Opinions Are Correct, won too many people, Radio Free Skaro, Rite Gud, not them they’re terrible, Science Fiction 101, it’s British, skeptical of the British, SFFaudio spelt wrong, host/producer, SFFYeah, SFF180, why do people hate you Cora, good takes to all 6 of his viewers, underpitching it a bit, Staship Fonzie, Steve Sheeves, Stitch And Bitch, Sword And Laser, g4 tech TV, Take Me To Your Reader, The Book Finch, Coode Street, steampunk Victorian people, good that steampunk is over, Gary K. Wolfe, Luke Burrage, Skiffy And Fantay, Shaun Duke has blocked Jesse, 2 Minute Time Lord, all the Doctor Who references, Wizards And Lesbians, Wizards With Guns, dudes with mustaches, fart and poop jokes, Worldbuilding For Masochists, Tar Valen or Bust, Wheel Of Time, Eating the Fantastic, comics people, Tales From The Trunk, Hillary is male, Story Hour, If This Goes On Don’t Panic, two different story titles in one, Voluminous, very good, read H.P. Lovecraft letters, very liberal nice people who have nice, HPLHS, one of them (or both) is gay, made Lovecraft their jobs, actors, Chilean SFF on Youtube, The Cromcast, Rogues In The House, repeating themselves, having fun, doing their podcast only for them, we don’t repeat shows, after 10 years, that’s fine, just do the poetry instead, can only read it once, if you’re going to remake a movie, don’t remake that, stop making that, do it once, move on, Luke Burrage repeats himself, eligible?, a minimum of 4 episodes, recusing myself, since 2023 is now over, they don’t pay your flight, guests of honor, good to get the people nominating on the stage, The Oscars, cosplaying as an unmade bed, evening gowns, the clothes are more weird, actual playback history, Second Shift, an audio drama where 3 teens who work at a pizza place and transported to a fantasy realm, as in the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon, The Last Drive, Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, Scott Miller, great audiobook narrator, a Jesse follower, a Scott follower, too democratic, Buckaroo Banzai, Golan Globus Theater, talk about movies, two Israeli guys, action movies, Charles Bronson, quick good fun movies, ignorant and funny, American Writers 100 Pages at a time, Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Mate, Gabor Mate, 2 Jews talking about what’s going on in Gaza, Gaza all the time, Matt Taibbi, The Lack, Racket To Go, SFBRP, Witchhouse Media, Strange Studies Of Strange Stories, science fiction stuff, liberal boring, H.P. Lovecraft guys who ran out of H.P. Lovecraft, weird fiction, Guy de Maupassant month, takes aren’t spicy enough, more of an entertainment show, the plot of what’s happening, a useful service, Compact Magazine, Nina Power, Mr Jim Moon, Hypnogoria podcast, BBC In Our Time, How Doctor Who Stood The Test Of Time, their opinions are not correct, to get inside the mind and understand people, figure out why people are wrong, the alternative is violence, censorship, the same thing, too spicy, quote tweeting, migrants coming at the border, one A-10 could solve this, that would make him a monster, a very fruitful discussion, murdering a whole bunch of people, a tool for the politicians to do shit, a result of politicians acting overseas, would be very reasonable, not here to defend that tweet, there are people, show them out of the helicopters, seems a lot more reasonable and more cynical, Paul refused to be on a podcast with him, very reasonable, very cynical on the tweets, generic shitposting, naked dick pick, vile antisemitism, free Palestine, why are you harassing us with all of these reports, “one a-10 would fix this”, 15,000 individuals, I can’t with so much pettiness, are these migrants?, daywalk, refugees, farm work for a while, guest workers, replacement workers, scabs, there’s arguments to made here, about as deep as you can get on twitter, severe down-punching, practical and political, the people who replied, cosplaying, cartoon responses, this is what triggers Paul, seems to be a call for violence, doesn’t come across very well in tweets, too vile, if your house burns, we still have the rental car, an engagement point rather than a solution, seems vile, incitement to hatred, parasites, kept denying the holocaust, step back, literally not true, who is in charge of the US airforce, secretary of defense, Joe Biden, whoever is ruling the U.S., a very cynical take, when you can’t do anything, shoot refuges at the German Polish border, he’s not a politician, an aristocratic lady and far right, Tolkien vs. Lewis, Teen-Titans, politics in here, Quakers get wrecked, Biden administration, statue of William Penn, a Quaker teacher once, typical for a government, Cirsova’s politics are political realist, really horrible, feels unsafe, constantly on alert, most San Francisco, gibbering black crack head barely looked human, FAS, a lot of problems in society, mom was drinking while pregnant, alcoholism, alcohol is poison, smoke a lot, baby underweight, very funny, read between the lines, they have no faith in anything that’s political, potholes everywhere, a great place to look at the failure of everything, watching good old movies, charitable, be prepared to do violence, may do and are doing is a big difference, Minority Report by Philip K. Dick, 3 precogs, 2 predict, hence the minority report, I’m not going to do a murder, prediction vs. are doing, so kindly butted into so kindly, David Currie in the UK, fight me, I like him, not a good thing to do, joking with, Guardian article, Russian and Chinese imperialism, could happen in future vs. actually happening now, hypotheticals, most of the bad things that could happen don’t happen, I shouldn’t eat this chocolate, is it good to not eat the chocolate, adulterated chocolate, artificial flavours, Hershey’s, palm oil, seed oils, belongs in palms, not food, no business being in chocolate, they feed it to humans, palm plantations, a food additive, instant ramen, Thailand, Brazil, rapeseed oil, canola, sunflower, which we like, olive oil, actually made out of olives, not human food, feed animals, industrial lubricants into human food, no more margarine for you, make your own mayo, they don’t have flavours, rape oil, canola, people think rape is bad, fields of rape, very Orwellian, not something you should put in your body, might remove some skin oils, when Cora dissed the tobacco industry, fume as in over the tobacco, a little bit tobacco pilled, pumping toxins into the air, continuously, exercise your liver a little bit, more than 10 drinks a day, cigar, you don’t put it into your lungs, the point of the drug, smoking is probably better than drinking, smoke or drink?, alcohol in your food, inherited whiskey, brandy, cognac, mostly beer, the alcohol is dry, I’m never going to drink that.

Dell MapBack - The Cave Girl by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #786 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Radium Pool by Ed Earl Repp

The SFFaudio Podcast #786 – The Radium Pool by Ed Earl Repp, read by Thomas Copeland (for LibriVox). This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (2 hours 43 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Maissa Bessada, Will Emmons, and Terence Blake

Talked about on today’s show:
in Earth language, sorry everybody, Sophie Wenzell Ellis, another radium filled story, avoid radium, taking a long time to get started, WHAT!, so many explicitly catery characters, outer narrator, professor who explains things, meet a guy who who is looking for another professor, another professor, infodumper, chapter 9 tells us despite the counter evidence, that makes sense, me too I agree this story makes a lot of sense, if H. Rider Haggard were boring, Inception, oh yeah, that was a thing, awkward framing, August and September 1929, The Moon Pool by A. Merritt, an early popular science fiction story, sequels, sorry, cool cover with a lady in yellow, old science fiction, some shitty science fiction out there, completely unfuckin scientific, despite the gestures, Jovians from Jove, lovesick guy with a gun, getting the better, cheated by using telepathy, tentacles, a scientific fact, other than it’s a planet, a gesture at the distance, whatever, this story is so fuckin bad, Mars has already been done, there are good stories set on jupiter, Call Me Joe by Poul Anderson, The Radium Poul, Lester Del Rey, good ideas, not being so long-winded about it, Maissa speaks for Will, the same as Avatar, grow a Jovian, as in the original Avatar, a telepathic link, guy just lives in the new body, a centaur with a big axe, Poul Anderson likes vikings, downloading yourself into an avatar in reality, what Justin Trudeau is trying to do, become a leader of the people, the first 2 Avatar movies, waiting til we are ready for it, why they’re all the same, he’s good at what he does, Titanic (1997) is his worst movie, a long and a prequel for Avatar 3, do your own serialization, might as well just talk about Avatar, Jake Sully is fundamentally untransformed by becoming an indigenous leader, a football coach from Cincinnati, for the Navii that’s exotic, why he’s not so boring to them, what’s really happening in Avatar: the American audience inserts themselves into Jake Sully and downloads themselves into the movie during the running time of the movie, six years old and think its cool, he’s not a character you aspire to be, he is you, no qualities, the most frequent expression, the bad guy in the first one, too bad they brought him back, there’s a reason we don’t do a movie podcast, most movies aren’t very deep, playing with the water theme, The Abyss, a cool Cold Equations scene, you need to drown in order for us to live, with a solution, the aliens thing at the end, crazy guy with a nuke is enough, better than Terminator 2, radioactivity coming into its own, radium was touted by doctors and scientists, rejuvenation, it kills cancer, it killed all those women, Marie Curie, watches are time and immortal, some sort of high before you die, unobtanium, when radium is in abundance it has other qualities, scaling, a big pool full, also power your spaceships, homeopathic doses of radium, the opposite, it can eat off your fingers, burn the end of the barrel of your gun, garbage story, something very bad, we’ve all done bad, a humiliation ritual to cleanse, something special about it, from the period it is, a taste of 1929 is very refreshing, the way we think, Jules Verne, hollow earth fantasy, four levels of characters to explain one muscular action, too space-opera in fashion, E.E. Doc Smith, Triplanetary, 1934, the swing of the pendulum, Creatures Of The Light by Sophie Wenzel Ellis, Antarctica, Death Valley, you can’t stand being their too long, lack of research, infodumps, guys feelings, partners for a long time, alien shows up, I turned your girlfriend into my throne lady, a Sleeping Beauty moment, I can throw words at pages, diverges, the peridocity?, Astounding, Science Wonder Stories, more science, throw everything into this pot, king of the university, robot sentry and a wagon and a gun, editor at the journalist desk, we’re not reading the newspaper report, chapter 9, somehow I found it incredibly plausible, pad his expense account, this is not the newspaper report, another step out, censored at the end, plausible we can go to Jupiter, first they’re going to have to find some more radium that wasn’t drained away, a lot of Doctor Who, a serial, Enlightenment, the fifth Doctor, Peter Davison, companion pets, materializes on a ship at sea, Edwardian era sailing vessel, all the officers have telepathy, Turlough and Teegan and the Doctor are thinking, they’re racing in space, solar sail race, crewed by humans, the grog doesn’t work, the aliens who look like humans, so bored, there’s stuff here, cheating, treating the humans like pets, learned a word: ephemerals, word in back pocket, being bored and nothing to do, you can’t waste your time because you have to live forever, three score years and ten, in June Terence will be 70, somebody becoming immortal, mine shit, lord it over, big long speech at him, quite taken with that girl, best possible tautological name: Alley Lane, Jimmy Olsen, just plain ordinary folks with superhuman friends, Spider-Man, earnest reporter who’s on the beat, the twist is he’s reporting on himself, here’s a market for stories about pools, suckered in, pretty girl, not as green as expected, 40 years in the desert, hoping to meet her, got a bad rep, something super-redeeming, this doesn’t have that much, not as tedious as it should be given how it doesn’t pay off, it’s naive, not meta-level at all, several layers of explanatory sauce, a magic formula, I have to put the ingredient of scientific realism in, that way nobody can say, radium parfait, Mimic by Donald A. Wollheim, film’s not great, the problem with the film is just jump scares and has to fill two hours,

“the original MIMIC, the 1942 story by Donald A. Wollheim, is abt as close to perfect a science fiction story as you can find

1. HEAVY EARLY INFODUMP✔️
2. PAYOFF WITH A TWIST BASED ON INFODUMP✔️
3. 4PGS LONG✔️

MIMIC is highly suggestive. leaves u in awe. leaves u with ideas.

the movie takes 1 hour and 45 minutes – the story takes less than 9 minutes to read with your eyes, 13 minutes 34 seconds to read with your mouth

the movie takes 1 hour and 45 minutes – the story takes less than 9 minutes to read with your eyes, 13 minutes 34 seconds to read with your mouth”

stars some lady, Mira Sorvino, Charles S. Dutton, young Josh Brolin, Thanos, Cable, a fun actor, Jeremy Northam, Charles S. Dutton is a cop, buy food from local street vendor, now in the present, killed in his apartment, a metal box, the window is open, not actually a human, literally an insect that looks like a human, his trenchcoat is a carapace, some other animal mimicking another animal, swarm of its babies, chimney suddenly transforms into a predator, there are creatures out there that mimic humans, the awesome infodump, paid off, takes it one step farther, what if…, backstory about cockroaches spreading a COVID-like disease, Guillermo Del Toro, tweeting about Microcosmic God being in the public domain, neoterics, capitalism trying to happen, steal his ingeniousness, Theodore Sturgeon’s great classic, classic mad scientist buys and island and does Edison work all day, make a race of creatures do the work for me, tiny people, meth and probably radium or whatever, an evil god, materials and compounds and alloys, he steals their patents, that guy’s got too much power, same techniques, a nested idea of the story of Edison as a mad scientist creator, it’s also us, we need to build cave walls and sunscreen and french fries in order to survive, Blood Music by Greg Bear, usually he’s a horrible writer, a collection, Wind From A Burning Woman, who’s talking, what’s going on?, children born with mutated organs, wasteage, incredibly intelligent, takes most of the novel, slow with lots of information dumps, Vitals, you’re not good, had he died tragically it would have been must better for him, dead to Jesse, Darwin’s Radio, so slow, even the novel is good, the grey goo problem, make a machine that can make stuff automatically on an atomic level, the paperclip problem, the Grogu problem, cute animals from twitter, should I be sending this?, some sort of deermouse with peglegs eating lettuce, quite relevant, somehow enhanced, here’s a baby muskox eating some lettuce, incredibly racist, two racisms in a row, grappling with the king of the Jovians, a white beast, mental leap to Octavia Butler’s Dawn, tentacles, creepy crawly little tendrils, seem ugly to the explorers, arrogant and condescending, making shit up and throwing it on the page, having characters tell each other its very plausible, the radium powered plausibility machine, drink the pool, how dare you do this to a white man, something about a ‘spic, completely unnerves, Sands, you look like a ghost, you don’t look like a white man yourself, by jingle, second childhood, not the opening character, outback hicks who are racist, I’m second in charge of everything, I could destroy you with a wiggle of my tentacle, then I give a big long speech about how I like your girlfriend, and I keep her on this throne for reasons, and I’m going to take her back to my planet, for reasons, with her dad!, and you notice your gun doesn’t doing anything to me, well that won’t stop you from shooting me later six times in the head and that will stop me, I’m telepathic but I thought you were dead, I hit my wordcount, accepting a lot of shit, as an artifact it is a valuable lesson, understand the progress and changes, there’s some shitty stories too, the S effect, Nerves by Lester Del Rey, revealing atomic secrets, this story doesn’t reveal anything about anything, if this story came out today, would not be popular, the attack vector, it’s dangerous for children because they’re going to eat radium, manipulate the watch, a darkroom to show you that it worked, radium in its pure state, tritium glows green?, is there a dye?, radioactive isotope of hydrogen, luminous because of the alpha particles, phosphorous, most volatile, little bit of green maybe, copper, if you had it in a pool, you experienced the radium pool, no research done, fake fainted a lot, Freud started treating hysterical patients, hysteria was more common, one explanation, so oppressed, rebellious of deviant feelings through their bodies, listened to women, more narcissism, no real feelings, a social change, the evolution of the symptoms, how tight their corset was, special radium ribbed corset, keep your shape, as much as she wanted, marriage ceremony right now, have you forgot I’m a pastor?, the opposite of Chekhov’s gun, Munchausen’s threads, ends suddenly when Alexander the great comes in and chops it off, why should she faint?, telepathically knocked out, they don’t eat anymore, whatever, if you’re immortal, they ate all the radium on Jupiter, the story is stupid, in V they want our water, Michael Ironside, a Dutch historical story about occupation by Nazis, we call the the Visitors, V for Victory, V for Vendetta, the aliens that look just like us, they have to wear sunglasses, sex with the lizard man, lizard baby, the resistance against them, the Nazi party, Nazi occupation of Europe with aliens that were lizardmen, Alien Nation, the show was amazing, oppressed migrants, a movie with James Cann, hardboiled cop buddy movie with an alien partner, the human is racist against the aliens, mild mannered, strange culture, alien lady with no head, they solve murders involving the alien, manufactured by other aliens, the masters are not their, a shipwreck with 100,000 aliens, Fox show in the early 1990s, contemporary with Star Trek The Next Generation, is it weird to have a guy sleep with your wife, dating one of them, 1 full season and then 6 movies, a film first, parallel with, archive.org or youtube, it helps to be able to see things, the 80s is a weird time, women in the work place sort of stuff, Murphy Brown, ten seasons, presidential debate, there’s nothing going here, a different time, weird period of time, of this terrible story, not everything in the past is good, the Olemas sequel, why would I hurt them like this?, The Ones Who Stay And Fight by N.K. Jemisin, condescending and fascistic, goes off into an alley, quote mine it, an alternative universe, send information between alternate universes, observing our universe, our TV shows, a very American world, one of Jesse’s big objections, horrific videos of people being bombed to death, you condescending lady, the Heinlein solution, if you’ve been infected by observing our earth, I know what mis-mal-disinformation, you’re not equipped, its my burden, Ursula K. Le Guin, maybe she’s wonderful, mummy knows best condescension, mommy knows the right people to drop the bombs on, it just takes a few good surgical strikes on what people know, everybody Eloi, one Morlock, the worst treated proletarian, magically, more politically correct, our horrible racist evil world’s ideas, the CIA and the FBI, the secret judges and jury, killing people with the wrong ideas, apologize and sit still, it won the Hugo?, wow powerful story, am I offering good solutions for humanity, patting myself on the back, given what’s happening in Palestine right now, double down, the holy shit people are protesting, 500,000 people in London walking together can’t stop it, the price of being on the wrong team, let’s make a long list, always an excuse to drop bombs and kill people, object to the trolley problem I have to make a choice where the trolley goes, some people are not going to accept it, the response, a response to a false Omelas, a straw-man of Omelas, very much a Bartleby, The Scrivener, grit in the system, taking the metaphor literally, I’m better than Le Guin, sanctioning Biden sending arms and ammunition, I’m going to give you a condescending lecture, a movie that’s an antidote to all of this, Dream-Speaker (1977) TV movie, Cam Hubert, Angry 11 year old orphan Ian Tracey burns down his school, meets an Indian shaman and his mute companion, the authorities find out, blonde white boy, reform school, he’s hung himself, cut back to the Indian and his mute companion, please place me in a tree as was traditionally was done, school is a horror, institutions, it just is a horror, asking kids why they set things on fire, what am I supposed to do with this, residential schools, doing pretty well with their broken family out in the forest, an instinct in people to try to solve problems, cogs to be solved in problems, no alcohol should be imbibed, you think you’re fighting for something good, is there a possibility that you’re wrong, arrogance, interesting, more artistic trolley problem story, another objection, 3829, 1200 and something for Omelas, a lot to prove?, flourishing details, random paragraph, wear wings too, some are invisible, forbid the emulation of beasts, all honored, all sounds very nice, the triggering word is honoured, honouring her feelings, don’t honour feelings, not something to be venerated, kids don’t have the experience you have, couch it in another way, not the right way to frame it, stupid feelings, that was a silly thing to feel, you can wear as many wings as you want, we can still be friends, you need to be destroyed, targeted at race, 2018 and still talking about race all the time, racism exists, ingrained in a racist society, the nadir is the lowest, pinnacle, the worst kinda racism period, look at this huge problem and what caused it?, the kenosis, self emptying, on an ordinary level, maybe one day I will, grope around in the dark, starting with the idea that I don’t know, a big part of the solution, anti-kenosis, infodumping, solution dumping, moral dumping, best done through parable, that’s not a parable, oh my little sweetie, it’s okay that mommy runs drone programs, you’ve got something wrong with your car, sledgehammer, gets rid of the problem by getting rid of the people saying the problem, just delete youtube and twitter channels, mute it, give a warning, violence by having a video, goodreads, Omelas is pornography?, this is about abortion!, offended her kid was told to read, in her school English class, what ever happened, spirit and refreshment, she may not like it, millions of murdered babies, billions of dollars the abortion industry…, pornographic literature, demonic desensitization of our young people, the punishment of a child, about capitalism, if she was standing in line at the grocery store, Peel District School Board, emptied everything pre-2008, unfathomable, somebody talking about the red scare, number of professors fired for being communists, anti-woke (not censoring), a kind of hysteria that’s going on now, writers telling other writers you don’t need to read anything past 10 years ago, because other better writers, and token John Scalzi, you don’t need to read a Lovecraft story, lies you’re telling yourself, trust me the homework’s not worth doing, school library is a place to hide in the school, even in prison they have books, prison book programs, escape the horrors they’re locked in, a bulldozing non-thinking tactic, super-retarded, those people shouldn’t have those jobs, in favour of humans doing ok, because they’re ignorant fucks, mommy or daddy knows best, mommy vs. daddy, daddy’s meaner than mommy in the stereotype, oh sweetie, condescending like I got a boo-boo, old fashioned radium pool drinking black pilled anarchist with tendril face, giving lectures to professors, trolling me, a very bad story, it had a nice cover, produced, not much meat on these bones of the story, what did I do to my friends, not very deep, Thomas Copeland’s narration, university professor in English, his recordings of Paradise Lost, his productions, long stuff, Orlando, Furioso, Jerusalem Delivered, a classical education, unjustly forgotten science fiction, worthwhile, rock bottom, we’ve fasted and we’ve prayed, skeletons hanging on the wall, Lowdown Road by Scott Von Doviak, The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton, watch his movies, an ancestor to cyberpunk, science fiction-ish, watch The Andromeda Strain, good science fiction, race-against-the-clock, he knows his shit, Gilgamesh the King by Robert Silverberg, The Sword Of Welleran by Lord Dunsany, on the other side of the state, find the length, his novels are a little longer, he’s fun, fun and short, Hobbits!, Marimna, a dream story, the kings of all the countries, a cute story with beautiful description that he subverts somehow, Lord Dunsany’s in a restaurant, crazy man runs into the restaurant, The Hashish Eater, a doesn’t think about race at all Lovecraft, whimsy, entertainment for toffs, cozy, even when dishing out, quite cozy, In A Dim Room, a ghost story, a tiger in India, all the subsequent fracas is on Jorkens, very palate cleansing sort of reading, half-sold, Through The Gates Of The Silver Key by H.P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffman Price, The Weirwoods by Thomas Burnett Swann, reactive and doesn’t pull his punches, a sparky conversation, Arkansas, Kentucky, another Kentucky, mountains and hillpeople, reputation for being backwards, very foreward thinking, Sirius by Olaf Stapledon, smart dog book, they all want to get kisses instead of doing podcasts, The Cave Girl, no bad books, just less good books, a good way to start the year, The World That Couldn’t Be by Clifford D. Simak AND The Worlds Of If by Stanley G. Weinbaum, a double good show, the titles, inspired a magazine, kinda like an ACE DOUBLE, chocolate and peanut butter, that will be the homework for the podcast, draw a straight line from, modalized titles, Return From The Stars by Stanislaw Lem, Dark Carnivals: Modern Horror And The Origins Of American Empire by W. Scott Poole, strongly suggested, nuke Nice, take hostages, political experts, political views, The Devil’s Elixirs by E.T.A. Hoffmann, Matthew Gregory Lewis’ The Monk, minor capuchin, said by scholars, sort of a pioneer of a lot of interesting stuff, Poe ripped him off, 200 year old novel, Confessions Of An English Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincey, Drug Of Choice, At Time Of Changes, with beautiful art, mentioned in a Lovecraft story, interleaved the art, of things that are hot, 41,000 views over 11 years, 5 hours, comments on this video, transformed my life!, all addicts?, this is really interesting, learned more about drugs by not taking them, read it 50 years ago, well written, hallucinatory style, not modernist prose, from the era of the Romantics, 1821, here’s what I found, no image remains, the pains of opium, a BBC In Our Time, still a good show, podcast, did we miss anything?, parodied in Elder Scrolls, Morrowind, Scottish opium eater’s POV, Mount Analogue by René Daumal, the surrealists really loved it, symbolically authentic non-euclidean adventures in mountain climbing, treated in a science fiction way, famously finished on a comma, an audio comma, producing a short film festival, have lunch, commune, participation, fear to recommend, that would be homework, trick-or-treaters, not a light to turn on to summon them, never big in france, society is going to hell, can’t wear masks and demand candy?, protestors, invite them in, makes Jesse cynical, she’s popular, take it at face value, a good reply to Le Guin, way worse ideas, a big answer rather than posing a question, very American and not very universal, take it to Australia, right to be distressed, James Wallace Harris’ review, fairly bland takes, very clear writer, not a radical, doesn’t have strong opinions, angry ripostes, that’s sad, Lester Del Rey is a bad writer and great writer, Greg Bear is a great writer and a terrible writer, banger after banger, filling my brain with interesting stuff, is this the same character as the one on the previous page?, so good at sparky ideas, full of anger, go on to write Halo novels, so horrible despite the good ideas, despite the fact that Blood Music is great, he didn’t ruin it, Asimov ruined his stuff with Silverberg, married Poul Anderson’s daughter, fairly litigious about estate shit, nude pics of her cosplaying of Dejah Thoris or Red Sonja, Karen Anderson, 85 now!, temporary and long term, just recent stuff, Hardfought, great!, an old telephone operator switchboard, 10 hours on youtube, from Recorded Books, fake audiobooks, that’s not a human, Bears Discover Fire by Terry Bisson, the idea yes, cozy American, marshmallows around the fire, they don’t need fire, look manually, read with your mouth, creates an image, read with fingers, counting on your fingers, precise title, Frederik Pohl, Luke Burrage has mentioned it, an essay, Consumership by Margret St. Clair, Meem, kind of light, a lot of good worldbuilding for no reason, Three Worlds Of Futurity, A History Of Science Fiction Without Holes, The Man Who Sold Rope To The Gnoles, the title, take an ordinary expression and interpret it literally, one of the big secrets of science fiction, he knows diddly squat about science, there’s a Bevatron, even if he’s not New Wave, that forces you to be in a scientific background, go one step further, the whole and your life that way, that’s Philip K. Dick, a pure case of science fiction, being able to solve things, somebody tried, wanna use this for the cover of your book?, seven minute stories, need to be inspired by something, this is a really good story, Jesse, sent it to Eric, an excellent little story, pioneer uplift stories, build a robot and marry her in your basement stories, why everything is working, weird, and arrogant, The Basket by Jesse, this is a very good story, why shouldn’t you do a show on it?, lead the dance, maybe it is a great idea, not having other authors on to talk about their own work, what’s there to discuss, brings stuff out, not Dickian enough, The Exegesis, but what if, where’s that goddamn novel?, put on a different hats, story about hats and baskets, this picture is a story, how writing techniques work, The Man In The High Castle with the I, Ching, what’s the penalty if they don’t, get their grammar fixed, students play the game, boys love competition, they think it’s treat, Isaac Asimov’s Super Quiz, Bruce Jenner will be in there, pick a card, get to keep the card, aka the smartest person in the room, defeated their brother or this other kid in the room, that’s how kid brains are actually, busywork, makework, indoctrinated into school horror, sometimes it’s super-hilarious, who got up?, Bobina, young kids who need, could do anything, the program was more and more edulcorated, putting sugar in, the final exam, we’ve removed 1 result from this page, the only result has been censored by a copyright claim, medieval latin, India Love, the pornstar’s onlyfans, Instagram, allegedly infringing boobzone, a sex move, very rapidly, exam copies, straight-away, count as correct even when it wasn’t, very hard to get bad marks in English on the exam, special methods, minimum knowledge, some very short stories, half page stories, three minute videos, a minute and half, I’m against school, I’ve failed my life, I’m a school teacher!, that’s why we don’t like it, egodeath, killing your conformist self, the whole literal, Edward D. Hoch, the most delicious sin, the ancient sin, what is this sin?, mummifying himself, the story is profound because I don’t know what it means, suicide, this Karl Jung quotes, the one is the shadow of the other, seems interesting, psychological types, the four functions, the rival psychologists, Alfred Adler, Friedrich Nietzsche, like that Luther show, beyond Jung, Elmer Gantry audio, I could grow to love me, she’s a lot like the characters in The Fountainhead, a dominatrix, real love has all sorts of elements, I like reading his stuff, sharing his works, deeply flawed novels, dreading his phonecalls, shitty love, purified form of love, I don’t want to have power over you, hence the job of parent, more to make you think, a schema, will to power is not power over others except in its lower forms, to will it over and over again, because it has the name attached and picture, too guru, an all or nothing sort of thing, very ultimatumy, not even true for Jung, his alchemical phase, tortures and crucifixions, weird hermaphroditic result at the end, it has the shadow in there, a sentence, is that true?, this sounds interesting, makes sparks start flying, Omelas makes sparks go, you’re a monster, am I supposed to think you’re a monster?, a feel good libertalia, she’s tough love, I kill you if you think the wrong thing, maybe they read it and say you are so evil in this story, Beggars In Spain, yes, I’m a slan, the Hillary Clinton mentality, the most qualified person in history, whip me harder, mom, hence Trump, he has the right enemies, the joker card, a card working under cover for another card, he only works for him, all about him, the existence of billionaires, not a deep man, not my first choice, capitalism creates egomaniacs, one is an honest egomaniac, why this Jung stuff is so interesting today, all shadow projection, this Cirsova guy (Alex P.), we go back and forth, his critiques are pretty good, Paul has a problem with him, integrated into the microcosm, he’s on a team, reacting what’s going on in Israel and Palestine right now, same story as Ukraine but more heated, The Jimmy Shore Show covered Ryan Long’s skit, it would be really convenient to be a coma right now, at the end they’re dead, the reason the left hates Nazis so much, because they killed 27 million communists, pretty sure she’s not, see something they don’t like inside themselves, just trying to hate that person, poor vocabulary, Justin Trudeau, literally calling people to Nazis and then giving a standing ovation to a guy who worked for Adolph Hitler, there’s Nazis in Russia, what Putin is saying: we’ve got to root out the Nazis, they are definitely on the Nazi team given the Nazi imagery, totenkopf is one thing, dumped the imagery but kept the guys, kept the unity and the symbols and dumped the Jew hatred, nothing political on twitter at all, good for jokes, for links, get to meet people that way, either hyper-religious and autistic or mentally ill, I never see that, might be a listener to the podcast too, Roof Bears, weird people to get new insight into the world from, most of the time no feedback, one of them will bring good reaction, for maybe 10 years Jesse’s been poking Wayne June, what ancient wisdom was ruthlessly torn from the sacred archives?, are they fit?, what twitter is good for, poked Jonathan, a great sense of humour, ok robot, he’s very very dry, too dry, piss off?, hard to do tone, his communication system is too different, The Wall (1982), big long music video, Roger Waters words, politics, he gets stuff wrong, a great attitude, love Dawn Of The Dead (1978), it needs to be seen by political people, responds by becoming a fascist, The Quiet Earth (1985), Jesse is not a music guy, must be missing something, Wagner’s good, philosophy, science fiction, nothing, Tangerine Dream, music over the end credits, a beat in a scene where you get a montage, that’s something you like, we don’t need no education, political speeches, active politically, 1979, 1982 in the cinema, wife to be, Blade Runner (1982), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), El Topo (1970), acid western, Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013), this new Dune movie, dumbing it down, what they did to Jessica, can’t stop weeping openly, we’re not allowed to have narration or voice overs, one-dimensional, like a Cliff’s Notes, multidimensional, the TV adaption, why Lynch’s Dune is reviled, a book medium, people decoding each other, even Heinlein, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress has some action and some visuals, the martian one, Stranger In A Strange Land, of his adult novels, Dune is better than Stranger In A Strange Land, you need the ideas, you need the doubt, you need the multidimensional, different grids, good science fiction in writing, you need a demanding film, how much Blade Runner is able to extract from the novel, Mercerism, the owl, that’s enough, the dove, he’s a video guy doing a video medium, a little bit of this book, no fake police station, I want more life, fucker, the elevator scene, the eye scene, Gaff, a real idea movie, little stick man, a robot and robot love story, why the sequel is a failure, here’s the bad guy for the next movie, pretty good for being what it is, Ridley Scott has dumbed himself down, we didn’t need Harrison Ford, children and garbage, the political woman, we all whole through that, very N.K. Jemisiny, film editing, The Matrix (1999), took everything out about Zion out as irrelevant, take away the battery scene, The Thirteenth Floor (1999), eXistenZ (1999), David Cronenberg, he can’t help his fetish, bodies, opening them up and getting weird, Barry Convex, tripping over his own fetishes, kinda gross, long live the new flesh, even The Fly (1986), Crash (1996), vagina surgeon twins, Dead Ringers (1988), lingering over body trauma, reaching into his belly and inserting videotape, Lovecraftian, Videodrome (1983), with some judicious editing, The Electric Ant, he likes boobs, mainstream fetish, fit them in regularly, they don’t rot or explode or melt, very William Burroughs, with RoboCop guy, Peter Weller, Naked Lunch (1991), like a Cohen brothers movie with Cronenberg added, non-intellectual class, this is basically a film about cockroaches, Brazil (1985) a similar movie with political resonance, comedic riposte to Nineteen Eighty Four, the state we’re in right now, kids don’t get to mine back movies, old movies, almost impossible to find anything old on streaming services, the Orson Wells movie with the sled, people who enjoy making movies, Citizen Kane (1941), William Randolph Hearst, stuck with the dross, unwatchable, Oppenheimer (2023), Barbie (2023) by other means, a big ad for that, very meta, socially critical, unless Red Letter Media covers it, seeing this as a science fiction film, Tenet (2020), paradoxes, does the universe re-arrange itself, you’ve seen it played through hundreds of times, nonetheless, really clear, Goddard movies, traffic going by, Robert Goddard made movies?, Breakthroughs In Science by Isaac Asimov, lots of stuff in common between his fiction and popularizing history and science, the Roman Empire and the Roman Republic, see Foundation in a new light, figuring out the worth of things like that, don’t read anything since 2008, throw dice for the Hugo finalists, unfortunate, not in the microcosm, when some of the Hugos made sense, read science fiction all alone, starved for good books, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka, fan clubs, media people, like dressing up, they found their people, a little like university, you’re going to have a lot more interaction with people who like books, just enough true, Greg Bear was there, Harlan Ellison, Connie Willis, Robert Silverberg, Larry Niven falling asleep, the panels were like very weak shit podcasts, so many names mentioned, going through the list of all the names mentioned, here’s a long list of reasons why SFFaudio Podcast hasn’t won a Hugo, that’s exactly what it is, read a trilogy, three years too late, very time based cheerleading, we can still talk about an old book and be happy about it, a cheerleading squad for people in our niche, mostly not good, mostly very fluff, that show is so fucking long, goes hours and hours, Luke Burrage did an exercise, focuses on new books, some fantasy stuff, Alzabo Soup podcast, the Gene Wolfe Literary Podcast, The Fifth Head Of Cerberus, made it real enough to plunge into the stories, Marooned On Mars podcast, novel by novel, Kim Stanley Robinson, the other podcasts who follow new writers, some of them are good, somebody else’s job to read it for Jesse, that 1812 book, kicked around for 200 years, probably something to it, Hayy Ibn Yaqdhan by Ibn Tufail, two ibns, more intelligent than us, how dare it!, a good phrase, a Sufi scholar, re-written in the first person, Robinson Ibn Tufoe, in A Time Of Changes, without language you can’t get access to reality, it was good, reading all Silverberg is a life, Scott Miller’s Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, The Thing Behind Hell’s Door by Robert Silverberg, inside out world, a really good source, his enthusiasm, famous authors and some obscure thing, some obscure science fiction author we’ve, Watchbird by Robert Sheckely, going Sheckley crazy, shitty Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett humour, Sheckley was there first and better, a more diverse range, a lot like Philip K. Dick a little more sane maybe, R.A. Lafferty and John Sladek, Harry Harrison, The Stainless Steel Rat, just having fun, Bill The Galactic Hero, the narrator who did the whole series for Brilliance, what’s going on on facebook, heterosexual man got nude pictures from a teen girl, he was a good narrator, maybe he broke a law, Phil Gigante, Commentary, Rusty Rockets, Russell Brand, they took his monetization away, they should promote cancelling people, so very public, keeping him on there is pure profit that week, almost 5 hours.

The Radium Pool by Ed Earl Repp

The Radium Pool by Ed Earl Repp

The Radium Pool by Ed Earl Repp

The Radium Pool by Ed Earl Repp

The Radium Pool by Ed Earl Repp

Posted by Jesse Willis