Tag: readalong

The SFFaudio Podcast #844 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Noseless Horror by Robert E. Howard and The Haunted Corridors by William Hamilton Osborne

The SFFaudio Podcast #844 – The Noseless Horror by Robert E. Howard (34 minutes) and The Haunted Corridors by William Hamilton Osborne (1 hour 37 minutes). Both are read by Tommy Patrick Ryan. These are followed by a discussion of both. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Alex (Pulpcovers), Cora Buhlert, and Tommy Patrick Ryan.

Talked about on today’s show:
Thomas, two stories, Magazine Of Horror, February 1971, Mystery Magazine, October 1, 1918, haunted by the image, very different, some similarities, pulp magazines, a lot less about Mystery Magazine, one of the first mystery pulp magazines, 1917, into the 20s, a break, bought by Street & Smith, merged into another magazine, later volumes, quite interesting, this is a science fiction story, improperly done, kind of a mystery story, always reliable Robert E. Howard, mystery/horror, Agatha Christie style, The God In The Bowl, police procedural, major flaws in both, more forgivable, generally flawed, much faster, doesn’t linger over its problems, predictable, fun, the full reveal, some interesting ideas, a more current reader, leaving women completely out, racism, such a strong powerful scary looking brute, red herring, the history of the mummy, put on a naive hat, a cynical hat, a little obvious, only 3 people in the house, one of them has no nose, inflated in the fire, well done, The Black Stranger, vengeance from beyond the grave, Vale Of Lost Women, a sharp sword is a hardy incantation, A Witch Shall Be Born, fight with gods, being racist, interesting article/review, Adventure Fantastic, pointed out a couple of things, forgotten, characters in Skull Face, reused names all the time, her liked certain names, a name to conjure with, not that many Sikh names, used interchangeably, by pulp standards, using the racism as part of the red herring, I don’t like the look of him, missing a nose, made me cringe a lot, what do I look like oriental?, we’ve rejected the use of that word, generally in society, eastern, people from India or East Asia, people from the middle east, all east, not referring to Siberia, Eastern Catholic churches, the counter to the idea that this story is racist, he did a particular thing, Noseless first, page 20, aided?, really good job with the accents, you’re a real man, the compliment, that is straight out of Kilping, Gunga Din, ignorance, the outlook at the time, a useful insight, his dark skin, his missing nose, his propitious strength, Howard’s intention, the hero of our story, sympathetic characters of color, N’Longa, a cliche character, the hero of those stories, sympathetic muslim characters, Saladin, the knight from Ireland, Cormac Fitzgoffery, Talbot Mundy, recently scanned by a collector, 1912, six years later, one stands on its own, The Soul Of A Regiment, a regiment can never die, a non-white doing the good thing, a very scary title, The Damned Old Nigger, a fez, a story building, it isn’t the skin it’s the man, it comes from a racist time period, there are exceptions, a British name, the unnamed narrator, Dr. Watson, the crazy Egyptologist, a Baskerville style mansion, the servant, the rival who comes back from the dead, he pulls a Lovecraft and faints, great white hunter, in a fight with the Afghans, as anti-racist as you can get in about 1928, nobody knows, this story doesn’t fit anywhere, written in two sessions, the feel changes, then we get action, an infodump at the end, such a great sentence by sentence guy, full of great ideas, handled terribly, a better story because it’s handled so well and so quickly, science fiction, crime story, the watchman threw me straight out the window, a crime magazine, reincarnation, 15 ideas?, so science fictiony, H.G. Wells might have done something with this idea, there’s no radio stations yet, the touches that we go to, the tone is all over the place, I’m gonna die tomorrow, what his other stuff is like, a lot of gender stuff in here, Queen Victoria was a man, Charles Martel was a woman, interesting, just thrown out there, no completely impossible, we know he had sons, very casual, trans by the way, Cleopatra, we would consider ugly, not a beautiful woman, so successful with men, coins are like official portraits, the same idea of accuracy, a really sexy woman on the coin, Hannibal’s Children by John Maddox Roberts, awkward, distracting and not in a good way, plays in, a professor and a scientist, Virginia is the beautiful daughter, professor of English literature, dime novel, 10 pounds of shit into a 5 pound bag, sparky but it fizzles, how cringey, how to pronounce it, let’s agree, two heads are better than one, that could be something interesting to explore, already super dense, made it hard to read, 15 pages vs. 13 pages, an hour 40, so much longer, back in Michigan, fancy sound equipment, the ending part where they’re in Egypt, a much larger portion, the cop and the shakedown artists, a comedy?, completely superfluous, supposed to be a detective magazine, history, that’s amazing, one of the things they don’t explore, making notes in their private journals, there’s no secrets anymore, why Jesse is weird, everything’s the past, the present doesn’t really exist, still annoyed with Jesse, the future doesn’t exist, everything we’re doing is looking backwards, there’s no more secrets now, we all learn sign language, that Robert Redford movie Sneakers (1992), The Quiet Place, what are the implications, love story through time, a Lincoln speech, kinda like it, on the cover, saw this cover Galactic Central (Philsp.com), looks Lovecraftian, the truths revealed are kinda stupid, The Black Cat, The Thrill Book, higher standards, all about the ideas, a counterpoint to that, a terrible story, it’s not good, it’s too long, such a good comparison, not innovative, entirely derivative, Robert E. Howard’s ability, a lot better than most pulp writers, the trunk of unfinished stuff, in a week, 2 days, banged it out, still better than most stuff being published today, Don Mark Lemon’s The White Death, a western story set in Mexico, Valley Of The Lost aka King Of The Forgotten People, evoke actual fear, Connor recorded People Of The Black Coast, the crab people, this noir horror, very simple ideas, guy goes to Mexico or South America, the forbidden valley, I’m prospector I must go, finds some bones, finds so gold, hops onto him and eats him, Mother!, a 12 minute story, an idea and nothing else, that guy really knew how to spark up a story and get out, not to its benefit, I’m really enjoying this story, there’s a mix, where is this going, what is going on?, all over the place, completely unnecessary characters, compelling, more or less in one take, recording setup, more interesting, the characters, the action, picturing the setup of the mansion, as if it was an Agatha Christie, for the genre, he’s such a great mood writer, comparison of the opening, Abysses of unknown terror lie veiled, he’s doing a Lovecraft right there, straight out of The Call Of Cthulhu, the rending of the veil, a locked room, familiar with the form, Mary Roberts Rinehart, a mystery story based on, Gum-Shoe Mixley, in a quandary, rank grass, remunerated him, old fashioned, what makes somebody just is that they pay him, solicited the patronage, as dark as Egypt at night, much more like The Hardy Boys, and what are they doing there?, why there?, in line of sight, they didn’t have radio towers, it keeps doing that, recreate the come hear Watson I need you, Alexander Graham Bell, Shakespearean comedic character, emotionally and tonally all over the place, two stories for scripts, its terrible and needs to be changed a lot, so easy, scary and fun, it would be impossible, too many, stripped it down, it has to be the tech, sound goes on forever, every step you take doesn’t echo in eternity, a cool idea, ghost hypothesis, The Stone Tape (1972), psychic images from great trauma, a murder in a castle, like phonographs, resonating properly you can see the past, the inspiration, really ancient whispering stone, recording equipment, voices from the past, a voice from the future, come to yell at it, get the hell out, we got out, the stone was warning him, its from the future, the abbey museum, there’s a nuclear war coming but we don’t know when, 1016 words, a similar idea, light, Slow Glass, Light Of Other Days by Bob Shaw, slower than the speed of light, a thick slab in a nice setting, leave it there for 15 years, recorded views, a picture window to that place in Ireland, makes your dingy apartment wonderful to be in, an Irish countryside, honeymooners, quaint country farm, off they go to live their life, she’s a young woman and he’s an old man, the slow glass was going two ways, a beautiful story that takes a science fiction idea and does something exquisite, Cleve Cartmill, Tom Godwin, all the things that it teaches us, incoherent and pointless, a better writer, broken them up into a couple of different stories, incongruent, the intro, the main plot happens in Egypt, so much exposition to develop the machine, they’re doing it, a train, its a romance?, she died, she died randomly in the end, trying to make it uncanny, the trope of a scientist and his beautiful daughter, Lester Del Rey, Futurama, an intern, Amy, guh, Stanley G. Weinbaum, distraction to the main character, how they look alike, reincarnated brother and sister, why is this happening, bad writing, trying to understand everything, Mistress Of Mellyn by Victoria Holt, not understanding why things are happening, associated with fear, people fear things they don’t understand, thunder is a good example, they act instinctually, hunker down, the cover is iconic, a guy running between pillars, Hammurabi style statue, very Persians, mouth open, what caused that?, covers are very important, this seems Lovecraftian, Syrian bearded dudes, the overwhelming truth about something in history causes cosmic horror, muted, 106 years old, when people still remembered Lincoln speeches, why was it soundproof?, an old dowager would, in the 70s they’re doing 70s stuff, the fifties was not understandable until Back To The Future (1985), the tech, the cars, the music, movies set in the 40s, the 80s, 90s, 00’s, 10s, study the past, the 1890s, Sherlock Holmes, William Hope Hodgson, prewar stuff, Anita Loos, Gentleman Prefer Blondes, every period of time, the Wilson presidency, super-conscious of race, not fast enough for some, post WWI to the early 20s, the last month of WWI, almost doesn’t exist, German spies, exists in Canada, rationing, important for Lovecraft, Nick Carter magazine, Blue Book, one of the sweats, Boston Blackie, heroic burglar stories, Johnston McCulley, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Edgar Wallace, Achmed Abdullah, the beginning of the pulp industry, the format is dime novel, no inside advertizement, formatted in a style that we don’t really understand, a popular consumable, biweekly, comics in the 90s, biweekly X-Men, who is the audience for this?, young men maybe, what year is our Robert E. Howard story set, it doesn’t matter, probably not set in 1928, he doesn’t do any work to pin that down, Sir Thomas Cameron, Sir John Baskerville, born into it, a competitor who was a German/Dutch, ring any national bells?, generic German aristocrat, having a von in your name, ancestors, Indiana Jones and Belloq, in 18__, why do you do that, comes straight out of Poe, neither is doing a Poe, Poe’s wife’s name, these are people who are aware of these past writings, lead to the next, a triumph, learned a lot, not mad at all, worth discussion, this isn’t great writing, creating the product, so much exposition to get us to this “climax”, not being able to handle women, almost intervenes, beating on the feet, whipping women, a reminder, he had that issue, the death of his mother, so unnecessary, he’s this way because his love was forced to be Cleopatra’s face, not useful, really poorly done, the one we’re discussing, a great idea, this story is super-interesting, administering the beating, over her stood a lower magistrate, shriek upon shriek, this is a piece of history, recorded forever, you will be haunted by it, a local colour thing, its not the visual images, it’s a story about sound, when you cover your ears, block out history, wanted to explore it and utterly failed at every turn, squint, the last part is about a third, 2/5ths of the story, the weird frame with the cop, back and forth with Virginia on the phone, three months later, Virginia’s voice in the past, how would she known, unlikely to have ever heard a recording of her voice in 1918, a certain direction, dissatisfying, no mystery for the Egyptologist, shrunk and turned into a mummy, fetish hut, he had all the pieces, two guys with no noses, a little bit of tweaking, Almuric, Otis Adelbert Kline, notes thrown in, very Howardy, Kliney, not his normal thing, British dudes talking about British dudes, just as racist towards the British, stereotypes about British people, a very very racist time, talking about some other issue, the universities in China, grandfather had been in an important player, one of Mao’s generals, a positive effect on the gandchild’s social life, if you’re a minority in China, an exam, out of 500, an ethnic minority gets an ethnic minority, if you’re not han Chinese, their version of affirmative action, George H.W. Bush, if your dad was president…, that is the thing that’s happening to us now, programs, that’s our reality that everybody knows about, everybody was racist, why H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard were talking about, the Satanic Panic really effected Jesse’s life, a panic, occult, the backlash to Harry Potter, a Ouija board, the lone Catholic kid, a panic about cults, how terrible cults were, seems like something out of the 1930s, that was devil worship, no longer allowed to Dungeon Master, subject to forces that dictate the conversation, real insight, they’re trying to do stuff, science fiction doesn’t become science fiction until Stanley G. Weinbaum, there needs to be a shaping, Alfred I. Tooke, weird fiction, him ripping off Lovecraft after high school, 25 years ago, Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, still is amazing, there’s other stuff too, Guy De Maupassant, dealing with tropes and stuff, reading that Hardy Boys book, enlightening, those boys are lawbreakers, not what I expected, lessons learned, ancient Egypt, subconscious, they both have H in the title, fashionable, Orientalism, Some Words With A Mummy, they found King Tut’s tomb, what this project is, look at old things and see what the past was like, echoes from Adam and Eve, sound doesn’t echo into eternity, no one else is talking about The Haunted Corridors, dug up out of the trunk, 1970, in 7 months, in the year 2610, be a haunted again, a cool takeaway, what is the purpose of reading old things, you have no sense of history, how men don’t read, why that is, its perpetually, none of them reference each other, the historical explanations, boys don’t read, YA fiction, why Pulpcovers boys don’t read new fiction, what about Dogman?, romance, a prize to be won, message issues, Lodestar award, barely readable, the other Alex, one of these charges, a comicbook that you find at Walmart, superheroish, 10 years old, in that age range, teens talk about that, subbing a lot, Diary Of A Wimpy Kid, Dr Seuss, Doctor Suess’ Sleep Book, he’s classic, the touchstones of Cora’s childhood, Meckie the hedgehog, Pingu, an official superhero version of the leader of Venezuela, Super Mustache, what we only ever do, the deeper you study the past, we don’t have a good focal length for studying things near, video and records and newspapers and the internet, elevated even tho its so crappy, think about what it means, they could listen to it again, looking at the past, transmissions from earth, this is not a telephone cable, this is sound itself, hilariously stupid, a great idea for a story, more sensitive to the science of it, make it slightly mystical, The Silmarillion, echoed there forever more, it turns into heat after a certain point, magical realism, because of the period, the Resonator from From Beyond, Francis Stevens, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, supercool, suspend disbelief, the Star Trek communicator, across time zones, an international call, ring the operator, Unseen – Unfeared, narrated by Mike Vendetti, 1919, a framing device, the mad scientist, that’s how it does start then he fumbles it, Sunfire by Francis Stevens, Argosy, millions over millions of years, you need to give yourself homework, find the time, nephews, give them some Dogman, comparisons, wet women, super on the nose, too much in common, lack of innovation, we had fun, a dude lit up, grappled by something, a weird startling story, similarly clothed, harrowing and weird events, a far off island, sparks coming out of her hands, a monster nearby, the derelict fleet, fire of the sun, the first few pages, the right use of the word, she’s good, she deserves to be better remembered, scientist goes on vacation, ticked him into dying, a science story and fantasy story, weird fiction, science fiction, another dimension of Pittsburgh, never gets picked up again, a pocket universe, this lady’s a girl, Leigh Brackett’s birthday, sane take, she’s uneven, C.L. Moore is all right, as a female author who’s really important, Jean Veil, innovative, her last story is in Weird Tales, follow these great authors, worked for a Mormon magazine, John Bellairs, The Face In The Frost, fairly scary, Astrid Lindgren, The Mummy, The Will, And The Crypt, listed in Appendix N, died really young, only 53, after he died, his characters, just under Poul Anderson, one of the most obscure, Margaret St. Clair, getting yelled at, the first Gor book, would read it again, John Norman, infodumpy, where’s the sex?, BDSM stuff, super-superflawed, the green muscle mommy book, Legends & Lattes, a Gor movie, Jack Palance, John Lange, the bit from Police Squad, not disguised at all, Betty Page, she’ just barged right in there, Jabba’s sailing barge, lot’s of slaving, the proper order of the universe, Tarnsman Of Gor, fetishy, 7 hours 44 minutes, very prudish, that dude just grabbed that gal’s breast, 27 hours 30 minutes, Ralph Lister, probably pretty tame, 1966, very quickly stopped, badly written, not great, off the rails, no one would remember, great Boris Vallejo, fascinated, Eaters Of The Dead by Michael Crichton, abortion book?, A Case Of Need, Congo, Airframe, such a weird book, thinly disguised Boeing, a plane crash in Russia, so weird, a hobby horse he was on, Pirate Latitudes, Travels, Micro, Disclosure, weird sexual harassment, bitches be lying, The Great Train Robbery, Sphere, Dragon Teeth, golden age of fossil hunting, came out in 2017, State Of Fear, how global warming isn’t real, wrecked his reputation, captivated until the end, really good writer and clear, too much baggage, Timeline, with Paul Walker, a castle siege, rock and roll jousting, a Heath Ledger, A Knight’s Tale (2001), David Bowie and Queen, on brand, its Beowulf with Neanderthals, Antonio Banderas, filmed in British Columbia, downloaded and organized, The Ship Who Sang, The Ship Of Ishtar, an early Munsey magazine, Isekai?, entangled, dreamlandy, Queen Of The Black Coast with parallel dimensions, Exile Of The Eons by Arthur C. Clarke, a social satire, a dude with a boy, a Virgil Finlay space suited dude who’s a giant, audio drama, it’s terrible, so ableist, thalidomide scandal, Philip K. Dick, a classic, Eric’s book club, mutual acquaintance, pairing things, how long do you want this to be, so many good books to read, go do your podcast boys, the more people the longer, some long individuals, Scott is very short, Mr. Pulpcovers is pretty short too, Mad Max novelization for 4 hours, R. Murray Gilchrist stories, deep and rich, compare and contrast, there’s not much to say about it, West African mummies, he just made that up, weird fiction stories lend questions, rich and good, the more enigmatic the more fun to talk about, book club, too much going on, Paycheck and The Weapon Shop, dislike it more, hasn’t aged well, talk to you next year, good slide into the New Year, good job, as a voice actor, new equipment, optimal settings, Philip K. Dick never disappoints, Jungle People, he was 13, able to map it, a novel with a key, a fable, a bunch of monkeys going to war, because he’s Philip K. Dick that’s why, quick dinner.

The Haunted Corridors by William Hamilton Osborne

The Haunted Corridors by William Hamilton Osborne

The Haunted Corridors by William Hamilton Osborne

The Haunted Corridors by William Hamilton Osborne

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #843 – READALONG: Mistress Of Mellyn by Victoria Holt

The SFFaudio Podcast #843 – Jesse and Cora Buhlert discuss Mistress Of Mellyn by Victoria Holt

Talked about on today’s show:
Eleanor Alice Burford, two others, gothic romances, multigenerational family dramas, every book focused on a different woman from the same family, to name a doll, Harlequin Romances, her maiden name, historical novels, mysteries, mixed up with someone else?, early lesbian fiction?, this particular book is not very lesbian, specialized in straight romance novels, wrote a really long time, her best known pen-name, her first Victoria Holt novel, an excellent read, a little over 10 hours, a hardcover publication, the book that started the gothic romances, inspired by earlier books, women fleeing, very very good, how good it was, discovered something, aiming for, a phenomenon in the world happening, Jesse gets it now, sell a lot of books, used books, romance novels, they’re addicted, straight up romance novel, ridiculous and silly, the genre, making a distinction, gothics, romance, gothic romance, in comics, she’s interesting, she’s got something wrong with her, neurotic?, what it is, this is like escapism, a fantasy series, Dragonlance, really fun, teaches you nothing, escaping from the world, fantasy is the same thing, learning to swordfight in a book, fun but teaches you nothing, escaping their life, she’s not neurotic, overthinking things, her own experience of the world, what evolutionary purpose does it serve, gothic romances are like amateur detective novels, Tommy and Tuppence, Agatha Christie style, mysteries, cozy mysteries about cupcake bakers, it wasn’t their friend who was murdered, these are detective novels, and the mystery is, an menace, is this man the right person to marry, Jane Austen, the Byronic hero, Lord Byron, Mr Right and Mr Wrong, its a parody of the 18th century gothic, they’re absolutely connected, a descendant, what makes it so much better, hints of the supernatural, she looked like a fey, are you fey?, no wereford, don’t go out on the moors, the little people will pull you into a bog, supernatural threat, all the feelings that she has are justified, the final scene before the afterword, having the rugged pulled out from under me, perfectly red herringed all the way through, she would be the one, the killer, the source of all the weird happenings, totally surprised, skilled writing and fun to try and figure out if this is a suitable man for her, are these feelings I have all in my head, very standoffish, inappropriate kiss, aloof, 1980s, first person, the POV of the woman, the man is the mystery, he’s always flirting with you, go off to Australia, often such a guy, she needs to investigate, the mystery of who am I gonna marry, Philip K. Dick, what’s the difference between men and women, some time in the 19th century, later 19th century, trains, 1860 or up to 1890, described the clothing, men are different from women, women gestate babies for 9 months, a woman needs to be circumspect about the man she marries, lots of money vs. a little money, very little power, she’s poor, a gentlewoman, Jane Austen onward, gentry, find a job, governess, companion to a rich elder woman, worse jobs, not respectable jobs, a streetwalker, a high class prostitute, an actress, she doesn’t think she’s pretty, she is pretty, a romance trope, the heroine never thinks of herself as pretty, we don’t want her to be vain, not relatable, to the female reader, nice qualities, kind to the one kid, the non-verbal girl, a fairy child who got run over by a cart or something, she never married, just a servant to an old woman, telling this story, her great grandchildren, the room with two skeletons in it, snaps her out of her coma, two minutes ago, story’s over, she really strung me along, this book would make a great choose your own adventure, a Jane Austen based humorless one, an Austen scholar, aimed at teenagers, translated from English, because we don’t know he’s a good guy, I went and saw, as soon as she finds the diary, medallion or necklace back, contradicts the official story, turn to page 78, he chokes you to death, he murdered his wife, a mix of two previous famous books, Charlotte Brontë, Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca, Jane Eyre, Martha, previous wife, mysterious presence, said to be dead but isn’t, are you okay with me spoiling these two, mentally ill, locked up in the attic, died in a storm, a lot of ghosts in this book, provoked him into murder, couldn’t just divorce, the big house burns down, the body of the wife and her sailboat, terminal cancer, the murderer, similarities to Rebecca, both set in Cornwall, an inversion of the most famous Sherlock Holmes story, The Hound Of The Baskervilles, Dartmoor, a Canadian who inherits the estate, Watson is the viewpoint character, the woman in danger is Sir John Baskerville, the neighbors are a brother and sister, an astronomer, the other one likes flowers, like a gothic romance, just a straight up murder mystery, wrote well into the 1980s, probably worth reading, historical, the formula’s older, rediscovered, perfected, Sir John Baskerville falls in love with the sister across the moor, the neighbour astronomer, wanted to inherit the estate, make the baronet close, kill him too, the final distant heir, the girl falls in love, I don’t want my husband to kill you, all very solid, that is not perceived as a romance, an amateur detective, hiding in a cave, investigating this spooky old house, not a gothic romance, what makes it a gothic romance, the possibility of marrying in, what does Connan Tremellyn do for a living?, goes on business trips, could have been red herrings, a rich landowner, tenant farmers, my money is in slaves, my money is in rum, Mansfield Park, do we want to marry him?, she marries the younger son, what makes this book so interesting and significant, investigating along, not knowing right up to the end, the appeal of this, beautiful women fleeing castles at night with a high lit window, this is part of a woman’s mind, I’m dating this guy, he’s physically stronger, he could hurt me, how do I know that he is good?, Joanna Russ, scholarly article, another person’s blog post, neither love stories, adventure stories with passive protagonists, she’s the opposite of that, the actions she takes, she takes this job, then she realizes this kid is traumatized, needs to get back on the horse, why the book is so long, lemme raise this kid, not as brain damaged, teach her letters, worrying about this journal she found, writes a letter to the previous governess, presents that information, she is doing an active investigation, whenever men are giving her gifts, almost a swordfight parrying, verbal techniques rather than physical techniques, great dialogue, all the men are sinister but no men in this book are evil, an evil woman, the wife is coded as evil, slave plantations, Caribbean, she’s mentally ill because she’s mixed race, am I going crazy?, is this a dream?, why is she always second guessing?, that’s the quality of she’s doing the investigation, not taking everything at face value, when presented with the horse, the right instinct, the stabling of this horse, the reason that guy is a bad guy, he’s not thinking things through, what we would think of a little suspect, realistic character flaws, cheating on my first wife, a very elderly husband, I’m disaffected, when I marry you, don’t listen to the rumors, Victoria Holt tricking us very effectively, the formula that birthed the gothic romance, the new explanation, when the elderly sir died, this is why this book is so long, he wasn’t a useless character, he was a red herring, he might have been murdered, suspected poison, is she being used?, sure looks like it, is she gonna go confront him?, at any of the points where she’s questioning what to do, the gothic novel boom had ended by the 80s, not enough overlap, sensuality and kissing, there’s implied sex, on screen there’s kissing that’s it, The Flame And The Flower by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss, half-rape, Heartquest Dungeons & Dragons romance novel, not a true romance, you literally are going on a quest to save your village, bad water in the well, cute guy, to expand the customer base to girl, the most popular German one, The Dark Eye, a German D&D knock off, early sword & sorcery, nerdy guys, more Tolkienesque, specialty import shops, advertised on television, mainstream board game company, was it available in East Germany, it would fit, on a train in 1989, 16 years old, a city partnership, for the fall of the east europe, the other person is just like me, what was then the Soviet Union, Latvia, student exchange, see for myself what its like, 3 days from Bremen, Berlin to St. Petersburg, for obvious reasons, endless three day train ride, two guys had the dark eye, Poland, someone probably did play it in East Germany, didn’t care about board games, gothic romance choose your own adventure, write those extra scenes, end up murdered, shoved into the murder hole, the old priest’s hole, there’s a skeleton in there, yay!, perfectly reasonable to expect, crazy woman locked in the attic, child locked in the basement, buried alive, Edgar Allan Poe, essentially a perfect book, long but justified, a murder mystery, the romance, 8 and half hours in when he asks her to marry, mostly it’s about the kids, common gothic thing, I want to marry you, Mr Darcy is besotted with Elizabeth, dude what are you doing, the only threat is his eyebrows and his gloominess, the mysterious unknowable, mad bad and dangerous to know, Lord Byron left the country, they are stay at homes, having to flee the country, the scandal is so great, Bluebeard, there is a Bluebeard scene in this book, Bros. Grimm, The Castle Of Murder, Fitcher’s Bird, three daughters, take her away, I would like to marry your eldest daughter, third time, the only sister, parents what are you doing, she’s very suspicious, here are the keys to any room in the house, do not go in there, oh and take this egg and carry it with you always, an old woman skinning guts, chopped up in a bowl, egg to drop and get stained, the truth is out, this bluebeard character, murdering his wives, maybe he has sex with him, one way of ending the story, where’s that egg?, oh good, now we can have a good marriage, psychologically, a woman needs to be locked up, his wife was not faithful to him, she is going to be faithful, good at rebuffing, so true, only to give birth to children from that man, Bluebeard’s test, the woman’s test, a mental investigation, some of those memes, man and woman are lying in bed, about the Roman Empire, women need to investigate the man’s head, the baby won’t be supported, the gap between the genders, not knowing what motivates the other, note that folktales, fairytales, warnings, be careful about who you’re marrying, stories written by Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm stories are fairytales, orally transmitted, cautionary tales, art fairy tales, Charles Perrault, little mermaid, Copenhagen, put a nail in the coffin, being happy, perfectly grokked, propose this scenario, imagine this novel gender swapped, a lady who has a big castle, she needs a tutor for her son, she’s very standoffish, she’s not sure that her son is her son, that is Jesse’s point, there are things going on in this kind of fiction that allow us to see inside of people, gender flip public domain stories, King Of The Black Coast, My Cousin Rachel, you don’t have the kid in this one, is Jilly Flower the most important character in the book?, she leads things in directions, she’s not, neither is the daughter, step daughter, not a bio-daughter, she’s a bastard, she’s a cuckoo-kid, who is the most important character in the book, the narrator, she’s absolutely not passive, that quote doesn’t make any sense, active in every respect, at the height of the gothic romance boom, Tansy Rayner Roberts, woman and the house, who is the Mistress of the title, mistress has a second meaning, the title of the book can refer to the murderer, it does refer to the child as well, both children, half sisters, slept with everything that moved, a realistic book, really well put together, another part of the universe, why are gothic romances so appealing?, this is a real phenomena, you don’t write novels about men investigating women’s past, weird incel guys, as long as it hasn’t been for the last nine months its probably fine, in the 21st century, always virginal, the servants in this house, the mother of Gilly, walked into the sea, Beyond The Door is awesome, that night at the dinner table, her hand to her mouth, sharp nails, her bosom rising and falling, a cuckoo clock, just like my mother had when Pete was still alive, Carl got it for me wholesale, a funny little sound, what’s the matter with you you’ve got your clock haven’t you, the opening of the story, its in Fantastic Universe, only for her, won’t do it for Larry, smash you, breaks his neck, very near the end of the story, what?!, what is this?, nobody cares except for Jesse, there’s a hidden story inside of this story, like my mother had, when Pete was still alive, never hear Pete again, why is that in there?, if you’re paying attention, there’s a nosy neighbour across the street, suss out whether she was cheating, the neighbour’s last name is Peters, we heard from the nosy neighbour, Larry Thomas, why is Pete the presumed half brother, Doris, it’s all about cuckolding, the wife is cheating on him, he comes home unexpectedly, they were having sex, informing on this household, her husband cheated with Doris’ mom, he murdered him, the same kind of psychology, women are biologically different than men, men just have to hope that women are faithful, that difference makes for a vast exploration of genres of story, pretty much all of them, if we had access to alpha centurian literature, Alien Nation, George Fransisco, retarded guy at work, prefertilizes women, the fertilization ceremony, everybody celebrates, not something that normally happens in our culture, made possible by his contribution, that’s what makes science fiction amazing, that’s what its really about, not just an alien with a ray gun, isn’t that cool?, Nancy Drews, Hardy Boys, she is an amateur detective, something’s gone missing, she has a girlfriend, she’s not dating, teen mysteries, next week, some kind of early advent coffee, 4.5 hours, aimed at kids, this was very solid, one of the best books, let’s talk about Rebecca, it’s public domain status, there’s several movies, the Hitchcock one, fairly recent version, Charles Dance, Diana Rigg, Game Of Thrones, she was the old woman giving really good advice, a British actor, Sean Bean, Sharpe’s Rifles is the one where he doesn’t get killed, Goldeneye (1995), he’s a white ruissian mad at the British, a great backstory, very few good Bond movies after the fall of the Berlin Wall, not really about the Cold War, it wasn’t the Russians, he slept with them, they gave him an Order of Lenin, License To Kill, James Bond does Miami Vice, the Bond movies died with Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, products of the 60s and 70s, the modern ones with Daniel Craig, Newcastle Birmingham accent, part of the promotion of the film requires that you pretend, Sean Connery, the best James Bond movie is the Cannonball Run (1981), plastic surgery, a Jew who wants to be James Bond, they’re all fairly good, George Lazenby, it has Diana Rigg, a very good movie, the guy who plays Jaws [Richard Kiel] is in Cannonball Run (1981) too, some cookies, we have bad food in North America, truck stop bakery, a well lit bakery, American style diner, discovered the cookies, cookies in the background, see you next week.

Mistress Of Mellyn by Victoria Holt

Mistress Of Mellyn by Victoria Holt

Mistress Of Mellyn by Victoria Holt

Mistress Of Mellyn by Victoria Holt

Mistress Of Mellyn by Victoria Holt

Mistress Of Mellyn by Victoria Holt

Mistress Of Mellyn by Victoria Holt

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #842 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Symposium by Plato

The SFFaudio Podcast #842 – The Symposium by Plato, translated by Benjamin Jowett, read by Geoffrey Edwards (2 hours 14 minutes) for LibriVox, followed by a discussion of it. Persons of the podcast: Jesse, Alex (pulpcovers), Terence Blake, and Tommy Patrick Ryan

Talked about on today’s show:
on the outside, a flute girl, from approx 2400 year ago, a nice conversation, how gay these guys were, 30 years, pretty peculiar, a callow youth, these guys are deeply gay, great books, Eric [Rabkin] our mutual friend, amp up the gayness, Socrates and all these guys were NPCs, the real love is with a man and a boy, his beard needs to be just sprouting, how okay they were with, it was the moral thing to do, it was the norm, they’re aliens, half the people aren’t okay with it, allies, real deep, what’s the cutoff line, very prevelent, slaves gettin wrecked, other dialogues, one of the Assassin’s Creed games, all these quests, very cool, the death of Socrates as a mission, Plato as a young boy, Hippocrates, Pythagoras was an elf, a few hundred years, names you would know, probably an awesome way to learn about that stuff, players appreciate depth, taking a walk, walkin and talking, partying in the street, everybody’s a master, the flute girls suck, are they filling flutes of champagne or piping of flutes, literature, right to the point, why isn’t all philosophy written this way, Aristotelian, sub bullet points, what is this book about and who’s right?, the story of the double people, two weddings, some part of that passage, the premise, connected, somersaults, androgynous, gay weddings?, best man, both were non-religious weddings, looking for that other half, in tears, I found you, not an emotional guy, 30th birthday, people being split, soul mates, super goofy, we’re punished, we’re cursed, we’re forever cursed, you need to find some way to connect, weddings usually involve some words, obviously wrong, a myth created for this particular piece, gets at something, a comedy piece, pieces are tucked in, move the genitals around to the other side, it’s silly, resonates with the Christian myth of the fall, splitting you in half, complete in another person, super-common, you complete me, people want that, not whole, a lot of propaganda in Hollywood, the #MeetCute, ideological and pathological, 17 years now, I got to find my romantic partner, I’m on the wrong path, I can’t find the one, Speed (1994), base it on sex, mimetic, Speed 2, the meeting the other half of your soul, higher and higher forms of love, inside this text, towards something, real love is a higher thing, Agathon, craziness, the greater the #MeetCute, the gal in Ecuador, randomly on the bus, a city of 400,000 people, hard to get over, there’s a narrative that we subscribe, the plot is breaking, this can’t be the end, no, it’s the end, look at the details, witty banter and personality defects that fit together, The Front Page (1931), back and forth, a high high, elevated horror, in the clouds with Aristophanes, love is wanting to share, step in, love is being drawn towards the good qua good, participating in the good, love is not inter-subjective, translated as love, erotic love, the lowest form of love, real eros is towards the good, middling eros, sublimated eros, philosophy, philia, a transformation of eros, the other forms of love, the appreciation of beauty, you have to have a consciousness, this is fun, what do I do all day long, Tommy in the chat, process stories to read them, beautiful art, it needs to be appreciated, beautiful women, why?, there’s a story there, I’m an animal, I’m a male, I’m not super-gay, what does Mr Pulpcovers do all day, beautiful pieces of art, higher DPI is better, costs a lot of money, that’s not the purpose, a certain kind of art, a lost art, commercial art, spend a nickel on a crappy magazine, designed to make it hard to look away, the same cover three times changed, aesthetic judgements, cave women uncovered pictures, suddenly jumps off the page, tasteful or better, figuring that out, a particular [John William] Waterhouse painting, one of Circe, a mirror behind her, in front of her in the mirror is Odysseus, his ship, you shouldn’t be able to see the ship, her wand, level with her head is a cup, incense burning, tile floor covered in dung, flowers strewn all about, an image rich in scent, took the painting, how is this such a great painting, recreating it in photographs, very good, in a dream last night, a poem without meter or rhyme is probably not worth reading, respect that some people don’t like rhyme, the greatest example, he has meter and he puts rhymes, prefer it, sonnets are sweet, nobody pays you for it, not something you do to get paid, unless you’ve got a guitar or are in a Korean boy band, a fun framework for a song, lyrics, one is the root of the other, grokking the image better, appreciating what’s going on, bare and graceful foot atop the head of man, how striking it is, the first story with a wand in it, very firsts, at the end he attacks her with his knife, promise not to entrance him, feeds him and bathes him, first they have sex, stay for a while, some insight into the Greek, talking about Homer, more Iliad than the Odyssey, Achilles love for Patroclus, this is part of Plato’s realm of the forms argument, getting at the same thing, what Socrates eventually talks about, Platonic theory of forms, the Platonic ideal of a pulp cover, #BrassBra and #LegCling, why is #LegCling a thing, she grabs at his knees, these Greeks are crybabies, when you have a lot of slaves and a lot of violence, a platonic ideal of a western pulp magazine, a horse a girl and guy and a #KetchupAndMustardGetup, Han Solo’s black vest, doesn’t make him any less a Western cowboy cover, when Greedo shot first, very reasonable, The Iliad, the heterome I am, iconic scenes, the sheep, the cyclops, the cattle, the island of the sun, Argus the dog, gone from 20 years, recognizes Odysseus in disguise, sees his master he dies, whatev you just a dog, how to be in the world, Odysseus doesn’t seem super gay, gets all the honors, Agathon, Alcibiades, the gay rapist traitor, famously a terrible traitor, fought for Sparta, he deserved the battle honor, saved me and my arms, he should be the one honoured, harder to understand, the desire to go home, defeat one’s enemies, so focused on male on male love, an appreciation of some sort of beauty, we can picture in our heads a pulp cover we’ve never seen, a rocketship, a bubble helmet, #SpaceBagLadies, this is this and that’s that, class notes, he would talk for years and his students would take notes, Plato is a lot more like [Saint] Augustine, more narrative, doesn’t have a clear answer, gesturing in the direction, sharing, in the content its not about sharing, harmony, the search for unity, the form, all together, Plato is giving several different answers in the content, the sharing in the form, all about eros, if it wasn’t too old, the symposium is about the love of sharing (agape), an anachronism, the whole setup is producing all sorts of concepts of love, riffing on eros, heavenly eros, earthly eros, eros as cosmic, takes you toward abstraction, excess and lack, later on we will give different names to those things, concepts at play, maybe he doesn’t even want to invent certain sorts of terms, a technical sense, terminological pinning down, in the text proper, one guy says to the other, sit here by me, let me pour myself into you, a bad vision of dialogue, drink of your wisdom, vampire, that is sharing, finish quickly, the example, water through wool, if you lay a strip of wool, capillary action, siphoning petrol, pour my wisdom into you, no wisdom by proximity or osmosis, you gotta do the work man, Zeus showing her true form, she was just exploded, ok, lightning bolt, Neo in the Matrix, download is the metaphor we are problematized today, downloading is actually just copying, copying over and copying across, an actual drinking party, the name Achilles, Diotima, super adjacent, super interesting, a narrative, almost a soap opera, some sort of different, what did you do in the war?, bard comes into town, two different Ajaxes, you don’t have to be from Ithaca to appreciate the story, Achilles was mad at Agamemnon for stealing a lady, borrows his armour, bolsters the troops, slain by Hector, taking the revenge, had a lot of lovers, The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), I go to bed with all my friends, they are really close, several lovers there, Phaedrus, lover of Agathon, unrequited love, the inverse of the image, the divine statue inside, the earthly parodic version, external beauty of the warrior, a reverse image, the Iliad is an earthly allegory, touch on this idea, why is it a symposium, a drinking party, who can get drunk, not a real drinking party, it’s diluted, the heavy drinking, the undiluted wine, dilute with some water, attenuate the effect of the alcohol, as the host, don’t give them too much, tipsy and good humour, the form is important here, ultimately, lets you understand what something’s true nature is, let’s close the door, later on in the party, when a party of street people comes in, a metaphor for his later betrayal, looking pretty and wrecking Athens, the host shares the wine with you, Jesse is not a wine guy, when the people are doing that, appreciate this, why do you invite people over to your house, diffuse good, spread it out, 48 Laws Of Power [by Robert Greene], assumes scarcity mentality, that’s not really the problem, a lack of scarcity, we are post scarce on almost everything, more and more people are skipping meals, the lower level of income, food is not scarce, scarcity is produced, the opposite of the love mindset, in fairy tales nobody ever says I love you they just give you food, a palpable need, she’s not trying to make money, she wants to express love, words are new, do you know what love is, they’re still alive, puppies covered in blood, licks them clean, helps them to find her nipples, she licks up her puppies poo and pee, they don’t have the word love, balls and owls, they did know love, this is the good, share the good, perverse incentives, using people to keep your position, assumes scarcity, the more you share information and skills and the good the better it is for you, your environment is better, comes at the end, how ugly Socrates is, it isn’t just about Alcibiades is pretty, the visual is the first step, born with your eyes closed, shared, coming there to party, drink of the ideas, the form being somehow connected, seminar is a 3 hour class, professors getting together and drinking, extemporaneous speeches, they picked a topic while they were there, set up that way, sophists or students of sophists, Aristophanes, the best versions of themselves, a literary device, an idea of preparation in it, plucked out of the air, a rhetorical competition, they’ve set pieces, so right, they’ve had this conversations multiple times, great speeches, kept having these speeches, Plato took the best of it, makes it compelling an interesting, working on it, they did it again, tweaking us, extemporaneous speeches, expected to have, frameworks, taught how to give a speech off the cuff, memorizing a speech by license, Protagoras, Gorgias, Homer’s poetry, rosy fingered dawn, each is relying on his previous work, half extemporaneous, serving up what they’ve got in their repertoire that they adapt, public speaking, canned jokes, Intoxicating Interests, the entire Skywalker saga, Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1000% they were ready to talk on this topic, experts on love, the warrior poet as a concept, Tolkien, the Battle Of The Pelennor Fields, Gurney Halleck in Dune, composing war songs on the fly, tattooed on my arm, a framework that’s lost now, a proper education for normal people, all the citizens were all senators and lawyers, coherently, persuasively, and passionately, any real powers of enjoyment, no human being has ever seen Socrates drunk, he can transform the alcohol on the molecular level, it fits, going back to Circe, Mercury comes, moly, mix you up a mess in a potion, he drinks it, he drinks the poison that’s going to turn him into a pig or a lion, turning water into wine or wine into water, part of the rhetorical story, he’s the intellectual ancestor of the stoics, self mastery, the statue of the Silenus, highly developed soul, a yogi, master the bodily reactions, that archetype, though phyiscally ugly, the tutor to Dionysus, in vino veritas, talk to a lot of randos, do you smoke weed?, what they’re doing, my brain is drugs, certain drugs, bad effects, alcohol makes Jesse stupid, makes poorer decisions, Friedrich Nietzsche, my good friend Yoda, not that wise, Yoda as a Buddha, inner beauty, whatever the yoda species is, where baby yodas come from, a female jedi, the only of that race, inner light, inner beauty, teach yoga a lot, friend from Russia, halo of golden light coming from his third eye, sees in these ways, waiver, would not take drugs, unlocked all this stuff, mistaking metaphor, Tucker Carlson, nuclear weapons were built by demons, a guy named Oppenheimer, that which is good, its as if, making it not a simile, very little metaphor, mythology of where some subset of humans come from, silly, designed to be humorous, speaks to the problem, the party gets broken up, the less of a good theory, a basic level, leveling deeper, what makes Socrates beautiful in that scene, saving his friend, retrieving his armour, his beautiful actions, talking about actions, could be taken to literally, a shift in perception, that’s not a pretty person, Steve Buscemi is not a handsome man, he fits some sort of archetype of beauty not in the supermodel department, people light up, a useful metaphor, seeing the beautiful actions, look at the actions not at the nose, Nietzsche’s thing, collective Greek psychology, beginning to come apart, classical poems, scipture, coming apart, mastered this chaos of instincts in his person, at the wrong time, the ugliness meant he was going to fail, the very next year, a series of sacrileges, the Hermes statues were disfigured, parodies, it was a plot, fled to Sparta, powers as a general, had to flee again, refuge with the Persians, assassinated, Macedonia, Agathon was one of the people accused of the desecration, this is the end of the good old times, banquet, known people who’s fates declined, judged and tried for being friends with people like that, his failure, good and strong and resistant, his undoing as well, the seeds of that were there, by implication, 416bc, the year before, high gear, the decline of Athens, underneath Socrates’s surface, the realm, to talk like Game Of Thrones, underneath the surface of Athens, this decline, this chaos, pluralism, criticize each other, typologies and instincts, the setting and the scene more resonant, written backwards, Hagel’s thing, the owl of Minerva spreads its wings at dusk, how you interpret the last scene, a paragraph, when Alcibiades had finished, you are sober, for all this long story, an ingenious circumlocution, I ought to love you and nobody else, the plot of this, has been detected, Alcibiades: Agent Of Chaos, each speech is more powerful and more inclusive, two different types, the medical point of view, the right dosage, the cosmic viewpoint, Diotima is Socrates in transgender dressing, up in the clouds in transcendence, a failed incarnation, only one person managed to do it, everyone else was scattered to the four winds, doublefaced, profitable to revisit, perceiving it as super super gay, that’s the deep state, Trump was elected to get rid of this stuff, the politics of the breaking up of the two bodies, androgynous, we only use that as an insult, he ain’t got no big bushy beard, it doesn’t fit with today’s aesthetics, too manly, the bad flow, they’re just slaves, not as sexual objects, cultivated slaves, how different the society is, appreciate the things we can connect with, supposedly a very advanced civilization, technological marvels, we were walking, so many levels of hearsay, piecing this together, we start with a walk, Ethan Frome [by Edith Wharton], frame narrative, Canterbury Tales, maybe in a novel, The Odyssey, everything is unreliable, most sacred and hallowed love, is this pedophilia, not really the best people, they’re not trying to impress us, there’s no wives mentioned here, men with men, they are literally at home supervising the slaves, another party in another part of the house, what classes you’re taking, the wife who goes down, Priam’s daughter, Orpheus tries to get into Hades alive, the relationship to women has massively changed by the time of Shakespeare, The Odyssey, Iago’s got the hots for Othello, you can have a conversation with a lady and the eros goes up, in Macbeth, she’s a real character, not the subject, the pureness of it, its relation to the pureness of it, Pulpcovers.com, the spacing between the characters, a celebrity face, make it look like Mr Spock a little bit, we want to see the original, raw, [virgin covers], making alternative covers, weird collectors, for investment purposes, we have these dudes hanging around drinking, being in academia, a trade issue, access to the Black Sea, in a finite space, they went to Ireland, after various plagues, get people banging, useful banging rather than pleasureful gay banging, tragedies, normalized those relationships, definitely changed, gay vikings, hot for finding ladies, show off too each other, interested in braggadocio, the one where Socrates dies, two dozen, not a Plato guy as such, why do they teach this one, this one’s funny, an instinct to share (not just bodily fluids), what makes someone spiritually ugly, using you to get what I want, thinking Ayn Randian thoughts, Objectivism is not that, sterile and kind of gross, mathematically planned, they both have contempt for the others, creator of great architectures, they don’t have souls, she did that to her own husband, I guess, she lived that philosophy to the max, it seems ugly, ugly in real life too, as a point of aesthetics, The Fountainhead, get it through osmosis, as great souled as him, stop watching ninjas and samurais on tv, do some more dialogues, The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown by Lawrence Block, Project Pope, Clifford D. Simak, The Visitors by Clifford D. Simak, how fun those Simak books are, Time Is The Simplest Thing, Shakespeare’s Planet, Special Deliverance, the poetess is like Agathon, let herself die, the singing pillar, turned into a mummy, Simak is a philosophy guy doing science fiction in those books, he never really was a big plot guy, the ones written for Astounding, late Simaks, spread those out a bit, Mistress of Mellyn by Victoria Holt, The Haunted Corridors, Odd John, Lilith by George Macdonald, step away, more out there, new good stuff on LibriVox, another Plato, six months or a year, pretty long, six months or a year, how this is sci-fi, kind of curious, another website, two wordpress sites, a very good argument, crime and mystery rather than police procedural, very much the same thing as science fiction and fantasy, help a student with some homework, Fugitive Pieces, canadian lit forced upon canadian students, unreadable garbage because they don’t have wizards and they don’t have robots, necromancers, not sent in the ancient past, mimetic fiction, the author grew up in a suburb of Toronto, dad was a holocaust survivor, it’s boring, interested in interesting, philosophy and science fiction go together like ham and eggs, and the ones that aren’t confuses things, in essence, if you want to stretch it and make it easy, eight-limbed two headed creatures, fantastical writing, myth, philosophy is asking questions, myth and fantasy aren’t the same thing, a lot of Manhunt, characters are disposable generally, a six page story, Shot by Gil Brewer, I’m shot!, every picture of ladies holding guns, noirvember, The Lady From Shanghai (1947), James M. Cain is not science fiction [usually], a fantasy story by him, they kill each other and go to Hell, crime stories do some sort of sparky thing that science fiction and fantasy do, stuff that’s really good and fun but nobody should do a podcast on: Tales Of The Gold Monkey, fun, stupid and silly, wasn’t that a great scene where the nazi’s dressed up as a priest, she’s in a hot-tub, the girl who’s name is Tiki, silly and fun not deep, spark, not mimetic, my dad was traumatized when there was a flood, praised to the heavens because it has poetic devices, its narrative, not interesting, overexplained it, starting to bore myself, The Tower Treasure, Mr. Pulpcovers, he doesn’t want it shared, Tommy works for me, names online, the account name, SneakyFokker, banned certain words, WWI aircraft designer, Mr Jim Moon, he’s not Jim, it’s funnier and funner, Plato means shorty or flatty, Socrates, nothing to be written down, who do we hear it from tho?, Socrates said this, that’s a good point, committing to memory, hard to remember, as soon as we are done with it, who’s this hilarious smart guy I’m listening to, we know it’s being recorded, rote, canned, happiness is the exercise of vital powers through lines of excellence in a life affording them scope, the them refers to the vital powers, copy things and share, to understand it, we don’t know who wrote it, we tell three stories, an eagle, a horse, a human, flying and eyeing and hunting, making eggs in their eyries with their sweeties, horses, what do they like, running, grass, running in groups, I have heard that, horsey things, it’s almost like they like being scared, Shadowfax is hero, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, so noble and beautiful, I’ll be in the barn with my horses, they like the power, horses are beautiful like kittens and puppies, what is man like, what would make an eagle unhappy, not being able to fly, being in a cage, not eyeing things, specific kinds of freedom, it wants to soar, doesn’t just want food, it wants to be an eagle, to actualize it’s nature, break one of its legs, don’t let it run in groups, I’ve herd, horsey things, being brushed, back to the man, so many opinions, a narrow specific kind of man, a king from some Greek kingdom, I do like my works, fleets of fleet ships, taxed away from my people, this is exactly what I do, impress other kings, this guy’s got all the ship, the happy shipwright, he’s motivated by building ships, making a tank maker happy, if you built one and put it in the water, had admirable lines, whatever a ship is supposed to do well, what we left out, do it over time, happy in the moment, designing things, making things, doing art, reveling in creation, that’s not what happiness is, the shipwright doesn’t want to build to make money, when the old man who’s built ship for 70 years, when they stand over his grave they say this was a happy man, before the internet, better at memorizing things, a muscle to exercise through lines of excellence in a life affording them scope, this is their cheat sheet, the George Lucas witching hour, the way to St. Tropez, HMS Pinafore, Pirates Of Penance, [Major-General’s Song], forensics, rhetorical, extemporaneous, interpretive, storytelling, duo, Tom and Tommy, performative, word knowledge, the narrator, Canadian, a similar register?, Geoffrey Edwards, 400 episodes, such good stuff, always just look it up, the artifacts in it are there because of the medium it was made from, a way of oriented, they’re lost, day is coming, just the next day, sixteen different ways of saying next, there’s always more to say, that’s why that show is only half an hour long, pre-stuff, wrap it up, he’s 85, it’s not a tragedy, we can say he was happy, happiness is a verb, a thing you do, its also true, it was good, you look back on it it was good, excellent and vital somehow, punishment, there’s no happiness there, you’re not doing it through lines of excellence, little kids, problems can be solved with money, money will get you more stuff, a fun one, a great group, sound issues, that was Terence, 8th and 15th, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, the Ayn Rand, The Time Machine, V For Vendetta, an actual novel, not written by Alan Moore, a little too hot right now, things being cold, there’s no audiobook for it, Treasure Island, read some things, I’ve always wanted to read, Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle, a very forgotten novel that sounds amazing, Good Omens some time in 2020, there’s nothing here, not everything needs to be discussed, that’s how I act, I’m not happy but we’ll see, caged up with a broken leg, making eggs with my sweetie, Steve Miller, go fly like an eagle.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #841 – READALONG: The Weapon Shop by A.E. van Vogt and Paycheck by Philip K. Dick

The SFFaudio Podcast #841 – Jesse and Cora Buhlert discuss The Weapon Shop by A.E. van Vogt and Paycheck by Philip K. Dick.

Talked about on today’s show:
wanted to pair, not public domain, first and second, Philip K. Dick was a fan of the writings of A.E. van Vogt, The Worlds Of Null-A, very similar in a couple of ways, the movie with Ben Affleck, and the lady from Kill Bill (2003), Uma Thurman, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, The Pre-Persons, sexist, hate, anti-choice, if you’re a woman, Dick is sexist, how is he sexist, Rethrick, Kelly, the secretary, his daughter, keep his business in the family, doesn’t even enter his mind, that’s the character not the author, it doesn’t seem to occur to Dick either, smart and competent, a terribly conservative protagonist, drill down on this idea, Jennings is not much of a character, Jennings prior to the wipe, Total Recall, what his backstory is, at the end of the movie he’s fighting a guy named Cohagen, Captain Jellico, Ronny Cox, always a corporate badguy, he’s always evil, Dan O’Bannon, almost every good science fiction movie, $50,000 for having his stuff from Black Destroyer used, similar, might have read this, quite different, Couerl, a very bad writer, a weird writer, great at ideas, not a pleasure to read, his prose is problematic, it’s the ideas, in watching the movie, in a different frame, explicitly it’s called out, the opening, smooth jets hummed, ugh he said, staring keenly, coming around, two or three ticks, eyes bright, the dull ache, ask that a different way, it was spring, stepping into an elevator in late fall in New York, almost two years later, the government is even stronger, the SP have almost unlimited power, teaching the school children, filling San Fransisco bay, born in Washington, DC, stopped in Colorado, Vancouver, the bay area, Los Angeles, road trips, flew to France, set in Chicago, very well written, very economic, what this future world is like, we become the character, he doesn’t know his backstory, a time scoop is used, the reason he knows, for most of the story, having things happen to him, the world we’re set up with, the old government fell, two babies, a 3 pound weight, pathetic, the plot of what’s making the story happen, the security police are trying to get information on the Retherick company, the FBI are the good guys, even The X-Files, except in 1953 Philip K. Dick can do it, the government is evil, the corproation, Elon Musk style corporation, citizens, the girl betrays him, secretly I’m the daughter of the boss, the boss wants him to marry his daughter, work for us again, Kelly thinks you’re handsome, if at the beginning of the story, either he’s gay, has a wife, he’s our hero, we want him to do well, he maneouvered Rethrick using the daughter, you can’t blackmail me, foresaw this, we now know he can blackmail them with that, the family business, forced a marriage, parcel receipt, so he saw even that, he as in himself, the main character, one more step out and that’s Philip K. Dick, “trinkets”, souvenirs, little objects with no actual value and immense value, 7 objects, plot could happen, planned it out pretty well, as opposed to A.E. Van Vogt, her face wild, a slip of paper, it’s still here, in the air above them, a circle, stared up frozen, a metal claw, a shimmering rod, swept the paper from Kelly’s fingers, the circle of black, nothing at all, what was that, safe right here, we only see his waldo come in at the end, so unhappy, the paper is safe, the company is safe, strong, very glad to help out the revolution, his eyes twinkling, more members of the family, women had a lot less agency and legal power, by herself she can’t make the company go on forever, she could marry someone, adopt a kid, time scoop a kid, technical knowledge, Kelly doesn’t need the technical knowledge, compare this, the story is sexist, an inherent sexism, Mad Men, except that there’s a time scoop, two things going on, this is not a Gray Flannel Suit story, what they hired him for, a manual labour job, a mechanic vs. an engineer, drawing this from, a music shop, a guy who fixed radios, is there a television repair place, they’re all gone, everything is disposable, real estate is insane, nobody can afford retail, so many businesses are disposed of, shoe repair place, they all go when the guy retires, orthopedic shoe places, 20km away, the movie came out 2003, right after 9/11, bad guys in 2003, how they changed the Kelly/Rethrick dynamic, Rethrick is the badguy, doing something evil, what they do in the film, used to find out what the future is like, cause the wars, the enemy is bad, post 9/11 thinking, a pandemic, set all that aside, what happens to Kelly, she’s Uma Thurman, she’s a biologist, doing biology doesn’t make any sense, construction, tunnels underground, she’s just works there and she’s naive, had a romance before the memory wipe, convenient for the plot, the friend character, the best Philip K. Dick actor, Paul Giamatti, to be the love interest, she says that other people have done this, objects in lieu of pay, called out near the end, she has an idea as to what the company does, those are tests for husbands for Kelly, saw what was coming, they didn’t see far enough?, maybe they also escaped, none of them married Kelly, a setup between the father approving of the son in law, come meet my dad sort of story, she’s not the agent for it, she loyals back to her father, the company is out in the countryside, she’s an accountant or something, protective, even more sexist, it’s not his job, if Kelly wants a husband, Rachel is not a good change, a perfectly fine name, Mildred, “keen”, a biblical background, an Irish name, a job that’s unrelated to the story, she’s just a love interest, she throws him a gun, she’s not killing her father, it’s just his boss, even a dove in it, 2 hours long, not science fiction, FBI agents standing around, the girl is just there to be a love interest, a standard movie for a date, Kelly’s job is inherent to the plot, 20 years ago, even if they were smart women, that is not better, if we’re grading on a curve, 1953 is better than 2003, much more mature, takes 30 years, 1979 vs. 1940, for Black Destroyer to Alien (1979), lame vs. sexist, the main character is not in it, that’s amazing, not likeable, if they had actually adapted the story, FBI are good guys, couldn’t be adapted properly, adapted as it is, include some computers, there are good things in it, fundamentally flawed, a second Retherick character for no good reason, to have a bigger cast?, the make the movie longer?, compare to the A.E. Van Vogt story, about a mechanic, what’s his problem?, automated repair place that’s outcompeting him, faith in the empress, unjustified, a son he doesn’t get along with, who was the girl he was talking to on the street, she was a weapon shop employee, stealing from his parents, badly written, she never shows up a again, a snippet of their dialogue, David Agranoff, nice guy, doesn’t hit hard enough, he makes really good points, being mean, about A.E. Van Vogt, seems to fit, every 800 words change something, it hurts the story, as a piece it’s garbage, too many turns, too many things unexplained, tempted to just read the next story, Seesaw, a fixup, The Weapon Shops Of Isher, people are weird about this, City won, people recognized the name, guy taking a walk through a beautiful small town, setback homes, perfectly designed, says to himself or his wife, this is how the empress pictures out village, evil atomic engine corporation, like a Walmart, suddenly he sees it, sprung up over night, a strange empty feeling, the other villagers are gathering, places of infamy, built in hidden factories, property rights, a suddenly springing up building, this is a gun store, this is a bad thing, weapons being sold willy nilly, a point Cora agrees with, the story takes him on a journey, his son has betrayed him, case dismissed, they come to take his shop, back to the weapons store, $4, a phased plasma rifle in the 40 watt range for $4, so why is that happening in the story, exploring this idea of a corporation or a something going against the government, surprise the reader every 800 words, here’s a surprise, turn the corner, they do follow, they don’t follow logically, how to fill space, a technique to make things longer, he needs to have 5 items, in the movie he has even more and they’re all different, the premise, the basic idea, what if you are a small town guy, people respect the queen or now the king, shows up on tv once a year, that’s not a relationship, things are done in her name, become a member of parliament you have to swear allegiance to the king, an enforced thing there, take individual autonomy, these two things are in tension in this story and this real world, sort of a Canadian, Mennonite coming from europe, fleeing, the Lakehead of Ontario, German radio stations playing very bad German music, a common story, fleeing persecution, fleeing war, fleeing bad emperors, Canada and Russia, Catherine the Great, the Russian Mennonites came back from Russia, a circuitous route, the reason you flee to a particular place, the way Canada was settled, the owners of the Hudsons Bay Company, manipulating persons and family, the land’s not free, so many places, the moor colonization, aristocrat had some moors, free land, a guy coming out of that background, Campbell writing, a big fan of Don A. Stuart’s Who Goes There?, he’s not a stupid man, the right to weapons in Canada, more reasonable, German gun laws, a license, sports shooting club, those are grandfathered in, there are a number of people who have need and desire for rifles, bears, hunting, indigenous people, there is no treaty between the government and their group, hunting today, cheaper and easier to learn, a lot more work, if you want to eat the animals, a lot of training involved, harder for a lot of people, farmers, killing varmints, a small rifle somewhere in the house, call the police, braining with the butt of the rifle, shot pigeons, when he goes into the shop, a greybearded man, the secret sauce, you’re here to buy a weapon, in the story proper, this is unfortunate, I automatically respect old men, these are manipulations by the corporation, teleporters, time travel makes it make more sense, in Seesaw, this empire is 7000 old, you want a weapon, for hunting?, he thinks he doesn’t even want a weapon, for killing a thing of a certain size, that is also a legitimate reason to get a weapon, it’s a tool, in our kitchens are knives, chop vegetables or stab people, knife crime, Syrian refugee, isolated, radicalized, forced out of his country, a party and a concert, stabbed a couple of people, for Palestine or whatever, fun fair, pat me down, freaks out and stabs, checks at all the borders, how did this guy get radicalized, hoped he would have a better life, isolated, he wasn’t very religious at all, a department store and buy a knife, a no weapons zone, notice the weapons that they have, pistols, different designs, they don’t have nuclear weapons, they don’t have bombs, they’re all projection weapons, they’re not bombs, they’re also not selling kitchen knives, write this story now, razor blade to shave your face, what’s actually going on, sparky, human hands are weapons, pet animals or kill animals, lift somebody up or murder someone, they’re dangerous, we have to have that tool, a tool for you but not for me, atoms for peace, British Columbia was nuked once, a hazard to navigation, destructive device for constructive purposes, hit pigeons, shoot birds, a bear savaging your wife, only eat the processed food now, this is an inch along down the path, outlawing things, it’s about control, his fellow towns folk, a fundamental dynamic, he’s set up a counterbalance force to the power of government, the U.S. 2nd Amendment, there will be more cops, Waco, Ruby Ridge, eventually the government always has more weapons, that’s not always true, not Ruby Ridged, not Wacoed, raid those people sooner, tear gas, flammable tear gas, a more recent example, shooting incident in Uvalde, they lock the school, establish they are the only arbiters of violence, people are going to get shot, so the shooter can’t escape, weird, a kid went missing, locked in a mall, some woman lost her kid, you’re right, the Tiananmen Square tank incident, it would be wrong, the government cops and soldier will follow orders, the more they are subject to reasonable orders, how the Berlin Wall opened, 70th birthday, East German government party secretary, press conference, when will this go into effect, I think immediately, border checkpoints, we’re allowed to leave, they haven’t received the order, he got a medal, we’re allowed to go across, more and more people kept arriving, phoning his superiors, past 9 in the evening, I can either shoot at these people or I can open the border, by midnight people were dancing on the wall, one guy did the right thing, this is about balance and power, the reason that its bad to be mean to women is they’re people, treated equally would be nice, in unequal systems, tortured and tied up, wrong, unfair, no supervision, no way to empower these people (by breaking the prison open), a bad power dynamic, a government and a counterforce, both involve some shadowy institution, amazing technologies, these two stories could be set in the same universe, the A.E. Van Vogt solution vs. the Philip K. Dick one, build up a certain amount of power, not a good solution, offering support to a revolution to come, that George Soros guy, problematic, supporting revolutionary anti-government, a Philip K. Dickism, ignorant about some things, the S.S., the Gestapo, the stazi, the SA, it doesn’t really matter, almost unlimited power, they’re teaching the school children to inform now, it also happens here, a prayer to Stalin, people are crazy, lower your head and think of father Stalin, early 50s or late 40s, during the war, East German schoolchildren, the government is pure evil in the Philip K. Dick story, in the Van Vogt the empress is remote and corrupt, if I wrote a letter to the Fuhrer, if the Tsar knew what was going on…, the fact that there’s millions of people, one person with ultimate authority, the petition to the king is a tradition, a special day, I need redress, the king and the councilors would make a decision, doesn’t work for the modern UK, small council for a small town, the bigger or more ultimate it is, my bed is not operating properly, we buy a new one, we don’t buy from that old company, enforce the warranty, replacing mentality, a cash bank account, you have a problem you fix it, in both stories these guys are mechanics, gear changers, fixing things, if you’re a Mennonite, what are you famous for?, not Amish but close, a guy who worked in the back, people’s radio or television would blow a tube, a whole set of a stories, magical handed repairmen, transported to the future, he’s just smart in that his hands know how to fix things, even though he’s smart, he can turn a literal toy into a vidsender, a barbie videocamera into a real camera, these people exist, they’re blue collar, Mercedes Benz, family came from Russia in the 1990s, Kazakhstan, typical Soviet biography, can fix almost anything, self-employed mr. fixit, The Variable Man, Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, you had to fix your car, fixable, a phenomena happening, as the US goes so follows a lot of the West, right to repair, farmers with their tractors, John Deere tractors, they put DRM on their proprietary operating system, factory authorized, the fundamental interesting thing, security guards are allowed to carry guns, it’s a tool to prevent loss, individuals, gun deaths in the United States, almost all the gun deaths are suicides, as a percentage its almost nothing, bank robberies and street robberies vs. suicides, jumping off a bridge is harder, the way you want to structure your society, make it so people don’t want to jump off bridges or do school shootings, inform on your family members, both of them are evil, what was the son going to use the money for, buy a commission into the imperial navy, A.E. Van Vogt is bad because the story is unfinished, even the wife, she also changes her mind, he’s bad at this, us coming to conclusions, disrespectful to his father, he doesn’t want to work in the shop, who’s right about the shop?, apply for teaching jobs, let’s look at this particular business, teaching is always in demand and is not replaceable, take over the business, let’s talk about why he’s not interested, atomic automatic repair, try fighting that, a giant evil corporation, no son to teach, the son is right, a shoe repairman in the time of Nike, a bakery on every corner, branches of 5 or 6 different chains, surviving independent, resentful, the son says I’m going to go join the navy, a loan through the mom, talking with this girl, talking about the tech and the future, not searchable, out of touch, he is out of touch, the son is the most reasonable character, scams his parents, they’re not communicating properly, the way you get a loan, the banks scam the people, banking is a sin, halal banking, the Christians no longer care, the Christians were using the jews, repair guy just closed shop, plumber closed shop, fourth generation plumber, his employees kept leaving to the bigger corporation, shoe repair guy died, find it online, if something stupid like a strap breaks, two pairs of shoes per year, anything which breaks after a few months, 130 euros, health insurance, a second pair of shoes, 25 euros, if you have a decent shoe repairman, recommend a movie, heard it was good, High And Low (1963), samurai movies, nuclear war stuff, this is about a shoe company owner, confronted by his board cheaper shoes for a higher turnover, shareholders teaming up against him, based on an Ed McBain 87th precinct crime novel, driving quality down, now the plot happens, he’s got a driver, two boys are playing together and one of them is kidnapped, your son has been kidnapped, pay the ransom or save the company, he can only do one, the news is slightly modified, as a teenager, a great filmmaker, occupied Japan, heroin use, the influence of American occupation, why crime and science fiction are closely connected, the interaction with you and society, the movie Death Wish (1974) is a fantasy, American trash, evil and violent, shitty violent movie, it’s a good movie, definitely violent, questionable authenticity, revenge is a bad idea, need to want revenge, a country with nuclear weapons, not couped, for Ukraine it is a problem, Russia won’t invade Germany, not full of Russian speaking people, they don’t like governing, they turned it over right away, reunification in the 1950s, large Russian speaking minority, Zelenskyy is an actor, the people of Ukraine wanted to join the European Union, NATO should have been disbanded, why are people so stupid, propaganda works, shitty people, if we need their stuff, Putin is evil, Saudi Arabia chops off people’s heads, it’s a kingdom, why these two stories are good, coherence and paying off, Paycheck is like a fable of science fiction, an amazingly good idea, what you can do in computer games now, save points, expploited in other science fiction stories, take a bag of objects, this central mystery, what are these for and what happened, that central idea is terrific, a 60 minutes or a 45 minute story, getting paid by the word, 90 minutes is probably too much, sad about that, what a good idea for a story, the A.E. Van Vogt is sparky, The Voyage Of The Space Beagle is bad writing but sparky, Far Centaurus [copyright renewed], technobabble, space mission, suspended animation, woken up every 50 years, she’s an old woman now, she’s dead now, all the time they were going at sublight speed earth people developed faster than light travel, they no longer fit into the world, a short story, he seemed to have renewed, a sequel isn’t as good, a direct message, Raven’s Ridge, supergenius or accident, totally fit, the second amendment message, individual against business and the government, shooting incidents in the U.S., a big one at the time, more positively now, the story is a mess, can you imagine, a building suddenly appears, The Doomed City by Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky, a good book, a building that suddenly appears, urban fantasy, Simon R. Green, The Green Door by H.G. Wells, a comic where this happened, a Masters Of The Universe tie-in comic, the Fright Zone, industrial hellscape, exists between dimensions, when people are scared, illegitimate son of the king of Eternia, mother what should I do, a spooky tree, a spooky cave, spooky things happen, I come from a working class background, I work with my hands, whenever they’re kings they’re usurpers, killing the boss and the story goes on, a rare thing, an endangered species, the apprenticeship system, an apprenticeship to become a shoemaker, car industry, aerospace industry, well paid, Volkswagen is in trouble, household goods, not very often science fiction protagonists these days, a mechanic needs to go to the garage (not university), formal apprenticeship, people from Syria, a smith, a carpenter, he knows how to do the job, but he doesn’t have the piece of paper, Mistress Of Mellyn, The Tower Treasure, Plato, The Noseless Horror and The Haunted Corridors, they don’t invite you four months early, not respectful of the possibility, get some nature, a lake and a park, get some sun, everything is closed on Sunday, gas stations are not closed, restaurants are not closed, lots of groceries, shops at train stations and airports are not closed, a bottle of milk, Breslau, the protestant areas, the catholic areas, make dinner, eight hours ahead, trick or treaters, costumes, they should be monsters, serial killer, bloody bride, a devil, a spider-man, skeletons, kids without costumes, spider makeup, opportunistic, came back from sports, forced to do things they want to do, giving them candy, bad candy, 10 euros, make kids happy, an arab immigrant, nine kids, the very small ones didn’t have costumes, three or four, if you’re five you can do it, three babies born in the neighbourhood, a little bit more candy, personal stash, not kid candy, kept in reserve, what time of night?, 5pm, shortly before 8, took in the pumpkin, December 6, holiday scene, there’s candy, dress up in Santa hats, krampus, cool but south German, epiphany day, three wise men, cute but not scary, a stick with a star on it, paper lanterns, the next day, music on the street, lanterns and torches, St. Martin’s day trick or treating, Flesh + Blood (1985), Rutger Hauer, St. Martin, a bigish deal in German, Jane Austen, St. Martin’s Mass, saw a beggar who didn’t have a cloak, chopped his cloak in half, now they both have baby, eat a goose, Hispaniola, just north of Australia, south of Asia, Paupa New Guinea, divided north south between the Dutch and the French, if you don’t have a lot of weapons…, canons pointing at the water for the these guys show up, ready for a picnic, don’t bring your flag this time, country quagmire, Cuba, didn’t get to meet Castro, they got their island back, the richest country in Europe, Switzerland, technical skill, mechanical, they do have cows there, they don’t grow the chocolate there, they have no natural allies, no natural port, very very smart, they stay out of wars, they’re heterogeneous, if everybody has a gun in their home, high suicide rate, almost no mass shootings, a gun makes it easier, COVID panic, beer or alcohol, you have to wear a mask, an unforced error, shot the student, radical anti-COVID people, a stickler, altercations like that, you’re a murderer, impressive, a killer, danger, I hope you catch it from someone, you need to have a shopping cart to go into the supermarket, only a certain number of people, there was no study about six feet, said nasty things, a bigger power that didn’t care, mask in the bakery, farmer’s market, wearing a mask outdoors, gotta pee, wants some beer, in prison now, needn’t have happened, good night.

Astounding Science Fiction, December 1942 The Weapon Shop

Astounding Science Fiction, December 1942 The Weapon Shop

Astounding Science Fiction, December 1942 The Weapon Shop

Astounding Science Fiction, December 1942 The Weapon Shop

Astounding Science Fiction, December 1942 The Weapon Shop

Paycheck by Philip K. Dick

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #840 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Tower Treasure by Franklin W. Dixon

The SFFaudio Podcast #840 – The Tower Treasure by Franklin W. Dixon (3 hour 59 minutes) read by James R. Hedrick for LibriVox, followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Maissa Bessada, and Cora Buhlert

Talked about on today’s show:
1927, the narrator was very enthusiastic, an exciting story, an interesting accent, of the time, movies from 1927, distinct and of a certain place, old fashioned, a little bit of comparsion, Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys kick, the first Hardy Boys book, the first one first, before it was rewritten, they have the same title, a lot of differences, still told third person, no two words are the same, the chapter names, fake bomb threat, racial slurs, this Italian never quite lost their accent, melting pot, Jewish friend, Italian kid, upstate New York, Long Island, rich people, they’re there, obviously an older text, books from about the same era, set in Silesia or eastern Prussia, no longer German, Hanover instead of Leipzig, whitewash all these books, 1959-1973, remove ethnic stereotypes, shortened and modernized, they’re not shorter, modernize yes, a current controversy with Dungeons & Dragons, they rewrite them, new content, buy the new books, a generation, same title, the same reason we have movies coming out from generations passed, The Day Of The Jackal, a Frederick Forsyth novel, The Jackal, 2024 television show, put it out there, Heinlein juveniles, one is a syndicate, the other is a dude, Heinlein estate, many would love to, Philip K. Dick’s estate, tinker, change the dates in Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, Franklin W. Dixon is not a real person, Edward Stratemeyer, are you a good writer, can you fill pages?, an assignment, the boys go looking for a treasure that went missing, we still have Ford Mustangs today, it’s a 4 door SUV, or a roadster, we’re done with fins now, artifacts that make it old fashioned, there are no slurs to remove, lengthy series, obviously dead, that’s Poland now, that’s where Uncle Horst was from, copyright date, born in 1928, in the middle of WWII, age in realtime, 100 adventures in high school, the first three pages of chapter 1, The Speed Demon, clutched the grips, careening from side to side, climb this hillside and fast, motorcycles, on the double, the steep embankment, on two wheels, the dusty ground, wow, said Joe, let’s get away from here, a dead you know, the sedan sped past, a glimpse, hatless, a shock of red hair, too excited to finish the threat, practicing for some kind of race, Willowville in the valley, the rash motorist, over a cliff, the legal papers, how about taking the other road back to Bayport, every word is rewritten, wanting to be detectives, the motorbikes, not 15 year olds, driving something, car license at 18, an establishing book, in the rewrite everybody knew, starting from a whole different mindset, you would have known what the Hardy Boys was, strangely written, stop and talk to the farmhands, a boy honking a carhorn, vignettes, so old fashioned in the 1950s, impossible to accept that, sort of funny, charming, kids a re very sensitive to fashion and peer pressure, anachronistic old fashion, uncool, motorbikes: still cool, Jesse was not a big Barbie guy, Barbie’s corvette, a modern corvette, old toys vs. new toys, always pink, change shape, dreamhouse keeps updating, interior furnishings, reading experience, books from the turn of the century, books from the fifties, translated books, another layer, kind of weird, different place or different time, Karl May, brave Saxonian adventurers making friends, weird old fashioned, we’re all adults, not subject to that peer pressure, 1960, why this pressure was brought to bear, the parents, share an experience, a continuity there, still selling the books, make sure the product is something people want to buy, collective experience, thrift shop, listening to this one, the major mystery was solved offscreen by the father, the kids picked up the threads and finished it, the revised version, so much filler in this book, played for comedy, round and round, full of filler, they’re still boys, a Disney television serial, Applegate House, the boys’ ages are reduced, 10 or 11 years old, not independent boys, also pirate treasure, 500 hours long, the characters and the premise are more important than the mystery, why does that scene exist?, a Scooby Doo novelized, Little Rascals, how juvenile delinquenty these boys are, The Black Hand, anarchists, those are lawbreakers, charged with mischief, the least charge for the fake bomb, the non-bumbling detective in town, Smof, almost unrealistic, revised Nancy Drews, no sense of sarcasm, the revised ones in the 70s, she’s very well mannered, drives her 1950s blue convertible, as loosey goosey as these boys, she’s a girl, dangers of pranks and dare, steal a vehicle to play a prank, that was real, the life that’s described in this book, a real phenomena, the early life of H.P. Lovecraft, carried a gun around with him, followed people around, children become the focus of society, child labour is a bad thing, the highlight of your heavenly life, the J.M. Barrie books, Victorian childrens’ literature, kids were free range, charged with child endangerment, hanging out all day, doing petty crime, you’re a girl tho, just by smoking you could be bad, sneaking out of the house, a whole phenomena, the revision, one of the things that happens with comics, wild horror comics, The Comic Code Authority, read through it, no disrespecting authority, no death, rules against skeletons, no blood, the rules are different, each generation has a different set of background assumptions, that’s a crime and this is a crime, offroad, the rules were different then, strange strange things, Jesse’s most wild theory, what we don’t know where the treasure is, the mystery shifts, who stole the treasure, the last two thirds of the book, where did the $900 come from?, solved but not solved well, the sister with the flashlight, she’s on the cover, she’s an old lady, like 55, colourful clothes 20 years out of date, wearing a turn of the century dress, wore the same dress her entire life, clothes were more expensive, this great grandmother was really really poor, flapper dresses, she was wearing everything, colourful character, expected to wear dark subdued clothes, wild theory, you will not expect this, Nancy Drews, what the mystery is, funnier, swimming in a canal, they get their jeans on, wearing her friend’s jeans, how close the friendship is, always gonna go get married, hasn’t married him for almost 100 years, characters who are very stiff, clearly a robot, where the money came from, I came by it honestly, an abortionist, it is dark, what are the things today?, what he did in the old tower, underemployed, he didn’t steal the money, who’s using his services?, somebody in Baytown, it should be the answer, great Nancy Drew area maps, lakes and rivers, super common, Half Moon Lake, lakes are female, towers are male, all subconcious, write me a mystery, something they have to do, a fairyland, read it subversively, smugglers was a big thing, pirates still exist, a buncha bonds and stocks, masters thesis, Enid Blyton, Famous Five, there’s always smugglers, 1940s and 50s, kinda weird, what’s a smuggler actually do?, Nazi spies, it has to be something covert otherwise there’s no mystery to be solved, she’s a really nice girl, all the old ladies, all the men, kinda nosy, polite about it, make her lunch, have tea, semi-girlfriend, not as annoying as all the other girls, list you some of the book series, still being produced, 1899, The Rover Boys, on ocean and land, 30 volumes, Soldiers Of Fortune, Colonial, Pan-American, Outdoor, The Bobsey Twins, 1904-1979, Dave Porter, Boy Hunter, Boys of Pluck, The Motor Boys, boys in a motorboat, directed at girls, Ralph Of The Railroad, Dorothy Dale, 1908-1924, good little girl, Webster series, The Motor Girls series, Tom Swift, Victor Appleton, Outdoor Chums, Pioneer Boys, Dave Dashaway, Air Champion, Motion Picture Chums, Outdoor Girls, Ruth Fielding, an orphan, boaring school and college, Anne Of Green Gables series, juvenile mystery, complete with stupid bumbling cop, Sandra Detective In Jeans, liberation pants, a tape recorder, a radio with a tape deck, the forms are completely recognizable, Encylopedia Brown, a whole parallel british system, annuals, a Rupert Annual, under the christmas tree, this American system, largely forgotten, way deep under the popularity, scholastic, five books, all over North America, fit really nicely into those, the cover of the first one, Margot Kreuter, Sandra And The House In The Hills, Victoria Holt, Mistress Of Mellyn, Castle Fearstone, extremely regional, Scandanavian authors, Germanized, 1990s, Harry Potter, Twilight, more international, similar types of books, Edward Statermeyer, awake and alive, 1908, 1916, connective tissue, Old Indiana Jones, he’s got the hat, descendants, that narrative went away, The Spring Break Adventure, Nancy Stratemery, Thomas Edison, dangerous German spies, hostile enemy agents, exactly like the plot of any of these spy based kids in high school, borrows an electric roadster, a Tom Swiftism, electric runabout, new radio, his matter transmitter, WWI, is this cop corrupt, on the level, super appealing, kid empowerment, making a difference, having adventures, $500 rewards, Scooby Doo isn’t that different, with wills and estates, last woman to be guillotined, beheaded in the 1940s, old mansion, two towers, the old tower is abandoned, nobody goes into except guests, no children, what it that boys fdo?, help the old rich family recover, the family jewels, the lichy action happening, as much chicken as they can ever eat, the final reveal, I was being paid a debt, parents would complain, read these subversively, the double, The Cold Female and the other one with it, almost exactly the same story, weird menace, shudder pulp, always caused by some human doing something strange, a perverted human, women are abducted or in danger, men have to come to their rescue, gruesome images, sexually grateful, worse people, eat them too, that’s horrible, the man looks good while he save the girl, women will be greatful, female fantasy, investigate the character of a potentional husband, what the goss is, skeletons in the closet, this bluebeard chracter, need to read Nancy Drew subversively, a will that went missing, going down those steps in the hidden basement, cultists with branding irons, the best part of the book, where that money came from, the addition of the Black Hand, a cartoon and not a good cartoon, quaint, kind of charming, read six more of them, 8 year old Cora, 10 year old Cora, fun, Adelia used to be blonde, but then she died, Adelia is a ghost, redwigged racer, Red, serving the existing adminsitration, killing the kings, the castle that looms over Bayport is not being wisely managed, we should have sympathy for the robber, he’s dead, he gives up the information, a real Robin Hood type, not subversive, reinforcing, what super-hero comics are, always backing the institutions, no anti-Vietnam war comics untils the 1980s, every pop culture character, too young to rememeber, every hero you ever saw was there, ask questions about it, what happened there?, in the rewrite, the Robin Hood ending, locked away by a man called Hobo Johnny, anything in the tower belongs to him, claiming for himself, the simplicity of these kinds of stories, the forthrightness of the boys or Nancy Drew, just being super-subversive, if Nancy Drew’s first book was public domain, rewriting it an making it good, making it much more clear that the world she lives in is full of abortionists and immigrant smugglers, her name would have to be Nancy Drew, The Girl Detective by Kelly Link, whay the story was the way it was, 2006, the underworld at the back of your closet, the underworld is full of things you’ve forgotten about, get a flashlight and go underground, the same instinct, the peephole, can’t admit to herself, going to murder her, why is that an instinct, you get to see her showcasing her nautrturing nature, the poor little dumb girl, her dad doesn’t love her, meant to be flashlighted, it would be human smugglers, arms to Ukraine, some sort of political topic, Indian reservations, cigarettes across the border, before Poland and the Czech Republic, consumable disposable, something to this format, the wholesome nature of the characters, very lawbreaking, they cause a bomb threat, to be fair, they were deserving of that, the keystone cops, too cartoonish, we’re supposed to respect our authorities, H.P. Lovecraft with a pistol in his pocket, bizzare, practicing detective, series things, Randolph Carter, no strong evidence other than coincidence, Nick Carter, pulp detective, foiling tongs, it fits, his joke is right, Abdul Al Hazred, the mad Arab, associated with the necronomicon, put a towel on his head and pretend to be Arab, bragging about his breadth of reading, the name is not real, I read the whole Arabian Nights, an imaginative young person before videogames, go to the arcade, lose too many coins in the machines, home computers, play games for free at home, just copy the discs, make these suimulated worlds, Dungeons and Dragons without a Dungeon Master, everybody else clues into this, games on their phones, youtube now has games, this takeover of different media changing from 1980 to 2020, Hardy Boys hardly rate, hardback book series, students don’t read at all, girls still read, at a certain age, true in this case, better books for boys, am I the werewolf or vampire love interest?, romantasy, the YA is for women 20s 30s or above, problem books, adult books, science fiction and fantasy, sexier versions of YA supernatural romances, varied, that section doesn’t have any kids, Alex P. (Cirsova), they read Dogman, if you’re a boy of 10 years old, Captain Underpants, the younger kids don’t read, teens pretty much stop, they don’t read for fun, read comics on their phone, only punishment at school, English language novels, reading at school, Suburban Crocodiles, in a wheelchair, people in wheelchairs are also human, quite popular, a grocery store, yelled at for not knowing, everybody knows this, a remoderized one, Tom Swift, that whole Heinlein juvenile series, moon nazis, similar to this, a mystery going on, Nazi spies, Frank Reade, The Steam Man Of The Praries, wild west inspired comics, an engine that looks like a man, powered by steam, coal in his belly, legs and arms, pulls your wagon, who stole the Indian blankets?, crunchy hard to read serials, the media landscape doesn’t start and end with 20th century fiction, the 19th century was huge for kids reading, Little Women, way too good, very nice girls, Little Lord Fauntlelroy, 1980 film adaptation, on TV around Christmas, really good, steampunk but real, like a robot but not robotic, robot shaped, golems, before the word robot, Return To Oz (1985), a clockwork man, Frank Reade And His Steam Horse, NoName is the house name, the steam man is racing the steam horse, away they flew like rockets, giant strides, what is the interest here?, vehicles like this, represents power and freedom, even a bicycle, you walk everywhere?, how can you live?, a minor physiological thing, required to learn how to ride a bicycle, he is very slow, skateboards, scooters, the freedom of that motorcycle, doing something important, a little blue convertible always breaking down, drives around and solves mysteries, so many horses and buggies, roadsters and touring cars, super-high tech, if you were to write one today, with Elon Musk flying rockets, some drones, a small drone company, Jetson One, a drone airplane, a flying car, hover over things, electric scooters, signs outside grocery stores, very very dangerous, mostly teenagers, kids from immigrant backgrounds, 25 km per hour, Toronto, Coquitlam, rentals, abandoned everywhere, has to be much more exciting than that, cars and then flying cars, not very long, what a car is, by 1927, the guy honking behind the hay wagon, codevelop, which came first, the motorcycle or the electric car, Benz motor wagon number 1, steam powered and electric cars, in the UK they’re motorcars, in North America they’re automobiles, a car is a carriage, self-mobile, motorwagen, a carriage without a horse, self-powered vehicles, tractors, the platonic ideal of a car, the Ford Model T, instead of a tiller you have a wheel, a cover over the top of your vehicle, coachbuilt, handmade car, what horses pull, a Guy de Maupassant story, Maupassant’s take on a Nancy Drew, an omnibus, a great story, payoff his debt, buying a lawfirm, she rides and rides and rides, the final stop for the omnibus, where?, what?, my husband?, he took her dowry and fucked off with it, he married her took her money and dumped her on an omnibus, streetcars pulled by horses, he had to pay off Mr. Robinson, had to take the money to pay for an abortion, motorcycles in the 1890s, how techs effect, recognizable as a motorcycle, a lot like an electric bicycle today, motorbike shows, from the 1920s and 1910s, the light, fuel to the lamp, on the bicyle platform, the 1880s, a bike mad H.G. Wells novel [The Wheels Of Chance], the Green Party utopia, almost a religion, training bike, freedom, a horse but you don’t have to feed it, the bus came five times a day, dependent on yourself, The Adventure Of The Solitary Cyclist by Arthur Conan Doyle, essential to understanding, its the tech and the associated behaviors around the tech, 1400 vs. 1450 tech, a lot of manufacturing going, consumer goods vs. custom made at home, kids are interested in that power that comes from that tech, everybody wanted the new iphone, for fashion, a personal property item you take with you all the time, aren’t changing in size, all the cameras are good, phone from 2017, 1985 Toyota, 1995 Toyota, no ashtray, Vancouver Island, a 40 year old car, cars are robots now, technology that’s built-in, front and back cameras is standard now, are you living in your car, they do the same thing, they’re brainier, bad wifi, one of them was a printer, another was a stove, one was a refrigerator, Hitachi, LG, your stove probbably doesn’t need wifi, the dishwasher doesn’t need wifi, an 1895 Toyota is a horse, a fundamental difference, has a heater, a screen instead of dials, an ashtray, and a cassette player, an 1895 aprtment and a 2025 apartment, the tech that’s in it, not enough power outlets, the phone line ending in the basement, 1971, retrofitted, forward thinking, the phone connection is in the basement, next week, 2 horror stories, The Noseless Horror by Robert E. Howard and the Haunted Corridors by William Osborne, let’s go wassailing, the last Olaf Stapledon, an actual novel, George MacDonald’s Lilith, real science fiction writer, the smart dog book, Last And First Men, Starmaker, outside the US magazine ecosystem, retro Hugos, we no longer have retro Hugos, we have John Scalzi, he’s on the approved list, bitter about the retro Hugos thing, here’s a Heinlein let’s vote for that, make them better, you’re not a nazi but…, weird book, stock characters and sterotypes, a ginger, no real gingers, early diversity, the Brooklyn guy, not an important part of New York, the Irish guy always, totally sterotyped Irish guy in space, their idea of diversity was different, steam men riding steam horses, on their way to a steam abortion, Laura Ingalls Bewilder, Little House On The Prairie, steamy romantasys, participation in this Hardy Boy fest, read all the Nancy Drews, British and German counterparts.

The Tower Treasure by Franklin W. Dixon

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #839 – READALONG: The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown by Lawrence Block

The SFFaudio Podcast #839 – Jesse, Scott Danielson, and Maissa Bessada talk about The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown by Lawrence Block

Talked about on today’s show:
2022, the last book in a series?, where do you go from here?, very meta, The Burglar Who Counted Spoons, the Mondrian, the Spinoza, read them all, high hopes for super preparation, Burglars Can’t Be Choosers, What Mad Universe?, recommend that one to everybody, no Carolyn Kaiser, becomes a regular, he didn’t know what the formula was, imagine my surprise, selling books, thw worst Lawrence Block book, goes down so smooth, worst book is still great, everything in between, how violent is it?, ptsd from reading, A Walk Among The Tombstones, that series, traumatic, ooh this is dark, Westlake has his normal books, the violent ones, Tucker Coe, Donald Westlake, so many series like that, he used to be in television, now he’s an amateur detective, under a whole other name, so many Westlake, Lawrence Block’s still alive, 2 years old, reading this style, ebay, feels out of place, 1977, Bernie Rhoddenbarr doesn’t age, this happened 12 times, Bern, he would have aged up, a spry burglar in the prime of life, drink all day, a cozy, a weird alternate universe, New York didn’t change that much, a reckoning, you can’t be a burglar in modern sociert, video of you, teetering on the edge of oh I hate this, set in the modern, the ideal version of my reality, google’s still there, but Amazon and ebay aren’t, a fantasy a lot of people want to have, he’s american, more like school shootings or lynchings, he chose the apple pie universe, listened to it, totally recommend it, clunkier, Lawrence Block is a smoother writer, the smoothest writer Jesse has ever read, comforting and cozy, he never puts a foot wrong, the meta aspect of it, swirling whirlpool, he convinced me, Chapter 12, asterix asterix asterix, the superdeluxe handlettered version of this book, he’s never that meta, genuine SF, genuine meta SF, a writer for a pulp magazine, transitions to another universe, a capcitor rocketed to the moon, zapped out of existence, wakes up in another world, a dark cold war, their past diverged 30 years prior, fit in without an identity, investigating a parallel world, what we see here, solipsitic with two characters that had it happen to them, one of many parallel worlds, the perfect world of a guy he didn’t like, all the science fiction he’s writing about is now real, the show coming out tonight, the audiobook and the podcast, very very meta, other bad news, Richard Ferrone died in 2022, it can’t go anywhere from here

novels:
Burglars Can’t Be Choosers (1977)
The Burglar in the Closet (1978)
The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling (1979)
The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza (1980)
The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian (1983)
The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams (1994)
The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart (1995)
The Burglar In The Library (1997)
The Burglar In The Rye (1999)
The Burglar On The Prowl (2004)
The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons (2013)
The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown (2022)

three short stories:
Like A Thief In The Night
The Burglar Dropped In On Elvis
The Burglar Who Smelled Smoke

a movie version of the second book, Whoopi Goldberg, Bobcat Goldthwait, gender flipped the characters, Hollywood doesn’t do the books exactly right, such a literary guy, Peter Peter is reading a book, the manx, Raffles, stealing from this dynamic, E.W. Honung, Arthur Conan Doyle’s brother in law, that’s cool, a burglar version of Sherlock Holmes, shacked up together, the Moriarty of crime, supercozy, similar to one of the short stories, an American boxer comes to town, burly bodyguards, the biggest diamond you’ve ever seen, the master burglar, amateur cricketer, can’t resist, an amateur amateur, help I’m trapped, there’s a scene referenced in here, Ray Kirschman, gather everybody together, that scene is elided, a ripoff of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe, professional consulting detective, ratiocination, an agent who wrote, his own version of it, a sex quest, Greenwich Village of the 1960s, fishtank instead of orchids, to be his Archie Goodwin, told from the pov of an Archie Goodwin standin, echoing out, if you were a fiction character, being on the typewriter with him, don’t let this all be a dream, the cop-out ending, Lewis Carrol, Little Orphan Annie, 99% literary allusion, when did the plot even start?, The Screaming Mimi, any other Fredric Brown, Arena, Knock, Ballantine, the Star Trek episode, his reputation, a two sentence story, how Knock goes, the last man on earth sat alone in a room, there was a knock at the door, The Case Of The Dancing Sandwiches, Joe Haldeman’s The Hemingway Hoax, alternate universe, came back with Beatles songs, Jefty Is Five, Harlan Ellison, radio shows that stopped existing, books that were never published, really good, read by Harlan Ellison, The Screaming Mimi, read by Stefan Rudnicki, series characters, fantastic stuff, who is this Westlake guy?, Jason Sanford, the Reacher book, that first Reacher book was pretty good, compartmentalized, Fredric Brown’s Hall Of Mirrors, a lock that needs to be opened up to reveal what it is, experimental and thoughtful, doing it seemingly for himself, that meta aspect, an invitation rather than a story, it was a monkey, it was a woman, it was an alien, what made him the last man on earth, couldn’t be much different than this and still be good, can’t really complain, the Burglar series, Sins Of The Father, the Matthew Scudder series, ex-cop, he does his research, his life is a writer, he’s observant, has traveled, a lot of research, found out today, Transnistria, google it and it is real, alcoholic, in AA, a much darker version, fairly cozy, [A Walk Among The Tombstones] Eight Million Ways To Die, they loved the book, would make a great movie, then doesn’t, Reacher is better as a show than a movie, Tom Cruise Reacher movie was fine, more character based, the format, 2nd season in Toronto, a 3rd season, talking with Terence about it, Conan but with a pension, Conan’s not a patriot, other books to read, sitting in a cafe somewhere maybe, the main complaint, the body type, what is Bernie’s size?, taller than Caroline, 99% of this book is dialogue, I opened the cupboard and pulled out some cookies, chili, added some cheddar, whenever that’s happening, throwing down a red herring, that character is thinking, the dialogue is just great, why Carolyn was needed, gets a girlfriend right away, a person to dialogue with, she was the murderer, she goes to prison, lesbian poodle washer, to bounce your dialogue off of, Doctor Watson making notes about what Sherlock Holmes is doing, his writing skill is a combination of limited life experience, deep interest in research, and reading a ton of old stuff he really likes and wants to tell you about, his whole life Lawrence Block’s been a writer, he considered burglary, what’s going on that part of the book, when did the plot start?, in the first book, instead of having money they had credits, instead of a metro card, a subway card, happens in the dark, subconscious time, in the dark, an amazing sequence in What Mad Universe, grab a bunkbed, there’s a blackout right now, aliens are destroying parts of earth, a WWII allegory, a fog of blackness, push through, after getting off of the public transit, somethings walking the streets with canes, a monster coming, meets up with a burglar, drive by dead reckoning, 60 feet that way, then take a right, a super creativity there, a meta-science fiction book set in a science fiction universe, this book is not science fiction at all, influenced, Voltaire underneath all of it, Candide, ties back, back to Spinoza, a rich stew, a chili with cheddar put on top, what you will remember is the coziness, Peter Peter and the four bodyguards, barely remember them, what about the money, stealing from your friend on a ship, doom him again, a cruise ship, assisted living, if he was 30 in 1937, how old is he in 2022, died in a book 20 years earlier, I read all of Lawrence Block’s burglar books just to get all the callbacks, very fun and light, no gore, there’s a dead man in here, Bernie, he’s wearing your tie, Agatha Christie style, a snowstorm, cops can’t come, has to solve the murder, how he writes these books, why don’t we go upstate, takes his typewriter, a comedic element, even death isn’t dark, the apple pie universe, a scoop of ice cream, nobody gets fat, ice cream headache, raising your hand and swirling it, the names, the Cubby Hole, the Bum Rap, just great, this can’t work anymore, New York is unlivable, there’s no customers, what happened to Jesse, went out of business, everything works out in the end, it’s not an uber, your taxi is always there waiting for you, a kind of assisted living, food is good, the Bowlmore being taken down, a commentary on how New York has changed, the bowling alley coming back, because it’s a place where you wear other people’s shoes, multiverse, a strike, a gutterball, a nice metaphor, a thing to bring back, the same setup every time, the thinking, to reframe, the plot’s here!, in the context of What Mad Universe?, swapped for the main character in the other universe, there’s two of them, change places, an interloper, the other Bernie stole something and disappeared, the place broken, the domestic native Bernie breaking into his own shop, there’s a red herring, alternate universe Carolyn, hey there’s a lesbian in my bed and its me, slipped into each other’s minds?, the pocket universe created, dissolved out of existence, he didn’t really write Science Fiction ever, [Make A Prison], Richard Lovelace, he’s not a science fiction writer, other Fredric Brown, doesn’t feel like a science fiction, alternate universes, how does he get there, very Alice In Wonderland, we made it up, oh it happened and we made it up, something Eric [Rabkin], Alice’s Adventures Under The Ground, Alice is bored, the end of the reality, she sees a rabbit, everything after that is fantasy, do that book sometime, should be available, done with metaverses for a while, the Hollywood stamp of a approval, Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022), Deadpool 3 (2024), nothing matters, women are always giving phone numbers, The Burglar Who Counted Spoons, fine, nothing matters, enjoying this book despondently, kill me now, all just here playing our part, even more meta than What Mad Universe, based on a milieu, the cover of the magazine is described, reading this in Startling Stories, #BrassBra bikini, a green space girl costume, this is our uniform, everything about that, Mad Magazine, Colliers, recursion, going deep inside, a story about a writer for a magazine about a story about a writer of a magazine, referencing fans, Surprising Stories, not about science fiction, science fiction is old hat, rocketships in the future, needs to make money, plagiarize Isaac Asimov stories, it was better the second time, that’s the imagination that sparked Bernie into making this universe, the imagination that sparked Lawrence Block, a cat, Nora, a black cat, a Nick?, a dog!, a German Shepherd, therapy dog, dogs with jobs, a lab, even more approachable, naturally good at it, this one will go to school, not Nick, we need a reason to read The Thin Man, Bernie?, Carolyn?, Douglas, dogs named after tree, Douglas Furbanks, his half brother, previous litter, different colour patterns, some stuff on his head, colouration, exhausted this book pretty quick, so entertaining, tell me tomorrow, Bern, star star star, Chapter 37: I explained., we skipped a whole scene, flow so well, not homework, Raffles asking to be fed, dog burglar, keep working on it, two on the schedule, another Simak, Lilith by George MacDonald, 1895, 1969, among the the darkest, the most profound, the cosmic sleep that heals tortured souls, a Christian universalist, salvation is hard won, Mr. Vane owns a library, much like a Raven, the wraith, 351 pages, sounds a little dark for Maissa, children’s books?, Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series, The Wood Beyond The World, might be fun, The King Of Elfland’s Daughter, too close to your xmas, Project Pope by Clifford D. Simak, A Choice Of Gods, Mistress Of Mellyn by Victoria Holt, highly regarded, The Tower Treasure by Frank W. Dixon, Hardy Boys, The Mystery Of The 99 Steps, cozy and hilarious, pretty sure Nancy Drew is a lesbian, skinny dipping, blue convertible, doesn’t have a job, always nice, suspicious but too polite to say, a new suspect, pretty sure this one’s a robot, she’s not eating, a lot to read into it, locking people in rooms, that’s gonna solve the problem, her main device is a flashlight, soft and cozy mysteries, big in Scott’s childhood, The Three Investigators, The Green Ghost, Hitchcock licensing, Tom Swift, Robert E. Howard, spoiled the ending of Odd John, Olaf Stapledon, 2025, crazy, thinking about 2020 in 2001, thinking about 2000, Blade Runner soon, the future is not like I thought, dig back in old books and magazines, Ray Bradbury story, some guy named Oxford, Don Congdon and Associates, copyright strikes, The Exiles, Usher II, read by Leonard Nimoy, a couple of Robert A. Heinleins, The Green Hills Of Earth, the old days, he was on that, 2000X, Yuri Rasovsky, Dirk Maggs, Judge Dredd, Batman, audio drama, normal audio drama, a signature style, Independence Day, Dredd (2012), hyperbolic, 2000 A.D., of all the stories to do, make sense for a British comic in the 70s, a super-evil dystopia, six months in isocube, caffeine is illegal, everything is evil, the guy you care about is the bad guy, a parody of the United States, Mega City One, space judges, death judges, a complete alternate universe of Marvel, super-team this, league of evil mutants everywhere, not allowed to have wives or girlfriends or sex, a whole other universe to explore, a parody of the United States, adaptations, British actors putting on American accents, entertainment from another universe, anime, William who lives in Japan, Dragon Ball Z, waved a wand, computer games for education, they don’t learn anything in school, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, a mission to meet this ancient philosopher, world rich, you learn the things that you’re interested in, time is up!, see you, hear you, an hour early, editing later, Strange Darling (2023), it’s musical, some violence in it, the actor, based on two movies, so out of the loop, movie trailers, movies can be good, few and far between of late, artsy and innovative, 97 minutes, not a rape scene exactly, a choking scene, everything will be okay, prefacing, the opening credits, the movie is deceptive, Kyle Gallner, the lady, very good actors, not super super handsome, good at picking scripts, credited with a name, the demon, the girl, a little conversation, are you a serial killer?, this based on a serial killer, all lies, shot entire entirely on 35mm, that part is probably true, very important, art movies, not boring art movies, a structure, a movie in six parts, chapter 3, chapter 5, you’re gonna love, watch it during the day, cat hair is coming off, The Wild Robot (2024), Pedro Pascal, delightful noting traumatizing, cenobite, not into slasher movies, tricky slippery fun, deceptive, Ed Begley, Jr., plays an old hippie, very beautiful, hyper realistic, red and green, colour palated, Giovanni Ribisi, Dinner In America (2020), an hour 46, set in the 80s for no reason, a punk rock musician, sex letters, a pet store, fishtank cleaner-outer, straight laced parents, it’s like she’s retarded, no diagnosis, this is a romance, you’re rooting for them both, 91%, The Substance (2024), somebody’s back is stitched up, too scary, Bettlejuice Bettlejuice (2024), daily streaming charts, this chart has no value, Conclave (2024), sequester, new pope, Twelve Angry Men (1957), 12 pious men, Isabella Rosellini, good 4 lines, a lot of lurking, moves, stares, Stanley Tucci, its scary, a guy choking somebody, it’s worth it, movies that are manipulative, Pulp Fiction (1994), a buncha country roads in a forest, shot in Oregon maybe, the Red Letter Media guys, accidentally made a Kyle Gallner special, a follow up, at it for a while, he’s not ugly, Jennifer’s Body (2009), Smile 2, Scream 6?, Red Eye (2005), Red State (2011), weird revenge movie, picking good movies, who are not beautiful, pick good stuff, fun to see an actor you like in a movie, Eric Roberts will be in any movie, needs the cue cards, quite good, afforded his budget, not a professional actor, he’s just the attraction to make the movie a little more saleable, you know what you’re talking about, Star Trek: Lower Decks, how much they love it, the actor who plays the male lead, Jack Quaid?, six Jason movies, a crossover with Star Trek Strange New Worlds, cartoon worlds, hated discovery and Star Trek Picard, east to swallow, these are meant to be on in the background, if you’re very young right now, tiktok and instagram, you have to be taught, kids used to get bored, never bored anymore, research and processing, you need to be bored enough to get into somethings, ants, flowers, sucked into watching puppy videos, a puppy licking a Starbucks cup, the cough, winter related, if you lived in Hawaii, warm places in the winter, dysentery in Egypt, fluish sick?, winter weather, closed up, sealed up, what can we do about it, complain, have you noticed, have you looked at your coins lately, don’t look at your coins, some weird king on your coins, threw me into a universe, who’s this guy wearing a crown, a little peek, both old ladies, queen cookie tin, old lady with short hair, different people, a little faceblind, go into her classroom, a portrait of the queen on the wall, less disturbing than seeing this guy, what the hell is going on, about 5% of the coins, loonies or toonies, a disturbin experience, Charles III, still living with your grandmother, Charles III toonie, a quarter, not liking it, devaluing the money, on ebay, $25 for a $2 coin, ebay’s listings are free now, business model, before Amazon, 1999, ebay used to own PayPal, billpoint, spend the money, Skype, ebay used to be huge, recessed into the background, everybody knows about Amazon, a Star Trek Murder Mystery Box, ABEBooks.com, bought by Amazon, started on Vancouver Island, a competitor, this is why we can’t have nice things, the politics of this book make Jesse sad, an apartment that’s paid for, crazy real-estate investment, unaffordable and impossible, like an elegy, have a living and a place to live, go out for drinks, patches of that past, oh and independent store where they sell stuff and a person works there, runaway to escape, we can’t go back, doesn’t do that much tweaking, taxis arrive on time, customers for his store, his perfect little world, old books, visiting a time, when sandwiches cost 5 cents, coffee was 5 cents, a magazine 15 cents, $18 for a magazine, full of ads and super-thin, you have a phone, what the real problem is, real estate is really the issue, massive decline for a long time, middle to late 50s, drop off a cliff, 1953 is the height, in decline since then, 130 men’s magazines, more like adventure fiction, WWII stories, Chatelaine, competing with each other, steeply fallen by the 1960s, a major distributor selling the real estate for distribution, selling that depot is what killed the distribution, a scramble, super-interesting, blame it on television, movie theaters, what killed the movie going experience, COVID, bad movies, movie fans are all getting old now, the young people don’t know what movies are, small town movie theaters, movie festivals, untrained audience, expensive to rent the movies, a lack of availability of housing, not just for people, nothing they did wrong, investment properties, people don’t even know that they own it, Blackrock, you don’t even know you’re participating, private equity, why is the war in Ukraine happening, Blackrock is the answer, the breadbasket for Europe, sell our grain product, buy up all the land, taking all these debts, if this is a conscious plan, spray glyphosate all over it, the terminator gene style wheat, we’re doing all these things without knowing we’re doing them, everybody’s life is in your phone, imagine cinemas, big leather reclining chairs, $5 movies, $5 concessions, slash to this extent, all the matinees, you need to have something to watch that you want to see, Red One, the Rock, Heretic, supposed to be not bad, hires then marries, thriller, a child’s movie, Venom The Last Dance, We Live In Time (2024), Andrew Garfield, Florence Pugh, out of the knowing things business, Gladiator 2, Wicked, Moana 2, keep your hand in there, The Importance Of Being Earnest, such good words, as in it sucked, not in as they slayed, sad story, Mufasa: The Lion King, Sonic The Hedgehog, Wolf Man (2025), Captain America, Love Hurts, on the Island last, new owner coming, a good movie playing, late summer, old movies, a good date movie, I’m not sure we should be watching this, a movie that’s original, does good work, this is what a movie can be like, 90s comedies, dynamics of the neighbourhood, a girl who’s pregnant driving around town, actor became a dude, Juno (2007), Elliot/Ellen Page, those sorts of people, when was Superbad (2007)?, enjoy your movies, by DM.

The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brow by Lawrence Block

Posted by Jesse Willis