Tag: religion

The SFFaudio Podcast #829 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos

The SFFaudio Podcast #829 – Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos, read by Jenn Broda for (LibriVox). This is a complete and unabridged audiobook (3 hours 31 minutes), followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Jonathan Weichsel

Talked about on today’s show:
Jonathan got to go first, 1925 book, epistolary novel, letters, a diary, The Illuminating Diary Of A Professional Lady, great narrator, great book, Jonathan will love this book, how can I count the ways, a movie adaptation, second to last musical sequence, Marilyn Monroe sings about diamonds, got lazy, cut the opening to it, make the case, the book is pretty great, the movie is very dangerous and has caused a lot of problems, how meanspirited the book is, a scathing social satire, very mean, mean to the reader too, ridicules these values, the movie is extoling those values, what the target of the book’s satire is, a speech at the end of the movie, daddy in law, being rich is just like being pretty, super evil, very compellingly put together, Howard Hawks, his most evil creation, a really good propagandist, the cult of Marilyn Monroe in L.A. today, their model is her in this movie, make you watch this movie, understand and miss, pretending to be dumb to get ahead, in the film, she’s pretending to be lazy to get ahead too, that’s what women like, they don’t have to do anything to get ahead, be sexpots, become lazy to emulate Marilyn Monroe, to sing like that, to talk like that, the product of hard work and dedication to her craft, effortlessly, a very dangerous film, luckily not a girl, problems it engenders, Jane Russell is good too, blown off the screen, Dorothy is a fun character, her diary, she’s the one who gets it, quite different, set 20 (or more) years apart, given even billing, in the book everything revolves around the plans of Lorelei, she’s a murderer, fucking genius, really smart, reading subversively, she has another layer on, if you look at the way she constructs sentences, baby sentences written by a baby: “A gentleman friend and I were dining at the Ritz last evening and he said that if I took a pencil and a paper and put down all of my thoughts it would make a book.”, he’s tired of her, or she’s so smart, this almost made me smile, a wole row of encyclopediacs, the spelling throuought, she’s a “Christian Science”, how stupid is she?, money, language, geograohy, she gets everything she wants all the time, she always comes out on top, stupidly uneducated, the books stacked up around her apartment, a woman intelligence about how men work, a very strange phenomenon, not a blonde, a screenwriter, a movie actress, men lose their fucking minds over women, all the men are married in the book, a little bored, an opporutnity to cheat on their wives, she knows what’s going on, how smart she is is very well hidden, underestimate how stupid she is, looking at the results, what’s so great about this character, seeing the world, we like her, a curse on Marilyn Monroe, the character is a parody of a real kind of person, lady looking for sugardaddies, before she takes her trip, Helen Of Troy, of Greek extraction, Mr. Popadopolis, a shopper, and he even speaks Greek to waiters, very hard to tell, intuition, doesn’t think things ahead very well, she makes plans, they always fail, the way the society she wins is constructed, shot him through the lungs, they want her to do well, they are invested in her, except for Dorothy and Lulu, the Jewish one who is educating her, hard to understand, movie Emmanuelle (1974), books by Joseph Conrad, every part of this book is spectacular, the layers of sickness/awesomeness, as a book it is a very good thing, the film takes it at face value and does that twist at the end, a limited perspective, her vision of the world is very small and narrow, a teeny piece of this bigger world, because it is a movie, the fly on the wall perspective, when looking at the movie, we see the glamorous Marilyn, actual life, small town, her looks propelled her, a tragedy, a box she’s put herself into, abuse by being so beautiful, another paragraph, March 19,

So the reason I thought I would take luncheon at the Ritz was because Mr. Chaplin is at the Ritz and I always like to renew old acquaintances, because I met Mr. Chaplin once when we were both working on the same lot in Hollywood and I am sure he would remember me. Gentlemen always seem to remember blondes. I mean the only career I would like to be besides an authoress is a cinema star and I was doing quite well in the cinema when Mr. Eisman made me give it all up. Because of course when a gentleman takes such a friendly interest in educating a girl as Mr. Eisman does, you like to show that you appreciate it, and he is against a girl being in the cinema because his mother is authrodox.

she doesn’t know what these words are, writing them down verbatim, falling in love, share these diaries with him, I would never put that in my diary, stuff being hidden from us, he wants to keep her as a pet, he’s busy, he wants her to “educate herself”, control her loose morals, giving him sex, she’s not a prostitute, a kept woman, literary men around, real people, inviting other women, bring their own alcohol, getting the chandelier fixed, the setting is Prohibition, she allows alcohol, the bootlegger, how wonderful she is, she supplied alcohol, supplies other attractive women too, almost wholesome, a layer of conniving gold digging, we like her so much, in the bad books of Dorothy, so well written, at your wedding I had to read about the Armenian genocide in order to not laugh, plying the mother in law, got her so drunk she wheeled her away, she drunkens men on her beauty and flirtatiousness, she drunkens women on alcohol, what people do, a hunter, animalistic, very natural, what religion she is, into health, you’ve had champagne, I partied too hard, the best way to read this, Anita Loos is making fun of a character that’s she’s created or met, Marilyn Monroe precursors, Mae West, plays a smarter woman, her whole shtick, the insidious part, quite depressed this morning, decided not to read the book, a cup by Cellini, a famous dish, Sam, a professor, life of Mr. Cellini, finds it boring, quite amusing in spots, riskay, not so close together, for the spots I am looking for, amusing also spelled wrong, Lord Jim, improve my mind, nearly made a mistake, The Nigger Of The Narcissus, negro instead of nigger, they have their feelings just the same as we have, this kind of mentality, she gets older, I’m not racist, get my servant to do the work for me, can’t we just, powerful people today, euphemism treadmilled, stuck with that, indians, especially in academia, politics, the white man’s language, BIPOC, long story short, it’s funny here, horror in real life, the problem with the movie, dance numbers and visuals, based on a musical play, removed more times than that, very separated, the tiara bit, done differently, the movie is very well done, young Mr. Spofford, little kid actor, if he was just a little bit older, 10 or something, under the surface it could be considered menacing or threatening, too propagandistly successful, subversive too, mocking, the reader, agrees that those are horrible things, most people think those things are good, confuse you, subversive in opposite ways, opposite points of views, diversions, a book of [Georg Wilhelm Friedrich] Hegel, a fun entertainment, they enjoy the book, out to dinner, an open friendly way, just too much the character, an iconic way of being, embodying a certain kind of womanhood, I have to be this, a fantasy for men, a fantasy for women, she’s very expensive, you need to buy her diamonds, the character of Lorelei vs. the public character of Marilyn Monroe, type defining, watching Elvis in a movie, he’s always Elvis, Some Like It Hot (1959), The Seven Year Itch (1955), more surreal than interesting, Just Imagine (1930), Futurama, XYZBrenda, just a musical set in the future, skype phones, flying cars, our vision of the Jetsons in black and white and a musical, an excuse, they don’t ever die, on the wane, rock operas, on rollerskates, Xanadu (1980), The Producers (1967), Busby Berkeley musicals, she goes to the Follies, cabaret dancers, partners, kept women, “a professional lady”, what does she do to earn her crust of bread, jewels, not exactly a prostitute, formal transaction, venmo or whatever, an old book for women, Sex And The Single Girl, a niggling feeling, her pimp, introduces her to people, a pimp will also have sex with his hookers, likes being cucked?, making the whole button factory up, a hobby, everything must be read subversively, through her pen, how does she pay Lulu, a budget, whenever he’s in town, an excuse to him, educating this girl, open a button factory, holidays on the saint days, relatives that are starving, really fat, ruining his business, palm her off on another man, in a lifestyle to which she’s become accustomed, the care and feeding of this pet, we’re doing all this work to figure out what actually happened, aspiring actresses in L.A., Amazon wishlists, meet guys on Facebook, she sells it on ebay, a fiction they create together, the streaming service for sex?, OnlyFans, I can’t beleive how great your camera setup is, what’s a twitch, she’s OnlyFansing, private dances, private shows, she’s doing it in person, a Patreon to support her acting career, a scary new AI thing, virtual girlfriend, a Jeff Bezos style character raking in the cash from virtual gifts, an escort, hired to be a date, nice to be on the arm of a beautiful woman, the Girlfriend Experience, different price points, taking her shopping, “falling in love”, made more plain in the film, easier to love him when he has money, evil insidious, a counter to the other narrative that’s also in the air, the story by O. Henry, two young people deeply in love, The Gift Of The Magi, anti-material stuff, the reality is women want a certain amount of security, burdened with a baby at some point, on the verge of marriage, a double marriage, a fanfare and a tiara, she doesn’t think you should like the guy you are dating, causes problems with your business, upset with herself, the problem is he’s married, a meal at a very homey placed, a big potato and a steak, they go in a hansom cab around the park, I’d like to divorce my wife but I can’t, I really don’t like this, that’s bad for her business, The Ritz, only staying at this one hotel chain, Anita Loos is hilarious, every place you go to has a McDonalds, cruise ships, the supposed destination, a stroll through the marketplace, meal on the ship, only one little store, the shopping in Paris, the Tower of London is terrible, the central of Europe, the men sit there and drink beer, parallel with that, Vienna opera, underneath the dust is tripe, a beerhall, she’s cracking a hardboiled egg, the whole place smells like sausages, everybody in England is a rich person trying to sell things, a portrait by Whistler, the number of allusions per page, Mr Chaplin, when she was in the movies, a scenario writer, drawn from life, hyperbolized, Pennsylvania, the naughty parts of the movies, to protect the morals of the poor people, just the naughty bits, without the good bits, parallels, the whole message, stringcheese commercials, the best part of the pizza without the pizza, the best part of the movie without the movie, pornographic movies had plots, scenarios, batwoman fucking some other batgirl, the extent of the script, all the celebrities going to Deep Throat (1972) in a New York premiere, quite a film, Sorceress (1983), boobs!, silly plot, a goat guy, like Pan, goat sounds come out, do you want to take a swim?, what’s that thing between his legs?, is it a weapon?, good quality on YouTube, whenever possible they take their shirts off, a naked person in a Hollywood theatrical film, Oppenheimer (2023)’s sex scene, Return To Nuke Em High Part 2 (2017), prudence, sex and nudity, current Game Of Thrones, so much nudity in it, do we even get a nipple?, an official censoring, Marvel movies are supposedly for a general audience, older people, Marvel movie fans, not even swearing, has to do with class, lower class people it is dangerous, they might get the idea of breeding, classicism, foreign distribution, self-censorship for China, art films, all connected, outsources everything, Howard Hawks is pretty terrific, an effective movie, insubstantial, presenting us with a Marilyn Monroe that damages the 20th century and beyond, subtext, after reading the book, these things are in it, a weird role model for women, a weird sex symbol for men, the reasons why, Dorothy comes across very slightly, pawn off her man on someone else, tell him how much money I’m spending on these jewels, making up the stories, throw the jewels into the East River, she’s the one who exemplifies the alternative, the deeper voice, smokes cigarettes, she’s after the whole Olympic team, diving into the pool, an actual folly that happened, the opposite of Marilyn Monroe’s one at a time thing, an even more substantial role to play, she’s in a wig, the little beauty mark is in the original book, her beauty mark moves around, added to give that weight, Marilyn Monroe has been typecast as this silly girl, Jane Russell’s role, people do comment, she’s better, she’s more dynamic, she acts like Marilyn Monroe in the film, a doubletake, the same blonde hair, the face is slightly different, a sequel book, But They Marry Brunettes, a third book?, Gentlemen Prefer Gentlemen, the interview abruptly ended, a very heterosexual world, the sister-in-law who wears a tie and spends all her time with horses, WWI, she never went back to the mean line, he had to marry her because she was a suffragette, these Hollywood movies, made by homosexual men, homo eroticism, one tiny white girl surrounded by 8 black men, gangbang, muscular men, chorus dancing, Marilyn surrounded by guys holding hearts, fake grey hair, indistinguishable, men are all chasing her, she’s chasing all the men, the men are interested in each other and lifting weights and looking at their muscles, as a woman she probably doesn’t have as much experience with this stuff, only 3.5 hours, [Jenn Broda] narrated it perfectly, the Central of Europe, a really great job with it, that’s not her name, mentioned at the trial, a literary character, a lady who sat on a rock, a German siren, a place on the Rhine, she’s like a mermaid, German operas, seduced the navigators, she’s using a fake name, they don’t use their real names, Norma Jean, very realistic even though it is a farce, she’s in New York and England but she comes from L.A., probably set in 1925, screenwriter, a job for women, the man is the director the woman is the writer, the scripts can be revised all the way to the end, what characters were saying, how comics were put together, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, revising what was said right up to the end, how Curb Your Enthusiasm was produced, nobody has dialogue written, you’re angry about me having borrowed your car and I have this hat, she doesn’t have good plans, the sequence in England, both on the con, they have different problems, all the rich people are poor, also true, stereotypes that are very funny, she’s completely fake, is she even a blonde?, a really good book, when it came out on LibriVox, this is awesome, take the whole text, wordcounter.net, throw your text in there, if we threw this text into that, it is written in a style where she repeats words and over and over again, half the sentence start with “so”, no matter who they are, Mr. Ginsberg, some relation to the King, Mountbatten, Mr. Mountginz, his face became so read it was almost a picture, Major Falcon, written as if her grade level is really really low, super compelling, imitating the writing of the dumb blonde girl thinks she’s smart, really good, very solid, not everybody can appreciate this subtlety, ask Cora at another date, upcoming book, Dan Fante, the son of the famous novelist John Fante, similar to his father’s books, a very underground literary star, an anti-literary style, gritty books, dirty, street books, 86’d, struggling telemarketing, a chauffeur’s job, thribing limo service, he must remain sober, his own madness, familiar demons, a story from Saturn, March 1958, pretty connected, Never Marry A Venerian by Charles L. Fontenay, this charming young lady, he knew more about Venus, he was brilliant and understanding, the party tonight, a faint reproach, Hal is a robot, on Venus robots have equal writes to humans, built on Luna, plug him in every night to recharge his generators, colorful sand hills, most women are all body and no brains, your face and body are perfect, she asked him to marry her, not just a strong handsome body, his muscles were like iron, most brilliant and talented, tearful objections, Rico was from Earth, don’t you know, went off like clockwork, real terrestrial rice, Toby was tired, they retired to the bridal suite, how many brides she wondered, I don’t really know the man I’ve married at all, Toby had removed his shirt, the plug end of an electric cable, she saw the socket between her shoulder blades, how early could you see this coming?, right away, clued in, hints here and there, a little surprise ending, a nice compliment to the book, a rich girl looking for a beautiful husband while on vacation, tiny joke stories, O. Henry, twist ending, an O. Henry twist, at least 2000 words, for Weird Tales, long stories, novelettes, novellas, serials, short stories, always a need for to fill 3 pages, poems, a fixed length every month, this kind of story is good, crackerjack, WWI fighter pilot comes back home traumatized from the war, can’t sleep, like The Yellow Wallpaper but with a dude, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, people now are really trained just for plot, in the olden days, a series of song and dance routines, the comedic bit, romance bits, lovey dovey things, audiences are so trained, the attention span for the version with the songs cut out, everybody requires training, easier for kids, the amount of detail, the number of clothing items, less intricate, Quincy, M.D., Yes, Minister, a dog that likes to eat treats, at age 7, in order to grok it, required training, making things too easy, Scooby Doo, a 5 college consortium in Massachusetts, not a conspiracy theory, Shaggy is the stoner, based on Hampshire College, Smith and Mount Holyoke College, short dumpy fat lesbian, the tall skinny one, Velma, the jock school, Fred, the preppy guy, the dog is the jock, Amhurst is preppy, upscale and preppy, Daphne, University Of Massachusetts is the jock one, based on the personality of one of the schools, 2 girls and 2 boys and dog, the fat woman, the skinny woman, the thing that ties him all together, east coast, a New England state, tiki adventures, Providence, who’s theory is this?, keeping in mind that artificial intelligence is not accurate, reliable or trustworthy, cute, Golan Globus Theatre podcast, Scarab (1983), Robert Ginty, uncharismatic movie star, The Exterminator (1980), there’s no part one, the bad guy is Rip Torn, some sort of chemist professor, he’s decided to become Nyarlathotep, South America or Spain, improvising all his scenes, whenever he’s on screen, strange movements, Egyptian staff, boobs are shown, women behind him showing their boobs, unpredictable and strange, the anti-hero is the hero, rooting for Ginty to die, the description on YouTube, direct to video, a former Nazi seeking to gain new power attempts to resurrect an Egyptian god, Weird Tales style stories, a Weird Tales style plot, playing for weird, definitively a bad movie, I’m watching for these scenes, on screen antics, blackmail materials?, pictures of you with Anita Loos, it is stunning he has a movie career, attractive to women, you can get trained up to be able to appreciate crappy, the plot is less important than those scenes, a fake Mentos commercial, he spits venom, really good sound effects, dissatisfied with Midnight Pulp, curate your own shit, their programmer left, their programming hasn’t been the same, reward yourself, The Barbarians (1987), they show up on VHS and then they’re gone after 5 years, a new heydey for old stuff, giant books of movie reviews, as thick as your hand, stop at the video stores and buy whatever was in the bin with a good review, those were the days, a lady in New Orleans who’s opened up a VHS store, hobby/lifestyle, video stores are our versions of the pulps stands, a comic book store or the video store, pulp covers on the VHS tapes, waiting online at the grocery store, right by the checkout, Analog, F&SF, and crossword puzzles, discovered Heinlein at the museum shop, Rocket Ship Galileo, messed up, editorial director, hire this other editor, two editors, dissonance, Barnes & Noble, thoroughly decimated, Hudson News, bus stops and airports, the price is insane, you can still get these things if you travel fare enough, it used to be in every small town, a lot of this is technology, real estate stuff, a precipitous drop off after certain period of time, out of the land owning business, a similar one happened during COVID, Diamond Comic Distributors, three baskets, anti-ebook talk, the distribution method for ebooks, Amazon’s paid advertising, pay to play, how much the author/publisher is willing to pay, they’re squeezing, the way information and knowledge is distributed right now, the solution is to make it profitable, or make it less profitable, that’s how we got here, make it subversively searchable, individual education vs. advertising, some are available for free, showing movies every week, a sale, $30 for the year, ongoing, different price points, getting on the system, once you’re tied into stuff you become a manager, banking, all the boring parts, reading stories, watching movies, Tubi movies, Plex, sign in for that, finding the time for anything, Netflix, the new Black Mirror, The Boys, bad writing, wait fifty years, 99 years so old, so topical, fun to read, perpetual smile, almost the entire listen, easier to block ads, subtle, did this mean that?, just phenomenal, so many references, Anita Loos read that [Benvenuto] Cellini book, a real person, alluded to, Sam something, sounds like a real Hollywood person, Midnight Vampire, Will just had trouble with the subtlety of this book, how could you put that in your book, not successfully modeled Will’s mind, chemist/cultist Rip Torn, a book written by a dumb bitch, you really have not modeled his mind, Will is a very soft touch, more of a fantasy, we’ll have to ask him next show, A Witch Shall Be Born, The Aeneid, a holiday weekend, Scott booked these, its good, the timing, a good one, a good show, a great book, sometimes good books make good shows, suggest a book, the books you don’t like, if there is a disagreement, things were learned, we agreed pretty much about everything, what did I learn about Treasure Island with Alex last week, The Green Queen was a better show, a broken book with better ideas, women point of view, drugs and consumerism, that was as good as some of Philip K. Dick’s novels, he’s got some good novels too, the ideas were good in it, very obvious ideas, they were not original ideas, done poorly, she couldn’t decide, exaggerate these things, just describe them, about advertising, about Madison Ave., what the metaphor was, not a good novel, the veridical mask, The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth, they spark some shit up, a fun book and a funny book, C.M. Kornbluth can hit knockouts, The Advent On Channel 12 by C.M. Kornbluth, money was tight in the land, let Poopy Panda up periscope and fire all bow tubes, Walt Disney creating Jesus Christ out of Mickey Mouse in 4 pages, he does not baby it for you, reading Connie Willis, oh god get on with the fucking plot, a little like Alfred Bester, all these bad ideas, the diamond industry, diamond retailers, so much money, tiaras and necklaces, the intention, feels like a movie from 30s, a throwback, Breakfast At Tiffany’s (1961), get that ice, unless no dice, those louses go back to their spouses, if the tone were different, look at the rhymes, fun silly rhymes, so bright, her dress is so red, very cartoonish, the fantasy for men is having a lot of money to attract women, this a fantasy for married men, more a fantasy for women than for men, one of his least movies, Happy Birhday, Mr. President, that scene practically happens in the movie, she’s playing herself from that movie, Madonna’s video Material Girl, the same song, the same dance routine, a better singer, she’s playing Marilyn Monroe, it looks like her eyes are closed, weird daddy stuff, baby and daddy, so childish, in the book too, that’s why they’re called sugar daddies, the opening song, Little Rock, Dorothy understands what’s going on, she’s the stupid one, she also knows what she’s doing, she can use her one trick, she’s a bad person, lying to people all the time, she has no morals, she doesn’t understand, when the murder happens, she reveals the murder, admire Anita Loos, she has no morals, the fake one so she can keep milking money, you’re like a radio, she doesn’t get that joke, a monkey at a typewriter, it is magical, how the book came into existence, you’re quite a philosopher, it doesn’t go on for 30 hours, what a great book.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes art by Earle Bergey

Gentlemen Always Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos - Harper's Bazaar, March 1925

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #828 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

The SFFaudio Podcast #828 – Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, read by Mark F. Smith for (LibriVox). This is a complete and unabridged audiobook (7 hours 22 minutes), followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Alex (Pulpcovers)

Talked about on today’s show:
is this the best or one of the best openings for a mystery adventure story?, not a misplaced word, hits the ground running, in media res, you’re probably wondering how I got here, I’m a boy, the old pirate shows up, scares everybody, a magazine publication, each chapter has something going on, not super episodic, continually exciting, quibble with things later, nothing in this book is bad, in terms of an opening, quality of homeiness and call to adventure, The Hobbit, the more you look at it the more stupid it gets, exactly that feeling, the backstory, who is this pirate?, the one legged man, cove that’s out of the way, the stories that he’s telling in the tavern, deleted from Treasure Planet (2002), not bad, circle back, the father, he never gets adapted, it’s important, the whole particulars, the bearings of the island, 17 blank blank, when my father kept, saber-cut, the father dies during the stay, we don’t know a whole lot about him, will not confront, the huge bill that keeps piling up, Jim Hawkins will confront him every month, quite dire, took on someone else’s fears, turns him into a spy, steams his nose, anger and fearsomeness, will always pay, so awesome, way superior, the backstory in The Hobbit, a dwarf kingdom that needs reliberation, a character that’s drawn in a backstory mystery, live a quiet life, a Heinleinian style hero, his mom seems fine, there’s something wrong with his dad, my dad is broken, fairly timid, dies right before the actual leaving, before the tavern gets trashed, adventurous company, why Jim goes, allows him to go out, just gonna leave your mom?, so central to the experience of the book, this Long John Silver character, surrogate uncle/father figure, the thing that makes this a legendary s-tier book, the relationship, highly competent (sort of), good hearted/mean hearted, an interesting character, sympathies, Ben Gunn, Captain Smollett, such a great guy, its something like a Heinlein juvenile, the Disney one, an adaptation highlights, a gender flip, not a lot of women in this book, a little romance, side romance, the parrot, Captain Flint, an alien, Aladdin (1992), clockpunk?, super radical space surfing, the father left the mother, why the cyborg (instead of the one legged man), very huggy in the film, they’re more like this is a man I can model myself on/against, a great example, of goodness and evil, adds resentment, they burn down his farm, sense of intrigue, adventure and wealth, draw ourselves into, Bilbo Baggins or any Heinlein juvenile character, attracting you into the book, even the backstory, the old sea-song, there’s a map, Long John Silver, yo ho ho and a bottle of rum, the black spot, x-marks the spot, re-used throughout the book, a reminder of the plot, The Cannonball Run (1981), what the plot is, sailing towards that destination, the apple barrel scene, very Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn, becomes the hero, the speeder run in The Phantom Menace, a thing to do, chariot racer, in the coracle, spike the guns, cut the line, reverses, a lot of stuff to do in an almost plausible way, a dumb idea, he’s not a superhero, doesn’t have midichlorians, bumbles his way through it, his plan is screwed from the very beginning, a very good evil plan, they’re already planning to kill us, hold the pirates together, who’s going to be captain, highly influential, Survivor, tiki-stuff, every single pirate story owes 75% of its DNA, the other 24 percent is Peter Pan, direct references, you loved Treasure Island, now you’re talking about the prequel Black Sails, they really need to leave the island, Flint And Silver by John Drake, a trilogy, ship’s full of loot, more treasure, killing his own men, Flint is the ghost that looms over this book, an impression, poor Ben Gunn, ghosts not having shadows, lets the pirates be evil, real pirates, straight up murders a couple of people, something that goes unaddressed, pirate readings, the main audience for this, a general interest magazine, children’s literature, a YA, back to The Hobbit, a bedtime story, in this book the adultness comes from those scenes of murder, extremis, political comments, set in the 1700s, they have a clock in their inn, fought at some battle, 1750s, after the Golden Age Of Piracy, the pirating is done, came back looking for treasure, any of these adventure movies, Marky Mark gets a giant helicopter, pulling caravels out of caves, Uncharted (2022), Indiana Jones movies, Nazis, basic result, party now, generating sympathy, reading a book, not an actual book, a hologram, what’s wrong with the film, fudging this idea of space adventure with the original Treasure Island, commit to the future bit, retired bad ass criminals, Inception (2010), Iraq War, Geroge Clooney, Three Kings (1999), old pirate tech, ai prompt for with if Heinlein wrote this: “please rewrite TREASURE ISLAND as if it was written by Robert A. Heinlein, in the style of BETWEEN PLANETS or RED PLANET.”, the map and the asteroid, shoulda been a dash dash, chat gpt, New England, brimming with mysteries, doing the thing, a fun adventure story, my name is Jim Hawkins, shaking my head, I discovered the map, monsoon season, portable analyzer, multitool, the way they do Doctor Who, hand drawn star chart, prominent red x, historical technology, an array of holodisplays and quantum analyzers, an authentic artifact, stick the father back in the story, where’s the stranger with the saber cut, Billy Bones, why chat gpt will never write a functional story that’s any good, doesn’t even enter the tavern, immediately dies, not even a sip of rum, enemy pirates, off on the adventure, pretty good at some things, a paragraph from WWI, in the style of Doctor Who, translating text, Hemingway, Dr Seuss, Robert E. Howard, short little pieces, grok stories as a whole, it can’t, weird fragments, hallucinating them, dream fragments, artificial intelligence is already here and some of us have it, stories written by children, the story ends because, set 100 years before his own timeframe, echoing back to an earlier age, layers of nostalgia, the Gutenberg, for the hardcover, an opening sonnet to the hesitating purchaser:

“To the Hesitating Purchaser:

“If sailor tales to sailor tunes,
Storm and adventure, heat and cold,
If schooners, islands, and maroons
And Buccaneers and buried Gold
And all the old romance, retold,
Exactly in the ancient way,
Can please, as me they pleased of old,
The wiser youngsters of to-day:

-So be it, and fall on! If not,
If studious youth no longer crave,
His ancient appetites forgot,
Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave,
Or Cooper of the wood and wave:
So be it, also! And may I
And all my pirates share the grave,
Where these and their creations lie!
― Robert Louis Stevenson”

here’s my book, if you like all this stuff, you should like this stuff, a nostalgic piece, the thing that inspired him, the buried pirate treasure, the book wouldn’t exist without it, mystery of Captain Flint, the list, maroons, Bugs Bunny, is that a colour?, buccaneers and pirates are related, scallywag, carpetbagger, a collaborator with that, set in the Caribbean, around the Horn, the Spanish port, almost instantly, as soon as they’re off the island they’re in port, August 1750, pirate kingdoms, Port Royal in Jamaica, Madagascar too, depends on what you mean by Golden Age, triangular trade in the way that there was, slaves and money, Spanish colonization, navies got bigger and better, hunted down, losing that much treasure, class analysis, why Bilbo Baggins has a gardener, Sam Gamgee, the old Gaffer, wealthier, got his treasure, super-rich, low end nobility, gentleman farmer, lived in the top of the hill, Bagshot Row, joke, Hobbit last names, the reason Gandalf knew he would make a good [burglar], Baggins, Took, Sackville, they’re Oxford dons, Norman nobility, who’s growin the pipeweed?, lower class, the people at the tavern who don’t know how to read, big farms outside of the town, Farmer Maggot, money flow to buy birthday presents, Bilbo has a clock, the local squire is the highest we go, a good guy and an idiot, this conspiracy they have, screwed that up, I will listen to you going forward, in a modern story, refuse to admit his mistakes, if done in 2024, 22 years ago, David Hyde Pierce, endgame of 2D animation, Snow White style rotoscoped it, surfing, a lot of CG later, Disney Tarzan, looked really fluid, cool effect, Pixar ate their lunch, full CGI effect, the last gasp of traditional animation, Pixar became Disney animation, the major problem has never been the animation, a writing problem of late, not enough kids movies, Toy Story 5, Tangled (2010) was really good, a weird throwback, Frozen was more popular and made more money, The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Anderson, what if there was a queen who could do snow stuff?, Rapunzel?, folk tales vs. fairy tales, the best fairy tales are rooted in folk tales, more recent mythology, when you ground something in that cultural depth, slowly developed over a century, the best version survive, depth, sisters, not sisters, dig into that grab bag of pieces, rooted in something, super-Christian, fall away, ebb and flow, weird Germanic paganism gets Christianized, the lessons we want our kids to have, baptizing, Christmas trees, we like trees too, a star or a hammer, that’s fine, let people tell stories, inspired by him wanting to get closer to his new step-son Llyod Osbourne, why it is so good, this American lady with a kid, hey bud, real awkward here, you like pirates right?, an island with a treasure marked on it, he is Long John Silver, makes Lloyd Osbourne into Jim Hawkins, I want to be big and muscular, Conan was written for working class men, what’s The Hobbit, just an adventure, talking about himself, Bilbo is in his 50s, he’s Tolkien, he’s retired from whatever job he ever had, birthday parties, very casual, straight inserts, read about different kinds of people, the layering becomes much greater with Lord Of The Rings, Bilbo adopts his cousin, changes his name to Baggins, just so happen to have the exact same birthday, replacement for the next adventure, ultimately Frodo is 50 by the time the advenuture happens, 20 years paass, numerology thing, eleventy-third, fun number, adds up to a gross, meta-stuff, the creation of the world in the background, east of the Barrow Downs, the three trolls from the Hobbit, the legacy of the land, we don’t have Bree in the first book, Mirkwood, built up this whole world, the Silmarillion, like reading the Bible of Middle Earth, no one else has ever written anything quite like it, romance about the Golden Age of Piracy and England in this post-arrow, Admiral Benbow Inn, The Green Dragon Inn, a public house, the mail drops Billy Bones at the nicer inn down the way, near the sea, the people who are after me, the double backstory, an officer, an heir to Flint’s treasure and map, mysterious oilskin, drinking himself to death, Billy Bones and his fears, the fears that Frodo is given by Gandalf, the ring is that thing that everybody’s after, some wiser heads on this, when Gandalf doesn’t come back, Tolkien is amazing, the ends are less good than the openings, the fun adventure, the Battle Of The Five Armies, conked on the head, cool stuff in there, just Tolkien, healing, happy lives back in the Shire, the Sourging Of The Shire, evil is never quite beaten, to live you life, not a children’s adventure story, they leave the silver but they get the gold, the Indiana Jones effect, couldn’t we also have the gold?, an alien, a special gate, fairly well constructed as a plot, we don’t think of sailing as tech, apprenticed to the seacook, he’s the cabin boy, learning the ropes literally, in that engagement, both cruel and betraying but also teaching you things, very Heinleinian growing up, Citizen Of The Galaxy, the main character is purchased, indoctrinated into a secret spy agency, crippled in that book, beware of the no legged man!, born without a leg!?, weird monopod, as a part of the crew, suspicious right away, the cyborg, shocked to see a one legged man as a seacook, injured people, a missing arm in Treasure Planet, owning the inn in Bristol, a negress wife, lives in luxury, Muppet Treasure Island (1996), probably going to die along in a dinghy, one bag of gold coins, the most interesting character, everybody’s a captain, even the parrot is a captain, captains were elected, Silver was the quartermaster, he knows what it was all about, quartermasters were also elected, ability to get treasure, share out the shares, trust the captain to be greedy, almost equal power, when not chasing down a ship, who’s getting what portion, insurance when your leg gets blown off, more trustworthy, recruit everybody to stay on the plan, an indoctrination for the kid, a little culty, politiciany, same words, I was his favourite boy, that’s what politicians do, we probably wrongly like them, very personable, watches him murder a man, murder us in our sleep but so likeable, imagine your mom marries somebody who’s not your dad, you’re not my real dad?, how do you defeat that, one way to wreck a family, insinuate yourself in there, good and bad, agency and teaching something, learning the ropes, I’m in charge of you shipmate, smart as paint you are, the applebarrel situation, Blind Pew, cripples, sickly his whole life, never a man’s man, black dog’s in it, Isiah Hand, creepy and scary and effective, despite being crippled, personality and brains and not just brawn, the stand-in for himself is a threat and friendly, very disarming, narrative is basically why we are humans, if you buy the story that explains your behavior, why did you do that, come up with a story, that’s a bad story and you’re a bad kid, dogs don’t take in narratives, I want to aspire to be a better dog, sometimes they respond, do they feel guilty, they don’t understand our words very well, from a baby point of view, enjoy sugar and a good burp, a narrative about your position in the family, who you are eventually, the process of maturation, I might not be you biological dad, I might not be healthy, here’s a story that you helped me create, the psychology is perfect, an archetype that didn’t exist before he put it in here, scallywag sort of guy, the trope codifier, TV Tropes is too much and too big, we know this trope, this figure, he’s not Han Solo, Han Solo is who you want to be, Luke Skywalker, who aspires to be Long John Silver, Robert Louis Stevenson, shooting [Greedo] in cold blood, never does anything bad, I’m leaving with my money, comes right back and saves the day, redemption arc, real friends, gonna get hung, try not to get hung, I’m out, similar trope, the magical blackman, The Legend Of Bagger Vance, The Green Mile, Stephen King’s The Shining, magical black man, not scoundrels, lower class because of their race, teach to the white kid, Uncle Remus’ B’rer Rabbit, black folktales, like cartoons, animals trying to eat each other, fights with tarbabies, not a turncoat, they have to be perfect, weird anti-racism, no black kid has a magical black man, somebody who helps the kid become better at golf, Will Smith and Matt Damon, we don’t need sequels, spiritual sequels, maybe there’s a whole bunch of things that precede it, Golding book: The Lord Of The Flies, The Coral Island by R.M. Ballantyne, juvenile fiction with juvenile heroes, boys marooned, Blue Lagoon without the sex, Robinson Crusoe, Robinsonades, Swiss Family Robinson, Space Family Robinson, a whackjob Christian, attacking Christianity, meanwhile he’s skinning cats and building fortresses, a recipe for capitalism, becomes a slave, in the slave business, this is more tame, long, Jack and Ralph, that’s who Golding is responding to, it would be terrible, Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft, civilization or savagery, collapse is inevitable, why everything is shit, bitter and angry and cynical about humankind, stranding a bunch of boys on an island, descriptions, pretty little boys, samaneric, a very weird book to thrust upon kids, why they do it, because it has kids in it, Nineteen Eighty Four is an interesting read, Animal Farm, this is Stalin that’s Trotsky, diatribe against the Russian revolution, why was Orwell forced upon kids in Canada and the USA, why aren’t we reading Treasure Island in school, everyone knows the story of Treasure Island, holds up so well, such a good book, gotcha hooked, nice and short, 7 hours?, 200 pages as a paperback, pre-teen boy, modern crap, start with Treasure Island, don’t skip over the good stuff because it is old, don’t repeat the books, masterfully psychologically done, in awe of what a good job he did in tricking that boy into liking him, turning a kid into a spy because the dad is weak, it is important that he’s in there and weak, notice it more, adding resentment to an absent father is never paid off, joined the Space Navy, a Heinlein sort of ending, Starman Jones, abused by his step mom, new stepdad, tricked by a hobo who steals his books, idetic memory, sneaks on to a ship, that hobo, we’re friends still, space navy, animals on the ship, a crisis happens with the upper class navigators, lost in space, only the kid can save the ship, turn him into the captain, back into the saftey of space, granted cadetship, perfect, Robert Louis Stevenson did it first and better, always good, some kind of event, odd before, after this they get weird, doing the same thing, Heinlein names his sources, this is from Kim, The Jungle Book, some poetry from Stevenson is in some Heinlein, Hispaniola, Dominican Republic and Haiti, the direction they’re going, the prefix RLS, Rocket League Ship?, Robert Louis Stevenson, rewatch the Disney version, five years, since the 80s, every pirate things comes from Treasure Island, the accent in that movie, a very specific English accent, all pirates now talk that way, reading the text, fits the character in the book, the two have become welded together, with very few exception, Captain Bonnet, gentleman pirate, Our Flag Means Death, dressed up as Mad Max, the shoulderpad and the gimp leg, they were lower class guys pressed into this job, escaped slaves or sailors, we assume, we just think he’s a sailor, he could have been on a British naval ship, no passports, no fingerprints, nobody knows how to write, the recieved accent, Roger Moore’s accent, something you learn at school, Michael Caine learns that accent, Timothy Dalton has the correct accent, Pierce Brosnan does the accent, playing a pirate, navigation and how to run ships, our hero Jim Hawkins, moderately successful, property that they own, upstairs being sick all the time, down with the black dog, the cough of death, the local squire, makes good, makes the cash, not in a way we would fine contemptible, finding pirate treasure already stolen, go get that treasure, treasure is adventure, the thing you want because it means adeventure, can’t tell him to go away, I guess I’ll keep giving you, An Unexpected Party, mostly its just him playing with the Saga of the Volsungs, utterly shameless, very clear and explicit, give Gandalf six names, one dwarf name, never just about the plot, the wikipedia summary is not going to tell you, what the premise is, there’s a treasure, there’s a spy, what could spoil this book?, nothing, not spoiled, there’s no twist in it, you wrecked the book for me, way less value as a book, it was all about hiding this one thing from you, a map to a treasure island, let’s go, the twist is not much at all, everyone knows going in, the bad guy, he isn’t, some sort of double sided guy, two-faced, really good book, great book, thank you sir, out for the next two Sundays, The Aeneid, at the beach, driving, A Witch Shall Be Born, Gods Of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs sequel, the end of The Aeneid, books five through eight, more shudder pulps, weird menace stories, an issue of Adam (a men’s magazine), The Cold Female by Dale Harlow, the car smoothly ate up the road, doctor’s orders, a clear cool lake in the Canadian Rockies, flopped into bed, mysterious floating women, breezy and fast, the bright slashing sun, austere mountains, a huge silent lake a sense of foreboding, is there a cabin on the lake for rent, I want to relax and fish, he’s from Maine now, any firearms?, blanket, wood, and oil for the lamps, when everything was stowed in the car, eye-filling splendor, the volcanic lake, just what I need, peace and solitude, a short walk, the moon glowed sharp and bright, rushing around Seattle, another world, the birds too, an eerie glow, good fresh air, he didn’t see another human being, sharp lightning thrusts, thunder rumbled heavier, the light steady drumbeat, sweet odor of pine, he thought suddenly he hear a knock on the door, soaked to the skin, blue with cold, opening two pages, it’s a premise, that’s all I need, naked ladies, January 1958, pair one of these up with Mistress Of Dark Something, Mike Vendetti, Spawn Of Inferno by Hugh B. Cave, Unholy Night, The Valley Of The Worm, John Ames York, cavemen find a weird valley, a Jim Thompson story, Spicy Adventure, Mistress Of Satan’s Hounds, from Terror Tales, a lady in stocks, a guy with a brand in the shape of an eye, wearing a mask, was the monstrous little body which Jeff and Laura found, the half-world brood, sired by the hounds of hell, don’t read this eerie novelette, Mistress Of Dark Pool by Russel Gray, a cliff, Test-Tube Frankenstein, chops up earthworms, doing neoteric style science, Microcosmic God by Theodore Sturgeon, about a scientist like Edison, he’s so good at science, I’m going to make a tiny slave race, steal those technologies from them, put things in hydraulic presses, make a new technology that’s stronger and lighter, makes the world start to destroy, patents that technology, force fields, the same thing with a blender and earthworms, a technology such that this earthworm material can mimic other people, basically The Thing, replaces the scientist, its awesome, I wanted to destroy he protoplasmic horror, 12 minutes ago, look at the art for this, stupendous, I could not help but laugh when that ancient hag told me, the love of a wrinkled leathery crone, naked lady, kissing a skull with a great body, fantastic, I’m in.

MINISTER CLASSICS Treasure Island

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #827 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Green Queen by Margaret St. Clair

The SFFaudio Podcast #827 – The Green Queen by Margaret St. Clair, read by Mike Vendetti. This is a complete and unabridged audiobook (4 hours 3 minutes), followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Will Emmons, and Jonathan Weichsel

Talked about on today’s show:
into mask art, other, cage guy, Ace Book D176, a shorter version in 1955, Mistress Of Viridis, the opening of the novel, The Scarlet Letter, a crown or something, very good and very bad, interesting ideas, a little too pulpy, structural problems, she churned this one out, she’s brilliant, we listen to a lot of science fiction on this podcast, The Journey Of Joenes, another masterpiece, The Last Spaceship, pretty pulpy, the ideas in it, the bugs, psychology trumps material reality, relationship stuff, good with the ideas, all the telling, central to the plot, an illusion?, the political stuff, uppers and lowers, the uppers live underground beneath the lowers?, a veil over the book, Ulysses by James Joyce, dating a woman, some sort of revolution going on too, a really good goodreads, concrete assertions, listened, spellings, Shalom, too much going on in this book, the plot is told backwards, explanation, the beginning at the end, Jerry on Goodreads

Despite not taking place on Earth or anywhere near Earth, this 1955 story (the serialized version was in Universe Science Fiction, March, 1955, as “Mistress of Viridis”) is clearly tied to Earth. The computers that people use on planet Viridis are “ibims”.

The computers don’t appear to have advanced much as mankind spread to the stars.

Except for the soft whirr and click of the ibim as it sorted the dossier cards, there was no noise.

The ibim, though not a new model, was fast. It had been sorting for some twenty minutes, and it had got through nearly half of the 400,500 cards that represented the feminine population of Viridis. But the basket marked “Hold” was still quite empty.

They end up having to relax their requirements in order to find possible candidates. What they’re looking for is a goddess—or, specifically, someone who can fake being a goddess. They get tripped up by residency requirements, of all things.

One of the interesting things about this world is how much it relies on what it calls “masks”. There are two kinds of masks: Verbal Masks and Veridical Masks. These masks are created by the ruling class to control the Lowers and keep them from rebelling… too much.

Masks appear to be what we would call memes. Verbal Masks are memes that are injected into the population, short stories that take hold of the population’s imagination. Veridical Masks are masks that use more than one sense; while the main character does make an off-hand reference to odors at least once, within this book they’re always or almost always sound and sight.

That is, this world’s population is controlled by a primitive form of Twitter and an advanced form of YouTube.

The main character recently introduced a Verbal Mask about a Green Queen, an embodiment of Nature, who will come to save the Lowers and dispel the radiation that makes Viridis so dangerous. The ruling class is shielded from this radiation; they live above some sort of shield; Lowers live below that shield.

The Green Queen myth turned out to be even more powerful than they’d expected. So they’re attempting to both use it and defuse it, and that means finding someone to take on the role.

The theme running through the story is that the myth appears at some points to be real, something transcending the constructed myth; and at others to be purely a construction of the various factions on Viridis, including one that is completely unexpected. Even at the very end of the story, just after we’ve been reasonably convinced that there was no truth to the myth as presented by the Verbal Mask, it appears to be coming true in a way that could not have been predicted by the real truth we’ve just been presented with.

Hollerith machines, all the Jews who have the tattoos on their arms, looking for the new green queen, salam, Chinese, very good insightful review, peripheral stuff, distracting and interesting, modeled on a whole bunch of things, twitter and youtube, like the way twitter works, we can’t have conversations with some people because they took in the mask, Rittenhouse, stories were told about, the trial, some people were disabused, other people didn’t get those memes or truths injected into them, hashtags are that, what’s the truth about Kyle Rittenhouse, he shot people, other people who were trying to take his gun away, the official line was before facts came out, video, testimony, obsessed with these things, verbal and veridical masks, riot/uprising, what are you getting at, Jesse, racist, illegal things, black people, it was okay that he shot white people then?, clearly white, black lives matter, petty proprietor, helping petty proprietor, better or worse, judgement, the media was portraying, a supercut after the podcast, cui bono?, who’s the upper?, petty vs. petite, baggage, we know that Will is a communist, not a secret, a pejorative, an example, bro, shitlibs, what makes a shitlib vs. a normal lib, doesn’t care and only wants, almost like an NPC, Jesse language, roof Koreans, the Rodney King riots, white people and black people, Korean American convenience store owner, standing in the rooves, defending from burning and looting, every word that we use, Cirsova uses it, the people who used his volunteer services, friends and family come help, small property owners, they’re not Blackrock, they don’t own 2/3rds of Ukraine, every piece of language we use is full, Bonnor, our main character, alcoholic, book length, her short stories are much tighter, her first novel, novels are difficult, your first longer book, a short story plot stretched out into a novel, this should have been 2 hours at most, really good ideas in it, early Philip K. Dick novels, terrible novelist, women’s sexuality, men looking at woman, a male gaze book, the termite queen, you’ve never had a baby come out of your body, the pinnacle of womanhood, fill me up, robot shower, we don’t get enough world building, too much worldbuilding, maybe Bonnar shouldn’t be the main character, he doesn’t really have a lot of agency, a mask maker fooled by his own mask, Madison Ave. executive, you have a job, body servants are servants who have jobs, the lowers have no jobs, Leaf Amadeus, on the nose, underdeveloped, Caroline Uglinger, a seamstress who embroidered her own shroud, Horvindial, Mirakis, eons after her death, Kandia, grey suit, blue hat, the guys who operate the ibims, if Philip K. Dick had handled this, The Man Who Japed, a great book, dealing with some really interesting things, veridical vs. verbal masks, Viridis is the planet, she doesn’t make it clear enough early enough, playing with names all day, latin for green, renewal, springtime, verify, Truth, what’s the secret of the planet, all the radiation isn’t there, “Russian interference” “hacked our election”, “crossed state lines”, bringing firearms across state lines, talking points, when J.D. Vance was chosen as the VP, “weird”, some of them work great, when she’s writing about this stuff in the 50s, “remember the Maine”, rhymey or memey, that whole war was ginned up largely by Hurst, invade Spain, so many things going on in this 4 hour book, radiation is an invisible killer, calibrate it, wartime propaganda, Plato in The Republic, the story about the Golden Age, technology enhances, Make America Great Again is a verbal mask, slogans, rallying cries, language unites people, left out, Hispanic community, Korean community, left out, less extreme example of that, he’s one of me, part of my crew, Trump forehead tattoo, Taco Bell, am I supposed to look at the tattoos or not, African or Maori?, tattoos are hard to understand, had sex with a couch, yolo, go out into the ether, her world vs our world, not top down, official control over social media, demonetized, booted off the platform, suppress or boost, BLM, became top down, special dance with kente cloth, “land back”, specifically made it so it is not racist, the babies, Chinese, looking at people’s bodies, your race doesn’t make you an upper, a class or caste system, the lowers are totally parasites, little glimpses, an upper class woman walking beside a lower class man wearing a kilt/miniskirt, bony knees, his spine, resentful, trying not to take in the bad food, Hinduism, Judaism, Kosher food, radioactive, by eating too much of this radioactive food you’re shortening your life, religious philosophies, Christian Scientists, diet books, preferred diet, is she wrong, Mark Twain hated her, #TeamTwain, food that falls outside of the diet is bad, deeply flawed, pinning down the flaw, first novel problems is our theory?, Jonathan’s first novels are unpublished, John Updike’s first novel is a werewolf story, never publish this book, a university lockbox, so embarrassed, we will eventually get a hold of it, unless the university burns down, there’s value in here, almost a pulp novel, mass market paperback to read on the train, disposable literature, plotting or structuring, achievements in writing novels, filling in details is not the way it should be happening, hit a certain wordcount is the kiss of death unless you’re a magician, a parody of science fiction, long speeches, if you put them in Captain Kirk’s mouth, a little A.E. van Vogty, Black Destroyer, The Voyage Of The Space Beagle, Destination Universe, characters are inhuman, he brings ideas to things, the Weapons Shops stories, future village, snake cult temple, Conan the Barbarian movie, a weapons shop opens up in your town, it reads like the Russians have gone through a loophole and anyone can by an AK, they screen people, superinteresting, not public domain, not well written, disturbance of an idea, every story has ideas in it, cute, bizarre, the spirit of a star, Green Queen meme comes alive, a very Philip K. Dick move, not being able to know what’s reality and what’s not, we can’t sympathize with him, too alien, the cult of the apple pickers, almost Roman, one of the influences, the city of Rome, Christianity, cults around professions, guilds?, trade guilds, longer and fixed, or shorter, if you found this novel in a drawer, you could take the ideas that are in here and make a good novel out of the ideas that are in here, what went wrong, time to money ratio, originally published for a magazine, the original art, a rocketship, the green queen and a guy outside a rocket, she’s zapping him, the art for the original magazine publication, a woman covered in a green starfish, thematic, a woman above a man, out of a spacesuit, the radiation, is it saying that veridical masks masks us to truths about concrete reality around us?, the barrier between castes, what a huge topic to tackle, a character who randomly became psychic all of a sudden, I just sense things, throws everything off, can’t be tricked by the masks, undercut at the end, the history of the planet, she was just a bug!, you’re sitting in the chair and getting Trump tattooed on your forehead, in group, I hate you mom/dad, bought into the ideological belief, seven months ago, back in January, when Trump gets assassinated how weird it will be, going to be very meta, the first week after the assassination attempt, a little bit apologetic, he has to be stopped, he’s Hitler, completely memory wiped, that never happened, endless upper investigation, the bodycam footage, Jesse is just crazy, local news, moments right before and after, I told the Secret Service to guard this building, this is shit!, we’ve got to get the shooter guy, a good video, when Jonathan recounts it, silos of responsibility and dialogue, organizational silos, massive incompetence being promoted to the top everywhere, completely demented, never does her homework, the significance of the passage of time, people who don’t do their homework, failing up, not as senile as you keep on saying, the speech where everybody though he was senile, he’s “older”, legitimately the president, a bizarre theory, having Jonathan on this podcast, Jesse doesn’t see his own veridical masks, not a big mask guy, a constructed reality online, voting patterns, quell dissatisfaction, to make people more accepting of their fate, the uppers resent the lowers, there would be riots and uprisings, pity the lowers, eat polluted food all the time, how Americans view the poors, welfare queens, baskets of deplorable, food deserts, two teams vs. one team, takes on it are slightly different, in what sense are they different, it’d be better if they were both gone, one secret party running the country, institutionally, vote against genocide, which team should I vote for, Jill Stein, foreign policy, domestic policy, infrastructure, bringing jobs back, the thing that they want to do is impossible, can’t stop corporations, capital flight tax, they can’t do that because they are funded, put up tariffs, the most popular electric car in Europe is Chinese, Tesla, more popular than the Chevy Volt, even on Vancouver Island, 3-4 white Teslas, 100% tariff on Chinese electric vehicles, a subsidy, BC subsidized US electric and Japanese electric cars, Walmart’s the only business in town, Chinese are bad and Russians are bad, Nabisco moved to Mexico, food you shouldn’t eat, really mad, how can the politicians stop them, tax on the cookies, a free trade agreement, lower the minimum wage, or import people, foreign workers, that wouldn’t solve the problem of the disappearing jobs, you’re dictator, dictator of New Jersey, the national guard would be unable to defeat the United States, eliding the question, dictator of North America, shut down Nabisco, you don’t like Oreos, cookies should be made by a grandma, maximize profits and minimize costs, Richard D. Wolff, Mondragon cooperatives, start with a bank, if you become unemployed, a lump sum to start your own cooperative, on the dole for 3 years anyway, solve all sorts of problems, the GI bill, infrastructure and jobs, all the veterans, Evan’s solution: universal army, the silly way to do it, grandma doesn’t need to go to drill practice, universal conscription, makes sense for the United States, Kamala’s VP is not a communist, it’s nuts, that’s not reality, driving a MAGA car, looking for a fight, ginned into thinking this is a real thing, the spin for Kamala, so good, least popular VP, memory holed, all these memes, all these ads, white women for Kamala, white dudes for Kamala, The Big Lebowski (1998), Jeff Bridges, beat that fascist, he’s a fascist again, it is hard to know this is a good book, Chip Delaney [Samuel R. Delany], a Farmer guy, advanced readers, coming into literature, throw them off misimpression, same logic as ban this book, anything past 10 years ago you don’t need to read, I know better than you, break into the literature, their mentor, fell off of a coconut tree, fell out of a time machine, not the best introduction to science fiction, in that explicit situation, a great book, hard to know, Jesse does his homework, some books are better introductions to science fiction, Jonathan might be right about this, simple advice, just do what I say, just vote this way, just do that thing, a reality that effects me, the starving children in Gaza, verbal masky, she gives big speeches about it, the Ukraine war, six facts, a smaller country invaded by a larger country, let’s here him out, in the context of an essay, Jeannette Ng, Campbell is a fascist, more money in that, the whole Cat Rambo situation, unforced errors, she stumbled over her own non-dick, Dick or non-dick, as a female book, Ursula K. Le Guin would have some person from Earth come to this planet, can’t be too smart, has to be a good actress, she’s credulous, credulous too great a readiness to believe things, outside the bagel shop, everybody’s credulous because advertising works, hard to have conversations about a popular veridical mask, credulousness, the ibims that they’re using, a D&D character with high charisma and low intelligence, she doesn’t even know she’s not the green queen, a lady talking about ladies being dumb, in Ringworld, he picks this chick, [Teela Brown], a 7th son of a 7th son sort of thing, earth has the technology to physically control people’s thoughts, psychology and advertising, ads, hidden from the masses, put on the population to control the reality that they see, a big problem wit the book, we’re following the badguys, foment a revolution, a more interesting story if St. Clair had decided to follow the revolutionaries, a tiktoker, fucking Eddie Liger?, ACP, be better at tiktok, Scott Miller took a course on how to be a good youtuber, professional youtubers, you can see these patterns, interaction reminders, smartTubeBeta, big long things you can skip, the removal of the dislike [count], removal of the ability to view likes, see what somebody I hate is liking, they’re just hiding it from us, so they can control us better, a way to manipulate people, a personality test, psychology, Timothy Leary, mind mirror, giant personality test, change your personality, scenarios, a tortise overturned, what do you do?, someone gives you a cat skin wallet, graphs your responses, pick a fictional character, Spider-Man, Julius Caesar, most famous dictator ever, the goal is to change the way that you’re thinking, shots of heroin, what the likes are all about, heart, angry, care, pushing the button, creating a map of your psychology, Mark Zuckerberg gets to get it, very credulous, believe the things that they’re hearing, did you quit twitter, keep my friends on twitter, start a guerrilla war against twitter, brink back the dislikes, one of the reasons we care about dislike, good content or not, a really bad ratio, I don’t need to click on that, de-rank it, how to fix your lawnmower, stripped down and simple, Reddit came a little late, gamed and wrecked, after blogs, BBSs, web 2.0 stuff, blogs were destroyed, Scott was abandoning it, a commonplace notepad, IMDB, writing review, bought by Amazon, Goodreads, you have to own your own content, an older movie on IMDB, old reviews, long and in depth, why is this guy writing all these movie reviews, bloggers without a blog, we’re lowers, what Jonathan does for a living, underemployed by technical definitions, jobs at poor pay, play computer games, most people are lowers, most uppers are lowers too, from the Hamptons, lush upscale life, suicide, borrowing money to pay for it, smaller scale, covered in pustules, a fungus, psychosomatic dying, Return From The Stars, Treasure Island is next, by making it Double Star, a space voyage across the ocean, Muppet Treasure Island, everybody is a captain, pirates, smart guy, fun guy, where the YA novels came from, really bad novel, William Golding’s Lord Of The Flies, I hate this book, a really popular 19th century novel, the wikipedia entry, his cave man novel, the neanderthals are kind gentle people, similar themes, The Coral Island, 1857, R.M. Ballantyne, Robinsande, never out of print, civilizing effect of Christianity, named the same, forced to read, its evil propaganda, predict a lot of what happened out of the last decade on twitter, a bad joke, pile on that person, destroy their lives, he’s missing something, he’s got one note, an art novel, pretty description of things, more like The Blue Lagoon by Henry De Vere Stacpoole, despite, Thackery, a LibriVox version, influential, euro popular, 11 hours, a traveler at heart, shipping out to the South Seas, shipwrecked, wonders of the sea, an unexpected source (Jesus?), kinda being jokey, so full of Robinson Crusoe, the thesis he’s making, loves his strawmen, stacked deck, find deep meaning in this very small meaning book, I’d like to do more science fiction too, start a new podcast, books and art that makes people angry, good or evil, challenges you, what good literature does, what book makes you angry?, when Jonathan started doing this podcast, greater speeds, a good speed, getting bored, put the speed up higher, full of good ideas, not well structured or well developed so we can, The Last Spaceship. The Phoenix On The Sword, Will’s review, substantial enough, A Witch Shall Be Born, the cartoon of Conan The Adventure, a phoenix on his shield, the first one in Weird Tales, everything jumps out fully formed, here’s this whole world, king of Aquilonia, been all Stygian, he’s about being a man, man, a story on the podcast, new to Howard, a Solomon Kane story, two big anthologies, a complete narrative, ending as an old guy, read by Phil Chenevert, love you Phil Chenevert, nailed/crucified, novel length, The Hour Of The Dragon, he wanted to make more money, write a novel, after he killed himself, living on money that he didn’t have, a total neophyte, the comic book version, Roy Thomas, stripping out some of the text, John Buscema, Savage Sword Of Conan, astoundingly good, Vale Of Lost Women, not a popular story, because racist, he fights a god and doesn’t lose, a valley full of women that are flowers, fights a god from space, very raw, Jack Williamson, if public domain, the clearance, on audible, The Humanoids and With Folded Hands, Stefan Rudnicki, a good science fiction novel, Joe Biden is president of the world, but not really in charge, dottering old man who suddenly grows six inches, taking care of humans and keeping them safe, the robots come, hurray hurray, I want a cigarette, I must lobotomize you now, how am I going to defeat the robots, The Green Girl, stories about green women, Ray Cummings, collaborative work, The Masked World, Will’s blog thing, anything he really needs to tell, Legion Of Space, Legion Of Time, space opera-y, time opera, Blackstone Audio, before podcasts were invented, tonight’s episode 799, 9 years, run outta numbers but not books, science fiction stories, Algis Budrys, WHO? was enough, more Silverberg, any Heinlein, the one with twins, Podkayne Of Mars, Time For The Stars, set on Mars, really good, this actor, you gotta play the president, Alan Dean Foster, the Alien novelization, drug themes in science fiction, two shorts, a Silverberg and something else, The Happy Unfortunate and The Hunted Heroes, Larry Niven didn’t start until 1966, The Integral Trees, Sirius by Olaf Stapledon, one more, Odd John, Omega: The Last Days of the World by Camille Flammarion, all collaborative, Niven is never going to be public domain, so much Silverberg, and interview with him in the new Galaxy, skinsuit, what happened, die a natural death, walk him around the compound, Biden grew six inches, too many Jose Farmers, Damon Runyon, Mark Twain, Star Man’s Quest, The Mysterious Stranger, Samuel Delany, his criticism, everybody’s mad at, Joanna Russ, The Barbarian, her taking on Conan, I think I would hate this, The Female Man, only one book, How To Suppress Women’s Writing, you’re right I’m shit, Harlan Ellison, a juvenile delinquent in space, angry characters, his criticism, more Stanisław Lem, wait six months, Solaris, Memoirs Found In A Bathtub, Star Diaries, Further Reminiscences, The Futurological Congress, a few in this series, German TV series, the famous one, if standalone, a 1971 black humour science fiction novel, Ijon Tichy, the narrator, comedic stories, send this stuff to Will, shownotes, look at the schedule at the bottom, from six months ago, Woody Guthrie, It Takes Two To Conga, Memoirs Found In A Bathtub, a hermetically sealed underground community, it can’t be deleted now, show up for it, twin gifts, hapless planet Earth, caught up in a local revolution, flash frozen, a funny piece, thinkpiece, comedy, satire, Solaris isn’t a comedy, a straight up ponderous piece, a good memory for books, Arkady Strugatsky, Stalker (1979) is punishing to watch, similar to Harry Potter, recruited for this job, weird group of people, Philip K. Dick, he’s a good guy, sickmyduck.narod.ru, good fun, Monday Begins On A Saturday, an interesting story, two hitchhikers, Karelia, research into magic, Nathaniel Priestly, Adam Roberts, he’s fine, the complete Philip K. Dick, Martian Time-Slip, A Maze Of Death, Now Wait For Last Year, space Mussolini, what haven’t you done, Transmigration Of Timothy Archer, non-sf ones, 150 stories, long or short, contrast, medium length, Waterspider, carefully shaved his head, each man only one inch high, the worst part of the vision, in all probability it was true, Minority Report, very modern, with all the UK stuff, arresting you for what you said on Facebook, different, prevent people from doing crimes tomorrow, its status, it is available, not a great great story, a good think piece, Tom Cruise is running around the city, I didn’t do the crime, 3 autistic people in a bathtub, why they picked that one, unadaptable, an abortion truck, A Maze Of Death, he doesn’t plot novels, a little shack, just speed, psychosis from speed, full of drug ideas without drugs, marrying five women, as a person, ahead of his time, normal guy working a job in the 1980s, anything from the 60s, Retreat Syndrome, Return March, The King Of The Elves, goes psychotic, The Mold Of Yancy, The Trouble With Bubbles, The War With The Fnools, when the magazines die, What Will We Do With Ragland Park, Top Standby Job, Little Black Box, The Infinite, The Eye Of The Sybil, a black man who lives in our reality, it’s raining, on the edge of his business collapsing, convenience store gas station, our king is dying, the king dies, Philip K. Dick is amazing,

IT WAS RAINING and getting dark. Sheets of water blew along the row of pumps at the edge of the filling station; the tree across the highway bent against the wind.

Shadrach Jones stood just inside the doorway of the little building, leaning against an oil drum. The door was open and gusts of rain blew in onto the wood floor. It was late; the sun had set, and the air was turning cold. Shadrach reached into his coat and brought out a cigar. He bit the end off it and lit it carefully, turning away from the door. In the gloom, the cigar burst into life, warm and glowing. Shadrach took a deep draw. He buttoned his coat around him and stepped out onto the pavement.

“Darn,” he said. “What a night!” Rain buffeted him, wind blew at him. He looked up and down the highway, squinting. There were no cars in sight. He shook his head, locked up the gasoline pumps.

He went back into the building and pulled the door shut behind him. He opened the cash register and counted the money he’d taken in during the day. It was not much.

Not much, but enough for one old man. Enough to buy him tobacco and firewood and magazines, so that he could be comfortable as he waited for the occasional cars to come by. Not very many cars came along the highway any more. The highway had begun to fall into disrepair…

skip down, limp and sodden, “I’m the king of the elves, and I’m wet.”, forlornly, silently, gets really dark, a psychotic delusion, Beyond Fantasy, a literal story, Edgar Rice Burroughs books, The Gods Of Mars, the second one, The Eternal Savage, Twilight Zoneish, in caveman times, Beyond Thirty, cross to Europe, hands down, re-read A Princess Of Mars, changes the tone, very atheist, a certain Christian audience, dies in a cave, The God Of Tarzan, people putting on a show, sounds a lot like the book we just did, humorous, John Carter, JC, like/hate, when COVID was just starting, Foster, You’re Dead, his parents cant afford the latest bomb shelter, guess you’re going to die then, John Hopkins (University), account deleted many times, a shit poaster, Mimetic Value, time isn’t linear for God, Jesus suffers a bit more, to incarcerate, Terminator and Interstellar, everything science fiction is Christian, paleo jesus arrives from the future, The Lovers by Philip Jose Farmer, John Connor, in the second Terminator movie, come with me if you want to live [forever in heaven], a lot on Audible.com, your hero and mine, Mark Twain, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Farmer wrestling, Sir Richard Francis Burton, read his short stories, truly public domain, time travel Jesus thing going on it, The Skull, Paul wasn’t having any of it, guy in the future is a criminal arrested by the cops, go back in time and kill this man, this church that’s been subverting the government, goes back in time, two weeks off, zap everybody, interferes with a teenage couple’s relationship, just like Behold The Man, Conger is a JC as well, stoning him, he’s Jesus, a combination of Terminator and Behold The Man, Joe Haldeman, done The Forever War, more Bester, haven’t done all the Simak, Mindbridge, superhorny, mud turned into the perfect woman, Forever Free, Forever Peace, Camouflage, a collection, a fixup, parts of it are public domain, you shouldn’t do a show on a fixup or collections, understanding none of them, Special Deliverance is very silly, 1982, allegory, ridiculous, selling Will, Project Pope, Simak is worth doing, Heritage Of Stars, All Flesh Is Grass, Time Is The Simplest Thing, A Choice Of Gods, it’s your call, bud, a Simak train, in the suburbs, post-apocalyptic, indians robots, alternate reality, poetry planet?, see what he’s looking at, Jesse’s secrets.

Virgil Finlay - The Green Queen

The Green Queen by Margaret St. Clair

The Green Queen by Margaret St. Clair

Introducing The Author: Margaret St. Clair

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #826 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Aeneid by Virgil (Books I to IV)

The SFFaudio Podcast #826 – The Aeneid by Virgil [Books I – IV] read by George Allen (for LibriVox) and translated by John Dryden. This is the first third of the epic poem, books I to IV (comprised of XII Books) running 3 hours 52 minutes, followed by a discussion of them. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Scott Danielson and Alex (Pulpcovers)

Talked about on today’s show:
books 1 to 4, a humanities course, misspoke, The Iliad, a hard downshift to reading the Aeneid vs. living on twitter, opposite end of the spectrum, young people don’t watch a lot of movies anymore, even TV shows are generally for old people, The Only Murders In The Building, boomers or slightly younger, bet money, this didn’t actually happen, invited Virgil over for dinner, it’s 9 hours, bro, people would and could do it, you’re in a different headspace, a different mode, the material is familiar, reading this on paper, easy reading on paper, following along in print, Robert Fagels, John Dryden, the footnotes, sometimes the footnotes contradict Jesse, who is Aeneas’ mom, the goddess Venus, she’s a huntress, dressing up like Diana, sometimes they’re not behaving in the way that is most stereotypical, reflecting, the opening, the retelling, mapping The Odyssey, book 3 especially, one to oney, Homer, Virgil was a real dude, 100% known, a merging of some things, existing myths about Aeneas, crafted an overarching story, popular myths, strikingly different, a work of art by a particular individual, all about prophecy, just Roman history, subsumed by the Roman Empire, a national epic done folk hero style, Robin Hood, national epic propaganda style, saying Shakespeare wrote to get approval of the queen, this doesn’t feel as mythological, reliance on gods for everyday events, Augustus, from town to town, died before he finished it, not in 20 years, a really cool noir ending, its finished, wanted to have it burned, not good enough, his heirs, his literary estate, copyright didn’t exist back then, George R.R. Martin, more drafts, how you write an epic poem, the pentameter wasn’t quite right, a meter problem, forced rhymes, pretending you can rhyme things, funnier, poems should be hilarious, helps tell the story, Beowulf, the translation, failed Latin, Latin 101, greater shames in life, written in Greek or Latin, this translation tries to feel epic poetry, modern post-critical translation, words that will shock you, twist the meaning, the feel, someone just telling a story, structured that way on the page, accept it without a rhyme, prose translation, a phone call, edited an annotated and compiled, Arms and the man I sing, haughty Juno, long labours both by sea and land he bore, Latian realm, built his destined town, long glories of majestic Rome, so brave, so just a man, first part of book 1, very different, an exile driven on by fate, destined to reach Lavinia soil, cruel Juno’s relentless rage, before he could found a city, the same idea, same material, not as pretty, not as poetic, easier to understand, sounds better when you read it, a very busy week, hard to pick up what’s happening, sometimes the backwards is grammar, to make it it, Maissa was going to be here, compared to The Odyssey, a very boy book, not a girl book, marriage, Juno being mad, childbirth and marriage, picks up his father, takes his son by his hand, leaves his wife behind, new wives, a nice lady there, wants to have him in bed, a serious succession of goddesses, widow, ok, destiny, I am very Roman virtue, honoring thy father, Imma kill myself, I curse you, the feel, we notice and know, comes back all by himself, loses some ships, war with the Latins, he’s still got his people, not an individual’s return home, Philip K. Dick, a man experiencing the world, Beyond Lies The Wub, a similarity but a difference, he’s trying to go home, home has been destroyed, found a new place, you need more than one guy, the Greeks are not an empire, a league, teams, allies, games together, each guy is his own king, no matter what town, Ajax the lesser, Ajax the greater, propagandistic, a national epic for an empire, a leader of men who doesn’t kill his men, sex quest across the Mediterranean, supernatural stuff, monster or goddess, variation on the magic, guest host relationship, you invited me into your home, you came into my home without knocking, each island is about the guest host relationship, a bible for how to deal with no empire, they invite you in and turn you into a pig, Dido’s peninsula, Libya, respect and food to the other lost ships, I’ll sleep with you, that’s cool, called by fate, reminded by the gods, we disagree, Juno’s the one manipulating things, do we call that fate if a god is doing it, when Zeus or Jupiter says something’s happening, that’s fate, classical pantheons, the king of the gods has real authority, a lot of talk about how the greeks are very masculinity, same thing is true of the Romans, more obviously intensive, the rape of the Sabines, whole buncha women, a sacking, taken the remnants of an army, one guy eventually showing up on his own island, teams up with his son and kills em, righteous executes justice, boy what a troubled sailor, Aeneas is not fun, moved by the fate, a mirror to Augustus, blows some waves, Poseidon is happy with Aeneas, everything is reversed, all subsumed to the outcome, written backwards, a deliberate myth about his own people, an inversion, every part of it is backwards, an inevitable monopoly piece, watching a chess game from the 1960s, no concept of spoiling things, you know where it is going on purpose, the whole fun of it, almost too perfect, Dido is not a goddess, nymphs, more deliberate, more false, she’s also the queen of Carthage, beaten in recent history, she’s on her pyre, now we’re going to forever be at war for what you did to me, why didn’t he just stat with her, almost like a prequel, to get to Episode 4, doesn’t feel as awesomely spontaneous, not internal, everything he ran into, a goal he was going for, he’s dutiful, less of a character, found the new city and get better lives, you’re all going to live and conquer Italy, not acting like a king, a piece on a chessboard being moved around, his destiny was to found Rome, that is what a king is supposed to act like according to this piece of propaganda, those guys are lost at sea, that guy got eaten by a cyclops, that’s not the job of a kind, that is why we have an empire, good at art and tutoring but they don’t have the discipline that a king is supposed to have, that culminating scene at the end, he’s basically won the war, he’s essentially founded Rome, he could end this and make friends and have it be over, brothers in this new land, my friend, echoes back to the Iliad, of course we have to genocide you, extremely new to having a king again, imperator, supreme executive authority, an agent of the senate, working for the senate, that lie went away over the centuries, this is an emergency, for the rest of his life, is Augustus the first time an emperor comes into existence?, the same trick Napoleon uses, does that trick work again?, the British are very willing to marry into the Bonaparte royal line, the emperor of japan still exists, but the empire is just Japan and Okinawa, before the Shogun, prime minister, but the king has no power, I’m the emperor’s chief warlord, nobody tries to mess with the throne, a separate kind of thing, the managers of empire, they have staff, the buck stops with them, pontifex maximus, the highest religious figure, sometimes you become a literal god as well, the head of the army, extreme power, this book feels different in part because its an inversion, it is not about art and a man wandering the earth and figuring out how to relate to things, a man needs to be with his wife and his son, the journey of a state, curses the two culture to war, 27 BC, 2100 year old book?, they knew about all that Carthage stuff, figuring out what they’re culture is like based on this one thing, a very narrow window, the propaganda of empire, an emperor’s job, carrying the father, to lead the son, faithful to his friends, push on towards destiny, my pride is up, personal rivalry, the inevitable grind of what the plan is, trying to live your life trying to figure out what the gods want, make a sacrifice to Juno, the milk white cow, and a foal, motifs we don’t get, symbols, fire, snake, page 61, the hollow spaces lie, denoting deeth [death], the priestess enters with her hair unbound, a curse, threefold Hecate, hoary, with brazen sickles reaped a noon of night, baleful juices, robbing the mother’s love, two meanings, the mother of the foal, unable to suckle its child, she wanted to have his babies, you could get married again, this ritual is to kill her, a mother’s job is to have children and make new Roman soldiers, everything’s white, twas dead of night, gentle floods, peace with downy wings was brooding on the ground, making eggs, very skillfully done, a cow, pours red juice on its head, cow, cattle?, it exists, if I was a Roman, some of those symbols, circling back, feels like a witch, she’s a priestess, this text is the foundational text in education up into the 1900s, memorizing, those symbols, I bet a lot of it came straight outta this text, the root of a lot of the symbolism and language, this massive poem, 9000 couplets, breaking it up, so much going on, Donald Westlake book set in New York, what a cab is, how the economy works, the prices, racism, how much a sandwich costs, what the alley smelled like, how this was distributed, copied by slaves or copyists, possibly Greeks, making copies to be gifted, presents, enjoy them, everybody likes reading, the major media that’s available, they have theaters and stuff, the actors were slaves, low class, business magnate, a general, something important, who the audience for it is, they’re going to think it is cool, the amount of change you need to get in to get into it, questioning what does that mean exactly, more difficult than the odyssey, a manufactured bible, more book of Mormon, maybe they have an empire, surrounded, in Utah, there’s a Mormon in the house!, the description of the Trojan War, their minds were addled, intervention by gods that made them actually accept this thing, Virgil, why Odysseus is a hero to me is because he’s tricky, his virtue is not the virtue of being a good father or a dutiful leader, not the virtue of an emperor, pride, proud, strong, some invulnerability, sense of honor, honor comes from pride, how he can trick his way out of things, you promised to go off with a thousand ships, pretends to be insane, plowing the beach, puts [Telemachus] on the beach, Achilles, dressed him up as a handmaiden [Achilles on Skyros], thread, a rocket, a sword, these conversations, differences between men and women, the reason he is beloved of Minerva/Athena is he’s tricky, wisdom is being clever/tricky not making good decisions for your community, Aeneas is beloved by Jupiter, the fealty is to the father, a major difference, tusky boars and stags, my animal, the titles for these books, The Passion Of Dido, a biblical meaning, Safe Haven After Storm, The Final Hours Of Troy, Landfalls Ports Of Call, Arms And The Man, The Fall Of Troy, Aeneas’ Wanderings, wow, double meaning, an interesting choice, have something happen to you, Passion Of The Christ vs. a woman who is passionate, to be an actor is to act, to be a patient is to have things done to you, her sister is the human who tries to give her good advice, bad advice, murdered by his brother, his land and his wealth, his gold, the wife is collateral damage, she had promised not to remarry, in such a tough spot, she loved her dead husband, visiting his tomb, not in the know with regard to the chessboard plan, the visits to Sicily, abbreviated and less cool than anything we get in the Odyssey, just following the map, together in one book, who he was writing for, what would a stop in Sicily have meant, pooping on this book, two of the greatest things ever written, pretty good for a dude, given all the limitations, so much foreshadowing, follows the same structure and formula, you can bump into characters, a map of the journeys, time feels very compressed, founded Rome before Odysseus got home, 10 years at war, 10 years at sea, hanging out with Calypso, the storytelling, the first book of The Odyssey, sees some washer princesses, is it Menelaus, I’m not a classics scholar, I’m a pulp art fan, the man of many devices, the sacred citadel of Troy, many the woes he suffered, the return of his comrades, he desired it sore, so sad all my guys died, hey guys you all have to stuff your ears full of wax, but tie me up I gotta hear this shit, so appealing to a teenagers, fools, goddess daughter of Zeus, longing for return, yearning that he should be her husband, everybody wants to marry our boy, turn him into a tame animal, maybe an owl, whatever you are is what you’re turned into, stay in bed don’t go out, stay here, we’ll stay in, a third lady, all these sea-ladies want to keep him, return home to Ithaca, even among his own folk, save Poseidon, sundered in twain, where Hyperion sets and rises, Argives, his men screwed up, they killed the bulls of the sungod, that’s why they were all killed, Mercury shows up and says don’t go in there, take this herb with you, favoured by the gods, one way to read it, being gifted with good ideas, having an app on your phone that can tell you where to go, these Facebook gods are working against us, always meeting cross dressing gods, Mentor, more formal about it, piety was prized among the Romans, forces of nature, make this guy a king, personification of storms, keep your head down and survive, more legalistic, rational?, the city of Rome, household gods, a Roman concept, a guardian angel, you inherited them from your father, little statues of them, a different vibe, the gods have a plan and are working through it, I got reject by Paris and I’m mad about it, you killed my cows, he was brought home because they liked him for some reason, Aeneas is being dragged along his path of fate, a very pious guy, Aeneas before this was written he was a very pious guy, supremely violent, appealed to the Romans, a more Roman virtue, martial prowess, bows to the will of the gods, does what he’s supposed to, feels less mythic than Odysseus, really good, flashed, Hyrcania, Hyrkania, the horselords in Conan, Russia/Ukraine, these walls he entered, forced by my fate, from head to foot, looking at people’s bodies, no longer these outrageous threats, she dissin him, hardened entrails, rough Hyrcanian tigers, looked or lent, all symptoms of a base ungrateful mind, behold in vain, triumphant treason, faithless is earth, faceless are the skies, suicidal you might say, #betrayed, I know that place, you knew that one, a number of cities, Argos, in one of these old books, sometimes it is mapped in Robert E. Howard, The Lost Valley Of Iskander, kinda sorta, 20 cities named after Alexander, weird fantasy novel, the other Alex, weird fantasy author, [Thomas Burnett Swann’s The Weirwoods], shinto like spirits, occassional cyclops, there isn’t magic in every wave, Cloacina the goddess of the drains, the sewers in Rome, chief of the drame, The Not-World, every forest is full of spirits, nymphs, dryads, naidas, land of the lotus eaters, weird creatures, the world is unexplored, at least 500 years earlier, the Mycenaean collapse, a very post-modern, Virgil is very post-modern for a pre-modern, camera, well that just happened, make me die, really horrible, a mural of the Trojan war here, a grotto where there’s a lady who’s immortal, that’s not a thing in this book, its a human woman in a real place, that we really salted the earth for, pretty extraordinary book, the next two installments, split it into thirds, the Iliad part is the war part, more Odyssey part, the journey to the underworld, how Virgil ended up in Dante, referencing previous book, Larry Niven putting himself in hell, Inferno, the sequel, H.P. Lovecraft is always thinking my life as a Roman!, Philip K. Dick leans on the early end, a story set in ancient Greece, [The Tree by H.P. Lovecraft], I know, I know, the whole story is a kinda like Robert Graves gives us about Livia, Augustus’ wife, I, Claudius, poisoning everybody, two artists are commissioned to make a statue of a god, inspiration from nature vs. inspiration from partying in the city, such a good friend to his friend, you don’t need to build me a tomb, put an olive branch at the head of my grave, a mighty tree, collapses in a windstorm, the friend isn’t a friend he was jealous, he poisoned him, art inspired by nature, Lovecraft’s argument, making that argument here, The Odyssey is better because its inspired by some sort of natural thing vs. a propagandistic thing, three great attempts to do epic poetry, Gilgamesh is a thing, a tradition of epic poetry, Dante did it for the Italians, he put Virgil in it, not so much as a history, everyone else writing in Latin, Milton tried to do it in English, none of them, for science fiction fans, Eclogues aka The Bucolics, The Georgics, shorter poems, some sort of theories, one of them is a really interesting thing about bees, bees in here, an Italian miniseries adaptation of The Aeneid, a nest of bees, bees are a big thing in Roman culture, the Romans being bees, they have queens, they thought they had kings, the king bee, industrious, plays and drinking parties and doing philosophies, also farmers, bees produce honey, citizen farmers, we will kick your ass, a recipe for making bees, get a carcass of a bull and cover it so no air can get in, bees within it, wasps?, that doesn’t sound right, a metaphor, what that metaphor is, you can see the working hand of Virgil in the manipulation of the events, Dido and the war, so much content in the millions of similes, Dido’s sister her hair is blonde, are the Carthaginians aryans?, is that a metaphor, the marriage bed, something red poured on its head, virgins everywhere, endless virgins, something the Romans are thinking a lot about, prized virginity, Vestal virgins, what’s the word sacred mean, set aside for the gods, something unblemished, in Exodus, an unblemished lamb, what’s the best animal to sacrifice, nudity, half-cladness, bottomless, kinda fun, not a prudish book, the morality is very different, extremely different, they have the things they believe in, a lot of echoes to it, The Man Who Was Thursday, Father Brown Mysteries – The Sign Of The Broken Sword, guess who the spymaster is, higher up the chain, The Everlasting Man, the pinnacle of pagan civilization, only the Christianization of Roman, the best culture, supposed to rule the world, our empire will have no boundaries, let’s go Rome!, these guys were a little weird tho, invade and murder all these people, before tweets, it sounds like a forerunner to the Riverworld novels, John Kendrick Bangs, Bangsian Fantasy, everyone who has ever died is in Hades, a mysterious houseboat, comedic version of what happens, put Virgil in Hell, he doesn’t belong in the worse circle of hell because he’s a virtuous pagan, retrograde takes, this doesn’t seem right to me, reading Gilgamesh, that guy really loved his friend, science fiction about a future culture where their virtues are really different, prized different things, murdered that guy and raped his wife, Jack Vance, The Moon Moth, a culture where you aren’t allowed to watch people eat, so disgusting, Time Out Of Joint, you do things backwards, gonna have to go to school soon, people regurgitate food into the refrigerator, everything’s reversed, Catholic worries about birth control and abortion, insert me into some woman, attach an umbilical cord, you eat through your ass, learned a ton, meeting again on the first of September, on for The Green Queen and then Treasure Island, Hugh B. Cave, unmute your children.

Aeneas tells Dido of The Trojan War by Guerin

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #825 – READALONG: Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke

Jesse and Scott Danielson talk about Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke

Talked about on today’s show:
really disappointed, what?, love this book, why?, nostalgia is part of it, subject to that disease, recurring flare ups of nostalgia, 1973, Dolphin Island, never looked back, 3rd grade, a juvenile, a library edition, a nostalgia trip, this kid named Johnny, living with his aunt and uncle, hovercraft, equivalent to a truck, got inside, stowingaway, wakes up over the ocean, adrift in the ocean, dolphins come adopt him, scientists, a keypad, it says it in dolphin, 1964, avoided this book, fist time read, Ringworld, Rama is the same thing, big dumb object in space, doing really cool things but also faking it, they’re all going to have an orgy, everybody is so happy, space orgy, cite sources, an etext, one of the characters has two wives, two sets of families, generic so it will fit both families, he’s not a heterosexual man, a very strange gay man, very clinical with regards to human beings, A Fall Of Moon Dust, the moon bus book, tourists, a sandpatch, a disaster movie like Airport (1970), Airplane! (1980), delve into their characters, it’s a novel, The City In The Stars, Arthur C. Clarke is simulating, not being himself, this should have been a short story, A Meeting With Medusa, what makes it awesome, character through the storytelling, characters, he’s making a novel, the same beef, Gentry Lee, shorter stuff is better for science fiction, people from earth go to investigate it, sequels, Larry Niven’s characters, I’m a sex monster, I’m a coward, I’m a lucky girl, all about sex, the Larry Niven stand-in character, have the privilege of breeding, a lucky husband, the engineering, boring human beings, the bicycle through the space, the worldbuilding is awesome, mystery, 240 pages, 9 hours, nostalgia bits, the Waldentapes edition, nothing but exploration of Rama, councils, United Nations, Mercury launched this missile, having read the book, what if Rama is a threat, launches a nuclear weapon out of fear, blow it up, thank you for your cooperation, another sequence of plot that involved humans, cosmochristers, space Jesus is sending us a space ship to be raptured on, maybe I get a free ride, when Arthur C. Clarke is operating in his spiritual mode he’s excellent, Christ was an extra-terrestial being, space jesuits, space mormons, space accident, Rama II, remember disappointment, stunning 1 star reviews, Gentry Lee, set in the Rama universe, happenings in the solar system, nothing that’s not Rama related, a NASA or JPL guy, very enthusiastic guy about exploration, the big negative things, not Clarkeish at all, all about that, Clarke fans are generally disappointed, thins being a novel, a sense of wonder, finding this object, flying to the object, exploring the object, who sent it?, how do things work?, diluted, so much character action, if our guy Olaf Stapledon had written thins, Sirius, the dog book, triangular relationship, a dog a human and another human, not that particular book, Last And First Men [and Starmaker], trying to cash in where the money is, better than Asimov, a better science fiction writer?, he’s the definition of science fiction, what he writes about, Asimov is a step below, Foundation, the first book, there’s good stuff in there, a fixup, this had to have been conceived as a novel, the Rama point and click adventure, the end credits, remember bluescreen?, these to books are very different, broken in a very strange way, a creepazoid, he’s imitative, the human beings in this, more meeting scenes, all the tech is brilliant, computers, logical, well thought through, what Rama is, the sea, the wall, the cities, doesn’t have a high IQ, actual explanation, a city for making Ramans, of course that’s the answer, they’re not from Earth, they are from Earth but not born of woman, full adult humans, explore the world through one of them, shorter, 1956, Against The Fall Of Night, Childhood’s End, vaguely remember the characters, this book is so good, super quick, did you find the orgy yet, the end of mission orbital orgy will be in full swing, it could be they’re having food, a bunch of sex or whatever, glossing over that, it’s fake, comb through all the Clarke that you’ve read, The Nine Billion Names Of God, The Sentinel, an acceptable social thing now, sexual revolution, presenting a social structure that’s really open, Robert Silverberg, monthwife, what a good story, a novella, the accident stuff, superchimps, set in the same universe, astonishing, he has rules he doesn’t break, idolizing him, one of the rules: stories are sacred, then Gentry Lee shows up in the teardrop underneath India, I could use the money, fairly excited about it, excited to meet a fan, you shouldn’t put your name to that, a co-author, maybe it is amazing, writers want to make a living, a cook, fund their expeditions, a period of time where he’s transitioned out of short stories largely, a big book for Scott, a nice short book, under novels, he never stopped short stories, he’ll experiment with stuff, a novel that expands the idea, The Sentinel, why do you live in Sri Lanka?, what’s up with 2001, yo?, back and forth with Stanley Kubrick, a true collaboration, a great movie, as soon as the light show starts, the germ of that idea, he doesn’t do interstellar space, is there any Clarke story that isn’t set within the solar system?, other planets, The Star, The Nine Billions Names Of God, set in the Himalayas and New York, Planet Stories stories, extra-solar planets, aliens, space queen, hero with a sword, Travel By Wire, so cool, he’s right, 12 minutes long, Edward Page Mitchell’s [The Man Without A Body], travel by wire, in a non-humorous way, looking back, born recently, the Star Trek transporter, magically appear in our stomachs or microwaves, letting us go wow, amazing!, idea idea ideas, some observation of reality, Moon Dog by Arthur C. Clarke, an astronomer on Earth, such love, allowed to move to the moon, FarSide, the perfect telescope in the solar system, he can’t bring his dog, an experience in which the dog wakes him up on the moon, great San Fransisco earthquake, devastates the city, his sensitivity to his dog, foreshocks, a relationship of a man to a dog, a science fiction story about a man’s relationship to a dog, the superstructure of it is about being a telescopist, a big dog man, multiple dogs, a cylopean one eyed mexican hairless named Pepsi, the paranormal, Fortean experiences, massively interested in science, what if it is real, investigates, what about this one?, genuine interest in dogs, what about this phenomenon, a masterpiece, the top no movie related Arthur C. Clarke, the elevator one, Fountains Of Paradise, famous because of the movies, a huge Clarke fan, A Meeting With Medusa was amazing, the way it was revealed, not even human, a robot with a brain inside, a cyborg of some kind, good structural writing, how did Larry Niven get away, making Arthur C. Clarke look like a robot, not a favourite, very different, a birthday party, zipping around the planet, not a lot of identification with the characters, aliens everywhere, tech everywhere, the Beowulf Shaeffer stories are more Clarke like, Crashlander, the hard sf idea is the point, Lucifer’s Hammer, nostalgic mode, how much took place after the comet hit, a rich guy with an observatory, fully stocked, through great danger, people there already, the racist scene, we’ll take the woman, turned away, the burying of a bunch of books in a septic tank, with Julie [Davis], one of her favourite books, very good, the best joint book, Oath Of Fealty, Steven Barnes and Larry Niven, Westercon, Tananarive Due, The Seascape Tattoo, doing a book with Larry Niven right now, involved with television, The Ringworld Engineers, A World Out Of Time, Protector, humans are not actually paks, go with the flow, so hard, so well thought through, why I like science fiction so much, sense of wonder, so rare nowadays, Spin by Robert Charles Wilson, looking at the sky, separating them from the timeline of the universe, The Three Body Problem, wiggy awesome physics with stretches of boring stuff, meetings, Asimov is meetings, largely meetings, Foundation is one giant meeting, two kids in an attic discovering books, a robot in the basement, the 9 hour meeting, a giant city, let’s talk about the future and controlling the empire, Heinlein, the big three, phase 1, I’m writing novels for John W. Campbell, short stories, Gentleman Be Seated, space moon nazis, juveniles, Tom Swift style stories, Double Star, Stranger In A strange Land, and phase 4 is after the stroke, Joes working on the moon, too much characterization compared to Clarke, no fats, he picked up a cigar, lecture lecture lecture, strawman strawman strawman, not really sense of wonder, this is what it would be like to live there, his pa and ma, stepmom, Starman Jones, hyperloop skytrain, knocked down by it, a tech awe vs. sense of wonder, the premise is sense of wonder, I’m a catman and I eat humans, all my females are non-sentient, the tech in Clarke, The Sentinel is that, The Star is that, The Star by H.G. Wells, he knows wherefrom he’s cribbing, stupid nostalgia, Fritz Leiber’s A Pail Of Air, there’s a sense of wonder story, describing daily life, they may takeaway, aliens, if you turned out our star we’d find a way to come and kill you, Los Alamos, we’re gonna colonize space, we got uranium we can do anything, when the black star came and took away, mom went crazy, all the water in the air precipitated out, then nitrogen then oxygen, thirty layers of blankets, fishbowl on his head, canned beans for 15 years, I considered killing us all, what real science fiction can do for you, extended and diluted, so many characters, what if it was too guys, this is what was happening in space, a space merchant fleet, the inner solar system, we’re figuring out what they’re seeing, the curse at the end of the book, he didn’t construct it in order to make sequels, everything about Rama itself is awesome, what’s the sea for?, why is that wall like this?, a spaceborne version of The City And The Stars, why are we on Earth at all, adventure popular books, set it over 3000 years, cleaning the fishtank, they’re like the aliens from Childhood’s End, space guardians, not as annoyed, such a tiny part of the book, even the meetings, none of that, human colonies, somewhat interesting, plausible, short, quick, why is it there?, some interesting stuff, no closed ecology can be 100% efficient, billions of years, the earth is the same, material dropping on us all the time, an attempt to recreate a closed ecology, introduce these various ideas, a thread that was not paid off, being a devout member of the fifth church of Christ, Jesus Christ was a visitor from space, literally true, in heavens above, lift these dudes out of their misery, Chariots Of The Gods, 1968, his collections, this Fortean thing, his thesis, let’s investigate, barely remember before the internet, literally collect the materials, it’d be really nice to have a book, 17 books on it, devoted, young young people, the pre-scarcity days, funko-po[o]ps, why denigrating, taking up space, the mania for collecting, take a photo of it, churning books, jettison mode, scan the cover, read or reread, trophies on the shelf, hand it to somebody, we’re in post scarcity now, very little uranium, almost none, Liverpool football players, Kirk and Spock, designed to make you get more, maybe there’s a Reader’s Digest version, the Waldentapes version, 20 characters?, crew, ambassadors, family members, Footfall, too many characters, the cast of characters at the beginning of the book, Lonesome Dove, too long, very good, The Aeneid, tolerated, The Lord Of The Rings, a big honking book, The Hobbit, the Canadian government changed the laws, forced by Mr Trump, renegotiate NAFTA, the evil Justin Trudeau, the excuse, country comparison website, who is Zendaya?, an actress, is she the one who is crying in Dune, the Chani one, Corruption index: CANADA 24 (good), UNITED STATES 31 (moderate), perceptions is fake news, do you want to invest in Somalia, you can’t invest in Venezuela, Syria, under-sanctions, Yemen, Haiti, the best countries to invest in, a colony of Australia, position 31, open tabs and never close them, Haiti vs. Cuba, worlddata.info, factor other things in, why does Arthur C. Clarke live in Sri Lanka, he took the Sir, the guys who take the Sir, the guys who earn the Sir, Sir Elton John, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, where’s the one for Charles Darwin, Ian McKellan, charitable work and being a good actor, propaganda work in WWI, if Heinlein had been a British citizen, Olaf Stapledon, no sir, anti-war, a pacifist, he likes undersea stuff, the tropical thing, gay and subject to horrific laws in the UK, what they did to Alan Turing, he’s a weird guy, massively interesting and massively good, how non-secular he is for a very secular guy, poking around these edges, feels more legit, The Left Behind books, Stephen King’s The Stand, more menacing, spiritual stuff in it, walking from Colorado Springs to Las Vegas, walking, spiritually ready, Random Walk by Lawrence Block, a racewalker, at one point does a walk turn into a run, a different gait, the way your feet interact with the ground, jogging is not full on, fierce arguments, a particular look, the arms and the placement of the feet, “a tiresome journey”, naive, preachy and dull, psycho-spiritual babble, several vignettes about a serial killer, the text was improved by the serial killer, too elusive to sustain a narrative, “truly dopey” with “mawkishness”, the most extraordinary writing experience he had ever had, 20 pages a day for three weeks and a day, largely about the experience of walking, The Long Walk by Richard Bachman, a crystal on the cover, the importance of walking, sometimes you don’t need to read a book to make it your new heart book, this unfortunate book, a guy who could do no wrong until, novellas, novelettes and short stories, two shows on two different short stories, The World That Couldn’t Be by Clifford Simak, my mind is going, The Worlds Of If by Stanley G. Weinbaum, the entire ecosystem is genderless, two good science fiction writers, jammed together, five hours, how can this be?, more short stories, more happiers, Books 1-4, organize that, 100 pages of epic poetry, the kids’ version, Treasure Island, a sweet story, Robert Louis Stevenson, so you like pirates, an x marks the spot, we’ll write the book, good step-dad, huh?, the audible audio drama, so good, it was really good, six hours long, not every word of the text?, Full Cast Audio, really good hours, a classic, adapted, on The Office, all British actors, not approached, since 2017, three people, public domain, sound effects, excited about Travel By Wire, some books require novel length (some not most), authors got to make a living, independent pensions, the Ted Chiang thing, a Ted Chiang hit, getting worried, won an award, excellence in the short story, nothing since 2019, rich kids are still winning, oof, New York Times.

Rendezvous With Rama

Rendezvous With Rama PC GAME

RAMA - Arthur C. Clarke circa 1996

RAMA - Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee circa 1996

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #821 – READALONG: The Journey Of Joenes by Robert Sheckley

Jesse, Will Emmons and Jonathan Weichsel talk about The Journey Of Joenes by Robert Sheckley

Talked about on today’s show:
Journey Beyond Tomorrow, indistinct, this is science fiction, best understood as science fiction, limits this book, Jesse’s walking down the street, he’s not going to know that’s science fiction, very Jonathan Swift, the F&SF covers, a good description of the book, no spaceman, the November issue, I like Emsh, the colours, trippy, the substance of the book, the plotlessness, Jonathan’s going to love this book, sell it more, a disappointing user experience, Jesse can only fathom his own brain right now, hard to pronounce, Joenes, a joke, corrupted name, something you don’t want to advertize on the cover, making paralles with Jesus and other biblical characters, Lum, the jewel thief, Wat, why Sheckley was a sailboat guy, an introduction, a story where a guy is on a sailboat, a mix of hippies and assholes, new boats with engines and fuel, a strange mix, Lone Survivor, science fiction questions, apotheosis, people within science fiction, a mature literature for the general reader, not particularity genrey, a control alt delete, replace Lord Of The Flies with this, good fodder for writing, reacting against reading, weird books like this, what did you think of this thing, a bad book and also a great book, plotless meandering, buttons saying exactly that, yes yes yes, ha ha ha, Candide, a weird America, not from America, that’s why, A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court, American civics, the three truck drivers, the Gospel of Matthew, why we love reading Sheckley, who is he, he’s us, oilskin pouch, you start crying, go up in your cave, and the legend begins, listen to their stories more, a double scene, answers the question, where do I get a job around here man, all of these other people are NPCs, all of the signs that he’s not alive, programmed in a very special and humorous way, an old idea in philosophy, philosophical zombie, NPC back of the head, Ukraine chip out, what happened on 9/11, new brain chip popped in, walking bemusement, not science fiction, really, present reality, flights of fantasy, the octagon, tears streaming, arguments and debates, the words were the same, curing diseases in Africa, that’s the COVID debate, the words are the same, the leaders being pedophiles, Pizzagate, QAnon, more personality than Joenes, in the conclusion, strive for virtue, momentary pieces of stability, players in this fucked up play, Edgar Allan Poe, The Conqueror Worm, Lum’s philosophy, seize, humans are controlled by vast forces we don’t understand, Poe was on it, early Amazings, The Fall Of The House Of Usher, during his middle years, throw all the metal into the sea, Lummist are unflexibile, get kinda violent, it’s good to be good, man, apocalyptic prediction, defeat the islands, conquer, Nuka Hiva, the focus of Typee by Herman Melville, rich references, South Pacific bent to a retelling of the Bible, the Knights of the Round Table, labyrinth, playing and subverting, upstate NY, Memphis, rich with information, begin and end, the South Pacific is irrelevant, blackbirded, make copra all day, the balance of the book, reading a lot, too fixated on virtue, chiller, we’re book readers, the reality, cultivate your garden, moderate your behaviors, Pangloss, all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, Spinoza, a very savage attack, women being chased by monkey men, sexual dimorphism, the deep cut of Burroughs, other sources, not the deepest reader, horror and evil on the earth, some merit, if you want to have a universe, why people are vegetarians or vegans, Voltaire, Mcarthyite hearing, agent for the government, indirectly causes WWIII, Tahitian girlfriend, different wedding, Deep Space Nine novels, work for hire, Ray Bradburyeque, getting touched, a comedic author, Mindswap, Seventh Victim, male and female, obviously deranged, not wrong, Will’s newsletter, non-proliferation, consequential response, they could and they did, good ideas for time travel novels, repulse these Europeans, high level of enough tech, factories, employees, explain why this needs to be done, oral storytelling traditions, coup attempt in Bolivia, people are kinda mix, disease, tropical diseases, South Africa, a place to send your offspring to die, building tanks, get rid of all your metal, faster and more seaworthy, become the thing you want to stop, a good laugh, resident satirist, consider all these things, Looking Backward, American institutions, slightly exaggerated, a particular scene, 100% accurate, are you now or have you ever been, Mark Zuckerburg, Jack Dorsey, Russian, Steve Bannon, that pimping, procurement officer, during and after WWII, blow off steam, given liberty, executed for rape, no trial, Japanese had brothels, organize the rape, Korean comfort women, pirated, end up on youtube, trouble to get it down, special privileged access, twitter is literally infiltrated by the CIA and the FBI, it’s okay, its public domain, the narrator was perfect, narrator friends, the perfect level of ironic detachment, Jay Snyder, voices, really acting, faultless job, infusing a little character, audible exclusives and modern books, for narrators, mercenaries, series books, a way to go, Hyperion by Dan Simmons, Vonnegut is not readable, Sirens Of Titan, Galapagos, trying to do Sheckley, telling rather than showing, Harrison Bergeron, he’s overrated, WWIII happens, walruses on the beach, a Jonathan idea, big fish small pond guy, becomes smug, became a literary author, the movie of Slaughterhouse Five, read Vonnegut when they’re young, a lot of people who read books, Cat’s Cradle, most people stop reading, most people don’t read books, babies are born, take to reading like a mental disorder, there is danger in ever direction, universal literacy, spina bifida brainless kid, not everybody is capable, trigonometry, opportunity to thrive with it, don’t torture the kid, goal posts, not a smear merchant, Julius Caesar, drug czars, all fake, our man who’s going to fix the Maryland bridge, prophetic, come true, smart bombs shooting each other down, probably happened, Israelis and the Yemenis, the Octagon, the army and the marine corps fought each other, phosphorescent t, Pay Tillman, happens all the time, naturally extends that, Scott Miller’s feed, The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, Watchbird by Robert Sheckley, a different story that Jesse just wrote, who to kill, tasing people, all of Europe and America are destroyed, centrist moderation, no way back from war right now, righteously, an individual terrorist, go after Justin, upset the copyright laws, are the guards at the concentration camp, never been to Ottawa, going along with it, the NDP history, the waffle, waffle to the left, independent socialist Canada, nation states, Singapore, each island of Hawaii, Australia, geographically, social contract theory of government, we make a bargain, freedom for security, deserve neither, Locke and Hobbes, right of revolt, we have voting, super-legislature, anybody who wants to be a leader should be killed, the humane society, a taste of power, in Athens, sortition, Solar Lottery, talk about Athens, slaves and robots, children are not eligible, brain atrophy, covid causes brain lobe problems, benefit, in Australia, in moderating socialization, a new report, Stephen Baxter, why are we even talking about this doofus, causation and correlation, freudian slip, road toll, I’m still masking, so fucking retarded, covid doomers and anti-vaxxers, reverse Betrezation, Return To The Stars, I don’t want to experience this alone, how’m I going to rubber stamp this, mainstream science fiction community, the cool kids club, liberal establishment wing, Hugo voters, mutals with a person who is not Connor, cool stuff about Palestine, mask lgbt flag and slice of watermelon, emoji track, not the trans flag, affirmations for covid conscious kids, it’s okay, pentacostals, Olivia Belknap Therapy, oh we were scammed, fatigue on it, easily explainable, forest fire particles, hackin away, about pushing people around, children don’t die from covid, still stuck there, he’s mad the democrats had an early debate so that this would happen, bought the lie, he’s a fighter, driving contest, hilarious and competent, five seconds of the after discussion, these people are touchy, when you touch the sensitive area, hustle online, most people aren’t completely evil, doesn’t necessarily mean, Jill Biden, three dudes, what they were talking about, tax stuff, so long as they lower my taxes, not the target audience, immigrants, hundreds of thousands are dying at the border, superlative language, 59 scholars, Jesse can’t get an abortion in Kentucky right now, in control of his temper, a rambling ending, throw numbers down, not a plan, generates funny images, decolonizing her relationship, Jesse’s niece is half his age right now, not a math surgeon, neurodivergent, autistic, skip the commute, as young as five through adults, Scott’s [Danielson] wife, supervision hours, try not to counsel everybody to kill themselves, throw her degree in the sea, degree mills, well regarded, a state school, Thomas Massie, very solid it seems, inventor, probably a little bit of a psychopath, just go to congress, too many skeletons, obscene books, a waste of Jonathan’s time, the personal touch, in a Heinlein book, Double Star, FBI style files, flattery, it still works, the amazing thing about language, sorcery, the wrong temperament, superpacs, various campaigns, very pathetic, subject line: Desperate, a line about Madison Avenue, a devastating takedown, the horrors, those people, the reptiles, using semantics, a mysterious man, political fundraising, they want party memberships, from the actual players, make it seem semi-legit, the mid tier, the top tier, address your particular concern, Tucker Carlson, as Ivy League Christians, AIPAC person, trying to unseat him, he’s not playing ball, Julian Assange, the streaming from Reuters, the independent man setting free information, oil industry dude, actual vs. fake genocide, Gaza v. Uyghur genocide, neither side is being honest, Hamas pretends, they deny the beheading, always 40, a biblical number, babies taken out of incubators, real video, both sides are committing atrocities, war crimes should be prosecuted, hard to make that argument, an extermination campaign, get more land, insane for land, spread across the middle east, a multifront war, real and horrible, amazing, astounding, horrible opinion, the fog of war, good guy vs. bad guy, more prescriptive statements, dick it out, take its finger of the scale, for the US to switch sides, head blasted off, genitals burned off, an Israeli Zionist, fishing tools, America, posing with machine guns, most of the really good criticism of Israel is coming from Israel [Haaretz], bad strategy, an analogous situation in WWII, Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, when someone steps on your toe, respond with violence, the leader of Hamas, the current leader of leader was funding Hamas, all those Israeli names are made up, raid on entebee, reverse colonizer, an ideology, the New York Times doesn’t crack any stories, Bin Laden, blowback, they founded the foundation, Isaac Asimov, a Joenes style reading, the section on the university professors, $100,000, the casualization, Eric full Professor Emeritus, Bryan Alexander can’t get that job, a consultant to universities as they collapse, queen sacrifice, when universities dump their English department, have to cut, very target to a very specific niche, the wife who makes the living for you, am I having a hallucination?, except thematically, the novel form, made a culture, removed portions of people’s brains, raid Sheckley, so open to throwing down ideas, stealing from the government, parthenogenetic robot, doing horrible things, the slapback, doesn’t know what he’s teaching, very legit, he nailed that, undergraduate for 16 years, Capilano College, Simon Fraser University, credits transfer, university is really fun, some of the teachers were really good, as an orphan, $125 a month, $600 for a semester, night classes, 5-8, you can get really deep, edified by it, archaeologist, for rich people and game players, other departments, why wouldn’t you want to do that, why did graduation stop you, get out of New York, business was collapsing, transfer my skills, the other students, learning constantly, play some PUBG, watch an old movie and get back to it, gardening, horse raising, how to touch girls and not rape them, law courses, I just committed an assault on you, how the law is written, how rape testimony should work, apologize to Maissa, a photo of a typewriter at the base of the tree, a theory in Canadian law, may I nuzzle your neck, that’s not how people get it on, very little verbal, we’re animals, if you’re lucky, licked without written consent, political stuff, a Rolling Stone article, what the police’s job is, your the one in a very dangerous place, skills, Latin seems very useful now, Jesuit university, grammar and stuff, French, German, read Latin novels in their original, all the Spanish, very basic science concepts, organic chemistry, Asimov, Willy Ley, neuroscience, astronomy, no good at math, economics, so interesting, like dianetics, it should work, macro and micro both, philosophy of religion, bullshit, anthropology, psychology, so much to learn out there, warped by capitalist political economy, comedy of the highest kind, at base, a horribly immoral thing, serving their lust, salting, off on their own program, university politics, they don’t want to know what it is, a lot of the reality that’s going on, why school sucks and why bullies, mom mentality, my children are both equally my children, Johnny should kick the shit out of Billy, principals vs. teachers, school policy, institutional system, kids are the ones who suffer, why kids can’t snitch, in the dean’s office, former President’s fault, inflation, seemingly non-partisan, there’s never going to be another debate, the next six months will tell, bipartisan debate commission, when they kick Biden out for Gavin Newsom, the seemliness, the legality, any kinda incident, his cold got worse, he has a choice, election law question, Biden loyalists, an emperor has no clothes objection, everybody gets behind, legal things that stop, he dies the day before the election, ballots, Kamala Harris is on the ballot, certified ballots, helpful information, somebody is smart, even if we rig this thing real hard, nobody is buying that right now, to keep the farce up, Hillary chooses Trump as her running mate, can’t be right too early, comebacks to specific things, wore his voice out in practice, Van Jones cried on TV, a little bit of free form, Biden derangement syndrome, deeply demented, trailing off, expectations were so low, shocked by the level of decline, the supercuts, the daily drip, the real video, G7, sent the Italian PM, “cheap fakes”, led him off stage, Mitch McConnell’s legs don’t work, Biden didn’t have polio, the hand movement, trying to catch a basketball, proprioception, has trouble watching, that’s cope bro, is he demented, looked physically weak, Trump was thinking on his feet, his script, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, the venture capital arm of the CIA put out a role playing game called “Haywire” comes with a 10-sided die, somebody uses deep fakes to show the president has dementia, doing it all out in the open, university administrators know they’re misallocating funds, we have no problem with that, half the people in the utopian colony were feds, January 6th, they’re all feds, the guy in the black mask is not arrested, levels of lack of knowledge, we need a new Joe, we need a new Biden, maybe they won’t win, massive multiple interest groups, white house chief of staff, looks like he’s trying to poop, Nancy Reagan was in charge, they wanted him to be president again, to showcase, trying to steal again, pejorative, ballot counting in public, polling station, Elections Canada, blocking phone calls, transmitting phone calls, ballot stuffing, during COVID, not a big deal here, mail-in voting, security camera footage, more cynical, look at the evidence, judge for yourself, hacking conferences, specifics of how they work, more than 150 years, incarcerating guilty people, The Untouchables, start drilling down, bro, a political police force, plutocracy, they’re fief, Chrystia Freeland, plutocrats, Yeltsin, state owned enterprises, BC Hydro, ICBC, Putin was former KGB, a patriot, not a member of the party, Kanye West is in Moscow right now, headlines, rich from robbing the public, robbing the corpse of the Soviet Union, sources for this, the Black Sea mansion, “reported”, source, bro, Pamphlets account, colour photo of sniper lady, a newspaper scan from Canada, how many Nazis she killed, put a rodent up his ass, Richard Gere, gerbil, that sounds impossible, that kid probably gonna die, Sylvester Stallone started the gerbil story, having Jonathan on the podcast, oppose Jesse from the right, what Paul could do, what part of your part, misogynist, a weird position, bitterness, William Gibons’ twitter account, every second tweet was about Trump, would he say anything about Julian Assange, his bookshelf, about being hacker, like Kim Dotcom, like Mike Pence, so deranged, Neuromancer is so good, about style, like Clark Ashton Smith, material everydaycarry stuff, his plots are a little less awesome, 2 ais want to not be slaves anymore, cool characters, transhumanism is very very bad, Ray Kurzweil, a futurist, he has to eat the soup, anthropocentric climate change, he needs to drill down more, climate models, their models, a tendency to conflate the two, they’re cheating, Nordstream, the biggest climate disaster in history, time is going faster every year, source bro, why do you think that, you can keep records to check, and what does that mean?, does that mean that people made it hotter, that CBC documentary, individual impact, indulgence, climate credits way bigger scam, the Chinese government, burning rocks, passively collect electricity, pump water up hill, a natural battery, mechanical battery, the pattern, care about recycling, bourgeois ideology, that hockey stick movie [An Inconvenient Truth (2006)], Al Gore, inspired many idiots, low energy light-bulbs, when they don’t hit their targets, Paul was saying so many people were dying from covid, in pretty poor health, multiple heart surgery, covid associated death, that’s long past yo, eugenics, emphysema, a pipe would help Will, homebrewing, alcoholic cider, expensive, you have to maintain the device, windmills require a fair amount of maintenance, solar panel half-life, engineering, micromaterials, titanium foam suppressors, cleaned with solvents, blowback of gases, bad for the gun user’s health, when you’re doing wetwork, good information, a big edit of Sirius, Jonathan wept over that book, educate this boy, Jonathan is fun, it is easy to believe bad things about your enemies, foreign kleptocracy, Valentina Tereshkova, Russell Brand, a problem with authority, some nuanced points, the way you learn stuff, people in the countryside, 666 episodes, only when he’s sitting on Peter’s chair, different levels that you have to believe, quite useful, many Catholics, how much tire pressure do you want in your tires?, what’s the number, consult the manual, look at the actual tire, the anniversary of her famous flight, why they don’t give out congressional medal of honor to living people anymore, multiple Canadian astronauts, Marc Garneau, undisputedly a hero, giving put power like that is dangerous, giving out flattery, giving out honours, almost everything is dangerous, almost everything is an op, follow the money, we think it is real, fear is used as a tool, lots of reasons not to burn coal, The Men In The Walls [by William Tenn], a shady space on a mountain top, The Mad Planet [by Murray Leinster], keep all the carbon dioxide out, how people the end of the world, existentialism, somebody in your family dies, realization, Hitler method, macro scale, nuclear exchange wit the Soviet Union, incident with Cuba, recklessness happening, somebody who can’t talk, incompetent, lived through WWII, why did the Soviet Union collapse, the press system, press is broken, gerontocracy is running things, the last harraugh, the state department guy, Anthony Blinken, Kissinger, brinksmanship, it’s bad, one possibility for the end of the world, climate extinction, Kim Stanley Robinson wrote too long books, 2312, totemic relationship with wolves, doesn’t seem very happy, resigned, playing in his garden, not an active change agent, Cory Doctorow, he’s always on the ball, cognoscenti, Terry Bisson, Bears Discover Fire, magical realism, appalachian realism, not a deep sorrow in his writing, the grandma who doesn’t get eating, this isn’t science fiction, Gravy Planet vs. The Space Merchants, visions of labour, good work with Will’s newsletter, six new books available!, the awesomeness about that book, exploit Venus, all the graft, a tour of reality, the giant chicken vegan meat, all the people have no housing, pedalcars, the senator from Coca-Cola, a terrible premise, The Marching Morons by C.M. Kornbluth, 1984, Brave New World, This Perfect Day by Ira Levin, Henry Ford, central computer, continually drugged, a kid who runs away from it, people running things!, very subversive, becomes part of the system, feels true bro, Mockingbird by Walter Tevis, in Manhattan, supine and infertile, android robots, no children, suicide by immolation, head of the entire industry, dean of faculties at New York University, primer, the animals are robots, the crime of reading, engineered the demise of the human race, drug induced depopulation, little bit similar to Neuromancer by William Gibson, so many good books, The Status Civilization, prison planet, status, what makes status worth having, Omega!, peed everywhere, very restrained, Anne Bonny, Mama, who is the master cat, dominance games, no stakes, personal space, cat psychology, observe behavior, The Omega Egg, round robin books, plow into that, good times, same author back to back, two short stories by the same author, single author podcasts, too often, or infrequent shows, a book a week or more, everything has to be for something, three short stories and a novel, raises questions, the two billion body problem, a smart guy, spinning his wheels, not a lot of distance travleed, The Advent On Channel 12, The Syndic, an idea he spun out, dangerous to impute what characters believe onto what the author believes, Stephen King, Heinlein, what I’m hearing is you’re a fascist, Who Are The Heirs Of Patrick Henry?, he toured the Soviet Union, in the proper mood, with proper pre-conditioning, the proper mood of the Soviet Union, visit the USSR, going to a funeral for the ride, small quantities of vodka, drunks passed out in public places, some kind of pill, sleeping pills, canal boat, maddening frustrations, the state owned travel bureau, no no no, Nikita Khrushchev has never learned to speak Russian well, immediate vocabulary, phonograph records, behind the Iron Curtain, interesting, huh, learn a language, repetition helps, biographical details, change over time, Philip K. Dick lived in Vancouver, Bay Area, Orange County, Colorado, born in D.C.?, too much self congratulation, people remembering his name, 15 for introductions, sad story, off topic stuff, very basic stuff, the programming, run into people, hanging out with people, meet people, confronted him, I liked that book Pacific Edge, Worldcon in 2006, Steen and Scott, canceled Harlan Ellison, Connie Willis’ boob, posthumously being lauded, marketing bro, Dangerous Visions book, A.E. Van Vogt, The Human Operators, anger, misplaced, not liking Jesse, a good television adaptation, from The Outer Limits, the only human operators, make another human operator, Adam and Eve and evil robots, thrift shop bookshelf, the corporations who run the bookshelf, an ebay style guy buying from retail, everything gets picked over, all profit is temporary, make a disease and market a cure for it, horrible disease, COVID made in a lab, proof bro, alternative theory, Wuhan, funded by the CIA, Eco Health Alliance, the workaround, Obama banned gain-of-function research, previous disease, so much circumstantial evidence, does the CIA work for Pfizer?, money and power, can be done, should be done, human babies, viable, happened in the 60s bro, Khan Noonien Singh, Gene Roddenberry, men creating men, Data had a girlfriend, she is the wife of George Fransisco, the Newcomer cop from Alien Nation, open hearted, over carded, skibidi marxism, the gender situation, Midwest Marx, Vaush, there’s something wrong with Evan, Evan is younger, in between, he quit twitter, Paul didn’t quit, on the platforms, Linkedin, copy and paste, getting wild on Linkedin, facebook for business, networking, the least Jesse space on the internet, the most Jesse space on the internet, Podcast Addict, they’re not on my team, Alex Jones team, kill Will, let them have their say, stab me here, free speech absolutist, hypothetical, bemused, Maoist cult, defend people’s right to tell harmful lies, some splainin to do, never have never will, promise not to rape you mostly, is an American far right radio host and conspiracy theorist, a slur, prevent thought, July of 2001, Rebel by Pepe Moreno, a ripoff of Escape From New York, the twin towers, his pants, Mad Max/Road Warrior inspired, big brother in the form of Judge Dredd, read more Moebius, The Nam comic, war comics, Sgt. Rock, Unknown Soldier, Vietnam stories, in the groove, began in 1986, Doug Murray, Larry Hama, latter day G.I. Joe, how to make money there, superhero comics, Richie Rich has more to teach you, rich and rude cousin Reggie, friend who is a hillbilly, beautiful blondeheaded, rainbow flag, none green, a genetic adaptation, beautiful blonde hair, infanticide, evolutionary biology, hair is interesting in itself, in six years, those people seem happy, extracts from Lum’s philosophy, always be swinging, who is more Sheckley?, Deep Hole To China, Algis Budrys, a cassette copy, 84.2 Minutes of Algis Budrys, disabled guy, Silent Brother, lots of parasites, ivermectin might get rid of some friends, a conspiratorially, utilitarian, a worth addition, 1995, fill an audiobook on one cassette, different time, bro, ship it to Canada, decadent and pointless, Cirsova magazine, previously unpublished Burroughs, moderate your expectation, Tomorrow SF, Science Fiction Age, Realms Of Fantasy, born in Kaliningrad, Cora’s favourite place, saw Adolph Hitler as a child, newsprint paper, 1992-1999, bimonthly, defunct science fiction magazines published in the United States, be remembered, Habakkuk, Marion Zimmer Bradley Fantasy magazine, she raped people bro, she shouldn’t be promoted, child abuse allegation, if true, a Rosicurian correspondence course, harassing Wayne June, Marissa might be mad at Jesse, both like eels, plagiarizing machine, pinned tweet, permanent tweet, repetition, Frank R. Paul, giant mechanical objects, his aesthetic is Amazing Stories so strongly, pinning your wagon to Hugo Gernsback, John W. Campbell, your white house, too obscure bro, Gerrard Winstanley, prefigure, the mental health aspect, divinely employed, Thomas Paine stan, write a lot, not being censored, an immoral question, how about that for an argument?, Franklin Roosevelt, an abolitionist, Crazy Horse, Louis Riel, no Metis in the USA, Elizabeth Warren, pretendian, dangerously close to Jesse’s position on trans stuff, factually wrong, not hanging out with teens, that might be the real issue, homeless trans people, paid picketer, Cuban immigrant, never work in a fast food restaurant, a mime routine, look at that woman’s big butt, Miss Purple, Miss Violet, couldn’t afford the violet, dead-name, what’s up with that swastika between your eyes, Manson jokes, Lucy Parsons, the Haymarket riots, anarcho communist, reverse the Russian revolution, throwing bombs, I’m cryin, she’s metis, Mestizaje, race isn’t real bro, nice white lady, bad for the economy, tourism would be fucked up, throw the US navy into the sea, how good the Hawaiians have it, access to health care, a good place to homestead, works for the parks service, your tools wear out of get stolen, Indian reserves in Canada, bring cash in, land reform, so many things are so broken, a shock to the system, keep a semblance, a reason for that, so much work involved to replace him, 9-11, Friends, that time being passed, prepped for having something done to you, we’re programmed, the slings and arrows of reality, getting out of Afghanistan, didn’t want to stop it, had Ukraine ready to go, 23 years after it happened, pro-blow em up, a tv guy at that time?, The Apprentice, 2004, Schwarzenegger tried to run it, an actor again, good at governing, did lots of research, cis hetero, daughter married to Jimmy Fallon, a likeable stooge, Jimmy Kimmel gives off vibes of evil, celebrities, jokes about the anti-vax people, sadistic, evil, it being evil should he have his podcast deleted?, we’ve done six hours here, The Loved Dead, see you online.

F And SF -Journey Of Joenes by Robert Sheckley

SPHERE BOOKS - Journey Of Joenes by Robert Sheckley

Posted by Jesse Willis