religion – Page 5

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

Reading, Short And Deep #463 – Flight by Robert E. Howard

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #463

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Flight by Robert E. Howard

Here’s a link to the poem |PDF|.

Flight was first published in Witchcraft And Sorcery, May 1971.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #815 – READALONG: Mad Max by Terry Kaye

Jesse, and Connor Kaye talk about Mad Max by Terry Kaye

Talked about on today’s show:
novelization, Terry Kaye is Terry Hayes, he’s from the UK, UK phrases, balustrade, John Olsen is Jesse’s hero, he’s awesome, his channel AudiobooksForTheDamned, a website, a facebook group, waybackmachine, four years ago, a coda at the end, acknowledgements, not reading from his car, road trip, parked on the side of the road, someone else is driving, reading while moving, carsick, front porch, sounds like recorded in his car, backed up by hearing the weedwhacker, a guerrilla audiobook, pirate audiobooks, illicit audiobooks, books for the blind, audiobook sighted people are not allowed to have, a serial killer recorded one, its immoral, executing and deleting people, Phil Gigante, Stainless Steel Rat books, arrested and plead guilty to, photos from a 14 year old girl, he’s been canceled, he’s out of prison, good narrator, maybe not a very good person, announcements on some websites, really good narrating voice, he’s a human being who’s still alive, prisoners are humans to, a platform, consumer should have the choice, consumer logic, how to live properly, the movie Stone (1974), a necessary precursor to Mad Max (1979), Toecutter, essentially the same kind of person, a biker in a biker gang, the main character, good actor, good character, largely the same, riding around Australia’s coast and getting revenge, noticeably nice, movie and novelization, leaning into exploitation, naked girls and naked men, equal opportunity nakedness, dicks swinging in the water there, cheap, low budget, intentionally salacious, the bikeys being on drugs at the start, the ending is fucking fantastic, a cop film, goes undercover with a biker gang, usual plot arc, accepted in the gang, an anthropological film, trope maker not a trope follower, ahead of its time, just a job, you’re one of us now, beat the shit out of him, doesn’t press charges, that’s the cost of leaving the gang, speaks to a lot of things in Australian society, upper-middle class, his girlfriend is rich, they have a house, a car, a kid, a dog, similar themes, people who are living within society’s rules, people living outside of society’s rules, we’re outside the law, Mad Max is about the whole of society, scale shifting, lawlessness is in control, the legal system is neutered, inability to impose penalties, no justice anymore, every film after that, progressively worse, maintain it, justice?, society?, then outlaws have a society of a kind, a hierarchy exists in a way, Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (2008), the importance of stone, a gang that’s being hunted, by a cop, vicious crimes, they’re bad, badass and bad, behaving improperly, raping a lot of people, stealing things, murdering people, making cat noises while on roofs, stealing people’s ice cream, be careful girl I’ve seen him lick his eyebrows clean, slightly different, made more explicit, The Dark One, they go to his farm, May lady, she’s the hero of the film and the book too, she’s about protecting people, runs out of bullets, Max is not the hero, when the goose dies (he’s just burned), she’s going to make it, the wife is still alive, he leaves the bedside and hunts down, ruptured spleen, he’s like a zombie, listening like a zombie, revenge on his mind, one of the greatest movies ever, better than The Road Warrior, Fury Road, the prequel [Furiosa] looked terrible, no longer present, May Swaise, connected, related, she’s the aunt?, dead partner’s mother?, the hero car before the black and black, M. Rockatansky, the missing partner, through a connection with the cops and turning in Cundulini’s hand, makes arrangements, a bed and breakfast, she invites them in, protection away, danger that’s happening outside, the character of Benno, adult farmhand or son, jump scare, trying to be helpful, Mad Max II, expansions or repeats of Mad Max 1, truck runs over a biker, parallelism, truck that’s on a railroad track, road train scene, Stagecoach (1939) with John Wayne, Night Rider, lieutenants, biker gangs don’t work that way, Johnny The Boy, the source of ignition, when Toecutter dies the movie isn’t over, Max doesn’t kill Toecutter, called out in the book, the importance of reading the book and the film text, always started as a movie, based on the script and filling in the details, details brought out, in Stone how do you join the gang?, a probationary period, they have a vote, this is a pirate ship, history of pirates, we are lied to, disnifyed version of pirates, Robert Louis Stevenson, pirates didn’t bury their treasure, invented democracy and pensions, horrific exploitation, bigger responsibility, everybody is elected, captain, quartermaster, here’s the plan, they share you out, a covenant, until we hit a certain number, renegotiate, sign the articles, abide by the rule of the ship, no smoking below decks, no women on the ship, awesome and democratic, physical intimidation thing, any one man can be taken down by any two man, a cartoon version of a badguy or pirate ship is, guys who like not obeying society’s laws, they interact with society, a montage of scenes, goes around to all the suspects, team members, they attract business, they are business, they adopted this place, women lining up to be with them, the whole point of Stone, they’re human beings that are not cartoons, isn’t for everyone, respectable and full of respect, different values, they don’t kill him, they respect him even though he’s shit, the grievance, the ArmaLite gangs, Road Warrior was a bigger hit, more action, simpler, more cartoony, amped up, the film that George Miller wanted to make, Evil Dead vs. Evil Dead II, Terminator 2, The Terminator is a better film, parallel remake, reviewing the movie series, Fury Road is a visual treat, plotwise it is retarded, how simple vs. complex, the novel drills down into some of the worldbuilding details, complements it, the first chapter, what is the world this novel is set in, far in the future, a transcontinental highway, not set in Australia, no references to Australia, looseness with the words, to the other coast, not a lot of bridge action, inter vs. trans, across vs. between, no ArmaLite guns in the movie, the M-16, they don’t exist in the movie or the book, shotguns and a pistol, for an action movie there’s not that many guns, ran out of bullets real quick, I was saving these, a low magic world, a quote from the beginning of the book, cattle, there’s no animals in the film, a chicken mentioned, there is food, Goose steals the fries from a guy, “victims of a society which now relied on laboratory-produced proteins for nourishment and fast-food pulp for taste”, the dystopia of ourworld, disconnected from farms, even on May’s farm, a wheelbarrow, no animals, George Miller, George Kennedy, a contemporary action movie, couldn’t do it for a number of reasons, they needed abandoned buildings, the Halls Of Justice, clearly an abandoned building, guerilla filmaking, like Breaker Morant, Sun City, Sunshine Coast, Jerusalem, wee Jerusalem, putting things together, in the film of Mad Max, the tractor trailer in Mad Max II, methane, Prime Mover, a term used in the novelization, the Prime Mover ran over Toecutter, another word for God, Goose killed Goose, Fifi, that was not on the job, he was attacked by Johnny The Boy, the mirroring and the parallelism, Mad Max is not the hero, shown to be the hero, cleaning his hands with a towel, the incompetent cops, Roop and Charly, Big Bopper, doesn’t look 15, the chosen one, without a partner, Fifi has to tell his boss, given a hero car, we need heroes, the police commisioner, a kendo appointment, bamboo katana, lure him with candy, the feted one, his real one is Mad Max, paralleled between the second lead of the gang, Bubba Zanetti’s costume, accented with chrome (instead of bronze), a space blanket, quiet, the advisor to Toecutter, it’s your job to get him back on the straight and narrow, the path of becoming a proper member, Johnny doesn’t have a tear [tattoo], an insight into the structure, those kind of relationships, terrorizing Jerusalem, a couple, the Chevrolet, the Ford, hot-ride pipes, that girl and that boy are raped, the girl is tied to Johnny the Boy, rape and destroy party, literally chained to her, chained to a car and lit on fire, like what happened to Goose, the parallel structuring, good acting and acting sequencing, foreshadowing, the injustice, the whole town wouldn’t show up, the Turkey, called out in the film ever so briefly, a night scene, ambulance chasing experience, road gangs, “it’s in the food”, another night in the meatgrinder, have you eaten yet, there’s an awesome futuruistic story happenin in the background of the revenge film, all the sponsors, Kawasaki, cigar company, the girl and the guy, it’s Mary, this is a retelling of iconic stories in a way that we don’t recognize, what happens on the hill, the fruit of their union is one of revenge and horror, what makes Max good, Jesse is a mom, she’s a wife, when she is runover and loses her baby, fridging in comics, Keanu Reeves’ John Wick dog motivation, ran over his wife and killed his killed, the worst possible relationship with other human beings, setup setup setup, his boss is conspiring behind his back, it’s all fake, the proper relationship police should have with biker gangs, clubs not gangs, despite the cartoonishness we don’t feel, Max van has a spaceship on the side of it, lost control of the roads, a game of chase, Max is running rogue, he’s stolen that car, “the forbidden zone”, the Outback, roadtrains have guards on them, unintentional, special, Judge Dredd, paints a world that’s just like that, a few elite cops, very similar, Dredd (2012), post apocalyptic story, learning some vocabs, larakins, hoons, boisterous often badly behaved young man, larakinism, a ratbag, plays pranks, fucks around, an Australian of the kind that gets kicked out of England, crutch,phonetically, crutch, crox, an A-frame, here he is the walking armpit, bitumen, asphalt, Terry Hayes was hired as a scriptwriter for the following movies, The Year Of The Locust, car chase, motorcycle scenes, what people smell like, seaside home, the monster mask, a rare book in North America, buy em and sell em, $70, abebooks, the cost to post to America, $40 for shipping, a crateful, scan it and put it up online, the import expert business, follow the Man’s rules, listening to the radio, here are the regulations, as long as the paperwork is clean, Max’s objections, terminal psychotics, Toey, excited or nervous, hoofing the line, the first pursuit special, Night Rider, that scag and his floozy, hopped up/supercharged, two different versions, Mel Gibson looking shocked, the movie poster, a biker’s mask, commissioned the poster, still financing the film, Frank Frazetta, the 1985 rerelease, SuperChannel, novelizations are something that have basically died,you liked it so much you wanted, the novelization on Predator (1987), people trying to deny me access to knowledge, the summer of 1987, to spite the people are going to deny me access, novelization for a videogame, The Legend Of Zelda, really fucking expensive, one for Christmas, one for your birthday, indie games for a couple of dollars, installment, enjoyed the shit out of it, 100 pages, 8-12 year olds, you couldn’t get access to the media you wanted, the right effect, experienced it vicariously, reading is on the decline, just a fact, the publishing industry, bookstores were around an a thing, real estate speculation, a primary sale for a secondary sale, we’re going into the new meta, the new paradyme, you don’t own anything, subscription, all very evil, the movie and the book of Mad Max are becoming much more plausible, we assume a nuclear war in 1985, old footage, footage of nuclear bombs, we filled in the blanks a lot, the food stuff, called out in the book, granola crunching farmers eating whole foods, in the 1970s, brown bread vs. white bread, Bryan Alexander, protesting, a plant based diet for the school’s cafeteria, tacos or hotdogs, make your menu choices, make your food at home, loudness of relationship to food, the loosening of the control of government, the government is incompetent, larakins, hoons, taking over the roads, working in the city, cut loose by going into the country, the setup for the second film, Geiger counter, more and more cartoonish, the gangs are so evil and fun, a fuckin nasty film, the worst we see are the hand of Goose, the knee of Max, the reality of the gang, what they’re doing is plausible, victimizing people more, sadistic, fairly balanced in the second film, petrol, victimize a man and a woman, gap toothed guy, boot on somebody’s hand, raping this couple, stuff pulled from the first film, more palatable, a little kid almost gets run over, oh Christ they’re going for population, break off pursuit, Charley gets it in the throat, the good guys wear white, Cunégonde and Casca, Candide by Voltaire, a comic novel, half brother and sister, all the names are jokes, goodpussy, a tutor, all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, any evil is all for the good, girls chased by monkeys, that’s what the male of the species looks like, a prostitute has half her ass eaten, Mudguts, Lurch?, Clank, game names, somebody had carved out a piece of his ass, on the run, he flees, pretty awful, especially Max, this guy is not going to get punished, justice in the world for ourselves, if you have enough money and the circumstances don’t line up, if you have influence, make a lot of problems for them, on that note, bathroom break, the world of Judge Dredd, more what George Miller would have liked to have done, judges fulfilling, they are the judicial system, hero cops that operate outside the law, the world is simply to wild, too easily taken advantage of, direct justice, the police commissioner, the break down of society, more interesting, it’s perfect, teeter over the top into apocalypse, things go wrong in such a horrible way, he says fuck it, he abandons his wife, he abandons his morals, after the end of the film, he could have gone back with his life, Mad Max as a franchise, a character as a plot element, they all stand on their own, the gyro captain, Bruce Spence, as different characters, they play the same, the feral kid grows up, the legendary story about The Road Warrior, preceding and following film, in this weird space, they blow up the car in the second movie, it is back in the fourth movie, they’re not connected that way, Sprog, fulfill a purpose, she’s given a name and has a character, she’s to be fridged, it’s a guy movie, Fury Road, Max’s backstory is changed, the guilt that he bears, the people he couldn’t protect, flashbacks to characters that never existed, other adventures, missing adventures, “Mad”, a moral man trying to survive in an amoral world, what that does to a person, they thrive in this world, the survival of the fittest, Max’s car is not ready, the fuel line, he fucked it up, he’s trying to help, a lot from the pov of the gang, a surprise in the movie, they don’t try to kill max after they kill the girl, how to be proper, excised from the film, Goose’s girlfriend, Katamine, Catamite, not Calamity, a lovely scene in the car, the mooners go buy, wild larakins, just hoons, vicious gang members, having fun, she almost kills them, being prepared to defend your family is a very masculine fantasy, a story men like to see told over and over again, they’ve excised all that shit, competence family, his car is stolen, never matters, just get to the point, that’s why it is the best film, The Road Warrior is a better introduction, he’s dressed in black, federation of gangs, gay Mohawk, strength to strength, literally has him on a dog collar, to release the hound, his lover, the feral kid, comic relief, a black suited character, he has his own motivation, the positive character, help the good team, some sort of redemption, offered a relationship with the warrior woman, it goes nowhere, choosing when you’ve got two teams, Humongous’ army, calculated and smart, a very seductive team, why are these guys hoarding this gasoline, rooting for the oil company, they choose to blow it up, its very simplistic, in other revenge films, the inciting of the revenge quest, Death Wish (1974), trod on his daisies, the inciting incident that makes him turn back, a little bit like Yojimbo (1961), tumbled by the gang, Gyro Captain, they kill his dog, fucked up, like John Wick, precipitates the third act, works well in both cases, just in time to setup the massive chase scene, there’s nothing like it, the visceral awesome, dogs dying, the happy family, two year old sprog, on vacation, goes for a swim, she sees the dog dead, May is awesome, she has agency, disabled, deaf, opens her home to people in need, protecting them at gunpoint, hardy country woman, Casca, the town being called out, every other small town in Australian movies, saloon underneath, a milkbar, local cafe, long formica bar, milkshakes, a blender, a big stainless steel cup, ice cream milkshake, a reference to A Clockwork Orange, literally drinking milk, the symbols are all boobs, soda [jerk], a series of books, male competence porn, The Executioners, The Destroyer, The Eternal Mercenary, the character who stabbed Jesus with the Spear of Destiny, cursed to walk the earth until Jesus comes back, he can’t die, he’s like a Highlander, connect the movies together, he sees Mary raped, arrest the criminal, Johnny the Boy is the mirror, new to the gang, they both survive to the end of the film, everything is inverted, a Lovecraft story that’s the story of Jesus that’s reversed, The Dunwich Horror, invisible evil brother, torn apart by dogs, Max is like Casca, kills the evil that is Johnny the Boy, I’m sick, it’s not my fault, doing exactly what Johnny didn’t want to do, he has to abandon his family, he’s still mad in the desert, he won’t join any of the sides, he can’t trust anyone, the inciting incident in picking a side, a tale to tell to you to be careful, how do we end up not in this relationship, the gang is fake but the cops are real, their colour is real, pressure from above, the sides, and beneath, how do we not end up in this horrible relationship?, we have to do some politics and point up, government in the first Mad Max movie, like in Stone, they’re going to do their shit, appreciating life and living it to the best, take some drugs, respect your fellow man worthy of respect, a politician who wants to change things, starts with an assassination, intellectual anthropology vs. art, Z-900s, before we run out of time, some of the best writing in the book, Goose’s birthday, a motorcycle guy, scooter, road rash, no helmet, no leathers, cars are a little safer, has taken these long road trips, it was poetry, went a long way to explain his motivation, the excitement of what he is doing, they are mirrors again, freedom, escaping the body, becoming something else, not like a car, you’re sitting in a machine, a ragdoll within the machine, you don’t have that on a motorcycle, you are literally in control of every part of it, it responds only to your input and the road, when you ride a motorcycle, an extension of you, a suit, clothing, the response of the machine to your physical movements, when you want to turn, more in control on a motorcycle, sharper turns, you have to physically move, the toecaps sparking against the ground, camera over the shoulder, the camera moves, the rider’s point of view, riding a horse, more like a cooperative effort, a good relationship with a horse, a negotiation, the best riders have a deep trust relationship with their animals, what the rider asks them to do, attraction to motorcycles, the sense of freedom a motorcycle gives you, two weeks on a motorcycle, grew up around motorcycles, cars are fucking expensive, buy a used car, fuck interest, a midlevel car is $10000, $1000 for a really nice car in the 70s, the inflation calculator, the price of cars has become like homes (unaffordable), cars are luxury products, there’s no money in affordable apartments, they’re buying it for an investment property, combined with the safety insanity, less driver training, drivers being protected in the event of an accident, height restrictions, pop up headlights are not allowed anymore, hit in the middle is better?, increases the weight cost, Japan does it differently, subsidized a different way, different results, read all day, Elon Musk, making electric cars, thousands of Teslas, even on Vancouver Island, in the city everybody has one, incentive of $5-7000, carbon offsets to make gas guzzlers, double subsidized, you’re buying an Elon Musk product, what you’re not seeing, there’s no way for you to fix it yourself, another cost, why motorcycles attracted Connor, a Suzuki GS500, $2200, no insurance, written off in a bad accident, registration, third party insurance, $500 year, mechanical repairs, 50k, mechanical problems, the chain got too worn, travelled all over the place, two week trips, Uluru, around Tasmania, you can ride the whole day in less than $100 of fuel, the freedom a motorcycle can give you, the entrapments of society, a shitbox car, parking, need to have a job to afford this, why bikies, why there are no truck gangs, vanlife, live rent free on the highway, the copyright situation, if some corporate lawyer suggests, the new copyright situation, only recent and hot, or under particular control, full film, hundreds of films online completely free, the most recent things, anything past that is online, sometimes it is Tubi, youtube, Ok.ru, just use an adblocker, the cartoonish nature, the visual is more important than it being realistic, based on a finite resource, a constant supply of new parts, cracked engine case, fuel line’s fractured, the disabled mechanic, you got 12, completely disregarding the reality, how long til Cundulini’s bike is ready, go meet the truck, George Miller and George Kennedy, scrappy at one point, he’s become old and rich, the storm sequence, too much CGI, everything is practical, he’s not Hollywoodified, Tina Turner, the amount of shit that’s poured on, let’s do the Blue Lagoon is Mad Max world, a serious step-down, alive forever, the redeeming arc, like Yojimbo again, need a leader, everything in Sun City is great, you know girl power and Max Max is there, the premise is broken, why prequels don’t make any sense, the backstory is to get you to the thing you want, A Mad Max Saga, the Fallout tv show, its not perfect but it is very good, the original Fallout game from 1997, the wanderer, dog’s named dogmeat, lore, a sense of humour, a funny situation, winks and nods, goofiness, the Gyro Captain, its my snake I trained it I get to eat it, insult humour, the ultimate film, just watch Road Warrior again, he has camels now, such a cool airplane, they see Sydney, the whole mythology, bigger not better, some amazing stuff, he recycles everything, a saxophone, Tina Turner’s stilt house, the sort of scene, he has to give up his weapons, none of those weapons get used, Doctor Who’s jacket, we can see the descent happening, Jesse plays the saxophone, scrapping, parallelism, symmetry, looking for symmetry, intrinsically resonates, video essay about doppelgangers, mirrorings, they know it to be good, hard to do without the vocabulary, the mirror of the beginning to the end, builds to the hero reveal, he’s the least interesting cop, his personality is he likes his wife, coulda bin any actor who was handsome in that role, an interview with George Kennedy looking very rich, will Mel Gibson come back?, whatever the answer is it doesn’t matter, he was a replaceable protagonist, Tom Hardy, they needed a big name actor, as an old man, the eternal hero, the greatest action film ever put to film, Mad Max one is a better movie, what it is to be a man, in cahoots to try to keep him on, Fifi is an interesting character, he’s got a plan, people need heroes, the message of the film undercuts that, at the end he gives the kid a choice, he becomes an anti-hero, a great anti-hero, a film that is more Mad Max, The Rover (2014), about it being on the edge of the apocalypse, almost a better sequel to Mad Max than Mad Max II, motivation for revenge, his dog died, his dog is in the boot of the car, his relationship with his dog, gets pretty fuckin dark, his wife was cheating on him, he murdered his wife, he knew that the world was fucked, he was a farmer, he’s a bad guy, he murdered his wife and his lover, I knew that the world was over, that’s the reality, that’s Mad Max, being a paramedic is going to show you some shit, driving yourself if a horrific act, that can happy at any time, falling into the street, a pedestrian, make eyecontact with the people who can run Jesse over, cousin blind in one eye has been hit twice, with a car its usually not on purpose, outsourced to manufacture and design, required by law to wear a seatbelt, ad campaigns, shock ads, very graphic car accidents, put people face to face with the consequences of having an accident, criticized and shocked, true stories being recreated, people texting on their phone, t-boned, people screaming, somebody dead, really horrific, people were against it because it shows the real life consequences, once you see the videos coming out of Gaza, what are you supposed to do with that information, any blue will do, my god what have we done, mal-and-mis-and-disinformation, cigarette packaging, lung cancer and tumours, it could contribute, very expensive not allowed to smoke almost anywhere, working at a tobacconist, 90% of the customers were over 40, not actually as dangerous as we were lied to about, alcohol can kill you, as a toxin, drinking too much alcohol in an evening, there was no connection between melanoma and cigarettes, you do you while you can, I shouldn’t be guilt tripping you about it, subject to the propaganda all around you, Alberta is the most rebellious part of Canada, felt uncomfortable, a very defensive driver and rider, tons of car accidents, a moment’s inattention, 1% is a hell of a lot, going 110km down a road, a T-intersection, an offramp to a rest stop, some dickhead stopped in the main lane, when you’re moving, that car is getting bigger really fast, sandwiched between two cars, get the fuck out of the way, the best case scenario, passenger vs. energy, safetyism, you’re in a chair, it’s happening, a slight unexpected something, a chipmunk on the road, a car that’s smoking, responding to something unusually, the takeway, how do we not have this relationship of escalating violence, turn off the internet, control the internet, if we don’t have free communication…, the bad people say the bad things, the top-down insensitive way, keep the money rolling in, if they find out we’re stealing them blind, people’s jobs to go on the internet, three day old account, tweet is deleted, job to fight what their boss wants, rewarded to get that, you’re taste of the cash, your job is fake, doing it because they’re in the bubble so hard, how do you end up there?, what if I’m wrong, that would be horrible, the dentist company, the policies are changed, asking permission to do things, why are they asking for consent now?, do you want to have fluoride?, why are they asking now?, they can bill it differently?, too many things like that, new forks for your motorcycle, coil overs, you don’t have time to research, that first motorcycle, at the time, 100k isn’t reliable, odometer only goes to 100,000, only meant, off the grid here, heard from other people, this is why you need information on the internet, brilliantly helpful, this guy is full of shit, formed the opinion, bad opinions formed, almost dead, does that guy run a dealership, do you think good information drives out bad information?, a tossup, fear, fear is hugely motivating, a trip to Uluru, in the middle of the fuckin desert, too much money to get a tow-truck, 3000km, cheap old cars leave them on the side of the road, if this does go bad, after a certain point of your own personal experience, things can always go wrong unexpectedly, they come off the new lot with problems too, fear is deflected by insurance, BCAA, road insurance, roadside assistance, how the money is made, a model known for mechanical problems, a Holden Barina, the reality, Donald Westlake, obsessed with insurance, comic relief characters, comparing insurance, one short story about insurance, what ifs are the most susceptible, when the war on terror started, everything was what if, two different bottles of shampoo, these things are possible, how likely is it?, when it comes to fear, climate change, it’s going to do this, it’s going to do that, track your accuracy, this sounds bogus, you haven’t looked into it, the temperature is so high, one of the tricks they were doing, ground temperature, the air above the ground is never as hot as the air above it, measuring the ground temperature, there are trends, we still have glaciers that they promised would have been melted, the global ice cap was going to be open all year, traffic from Europe to Asia ice free, is this fear being generated legit or not, control and manipulate before, the most recent one, as deadly as they said, if you don’t get the shot, fear is the motivator, it did for some people, people did die of COVID, largely ineffective, people died from the shots than died from COVID, the super-scary truth that hasn’t hit the mainstream yet, look into it and really see, just like the flu, inoculate the body, prevents you from getting COVID, changed the definition, a gene therapy, a new tech, the flu doesn’t work very well, it’s worth so much money, far off Mad Max, back to The Rover, deserves to be discussed, 6.4 rating on IMDB, the ending puts some people off, the reveal, the entire motivation, oh, really, probably annoyed some people, the strength of this story, a man who has nothing by the end of the film, no real hope for the future, a man with nothing to lose, he’s the terminal crazy he was afraid he would become, angry crazy shithead, Mad Max style story, so many spinoff ripoff, Escape From The Bronx, go out into the desert, dune buggies, the 80s was full of it, vehicular combat, no bikies, more realistic, no combat with cars, people get out of cars to fight, it expands upon, if it took place, it would be a couple of the years after the first Mad Max, fuel stations, give me $100, people are getting really desperate, under martial law, the military arrest people, Mad Max 1.5, noticeably more grim and serious, so nasty and scary, resonated a lot to things happening in Australia, the Chinese influence, radio stations in Chinese playing English songs, part of Australian, Greeks and Italians as the last immigrant set, families for hundreds of years, the gold rush, more so in recent years, it wasn’t there to make a point, a reality of modern Australia, one scene, Australia has survived, tourism, manufacturing, coal takes a long time to be replenished, the wealth of modern Australia, coal trains, armed guards, one of the characters in the rover is a fly in fly out miner, the money dried up, you should do a video on The Rover, ten years ago, a science fiction story, a science fiction story, what makes it science fiction, the relationship between government and people, the roads, the food, the consequences rolling down hill to a certain set of people, bronze vs. skags, rocker panels on their jackets, they’re not how a pirate ship or a gang actually works, they’re an embodiment of the fear of anarchy, they’ll come and rape your grandma, clunk having sex with a blowup elephant, rapists, they only respect the Night Rider, never explained, willing to kill cops, maybe?, he’s stolen that car, it’s a cop car that he’s stolen, studied it a lot, so well put together, the religious stuff before, he’s calling it out there, playing the game of lifting and using, it isn’t called Jerusalem by accident, explaining things, when they leave Johnny the Boy behind, a goat they staked out, spaced out on drugs, the reason people do drugs, a when to escape, obsessed with your avatar in a game, get in good with the gang, brushing Toecutter’s hair, a catamite servant boy, it is never explained, beloved, the beach scene, the scene killing goose, make him face the horror, that’s what we do, killing someone at a distance, it’s the same, Johnny, on the other end of the button, you have stock in company that makes the missiles, even better, then you don’t have any connection, make that company illegal, something cool about what Toecutter is doing there, very villainous and very solid, more of a sense of it in the novelization, especially in Fury Road, the old world becoming mythologized, remember him when you look at the night sky, valkries, a corporeal person, a spirit goes into the sky, a satanic ceremony, these guys are amiable and nice in their way, quite responsible in comparison, we are not liking the tennis lady and her parties, that’s not real, the vagabond lifestyle, not wanting to hide out and go and get a drink, not denying their animal nature, when we see that mythologized, goes right to the end, Goose as the same kind of character for Max, someone who was good and who was killed, what made Night Rider good is he was wild, Max breaks him, he’s talking about his belief in the supernatural legend of himself, witness me, trailer bait, very disconnected from the reality, patrol the highways, a wife and a kid, pay the bills, loving the road, way more sophisticated, less and a less sophisticated as it goes, Blue Lagoon heaven, to a fake heaven that doesn’t exist, a mythical place of green, disabused of that by showing up, this is degeneration, way to far away from the ambulance for way to long, nearly 50 years, a franchise, a video game out of it, this is no longer art, scrappy art, less and less art, something else completely, a franchise is even worse, Stone is an art film, that beach scene, boobs are all out, that was beautiful, not even into dicks, God Speed You! Black Emperor (1976), heavy metal, weird funk, an anthropological film, how they decide things, new member, a part of the club, the new member stands up, my name is Connor, they slap the patch on you, a consequence, he fucks up in some way, shave his eyebrows off, he’s gonna get a name out of that, confrontations with the cops, swastika on the thing, buddihism, bikers in North America and , stahlhelms, nazi pistols, nazi flags, quite the opposite, taking a trophy, counting coup, disillusioned soldiers, fake biker gang, Sons Of Anarchy, interpersonal drama, biker gang culture, saw their friends killed, The Wild One (1953), reflecting rather than explaining, interactions with these people, not willing to submit, going off and getting killed in wars, why the biker gangs still exist, rotarian groups, shriners, the masons, they’re all dying, in the shit of it, served in the military, time with their friends away from women, companionship on the road, bikes, car clubs, not organized like bikers, living an alternative lifestyle, amish as a response to horror, why do you have that on your stuff, taking the badges of your enemy, a good documentary I’d like to see, thoughts and lives, biking culture, Japan, rebelling, post-war, disillusionment, no point of being part of this society, a hangover, human life thrown away, what is it ever doing for me, an alternative way of living, to be able to explain it, Blue Ruin (2013), pretty great, Taken (2008) is palatable, competence porn, alcoholic, the lowest of the low rising up to meet a challenge, his parents are murdered, he tries to take revenge, the folly of revenge, Momento (2000) too, Green Room (2015), music at a nazi bar, witness a murder, lock themselves in the green room, a pocket Assault On Precinct 13 (1976), a struggle, at night during the week, ping you online, great chatting.

Mad Max - Frank Frazetta

Mad Max by Terry Kaye

Posted by Jesse Willis

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

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

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

The Fearless Benjamin Lay by Marcus Rediker

Posted by Jesse Willis