The SFFaudio Podcast #856 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Exploration Team by Murray Leinster AND The Velvet Glove by Harry Harrison

The SFFaudio Podcast #856 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Exploration Team by Murray Leinster, read by Ben Tucker (1 hour 40 minutes), AND The Velvet Glove by Harry Harrison, read by Gregg Margarite (44 minutes), both for LibriVox. The discussion of both with Jesse, Will Emmons begins at 2 hours 25 minutes.

Talked about on today’s show:
2 hours, Ben-Hur, Bill The Galactic Hero, Space Tug, tugboat in space, maritime stuff, zygote, developing in a womb for 38 years, Damien by Hermann Hesse, a bird has to break out of an egg, Ray Bradbury, most accessible of his books, The Glass Bead Game, what’s the cover look like, not a lot of spaceships and dragons, a bird, a flock of birds, a sun with a face in it, Æpyornis Island, accidental father, becomes aggressive, it is very good, H.G. Wells, continuously mean characters, not every piece of science fiction is equally good, better written vs. better ideas, a value judgement, The Velvet Glove, 1 to 2 ideas, much better in terms of ideas, robot underclass, almost like reality as it is, the robot meets a blackman, how many people were lynched in 1956 just for, if you have this book burn it, Scott Miller’s audiobook Robot Strike by Harry Harrison, the better of Asimov, joining this federal agency, The Stainless Steel Rat, first person perspective, pushed in to working for a benevolent law enforcement agency, subversiveness, the craft is a little weak, a me problem, taking his legs off, robot body parts, a strong craftsman, a little repetitive at points, he invented a world, really good science fiction for a bit, I likes bears, the eagle, the setup, the plot is ok, the resolution is fine, mutated bears, a value judgement, galactic manifest destiny, the problem with the robots, we become the servants to robots, how the two stories interact, the background, very minimal, minimal goals, wouldn’t it be cool if you had bears who were your friends?, swat her baby bear, many times, bears communicate with their fellow bears by swatting, how momma cats take care of their baby cats, make them run away, we’re lovin it, that’s the only thing going on in the story, needs to arrest him, illegally colonizing, keeps confessing to crimes, never a real threat in the story, we just lie a little bit on the forms, how we’re gonna classify you in the end, trick readers, trick John W. Campbell, a buncha bears, cool names, why wouldn’t I like this, goddamn big, goddamn small, a very goddamn big eagle, Sitka Charlie, Sourdough Pete, Nugget, Huygens, a tier down from Newton, kinda cool, famous dutch scientist, a hidden story in it, a hidden truth, what is inside of this story?, we have been entrained, entertainment isn’t enough, it’s terrible because it doesn’t do anything, you should read my novel it has power armour, the power armour is the main character, the guy inside, and the power armour has been dead for 16 years, and the power armour is corresponding with his wife, ‘I’m gonna be home soon’, can a man come home if he can’t actually take off his armour?, donkeys are not food, friends not food, food and friend, dogs not so much, mmm donkey milk, wouldn’t be cool to have a bear for a friend, barely science fiction, that’s the problem with it, science fiction adventure writing, dismissing something, wanna be friend, cool to be friends with Scott Miller and a donkey, Man-Hunting Robot by James Rosenquest, dining hall full of skeletons, chased by this robot, like The Running Man, joining the galactic police, galaxy’s most famous criminal forced to join the cops, subverting rather than joining, Ben Tucker’s good, very little to talk about it, fold in, see the hidden story within it, we turn our attention back to The Velvet Glove, Mississippi Burning (1988), Willem Dafoe and Gene Hackman, nice feds, mistrustive of institutions, gritty realism, didn’t look good anymore, a complaint through the grapevine, no teeth, no job, clean clothes, shoes that don’t look terrible, goes down that direction, when the robot gets kidnapped, plot shit, Robot Grapes Of Wrath, Brian Aldiss, the iron fist in the velvet glove, Napoleon, the Iron Hand of Mars, their standard is a literal iron hand, the iron fist in the velvet glove in the flaxen gauntlet, literally iron hands, from the POV of a robot, a way better than an Asimov story in general, the first law in the 92nd chip, kicks ass, the job interview, all downhill from there, the opening, editor of Fantastic Universe, the poor man’s F&SF, they don’t have the money, robots who don’t know their place, New York was a bad town for Robots, John Vennex, so excellent, he would have his leg off in a jiffy, old dead friend, Gregg Margarite, he fixes his leg, the light goes off, the comic strip from the newspaper, infrared light, an Asimov robot story but told from a much better pov, 1st person Asimov?, The Naked Sun, a sense of humour, smooth and easy, totally ripped off for Futurama, rusty on his face when he doesn’t drink too much, Robot Arms, a standing space, playing with the idea, New New York, a story with a story inside of it, robots are never about robots, they should be now, they’re about the division of labour, bro, robots get religion, the way that Philip K. Dick is much more exploratory, working joes with chips in their heads, the bomb and that boring stuff, a drunk guy there, almost hard to follow, down with the truck driver, black man being harassed for being too uppity, put on a livewire, he has instant recall, perfect senses, see things in the dark, a superman treated as an underclass, corpulent man, bumping in, saved by his employer/owner, right after the robot liberation from slavery, this might be a sequel to the robot strike, a loose sequel, the plot is crap, accurate, compelling stuff, hardup itinerant robots, what is this freedom, wishes he was owned, Harrison really had something here, financial incentive, he’s good at characterization, Asimov’s not good at, silly, a promise of more, he’s reading the book, back in the same situation, the closet in his room, please destroy this card after reading, any Tuesday at 5pm, a perfect memory, playing with the idea that he is a man, a superman, undercut by restrictions that Asimov has put on him, Harry Harrison has adopted, the society that he’s in, a forgettable Asimov story with characterization, should have been a classic for the ages, mass meeting, go on strike, one of the laws of robotics, any order that a human or robot gives you, shut down New York City, a whole lotta violence, human on human violence, the Robot Equality Act, drunk woman orders, a bottle of liquor, he couldn’t say no, Deathworld is good, The Stainless steel Rat, Slippery Jim DiGriz, in a fun world, light hearted, Soylent Green (1973), Make Room, Make Room, emotionally moving, The Senator’s Daughter by Edward Page Mitchell, Bill Christensen from Technovelgy, The Man Without A Body, Star Trek transporter through telephone wires, The New York Sun, 1879, 13 pages of text by transcription, Chapter 1, The Small Gold Box, 1937, Daniel Webster Wanli, eating a toilet, a rather elaborate toilet, googledocs, readalong, something Jesse complains about, walk up to a mirror, so funny, so bad, C.S. Forester novel, a first novel problem, you never have H.G. Wells doing that, in the glass he beheld, a perfect oval, short upper lip, he’s Fu-Manchu, dancing pumps, a pure Mongolian ancestry, this story is super-anti racist, but uses all the racist language, so interesting, profusion over the neck and shoulders, nickerboker breeches, intelligent good sense, an easy grace, the voice of his friend, how are we off for time, getting late, curtains, strode in, the Honorable member, prepared to conquer tonight, these frivolities, blush, infernally cold, it is snowing hard in New York, traveling at supersonic speeds, awesome, dressed hilariously, what a dandy, thermal electrode, waltz creditably, a sphere of shining platinum, that feels good, the scarlet bows, what would your constituents say?, th mainstay of the hope of the Extreme Left, knee ribbons, at a fashionable Harlem hop, the Bette Noir, this is very good, raillery, noiseless rollers, wickerbasket, the tech is great, so silly, can’t help but love it, the Contemporary News?, the Interminable Intelligencer, the organ of his own party, the wealth the beauty, unprecedented luster, stately wife, ex-President, sinecure, how funny the contrast here, set in 1937, bitter political animosity, just complaining about his now wearing a suit, Zelensky, guy who wears shorts, John Fetterman, slouch-ass clothes, when Netanyahu came to congress, the Israeli lobby probably paid for the suit, General Kwong, the defeated Mongol Vegetarian Candidate, the Chinese ambassador, strongly marked Asiatic features, the Chinese ambassador is probably a woman, this isn’t a homophobia story, little details, the Battle of Cheyenne, hoodlum fighter, equality of his racist, anti-racist in its racism, a Jesse definition, it could be a correct one, 1879, Chinese Exclusion Act, the ferment, far distant future, 60 years in the future, that’s a newspaper but in a constant flood, this is the tech used from stocks, a stock ticker, wired telegraphy, it’s amazing, what the hell is going on?, the toilets of the ladies are charming, the peacock feather train, give me a dinner, eaten nothing for 15 days, genuine science fiction, oh good, it’s not a small room, it is not hyperbole, the Mongol Vegetarian party, oval in form, a number of grey pastilles, candy, hardly larger than peas, thus do I satisfy mine hunger, vile and degrading, outraging the very laws of nature, the small gold box, with eager gaze, as if involuntary, Schneke, Senator Newton, no small sensation, regarding him earnestly, affected indifference, I think my dear boy, proceed to the capital, totally loveable, as being twitter, constant firehouse of information, ticker at the bottom of cable of news, description of the inauguration, so far, he’s a white guy who likes a chinese guy, very charming, this style of writing, this style of science fiction, owe it to Bill Christensen, science fiction tropes, interested in the origins, she’s an archaeologist, an aztec mummy, comes to life, never dead, suspended animation, I have no soul, come with me and we’ll suspended forever, sounds good, H. Rider Haggard energy, adventure and romance, funny intentionally, also science fiction, disarming you with humour, subversive all over the place, the ball at the capital, a brilliant throng, the rotunda of the capital, delectation, wall of flowers, D.C., not dingy, set in the future, worth noting, temporary interior dome, concavity, oppressive shower of fragrance, a single jet of water, flooding the room with light, as the light of the Moon, gave utterance to the notes, the vibrant tip of his baton, light and blurry and difficult, a contemporary conductor, live music delivered across the ocean, blocking the rotunda’s concavity, nice smell and music, the tech here, gave utterance to the note, so futuristic, for 1879, hydrolecrtic fountain, scientifiction, met and mingled, seized and led of captive, scarcely noticing, exchanging bows, accosted by General Kwong, the campaign of 1936, a repeat, he really wants you to know and note it, the Democrat/Republicans and the Mongol Vegetarians, February of 1937, a Chinesey accent, the senate chamber, retraced his steps, the other extremity of the capital, been there, done his research, all this walking around, the music of a waltz, several hundred couples, apparently an Italian, relinquished her waist, this story is great, holding out her hand, thank you Miss Newton, you may retire Francesco, I shall not need you again, bowed respectfully, this Italian guy, dismissed him like he’s a servant, wasp white ethnic divide, she’s in love with a chinese dude, looking forward to it, glided off together, slap, thanked her with a smile, competent professional partner, sit dismally around the walls, a shade of annoyance, forgive me if I have wounded you, there’s a story by Jerome K. Jerome, The Dancing Partner, novel notes, a good horror story, blood and dancing, a dancing machine for girls, what a blessing, unfinished, a call back to the time in which the story is published, hire our own guys to dance with us, not just progressive in racial terms, also in gender terms, absolutely insane, what he’s laying down, the next one is unfinished, he knows it, a feather’s weight, in society, in her father’s laundry, sampan, don’t you love this, as you well know, Jim, first spacecraft to land on mars, these Tesla batteries, reflecting while they’re dancing, not going to be a popular science fiction story, it’s amazing, an anonymous story, just content, my mom was doing your family’s laundry, isolated rural peasant, Yangtze, Deep Space 9, literally think, a lot like Gene Roddenberry, really strange, neat futuristic stuff, the tech, progressive gets a lot of negative material, that means he’s a shit, people being inferior is wrong, poppa?, tiresome speech against the vegetables, manifest embarrassment, trembling in my happiness, a conservative among the conservatives, this must have an end, an equivocal position, on one bold move, a charming blush, you beloved little puritan, honky, he’s insulting her, a congregationalist, as they passed out of the hall of representatives, she’s racist, I may need your counsel before morning, Massachusetts sweetheart, a screen of palmettos, asked him for food, bit his underlip, heaped with delicate viands, obtain refreshment, I’m going to ask you for a final proof of your affection, a wing of a fowl, a plate of fruit, I’m a vegan, the theory of your party, the political topic of the day, there isn’t a vegan party, demagogy, an absurd and sophistical theory, the radicalism of the rabble, capitalization, political right?, moral right, abstract morality, an upheaval, science and abstract Right, the march of time, his flaming eyes, she could not hide, his manly bearing, long hair don’t care, a beautiful toilet, a dandy, knickerbockers, a cartoon of this, every animal, most insignificant mollusc, children of the common Evolution, the great family, the Australian bushman, the ox, levels to this shit, so heady, is not the butchery of the murder, fratricide?, cannibalism, in the habit of long ages, Benjamin Lay, the nadir for vegetarianism, Hitler, a rise the 60s, whole foods, we forgot this was a big thing, making an argument that only science fiction can make, very progressive, modern shitty racism theory, that description of his body, he has little feet, so crazy, would you elevate them to suffrage, the baboon?, at least not at the present, the right to vote, the ox, the chicken, the baboon, sentence in isolation, hilarious, mind continuously blown, for the sake of a meal, how evolution works, we got there first, the pinnacle of being an organism, where uplift comes from, The Island Of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells, those are noble sentiments, the adverbs for everything, he said with a smile and a bit of sadness, they will carry the country of 1940, Mongol-Vegetarian party, a fusion between a pro-Asian party and the vegetarian party, the Mongol Free Love party, I admire your earnestness, even so much as a chicken wing, women didn’t have the vote, almost like a checklist of progressive ideas and tech, with your words still in my ears, a little fruit, the great mass of our party, this story is getting better and better, the laggards up to our line, calmly await ultimate results, how can we escape, the tree, the plant, event the fungus, who can say where vegetable life ends, to uproot a potato, to pluck a grape, to outrage consanguinity, the vocab of the author and the character, a duty to refrain from vegetable food, all living things are born free, is not that a beautiful thought, Canadian humour pop bands, [Arrogant Worms – Carrot Juice is Murder], must we starve to death, what a sentence, the small gold box, her white hand, it will satisfy her hunger, morsel, even if it were poison, nourishment, tasteless, 18 to 25 days, entire 76th congress, more than 20 years, handwavium, nice infodump, proximate principles, fibrin, albumen, by the old plan, muscular tissues of the ox, encumbered, back to the toilet, in the ideal form of food no ladies have to poop, no useless irrelevant matter, the German chemists, the fountainhead of nature, now shall the evils of gluttony, brother vegetables, now shall all this be, the lips I love, stockings have flowers, this man is so elaborate, funny looking, at this point in the story, he’s making fun of vegetarians, how can he be anti-racist and making fun of vegetarians, two things at once, too sophisticated, The Ball At The Capital, pills that are food, Mr. Wallsingham Brown, that Italian dancer, following you like a hound, her Mongolian lover, there shall be no scene, what’s his business, the wingman, racist against the Mongolian, inner party, a rich kid, he’s not from old old money, his parents had a laundry, Pennsylvania Avenue, the bowels of the earth, luxuriously upholstered, to Boston, a pneumatic tube, the New York subway system, the final chapter, The Frozen Bride, 1904, London Underground, 1863, Paris, he doesn’t invent things out of wholecloth, The Man Without A Body, why not physical objects, wired lines, everything in this story makes sense, even that is correct, u can live like that for a long time, still peeing, toxins removed,having some fun, reading it with a straight face, like The Coming Race, we don’t wanna kill animals and eat their flesh, a nice tree, as soon as you say: don’t eat fruit, look at me, a flashing neon sign, come eat me!, kale, cabbage, vegetables don’t want to be eaten, fruits want to be eating, “want”, evolved to be eaten, extend voting rights to apples, too parodic, people might twig to the fact, the suffrage of the succotash, the Narragansett word, before Lovecraft said I’m a native, The Dunwich Horror, bushmen and indians, radical, more radical, undercooked intellectually, doesn’t complete sentence, a short hard laugh, the lower branch, his colleague, the lower house, the upper house, the lower branch of humanity, senators vs. congressmen, Bernie Sanders calls it the House Of Lords, waist of the young Chinaman, because I love him, long afterword, after the story material, Los Angeles apartment, not good craft, that mirror stuff, it is funny, foolish child, profit in the least, sinister operations, deceives himself, won’t even say his name, emotional control, he’s so important, very patrician, as an honorable man, honorable marriage, with a sneer, a prophet, an apostle of Vegetable Rights, let him seek a cactus in marriage, wanton insult, loves his emdashes does Edward Page Mitchell, such is due him, I go with him, a lawyer, the Suspended Animation Act, surely you would not, inhuman, outrageous enactment, for a quarter of a century, Wanli swoons, he swooned, he’s womanly with that long hair, flowery socks, firmly set teeth, another kick in the balls, I will read the text, the ritual of this marriage, female person, maid or widow under the age of 30 years, registered consent, null and void, such parents or guardians, really interesting, marriage is controlled by the states, why is he writing about this?, writing for money, Margaret St. Clair, participate, Harry Harrison, Murray Leinster, other kinds of fiction, western, crime, romance, fill pages, make content, get content, he’s thought about, he’s a Walsingham Brown, laws against that, set it in the future, the punishment for offending is being frozen, since the 18th century, animals that hibernate, 1801, speak for people, for space travel, a gimmick to get somebody into the future, The Jameson Satellite, the first Heinlein novel, For Us, the Living, an evil story, The Marching Morons, not a Good story, an Evil story, the history of refrigeration, Cool Air by H.P. Lovecraft, when his wife left him, crappy boarding house, the slattern who runs the place, boils weird cabbages, an old Spanish man, a zombie, using air conditioning, refrigeration vs. ice boxes, battery powered stuff, first electronic refrigeration, ice truck deliveries, 1913, the idea, the concept exists before it is marketed, freeze people, such a strange turn in the story, the new world struggling to be born, what does it mean?, the cruel sin of the fathers, we must part, as if to dismiss, a bugaboo, 4am, arguing for 2 hours, as cold and self-possessed, frozen, he has frozen me already with his frigid heart, the 27th amendment, according to his pleasure, a means to procure divorce, not superlegal, freeze yourself, a right to put yourself on pause, government paid for?, pause yourself, so as to avoid paying alimony?, get out of your marriage, by going into the future, by waiting for her to die, how did this come up, invents freezing, that’s immoral, 27th seems high, shorten the time between elections, WWII or previous, change the salaries of congress members, Nancy Pelosi is $180 [$240] millionaire, the clergyman, the Refuge, the cloister, soliloquy, his life probabilities, the vital bureau of Washington, Lifeline by Robert A. Heinlein, the insurance companies murder him, cute, claim your bride, another Heinlein one, The Door Into Summer, child bride, frozen husbansicle, age up to “husband high”, tall enough to get married, Wyoming Knot, pale cheeks, womanish rhinelanders, very emotional, dissuade the caucasian, he’s got the tissue ready, fresh rosy, prematurely aged, sallow, flacid, a skeleton, a ghost of her former self, absolute suspension would be death, they gnaw and prey upon, the last and most perfect argument that can be addressed, what if you get ugly?, for my poor beauty I care very little, the little gold box, swallowed it’s entire contents, valances today, she swallows the whole bottle of pills, my duty is with you, the joy of awakening, you have a great and noble order to perform, I think your duty is plain, you’re important, outlive my dad, voting rights to cabbages and carrots, not to fruit, once the chickens get ready, David Brin, in the gray dawn, Cambridgeport, a mockery of grief, grave and silent, tearless eyes, sobbing, cried out all his tears, the congealing chamber, icy embrace, does it have a plot?, does it cohere?, withered husky, is it a good story, no, is it a great story yes, timeline, twenty minutes, typesetting, that tracks, a better science fiction than the other two, it’s great science fiction, completely nuts, gonzo, a real gem, his website has been around forever, based on his references, however long the internet has been around, the text is on gutenberg australia but it is not a reliable text, chronicle.gov, capitalizations and corrections, why is there no Jewish Narnia, what about…, a Jewish fantasist, this is not a fantasy writer anybody has heard of, not in the mainstream, even Tolkien and Lewis, Olaf Stapledon, and H.G. Wells, not submitting to Astounding, they fit, copying Wells, some New York Review Of Books, obscure, the idea holds, secondary world fantasy, a lot of Mormons doing it, the secondary world, totally off the radar of mainstream science fiction, died in 1927, born in 1852, an earlier science fiction writer, The Clock That Went Backwards, 1881, the plot of Back To The Future (1985), a Dutch starvation siege, instead of Doc Brown, Delorean time machine, the progenitor of the whole family, like Time Rider (1982), an excellent science fiction movie, it’s tight, gold to be mined, Tachypomp, Back From The Bourn, The Soul Spectroscope, The Exchanging Of Their Souls, The Extraordinary Wedding, Or War With Monaco, sounds good, The Balloon Tree, 1886, The New York Sun, letter column, handin around, way more disposable, done that day, save a newspaper longer than a day, on a ship, becomes toilet paper, with Weird Tales you can stack em up, participatory, magazines are more collectable, in comes the collecting thing, fill your bins, two stories in the official podcast, almost awesome, enriched, tell Meg about that, tell her the fun parts, bride getting frozen, totally science fiction, not like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Lucian of Samosata, doesn’t scream SCIENCE FICTION at you, the closest competitor Fitz-James O’Brien, weird fiction, in a proper sense, Jules Verne, it depends on the story, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, From The Earth To Moon, a play for comedy, Stephen Leacock, The New Food, pills as food, a secret story inside of it, Jesse’s thesis, every podcast on two science fiction stories has two science fiction stories inside of it, Professor Plum, all the essential nutritive elements, ordinary article of diet, drawbacks as well, the smiling family, plentiously laid, the radiant mother, the Christmas dinner, resting on a poker chip, lifted the thimble, this is great, an agonized cry from the mother, Gustavus Adolphus, the unthinking child, give him water, a dull rumbling sound, exploded into fragments, a lingering smile, 13 Christmas dinners, exploding baby, a happy baby, The Retroactive Existence Of Mr. Juggins, make a proper handle, a sapling, sharpen up the axe, fix the grindstone, making wooden legs, a carpenter’s bench, never came back, metafiction, really fun, no name for a baby, an allusion to a real person who exploded on a battlefield, it by a cannonball, a good think in the background, LibriVox, The Tachypomp, read by Ben Tucker, The Devil’s Funeral, The Crystal Man, Back From That Bourne, An Extraordinary Wedding, 70 young men, a math story, for whom the limbs of heavenly bodies, spectacular stage?, Polyp University, two weeks where the story is about marriage, a lot of marriage going around, a show on food, throughout science fiction, superfood to animals, he becomes a giant, giant chickens, giant cows, go with The Tachypomp, a picture of a yeti, bigfoot smoking a pipe, a body cleaning product, pharmacy section, wearing a suit, a smoking jacket, pocket, he’s pretty cute, product design, looking at shelves, where the true art is, Coffin Crisp, Coffee Crisp, during Halloween, I love this, make this my desktop, Smarties, Mars bars with bats, the gimmick, almost all art related, Gaza is being holocausted video, a fake meat Margaret St. Clair story, a fake meat factory, 3 shill magazines, the sounds in the vats, tourmaster, made of the meat, fleshy monster, to be cut up to be served, a cute little story that addresses Mr. Wanli’s concerns, she’s great, funny and horrible at the same time, is it terrorism, video slaughterhouses, what a wonder, The Green Queen, bad novel great book, a Margaret’s St. Clair’s Magazine, Asimov is good, series sellout, a Philip K. Dick magazine, the UBIK end, have to be based on her stories, domestic weird science fiction, earthbound, stuff set in space, go back in time and marry her, finds the lady, Somewhere In Time, she renewed too much, Return Engagement, old reliable Ben Tucker, 28 minutes, pair it with another, voles with laser beams on their heads, very Margaret St. Clair, The Gardener, a creepy kind of space horror story, chops down a sacred tree, totemic guardian of the tree, she likes plants a lot, a trans story, she is telling her story, she’s mentally ill, her old wife, she murders that person, I paid for your operation, be in my alien zoo, she murders her old identity, published in nice editions, there’s no audiobook, Mike Vendetti, fantasy by her, they just stopped making books, someone has to create content, series, power armour book, an army of self promoting indie authors, Jonathan’s second Scandals funded, two good looking covers, pretty extreme art inside, made a deal with the devil, the John De La Roz crew, friendly with each other online, taking a stand against Paul based on nothing, Ben-Hur next week, very relevant for the creation of Israel, Americans who support Zionism, people have ideas, it wasn’t all sexual blackmail, Christian zionism, Lew Wallace and the movies, the 1959 movie, sword and sandal movies, Jewish characters are prominently presented, he plays Moses, The Ten Commandments, Charlton Heston playing Jews, just don’t hate on us, we want you in Israel, Exodus (1960), Paul Newman, set in 1948, all the teams coming together, a piece of propaganda saying Israel good, not a lot about the Nakba, what’s the lesson here, he does a lot of work to make Jews good people, very powerful looking film, insane aspect ratio, horses getting crushed, people in the stands watching the show, sets look amazing, the 2016 one, the CGI is quite good, point of view cam, bad dialogue, he goes to Rome, the Circus Maximus, chariot race, Palmyra, done in a minute, Jews are really good people, we really support Israel, the Zionist political movement, Camp David Accords wrong, it’s fuckin nuts, Balfour Declaration, the Rothschild family, Napoleon, mostly secular, ethnic Jews, Millenarian, a book for Christians about Judaism, very well written, the method of storytelling, second person plural, we follow them, first person plural, our attention is drawn to, an experimental thing, this book was bigger than Harriet Beecher Stowe, super-Christian in a good way, probably prompted, a Union Civil War general, Cynical-C blog, Robert Ingersoll, miracles are bullshit, train ride, gotta do my own research, produced Ben-Hur, the story of his beliefs, one of the few books blessed by a Pope, back when people read, pulp style, at least in higher circles, the American frontier, money, books used to be expensive, buying a book was no joke, books are all free, the physical object, I can’t afford that book, access to books, very accessible, they’re all cheap, Costco stopped selling books, we don’t make money on this shit, Amazon’s going to stop selling physical books in 2027 (except maybe as gimmick books), buying books as trophies, too expensive, too heavy, too big, you’re not a library bro, hardcover small press, tradepaperback, pocketsize have been banned (by the system), Hard Case Crime, the old fashioned pocket size mass market, had to go along with it, where’s your distribution for those, weird no longer mass market, extended height for no good reason, sit out more prominently, thank you sir.

Exploration Team by Murray Leinster

The Velvet Glove by Harry Harrison

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #851 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Jameson Satellite by Neil R. Jones and Mellonta Tauta by Edgar Allan Poe

The SFFaudio Podcast #851 – Prize Ship by The Jameson Satellite by Neil R. Jones (53 minutes) read by Josh Horowitz and Mellonta Tauta by Edgar Allan Poe (36 minutes) read by Drakaunus. These are followed by a discussion of both. Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Will Emmons.

Talked about on today’s show:
The Jameson Satellite, Amazing Stories, July 1931, Mellonta Tauta by Edgar Allan Poe, Godey’s Lady’s Book, February 1849, also in Amazing Stories, Novemwbr 1933, tweeting is writing, pair it with something, an interesting pairing, thematically connected, a sommelier, tasting notes, one is much better than the other, we can agree, Neil R. Jones, as a story, good narrator, rough, short, intervening period, the sentence are pages long, makes it harder, one over the other, a “better story”, story is the wrong world, a meditation, congeries, a disorderly collection, a jumble, densely packed, a few through lines, human values have utterly changed, we’re told and then we’re shown, the wrong way to approach literature, what to put out there, edifying ideas, Edgar Allan Poe probably believed intuition was stronger than a posteri logic, just sort of there, social criticism, we don’t even care if people die, maybe Poe thought that, a very hard to understand man, 1840s is not our period, a different world, when talking about Poe, had he lived a few more years, the wrong side, we all implicitly know this, you could argue that he wouldn’t of, would have wanted to have been involved, one of the facts, stumbled through, plowed up, people’s takes on this story, his grandfather was a general in the American Army, somewhat inovoled in espionage, tried to become an officer, he went to West Point, cipher stories, stories not considered difficult, he’s gotta show his brain, this mess of a story is amusing and full of interesting things but as a story is terrible, easily captured by interesting details, hooks, you can love it even though it’s not a good story, a very solid story, what?! stupid, being on track, when he falls into the volcano and breaks himself, he calls out psychically to the aliens, your brain is different, suspense shit, artificially make it bad, works incredibly well, similar cosmic scope, 40 million years or whatever, Edgar Allan Poe with his 7 diary entries, given how old it is, 100 years older, super-old, 180 years old, do some math, 2025 – 1848 ?, 177 years old, buy it unbound, copies of that in a bound form, newspaper is pretty sketchy, a flyer, designed to be ephemeral, no waybackmachine for 1849, some weirdo hoarding, basement or loft, a promotional book put online by Land Rover, a 10 year old reading experience, all that stuff is not preserved by the waybackmachine, the audio and the javascript, just think about plays, surreptitiously recording a play, perfomred and lauded and respected, minor notes in a magazine in a newspaper, both of Poe’s parents were actors, you can still go to Ford’s theater, not the same actors, with regards to preservation, a theme of both of these stories, really fun, seems silly, with the radium, when he preserves his body, the story is made of elements, a bad chemistry metaphor, plans to preserve my body, references to the ancient egyptians, all those premature burials, a grave preserved for the lifetime of your loved ones, keep my ashes in their house, for religious people, bodily risen up by Jesus, preserve the bones, coffins and graveyards and memorials, the boomers are moving towards cremation, need land reform for graveyards, people take up a lot of space, morality about bodies, wars are good, the presumption, Solander’s Radio Tomb by Ellis Parker Butler, Pigs Is Pigs, eventually becomes the tribbles story, Martian flat cats, normal stories, An Experiment In Gyro Hats, Radio News, December 1923, a giant radio, speakers, a comedy story, revised slightly, a lich who gets his wish, the things in his will done after his death, a religious radio station, codicils in his will, give sermons, moving their graves out, the changing attitudes, if enough people don’t like jazz anymore, the radio station becomes unfashionable, a very similar idea, orbiting the earth, way past that, there is no character involved, the earth becoming tidally locked with the sun, all very fun, thinking about my own death, first dead man on the moon, sort of useless, an elaborate tomb, a nice bed, a cup of water beside the bed, free wifi, students can drink their starbucks on the steps of my tomb, where it could start, he’s no longer in his own body, he’s materially no longer himself, there’s no left and right anymore, he has no body, ears don’t seem to be thing anymore, or sleep maybe, or eat, autotrophic, a tiny bit of philosophy, sort of benevolent, what’s going on in the universe, great idea!, travel to all those planets out there!, contrast that with Mellonta Tauta, best friend/husband, wants to annoy, Poe is leaning into it, opposite philosophies, death vs. transcending death, a collection of observations about the 19th century and what is real, we are probably in a giant galaxy orbiting a black hole, it’s deep, one is shallowly deep, deep and easily dismissable, good in their way, Will can dig it, the climax, considering suicide, the benevolence, you could come with us, contemplating suicide, staying with the dead thing, staying with the dead earth, bury your loved one, jumps into the grave with the dead person, the alternate way, allow that person to be buried and visit a lot, dead and can’t respond, having been orbiting the earth not just his whole life, very cool, visiting the graveyard all the time, transitioning between life phases, accumulate mementos, throw away part of yourself, throwing away the possibility of being reminded of it, orients us, fixate on those sorts of things, different possibilities, the price of going out into the universe, leave behind this dead thing, a price you pay, he has that thrust upon him, really dramatic moments in the story, it’s fun and interesting and not self-aware, that era of science fiction, not true of Poe at all, gets in the way of himself, the audio version, sometimes excluded is the editorial introduction, hopefully the readers will, hopefully you guys get it, I don’t know, fun and funny, whenever presented with a fact through words, especially through words, it’s blue now, long story short that’s a false claim, you know Jesse’s nature, telling an untruth, in a story especially in print, the propaganda works, January 6th was an insurrection, if repeated enough, McDonald’s catchphrase, I’m lovin’ it, whoever I am, whatever it is, you become the I, more McDonalds, Hardees, Carl Jr.’s, same kind of situation, breakfast later than McDonalds, the getting up late lifestyle, many unhealthy things, physical constitution, Lord grant me chastity but not yet, reiterate, really good science fiction, really naive and fun, that deep time element, most science fiction stories of the period, associate with Lovecraft, The Shadow Out Of Time, vegetable men, aliens, a professor who has his consciousness transported through time, vegetable bodies, a mindswap, from the ancient earth and outer space, have a family, not consensual, they’re not even they’re just explorers, Douglas Adams, how big space is, almost Star Trek, the natural result of keeping down the TNG path, smoothed out and smoothed out, Lt. Brocclis, pursuing the interests, helping each other, eventually what they are, they don’t EXTERMINATE!, talk to them, cutely naive and nice, cynical with takes he wants to give you, our balloon is crashing, whatever!, that’s fine, I wrote it for my own benefit anyway, he’s great, he needed to get these ideas out there, when not drunk, not a good drunk to be around, doesn’t have people he can talk to, experienced with demons, both parents dead age 2, won’t even adopt him, loves one, hates the other, intellectual problems, kinda have money, nobody understands you, too many hormones, be more calm, go by days, sections by days, thematically organized, April 1st, he knows what he’s doing, foredated, displayed until, looking at march magazines on the newsracks, dated ahead, the year is 2848, probably when it was published, early early January at the latest, 1000 years, puzzle stories, largely the inventor of detective stories, other than possibly in China, Judge Dee, an analogy at best, reading Roman novels, watching the latest Star Trek Section 31 movie, it is that different, they don’t map together, Lucian of Somosata, it’s not science fiction, weird laurel, is it science fiction, Hugo Gernsback would say so, self conscious, the materials available, extends to be still valuable, because of its comedy aspect, Now my dear friend, a long gossiping letter, a comedic engagement and science fiction, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, the floating disc places with scientists, he’s taking apart science of his period, a really interesting argument, not really trying to tell us about technology, what science fiction is about, how knowledge of the universe changes us, the ruins of the island of Manhattan, fixing up the palace’s yard, a time capsule, the starting stone of a building, improper deductions, a way of attacking his period, Godey’s Lady’s Book had illustrations, they look like turkeys, April 8th, Eurkea!, a balloon from Kanada, late papers, Amerikan antiquities, a new fountain at Paradise, an island time out of mind, a rivulet, the whole length of the island is 9 miles, densely packed with houses, 20 stories high, the year 2050, wherewith to build up even the ghost of a theory, they were of a great portion of the Knickerbocker tribe of savages, pants, some allusion, a knight of the Golden Fleece, after a fashion of their own, acute in many respects, the poe phrase “monomania”, a kind of pagoda, wealth and fashion, an attack on modern New York, natural protuberance, in the light of beauty, miraculously preserved, a turkey cock and a dromedary, a savage attack on women’s fashion, the contents of the cornerstone, likely to have been a dealer in corn, they must have turned him into sausages, as a kind of science fiction, science fiction-like in many respects, it doesn’t work as a story, it works as an artifact, reproduced in the newspapers, undercooked, why are they on this balloon?, other balloons, above and below, having its gas changed, so infested with people, not fully supported by the story, travelers through the sky, no evidence that they’re powered, floating, travel by train at 300 miles per hour, Pundit and Pundita, people of the future, too undercooked to be a coherent story, two angels talking to each other, a dialogue, those are something but they’re not science fiction, worthy of being included in a science fiction magazine, a curiosity, allow that analysis, the canons of the short story, he’s a pioneer, we don’t know what to expect, The Complete Poe, a story or a fable, subtitles, an essay, The Philosophy Of Composition, how poetry should be made, The Raven, a space filler, the word magazine, the part of the shop where the gunpowder is, argosy essentially means magazine, its full of good stuff, these metaphors extend and change, a piece about hansom cabs, ruminating for a moment on hansom cabs, robotic looking a new technology, a two wheeled vehicle pulled by a horse, watching Sherlock Holmes tv adaptations, a new tech, patented in the UK, what’s it like to ride in an uber, here’s a Poe something, its not a short story, The Premature Burial, articles and anecdotes, a story at the end, The Cask Of Amontillado, a confession piece, Guy de Maupassant, and Hemingway, a form of art, doing a skit is not a play, sing, Shakespearean plays, bums in seats, in the direction of science fiction, precluding it from being science fiction, a way of judging and classifying, this piece is a good piece but not a good short story, is this a good novel?, no, just finished Dune, too long?, seductive, Frank Herbert, he could be wrong, complete and enough, a good novel as well as a good story also an evil story and scary, Paul’s doing what’s right here, not as a 13 year old boy, many 13 year old boys have read it, exposed to moral complexity, great bene gesserit characters, rich and smart, full of the ecosystem shit, wheels within wheels and plans within plans, surprising and scary and revealing, should we use people as objects to accomplish our goals, especially if we want to live, why are the Harkonnens bad and the Atredies good, at least worse, Leto vs. Paul, values people more than anything, muddled, lost perspective, the worm is coming, the scene that shows his character, reunited with Gurney Halleck, equipment vs. people, going in we’re on Paul’s side, that betrayal, they value people, tools to be used, squeeze and squeeze, betrayed by one he was good too, what is the lesson there?, a rich and difficult world, solid solid, Confucius would say, better to be like Leto and die, warrior prince, doomed by our position, what’s good about the book, complex and rich, the more Paul becomes fucked up the better the book becomes, a decent payoff, it’s unexpected and yet inevitable, different readings of it, Frank Herbert misunderstood Paul, snippets on social media, just reference the book, look at what objectively happens, talk about Gollum all day, ultimately what happens, too compelled by that heroin, or Smeagol, a certain intention, what Gandalf said, the author doesn’t matter unless they’re pointing to a particular piece of text, authors can be wrong, whom amongst us knows what’s in our own mind, explains some part of your psychology or interest, more than just intention, actual text, another mind can model it, part of our job, engaging with it and understanding, “Paul was good actually”, he becomes a knife fighter, I’m a friend of Jamus, all his names, the responsibility that comes with having killed Jamus, he’s there to survive, his mom is a user, being used, evil masterplan, Leto was used, have sex with this girl, she is pretty sexy and smart, to his true love, gotta marry the emperor’s daughter, negotiations about the dowry, the sister is so weird, in almost every respect, her position in the book is strange, that’s the trap, don’t fall in, the seduction, the movies of Dune, hurt Will’s reading of Dune, unnecessary, read the wikipedia entry, people like that Dune, what do we know about Neil R. Jones, Hugo Gernsback, so popular, millions of sequels to this story, The Professor Jameson Saga, does not call for a sequel, like TNG, a TNG feeling out of it, cryogenics, cryonics, inspired by this story, the afterlife of this story, what if we made it real, immortality, Herland, the western system of religion, what do you want it for, so I can explore other planets, just afraid of dying, completely dead, the most likely thing, never alive, Io’s got volcanoes, if they don’t have stageplays, their strange morality, Iain M. Banks, just get tired of it, get bored, get done, weird AI ships will store your body for you, a diorama of a historical scene, I’d like to be Lincoln being shot in Ford’s theater, just as long as my beard gets to be blue, highlights, in to being blonde, hair dyed red, pink haired Will, this explains so much, they already think Will’s gay, mortified hairdresser, fire engine red, a lot of work, grow it out, hair smells like smoke, wear a fez, that’s what is fez are for, there’s no brim, it’s not for protecting your eyes from the sun, an aesthetic form, a fashion, a technical device, just like a smoking jacket, you smell like smoke, those wives, a smoking robe, febreze chemicals, an exfoliating scrub, brand loyal, the proximate cause, face feel smooth, sunk cost, pushing us in a direction that’s not good, full body deodorant, don’t do that, you can wash em, you can wash your feet, use soap, hair is the least popular place to use it, don’t use it in your eyes, the mouth, separate mouth products, this stuff called water, actively looking for an unscented shaving cream, can barely walk, one day shaving cream with no scent, blood ox below 98, an electric razor, goatee, patchy and weird, partner/girlfriend/fiance, another thing to worry about, think about brushing, no teeth so no brushing, food chewing device, future pairings, very profitable, two 50 minute stories, solid in their own way, more interesting than fun, Mr. Spaceship and Mercenary, what to do is the question in life, Ben-Hur, The Garden Of Fear, winged men, Connor Kaye recorded it, many other authors, no audiobook that’s public domain, commercial releases, why LibriVox hasn’t got on that, The Hate Disease by Murray Leinster, he’s steady, Gregg Margarite, 2 hours, a possibility, the description, sold already, the Interstellar Medical Service, greeted by a rocket attack, a pandemic of demonic possession, 2010, medical stories, they’re related to science, danger, Alan E. Nourse, [Scott Miller’s] Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, The 54th Of July, social breakdown and what causes that, pretty prolific, he was a doctor, what’s wrong with your penis books, science fiction with a medical twist, Star Surgeon, promoted into existence, Dal Tigmar had always wanted to be a doctor, a silver star of a star surgeon, being racisted at, a medical starship, curing diseases, on the question of length, pairing it with something else, who pairs with Murray Leinster, very pairable, a neutral quality, the opposite direction, not one of the big three, Seabury Quinn, good at making himself popular, a Jules De Grandin collection, who else is in Weird Tales?, David H. Keller, let’s see what’s available, need to read more, The Rat Racket, late for him, Amazing Stories, April 1956, Amazing, November 1931, making it happen, not at 100% yet, a couple weeks ago, rough, still not a good time with Jesse, reschedule, typical to miss those, Jason Thompson, The Magic City, Project Pope, Lilith by George MacDonald, the day before our savior was born, not great, recording’s not great, a difficult story, barely a story, an accident of history, 7 famous stories, they know Poe is public domain, Scott Miller, Spotify deleted 2 Poe stories he put up, how fucked up it is, automated bullshit, a person in the world, friends who are musicians hate Spotify, paid subscriptions, discounted rate, ads, questions about their algorithm, what’s curated by humans, paid to make playlists, YouTube is polarizing, very full of good stuff, heavily censored, manipulative, super-evil, Paul doesn’t like Louis Rossmann, philosopher repairman, fixes macbooks, right to repair, a great video on Linus Techtips, a local computer company called NCIX, computers built there, a giant empire, he’s the number 1 in the world for personal computer construction, personal computer information, lives locally, a scandal recently, product called Honey [browser extension], defrauding or deleting people’s affiliate links in favour of their own, a little kickback from Amazon, using it to monitor you, finding out the bank you were promoting is stealing people’s money, data scraped and stolen, should have said something, Jesse’s hero, psychopathic, personality disorder, everything’s about them, narcissism, you broke this so you owe us, fixing a broken macbook, how do you end up as head of a giant corporation, probably have something wrong with you, our system rewards anti-social behavior, very interesting, seeing it on the edges, attacking adblockers, he gets his money from ads, attacked from his audience, find a way to not be the bad guy, always the victim, that moral victory of just lay out the facts and look at the two arguments, I got a lot of employees, on the side of, the mea culpa isn’t forefront, when the NFL has the superbowl, superbowl ads for fake bitcoin companies, a 3 hour mea culpa, they paid him money to run that sponsored video, so many employees I need to pay, yep, that’s how it works, be like Louis Rossmann yes, COVID stuff, on the wrong side, check to see people being vaccinated, New York, Texas, works for a billionaire, a very cool guy, his own mental problems, ethically he’s very solid, a bad practice, Paul Atredies dangerous, be more influenced by people I actually know, if I have a hero it might be the pope, this particular Pope, Pope Francis, surviving in Argentina, these are different things, he seems good, never worked for the guy, Scott works for him, seems solid, thinking of converting, jubilee year, people of good will, forgive all your debts, forgive him in your bank account, the big magic doom, Will hates himself so he follows a truly evil Israeli literature professor, baby Jesus in the keffiyeh, love without power is totally useless, power without love is very evil, Jesse’s student is here, go to him, end this.

The Jameson Satellite by Neil R. Jones - Amazing Stories, July 1931

Mellonta Tauta by Edgar Allan Poe

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #838 – READALONG: Fury by Henry Kuttner

The SFFaudio Podcast #838 – Jesse, Will Emmons and Cora Buhlert talk about Fury by Henry Kuttner

Talked about on today’s show:
one eight of his wife, the Gabrielle DeCuir read intro, pretty crappy, good, a little evil, the book was evil, calling things evil, pathetic, pretty pathetic, a Slan style book, Henry Kutter do good work, quite pathetic, to the mind of Jesse, summarize what the book is about and why anyone would care about it, read aloud the final up to this point in the serialization, Jonathan wanted to do it, Jonathan blocked Jesse, okay, seems like the plot’s starting now, texting a friend about it, a sci-fi from the 40s, everyone is lazy, amoral swindler, wouldn’t seem immortal, the necessary shock to society, jungle surface of Venus, immortal, some facts about the book, that’s interesting, interesting is not the same as a book, most interesting section, the introduction by C.L. Moore, what she contributed to it, I added the colours, I’m interested in tragic love, the theme that Henry Kuttner was going for, not trusting authority, what’s this book about, 1947, a decade or less into the welfare state, people don’t take responsibility for themselves anymore, pull their pants up, muddled by this immortality thing, a hot topic in science fiction, very immature, immature thinkers, everybody groks it, maybe I won’t, first grey hair, no no I’m not going to die, Heinlein has done this, not new to Kuttner, these mutant elites, a villain or a hero, agreed, a Will Emmons obsession, The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester, feels shorter, passion, experimental, wish Jonathan was here, not just blame him for this book, wasted a week, wrong philosophy, a modern book that’s similar, not modern at all, by a lady, Beggars In Spain by Nancy Kress, obsessed with not liking her, this book is evil, what makes it evil, take it in and say yes yes, the reason they’re better than you, genetic engineering, they can study all night while you’re lazy sleeping at home, all Elon Musk, inherited an emerald mine, all non-sleepless are contemptible, told from the pov of a persectued Slan, same libertarian vibe, why can’t your parents give that to you, plotting to murder everyone else on the planet, standard x-men, a sidestory in X-Men, look there’s a new mutant!, contemptible, a symapthetic view on both side, Golden Man cat, when Philip K. Dick did it, what if the ideal form of humanity has no brain?, a muddled version of that Nancy Kress book, more serialized, disgruntled guys, not strong enough to be evil, a toddler with a knife, dangerous, not evil…yet, both have fury, way more anger than this book, this book is not angry at all, a dispossessed slan, a rebel undermenchen, a good book, intellectual center of gravity, society under the keeps, no one is striving anymore, you don’t see any of that, a lot of tell and no show, a lot of churn, when he meets the prophet, also an immortal, not a robot, comes back later, exactly how C.L. Moore put it, we wrote this for money and there was no plan, the cloak that makes you feel nice and is a drug and kills you, what is this book about?, drugs?, not about video games?, a failed Heinlein book, the Methusela’s Children series, eugenics and a kilt, a secret society of immortals, flee for the skies, forget that Heinlein, not top five, he thinks its interesting, an immature idea, welfare state, immortal technocrats ruling everything, what is he really mad at?, his dad?, sad story?, temper tantrum, surgery, you don’t feel it, so upsetting, gut punch, skin is coming off, you don’t like the character but you’re with him, worse a nice blue dress one time, not boring, just bad, shoulda clued in, in Astounding, that magazine that’s not very good, another joint, Chan Davis, Pseudoscience In Naziland by Willy Ley, emigrated from Naziland, he’s the good german, pre-paperclip guy, paling around with the bad German, didn’t hang the three slowest Jews, upsetting, our modern rocket guy has a lot of problems, not literally a Nazi, fires some employees, capitalism bad, bad tweets, not literally an SS officer, John W. Campbell editorials, up his own smoke, high on his supply, telepathy or whatever, understand the impulse, dated this girl, no good reason to believe in it, running similar software, parallel possibilities, as to actual evidence, assessing, way too much based on that, of all the things that have happened to science fiction since the 1940s, what we’re doing now, Stefan Rudniki, a bad book, redeeming qualities, the devastating last line, weird authorial, the start of the immortal hero, a genre, the Amber book (Roger Zelazny), Phra The Phoenician, maybe Kuttner would have known, Gulliver Of Mars, His Vacation, a book that Cirsova (Alex) would like, portal fantasy, doesn’t take itself too seriously, the Mars books, crunchier, softer, sweeter, less filler, more killer, crashes on a planet, lands on a philosopher who’s a girl, go to a library, frozen dead people, magic carpet again, green muscle mommy, Soja?, Tars Tarkas’ daughter, a 40 foot lance, a big lance, lances were big in those days, pikes, the roundheads were overworked, a weird zone, the knife alluring, who’s the knife for?, for everyone?, there are no everyone, a guy who doesn’t know who he is, the priest who’s not the computer, blue dress, grandma, a lady who has a granddaughter, secretly, that reveal did nothing, why are we reading all this, the symbol of cash, the genealogy at the top of the story, the Bible’s a lot shorter, what things would happen in it?, deformed as an infant, see the lady, get got, colonization scheme, cheat everyone, wake up confused, get involved in the next colonization scheme, lost the thread, find the lady, 3 card monte, move their hands quickly, bet your money, a street level grifting scam, shills, they share the money, anytime the mark is gonna win the police show up, the guy who’s been gambling arrested, find the lady is a way to steal money from people, other than with my time, too scammed, after paying my 75 cents for 3 issues, not a good story, nothing is substantive in an idea way, the sea-creature that’s now a cloak, corrosive planets, just did a genocide of the entire ecosystem, for plot, for stuff to happen, telepathy, useless, pathetic, not even mad, wasted a week, sad, waste, Kutter is worse than Jesse thought he was, wrote so much, would write anything, Dragon Moon, a cover story on Weird Tales, just type in Dragon Moon, viking stabbin at a dragon, blonde in a green dress, the wild hunt, enthusiastically riding, cool looking, a novelette of drowned Atlantis, bad name, beyond good or evil, the Outside, a Chesterton quote, that Silverberg highlighted, Home Is The Hunter, Silverberg wrote a great essay about it, Kipling quotes, a secondary world almost, where’s the tech?, the closest we get is that cloak, a poisonous world, Clark Ashton Smith, sex and death, sexless, longs after a girl, breed generations of sex slaves, goes nowhere, people got tricked by the ending, immortality, is this something?, the meme with a butterfly, not furious or perverted enough, pretty cold blooded, deleting the entire ecosystem of Venus, plants that were dangerous, the drug addiction, no real life world experience, wasn’t a pioneer, didn’t kick a drug habit, hey I got a real theme going here, dreamdust, turns out he was in the backroom of the wizard’s cave the whole 40 years, okay, more Arthur stuff, Arthur Pendragon, put him underground, return and lead the people, a business startup, a free companionship, a startup designed to defraud investors, doesn’t doing any kind of running and grabbing, should be a lot madder, furiless and didn’t inspire fury, “Robin Hood’s barn”, the idiom, a robin hood’s barn sort of plan, at some point in a novel the novel reviews itself, a short story should have working components that are used and dissipated at the end of the story, spell components, three pinches of newt dust, Helen’s bones, blood from a surly teenager, disappears in a puff of smoke, shit lying all over the table, shocker, not impressed, people were smarter in the past, the reviews in the magazine itself, people should have been reading Thrilling Wonder and Planet Stories, if it was priority, Planet, Thrilling Wonder, five or six other magazines, Astounding, other magazines, the fifties explosion of science fiction, WWII, the wonder weapons, the rockets, people were not with rockets before WWII, almost nobody was into rockets, showing the v-2 rockets being tested in the states, the letters columns, talking about the v-2s, the censorship, circumspect, the V-1s hitting London, rockets are really taking off, Planet Stories, Fantastic Adventures, almost nothing good in it, Ray Palmer, somebody should have stopped him, too much power, exploit this mentally ill man, inner earth man, not just Shaver mysteries, worldview and approach to life, maybe people in the past were stupid too, UFOs, the truth is out there, UFO freak, if I believe in God, people get tripped up on words, barely a teenager, as if you know what you’re talking about, unidentified, what the hell is that thing, not a U, FO, trapped in the world salads, a spell, bring it back to the thing itself, talk to Meg about this story, okay to lie to people for the greater good, this story poses, immediately in the positive, try never to lie, communicating is complex, the outside thing about this thing, more specific about specific things, the way to think about this, just do this, what is an essay, here’s how we’re going to get a good mark, don’t write anything you don’t believe, play with the truth, telling the teacher that you know that, nobody knows what the word “essay” means, what is he trying to do?, what is the purpose of this?, how you do paragraphs, just filling the page, fulfilling the requirements, try to make good sentences, truth is very important, things are complex, words get in our way and trick us, that’s not how things work, this guy from 500 years ago still lives through, a cloud of understanding, trynna trick people, we’re gonna make you all immortal, working at this for 7 years, ha ha fuck you, a worker’s cooperative, that’s evil, for your own good, that’s a liar, what did Meg say?, undoubtedly evil, okay for the government to lie to us about UFOs, people can’t handle the truth, their gonna die, why we have religion, pretty sure, a mystery that can transcend, exactly like to was before I was born, isn’t it interesting I’m a brain in a vat already, includes skin and bone and digestive systems, sense data, that’s interesting, doesn’t make me think of a particular god, strange phenomena for the long time, a wish for immortality, a big part of it for a lot of people, lying definitely bad, we can’t handle it, lie to people to get them to do something good, back to The Stars My Destination, spoiler alert, superweapon, telepathically activated, gives it to the masses, now its your responsibility, hero, they don’t destroy the solar system, everybody needs nukes, if you don’t have hands, we want people to have hands, a real disadvantage for Sirius, Odd John, Olaf Stapledon, Kuttner can disappoint, a C.L. Moore stan, people love her, she likes hot kisses, scary kisses, atmospheric style, unfinished, that’s all she’s got, she doesn’t bring an idea to the table, Reading, Short And Deep recording, Probate, a legal term, about getting to the will, testament, estate, a science fiction story that deals with ideas in science fiction and dismisses them, mocking an idea by taking it seriously, it’s not what I wanted, it’s what I needed, an X-Men story, slightly telepathic, all the women find him sexy, no frontal lobes, just working on instinct, he’s beautiful, looking at it from a guy who is furious, on the wane, the homo superior are in the room, interested in pathetic things, full of all sorts of foibles, your beautiful child, assembling the components to destroy homo superior, better not the be a fuckin monster, not as fast or beautiful, slower to develop, very contrived and very silly, wham bam deals, A.E. Van Vogt, wipes it off the table and now we’re done, the Olaf Stapledon novel, Eric spoiled the ending, smart moral things to do, action and churn, Fury, boring slog, angry at Nancy Kress book, they’re fucking monster, they remind me of the shitlib bluecheck elite, fuck those Gazans, mad at The Washington Post for not endorsing a lady, let oligarchs fuck the world, seeing where the wind is blowing, the undecided voter, slant of various op/eds, not a big percentage, if Trump becomes president I’ll leave and move to Canada, trying to evoke a reaction, watch another youtube video and they react to it, this movie is too scary, twin brothers watching, a split screen, identical twin brothers, that memesis thing, still 3?, the thing being watched the you watching them, they’re watching each other, strange phenomenon, a girl in her bedroom, Damien Walter, words by himself are better, AI illustration of the Culture, retweeting them, that seems uncharitable, not giving a null prize, is this true?, the reason a lot of people are triggered by Trump is they’ve had no actual trauma, he’s not scary, hundreds of thousands of people being killed on the border, say things that are bad, the bad one, he’s pretty good, he did well that day, mobilize the army to deport people, the apparatus you have to build up, mobilized as a law enforcement agency, he was president already, he’s not very much like Hitler, he shouldn’t be that triggering, more like Heinlein than Hitler, only two people in the world, like the Little Prince, one is Heinlein and one is Hitler, pick your fighter, the future that liberals want, he’s not scary, internal enemies, the organized left, Palestine protestors, Arab Americans for Trump, pro-United States, Benjamin Netanyahu needs to finish the job, he talks a lot, what does he do, a different coalition, his staff, all the neocons, alienated John Bolton, learned his lesson, a confirmed Jill Stein voter, voted Green, when he says things he means them, a liar, he is a liar, I’m the best, I got the best people, the best country, the worst country, hyperbolic, is he lying when he says I want to use the military, on day one or maybe day two, someone who’s never been visited by the FBI, you live in a police state, he likes the FBI too, he’s a lot worse on Canada, the Free Trade Agreement, he’d be worse for Canada and better for the United States, doesn’t like communists, don’t understand what communists are, if Kamala is a communist, people you call communist, the dialogue is broken, we’ll see, laudable and good, more risk, the Black Uhuru movement, lazier under Democratic administrations, sleepier, drone stuff, domestic stuff, the MOAB, Soleimani, German government English propaganda channel, Venezuela, it wasn’t me who did the coup, fiddles with pen, in amongst that, persecute Russia more, secret talks, divide Venezuela and Russia, the State Department is running things, the Deep State hates him so much, a bad sign, tryna cozy-up, Bezo was vying for government contracts, less naked about it, Elon Musk picked a team, a lottery, he’s levering, For You, the ultimate test of self-government, returned your grocery cart, social contract, a fool’s framework, very simple, littering, mom didn’t tell you to don’t do that, why do people litter?, really strange lady, weird tiny house lady, keeps building things, trying things out, squeezing the juice out of her life, list of all the things that she’s tried, business startups, raise parrots, adopted from her or genetics, systems, don’t try to buy your way into hobbies, not lose money, you have to work harder outside, interested in parrots, very expensive, breed them, they’re in the house, there’s always more food, all that shit that spills on the ground, all the other animals do well, they eat and they drop food, we think of that as littering, not offensive at all, that’s what parrots do, dirtying their own environment, in a primitive society, sidewalks are a strange invention, do we need more sidewalks, not get run over, easier to get places, should we have roads?, they just tell you where to go, trails, humans in solidarity with other humans, just another animal, we train puppies not to pee in the house, they become upset, very similar to that, he’s not wrong, would you let this guy marry your daughter, he doesn’t return shopping carts, contemplating this, her being able to marry, implausibility, whether he litters or not, a stage everybody goes through, eventually your washing the dishes, community standard, Jesse’s weird, very childish, the grocery is like a government, somebody’s going to have to pick up after me, a boundary, get all your dirty laundry, your space, litter in your own room, don’t attract mice, this office, elected to the spare bedroom, the podcasting office, disenfranchised cats, peeing on the wall, exclusionary, the bourgeoisie, enclosed the commons, the crown, what a world, this election shit, provincial election came and went, Richard Lovelace, one of those cavalier poets, clergy in the house of Lords, wanting the king in charge, better than Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector, sounds like Napoleon again for the first time, get Napoleon III in charge, starting a list of the bad guys, Franco is on there somewhere, 19th century Stalin, a reformer, he put his brother in charge of Spain, make sure Spain doesn’t flip, the pattern, people trying to reinstate the king, why invading Ireland?, they’ll getcha, these Levelers, manhood suffrage, religious toleration (not for Catholics), modern liberal democracy, in bed with Cromwell, in the New Model Army, didn’t split the movement, this weird phenomenon, this English Civil War, conjure radical forces, aren’t able to use, Cromwell is Mao?, Sun Yat-Sen, sorta got his wish, the king’s back, roundheads, a short story by Lawrence Block, good character writer, good plotter, a werewolf story, Original Science Fiction Stories, January 1959, Make A Prison, the first Althean, he won’t languish and die in such a state?, ample opportunity, study the creature, the mere thought of a prison, the whole notion, an abominable one, wouldn’t do, he actually murders, subdue him, physically ill, for goodness sake, now you’ve hit upon it, a party of ten, he struck out at them, unprovoked assault, the first case of murder on record in 30 generations, he eats whatever we feed him, he is dangerous, very dangerous, as possible, perhaps I’m squeamish, positive, 130 feet high, right?, right!, it’s slides slope inward, a pneumatic tube, leaping from the top, littering, it seems safe, it is safe, not cruel, in just a few minutes, such a smooth writer, Cora got her times mixed up, sends her apologies, motor car, motor truck, forced myself to finish a book, she’s right not to like it, limbs securely shackled, the key to his shackles in his quarters, all the angles, one more page to go, a red light at the base, throw down the shackles, not something you see every day, plummeted through the air, he’s found the key, the key followed soon thereafter, gazing down at them, soared off into the sky, what is this story?, a trick, what?!, is this a science fiction story?, mostly a trick, as a practical matter, that’s it?, came across a key, hence Lovelace, a poem from 1642, To Althea From Prison, tangled in her haire, liberty, Thames, careless heads, thirsty grief, fishes that tipple in the deep, when like committed linnets, with shriller throat shall sing, voyce, inlarged, stone walls doe not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage, from an hermitage, angels alone that sore above, Lawrence Block read a poem, recognize those last lines, thing he’s going to be remembered for, secondary world, spun up just to do the joke of the story, that is very science fictional, take the poetic and make it real, okay but not, he is a dragon, that’s now science fiction, take it seriously, this world is not our world, they have motor cars, no murders for 30 generations, who is this creature from outside, how come they didn’t notice he had wings, that’s weird, just a joke, that’s actually, Brave New World is a line from The Tempest, a science fiction movie, that’s a joke, the world’s fucked, the second time it’s serious, the story becomes much better for what its addressing, kings are better than non-kings, in prison for wanting the king back, did some nice poetry, it’s okay girl, we’re like committed linnets, the poetry frees him from prison, the worst Kuttner/Moore book, just a terrible book, needed money, finish the bloody thing, blame Jonathan, partially responsible, worst thing Moore was involved in, knew how bad this one was, the prequel, Clash By Night, 1943, early military science fiction, also with Moore, fertility issues, couldn’t have a baby, miscarriage, contract marriage, mercenaries, jungle planet, The Little Prince, Attitude by Hal Clement, a bad summary, Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath, We Print The Truth by Anthony Boucher, unbeatable, it’s okay, the idea of a Little Prince planet, a very Heinleinian book, probably kill Hitler, [Methuselah’s Children?], Lazarus Long, Time Enough For Love, different writers, more sanguine?, philosophically interesting but evil, a toddler with a knife, who’s the knife for, for everyone, constant extolling, hedonism is bad, work them off for nothing, if you’re european, free healthcare, how terrible, second sons, people picked out of the enclosures, we’re plebeians, malcontents, emigrated to the U.S., hung out with the sailors in the harbour bars, she has a good husband, no one would have had her, high-tailed it to the U.S., the failed Bremen Soviet Republic, propaganda, New York City or Boston, the prairies, living in filth, westward expansion, things driving these things, Young Pioneers, colonize moorlands, the Netherlands, moorland colonization, little America, stay here and colonize the moors, after 1848, politically undesired, crises in foreign countries, selling equipment to goldminers, more wary, the lesson Jesse learned, more critical of claims, get a bad one, if you made this into a short story the answer is nothing, this isn’t a science fiction story, science fiction wallpaper, either the wallpaper goes or I do, totally disjointed, not substantive throughout the book, the introduction, some of the world building details, the happy cloak, you could do a story with that, Shambleau, most reprinted Moore, didn’t bother renewing it, sometimes people are dead, sometimes they’re distracted, step-daughter, retro Hugos, 71 Kuttner stories, easy to forget, her second husband, see the documents, SFWA grandmaster, had dementia, half a dozen Kuttners, The Proud Robot [was copyright renewed: “R494633”], asshole, that’s a great story, A God Named Kroo, Killdozer, good at comedy, The Proud Robot, solo Kuttner, fadedpage, the high priest of a Tibetan deity, the body of a yak, a bumbling Indiana Jones, a great story, Science Fiction 101, Worlds Of Wonder, Home Is The Hunter, a science fiction story, soft science fiction, the best kind of science fiction, space opera, hard, wallpaper, the biggest, the most ability to imagine different scenarios, what technology, ideas are kind of technologies, a future that’s not like ours, a post scarcity, 11 pages in Galaxy, credited to both, There’s noboy who I can talk to except myself, all my wives, Honest Roger Bellamy, Hunter, waterfall of marble steps, in all their jewels, this whole story of the narrative of how he got to this situation, he’s a headhunter, the most famous and best people kill each other, legal, proper, encouraged, his life is a misery, one giant rug pull, he woke up, death is real, what do we value, don’t do what he did, throughline in this, immortality is a thing, everybody wants immortality, why does this book exist, to fill pages, paid the rent, good for them, essentially hack work, sticks with me, Philip K. Dick is extraordinary, more short stories, fewer novels, Kuttner wasn’t a novel guy, Earth’s Last Citadel, allies, German spies, humanity has all but died out, huge citadels, rambly, a serious problem during the WWII, everything is about WWII, Fantastic Adventures, a story about fairies set on a military base, offensive, not very good, we gotta be more careful, descentish, Heinlein was too busy to write much, Ross Rocklynne, alien intervention, Killdozer, seabees, haunted machinery story, The Murderous Steam Shovel, Allison V. Harding, elevated train in New York, major food or family holiday, Thanksgiving, fucked up calendar, clumping of Christian holidays, patriotic holiday, Oktoberfest, Halloween, Reformation Day, time off school, a lot of candy, dress up?, native trick or treating traditions, St. Nicholas Day, recite a poem or sing a song, regional, lower German, seasonal poems, santa hats, wassailing, ghosts or Skeletor, paper lantern, Rhineland, Three Wise Men, the black wise man, blackface, paint one guy up, pretend to be a boy?, charitable causes, bless your house, Catholic homes, blessings on the door, Fichte, super Catholic region, the 30 Years War, chalk, imported from the U.S., unknown until the early ’90s, U.S. movies, college student Halloween parties, big candy, Carnival in February or early March, when Iraq, Kuwait, everybody was protesting, standing there, a peace protest, to stop the U.S. from bombing, serious about it at the time, why did we even do this, vulgar pacifistic, the best Halloween costume, a vampire a bunch of times, very good, in college, Doctor Midnight, the Justice Society, the yellow helmet, Doctor Fate, living like Doctor Fate in a tower, much more mysterious and less gay than Doctor Strange, definitively married to a woman, entanglements with women, not a medical doctor?, too many reboots, a few guys, a female Doctor Fate, snippets, the Flash with WWI helmet, stuck some poor guy in this silly helmet, Cora’s best Halloween costume, Psylocke from X-Men, the swords, energy daggers, difficult recreate at the time, Mississippi, Pippi Longstocking, a witch, devils, completely unknown at the time, kindergarten, Star Wars costumes, sexy witch, sexy nurse, Robin with a long cape, goggles, blind but can see in the dark, Daredevil, crescent moons, Watchmen’s owl guy, Batman with no superpowers, owl vehicle, mental patients he needs to punch, pines after a girl, very bad Alan Moore, very good, this is nothing, toxic fans, clickbaity title, something about Trump, fandom is not responsible, used to be quite different, fandom has changed, guys in their 40s, middle aged white guy, furious, LGBTQ women in Star Wars, reboot of a children’s cartoon, I’m A Celebrity, a real show?, super-intellectual, salability, Boris Johnson, Have I Got News For You, the Trump Apprentice thing, a helluva long time ago, not a politician, approach, why does this essay exist, he’s got a new book, funny words, febrile disgruntlement, his prose pieces, he’s a very good comic writer, you can see what he’s doing and you hate, big long letter, League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, his gandson playing Pokemon, asked to promote his book, random blocked, mocked it, random stranger, didn’t mock him, which hotel that is, a golf shop, what’s the difference, Tars Tarkas was queer, very queer indeed, quick on the block button, fragile, blocklist, win a null prize, H.G. Wells, super-eager to block, pruning what you see on twitter, a super-unfollow, can’t even see it in “For You” now, he’s funny, you don’t want to see him, Swiss weatherman, accused of raping his then girlfriend, consensual, rapist in my timeline, shitty excuse for a secretary of health, international journalist, get police out, really into the block button, never blocked a person, so many people who interact, other people would see it, I like Alan Moore, he’s cool, has problems, he’s gotta be 70, reminiscence of a guy, things have changed lately, “what we’re up against”, New York Times, the movie came out, can’t write about Neil Gaiman, rapist sexist, harassed women into sex, asking them, coercing, different from rape, didn’t rape anybody, otherwise consensual, seduction of minors, sexual abuse, the cutoff age, 17 and half years old, age of consent, lesbians, we forgot about them, still a shitty person, found guilty in the court of public opinion, The Graveyard Book, Coraline, Neverwhere, underground london, a show first, vintage Doctor Who, Sandman is pretty good after the first volume, shouldn’t have been in grace, you shouldn’t have a tattoo of Neil Gaiman, a tattoo of Death, are you into Sandman, girl?, must be into Sandman, he’s not the president, who cares, at a Hugo ceremony, accepting his Hugo for Good Omens, American Gods, special wheelchair van, as soon as the audiobook came out, George Guidall, 13 cassettes, Neil Gaiman in the United States, this overlay of the gods, blank main character, very similar to a Douglas Adams book, he is a good writer, he can write, Snow White Apples, he invented the whole genre of retelling for comics, after the Jim Lee debacle, Sandman, Walking Dead, all the Vertigo comics, Garth Ennis and independents, a little bit of French stuff, Belgian comics, Heavy Metal, 2000 A.D., a popular target, Ya Boi Zack, birthday party clowns, utubers who Cora really hate, Critical Drinker, closeted gays, wands, Captain Marvel movie, it’s stupid, way shittier things, delicious like Taco Bell is, she has no personality, Brie Larson, talk off camera, 2 brains cells to rub together, rewarded through the algorithm for hate, patterns pointing to, this stupid Guardian article is stupid, for retweeting, why are you linking, public health officer in Bavaria, how can you retweet this?, have their own ideas, the Gaza stuff, so horrible, pro-Ukrainian and anti-Russian stuff, what did stop the Iraq War, the 1990 one, treaty, that worked well, still not occupied even tho their occupied, the Taliban are the worst people, who made that happen?, Asian Muslim countries, headscarves, force men to wear beards, put this hat on, kids are roped into it, no kids anymore, kinda the plan, stupid actor, very upset by actors existing, people treat them like they are something, underperformed movies, German culture programs, what kind of show he’s on, political question, Bruce Willis can’t talk at all, a singer before he was an actor, if they write their own music, ring of fire guy, Johnny Cash, Leonard Cohen, quotes and the attribution, almost always a fake attribution, comes with authority, G.K. Chesterton, a Father Brown story, short stories, some people are Catholic, overly religious, doing a C.S. Lewis, asking them to not be religious in their fiction, Jordan Peterson, a stupid smart guy, Patrick Stewart is not Jean Luc Picard, he can perform Shakespeare, Shakespeare is hilarious, Charles Dickens, to be Scrooge, a fun role, a fun character, he performed Scrooge, Charles Dickens performed his books, unrecorded audiobooks, huge captive audience, no recordings of Charles Dickens, died 1870, audiences approved of it, Edgar Allan Poe went to one of them, anticipating the ending, Dickens fan, not enough science fiction, ghost stories, Oscar Wilde, the really gay writers, R. Murray Gilchrist, the yellow 90s, H.W. Hornung, Conan Doyle ripoffs, the Raffles story, the word fag, faggot, that’s not it!, in the British public schools there was a system called “fagging”, massive sexual abuse, that is is the sick part, a term of abuse, punks are on ships and fags are in school, an official and an unofficial system, commit suicide, who he used to fag for, burglary together, really fun and very well written, supergay, Oscar Wilde, great turns of phrase, fagging, that fucked up system, term for gay, being reclaimed, queer, we need the etymology, straight out of weird, the 1920s, gay balls, to dance around or prance, gay boyfriends, loves going to gay clubs, fun to hang out with, another German term, hot and sweaty, warm brothers, Toronto and San Fransisco, Turkish bath culture, totally gay, you carry, you gather wood, the evil part, you have to go to school, like regular prison, they had to go, forced to go, the parents forced them to go, mom I want to be home with you, governess system, the history right in front of us, gay writers, the Will digression, Will is a Jesseologist, his cowl is impossible, coveted the underoos, Conan Jesse with fur diaper, much taller, you’re too old for this, left out, a dog, how to make your Halloween costumes, the one made out of paperbags, paper bags for the ears, coloured pencils, a great costume, what if it rains, self-made, I’m poor, worst Halloween ever, bow was a coat-hanger, at a motel in northern British Columbia, no materials, Jesse had real trauma, a dinosaur, clowns, princess, costume jewelry, Hungarian girl costume, native American person, Romany fortune teller, Chinese woman, queen of hearts, a card-deck, very cheap, easy to due, carnival costumes, grading on a curve, none of your business, don’t vote for the Nazis, socialists, asked all the candidate questions, normal to endorse, Musk is endorsing, the party is dying, don’t say it, mainstream newspaper, we endorse candidate xyz, not doing it is the problem, the high tariffs is a good idea for the United States (terrible for Canada), customs fee, retaliated for tariffs, never took down the tariffs, it sucks to be a colony, next year’s Worldcon in Seattle, say hi to Paul, less littering, self employed, green card, might just stick around, sworn translators, no husband to go back to, not as terrible, crossing the border into the USA, refusing to come Kentucky, maybe under Trump, voted for Biden, pissed off, if they don’t denounce the Nordstream destruction, every American hated it, Ukraine and Russia were getting into squabbles, why do the Poles love the Americans, Polish politicians, owned by the United States, Polish students, a relationship, a girl from Finnland, very mysterious people, a bit reserved, Cora is not reserved at all, weird games, by a Finn, mini-scandal at the Helsinki Worldcon, My Summer Car, you bought a car, your going to fix it up, spray paint, the driving part of the game, something every person did in Finland, buy a second hand car, a Datsun, an alien planet, sauna culture, sweat lodge, demons I gotta exercise, Russian buildings there, don’t take down statues, Sámi people, Inuit is a very strange culture, look and act like Indians, teepees, dog culture, beards, from the same planet, reindeer, bilingual signs, northern cruises, had to go to Greenland, the Kola peninsula, Kamchatka, like Upper Michigan, across the top of the circle, central Asia, the horse people, Turkic peoples, Germans and Dutch, Austrians, what’s the American equivalent, affinity state, near Lexington, Richmond, easter half of the state, Appalachian, east Tennessee, normal Southern, gulf coast, anything South of Virginia, Kentucky accents, from the mountains, Hillbilly, oldest mountain range in the world, the golden triangle, Louisville, south of Cincinnati, totally devastated, stakes are low, technically true, Canada is very big, even in deepest China, Kentucky, horses, the derby, KFC, Kentucky Christ Fuck, ficken, sheiss, German actors, swear in a foreign language, need a girl, Black Widow, in WWII, fight Nazis together, Wolverine, shit friends, a letterer problem, Wolverine’s sense of smell, he sniffs things and he heals, if your bones are gone, his entire skeleton is showing, the new Deadpool movie, Blade, Wesley Snipes, I’m the only Blade, Blade Trinity, before Marvel movies were Marvel movies, a Punisher one, really obscure, Werewolf By Night, Iron Man, the 198[9] Batman, Superman (1979), a Spider-Man fan, he’s like a loser, having a good time, his life is just really bad, more relatable, the comeback, snappy, really smart, snarky, good hearted, he’s a teenager, Mary Jane, Gwen Stacey, in comics, Rogue, can’t be touched, Jean Grey keeps dying, hots for her, an Arthurian thing, she’s the Guenevere, Fantastic Four was entirely a boomer thing, when Beast starts to have Blue skin, master mold, makes other sentinels, Classic X-Men, John Byrne, Chris Claremont, 1975 to the early 1990s, the iconic cover, Days Of Future Past, reading it in Calgary, this is amazing, this is awesome, got some ideas, Jubilee, when X-Force came out, fuck these pouches, an early 90s teenager, Asian American, all good stuff, born in the U.S., mallrat type, sprinklers, Dazzler had a baby, she’s a mutant, does her own lightshow, comics used to be great, old people gene, really good things to read, the Claremont run, what the fuck’s with Morph, just a redshirt, Morph got fridged, Age of Apocalypse, better off with Richie Rich and Casper, he’s not just friendly, he’s not going to die, always the same, punished for being hungry, a grokkable psychology, Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, more like Tintin than anything else, undersold how popular Donald Duck, the writing, well written, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, menaces to Donald Duck, he’s not a great father, did they murder their parents?, the story of Inception before the movie, the exact same idea, such a great idea, working out the idea, a secret, straight out of A Scandal In Bohemia, everything’s in there, letters from the king of Bohemia, a rip off of the Purloined Letter by Poe, he did it perfectly, photocopying a plot, the New Twilight Zone, Jordan Peele, Not All Men, James Tiptree, Jr., meanwhile Harlan Ellison gets money and credits, Days Of Future Past, Doctor Who serial, I don’t like this Doctor guy, Christmas special, why are you so negative, watching Blade, half vampire, their age difference was negligible, 12 year between them, he looked like an adult, sad scary, not working out, Sir Patrick Stewart spends his time, Blunt Talk, a much better fit, he’s a no-nothing British guy, the Falkland Islands war, being a ditz, going to Starbucks, Star Trek feels, a reboot of one of the movies, actors having fun, alternate universe, no plan, making it up as they went along, not fun for the readers, how Kuttner wrote this book, actors having a ball, Star Wars sequels, have a plan, somehow Palpatine returns, gettin paid, J. Michael Straczynski, all non-union actors, him being the sole writer on it, as soon as he took control, one of the best science fiction shows, Babylon 5, Scarecrow And Mrs. King, skating, wreck the plot, that’s fine, pablum, the first three episodes, sparkles and no ideas, trust our sniffers, be like wolverine without the adamantium bones, didn’t fit into the bags anymore, deep Halloween trauma, the most special time of the year, go to people’s houses and threaten people, feel the power, American Halloween, witches and monsters, kids are talking about it, homemade costume, went to the mall, have to sing a Halloween song, Old MacDonald Had A Farm, custom jewelry, you have to say trick-or-treat, the Pledge of Allegiance, child logic, no song, Missy, store bought witch costume, definitely not Missy, every morning, Americans are weird, what the whole thing meant, got to hold the flag today, a good way to close our show, Wesley Snipes, artificial eye, stroke or something, wear sunglasses the whole time, pulled it off in Deadpool, guy wearing sunglasses, he’s cool, won Oscars, would’ve been fine, Demolition Man, the world than the action, a good science fiction scenario, the bad Judge Dredd movie, the sidekick was Rob Schneider in both, on a plane, Passenger 57, New Jack City, Gallowwalkers, using this technique, low or no critical reviews, Michael Crichton, Rising Sun, Westworld doesn’t have a book, Black Rain, Michael Douglas, Andy Garcia is fridged, yakuza and Toyotas, wet streets with lots of neon, little ones, Boiling Point, Mo’ Better Blues, the movies got smaller, in prison for a while, known as an action star, an episode of What We Do In The Shadows, tv miniseries, Netflix, Michael Jackson music video, good at dancing, Kevin Hart, could be good, something to download, writing about things that are stupid, working a lot harder than the writer who fucked it up, bad movies with high ratings, a short comedian, Eric Roberts, what happened was, small town low budget film, the star power, its actually pretty good, a small town seems to be a flame for the moths who are convicted criminals, murdered criminal, a Tales From The Crypt episode, a very specific formula, disposable character, based on the comic, super moralistic, people who are judging them, the violence in the comics, they want to have power, an easy get, 250+ ratings, 94%, 8.5 out of 10, Gone With The Wind, Lawrence Of Arabia, what the fuck is going on, local theater people, good muscle tone, half dressed packing a suitcase, I wrote this, my friends like the script, we can film here, who can we get, he’s in some good movies, famous as Julia Robert’s brother, mid-range movies, Runaway Train (1985), Akira Kurosawa, 700 credits, looking at his cue cards, Bruce Willis, tell him what his lines are, leave money to his family, they only have him fro three days, not the way Hollywood does it, an extraordinary, old people talk about old movies, 2005, time zone converter, another reason to hate daylight savings time, the regular time for Paycheck and The Weapon Shops of Isher.

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Posted by Jesse Willis

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

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

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

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

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

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes art by Earle Bergey

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

Posted by Jesse Willis

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

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

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

“To the Hesitating Purchaser:

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

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

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

MINISTER CLASSICS Treasure Island

Posted by Jesse Willis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Virgil Finlay - The Green Queen

The Green Queen by Margaret St. Clair

The Green Queen by Margaret St. Clair

Introducing The Author: Margaret St. Clair

Posted by Jesse Willis