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The SFFaudio Podcast #885 – READALONG: Destiny Doll by Clifford D. Simak

Jesse and Scott talk about Destiny Doll by Clifford D. Simak

Talked about on today’s show:
a prediction, cut you off, “liked” and somewhat similar to “Special Deliverance”, Shaun D. Standfast people, stopping watching, second read, liked it even more, about a year ago, felt familiar, much more into it, one of his better ones, it’s great, some theories, what’s going on, Way Station and City, casual search through twitter, new audiobook, this is my favourite novel, that’s really odd, I like it too, even if we made a list of all the Simak writings, the top slot, really?, what is the phenomena, objectively, not particularly cohesive in terms of being an original sort of thing, Philip K. Dick, short stories vs. novels, designed to be a thing, aim at a target, which is the best Philip K. Dick novel, Evan Lampe, psychedelic feeling novels, Galactic Pot-Healer, fairly similar to this, Tin Men and Cowardly Lions, another Oz book, really spoke to people who read them at a certain age, you can’t disabuse people that those books are bad, why you can love this book, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, the message is more of a question, what is our relationship to the artifical rather than the real?, it’s a what if?, what if America was occupied by the Japanese, mind expanding ideas, work and meaning, this is about art, your relationship to higher meaning, there’s a god, restoring the sunken cathedral, it has everything, what is it about?, I have no idea, it’s great, a starship captain, rich big game huntress, mixing of fantasy and science fiction, hobby horses, very Ozish, talking toys, don’t you say they’re robots, Star Trekish, triggered captain Kirk in me, finally found Lawrence Knight, fawning over the guy, the “tomb world”, not the person but the skull behind their face, steppin through doorways, what makes Simak so special, didn’t discover him earlier, almost no exception, he has this quality, more things in the universe than we understand, an unorganized religion person, there is a God, mythical layer, keeps appearing, appreciate it a lot, a line in here, the doll itself, Friar Tuck, like this book for some people, near the end, the captain guy, the only one left, back in the city and just thinking, philosophical thinking, they built this city, there’s something even older here, they built stuff, the carven plains of that saddened face of the doll, another race, the church-like edifice at the city’s age, the carving of the doll, the planting of the trees, that’s beautiful, this item, this art, a greater feat than all these buildings, calling out to the darkness, speak to you, old fantasies, Lord Dunsany and older, this quality, a quest novel, on a trek, a mythical quality that simak brings to the discovery, Rendezvous With Rama, a much more sterile book, an awe there, a mythical depth, it has that, they’re looking at the city, landscapes, who did this?, an emotion in here, touching something that’s transcendent, thinking for pages, he’s alone, amazing the thought that he has, pushed along by destiny, throw some facts down, kinda serialized, in one issue of Worlds Of Fantasy, Spring 1971, a note explaining it, a piece of an interview, 1978, 1971, Simak himself, the problem with Destiny Doll, a companion magazine, Worlds Of Fantasy, condense Reality Doll, cut it half and ruined it, what had had to be done, nominated for a Nebula, Destiny Doll was never nominated, interesting note, strictly for money, Westerns, spent the weekend reading them, cowboys as heroes, other people out west, I had things to say, 1949, this genre he’s writing, 5 fingers on it, Shakespeare’s Planet, whatever qua means, guy, girl, robot, weird monster, alien planet, no plot, roll the dial back, The Fisherman, plot driven telepathy, magic is real, the tin, man the cowardly lion, the scarecrow, an alternate dimension, they stop at an inn, they meet some creatures, some possibility of danger, quickly dispensed with, Simak is against conflict, where’s the conflict, the neighbours are a bit worried, spying on him occasionally, gets out the laser gun, centaurs, thousands will die, dude chill, the superior version according to Simak, unless included in anthologies, huge difference, one would presume, Lester Del Rey’s title, turns toward the Philip K. Dick aspect, shifting realities, Small Town, making changes to reality, outside the borders of his yard, the little model of it, takes out the bars and puts in libraries, look at this objectively, meet the characters, the blind guy and Friar Tuck, hobby horses run up to them, let’s go, suspicious, they go elsewhere, customs inspection, some gnomes, chapter 2 is the backstory, our Han Solo style roguish, back to our planet, that’s the whole book, adventures continue, they never leave back to go to earth, similar scenes, Cemetery World, the building are all white, robots, telepathic rhyming robot, what is this if not, the Final Frontier, checkbox, Shakespeare is in here, maybe she has a tattoo, check, religious elements?, check, strange planet, check, a place people go to and don’t return from, they’re all dead, Humans leave earth, dog starts to arise, The Faithful, religious elements, revisits, refines, The Visitors, Project Pope era, this is Simak, a lot of writers don’t have that, this is a Clarke novel, the perversity, got to put his perversions in there, you didn’t know I was a nudist?, let me drop some nudism in there, theses, at some point in every novel that’s a good novel the novelist reviews his own novel in the text, chapter 3, chapter 23, chapter 24, the DAW paperback, not synchronicity it is special attention, near the end of Chapter 3, the dune was no longer there, in it’s stead was silence, an insane crying, my friend is back again, super mysterious, the whole purpose in their journey, a venus fly trap, a honey trap, ships that come to this planet do not leave, is this God?, is this the sweet call of death, unusual for a Simak character, aggressive and yelly, shut-up!, that silly sickening look of ecstasy painted on his face, a creature from out of the desert world, that night that had lain over the white world, blocked out, no sign of the hobbies, earlier in the chapter, all good stuff, reading text, near the end of chapter 23, page 177, wispy filaments, wind whispered overhead, campfire smoke, something was chuckling softly to itself (that’s Simak), Shakespeare?, had it been Shakespeare?, how had Roscoe known of Shakespeare?, carried his knapsack, Shakespeare is a book, actual Shakespeare you have to read the actual Shakespeare, writing with an outstretched finger, also Simak, here’s the review: blue and high, stars ahead, and blue, blue laughter, think unhard, slowly I picked the words apart, blue foreverness, runners after nothingness, talk is nothingness, nowhere comes the answer, it was gibberish, worse than gibberish, the gibberish went on, page 52, far is distant, neither short nor long but deep, no stick to measure with, purple leads to nowhere, there is nowhere to lead to, to prevent the pages getting out, strange enchantment, Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, even if she knew, page 181, near the bottom, totally unintelligible, an utter moron, why my thesis is so true, laughing at himself, seemed to make some sense, blue and purple knowledge, all spectra of knowing, lonely planets, far lost in space, in the blue of time, trapped it is, a time of golden harvest, another tomb world, great orchards of mighty trees, down at the city, up at the city, the whiteness of the sky, the whiteness of the ships, as other planets soak in the golden sun, seeds trapped with knowledge, fruit is many things, sustenance for the body and the brain, it ripens and it falls, nonsensical rambling, thinking about his own thing, you can’t have that it the short story, a short story is like a device, like a pencil sharpener, it can be elegantly put together but it is not a dress, … a novel is like a wedding dress, why their stories suck, why does this guy have 6 brothers, the best stories, 1 character is enough, 2 is more than enough, in order to write a Simak novel you have to have a bunch of character, squid alien, Hoot, seems like a threat, immediately not a threat, are we not friends?, I sucked the poison out of you, what is he doing on this planet, we needed a cowardly lion, the man behind the curtain in the end is always Simak, let’s go, another Oz adventure, a formula that works, sit around a campfire, gets angry, calms down, a group on the road somewhere, one guy and a mystery, The Canterbury Tales, very similar to a lot of Simak, people on a pilgrimage, progress down the road, it’s ancient, told 1st person, and yet, when people disappear they disappear from him, lots of quest books, Nebula Grand Master, one of the fist ones, audio at an awards, dentures, 1977, a Stoker Award, Fritz Leiber, Frank Belknap Long, 1987, died in 1988, The Grotto Of The Dancing Deer, Hugo, Nebula and Locus, an early start date, before everybody, Murray Leinster, first short story, The Cubes of Ganymede, Campbell rejected it, many such cases, The Cosmic Engineers, Empire, a LibriVox version, not terrific, Project Mastadon, Mastadonia as the novel, Grotto Of The Dancing Deer and The Big Front Yard, when doing multiple stories, contrasting authors, H.G. Wells vs. Robert E. Howard, Conan vs. Conan Doyle, The Adventure Of The Cardboard Box, the one story that’s more interesting, they both have merit, having contrasting food, some real salty fish, some sorbet, completely, sherbet, sorbet, playing with ai (Gemini), notebook LM, 9 Simak interviews, ask questions, source documents, to make a podcast, one of the options, what it is useful for, a learning tool, make me a podcast and focus on his religious views, the NPR people, more interesting than good, people learn that way, ancient Greece, some aspect of ancient Greece, food in ancient Greece, educational mentors, BC Civil Liberties guy, [John Dixon] advisor to Minister of Justice, promoted to Prime Minister, politicians are good at shaking hands, they’re not geniuses, getting elected, they need smart people who know how to understand the world, all of them have them, dumb people as their advisors, he was not dumb, thoughtful, good taste in movies, write up something, write up a paper advising, busy gladhanding, what should be done, what should your policy position be, they’re not people, solve a bank problem for me, they’re untrustworthy, you don’t know who they are, a super racist Robert E. Howard story The Last White Man, a race war story, collaborated with the Asians somehow, one last man on the hill, as a man in a racist world, go max on Irishness, they say great things about it, there’s no sense of how stupid it is or how funny it is, no personal reaction to it, all the worlds associated with religion, a large language model, grey NPC character, that’s true of these products, which is Clifford Simak’s best novel, it really spoke to me, not what the tool is for, is Simak a religious person, testing this tool, list things that he talked about, here’s where you find that, a position paper, people are doing that right now, use data in some way, this group rated, Goodreads, pointing to the Shaun Standfast show, every book on Goodreads is 3.6, no one has read, the finest book I’ve ever read, modern stuff, it’s a thing, picking 4s, 4.5, gamified, to read a 3.5 would be absolutely not, movies and tv shows that are new, bots, work on the show, the corporation itself, there can be a rerelease, the same on utube, likes subscribers, in the end, I like to read Simak, he seems to reward me, I believe it, John W. Campbell, overrated, shit on him right now, good at coming up with ideas, go with Simak, go with Donald Westlake, part of their equations, the only other time, a journalist, a newspaperman, many such cases, strictly for money, pumpin em out, sounds familiar, feature length, super well produced documentary, Linotype, the business of paper and ink, answers so many weird questions, tears books apart, little marks beneath the page, an artifact, publish coordination mark, very kind of key, trays, electrical, you type a letter, a tray full of dies, negative dies, every line of the column, page 83, one column across, all a magazine styles with two columns across, this is the amazing thing, the letter that got inked were made of lead, the letter as you need them, every size every comma, that makes a slug, lead castings, same lead bucket they came from, like a printer that prints one line at a time, astounding, incredibly complex, the kinda training that nobody else will ever get again, just happened to come at the tail end of it, no demand for it, xeroxing, this is what made newspapers possible after the time of Benjamin Franklin, changed the world of knowledge and knowledge production than anything else, the machine the size of your kitchen, it’s big and you sit at it, hot lead spurtin out of it, Pay For The Printer by Philip K. Dick, a being from another planet, it copies the cup, very tired, the colour is faded, for making newspapers, every newspaper had one of these, technical people, superinteresting, people who run trains, not this job, bigger, every city that had a newspaper, every book publisher, guys, Mr. Pulpcovers, how well produced, I watched the whole thing, nice to learn things, thank you, a happy new year and merry xmas and a bruiseless boxing day, go Cowboys, which team is kicking the ball better, some kicking, throwing, running, some carrying, can you make a novel out of it?, some deeper purpose, too fun, cheerleader with a tattoo on her breast, collected fiction, spread out his best stories, sell em all, kindle, audio.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #657 – READALONG: The Ganymede Takeover by Philip K. Dick and Ray Nelson

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #657 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Marissa VU, Evan Lampe and Will Emmons talk about The Ganymede Takeover by Philip K. Dick

Talked about on today’s show:
Philip K. Dick and Ray Nelson, Philip K. Dick’s font is HUGE and Ray Nelson’s is tiny, very Philip K. Dick, tidied up a lot by Ray Nelson, a device full of microcircuitry, miniaturization, Philip K. Dick’s various flying cars, an ionocraft, even more seedy and disrepair than the first, a shabby little used interior, not apart of the fleet, I’ll convey you to the neegparts, are you safe to ride in?, I do what I like, it’s legal for a class 1 homeostatic mechanism to own a tom, many alarming creaks and clankings, a very Philip K. Dick paragraph, I mean I sort of smell bag, I smell like cat wee, insecure machinery, a robot owns a human being, stupid and hilarious, one of his more competent novels, where the Tennessee thing came from, Blacks and Indians, pretty interesting, not a great book, a prelude, we’re in the takeover, time jump, pre-invasion, Dr. Bloodmoney, supposed to be a sequel to The Man In The High Castle, the Japanese were replaced by the Ganymedians, made Paul uncomfortable, it is what Paul signed up for, Philip K. Dick is not racist, Ray Nelson is not racist, the USA in 1965 was pretty racist, superior and resentful of them, physically beautiful, Counter-Clock World, Our Friends from Frolix 8, why didn’t Evan do this for his podcast?, psychology and psychiatry, YUP is the opposite of NOPE, gender transitions, pronoun stuff, gender transition, oppressor class, what are the NeegParts? Negro Partisans, why Tennessee?, the great mixup, all Black people and Indians in East Tennessee now, Colorado, the neutral zone, the Appalachian Mountains are a wild place, secret agents, the narrators, the audiobook, 2012, Gregg Margarite, Eight O’Clock In The Morning, aftershow talk, Jen Murtha and Steven Davis, dual narrator audiobooks, Jen Murtha does all of the non-dialogue and Steven Davis does everything else, Jesse has no friend in South Africa, Jesse ended up liking it quite a bit, Jen Murtha is laughing a lot, a charming amateur production, having fun doing this, this book hasn’t been published in a long time, no copyright information, 5 and a half hours, chaypter won, a school project?, a pretty good book, the top half of Philip K. Dick novels, Marissa’s favourite version of Philip K. Dick, minimal breasts, obsessed with the one woman in the novel, Percy X, one of them kills her without her dying, kills her with a bust of Sigmund Freud, touch fingertips, the strength of non-sexual touch, vocal jazz thing, a beautiful scene, where Paul Rivers reflects on his sexuality and identity as a man, really sensitive, the men are all horny Philip K. Dick, their descriptions of what a woman is like, the huddling together moment, the individual vs. the gestalt, Galactic Pot-Healer, individuals and identity, A Maze Of Death, a collective experience, obvious in retrospect Percy X is Malcolm X, Perseus?, the occupation is so weird, comedy, petty villainy, the vidphone rang, psychedelic research, always thinking about the United Nations, I’m a sick man, a character who doesn’t want to get out of bed, a device that may be able to stop the invasion of the earth, functionary psychiatry character, they’re all in a crazyhouse together, almost like The Zap Gun, a parody of itself, I’m fulfilling a contract, they took some acid and started messing around, a fairly polished piece, Philip K. Dick is very sloppy, the passages and the ideas, the plot is stupid, some Philip K. Dick short stories are beautiful others are mechanistic, Now Wait For Last Year, Time Out Of Joint, Philip K. Dick isn’t very good at novels, beautiful gems of polished awesomeness, the models of planes, authenticity, replicas and fakes, Nelson forcing Philip K. Dick to explain something (how telepathy works), a theory of human consciousness, a quasi-scientific explanation, bottom half books, here’s the situation: I’ve got all these phrases, technobabble, the psychiatric element, the concept of the Nowhere girl, super-detached, the best girl ever because she doesn’t care about anything, that’s how he sees his wives, the more drugged out and detached they are the more fun they were to hang out with, he wanted the gestalt, female partners, relationships, the aloof woman, Clans Of The Alphane Moon, Eye In The Sky (the Bevatron book), a 1989 copy, lacking the gravity and conviction, this Mekkus character is basically a head, wormlike aliens, Dune by Frank Herbert, mostly a head, Dan Dare Pilot Of The Future, the Mekon, turning pages with their tongues, Deus Irae, Tibor McMasters, one of the people you’d see in the asylum, a flotation tank, become a nothing, political stuff, a WIK, a wormkisser, a musicologist, overt resistance to the worms, characterization is unusually weak for Dick, the Hellmachine that distorts reality, all the themes floating around, the experience on the battlefield, Robert E. Lee, the Black Freedom movement, the Vietnam War, the Peace movement, the Civil War, maybe everything kind of exists but we aren’t paying attention to it, a theme from modern fantasy, a little ironic?, a lot of sex in there too, tiny lesbians pulling out people’s facial hair, delusions of grandeur, the old confederate money factory, a fantasy of the old south, another money scene, what’s on the money, historical figures of science and literature, Euros are like that, the Queen and the Prime Ministers and randos to represent science, Franklin and Hamilton, nobody has confidence in these people, appropriate for 2021, maybe 2022 will prove something different, free floating Philip K. Dick parts, he did LSD twice, Ray Nelson was always trying to get Dick going, therapy, psilocybin, mechanically driven drug scenes, large or medium doses, there is no Ganymedian occupation of Tennessee, as a metaphor it doesn’t make any sense, looking at SF as a criticism of society, science fiction is about analyzing today, Ganymedians are Philip K. Dick unable to finish this book and Ray Nelson is Percy X, an idea in mind, what is authenticity mean, finding authenticity, meaning and work, identity and empathy, what’s this book about?, psychiatry is a big theme, psychiatrists trying to control everything, the only free people in the world are up in the hills, sinister, a heavy scene, he beats a robot to death, another Philip K. Dickism: Abraham Lincoln, Robots are not robots, they’re people, an inability to empathize with others, this is boring, Paul Rivers kills Percy X, the free person is killed by the psychiatrist, not many benevolent psychiatrists, We Can Build You, Vulcan’s Hammer, mental asylum planets, distrustful of psychiatrists, Radio Free Albemuth, A. Lincoln Simulacrum, Philip K. Dick’s bathroom tiles, the Dickheads Podcast talks about Divorcepedia, we’re getting two people’s psychology, in that headspace anymore, not so resentful and angry anymore, it isn’t one person’s idea, amazing scenes, California, Tennessee as a myth symbol, very Confederate, Orange County, the San Francisco Bay Area, a backward part of the country?, mostly set in space, in their plush pleasure palaces, people camping in the woods, a bit of Norway, everybody is speaking Norwegian, seeing the password through their eyes, Dick had his wife institutionalized, in a housefire, an important impact on your life, the commitment scene is just like an interlude, mostly dialogue, I wanna be able to commune with another person for reals, fuck it let’s blow up the planet!, what would be the point, becoming interested in the novelties of American culture, getting rooked, a fake tchotchke, Nelson’s first novel, 1963, the inspiration for They Live (1988), We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, We Can Build You (wholesale), responsible, “Mistakes were made.”, somebody made the decision, a guy who wants to be the king, a funny self-sabotage scene, I should be in charge because I’m a clown, Emperor Norton, President Breslin, The Crack In Space, the TV news clown, Tucker Carlson, game show hosts, anyone can be president if he can be president, make him king anyways, I’m a useless clown, I’m a racist slob vote for me, I’m a simple guy, I’m this intellectual who’s better than you, A Face In The Crowd (1957), a very American story, Arkansas, “I’m so exhausted”, “I’m a sick man”, we’re going to set you up, man, they’re in every part of the novel doing something sinister, yeah I smashed her head in but it doesn’t matter, make you feel horrified, the skinning people was pretty nasty, Blacks are called Bucks, Toms are Uncle Toms (sellouts), its all tuck, how good it would feel to roll around on the pelt, these are weird thoughts, he’s the bad guy (kind of), cartoon horror, we don’t need to take this too seriously, the hotel room is great?, you trying to escape from this place?, Ubik, Richard K. Morgan’s Jimmi Hendrix hotel (Edgar Allan Poe in the TV version), idea filled, a literature of ideas, that may be changing, the ideas in here are not potent, more like a regular genre, when people think science fiction fiction today (what Netflix produces), here’s a premise, Three Body Problem, Allan Quatermain, Eric Brighteyes, Vikings are dumb, Paul says we’re done, Evan’s Philip K. Dick podcasts needs addenda, losing track of everything, The Simulacrum, his 1960s books are really well packed, his 70s and 80s books, not as busy, quickfire character changes, very not modern, modern books are technically better, are they as idea packed?, adventure and revenge, trying to be a Norse story, an author’s voice, he’s the dumb blond doing what the witch tells him to, Allan’s Wife, not a good novel to learn real facts about Zulu people, kinda short, main themes.

The Ganymede Takeover by Philip K. Dick and Ray Nelson - art by VINCENT DI FATE

URANIA - The Ganymede Takeover by Philip K. Dick and Ray Nelson

The Ganymede Takeover

The Ganymede Takeover by Philip K. Dick and Ray Nelson

Posted by Jesse Willis Become a Patron!

Reading, Short And Deep #272 – The New Master by Lord Dunsany

Reading, Short And Deep #272

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The New Master by Lord Dunsany

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.

The New Master was first published in The Little Tales of Smethers And Other Stories, 1952.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #481 – READALONG: Exhibit Piece by Philip K. Dick

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #481 – Jesse, Paul, Marissa, and Evan Lampe talk about Exhibit Piece by Philip K. Dick

Talked about on today’s show:
If: Worlds Of Science Fiction, August 1954, its okay, a lot better than initial impressions, Evan loves this story, Marissa enjoyed it, Paul thought it was deeper than he thought, set apart from the Electric Dreams adaptation, the tropes of TV are not the tropes of Philip K. Dick, Real Life, Sookie Stackhouse and Terrance Howard, a strong script, slightly inspired by Exhibit Piece, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, Anna Paquin, a male fantasy, I’m a lesbian supercop, flying cars, pubtrans (a fucking bus), a suburban utopia, dystopia, juxtaposing, idiocy of television tropes, vs. a 1950s science fiction story, why are they cops, that’s what television does, the end, does a lot happen at the end, oriented for television, what is the plot in the two worlds in Real Life, they killed my partners (all 15 of them), those fingers your not eating, the french fries are the flapjacks, the physical trauma in the story vs. punching and shooting, the murder of his wife doesn’t matter, tracking down the murder of the cops doesn’t matter, all the threads in the short story, the concussion is hay-fever in the story, total world destruction ahead, demolish (The Demolished Man), Mr. PKD doing your job so well today, a schizoid embolism, Total Recall (1990), Paul Verhoeven vs. Arnold Schwarzenegger, back to the ambiguity, time portal, the best episode so far, the more you look at it, the psychology stuff, ultimately there are no threads you can pull on in Exhibit Piece that can make the story fall apart, The Commuter, wearing robes, Fleming, officious and a jerk or constructive truth, even the robot bus driver is upset, how much time PKD spent in university, Xeno’s paradox, weird one-up-man-ship, manifest in academic departments, historians in TV shows (don’t exist), some wisdom we’re missing out on, cosplay, powdered wigs, AP history exam, singing Stan Rogers’ sea-shanties, subtle!, I wish you could see this side, Carnap. Freedom, limited government!, no euthanasia!, he lives in a department dormitory, the Spartans, a psychotic break, a terrible shame, malice, they live in a dystopia like hell, political correctness, Small Town by Philip K. Dick, life-size, just beyond the paper-route, like the dioramas in the American Museum of Natural History, they gender flipped it!, a lesbian and a person of colour, George Miller, the fantasy world is the television world, billionaires and cops, Network (1976), the guardians as Plato described them, how many times does PKD use cops, drinking coffee and getting lost in bathrooms, the Eisenhower administration, the cobalt bomb, setting it in his period, oh my god!, I want to escape into the future, that great turn, from a utopia because it has flying cars and lesbians, advertising and VR, a clue, that whole world revolves around our main character, many lesbian supercops in the future, so egotistical, did they or didn’t they resolve it, survivor guilt, her mind is completely wiped, what about all these murdered 15 cops, the partner story doesn’t matter, the unresolved stuff with the husband trying to get revenge, it’s a dream, her wife gets killed, a personal Hell, a form of torture, Evan’s take, this can’t be real because my life’s too good, labour saving technology, the bad world must be real, our vacations are dystopias, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Windup Girl, it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, the one with the hot wife, when things are good we write dystopias, during wars we write the utopias?, Evan wants utopias back, The Walking Dead, no capacity for cooperation, Doctor Bloodmoney, an optimistic post apocalypse, seeing examples of solidarity and heroism, Gary K. Wolfe’s How Great Science Fiction Works, exposing cracks in humanity, Evan’s not a Hobbesian, being an anarchist, nasty, brutish, and short, a billionaire, lackeys, gun fight, Bruce Wayne, a lampshade, Ronald D. Moore, nostalgic 1950s restaurant, TV cops, neither one is a reality from which one could escape, they’re both fantasy worlds, a fear of the future being dystopic space, no ability to quit your job, a genuine fear, many people had that life goal, a car in the garage, the Russian River, that subtlety, page 2, no standards of your own, these words mean nothing to you, post Fordism (scientific management), The Variable Man, value from our working lives, William Whyte’s The Organizational Man, David Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd, The Mold Of Yancy, conformity in the 1950s, 60-40 or 70-30, there are good things about our society, he’s absolutely not a communist, losing track about people weaved their own clothing, the early modern, Souvenir, everyone walks everywhere, the board, the soviet, the committee, Edwin Carnap, N’York, the World Directorate, there are no other countries, the World Series, there’s no place on Earth for him to escape to, tobacco, why this story is so good, an Ouroboros style circle, nothing loose or falling out, cementing the circularity, kapok, George Miller was so much like Philip K. Dick, holding on to his art, the weird eccentric guy, this period, Time Out Of Joint, seeing the 1950s like an alien, like time travel, page 68, a picture of the 1950s, Don and his brother Ted, the woman, sprinkling soap flakes, slumping down at the kitchen table, vividly embodied, what was happening?, the sights and sounds of people, how could he be sure, a pink plastic apron, old man Davidson, a tall white-haired old man, downtown San Fransisco, tight sweaters and perfume, two sides of the same country, the authority figure of Davidson is paralleled in the future world by Fleming, a wife and car and two kids, a new prison, a delightful prison, Futurama, transformed language, why is this story so long, material, full, subtle, nothing flashy, why are these kids here, the very progressive 2018 version, a gratuitous lesbian sex scene, eye candy, we’re so progressive we’ve got to show the eye candy and the gunfight, recollecting, the details of a dream, building a world you’re immersed in, delusional or not, like a dream confabulation, amazingly strange, the visual tropes, wakes up with fire burning all around, thrown into the deep end, dialogue, TV cop trope: “whadawegot?”, infodump us, as you know Bob, “wegottanuthaone”, he never loses consciousness throughout the story, both worlds have technology that doesn’t exist, Black Mirror, going to the psychiatrist, such a PKD scene, you could start it the other way, having the same effect, Time Out Of Joint, a whole future outside the town, he writes about this stuff all the time, the Capgras delusion:

Mrs. D, a 74-year-old married housewife, recently discharged from a local hospital after her first psychiatric admission, presented to our facility for a second opinion. At the time of her admission earlier in the year, she had received the diagnosis of atypical psychosis because of her belief that her husband had been replaced by another unrelated man. She refused to sleep with the impostor, locked her bedroom and door at night, asked her son for a gun, and finally fought with the police when attempts were made to hospitalise her. At times she believed her husband was her long deceased father. She easily recognised other family members and would misidentify her husband only.

the Truman Delusion, The Father Thing, the theory as to why deja vu happens, sense data misinterpreted as a memory, brainfart, when you start noticing the operating system, a general production fault, we see the world with our brain, feelings are completely non-existent in the universe except inside this grey stuff, Gatecrashers by Patrick Tomlinson, The Gameplayers Of Titan, the threat of us being just a simulation in someone else’s dream, either it was too long or two short, something missing, where is their connection, one voice all the way through, maybe it would make a good VR game, a VR game about a VR game, Existenz (1999), put the bead on her head, playing with the media, how hip we are!, they used to care about Science Fiction, we only care about cops and billionaires, Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man has both billionaires and cops, although 20th century Americans laid their own floor tiles, Ragle Gumm, little weird things in bathrooms, the Hellenistic empire, obsessed by plumbing, individualism, Athens, the skeptics, the cynics, the stoics, an inter-cultural space, the ruins of Roman London, Celts running around Egypt, melting pot, he paid the robot, from the pre-Christian division, the atomic engine exhibit, it looks like a squashed Jurassic lizard, what is it all for?, a post-apocalyptic Hellscape in recovery, one of the threats of communism is conformity, the officiousness, the government oversight committee, we need spies, history is really important, World War VI, even in communist Russia they have museums and language learning, yes you’re supposed to study Americans but you’re not supposed to have Elvis’ haircut, the briefcase was a power authority symbol, transforming my relation to empathy, dig me?, look I’m important, the tie is the accoutrements, why profs go crazy, beards and sandals and sweaters, Stalinism, we totally misunderstood the Soviet Union, through a glass darkly, maybe that’s why this story feels like he did time travel, Back To The Future (1985), the nylon hose, the woman’s boudoir, he’s nailed the 1950s, he’s skewering his possible future, I’m making a living as a science fiction writer, The Americans, the Dead Hand, a dead-man’s switch, looking at the 80s with the knowledge about if from the present, watching the news, propaganda, when you were reading those history textbooks about WWII, the Americans defeated the Nazis at Normandy, 27 million dead, Stalingrad, grinding horror forever, little bit of rationing, other than Blade Runner the flying cars trope, the focus for the movies, I was promised a flying car, bureaucratic technologies, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, The Land Ironclads, helicopters are the flying cars for billionaires, the Aerocar, the future is not evenly distributed and may never be, Black Panther, Thor: Ragnarok, Spiderman: Homecoming, Hulk’s really great, snappy, What We Do In The Shadows, Guardians Of The Galaxy, why is everything about vibranium?, a flower that gives you superpowers, if you had this drug, you’re fucking monsters, a Rick And Morty, Message From The King, American street politics vs. fantasy fantasy fantasy, why we need a Robert A. Heinlein, to do a political job or teach a particular lesson, the third Iron Man movie, Battlestar Galactica, narratives of Africa, dreaming of Liberia, new world values, projecting dreams onto Africa, a fictional country made real, the whole afro-centric narrative, not just the Greeks, Greek philosophy comes from Egypt?, afro-centric philosophy, Ant-Man, the villain is so believable, an amoral corporate suit, the Iron Man villains, Robert A. Heinlein’s gay deceiver, spanking with their own swords, Blade Runner made it manifest, that’s the evidence, probes on Mars, telescopes in orbit, what we don’t have is the iconic Science Fiction cars, Real Life is worth watching, look advertising outside your window, nothing new, all derivative, not Promethean technologies, police, how many TV shows are set in the classroom, schools, teacher makes a difference movie, Head Of The Class, the learning experience or the teaching experience, what’s the inherent drama?, it’s easier to follow the trend, Exhibit Piece exemplifies actual science fiction, the story need not be published in a Science Fiction magazine, Netflix and Amazon are science fiction crazy, Paul is sad, we only like flying cars and cops and billionaires, bad endings, smoking a cigar, had it been a Black Mirror episode, too safe, the Zhuangzi, Taoist text, The Butterfly Dream, just go with it, making a choice, you shouldn’t make a choice, nostalgia, Ready Player One, nostalgia is not healthy at all, South Park, member berries, Magnum, P.I., a fantasy world that is acknowledging it is maybe a fantasy, same helicopter, the same Ferarri, a Haole, the Navy, based on issues about Hawaii, all the things, an action explosion show, Call Of Duty, Hollywood is eating itself, a terrible way to end this podcast, everybody gets lesbian flying car wives from billionaire cops.

Exhibit Piece by Philip K. Dick

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #461 – READALONG: The Impossible Planet by Philip K. Dick

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #461 – Jesse, Paul, Marissa, and Evan Lampe talk about The Impossible Planet by Philip K. Dick

Talked about on today’s show:
Imagination, October 1953, Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams, not that bad?, a lot to like, hate the ending, The Hood Maker, ambiguous clever or something, the story doesn’t need that, a tale of ecology, a fake tourist experience, they don’t know what they’re doing, what are you doing here?, long lost Earth, myth and legend, Isaac Asimov’s galactic empire, two kilo pos, love story, grandmother, grandfather?, incest issues, skinny dipping, more confusing, is it really happening?, a shared delusion?, a fairy realm?, deluding the same thing, she brought along some clothes, it’s Earth in the story, the twist in the tail, Planet Of The Apes, Richard, the coin, titillate our curiosity, the meaning of the coin, it could be Earth in the TV adaptation (but there’s no evidence for it), hook shaped rocks, the robant (robot) is lying, motivations, bad writing, we don’t get the ending, tell us what it means Jesse, struck, she’s the same old woman who appears in a handful of Dick stories, the old woman in The Cookie Lady, a personality, a sexuality, Captive Market, Douglas or Doug in a story is Philip K. Dick, The Geek’s Guide To The Galaxy, writing women, why is she an old woman and not an old man?, gender swap, he buries her in the sea, some birds flying around, E. Pluribus Unum, “out of many, one”, a subtle environmental message, a symbol out of where we came from (the sea), it doesn’t look like Earth, I didn’t want it to be like that, all the money being made on genetic ancestry, big business, kinda bougey, white privilege, she’s rich, or is she using her last resources?, this is not what I want, Lovecraft is obsessed with ancestry, you better not look to much, a historical argument, genocide and slavery, no idyllic past, historical memory, North Carolina, some very weird things, the forgetting of the Earth, despoiled, garbage floating in that ocean, Strange Eden, ancient astronauts, Circe, develop the planet, humans are terrible, when you go picnicing, when Mother Earth returns to die, supposed to have a resonant feeling, the robant as a culmination of the industrial society, big red eyes (I’m angry?), Fondly Fahrenheit, almost beautiful, he went along with the scheme, the acting is good, the scripting isn’t very good, an extra character (the girlfriend), science fictional trappings that don’t resonate, it only makes sense if they’re delusional, no time travel explanations, he doesn’t really love his girlfriend, he’s from the periphery of the empire, the captain, whatever weird porn, fake sex, fake tourist sites, make the rubes happy, the girlfriend wants to go to the “city” too, the rat race of the corporate ladder, maybe the old lady is his true love, it is weird that he has these old women characters, formulaic vs. instinctual, what her body is like, how beautiful she is (really), sexualize a 340 year old lady, the money is double, the names are the same, old women can be beautiful, she’s going back, give this woman some dignity, the guys are kind of the assholes, not about the dignity of her death, a suicide pact, a suicide mission, the service worker angle, you waitress pretends to like you, the rubes, fakeness, they’re lying the whole time, this is Earth, it’s not Earth, oh, it’s Earth!, a lie that turns out to be the truth, genuineness, genuine emotion, genuine reality, the industrialization, the robant is more loyal than the humans, Norton, beautiful and dark, they sink into it together, muddle motivations, its only there to scold Andrews, the American experience, we need punishment, they’re channeling Americans, there’s no punishment at the end for the two liars, we don’t need punishment, it is not about punishment, why she’s a woman makes sense if her robant is her loyal servant, to deliver her for that scene, the original title was supposed to be Legend, a quest like the one for the Holy Grail, from thirty years ago, The Twilight Zone (1985/6), Voices In The Earth, ghosts, grass and flowers, repopulating the Earth, a Wall-E style rebirth, an elegy not a renewal, nature doesn’t give a fuck, there are no ghosts, the slug that crawls over that rock from a temple from 1,000 years ago doesn’t care, what makes something true, not a justified true belief, the skeletal moonlight, the recycling bin, we’re outside of the story, she’s representative of nature, leaves and branches, a voice like rustling leaves, a faded leaf carried on the wind, the Earth is cracked congealed baked degenerate, crusted with salt and waste, line by line, evocative and beautiful, Earth is green, what do we make of her being deaf?, different deafness, sensitive to the hearing community, hearing loss vs. complete hearing loss, the second to last page, Andrews, senile and deaf, easier to justify tricking her, disability, if she’s representative of Nature, Nature doesn’t speak to us, they can say things right in front of her, spitting on Mother Nature, it works somehow, a small idea, The Commuter, Prominent Author, wonderful technology, a joke, devastating the Earth so badly we won’t even know it is Earth, Planet For Transients, Survey Team, post-humans, leaving their mother, the seeds for a new form of life, a human civilization on Mars, this is what our species does, die and face our sins, that should have been the story, I go to the hair salon, their stylized white hair, upping the pink nebula, weird bouffant hair, regular mousy black, vs. Louis XIV hair, are we supposed to be disgusted by the tourists, class warfare, fulfilling her wishes, fell flat, she can hear the bird, Andrews is interpreting it correctly (just low on oxygen), toxins and radiation, fantasy is comforting, maybe Jesse dreamed the comfort, how harsh reality is, the comfort of a woman’s body, late late late winter and spring romance, that’s all the tourist experience is, Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain, the intersection of old empires, the Roman Empire, Syria, Bible stories, the British, French, and American empires, poverty, managed and regulated, Hunting The Deceitful Turkey, hunting, Mother Nature is tricky and deceitful and full of irony, betrayed by her own bone, he’s a bad shot, if you interpret it right, he’s a vegetarian, too sensitive, reading Twain, Mark Twain deflecting with humour, Dick meditates in the spaces of the characters, the other characters are only there to deliver the scenes, how horribly we treat people, selling the dream, and sometimes they do get it, accidental moment of grace, research, hallucination, give her a fake memory of visiting Earth, that open question, the death chamber scene in Soylent Green, Edward G. Robinson (Sol), removing the ambiguity, the signature of this whole series, taking the lesson of Inception (2010) to heart too much, liquid realities, thematically grounded vs. fuzzy, The Commuter is an amazing and subtle short story, I can see it, he can’t see it.

The Impossible Planet by Philip K. Dick

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #130 – READALONG: Human Man’s Burden by Robert Sheckley

The SFFaudio Podcast #130 – Scott, Jesse, Tamahome and Jenny discuss Human Man’s Burden by Robert Sheckley.

Talked about on today’s show:
uppity damn robots, hilarious characterization, soulless robots, Galaxy Magazine September 1956, Star Trek, Harry Mudd, Sears Roebuck catalogues, freeze dried vs. flash frozen, Kiln People by David Brin, The Twilight Zone episode “The Lonely“, robot wives, manufactured fingernails, center of gravity, “could she have been a robot?”, Gunga Sam the foreman robot, duenna is Portuguese for chaperone, Gunga Din, the Writing Excuses podcast with Lou Anders, HuffDuffer, John Scalzi, Casablanca, The Dark Knight, Edward Flaswell, “Sure pal. Sure.”, Frontier Bride, mail order bride, freeze dried preacher, programmed by “a human supremacist of the most rabid sort”, was Flaswell talked into feeling bad, what is the Human Man’s Burden?, is it all a marketing ploy?, The Mote In God’s Eye, the Gold Rush, why is the combustion god?, “Him strong him good, believe me brothers, it is even as I say.”, Rudyard Kipling poem’s The White Man’s Burden, the justification for empire, satire, the page 99 illustration, labeling people, ultra deluxe model bride, “oil glistened on their honest faces”, Tama can prove the robots are having sex, “in their carefree robot fashion”, a series of robots on the moon ordering from Sears Roebuck catalogues (15 F&SF covers by Mel Hunter), Charles van Doren, face-parts, “the robot frontier”, Asteroids in fiction (Wikipedia entry), TZ ep.: “Two“, Dumb Martian by John Wyndham, TZ ep.: “The Lateness Of The Hour“, android vs. gynoid, Firefly, Gunga Sam knows best, Sheila was down-selling herself, this is a feminist story?, Human Man’s Burden could be a cartoon, Kindles/Xboxes/Wiis/PS3s are sold as cheaply as possible because of the profit being in the media they play, iTouch vs. iPhone, free robots in our homes selling moon makers and solidovisions, nesting dolls, Human Man’s Burden probably isn’t public domain, Psycho by Robert Bloch, The Status Civilization, Seventh Victim, Mindswap, Warrior Race, The Space Merchants, Blackstone Audio, Charles Stross, Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan.

ISFDB publication history for Human Man’s Burden HERE.

Posted by Jesse Willis