Rudyard Kipling – Page 5

The SFFaudio Podcast #483 – READALONG: Kim by Rudyard Kipling

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #483 – Jesse, Maissa Bessada, and Julie Davis talk about Kim by Rudyard Kipling

Talked about on today’s show:
the Forgotten Classics podcast, 1901, 1900, a long book, a picaresque: “relating to an episodic style of fiction dealing with the adventures of a rough and dishonest but appealing hero”, a rogue, Mahbub Ali, how do we come to this book, Citizen Of The Galaxy is Julie’s favourite Heinlein, stuck in Julie’s brain, enchanted, so thick, so much going on, the clouds parted, the sights and sounds of India are overwhelming, reading Edgar Allan Poe on the page, a style, the big thick novels of today vs. the big thick novels of yesterday, more work to be done in a classic novel, thank you so much, we should talk about it, Jesse is a trickster, reading a book is a lot of work, dropping seeds and seeing if they flower, how could one not like this book?, The Turning Wheel by Philip K. Dick, was Philip K. Dick a Rudyard Kipling fan?, Galactic Pot-Healer by Philip K. Dick, do you like Yates?, I don’t know I’ve never tried any, do you like Kipling?, I don’t know I’ve never Kippled, Dick’s nod to Lovecraft, an existential crisis, The Man In The High Castle, comedic, jaded teenage students, the plot of Counter-Clock World, Red Dwarf: Backwards, Nodnol, Bulgaria, Chesterton on Dickens, seeing the world backwards, Dick handles it very tastefully, the United States as a Buddhist utopia, begging as a normal and honorable trade, a necessary trade, a very different kind of philosophy, does it depend on who is doing the begging, acquiring merit, catching meals, the author’s perception of Kim, India’s respect for the holy, big blinders, a lot of dialogue and clever wordplay, the 1950 movie adaptation of Kim, the movie was almost unwatchable, Kim is a malefactor, making babies cry, the opposite of ‘the friend of all the world’, stealing, smoking, Dean Stockwell as a small child, Errol Flynn as Ali, Gunga Din, The Jungle Book, racist!, Kipling’s love of India’s diversity, all races do the same thing in their own way, enlightenment and non-enlightenment, respect, Neil Gaiman, vindication!, understanding people from 100 years ago, he has a lot of race in his stories, how caste is everything, special clothing, entitled to certain kinds of respect, Kipling is interested in people, the real racists keep themselves away from the other, spending time with different groups, many merits, racist language, Kim chose the Indian/Tibetan way, the llama, layers, the contrasts between, the Anglican and the Catholic priests, different benevolent approaches, small touches, the River of the Arrow, Man’s desire for freedom from sin, an unrelenting desire, the protestant chaplin, in matters of human affairs the protestant church turns to the catholic church for guidance, loosely translating, a priest who cares about people, cute, trying to become pure, one thing that’s frustrating, so much going on, why the film version can’t work, Kipling’s playing a game with the reader, the whole Great Game aspect, did Kipling coin the phrase “the Great Game”?, everything’s in translation, Urdu, the flaw in what Jesse’s saying, thee not you, the relationship was formalized, Captain Arthur Conolly, exposing the actual workings of the spy system, if the empire of the world was controlled by Buddhism, Tim Powers’ Declare, the Russians and the British trying to control Asia, Declare is brilliant at times, counting magic, escaping the time in which a book is published, modern novel conventions, too long, spy novels, duplicates and doubles, the end of Kim, running out of strength, the third time through, a difficult book, when Kim appeared to be dying, how hard the book is, a kid’s book?, we’re just a lot weaker at reading than our ancestors, sustaining vigorous interest in sentences, why it’s hard to read Poe, its not that we’re incapable of it, looking at Reddit, what books today will be taught in school in twenty years, in Jack London’s lifetime, The King Of The Mazy May by Jack London, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, The Importance Of Being Earnest, The Hunger Games and Harry Potter, teaching candy, The Kite Runner, demanding kids dig deeper, catering to: reading can be fun!, Ready Player One will be taught in school?!, the worst kind of book for Jesse, Julie remembers Donna Summer, almost some nobility to the colonial system, good propaganda, Plain Tales From The Hills, writing for the English, many more of the flaws, the Raj exposed, I loved India, weaving an entertaining spy story throughout it, the spy runner, also an oddity, LibriVox, Adrian Praetzellis, the Naxos audiobook of Kim, good stuff on LibriVox, doing it for love, interpretations, how interesting Kipling’s life is, Kipling thought of himself as a Hindu for the first five years of his life, Kipling’s father was really talented, a documentary about Kipling’s father on YouTube, Kipling’s father was more of a traditional racist, Kipling was an outsider amongst the white people, sent away to boarding school for 11 years, Lahore is now in Pakistan, thick glasses, balance issues, he’s short, the seventy white people who run Lahore, night walks, H.P. Lovecraft, when the night comes to life, smoking opium, the bridge between the white people and the vibrant and fascinating natives, he felt as if he was a prince returning to their own land, like the maharajas who were sent to Eton and returned to India, abused in boarding school, that happens in this book too, mother and sister and aunty, fixing this lull, The Secret Of The Machines, told from the point of view of machines, the things that run modern civilization, we don’t care if you get caught in the gears, the story of robots, a science fiction writer, an inventor of many kinds of writing, Reading, Short And Deep, The Mark Of The Beast, a werewolf story, British drunkards who defile a Hindu god, the Silver Man, going barking mad, the European werewolf story in Colonial India, My Own True Ghost Story, someone is playing billiards next door, like Dickens, telling the story of the people, The Phantom ‘Rickshaw, The H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast, learning to write for the newspapers, the Mark Twain of India, among the cast of thousands, Mahbub Ali, he’s got real influence, its his job to beg, another Catholic connection, its about intention, like the llama, not earning merit, giving alms, St Thomas Aquinas, the poor are always with us, omnipresent, beggars on the road, only giving to the people you know, do you see Christ in them?, giving them great merit, when the llama allows the boy to be trained in the ways of the sahib, becoming a healer, a boy given a gun, the military caliber, a box of healing things, quinine, make a charm for this disease, equivocating, continually struggling, when we get to our Heinlein novel, the modern problem, the old wise men who guide the younger main characters tend to be pontifical rather than self-doubting, Jesse’s grandmother had just finished reading the book, a TV movie withe Peter O’Toole as the llama, is this really a children’s book?, Kimball O’Hara, the choices that Kim made once he understood his place in society, the ways of his childhood, the English couldn’t take it out of him (unlike Kipling), a university dean, lecture tours, marriage, using English in thinking, hypnotism scene, double brained, how hypnotism works, letting yourself play the game, the roller coaster, the only people who dance like a chicken on stage are those who want to dance like a chicken on stage, like Girls Gone Wild videos, a biased picture, we didn’t know that smoking was a bad for you as we do now, everybody back then must have stunk really bad, a very scented era, big mustaches, mutton chops and layers and layers of clothing, clean and odor-free, the Asians don’t go much in for kissing, romantic drama set in China, times and conventions change, a whole weird world that’s always changing, what to call this effect, the fossil of a particular period, so many indications and different directions, Dragon’s Egg by Robert L. Forward is a relic from the 1980s, a snapshot, trapped in amber, a pretty good idea of what things are like, what it smelled like and the colours of the saris, invaluable experience, you are edified by reading such a book, a meditation of life and existence, a very unexpected journey, a tour of India, extremes held together by love, the story of younger and elder elephant is told twice, continually meditating upon it, reflecting upon it to Kim again, held together by bonds of love, set free to travel together, transcendence, if you look at the original publication of any Kipling book it always starts with a swastika, co-opting, pilots used the swastika as a symbol of good luck on both sides of WWI, on the begging bowl is a swastika on a lotus leaf, begging for Nazis!, this kind of symbolism, the cover of McClure’s magazine, a circle, a Star of David, an Iron Cross, looking at them in their proper context, the simple honest folk at the bottom of every society, an attack on the attitudes of people who take other people for granted, India as a place of delight and wonders, the Great Road, the road can’t go ever on, finding the river in your own backyard, Kim is Dorothy in The Wizard Of Oz set in India.

Classics Illustrated - No. 143 Kim by Rudyard Kipling

Kim by Rudyard Kipling - Classics Illustrated No. 143

Kim by Rudyard Kipling - illustrated by Oliver Hurst

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #482 – AUDIOBOOK: Kim by Rudyard Kipling

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #482 – Kim by Rudyard Kipling, read by Adrian Praetzellis.

This UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK (12 hours 58 minutes) comes to us courtesy of LibriVox.

Kim was first published as a serial in in McClure’s Magazine, December 1900 to October 1901.

The next SFFaudio Podcast will feature our discussion of it!

McClures - Kim by Rudyard Kipling

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #115 – The Secret Of the Machines by Rudyard Kipling

Podcast

Reading, Short And Deep #115

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Secret Of the Machines by Rudyard Kipling

Here’s a link to a PDF of the poem.

The Secret Of the Machines was first published in A School History Of England, 1911.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

The SFFaudio Podcast #450 – READALONG: Declare by Tim Powers

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #450 – Jesse, Scott, Paul Weimer, and Fred Heimbach, talk about Declare by Tim Powers

Talked about in today’s show:
Learned Hand’s Brow, Fredösphere, 2001, a supernatural spy novel, historical, a secret history of the Cold War, the author’s note from the end, Kim Philby, The Fourth Man, a paranoid squint view of history, “real truth”, On Stranger Tides, more piratical, this way of writing, a sequel?, Last Call, Expiration Day, Earthquake Weather, The Stress Of Her Regard, The Anubis Gates, supernatural adventure stories, very loooong, Kim by Rudyard Kipling, a novelette length epilogue, the last 15%, Scott’s favourite part, alone in a Memphis hotel room, the spy stuff, the final Ararat trip, Paul needs to go up a mountain, the two halves of the same souls, bouncing around the timeline, re-activation, up to confront God, how it was written, the blender artistic method, composition, writing a novel, should be between, where is that number written?, anything over 100,000 words would feel long (except in Fantasy), an 80 page James M. Cain novel, not novel material, what Jesse does for fun, filling in the pieces with supernatural theory, a different bent than Philip K. Dick, Valis, quoting C.S. Lewis, accidentally told the truth, the kind of conversations that they had are exactly where the material this book comes from, A Maze Of Death by Philip K. Dick, Gnostic theories about what’s really behind the veil, really behind the motivations, Philip K. Dick can’t even get through a book without undermining his own theory (unlike Powers), some evil power has blinded us to the truth, a conspiracy against us, escape into the truth Bishop Berkeley, a Gnostic leaner, Fred is reserving the right, dinosaur bones are a distraction, Gnostic vs. ignorant, theme parks for that, Gnostic theme parks, Paul is resolutely materialist, this mundane world, role playing games, this is a fake world, Roger Zelazny’s Amber series, driving to the Courts of Chaos, fantasy literature, spooky stuff, when you pick this flower the princess in the kingdom next door will die, activated, being hungry doesn’t mean we have bread, the bread in the book, miming eating bread that tastes like dust (the Barmecide Feast scene), the meat, an alternate way to god, almost an totalitarian world, how we feel about Kim Philby, how can anybody escape from the reality behind this world?, he’s not killing God he’s confronting an angel, striking against the higher powers, what the Russians are doing, the atheists in the story believe that the fallen angels of Ararat are the sources of all our Biblical theology, interpreting the agenda of Hale’s handlers, by destroying these powers, overthrowing the whole monotheistic paradigm, Andrew Hale, two layers, countries and people, to escape the judgement of God, very Lovecraftian, alien in mindset and morality, Philip K. Dick’s Upon The Dull Earth, profoundly interesting, bloodthirsty angels, Oregon, it ends in a horror, The Odyssey, lambs blood, On Stranger Tides, what the mystery was, the wireless telegraphy, the circles, that’s interesting!, the djinn and how they operate, they pick up what’s around them and use that, very cool, using a crowd, Abdul Alhazred, a Gnostic version of reality, a secret history, visibly torn apart by an invisible force, a subverted reading…, the crowd tears him apart, reading in-, the same feeling, random doubling?, beyond the double agents, Philby’s secret ability to double himself (bodily), the ark and the dark ark, Galactic Pot-Healer, the Glimmung and the Dark (or Black) Glimmung, Joe Fernwright, an evil cathedral, Joe Fernwright’s skeletal double, why this book is long, this is the novel you must read first, a subverted idea, I’m not going to think about this, Jesse thought that maybe one of the Hales we’re seeing is a different one, when he sees himself beaten up by the police, so subtle?, a bridge too far, taking the twinning thing a step beyond, an unreadable mess, a TV adaptation, could you do a TV series adaptation that wasn’t 400 episodes long, a Netflix series, The Sandbaggers, would anyone watch it?, the Publishers Weekly review, should you stock your shelves with this book?, genre bender, the audience for this is science fiction people, what it really is, Guillermo del Toro, Hellboy, The Devil’s Dictum by Fred Himebaugh, an audiboook?, a Fred podcast?, Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis, those English thinkers, really good writing, how much Powers knows about stuff, oh good!, it almost hurts the novel, he isn’t killing his darlings quite enough, how the Bedouins sit on the camel’s saddle, its okay to have one character who has read really widely (but when you have three or four people), when Jesse found out about Otto Skorzeny, I will not violate any known historical fact, the NSA, Davinci’s Demons had new world parrots in Italian streets prior to Columbus, why this book holds up as well as it does, a two-edged sword, historically consistent, infodumps, taken to see Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, in the hands of any other author, utterly brilliant, an insight into Theodora’s character, he’s ‘deep state’, silently assuming, a tension-filled (and hilarious) scene, not many authors who are thinking that hard, worth the cost of admission, going through a writing workshop, Fred bows before the greatness of Tim Powers, when writers do the critiquing, he took something that should have been crap and turned it into something, a bit too neat, we get THE goods on what’s going on, not enough room for Jesse(‘s theorizing), the suspicions have to fit the facts, conspiracy thinking but with constant undermining, I don’t know where we stand, room for mystery, God doesn’t actually show up, Hale as a rebirth of Jesus, Stillman head of Christ, blue eyes, his mysterious father, someone compares Hale to T.E. Lawrence, a ghost, ambiguity, making the Soviets seem competent, what are these purges about, wrapping up all the threads, what was going on in Las Vegas in the 1950s, Tim Powers doing Tim Powers, card games, playing for immortality, when Powers does real life research has to pay-off in a book, as for my own books, last time we did an interview, an apparent inconsistency, Earthquake Weather, under in a tarp in the back yard, Three Days To Never, Hide Me Among The Graves, Dave Robeson, The Projecting Project Pulp Podcast (episode 14), not merely a drug-addled mystic, insight into PKD’s personality, the MP3s are all available, San Fransisco, how he phrases things, John Le Carré, it’ll be fun writing set in the 1960s, Philby’s father, appeared to have a private army, I thought “that’s fun”, 1,001 Nights, wouldn’t that be cool, a very self-conscious writer, the plan forms itself out of the materials he discovers, forcing it together doesn’t work, the pages push away from themselves, I have 14 hours left!, 22 hours, the 1940s setting, the meat and potatoes of the book, three books in one, “Ok, Mr Tim Powers…”, dudes!, Ararat loomed over the whole novel, double a normal genre novel, occult writers, friction and stickiness at the same time, magic?, it had to be this long (except for bits), so perfectly marbled, no other author Fred admires more, Roman Catholic, studiously avoid inserting, a fascinating statement, two skeptics, assumed by the novel, distinguished from the rest of society, a lot of the answers, an Egyptian ankh, experience redemption a specifically Catholic way, heretic heathen people, dogma, wiggle room, Raymond Chandler, why everyone is drinking all the time, he experience the Catholic church, you can feel it, if you read it carefully, just fallen angels, you can interpret this the way you want, maybe Fred knows too much about Tim Powers, which side he’s on, to a Catholic audience, not preachy, Satan passes through a pizza parlour on the way to Hell, The Way Down The Hill, not be judged, hoping for a big Elena section, an honest broker, the Spanish Civil War, being in Paris, being a spy, walking down the street, what does this mean, the borderlands of the supernatural, the scenes in Paris are the most enjoyable part of the book, 1941, they didn’t have a snow that year, the weather is influencing the, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, working backwards, a brilliant sense better than so much more than the usual, Jesse likes the a 21st century novel?, he enjoys it too much, a Tim Powers move, a signature move, in syncopation, a magical trick, I wouldn’t wear this belt, the bare feet radiating heat, they stole the ideas from that book, Pirates Of The Caribbean, it would make a really good audio drama, a conspiratorial narrator, flying over the pyramids, a pyramid of sandbags, we don’t doubt it, the Soviet airplane, we’re spending it on other things comrade, so much time researching, when does he sleep?

Declare by Tim Powers

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #447 – READALONG: The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #447 – Jesse and Paul Weimer talk about The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

Talked about on today’s show:
1974, if everybody in the modern era writes like him…, depth beyond the good writing and the ideas, what does it MEAN?!, a straightforward 1970s novel, ever further into the future, future-shock, war, Ken Burn’s Vietnam documentary series, accelerated time, mid-2016 and now, WHAT the bleep has HAPPENED?, clown show, a politically traumatic time, 1967-1968, 1968-1969, Paul is my senior, draft dodgers taught Jesse, “not my president, hashtag”, leaving the USA for Canada, they stayed, making a peep, the elites (or quasi-elites) might have to go, the real plutocrats always found a way out, Jimmy Carter, McCain, John Kerry, that trick still works, the Russia thing, collusion, what skills does he bring to the table?, the John Podesta emails, Bill and Hill Clinton, flipped the script, they swift-boated him, a perennial technique, bringing it back to the book, all weird, another tour, all word, Earth is a dystopia, Earth became Texas, the first section, training on Charon, power-armor, technology, silly and weird predictions, Mogadishu, Somalia, the farm, lawless Horn of Africa, the center cannot hold, ever expanding military, no health-care for the mom, death-panel, trying to figure out what’s going on in the mind of the author, an analogy, this is why people sign back up (go on another tour), going back and forth, the big takeaway, oh, my mom’s gay, everybody’s gay!, everybody’s multi-racial now and I’m the queer, that’s interesting, now everybody is a clone, a hyperbolized version of the political changes, Cassius Clay -> Muhammad Ali (and great) -> now he’s a war-resister, the kind of military SF, Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, Armor by John Steakley, Old Man’s War, ooh it’s a twist (he’s not even white!), the movie adaptation of Starship Troopers, doing something slightly different, following forward, Jesse’s a big fan of the montage, tedium mixed with fear and shock, the military-industrial complex, romance novels for men, a focus on the specs of the pistols, the serial numbers on their special hand-grips, what gets them going in the night, he did a lot of math, gravity curves, MIT, political stripes, the legalization of cannabis, the acceptance of homosexuality, having latent feelings, a little looser, among those artist types, he’s the “old queer”, a funny twitter conversation: what’s really lacking today…, VHS vs DVD, we’ve become more prudish, conservative marketing, “no, we’ve lost context”, sexist!, homophobe!, “a latent heterosexual”, whenever you put a pressure on a large group of people results happen, everybody in our society is gay now, isn’t that interesting, look at the way we’re living now, the lack of context rule, when Potter converts to heterosexuality…, he’s not trying to target the audience of today, Heinlein was a weird guy, the way he obliquely attacks problems, no qualms about this book, an asexual cyborg, Forever Free, Forever Peace is excellent (Paul doesn’t like it), all about drone warfare, more artificial, The Accidental Time Machine, funny and delightful, Haldeman on Prisoners Of Gravity, he won everything (it was political), overwhelming, a thoughtful and reasonable guy, four serials of this book, Analog, Hero, “Screw you, sir!” -> “Fuck you, sir!”, Robert A. Heinlein’s naval service, a deep respect for the military, a hippie planet called “Middle Finger”, it starts with a “fuck you” and ends with a “Middle Finger”, Mandela’s psychological profile, leading from a position of empathy and ideas (instead of will), how the Marxist soldier during the Spanish Civil War would do business, ambiguous (ambivalent) feelings, Mike Vendetti, not something you take lightly, his emotions in his tweets, he’s got mixed feelings, a big mistake!, this war didn’t need to happen, ultimately the lesson, “support our troops”, taking a knee, a conflation with honouring the military, into the arms of the other f-word (fascism), a very nice point, politicians manipulating the people is nothing new, actual journalism with a critical eye, both Gulf Wars, “embedded with the troops”, stories in a patriotic light, propaganda, still happening today, Brian Williams’ ‘beauty of our missiles’, this book misses, told tightly from Mandella’s POV, the veterans are toured around the world, the comic book adaptation of The Forever War by Marvano (artist), Gay Haldeman (translation) and Joe Haldeman (script), Titan Comics, he stacked the deck, a counter-pole, there’s nothing here, the serialization, We Are Very Happy Here, necessary for serialization, a plot contrivance, 84-year old moms, joining the army for financial reasons, Marygay’s mother and father, true for the people of Somalia, pirates don’t do piracy for the sea-shanties, manipulated for our benefit, in the tradition of Starship Troopers (and not in the tradition), Heinlein’s generation vs. Haldeman’s generation, war with aliens, we become the alien, “you don’t understand politics”, why veteran are the only people are allowed to vote, politics of the era of Nixon vs. the politics of the era of Roosevelt, a “take that”, there was a revolt of veterans on earth at one point, the Bonus Army, the Revolutions Podcast, support our troops is a whip, the American support of the French in Vietnam, depending on how you calculate, a sunk cost fallacy, JFK needed to keep the war going past the next election, we can only badly infer it, what Jesse appreciated about Ender’s Game, a wish-fulfillment avatar for 13 year old boys, a lot of time in the online forums, reading a really deep reddit post, why that book is powerful, and here’s what’s missing, the general is a child, it kind of explains the real life generals, Netflix’s thinly veiled McCrystal biopic, there’s no job to be finished, there are no victory conditions, a frameworks for continuous unending war, without a draft it is an endlessly churning meat-grinder, a constant war economy, the government is being fleeced of its coffers by war profiteers, why is my standard of living falling?, pointing out the unfair, labeling it is not the solution, the Las Vegas shooting, “this is an act of domestic terrorism!”, we’re going to calm things down, slave revolts are not terrorism, labels are not the issue, the guns and the access to them are a bigger issue, people get caught up on the words and identity politics, sidestepping racism, sexual norms, a made-up name, he dodged the question, the charge of racism, google n-gram, nobody got suddenly racist, when they do the movie, Channing Tatum, they made a decision, socioeconomic status, a person’s story, the Ender’s Game movie, Johnny Rico is Filipino from South America, Ensign Kim is Scandinavian!, is it a weakness that the novel doesn’t explore racism?, a beautiful time capsule, Mandella’s psychology, Doctor Potter: I’m not prejudiced, the soldiers he was fighting beside were all his team and the fear of the enemy was more important than the colour of the skin of the soldier in the fox-hole with him, a media construction, real human beings, outside your bubble and your fears, deep deep resentment, prejudices of all kind, lived experience, ameliorating intolerance, a chance to grow and understand, an overoptimistic story?, a combat team, it treats racism as settled, let’s deal with homosexuality, Heinlein on homosexuality, a greater representation of gender-queer characters (male vs. female), painful and uncomforting, seeing the flaws within yourself, he’s a dude telling his own story, Diana, Margay gets her own standalone story, Spider Robinson, many changes, an excised fourth part, people read science fiction the wrong way, dangerous territory, Jesse you should read this this and this, this is a story of a dude like this…, reading off in my own direction, books written before I was born, reading the books written by the readers of recent books, unlike other genres (with the exceptions of mystery and crime), science fiction is a series of conversations between stories, your going to be missing a large part of the story, Day Million by Frederik Pohl, Friday by Robert A. Heinlein, I Will Fear No Evil, gay characters in a story is passe, I don’t read the stories for the characters at all, reading it for the societies, reading it for the science, I want to see my values reflected, the battle on that last planet, where’s the rest of the story, why people read science fiction (other than to see their values relfected), world-building, effusive for Ringworld, literal world-building, reading to see representation, an era of character based, having not seen themselves they want to see themselves reflected, a sense of wonder, Paul Atreides is someone Paul could sink into, a white male protagonist, they’re not the classic, how cool the other stuff in that book is, why am I having a whispered conversation with this weird lady in my bedroom, kids never pay attention to the author until you graduate from that, cover artists, aha!, this other thing: the author, this Miguel Ferrer is the actor (not the writer), Tom Cruise movies have no writers, the French focus on the film director, it’s not the characters to me, what makes science fiction so different, soft science fiction, looking at trends and forces, here’s a society with a guaranteed annual income, he’s probably male, that Mack Reynolds novel stands out because it is representing me, the scarcity of jobs is important, world-building enough to spend, there’s no one true way to read science fiction, to misquote Rudyard Kipling, alien planets, we get to see Heaven (a paradise planet), we get to see life on a little planet in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, a deep dive into William Mandella, academic to grunt, what a soldier’s life is like, waiting in a time, a lover or a nurse, reading for the Marygay-William relationship, the Church of Science Fiction, if you read it for the romance you’re going to be disappointed, a Heinleinian bit, looking it as a modern book, are there books still to be written in this conversation?, how Jesse would film the novel, people don’t just live happily ever after, H.E.A. (a romance term), Jonathan and Gary of the Coode Street podcast, how you want to slice it, Linda Nagata’s The Last Good Man, the “Red” series, in this particular thread, digitizing The Lathe Of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin, Le Guin doing Philip K. Dick, a great appreciator of PKD’s writing, she’s trying to have a conversation with Philip K. Dick, the Lovecraft conversation is so loud and churning, fulminating, denouncers, he’s now at max volume, how many sequels to Innsmouth, Ben Bova, a legacy of Analog and Astounding, John W. Campbell seemed to interfere, a pretty stupid man in many respects, the telepathic (psionics), add some bullshit element and you’ll get a sale, nobody writes those (psionics) books anymore, Julian May’s intervention novels, The Many Colored Land, August Derleth, not only a bad writer (a bad person), show me an alien that thinks as well as a man but not like a man, nicely reflected in what happens to the humans, you poor deluded human, Murray Leinster, A Martian Odyssey Stanley G. Weinbaum, an important story, H.G. Wells, I’ve got these great ideas and this piece of paper, thinking through the ideas, tell a story based on that world, what makes Dune so great, a gender-swapped version of Dune, monks instead of nuns, set on a waterworld?, this book has something for everybody.

Hero by Joe Haldeman - Analog June 1972 - Illustrated by Frank Kelly Freas

We Are Very Happy Here by Joe Haldeman - Analog, November 1973

End Game by Joe Haldeman - illustration by Vincent Di Fate - Analog, January 1975

You Can Never Go Back by Joe Haldeman - Amazing, November 1975

Titan Comics - The Forever War - Issue 5

The Forever War - art by Patrick Woodroffe

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #435 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Green Meadow by H.P. Lovecraft and Winifred V. Jackson

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #435 – The Green Meadow by H.P. Lovecraft and Winifred V. Jackson read by the great Wayne June. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the short story (17 Minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse, Mr Jim Moon, Bryan Alexander, and Wayne June!

Talked about on today’s show:
The Crawling Chaos, a tiger, a plague year, drugs, a meteorite, professors, translators, how it struck an ending, baffling, three big paperbacks, the revision work, Arkham House, Horror Of The Museum, like a fragment, an extended commonplace book entry, strongly echoed in The Shadow Out Of Time, the mythos shopping list, the artificial checklist, Memory, What Rhe Moon Brings, prose poems, the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast, completely ignored, what to make of it, prose poem aspects, the only audiobook version in the universe, the way it struck Wayne, 1918/19, an early effort, Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall Of The House Of Usher, atypical formula, loosely connected to the frighteningly uncaring universe, The Willows by Algernon Blackwood, The Wendigo, The Damned Thing by Ambrose Bierce, nature as a threat, 100%, the gauntlet thrown down: “The text, as far as preserved, is here rendered as literally as our language permits, in the hope that some reader may eventually hit upon an interpretation and solve one of the greatest scientific mysteries of recent years.” a hoax, dreams, a frame, figuring out what it means, a series of images, the power of the description, its so clear that life is the enemy, the sea and the sky are in a war with life, he breaks off from life, a peninsula, things of the air, the forms of the air that are non-alive join with the sea, conspiring, the living against the non-living, cataract, ending in the Dreamlands, Bryan’s take, the fantasies vs. the horror, appreciated and enjoyed, the massive frame, WWI, German, one of the many loathsome policies of the Wilson administration, the tonal shift, the quick catastrophe, the Harvard guy blows it,

I saw clearly the source of the chanting, and in one horrible instant remembered everything. Of such things I cannot, dare not tell, for therein was revealed the hideous solution of all which had puzzled me; and that solution would drive you mad, even as it almost drove me. . . . I knew now the change through which I had passed, and through which certain others who once were men had passed! and I knew the endless cycle of the future which none like me may escape.

Kafka’s fragments, The Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym, the four professors, Potowonket, Lovecraft country village, Dr. Richard M. Jones, the “late” professor Chambers of Harvard, how did he manage to do it?, the indestructible pages, he found out what happened and he followed the path, why the text is cut-off, it’s not a fragment,

. . . . All is before me: beyond the deafening torrent lies the land of Stethelos, where young men are infinitely old. . . . The Green Meadow . . . I will send a message across the horrible immeasurable abyss. . . .

that sort of scene, The Quest Of Iranon, Sarnath, the book is the message, that’s not so interesting, a real scholar, Democritus, idola (eidolon), air spirits you absorb through your pores, influencing your eidolon, really creepy, the theme: oh those scary trees – watch out!, papyri, center for Hellenic studies at Harvard, Professor Rooms, he original atomic theory, souls of the dead, Homer, audible and visible in sleep, the Poe connection again, Dreamlands,

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule—
From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE—Out of TIME.

Bottomless vales and boundless floods,
And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,
With forms that no man can discover
For the tears that drip all over;
Mountains toppling evermore
Into seas without a shore;
Seas that restlessly aspire,
Surging, unto skies of fire;
Lakes that endlessly outspread
Their lone waters—lone and dead,—
Their still waters—still and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily.

By the lakes that thus outspread
Their lone waters, lone and dead,—
Their sad waters, sad and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily,—
By the mountains—near the river
Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,—
By the grey woods,—by the swamp
Where the toad and the newt encamp,—
By the dismal tarns and pools
Where dwell the Ghouls,—
By each spot the most unholy—
In each nook most melancholy,—
There the traveller meets, aghast,
Sheeted Memories of the Past—
Shrouded forms that start and sigh
As they pass the wanderer by—
White-robed forms of friends long given,
In agony, to the Earth—and Heaven.

For the heart whose woes are legion
’T is a peaceful, soothing region—
For the spirit that walks in shadow
’T is—oh, ’t is an Eldorado!
But the traveller, travelling through it,
May not—dare not openly view it;
Never its mysteries are exposed
To the weak human eye unclosed;
So wills its King, who hath forbid
The uplifting of the fring’d lid;
And thus the sad Soul that here passes
Beholds it but through darkened glasses.

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have wandered home but newly
From this ultimate dim Thule.

msiing the one thing Lovecraft never puts in (the dead girlfriend), the dead trans-gendered boyfriend, not a good girl to hang out with, The Man Whom The Trees Loved, forest and verdure being alluring but having a terrible force, Arthur Machen, Jesse makes his students do his homework for him, vocab words, Jesse thinks regular people read about teacups and tea-cozies, how insane people were in whatever period, why are they so upset, they haven’t invented rocketships, between 1895-1925, astral projections, the long nights, cursing the gods, the ancient blasphemies and terrible delving, terribly upset and thoroughly enjoying himself, his astral body, over-leaped the bounds of corporeal entity, he planeted the seed, this explains the whole story, old science fiction (before the rocketships), David Lindsay’s A Voyage To Arcturus, Jack London’s The Star Rover, a lot less vikings and Japanese invasions of Korea, bringing Hypnos and the Dreamlands all together, the checklist, you can frame it in the wrong way, how good this story is, the abrupt ending is foretold by the huge frame, the narrator does almost nothing, a malignant hatred, grotesquely huge horrible, unthinkable things, the land breaks off, its up to us to do all the work, typical Lovecraft, unthinkable indescribable things, this horrible thing (existence) is just hitting them, existence (consciousnesses) attacks him, the hopeless uncaring universe, William Blake’s The Tyger, he thinks it is a reference to Rudyard Kipling, less and less of an isthmus, a description of bodily decay, let’s go off to another planet, so good, Virginia Jackson was a prodigious dreamer herself, holding on to all those details, turning a dream into a story, an alien place, why are the trees scaly, he had become an ant, a field of broccoli, lichen and fungi, grey lichen, a point of alien-ness, adapting it for film, stop-motion animation, whatever is going on in this alien planet, Scythian (Greek description of everybody to the top right of the Black Sea), if all the Mediterranean, the planet is being destroyed, the sea has defeated the trees, night gaunts?, dong interpretation, life is terrible-horrible, god is life, god is DNA, the enemy of life is non-life, nihilistic, living where young man are, scythe, the earliest recorded hashish smokers, the smoke rings of the hashish smokers, what’s lurking in the Green Meadow, human-ish,

While the words were utterly undistinguishable, the chant awaked in me a peculiar train of associations; and I was reminded of some vaguely disquieting lines I had once translated out of an Egyptian book, which in turn were taken from a papyrus of ancient Meroë. Through my brain ran lines that I fear to repeat; lines telling of very antique things and forms of life in the days when our earth was exceeding young. Of things which thought and moved and were alive, yet which gods and men would not consider alive. It was a strange book.

a prototype for the Necronomicon, who are the chanters?, The King In Yellow by Robert W. Chambers, Alan Moore’s Providence, a test out, a strange narrative and a strange book, a persistent meme, people get upset (and Jesse finds it hilarious), look at these crazy people, the Yellow Peril, what they should have been worried about, not just for space (it’s also for time), mis-named, semi-based on a real guy, projecting yourself outside your body, that’s cool, when King Kuranes walks off the cliff, Celephais, a fucking meteorite came down from the sky with a book in it, it took 2,000 years to reach the Earth, chalk and slate, the lure of life that isn’t horror, the siren call of human contact, parties, suicide, the shadowy figures were that which were really real, reverting to the main theme, oblivion is to be preferred, why is this story called “The Green Meadow” instead of “The Scary Trees“

My eyes could now discern several things amidst the omnipresent verdure—rocks, covered with bright green moss, shrubs of considerable height, and less definable shapes of great magnitude which seemed to move or vibrate amidst the shrubbery in a peculiar way. The chanting, whose authors I was so anxious to glimpse, seemed loudest at points where these shapes were most numerous and most vigorously in motion.

the sense of vibration and oscillation, wake up buddy!, shrubbery, a three headed knight, A Voice In the Night by William Hope Hodgson, The Derelict, a fungus, eater of the dead, green vs. grey, so green even the trunks and rocks are green, the forward and backward nature, the perpetuation is the horror, if anyone could become President then Lovecraft could become President, give me a clean planet like Mars or Mercury bathed in the solar rays, a walk in the woods with Wayne June, green is my favorite colour, just beneath the skin, existence sucks, In The Mountains Of Madness by W. Scott Poole, there’s still lots of interesting books to read, that strange book he read, Lovecraft is so funny, a joke, falling along his normal path and message, it’s not deadly serious, the most important scientific discovery in the history of the world, The Colour Out Of Space, that’s how Joseph Smith found his books, the hoax religion, there nice people to hang out with, sure they don’t like coffee but they don like ice-cream, really cool underwear, chloroform in print, before we go completely sideways, the Fiddler’s Green myth, The Sandman by Neil Gaiman, better than anything Gaiman has written since (except for the first volume), appeals to sailors, reading a lot of comics, mermaid, mermaids are the angels for sailors, DC and Marvel horror comics, mermaid discovers meat, lamia, sirens, a Valhalla for sailors, common ways of dying in folk-songs, Friday and The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, Billy Budd by Herman Melville, dance-houses doxies and tapster, ladies of negotiable affection, were dance halls a way of getting around prostitution laws, an earlier version of Match.com, off the rails and into the sea and off the hook.

Posted by Jesse Willis