science fiction – Page 39

The SFFaudio Podcast #487 – READALONG: Citizen Of The Galaxy by Robert A. Heinlein

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #487 – Jesse, Maissa Bessada, and Julie Davis talk about Citizen Of The Galaxy by Robert A. Heinlein

Talked about on today’s show:
Astounding September to December 1957, a juvenile, Julie’s favourite Heinlein, Starship Troopers, really subtle, themes!, the prison on the moon, “I’m tired of being told your philosophy”, reconsidering, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, the computer, it’s on THE MOON!, so good, lectures, Maissa’s first time, Glory Road, crazy stuff, how gently, grossly obsessed, handled deftly, serialized, magazines back then, magazines suck today, magazines have been on the wane, the promise, so cool, not written for children, Double Star, looking up and remembering stuff, Heinlein’s worldbuilding, three major cultures, Jubulpur, the Free People, and Earth, the Hegemony, little drop ins, the planet of the squid people, reading into Earth’s history, launching his imagination, because of its alienness, what strikes you, the ride, all those incarnations, a blank slate, the unspoken premise, slavery, how free is anybody, deeply entrenched within the text, Jesse never sees themes, no themes, that word: “FREE”, and that was the freest time he had ever known, straight out of Kim by Rudyard Kipling, he ended it the same way, the thing that makes you free, I’m going to finish your work, the two priests and the monk and the military officer, his heirship, the Free Traders are the horse dealers of this world, thoroughly embedded in the culture that he’s in, the responsibilities grow, the ending section is boring and businessy, getting a handle, coming back to Pop, he would have joined the military again, reconstruct and deconstruct, reading every Heinlein book, maybe its these Dell books, reading a ton of Philip K. Dick, reading life or listening life, PKD characters are always talking about chamber music, writing those crazy books, being super-enthusiastic about it, in Heinlein’s books, his early reading influnced his own writing, really obvious, when Thorby gets on the Sisu, what Heinlein did when he was in the Navy, mechanical computers, exactly what his job was, classic who sunk my battleship, shooting nukes instead of canon, paralyzing beam, that esprit de corps, making it a family, we’re making it a matriarchy, the other thing he’s obsessed with is manners (in a way that no other author is), no normal decent person would, the gas-lighting grandparents, slavery in Canada, the underground railroad (was 30 years), between the American Revolution and the American Civil War, Oliver Wiswell, fleeing Tories, slaves in New France, it’s cold up there, slavery is still a reality, Libya’s slave market, Blackbirding, fruit plantations of the Pacific, indentured servitude for six years, Nate And Hayes (1983), an action adventures, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Tommy Lee Jones, non-Frakis, Suomi, the Finnish word for Finnish, they can’t see it, putting scabs on himself, getting pissed off, making slavery look ok, the whole theme, supporting fascism, chicken hawk politicians, a thoughtful book, guiding you like a teacher, being wise, heavy handed?, the movie of Starship Troopers is a parody of the Starship Troopers the book, militarism is something worthy of mockery, we gotta take it serious, every time he changes jobs and culture, a new kind of unfreedom, philosophical pacifist, pacifism in opposition to militarism, what Heinlein is always coming back to, the grandparents are a slave to the money, what’s going on with their ships?, did or do the grandparents know?, so removed, are they that dense, the uncle knows, a disagreement about the ending of the book, did the uncle set up the parents?, he is the baddie of the book, willing to do anything to keep his power, he clearly has a lot to hide, a yacht with three passengers and no cargo, this is the exact plot of Netflix’s Iron First, “hey white kids kung fu is cool!”, political correctness doesn’t care about facts or logic, Danny Rand’s return to the estate, somebody at Marvel read this book?, lawyer characters, its going to cost you a fortune!, words of wisdom, talking to an experienced mechanic, is he going to marry his cousin?, they’re on the path for it, the career he needs, a person cant run out on responsibility, being so devoted to freedom…, what do you mean by slavery, being under the whip, Paul is a slave of Christ, that wisdom from the anthropologist, she’s fantastic, fun stuff, when Baslam is dead, he’s shortened, his words come back, he literally comes back, and so does grandmother, “citizen”, mmmhhhm!, the Sargonese nine worlds, end slavery by other means, India, caste, “levels of responsibility”, let me tell you better than you know, I’ve got scars on my back, the value of an open mind, how big is this book, it feels huge, so well packed, it feels breezy, all one character’s POV (with a few exceptions), age 4 or 5 or 6 to 19 or 20, Baslam looks at the boy, a hunted animal, opinions or endorsements of former owners, Jesse is going to blow everyone’s mind, Sisu came into popular North American parlance during the Winter War, 300,000–340,000 vs. 425,000–760,000, 2,514–6,541 tanks vs. 32 tanks, 3,880 aircraft vs. 114 aircraft, the Soviet Union won WWII, 27 million Russians died in WWII, Sisu expresses their natural character, the word that explains Finland,

The Finns have something they call sisu. It is a compound of bravado and bravery, of ferocity and tenacity, of the ability to keep fighting after most people would have quit, and to fight with the will to win. The Finns translate sisu as “the Finnish spirit” but it is a much more gutful word than that. Last week the Finns gave the world a good example of sisu by carrying the war into Russian territory

how Thorby acts at the end, just sign this thing, end use license agreements and terms of service, implied interactions with Grandmother, a whole novel or novel series hidden within just that line, bringing him into the family, a puddle of blood formed on the deck, your blood is now in the steel, sympathetic magic, he was now part of the ship, seeing how this is lived out, why does Baslam buying Thorby?, unmutated earth ancestry, he needs an assistant, many other lots, the whip marks and the price, he is literally buying a slave, he threatens to manumit him, “don’t manumit me, pop!”, Virginia Heinlein never bore any children, fertility treatments, all they could do was practice, the Heinleins never adopted, these juvenile books express a longing, he’s always the old man, interesting transgender issues, I Will Fear No Evil, a Missouri military guy, a free thinker, our Glory Road show, Heinlein should be handed out to everybody, Heinlein would have been a great father, slaves purchased for sexual purposes, this could be creepy, it’s not creepy at all, he’s mother and father to the boy, a touching book, very maternal for a dude, Baslam’s motivation, for no more children to be like Thorby, all the little hungry Thorbys, the big picture, you turn into the uncle, Heinlein is really good at the big picture, philosophy, circumstance, here are their skeletons, he never makes sequels, we make the sequels in our own heads, Thorby’s escape, the uncle is the undoing of Thorby’s family, giant stories we build ourselves, loquacious or voluble, the standard Heinlein asshole character, running around Bombay, where’d you get that scarf?, “I inherited it.”, that lesson is paralleled, how to get Thorby’s identity, when Heinlein is in the military, make it happen anyways, those kinds of lessons, lecturing people about morality, why Heinlein why?, no particular action, we’ve been taught, he’s trying to protect the kid, stealing from the beggar bowl, the ripples that effect somebody else, a true story we see expanded upon with every new level that he hits, Heinlein is more subtle here than in his other books, Mother Shaum, is she a brothel owner?, a parallel to Kim, the only time he has a mother, advisor, grandmother, one big strange family, more of the behind the scenes development, the nice note, indicating vs. preaching, the People (the Finish fleet of Viking trading ships), super-rich, potlatch style, so much prestige!, amazing cool culture, they’re racists!, from the anthropologists POV, Captain Krause, eating the soup, so good, real science fiction, anthropological science fiction, their name means the people, we all understand each other, SFFaudio is the people for that, right here this is our little spaceship, the trading ground, at the gathering, Jesse’s gonna lay out his stuff on this grass, their ability to turn Fraki off, admonished immediately, raiding neighboring communities for slaves, a path to one of the group, not the chattel slavery at the beginning of the book, evil slavers, the hope that was held out, Julie also heard that In Our Time episode, American slavery, Roman slavery, the business model, expressing the cultures, examining it, there’s nobody more anti-slavery than Heinlein, that’s “problematic”, Baslam’s fight to stop slavery, the ghost that haunts the whole book, Rudbecks, a giant evil state corporation, slavery is preferable to genocide, prison industrial complex slavery, people start wars for slaves, a more pleasant vs. preferable alternative to genocide, integration was hated by a lot of white folks, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lincoln, a book about slavery that isn’t about American slavery, Paul I hope you’re listening, why everyone should be reading Heinlein, literal starships, a book about a concept and anthropology (not technology), my other father, the way to find justice is to be fair with other people and not care how they treat you, calm things down, the judges, the justices, draw nigh and ye shall be heard, a lot of witnesses, the uncle’s daughter was named Leda, does it mean anything in this context, his swan body, Thorby is The Ugly Duckling and so is Baslam, pure of heart, the book ends with Thorby picking up another father, just in a way that Baslam was just, Stranger In A Strange Land, a great fondness for one particular kind of lawyer, using the weapon of the law to get justice, another wonderful person to showcase, how fatherly, looking at some pretty girls, back to Kim, the same tiny family, a good book, here’s one, a good story is hard to find.

Citizen Of The Galaxy by Robert A. Heinlein

Darrell K. Sweet illustration for CITIZEN OF THE GALAXY
Robert Heinlein's Citizen Of The Galaxy (comic) Issue 1, Page 33
Ace Books - Citizen Of The Galaxy by Robert A. Heinlein
Citizen Of The Galaxy - RUSSIAN

Posted by Jesse Willis Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #486 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The City Of The End Of Things by Archibald Lampman

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #486 –The City Of The End Of Things by Archibald Lampman; read by Mr Jim Moon. This is an unabridged reading of the poem (5 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Mr Jim Moon, and Prof. Eric S. Rabkin.

Talked about on today’s show:
Jesse goes crazy, this guy’s amazing!, unheard of, earlier and later weird poetry, Ezra Pound and T.S. Elliot, the poems of Clark Ashton Smith, child prodigy out of California writes amazing poetry!, Hamilton, poetry without music isn’t mainstream anymore, rhyme and verbal invention, evolutionarily pro-adaptive, mate-getting and gene replication, fashion, Dr. Bowdler’s Legacy, Sir Walter Scott, immoral novels, flat-chested sexy women, enormously mammary sexy women, almost perfect rhyme and rhythm, doggerel, Alexander Pope, the Canadian Keats, romantic poetry, William Wordsworth, Archibald Lampman on twitter: @alampman, H.P. Lovecraft, almost Lovecraftian, cosmicism, a dream poem, A Thunderstorm, multi-valent meaning, depths, circles, 1894, multiple ways to understand,

BESIDE the pounding cataracts
Of midnight streams unknown to us,
’T is builded in the dismal tracts
And valleys huge of Tartarus.
Lurid and lofty and vast it seems;
It hath no rounded name that rings,
But I have heard it called in dreams
The City of the End of Things.

Its roofs and iron towers have grown
None knoweth how high within the night,
But in its murky streets far down
A flaming terrible and bright
Shakes all the stalking shadows there,
Across the walls, across the floors,
And shifts upon the upper air
From out a thousand furnace doors;
And all the while an awful sound
Keeps roaring on continually,
And crashes in the ceaseless round
Of a gigantic harmony.
Through its grim depths reëchoing,
And all its weary height of walls,
With measured roar and iron ring,
The inhuman music lifts and falls.
Where no thing rests and no man is,
And only fire and night hold sway,
The beat, the thunder, and the hiss
Cease not, and change not, night nor day.

lurid night, end of days, a Dying Earth story, an automated factory, a city at the end of time, post humanity, the end of things we have made, at the end of the concept of things (manufacture and industry), bursting with different ways of looking, a Canadian Shelley, “hail to thee blithe spirit”, Ozymandias, the works of man, creation, what does the first “of” mean, the telos of things, removing humanity, leafless vs. dismal, sonorous description, murky, flaming, what does this presage?, “wandering lonely as a cloud”, the creations of man persisting, leafless tracts, lands with no leaves, books without pages, making decisions, this is a fantasy or this is a science fiction, dreams as vision, genre distinctions, Edgar Allan Poe, Dreamland, “bottomless vales”, pastoral Gothic bound in human emotion, looking forward, shadows echoes, rings and rounded, the end of a cycle, a nadir, the end of a phase, the poem is the city, the poem becomes the city, “unknown to us”, fore and aft in time, adjective vs. adverb, multiple meanings, once we “see”, a derivative meaning of cataracts, waterfall, extraordinary! extraordinary!, referring to himself, putting in vs. allowing in, this city has no name, it hath no rounded name, “Megacity 422”, a sense of gears turning, verticality and depth, this could be a clock (except for all the fire), foundry factory, uninhabitable, seeing this as astronomy, the music of the spheres, an awful sound (full of awe for us), what is a rounded name? Bubbles, Radar, the fixed stars, wandering planets, the Earth, a sublunary place, in addition, none know it now, set in Hell, Tartarus, the “Titan Woods” in Dreamland, a place and a being, Chaos and Gaia, Hesiod, an area in Hades, defeated titans, imprisoned cyclopes, the Gold, Silver, Brass, and Iron ages, the heat death of the universe, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an absent sun, the end of the industrial world, philosophical depths, how is a height weary?, The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster, Kubla Khan; or, A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, the hell of the mechanized underworld, and the garden above (until the night comes),

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

sunlights and blossoms, a dream interrupted, a river ringing the city of the end of things is Omega,

And moving at unheard commands,
The abysses and vast fires between,
Flit figures that, with clanking hands,
Obey a hideous routine.
They are not flesh, they are not bone,
They see not with the human eye,
And from their iron lips is blown
A dreadful and monotonous cry.
And whoso of our mortal race
Should find that city unaware,
Lean Death would smite him face to face,
And blanch him with its venomed air;
Or, caught by the terrific spell,
Each thread of memory snapped and cut,
His soul would shrivel, and its shell
Go rattling like an empty nut.

It was not always so, but once,
In days that no man thinks upon,
Fair voices echoed from its stones,
The light above it leaped and shone.
Once there were multitudes of men
That built that city in their pride,
Until its might was made, and then
They withered, age by age, and died;
And now of that prodigious race
Three only in an iron tower,
Set like carved idols face to face,
Remain the masters of its power;
And at the city gate a fourth,
Gigantic and with dreadful eyes,
Sits looking toward the lightless north,
Beyond the reach of memories:
Fast-rooted to the lurid floor,
A bulk that never moves a jot,
In his pale body dwells no more
Or mind or soul,—an idiot!

ITS ROBOTS!, Hephaestus, automaton owls, iron lips, warehouses, dump truck, the garbage truck, automated sounds, metaphorizing the pieces of the machine, exquisite control of language, imabic tetrameter, that empty nut, a prelapsarian time, the mechanized is ultimately the problem, mysterious, people built this city, now they’re dead except for three, Jesse’s illustration, a nightmare vision, the controllers of the city?, a fourth, Dreams Of Yith by Duane W. Rimel and H.P. Lovecraft, The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson, the huge sentinel, an insane person (a nut case), vapid empty mindlessness, trapped in the iron tower, prisoners, The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul, the citizen who does not participate, the three and the one, we’ve done this to ourselves, human perfection as an oxymoron, mortal races, who did the setting?, an exclusion, the idiot remains,

But some time in the end those three
Shall perish and their hands be still,
And with the masters’ touch shall flee
Their incommunicable skill.
A stillness, absolute as death,
Along the slacking wheels shall lie,
And, flagging at a single breath,
The fires shall smoulder out and die.
The roar shall vanish at its height,
And over that tremendous town
The silence of eternal night
Shall gather close and settle down.
All its grim grandeur, tower and hall,
Shall be abandoned utterly,
And into rust and dust shall fall
From century to century.
Nor ever living thing shall grow,
Or trunk of tree or blade of grass;
No drop shall fall, no wind shall blow,
Nor sound of any foot shall pass.
Alone of its accurséd state
One thing the hand of Time shall spare,
For the grim Idiot at the gate
Is deathless and eternal there!

who is this grim idiot?, idiom, Time, Lean Death, playing VR games, are they the masters?, master’s, Voices Of Earth, the mechanism underneath everything, the physics underneath reality, if this is all metaphor…, emojis that look like you, emoticons, technology, part of the reason to have poetry: to communicate the incommunicable, “grim”, a haunting spirit, “the graveyard grims” giant spectral hounds that guarded cemeteries, the wheel, the Hell turns off, a science fiction poem, The Valley Of Unrest by Edgar Allan Poe,

Once it smiled a silent dell
Where the people did not dwell;
They had gone unto the wars,
Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,
Nightly, from their azure towers,
To keep watch above the flowers,
In the midst of which all day
The red sun-light lazily lay.
Now each visitor shall confess
The sad valley’s restlessness.
Nothing there is motionless —
Nothing save the airs that brood
Over the magic solitude.
Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees
That palpitate like the chill seas
Around the misty Hebrides!
Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven
That rustle through the unquiet Heaven
Uneasily, from morn till even,
Over the violets there that lie
In myriad types of the human eye —
Over three lilies there that wave
And weep above a nameless grave!
They wave: — from out their fragrant tops
Eternal dews come down in drops.
They weep: — from off their delicate stems
Perennial tears descend in gems.

Reading, Short And Deep, But who Can Replace A Man? by Brian Aldiss, a missing piece of the puzzle from the dialogue of science fiction and fantasy, City Of The Titans, City At The Edge Of Forever by Harlan Ellison, an anthology of Victorian verse, The Atlantic Monthly, March 1894, the praise of Lampman as a nature poet, The City by Ray Bradbury, inimical to man, There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury, Sara Teasdale’s There Will Come Soft Rains, WWI,

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

we are very dangerous for ourselves, a poet who should not be forgotten, the scholarship, so many layers, its marvelous, repeating words strategically, the theme being revealed, such a deep feeling for what it is that he’s about.

The City OF The End Of Things

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #484 – The Lathe Of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

The SFFaudio Podcast #484 – Jesse, Paul, Marissa, Luke Burrage, and Evan Lampe talk about The Lathe Of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
Jesse, Paul Weimer, Marissa VU, Luke Burrage, Evan Lampe

Talked about on today’s show:
Amazing Stories, March and May 1971, the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s, the best way to be right more often is to change your mind a lot, different futures, eerily close in some ways, the opposite of this book is Nancy Kress’ Beggars In Spain, questions vs. answers, immoral vs. nice, a very evil book, some facts about sleep, lack of sleep, eliminating sleep, a horror show, Randian superhumans, robots, being robots who grind other humans into powder, A.E. Van Vogt, when fans are slans, not as a science fiction but as a fantasy book, Philip K. Dick, scientific explanations, the aliens, a fantasy book about a guy dreaming science fiction, calling out science fiction in science fiction, Star Wars, Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, the tropes of pulp science fiction, the 1980 TV adaptation, changes for changes sake, a good adaptation, the 2002 remake, they drop the “the” and the philosophical stuff, dying dream, WWIII, as he’s dying in a nuked Portland, Rumble In The Bronx, Mount Hood, volcanoes, Mount St. Helens, Mount Baker, how Mount Hood looms over the book, what makes it the classic that Jesse thinks it is, the first half vs. the back half, battling for control, the narrative goes off the rails because it’s needed, two bad utopianists, central planning, life goes on, Orr being passive, “George Orr” vs. “John If”, Haber is a verb, to express the existence of something, the perfect tense, future tense, Orr is wishy washy, using to perfect, cute, Lalashe, coward, an insect, a black widow spider, she click-clacked and snapped, changing reality, everyone’s skin colour goes grey, to have…or, the genie problem, The Monkey’s Paw by W.W. Jacobs, in imperfect dreamer, world peace (through war), no racism, overpopulation, internal vs. external, aliens ex machina, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, from ideas to reality, dreams -> reality, nightmare -> reality, Avengers: Infinity War (2018), the historical context, Stand On Zanzibar, Make Room! Make Room!, The Population Bomb, Star Trek, The Mark Of Gideon, The Conscience Of The King, Malthusian worries, people as consumers vs. people as producers, did Le Guin by into it?, Orr bought into it, it’s all about power and checking privileges, a diploma on his wall, a button on his desk, turned into an asshole and a user, somebody to use, a tool, Immanuel Kant, means to an end, what if there is no end, all we have is the means, the categorical imperative, subscribing to a particular morality, Haber is gaslighting Orr, civil rights, the dynamic between Orr and his psychotherapist, if this was expanded out it would be a dystopia, mild punishment for drug crimes, mandatory therapy, a little bit Brave New World, protein rations, climate change, the end of chapter one, the GPRT drivers, people on basic support, pretending that starvation is scurvy, at least they have unions, pre-Ronald Reagan, the logo of the white hand and the black hand are shaking, the anti-war movement, the end of the ’60s, wish for peace on earth (get war in space), simplistic anti-war ideas, asshole vs. misguided, wasting time on means, the consent form, the abuses of hypnosis, hypnosis as a device, Robert A. Heinlein, experimenting on patients, he hides his assholishness, getting violent, rejecting the second reality, it ISN’T morally ambiguous, Haber is so real, evil in our reality, what actual evil people do, belligerence, Haber’s arrogance, who was responsible for killing 5/6th of the population, how the establishment is: satisfied with the way things are, everything is getting better and better for Haber, why people are confused about Haber being a bad guy is because Orr is confused, he’s not curing me he’s encouraging me, being evil is using someone as a means to an end, rationalizing for evil, lying, the most insidious evil shit, why people stay in abusive relationships, compulsory voluntary therapy, blaming himself, hypnosis vs. persuasiveness, he wants another doctor, he wants help, what a medical ethicist would say, anti-psychiatry thinking, modern Scientologists, Dick thought this true, he’s not a mad scientist, his science as a means, his ends are good, aren’t they?, he’s right to go to a lawyer, so subtle, not everyone sees, the subtlety of Le Guin vs. the hammer of Kress, the most Philip K. Dick novel by Le Guin, out Philip K. Dicking Philip K. Dick, Ubik, Maze Of Death, PKD vibes, PKD and Le Guin went to the same school, a staunch advocate of Dick, one of the best novels, we are in danger of breaking the book by taking it apart too much, how different it is from Dick, feeling like a Dick plot, there’s no humour in this book, insectoid clicky boobs with a chitinous sheen, of course its a horse, funny vs. jokes, the focus on the power dynamic as a horror, sympathy for a horrible dictator, talking about that horse, Philip means “horse lover”, how George Orr lives his life, the homosexuality, dope, very advanced, no fear of bisexuality, NOT problematic, a very 70s way of talking, a 21st century book, the radiation, set a little in the future, undoing problems, mutating, the psychology of the horse and the mountain, erupting, everything’s beneath the future, evidence looms large, right out the window, only when Orr becomes upset, running away to his cabin, triple crown, Tammany Hall, Boss Tweed, corruption, a horse of corruption, is Orr naming it in his dream?, if you don’t treat it as a simple fantasy, is Orr’s brain creating the backstory, choosing between different quantum futures, switching dimensions, how Haber explains it, what does he know?, he’s confabulating it, this is a book about dream, dreaming about this podcast, less LEGO than in the dream, absolutely necessary, completely mysterious, we’ve all had that feeling, angry at someone all day, waking up stressed out, what is the reality, Jesse is sometimes surprised to hear his own name, explaining away the painting, that is not normal, it used to be a view of Mount Hood, the influence of Dick, the power dynamic, The Man In The High Castle, when you read a Philip K. Dick book you can imagine him writing it with a smirk on his face, this feels more dignified, the Laozi, Zhuangzi, Taoism, H.G. Wells, the quotes, too many, so on the nose, the book is prescriptive, in what universe are these quotes relevant?, why isn’t Shakespeare talking about bug-people and aliens?, my pigtail points to the sky, buttocks into a cartwheel, freeing of the bond, accepting the life that comes to you, guiding the reader, breaking the fourth wall, spoiling the effect of the book, The Beatles, she was making it a “greater book” but “diminished it”, more subtle, the I Ching, the characters are learning from the quotes, had the quotes been changing…, “Shotgun Funeral”, the character list that’s messed up, Brandon Sanderson, a missed opportunity, Ubik, advertisements, influencing the characters vs. influencing the readers, look at all these cool quotes I found, “dream quotes”, doing a service, narrative thrust vs. narrative wander, Bertrand Watson, Margaret Killjoy, this is almost an H.P. Lovecraft stories about dreams, Hypnos, drug taking and dreams, a strain of Lovecraftian stories with the horrible machines, From Beyond, Tillinghast’s device, Eight O’Clock In The Morning by Ray Nelson, transparent skin, birds, gross!, Herbert West: Re-Animator, the lesser figure, the passive witness, the dreamer himself, reluctant fascination than actual inclination, the power of dreams, dreams written down, had H.P. Lovecraft written this novel, what’s missing from this book, what’s missing from this book: lucid dreaming, continuing the dream, watching two episodes of a TV series over the space of days, Luke’s lucid knife fight dream, narrative control, did I dream dreaming, George Orr was so wishy-washy, falling under Haber’s sway, spineless characters, weak men, too average, Idiocracy, the most average person, did he make himself the most average man in the world?, which was is the causation, personality inventories, gaslighting, the augmentor, he’d never actually given it any thought, the lay-word sane, your median, by the end of the novel he’s called an artist, he’s a draughtsman at the beginning, grabbing the world by our hands, a celebration of human agency, creativity, character growth, Sidewise In Time by Murray Leinster, living with the pieces, the opening paragraph from Hypnos, Baudelaire:

“Apropos of sleep, that sinister adventure of all our nights, we may say that men go to bed daily with an audacity that would be incomprehensible if we did not know that it is the result of ignorance of the danger.”
—Baudelaire.

May the merciful gods, if indeed there be such, guard those hours when no power of the will, or drug that the cunning of man devises, can keep me from the chasm of sleep. Death is merciful, for there is no return therefrom, but with him who has come back out of the nethermost chambers of night, haggard and knowing, peace rests nevermore. Fool that I was to plunge with such unsanctioned phrensy into mysteries no man was meant to penetrate; fool or god that he was—my only friend, who led me and went before me, and who in the end passed into terrors which may yet be mine.

the audacity of this guy, we are gods, we are the creators of our own reality, dreams reveal truth, teaching things we shouldn’t know about ourselves, terror about knowledge, The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward, Thomas Ligotti, an early pioneer in a horror people don’t want to know about: science is true, the comfort of ignorance, melancholy characters, The Dispossessed, the novel is not about that, power relations, conversations where someone is playing a game, handcuffed together, it’s almost like they’re married, why change the lease 33 year lease to a 10 year lease, the age at which Christ died, no resonance, credited as a consultant (not a scriptwriter), Luke would give it 3.5 stars, the lips within the curly beard, then this world will be like heaven and the men will be like gods, the other paid no heed, volcanoes emit fire, fascinating, he has the beard, we are already (like gods), we can already do this, Le Guin is very good at not telling but indicating the direction, signposts on the road, course correcting, why Jesse loves Philip K. Dick, he always doesn’t give you what you want, the setup, Lester Del Rey, designed while it was being written, Jesse has four copies of The Left Hand Of Darkness, when you think of Le Guin this isn’t the book you think of, a step below greatness, the author is visible, here are the ideas I’m playing with, psychiatry as the mains science of the book, Gateway by Frederik Pohl, psychiatry is less science than economics (the dismal science), how primitive psychotherapy worked in the 1970s, A.I. super-intelligence, turned into paperclips, the greatest good for the greatest number, humans into widgets, anti-utilitarianism, how Orr is upset when his girlfriend is gone, not black and not white, it’s worth it, grey not pink not purple, pink dogs, Loving vs. Virginia, she’s not scoring points, a lot of books seem to think they’re the ones who invented being cool, I wanted to show a lot of diversity, rainbow unicorns, representation is overstated, go for ideas, a response to race as a problem, racism is historically contingent, 17th century, let’s talk about this a bit more, slavery, Doctor Futurity, breaking up into new clans, clans are a real thing, speciation, mountain lions and valley lions, family behavior, SNCC, integrationist model for overcoming racism, to solve racism by making everyone the same colour, if he was a PKD protagonist, why the genders are the way they are, Orr was a woman (never mind), the secretary/assistant, the aunt that gets deleted in the first dream, a retcon?, sexually predating on her own family, if Orr was a woman and that was an uncle…, exploring sexuality in other books, Orr had to be a male, male manipulation of women, Lalashe, the most PKD character, starts as a negative, a persona she can take it off, turtle shaped aliens, do they even have a planet?, allowing pink dogs to exist, reality will cover its tracks, when Evan is talking to his students, the origin of the prison, imagining alternative to prisons, the Romans didn’t have prisons, exiles, fines, crucifixion, it has always been this way, a historical invention, The Word For World Is Forest, weird side-bar, The Word For World Is Rainforest, back to PKD, a one sentence defense of utilitarianism, critical of bad and stupid utilitarianism, defer to John Stuart Mill, the problem of the pleasure wizard, Jesse thinks of himself of as a pleasure wizard, think about kids, they haven’t read any books, or seen any movies, you’re going to watch Snow White, god-like power, children are not best able to marshal resources, The Good Place, Kristen Bell, Ted Danson, way cleverer than Jesse thinks, Jesse hates the word spoiler, Jesse doesn’t trust people, “type it Paul!”, that’s cute, someone fools you it doesn’t mean they’re cleverer than you, intellectual journey, repetition, American Made (2017), Barry Seal, Hitler loses WWII is not a spoiler, is this Good Place better than Willa Cather?, time commitment, The Americans, look at it from the Soviet point of view, the ending was terrible because the bad guys were let go?, how we won World War II, the more you learn about the soviet end of the war, Canada boasts it had the second biggest navy in the world, gravitas, we can’t know, modern things, at the end of history, stagnating in place, the idea of the novel, historicity, podcast as a genre was completely unimaginable thirty years ago, still mysterious, how many music podcast are there?, it’s not a rights issue, Mr Jim Moon, The Lathe Of Heaven, With A Little Help Of My Friends, @SFFaudio “full film”, complete versions of non-public domain films, nobody cares, commercial concerns, podcast medium is fundamentally different, radio is almost all music, BBC is different, CBC is different, you have to keep it short, Joe Rogan’s three hour shows.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #128 – The Leather Funnel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Podcast

Reading, Short And Deep #128

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Leather Funnel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.

The Leather Funnel was first published McClure’s Magazine, November 1902.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

Reading, Short And Deep #127 – Darkness by Lord Byron

Podcast

Reading, Short And Deep #127

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Darkness by Lord Byron.

Here’s a link to a PDF of the poem.

Darkness was first published in 1816.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

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