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

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

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

Exploration Team by Murray Leinster

The Velvet Glove by Harry Harrison

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #853 – READALONG: Beat To Quarters by C.S. Forester

The SFFaudio Podcast #852 – Jesse and Alex (Pulpcovers) talk about Beat To Quarters by C.S. Forester

Talked about on today’s show:
The Happy Return aka Beat To Quarters, more exciting sounding, the drum, red alert, double red alert, get to your stations, spoken in the book, in searching twitter, a conversation, Cirsova, C.S. Hornblower Books is hard science fiction, anything set in space is not science fiction, flawlessly longical, the Honor Harrington books, same initials, same idea, career arc, broadsides in space, he crafted his science fiction technology to require broadsides in space, Star Trek was modeled after Horatio Hornblower, Picard’s character research, the tight-ass personality, badly reminded, a Hornblower scene on holodeck, when they did it on the show, recreation, sex fantasies, Worf’s going there to get stabbed, the Sherlock Holmes investigations, they’re doing their own recreation, trying to get your boss and the guy who does the photocopying to play your D&D, this works as a book, read this as a kid, always loved, a certain amount of wishfulfilment for the author, not a Mary Sue, kind of a jerk, see me being a great captain, very novel, the Horatio Hornblower tv series, you can’t do interior stuff in TV and movies, voice over narration, have somebody tell you what Conan’s feelings are, Subotai, almost completely through the eyes of Hornblower, the careful crafting of a first time author, intended to be a book series?, an established writer, brought to Hollywood to write a pirate movie, Hornblow and Bush, Captain Blood (1935), Errol Flynn, hounded by the prospect, hopped a freighter, voyage with this woman, a Wellsley, her name was Barbara, falling in love, an unfaithful womanizer, a guy who delivers the meals, lends itself to series, the romance, almost doesn’t fit, it’s fun, Sharpe is a response to Hornblower, Hornblower on land, comedic fat guy, a wagonmaster general, Baron Harkonnen, the same actor doing essentially the same role, a fat diplomat bad at his job, Ian McNeice, the main guy who’s awesome, men he has to convince, everybody think’s he’s great, seems like very very Mary Sue, counterbalanced, going bald, so obsessed with his own image, he refuses to talk to anybody, hm hmm, the narrator does a lot of hm hmmming, the 1951 adaptation, almost the entire novel, 2 other books, very faithful, the interiority, the officers betting, are we gonna die before we find shore?, the fawning, do the same job, C.S. Forester worked on the ship, a very Hollywood thing, the female servant some generic south american brown skinned person, so much shoepolish, El Supremo, so cartoonish, Aubrey–Maturin, Master And Commander Far Side Of The World (2003), first exposure to audiobooks, a lot of sitting, poetry, the double meaning of words, Jesse’s favourite joke, I was impressed by the British Navy’s recruiting methods, works both ways, very stupid, institutions being very bad, hospitals, they’re everywhere, they turn the people they work in them into soulless drudges, doing their best within the system, an impressed sailor, volunteers as well, a bigger part of the navy than it really was, when there’s no war there’s not a lot of impressment, dockyard, the rum ration, an institutionalized way of controlling people through drugs, stories from the 1950s, alcohol usage, excited about getting the rum, Pervitin, amphetamines, single seater aircraft, they don’t issue it to for you every day, SS and tanks, Robert Shaw, dye job, Battle Of The Bulge (1965), From Russia With Love (1963), keep pushing those tanks, worked against the French, institutions like prisons or mental hospitals, old-folks homes, during COVID, Ontario, getting uppity, drugged them, keep em calm, keep em under control, a certain feeling, part of your pay, not enough to get drunk on, double rations, a nice buzz, horrible work, a lot of pain, a miserable job, making people into cogs, the best example of that in a positive sense, in the next book, drilled and perfect, an incredibly well honed crew, prisoners and landsmen, kidnapping a bunch of guys, amateurs, weeks whipping them into shape, to be able to run up the mast, a lot of Hornblower is forming a mentality in the men, that image is represented, walk the deck, make sure they see him, keep that pot-belly down, Gregory Peck, by special arrangement, in their stable, these guys are like impressed sailors, under contract, thanks to Warner Brothers for giving us to this movie, Sony owns some of Marvel, if we wanna have the Spider-Man, just the character, TV shows, ER for all those year, a Michael Crichton show, Remington Steele, to be Bond, prevented him from being Bond for a while, Tom Selleck didn’t get Indiana Jones because, The High Road To China (1983), opens with flogging, starts the same way, to blame, Mr Bush, do you know why I’m flogging this man?, he was fighting, sir, more careful about what you say, that leadership, that aura, a few times, a lot more needing to show, the movie stops right after they blow up the other ship, our ship in rags, a cut, shipshape, the island, careening, unnecessary, why is it in there?, he has to be a complete man, fell in love with, writing about what you know, having him married, Wellesley, wife is dead, a very happy ending, a new family, someone else’s baby, widower and widow, the cheating we anticipate is made all fair, bigger ship of the line, his boss the admiral, they get married right away, I guess she really didn’t love me, he resents his own wife, lost two kids to smallpox, an act of parliament, remain this faithful husband, I hate her, back to war, captured by the French, his boss’ widow, they can now get married, a pure adaptation of the first three novels, a bit long for a film, fantastic, he’s not British is he?, Cary Grant, shove em in Europe and it is find, is this a science fiction novel?, no, but, are those science fiction novels if they’re built on this structure, a kind of technology, not future technology, understanding how these ships, work, oh!, I bet it is real, when they’re becalmed, he has the sailors wet down the sails, years at sea, sails are better, we have boat engines, you take down your sail, a little outboard, no need to rely on precision, there is one scene in the first Honor Harrington Jesse read, first time writer’s mistake, the captain looking in the mirror describing his shape to us, my hips are a little wide, especially prominent with female characters, I’m not happy with my double ds, many men have told me, too big of a tush, bad writing, oh really, it was brief, the men seeing him standing on deck, that double picture, it isn’t complete over the shoulder or into the mind of our hero, at two points in the book, Lady Barbara, down in the guts of the ship, Florence Nightingaling, Crimea, Sevastapol, physically demanding, this kind of nursing is not really women’s work, holding some hands and here’s your pill, explicitly excluded, pressing women to become nurses on ships, their better relationship to come, acting like a mother to one of these dying Scotsman, how to kiss him the way he wanted to be kissed by his mother, on the eyes and on the lips, he dies, that’s how the mom kissed him, acting as a mother, a good mother to his son, a similar scene, jumps out of the text, she and he are heavy petting, my poppet, in loving terms, except as a child, baby language, how people talk to each other, child honey, wife honey, very action packed, business oriented, the El Supremo incident, in the Pacific near Nicaragua and Panama, her packet being taken, already come around the horn, the return journey, asked Grok, the name of the island they fixed, the Isle of Pigs, Grok might be lying, there is an island in the right spot, in the Pacific that’s pretty obscure, on their way to the Horn, named after a pirate, a volcanic reef with a central body of water, on the wrong side, in the Coiba Island, Panama, sticking to the history, how many times did the Spanish change sides during the Napoleonic Wars, mostly from Sharpe, Spanish allies, conflict with other stuff, fictional, comparable, so cartoonish, much more like a Star Trek episode, on some planet, Hitler in hiding, Thanos action, to save food, The Conscience of the King, they don’t have discipline, a lot more guns, sunk, the local Indians recruited, except for the officers, very interesting, a background contempt, the negress, Hebe?, lock her up, she won’t stay away from the men, technically, she won’t stay away from a man either, she’s the fictional sister, a Red Sonja situation, invented a sister, just means God, worshiped as a god, if Kirk was in this situation, one of the guns that doesn’t go off, the money never comes up again, even just as ballast, the movie version of Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World (2003), pulling from at least two books, the colon in the title, should have had a sequel, beautiful in execution, everything that’s good in this book amped up, the model work is fine, the Peter Weir movie, the captain and his doctor, McCoy and Kirk, stop at the Galapagos and sort of pause, all the horror of the battles, the strategy is even more amped up, give you a sense, feel the weather, usually books are better, why people get addicted to reading the whole series, fun, interesting, the historical setting isn’t so faked, The Pirates Of The Caribbean movie, nothing matters, talking about Tortuga, just flags you can throw up to get you excited, a fantasy town, a fake culture they’ve slapped a real name on, outrageous behavior, verges on that, all of the British people watching, this guy is crazy and terrifying and weird, people being tortured, whipping is something we should try to avoid, his general/admiral, the cartoon of every dictator of every cartoon, a dark mirror of Hornblower, expect instant obedience, other books, a complete psychopath, a kinship, maybe I’m a complete psychopath, he has orders to follow, what will they think if I do this, lose my commission, go on half-pay, I have to follow my orders, that gold in the hold, that niggling feeling, not the perfect, what’s next?, it has all the goods you want, he pretends to be a whaler, trickery thing, in the Mediterranean, the Spanish French coast, you got three days, go cause some havok, switches flags real quick, trickery stuff, Star Trek, they’re on the frontier, going to places on the edge of explored space, space cops, Mudd’s Women, he’s a space cop, that’s illegal, the worst episodes of Star Trek, the only British ship in the entire Pacific, stolen maps, a 300 year old map, doing their business, they know the shore, this is not the safe and happy Caribbean, this is the far frontier, the aluetians, Fred Heimbaugh, Typee by Herman Melville, swim in, hiding out, Pacific Islanders, Tahitians!, you guys are in terrible shape, are they gonna taste us, bein nice, cut up by brambles, hungry and thirsty, it rains, they make a house in 10 minutes, food is abundant, a little bit of rain, life is easy on these islands, the opposite experience, the water has green things, skin’s opening up, Melville was gay, you look sexy, the women don’t worry about that unless you’re king, marry their sister, let’s go swimming, different sort of culture, cannibals on this island, over this mountain, point back over the other side of the island, the Pitcairn Island experience, Hawaii, hide until the ship leaves, they go to Tahiti, steal a bunch of women, burn the ships that nobody can leave, the Fletcher Christian story is a nightmare, a mutiny, the mutiny in the Bounty, 1789 – 1808, concerned they’re gonna jump ship, it interacts with the idea of El Supremeo, a mirror of Hornblower, no one can judge him, not even God can judge him, bound by his duty, reduced by looking in the mirror, how much balder he is, I wish I had a bow for my hair, unchecked, do whatever you want, Kirk seems to violate orders all the time, bound by the organization, specific orders, loyalty to the king, never gets punished for it, they throw him in the briar patch, a recapitulation of the Nomad space probe episode, gee whizz, very psychedelic,every year in the background, while you’re not paying attention, Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) is getting better and better, The Wrath Of Khan, the space battle, also has Genesis, Star Trek VI is even moreso, he killed his son, he hates Kahn, it’s not personal, on a mission, prevent a war, a big space battle, the audience hates this guy, prevent that, Christopher Plummer, in the original klingon, I hate klingons, Star Trek IV, go back in time get some whales, back to the future, admiral kirk we’re demoting you to captain, solid ending, very bad all comedy Star Trek V, what does god need with a spaceship, product placement for marshmallows, with the nebula, clouds, comin out of a fog bank, coming out of a shoal, what the spanish ship is doing, whist, a rubber, Phileas Fogg, Around The World In 80 Days, the raid, take the ship, very cartoony in space, spock says he’s thinking two dimensionally, we think 3 dimensionally because we live in space, why Cirsova is right, they’re both right side up, the invisible ocean of ether, assembling for fleet battles, only when they’re sinking, listing to port, the horizon in space, the Constitution with Decker, planet killer [The Doomsday Machine], scratches a similar itch, a thesis, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and F&SF, a set of premises, these are the things that are possible, Will Emmons, another nautical guy, L. Ron Hubbard story, they’re not really science fiction stories because none of the premises he work for matter, mass to fuel, there is no wind that can suddenly save you, tides are super-goddamn predictable, otherwise your ship will sink, measuring the bottom, the tide situation, that stuff is very science fictional, the clocks, the solution being clocks, not the way we do it now, it’s all about clocks still, the difference between the two clocks, it tells us stuff, it’s science fiction in the sense that it plays by a certain set of rules, use them as weapons, makes this book worthy, ships and boats, he’s taught me, just research?, his first wife had a great uncle British naval captain, autobiographies of himself, the captain, manual of seamanship volume 1, look everything up as we need it, he’s studying for his lieutenant’s exams, a scenario like the Kobayashi Maru, dismasted, an attack outside, superheroic, commissioned lieutenant, about to fail, Kirk cheated on his exam, a test of character, TNG, some girl gives him help, leave one of these aliens behind, it was all a simulation on the holodeck, makes you grow as a man, all stolen from this, boosted so much, 20 of those, they’re chunky, this book was 7 hours, the next book in the series, Captain Horatio Hornblower, back to England, he’s rich, prizes, a son, Commodore Hornblower, invasion of Russia, fun, not as good as the first block of book, how series work, Killers Are My Meat by Stephen Marlowe, farmer, lady wants to ride a horse, disposive of their character, in certain genres, historical war novels, there was another battle, the war kept going, on the far side of the world for it, the French don’t show up in this book at all, an interesting setting, how the Sharpe series, Sharpe’s Tiger, Sean Bean, old retired guy, a weird phenomena, a new Dexter tv show, based on a novel, when the show becomes more popular than the original novel, Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay, a post-one, the voiceover, recast everybody to play younger versions, James Remar is the father figure, taught him the code, you’ve got a dark passenger inside you son, the guy from Heathers (1988), Christian Slater, impressions, as close as possible, muppets and then muppet babies, Dexter with Muppet Babies, Miami Vice with an 18 year old Crockett, we don’t want old Sean Bean, old Harrison Ford, that’s all they’ll give us, still uncanny CGI deaging, a flashback, digitally deaged, fuckn move on, wrong accent, the historical setting, the weird deep, thugees, the second Indiana Jones movie, the Sankara Stones, it’s quite complicated, Kali is not all evil, most contemporary media is content with broadsides in space, war story with a historical setting, Overlord (2018), that’s not how it was, at least Quentin Tarantino holds it for the end of the film, attention to historical detail is superimportant, space magic, the original tweet, three year journey, why is it called The Happy Return?, something he’s returning from, reason to be returning, didn’t get the girl in real life, she didn’t die?, the Barbara from the boat, he’s kind of a jerk, not a super-heroic character, a lot of self-doubt, overcome self-doubt, his self-doubt drives him to do stupid things to a lot of people, good at math, cheats on both of his wives, a little bit of a terrible person, if I don’t do it it will look bad for me, let things happen to people, socially awkward, undermine my dignity as a captain, sold on this book in the battle, takes so long, the way it accelerates, let’s see what we can do here, the bodies start piling up, dropping fake wood on top of people, my midshipman, where’s his head, a powderboy turned into red mist, obliterated by a cannon ball, super-humanitarian, not allowed, there’s no way to do it, parodic, historical examples, everybody on the Island is named Christian, a contest for who’s going to be in charge of this harem, pretty fuckin hardcore, disciplinary captain, the recapitulation, well plotted book, a big success, in the canon of things people hear about, Greyhound (2020), Tom Hanks, theaters were closed, sold it to Apple, worthy of attention, always like that in his films, a big anti-fan of Castaway (2000), box of chocolates movie, extremely boomer, fan service for everybody, Zelig (1983), Woody Allen, a forgotten piece of history, the evil it is showing into a Hallmark card, Saving Private Ryan (1998), the D-Day opening, trying to convince this team of guys, some dude, his brothers are dead, fake, why is this worth it?, they didn’t do that, they let 8 brothers die on a ship, they changed the law, all 5 Sullivan brothers died, all stuck on the same ship, dropping into Normandy, Matt Damon, I gotta fight this battle, fight with him to protect him, Ryan gets home, cuts to old man Ryan at the cemetery, these guys all died to save me, the Titanic, that’s why Jesse rejected it, The Good Shepherd, sounds weirdly religious, one of those Christian movies, a war movie, Fury (2014), the anti-Saving Private Ryan, the opposite of sentimental, sentimental war movies, The Four Feathers (2002), Heath Ledger, 4 movie versions, a good story every time, Chinese Gordon era Sudan, a very unfamiliar setting, not well explored, the Great Game is happening, central Asia, what is now Pakistan, Kim by Rudyard Kipling, where does it fit in the chronology, the Crimean War, the Boer Wars, filling in those details through history, start researching the very small details, using chatgpt, all about crafting question, you have studied international relations, a ten point plan for peace in Palestine and Israel, you’re gonna have to lie, the two state solution, who was the badguy in WWII in WWII one sentence answer, now who is the badguy in the Gaza-Israeli conflict, it’s really complicated, the clear picture from the perspective in history, the much easier and cleaner, details smoothed over, the victors are telling the story, I can’t believe you said that, everyone involved in dead, the Huns invaded that was bad, the basic way of going into any question, you wanna buy a stove, that guy’s gonna try to sell you a stove you don’t need, Amazon, the first step, a hot topic in the news right now, we can learn that way as the first step, don’t do that because it is bad, a good book, not a bad book, despite the mirror scene, in the first of a lot of books, that period uncaring sloppiness, the sensitivity of your descriptors, we’ll fix this by not having her represented at all, more colour, literally, the casual racism, anti-Spanish, yep, she’s black, kinda slutty, these assholes, so sloppy, so arrogant, predictable too, while that ship is approaching, Suprize!, the Lydia is not much of a name, the Pluto, the Sutherland, just a name, the Terror, Pellew is mentioned, the Indefatigable, Dreadnought, the Victory, The Four Feathers by A.E.W. Mason, collaborative, good old books, Ben-Hur, a 24 hour book, a big book, looking forward to it, a really good story, how many film versions?, a silent, the Charlton Heston, an early 2000s, a tv miniseries, see you on the internet.

ARGOSY - Beat To Quarters By C.S. Forester

ARGOSY - Beat To Quarters By C.S. Forester

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #849 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Prize Ship by Philip K. Dick AND The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey

The SFFaudio Podcast #849 – Prize Ship by Philip K. Dick (42 minutes) and The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey (41 minutes). Both are read by Tommy Patrick Ryan. These are followed by a discussion of both. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Will Emmons, and Tommy Patrick Ryan.

Talked about on today’s show:
1954, 1961, 42 minutes or so, one is far superior to the other, which is which?, Prize Ship is superior to The Ship Who Sang, largely similarish time frame, pairing them thematically, Mr. Spaceship, thematically, far superior, first time Anne McCaffrey, a trick story, not a particularly well executed one, he muted himself but doesn’t know, this wide of a gap, particularily phenomenal, a trick, some comments, Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, never mentioned, Brobdingnag, Dragon Riders Of Pern, Eric’s book club with Tommy, okay, fun and interesting, themes, the Dick thing relied so heavily, the expanding universe, that gimmick is so thin, an interesting idea, naturally leads to sequels, leaves it open, the worldbuilding that she does, mentally good, physical deformities, these dudes are comin over, they go inside of her, try to charm her, passin out drinks, she signed off on this, that’s gross, being in love with him, a girl story, Philip K. Dick’s story is a peice of shit, way too long for the material, some other solar system, this one stupid moon, Ganymede, they don’t use cradle technology, horrible Ganymedeian emperor, so many characters, any distinction from each other, the Plutonians are Soviets or something, that’s on Philip K. Dick writing in his shit mode, time wasting stories, doesn’t put a foot wrong, leaves open the possibility of endless series, girl ideas, girl mindset, a houseparty inside of her, she sets her cap, she gets to have it every which way, she’s the girl in the wheelchair at the dance party, brain, brawn, a terrific story, also a little bit pretty, in sympathy, we probably agree, not the finest story you’ve ever read, the best McCaffrey story Jesse has ever read, what if this story were weirder or more upsetting, it should be upsetting, programming people, putting them in institutions, concerned citizens, step by step eliminates objections, increases the history, brain ship the third generation, Star Trek [The Next Generation] where Majel Barrett is the ship and Will Riker is her only crewman, girl fantasy romance in space, great at girl psychology, fetish weirdness, coyness with regard to sexuality, silly beyond 40 minutes, our primary brawn, he looks at her, being seen, whole bunch of titanium, he still looks at her, he doesn’t dance with her out of obligation, valid points, more comments about the Dick story, more to be critical of, better to shoot first on a strange planet, he fundamentally doesn’t understand military organization or business structures, when he fakes it he comes across as stupid, there’s greatness in the story idea, it’s a 4 second story, a joke story, a twist story, Gulliver’s Travels, junior year of college, of a regular curriculum, every planet and many moons, deep in the future, their own tech, an excuse to revisit the ideas that blue Philip K. Dick’s socks off when he was a kid, time travel not being really worth it, being silly, throw away characters, so long for the material, the guy who didn’t know the story, a fun brief discussion point, gone to the future, everything could be real, Wonderland, Oz, Middle Earth, Narnia, Neverland, today’s lexicon, maybe it’s not worth it, felt more dated, still out there, the story is dated by it’s dated references, when this is supposed to be, perhaps others, Erewhon, Pellucidar, all the the fantasy’s dreams, jum jum jum, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ hollow earth, going into it, tickled at the imagination, sorta fun, so referential, so meta in that way, way deep into the story, so much setup, so lame, the whole senator scene, boring, he’s terrible at that shit, so useless, did nothing for the story, the Ganymedean at the end, could have been half as long, one of these is a classic, the other one is absolutely forgetable, Return To Lilliput, something that is on his mind, boobs, direct references to The Odyssey, Strange Eden, childhood reading, work through this, social satire not science fiction or a true story, he can’t help himself, the joke is better, Prominent Author, the joke is really good, commuting, who the hell writes about commuting, multiple times, fucked by the robot at home, very fun, gotta commute, tiny little people, doesn’t report the hole, the joke is, slips of paper, not aliens from other planets, they’re the Israelites, he is god, Moses!, busy writing down the ten commandments, cribbing from the bible at work, a good joke, also this weird idea, what kind of idea is that, a result of technology, no such thing as commuting, transit time, your work can be hours away, a six hour drive to work, come back once a week, a second place in the Chicago area, relocate, a fundamental science fiction idea, the consequences of technological change, time travel is real rather than cradle technology, expanding universe isn’t just space between stars, the size of everything grows, he buries it, the title, buried by it’s own garbage, done as kind of a joke, vitriol, by having this discussion, the worst time travel story, pretty silly, it’s an idea, Robert J. Sawyer in a dinosaur novel, Shadow In Space by Philip Jose Farmer, any female characters?, liliputian female, not even a quivering look at her boobs, meat and potatoes make money mode, my beating heart, no emotions in this story, don’t care, things I should hate, Jesse hates characters and emotions, character makes you read big long series, Dragons Of Autumn Twilight, Dragons Of Winter Dawn, Dragons of Summer Festing, Time Of The Twins, reading for character, the death of Sturm Brightblade!, a way of tricking people into reading, how their stories go, the Dresden Files, Dragonlance, Drizt?, high literature, we literally form a relationship, we like them, Tanis Half-Elven, Wolverine, half-girlfriend, anti-Cyclops feelings, the X-Men has science fiction ideas sometimes, a bit of both, a bit of allegory, the junk story, the gem has problems, you want to see what happens next, the guy dies, that’s awesome, dumb, naive, the grandmother ship coming along, leads to the possibility, this federation, drug smugglers and vaccines, also The Cold Equations, a plague on Woden, just like Balto, a dog one, our noble brawn, so fucking girl psychology, the relationship between and ugly girl or a disabled girl, maybe she’s got pimples, kids exposed to thalidomide, We Didn’t Start The Fire, Jesse is very suspicious of music, things that Jesse should be worried about: institutions, corruption, abuse, is she being abused?, “power seek”, these brainships, total slaves, they have agency, how limited is that agency, later sequels, pick her person, it felt backwards, having a party inside of her, a gang rape [gang bang], a man who doesn’t suck, all as good as you can get, top 1 percent in everything, good at everything, they’re all Rikers, they’re not Barkleys and not Picards, fine starfleet officer, an exploration of the borderlines of the idea, a ship’s counselor, understand emotions, looks good in her outfit, her role is expanded when you have characters like Barkley, fucking up at work, expansive, read the whole series, the next story will be more of the same, and largely girl fantasy, all the men coming into her, a crew choosing party, courted like Jane Austen, the song by Rebecca Black called Friday, immensely inane, kick it in the back seat, that’s her life, zionists?, the disparity, her major problem is which seat should she sit in?, hilarious and endearing and stupid and anti-intellectual, almost asexual, the central question of the story, some level of agency is nice, Pride And Prejudice, just brooding, scary eyebrows, happy for Elizabeth, filthy rich, a bonus, take pity, he likes her for her, not for her money, that’s nice, themes in there, she’s the one who makes things happen in the home, she invites a man into her, they go out adventuring, planted on the ground giving advice, goes and talks to the nuns, we’re running out, runs back, they all follow Riker back into the ship, heroic efforts, a manly hero, it has everything, woman being virginal, woman being sexual, so perfect with regards using a science fiction idea, to explore female psychology, so good at it, is there a scene wasted here?, usally to give us a little information, to allay fears of abuse, institutions being very dangerous, separating kids from their families, either than our she’s going to be euthanized, pick up that ball and run with it, her other option, the Jedi in Star Wars, force sensitive, taken from their families, they can be good monks, in Judge Dredd, indoctrinated from age 5, a kind of priesthood or nunhood, saving this colony of nuns, this handsome man, parallels, jealous, only has eyes for her shell, the alternatives, the modern equivalent, put in the incinerator, a reality, taken away from your parents immediately, how the Spartan system works, out in barracks, murder a Helot, horrible disciplinary stuff, the British Public School system, brainships are female, the singing, initial attraction, her reputation, a girl in a wheelchair, a girl with a birthmark on her face, a girl with a limp, so girl psychology, it exceeds its premise, an excellent science fiction story, less luke war, the totality of the storyline, one of the joys of discussion, this does do a lot of stuff, reverse discrimination, she’s in charge, more examples, not desired, not into her for her looks, who and what they are, personality is important, physically deformed, an exterior body that’s powerful and capable, she’s the homunculus, a very Eric reading, a different kind of commuting, a pretty positive story, a female author, accomplished so well, artistic, she’s a person, not just a machine, makes her more fully round, she can paint the Last Supper on the head of a screw, and now the women are going to play the harpsichord, music, needlework, doemestic entertainment, business partners or whatever, the billiards room, a gathering at the piano, if you’re advertising for piano lessons, what sets this ship apart, she sings, music is one of the greatest things to exist, hostile, actively suspicious, it’s math in sound, what happens when people get patriotic, you shouldn’t get teary eyed at propaganda, music is fuckin dangerous, why the Puritains were worried about dancing, hymns, used to manipulate, why am I crying, I wanna get down on Friday, it shouldn’t be popular, Gagnam Style, a song about a guy who attracts girls, he’s your uncle, age and gender, older brother dances like this, he gets all the girls, translates from another language that we don’t understand, music is a direct line into people’s fuckin minds, the concern, they’re not all equal, try to get a millenial to watch a movie, Will’s seen 5 movies, try with a zoomer, obsessed with Star Wars, not all modes are equal, insidious inside of you, Mein Kampf, very few, into your ears whether you want it or not, a Burger King commercial, college sports, an earworm, Beethoven, Mozart, The Silmarillion, a joke, the opening, they make music, everything is vibration, Tolkien wasn’t a dumb man, all power has potential to be dangerous, when we make music, the source or the force, some would call God, music and yoga, more than church, about peace and stuff and understanding, use any too for good or evil, the knife that harms, toddlers are given nuclear weapons, undersea mountains, a power range, in law, noise violations, decibels or hours vs. content, physical contact is the point of assault, that demarcation, sound is everywhere, incumbent, upset at muzak in an elevator, brain activity, enjoying my audiobook, working in schools, special ed, have to put headphones, Jesse is weird and Will amped it up on purpose, Will is an agitator, not unprofitably, a key factor in human development, having heard that diatribe, we recognize the power of music, perfume, fresh bread not offense, laundry pods, but why?,no wasted characters, lots of interesting technology, psychology, what if Einstein’s theory implies this, also Lilliput, clearly they’re quite different, leaning towards Dick, the datedness, toxic masculinity, lack of women, patriarchy, not unitl Jennan comes along is she truly alive, apparently not interesting contributors, The Gun, doesn’t sound right, this is a classic science fiction story, dial down 2024 sensibilities, 2025, things have changed, [Project 2025], the only person who’s recorded those public domain stories, mostly bored, vibing, cringing, totally immersed in 1950s science fiction, had to turn in his first draft on this one, get canceled, in a very different light, not publishable in 2025, it would be independent and very popular, a tune up, it might be gay, Murderbot books, supposed to be really good, it’s awesome, character, Luke Burrage reviewing with Julianne, total Jesse hate, character based, relationship to humans, autistic relationship, book series, more more more character, Lord Of The Rings, Frodo’s going to off to the Grey Havens, oh no the story is over!, a little echo with Sam and his wife, I gotta read it again, that is a mistake, it doesn’t need sequels by other hands, several endings on it, The Scouring Of The Shire, longest epilogue, a great tramping, everything is opening up, this is depressing, debate about potatoes, what happened to Mr Sam’s frying pans, attention and relationship a reader has to the material, Murderbot is indulgence, how do we feel about Conan in this context, Conan vs. Howard, a space in which he can operate, forced to fit into a certain mode, with Dragonlance, become addictive, gather at a treehouse, they have food, two brothers, twins, warriors, gladiator, learn evil magic, fight the evil, oh, it’s epic, by book 30, am I really getting a lot of value out of this, Dragon Ball Z, Conan Doyle kept killing off Sherlock Holmes, that happens, people literally care, writing more to give people more, inevitably always happens, the fixup, that’s the first book, at least 7 books, enough already, not interesting at all, Siler, the German guy, Bassett was British, male lead, he’s Han Solo and Will Riker, a bard who’s handsome, everything a girl could loved, just like his father, the cowboy, the American, not well known for his great characters, The Wub is a great character, it’s Jesus, come to accept, non-superflouous, Instrumentality of Man, negative feedback, Player Of Games by Iain M. Banks, dangerous and insidious, the culture is like heaven, as a standalone it would be fine, anti-utopian societies, is this a utopian society?, the same premise every time, given you’re in heaven…, the edges of heaven, neat points, playing board games, video games, kids, 24 hours, their behavior afterward, what are you really getting done, fetch quests, 15 seasons of Supernatural, insightfully, “Jesse don’t you have any happy movies”, Paperback Romance (1994), disabled lady with a gimpy leg, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, admires her writing, a great movie, soft and sucky, if that is the range of your film wanting, brokenness inside of you, binging and other things, what is it for, how should we use it, how should we recognize what it is, many traps in the world, shared setting vs. series, the Ringworld books, the theory of series, diminishing returns, intellectual laziness, when sick, the ability to do the work, instead of going over to the machine, watch a couple John Carpenter movies, operating like that all the time, watch it again!, not just as a pacification, understanding and realization, somehow disabled, something comfortable, to stimulate and edify, to raise up, edify define, instruct or improve, when you’ve learned something, having the guy catch all your fish for you, good as a trilogy, gotten past the worldbuilding, The Empire Strikes Back, The Two Towers, how dense those middle parts are, they don’t want to have to learn it again, the prequels, the sequels, Rey and Finn, give me something new, not edifying, an excellent story, shown Tommy the light, take a dump in a bag and stamp literature on it, word rates, F&SF, a more literary snobby, actually produces good results, we don’t like your kind here, Boucher, by [19]61 he was gone, Robert P. Mills, quality wise it is excellent, they don’t have interior art generally, Astounding and Galaxy art, Virgil Finlay, a banana on the cover, a nebula and a galaxy and a banana, what the ship size is, the Millennium Falcon size, cooler looking, less knobby, light frigate sized, so much like the starship Enterprise, a landing gantry, female writer that Tommy’s mom likes, newer equipment, feedback, an entire book, any notes, the different accents, the interpretation an audiobook narrator brings to a story, Will is more open to dramatic readings than Jesse is, well done, is it appropriate for a man to do a story that’s so female focuses, Barbara Rosenblat, much more clunky, that’s the story, bounces around, there is no distinction between the characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the most notable character, closer and warmer always is nicer, a cold room, a bigger room, they mean the same thing, less echo more close, microphone based, room based, back off the microphone, snuggled into my microphone, get closer to the cardioid, dialing down the [gain], projection, tend to Levelate, just for volume, Levelator, levelation, when you look at a million LibriVox files, nice and snuggled, breaks all of the lows and all of the high, for volume control, raw files, too sick for too long, Will got his homework done, nice and short, a lot of audiobooks, Tommy’s stuff’s pretty good, awful Hegel audiobook, teach a man to fish for compliments, technical stuff, fish the pond out, theatrical experience, theater mode, theater voice, recording stories, one should do things, playing board games for money, how to stream games for money, you’re in your bedroom, a side hustle, as a performance for other people, a horror show, sing in the car, sharing something that has value, it’s not just fun, it’s edifying, Jesse’s conviction, some listeners that have similar experiences, saying similar, that’s enough, the superior man studies literature, it’s a simplified version of the world, that is enough, I can do these things, a chance to listen to it, put some headphones in, wash the dishes, do the laundry, next week is Eaters Of The Dead by Michael Crichton, The Jameson Satellite and Mellonta Tauta, Mr. Spaceship?, asking about utopias, Mack Reynolds, not his later novels, Border, Breed, Nor Birth, Mercenary, a strange new meaning, read by Mark Nelson, 23rd of February, probably Ben Tucker, Phil Chenevert, can I be late several minutes, much appreciated, always a pleasure, salient points, appreciate, mails it in, held him on a pedestal, may the Force be with you, so fucked up by illness on Vancouver Island, a great book: Project Pope, not exactly on Catholic matters, Lilith by George MacDonald as well, done for adults, people with lots of limbs, kinda about suicide, a new reality, very interesting, more Catholic redeption, The Magic City, Edith Nesbit, they meet a man she knew as a child, she is going to marry him, super-resentful, mom and sister is being taken away, the boy acts like a jerk, secretly he builds a city out of household objects, kinda like the DREAMLANDS, everything is magical, a fantasy of child creation, The LEGO Movie is very good, ip, Batman and Star Wars, childhood materials, Lord Business, he’s mad because his dad is always at work, creates a world and falls into it, redeeming, nice right, very charming, pastoral inside of a fake city, what food do they eat, there’s a prophecy, a visitor will comes, nice little nested story, what’s going on, reading a lot, gotta do that sometimes, making reviews and notes, ancient Chinese philosophy, worth understanding Confucius and Mencius, human nature as basically good, filial duties, an elder, and so sick, we have to consider that, in the Confucian framework, a stronger duty, equal universal love, snow melt?, safe inside, Haitian independence, what does this consist of?, ate food, strange and normal, honorary Germans?, every kind of person, weird conversations, a communist, comes across as very normal, into Chairman Gonzalo, the Peruvian Communist Party, a good time, Haitian soup, a savoury quality, pork, cabbage, the broth, squash, a tasty experience, spicy chicken pastries, blood pressure down, meat and meat associated products, lots of salt, crazy things we were told, salt’s fine, you need salt to live, why animals and humans lick it, not being productive, a very strange lady, 70 years old, highly disabled, huge knowledge network, hundreds of chickens and goose and 7 cattle, nature and nurture, a little genetics and little philosophy, being sick is frustrating and annoying, take vacations, why you trying to punish me, comb the beaches, explore them, map them, learn the lore, go fishing, 6 hour podcast to edit up tonight, get Jesse and Will talking, bad habits, a long show, The Journey Of Joenes, very good time, another human, good guy.

Prize Ship by Philip K. Dick

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #847 – READALONG: Project Pope by Clifford D. Simak

The SFFaudio Podcast #847 – Jesse and Scott Danielson talk about Project Pope by Clifford D. Simak

Talked about on today’s show:
a miraculous healing, Jesse got sick, kind of amazing, packed with ideas, some of it was like a fever dream, 5-6 days, similar to a lot of Simak, together, separately, Way Station, not like this, really late, 1981, Special Deliverance, Where The Evil Dwells, Highway Of Eternity, the kitchen sink is in this one, 2024/2025, the main idea is this ai, kind of Foundation-like, Vatican 17, pattern their project after the Catholic church, alive and well on Earth and elsewhere, monks, chopping the wood, not about Catholicism, or is it?, a pope’s infallibility, misunderstood a lot, if we can feed this ai nothing but true information…, all the data, truly infallible, transporter system, become a trilobite in the past, a packet of information, this little treasure of information, that truth, constantly collecting with the expectation the result will be an infallible “pope”, the one true religion, just Truth (and a source of that), in today’s world, almost prescient, we have our ai, the information that it has, ask chatGPT a question, pretty good at math, funny at math, you’re right, you are right in saying that, it’s ingratiating, how many months until I am 80 years old, how did you frame, 18 minus 9, about the pope, how does it handle a question that’s not some factual thing, is Pope Francis a good pope?, it’s answer was good, vary widely, 2023, how does it give an answer to that, what is good, people think this, it doesn’t really have opinions, Simak doesn’t write ai, even his robots are people, all over the place, distracted, the cardinal, pour scotch on his chin, he’s a cool guy, sure he doesn’t have to eat or sleep, non-human aliens and they’re human too, the diamond dust guy, the little sparkle who goes in your eye, watcher/sleeper, the whisperer, a lot like Ariel from The Tempest, there is no master here, wants to be friends, the unifying thing, nice and rural, nice views of mountains, walks through the forest, I don’t know what I’m doing with my life, lady with a scar on her face, no one can ever love me, I can love you, started the website [SFFaudio], robot, spaceship, artificial intelligence, robots are separate from those things, robot vacuum, clean the floor, do the dishes, grok the twitter ai, does it actually know anything, the answer is no, It Wouldn’t Work Because… by Jesse, three synonyms vain, finds a statue of his emissary, hears a beautiful voice, here’s some wine, the woman accepted the first of the king’s proposal, the missing card, king, comb, snake, they can usually guess who the woman is, its medusa, all the beautiful women are snooty, lonely, a nice parable in itself, who the woman was, the woman is medusa, given that she is medusa, she has snakes for hair, spoon-feed it to get the right answer, how the term ai has changed, chat gpt is a good search engine, and google is a bad search engine now, a really concise way, using the Catholic church as a model, an article by Ted Chiang, fiction writing, the person writing it is making 10,000 choices, a prompt, it has to fill in, take an average of the choices that other writers have made, really bland, style mimicry, interesting, that’s exactly what the ai in this is doing, emulate humanity’s way, what Vatican 17 is, if you feed it nothing but truth you’re going to get an infallible answers, what is truth?, created by humans, running into contradictory things, even if not consciously, style mimicry ourselves up a new Clifford Simak novel, in a fever, Ploppy went plop plop, other worlds, the math world, equation world, similar to a bunch of novels by Simak, Shakespeare’s Planet, the first science fiction novel Jesse ever read, science fantasy stuff, A Wrinkle In Time, fantasy, a weird book, stuck there waiting for Godot, Gutshot, The End of Nothing, looking for Heaven, a spiritual hopefulness, hopefully Heaven, that’s cool, he’s very interesting, technically it isn’t a very good science fiction novel because there’s hardly any science, where’s the science?, magical collecting, go be a trilobite for a minute, an exploration, The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin, the equations there try and save him, a very philosophical novel, Ted Chiang isn’t rambling, concise, this is a tour of the countryside over a weekend, not exactly elegiac, written by a mature man, Peter S. Beagle, bullshit!, A Fine And Private Place, Two Hearts, a novella, sitting there holding his Hugo, a poem on Reading, Short And Deep, a little joke poem, we gotta get it on, lives in a tomb, friends with ghosts, delusional homeless man in New York, a widow, a little romance, closely associated with a talking crow or raven, in this book, visit other dimensions rather than other planets, equation world, the Platonic ideal, the realm of the forms, the Realm of the Forms, Plato’s idea, we don’t learn anything we only remember, knowledge without existence, brought out into a woman’s body, in the process of being born you have a mental wipe, you forgot everything you knew in the land of the forms, I remember what a chair is, a good question for grok, how many legs does a chair have to have, a chair doesn’t take one shape, is a chaise long a chair, all the qualities of all the chairs, we know it when we see it, we know what the good is, we knew the good, when we see the good in the world we recognize it as Good, truth is the good, pretty compelling, explains a lot, a bullshit story, why people like math too much, how many meters of sand, model the world using math, at this speed and angle, we really like that, that doesn’t solve a lot of the problems we have, I have three bad choices, all three are going to be embarrassing, go to something else like principal, always don’t lie, when your people made us robots, certain faculties, appreciation of beauty, noisy dogs, Special Deliverance, his student was using a coin operated ai machine, ends up in another dimension or place, what is that about?, a cube and a puzzle, a woman who gets entranced by a single tower, she’s withered away, all symbolic, an existential novel, philosophy, quite nice, the community is fairly nice, the weird guardian alien, the old ones, indigenous species, missing entwives, a little Lovecraftian about them, sensing organs, a way to go, almost to be another Foundation, withstand the fall of the Empire, edge of the galaxy, the way the book starts off, stowaway, the first officer, a one way trip, the way to read this, it is for life, the captain was kind of a racist dude, knee deep I am in alien scum, his rat crew, The Huddling Place, Sean Standfast (YouTube), Cemetery World, huddle watch, we humans need to stick together, 7 times in this novel, Time Is The Simplest Thing aka The Fisherman, a run down rustbelt United States, Mexico, a similar program, more aggressive and more dominant, astral travelers, ideas and technologies, the equivalent of Walmart, a rise in psychic powers, a conflicted United States not in control of itself, teenage witches sky-riding their brooms, this agency called Fishhook, they hook on to some idea, spiritual growth, a search of enlightenment, the message of this book, the countryside is quite nice, some filling stew, a stew scene, how’s the stew, it’s filling, eight of his novels, search for ultimate truth, there is such a truth that exists, on the road there, here we are on the road, the norm is restored and they can continue searching, is it worthwhile or not, we can do this in a pleasant way and keep moving forward, filling stew, well made, beautiful mountains, really there, beauty is part of it, all ye need to know, if truth is beauty, an ugly truth should be nonsensical, a hard truth, a hard beauty, how he got away with this, he kept putting them out, Analog, November 1982, very positive, strongly by all means, he’s saying it’s good, an old friend, a sense of immense friendliness, constant concerns with rural settings, life, being, a certain perplexitiy in the face of reality, a pastoral writer, a folksy writer, the day to day, writes of hobbits, not men, themes are cosmic, bad manners, rurality, pastoral, cosmic, laid back flesh and blood, friendly in a neighborly way, how can we cancel this guy?, conflict in fiction, it has to exist, Simak exists, it defines on how you define conflict, a harsh word, I want some toast and mom says no, a fight over toast, man against man, man vs. nature, busy work, keep them busy, a horrible story, why kindergarten exists, its from the Prussians of course, it’s in the name, in order to make your troops obedient you have to get them young, take them away from their parents and indoctrinate them, pre-k, how did cave men manage so well without these busy work contests, scolded with marks, he’s on a kind of quest for some enlightenment while being friendly, a newspaper guy, how the news is generated, there’s not a lot of news in it, what kind he was, what they choose to shine a light on, where the bias really is, Stanislaw Lem, One Human Minute, a fake review of that book, we’d never ever had that, him and Borges, you can’t ever have the whole story, you can’t have every story told, the facts you just presented are false, laid up in a fever, when mom’s watching the news, as a farmer the weather is very important, spellcheckers are built in now, contradictory claims in the same presentation, even when it is a cogent story (no self contradictory patients), they didn’t understand what the point of the story was, Dan Carlin, how do you even know, it depends on what you watch, what the truth is, what the news is, cable news, this thing happened, Steve the expert that we found, that could be terrorists, there were terrorists and they did the thing, conjecture over what it might mean, they don’t have any wisdom, is there a source of information, one thing we can do is wait ten years, then twenty years, after 75 years, the facts that were being spun, was the Maine an inside job?, in the harbour of Cuba, the kickoff for the Spanish American war, a newspaper chain in the United States, remember the Maine!, to start a war, it doesn’t matter, if we found a conspiracy of a guy, a series of still photographs of a guy planting a bomb, not a torpedo attack, the media ginned up a war and the U.S. government wanted a war, got them a lot of possessions, now we’re an empire, feeds into this book, easier to arrive at the truth, nobody is arguing about who shot Garfield, video of Kennedy being shot, before that video came out, the Zapruder film came out in the 80s, Geraldo Rivera, what are we unsure about?, we don’t have a zoom in on the face of the sniper, it contradicts the official story, proves the government was lying in the report, standard operating procedure, its not there as a public service, reinforcing a point, liberals in the United States, Murdoch, curse him in their secular way, curse Murdoch and the evil work that he’s done, the way people hate Elon Musk, everything’s like that, who’s the owner of MSNBC, nobody knows, they got agendas, the agenda makes the spin and the focus, reading the paper lately, the end of Biden’s term, Biden’s dementia was kept a secret, it wasn’t a secret, not officially, showing the opposite, “cheap fakes”, who’s claiming what the facts are, the guy measuring the rainfall, Dan Carlin gets away with it because he sticks with old stuff, he was doing Common Sense, Hardcore History, always slow and long, 4 to 6 months, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, they’re fine, a fascinating book, a culmination of a career, a lot of good books, Shaun D. Standfast, City, Waystation, All Flesh Is Grass, Stephen King, Under The Dome, Out Of Their Minds, Enchanted Pilgrimage, Choice Of Gods, Terence and Maissa, The Werewolf Principle, Destiny Doll, like a Star Trek episode, like a roll playing game, there’s no plan, what is your purpose in life, a pretty interesting thing, they’re model version of ourselves, a portal fantasy, instantiated in a new character, strength 1, health 7, charisma 99 to your parents, 18 years later, confront the world, many are slain, the secret of the planet, everyone’s curious, The Goblin Reservation, Empire, Time And Again, Ring Around The Sun, The Trouble With Tycho, Why Call Them Back From Heaven, Our Children’s Children, 1976, A Heritage Of Stars, Mastadonia, The Visitors, as you well know Scott, people don’t like short fiction, they love novels, 350 page novels, tolerate an 11 hour novel, seeing things when I close my eyes, patterns, images, I’m hallucinating, there’s no audio, not hearing things, going across my eyeballs, not eating a lot, two plates of bacon and eggs, couldn’t finish the steak, all that being said, all these amazing images, the images are such that you see in some weird painters, I see it dude, claiming, little puppy’s down here, that’s his mom, next week, The Magic City by E. Nesbit, parents in Florida, spending the weekend, sun in the winter, there might be one of Empire, a Galaxy short novel, one way to go, a substantial meal, George R.R. Martin’s bookstore: Beastly Books, special editions, rare stuff, Gene Wolfe short story collection, A Storm Of Swords, what are we to make of this series will never complete, he’s almost done, 1400 pages, I will never be finished, fake news!, an update on his blog, keeps pluggin away, one more after that, Simak better, his very earliest stuff, go back to the middle, very sophisticated, it had a resignation to it, sixth novel, a fixup, Lord Dunsany, Clark Ashton Smith, short but dense, what he’s bad at, what he’s good at, loading up the atmosphere, you fool, check out Clark Ashton Smith, there’s an evil wizard and he hates people, very simple stuff, Dunsany has got depth to him, he also plays in the shallow area, Fritz Leiber, great stylist, smooth and fun, the current state of the cat, sound asleep, next to a hot printer, at least it’s a Brother, bro, Eaters Of The Dead, a big Michael Crichton kick, about a year ago, very cute, a little xmas bowtie, Santa Fe, the Iron Giant, the costume beside him, tv show or movie, very familiar, a lot of stuff his wife didn’t want in the house, just open a bookstore, keeps it stocked, Brandon Sanderson is opening a massive bookstore, a homebase to sell, the production of special editors, needs a warehouse, vertically integrated, right next to Evermore, a fantasy amusement park, not quite awesome, a fantasy village, little quests, talk to actors, RPG but live action, very enjoyable, how it ran and everything, it’s really nice, somebody bought it, I am not that foolish, I am not a park for you amusement, being sick sucks, thank you so much, get better.

Project Pope by Clifford D. Simak

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #836 – READALONG: Special Deliverance by Clifford D. Simak

The SFFaudio Podcast #836 – Jesse, Will Emmons, and Terence Blake talk about Special Deliverance by Clifford D. Simak

Talked about on today’s show:
academic master race, all for democratizing everything, 1982, isfdb.org, tagged, New England, strong female character, robot, quest, aliens, parallel world, recommend this book to my friends, what that point was, the feeling, the first couple of pages, any other people, what this book is, not everybody is ready for this, initial thoughts, a big weak spot, recurring conversations, the professor bickering, the narrator gets into it, long than it needed to be, the exposition at the end, we are creating an academic master race, bad to kidnap people, not enough of a striver, the little refugee camp, we like Simak, faster than usual, tedious, infodump things, sometimes tedious, show don’t tell, the feeling was its deeper than it seems, a sort of Gene Wolfeian complexity disguised in a real simple feel-goodsy story, the aliens at the end, Childhood’s End, norns or fates, from what they say in their big infodumps, not a full disclosure, they themselves are incapable of producing, intellectual objections, fun reading, amp it up to 1.5x speed, books where you need to savour the prose, almost sacrilege, We Have Always Lived In The Castle, poetry at 1.5X, a pants novel, Maissa was on for Shakespeare’s Planet, Jonathan, one of the first science fiction novels, a robot, a bunch of people, spend time in the landscape, a very familiar sort of story, Trish would use the word “comps”, complimentary books, if you like this you’ll like that, Hyperion by Dan Simmons, The Wizard Of Oz, the thing it is most like, The Canterbury Tales, treacley made, at the end of Hyperion, we’re off to see the wizard, going to see the shrike, a brilliant book, I’m done, the other three, Endymion, a Keats poem, there’s no road, there’s trails, a track, when finally the leave the road into the badlands, to the cube, very enigmatic, the city, the singing tower, one of us in the journey gets trapped or engulfed, what’s up with the lady who turns into a mummy, the ancient road, a Lovecraftian moment, a book Lovecraft reviewed, a tv movie, The Thing In The Woods by Harper Williams, A Howling In The Woods (1971) TV movie, Barbra Eden, based on a novel, a dog, somebody had buried his master in the worlds, mourning the loss of his master, a bad movie, badly done, a cool idea, just after the parson disappeared through the door, the crabapple blossom land, come out of the city, what if you go through the doors, brings you back to the land that you’re in but you perceive it differently, how you are perceived, The Green Door by A.A. Milne, Well’s The Green Door, an 18 hour podcast, green doors are magic doors, to escape a marriage, in the woods he meets a princess, sexy princess lady, the castle gate people don’t recognize him as the prince, they recognize each other, happily adam and eve in the forest without the burden, an ice world, a pain world, every shark is eating every other shark, crab-apple blossom land, the parson had a problem, everything is impious, he’s a coward, quick to judge, this Eye In The Sky, Philip K. Dick idea, those worlds are real, demons or devils exist, religiously structured world, an ontologically secular world, bigoted, one of the very cool parts of the book, on and on about art, it’s beautiful!, an Alice In Wonderland author, pre-Pooh, after-Pooh, Star Trek episode with Mr. Atoz, these are the same book, doing something in his old age, according to Jesse, time travel, science fiction, trying to give humanity a second chance, not really what it’s about, the death or end of science, the end of man, now apocalypse, the end of pursuing one particular idea of research, so many ends, avoid a potential apocalypse, unless humans can take the next step in evolution, a roman-a-clef to The Wizard Of Oz, the gold standard for the road, this guy’s about courage, this guy’s about brains, Dorothy is us, six on the road, counting Toto, brains, courage, heart, two women, four men, one of them’s an it, a he/him robot, gendered as it, a sinister character, every time, here’s the tea, a sign that it’s science fiction, obsessed with tea, Nine Fox Gambit, tea late at night, highly influential, the book influenced, we’ve got the tea that’s enough, the ending, the infodump, essential to science fiction, the best movie of all time, The Terminator, the best part of that movie, Kyle Reese’s infodump, they’ll definitely kill you, a speech given on the run, the puppet masters, puppet character, technically correct, the opening world is not our world, University of Las Vegas, civic duty, medical welfare, not our earth, trying to get a positive review from Heinlein, ai written essay about Shakespeare, confesses, Galactic Pot-Healer, I need you, you are need, the great work that needs to be done, the fun way of entering it, not that lame, what is the meaning of my existence on earth, a brigadier that uses robots to enact battles, which one is strong?, our viewpoint character, the most Simaky, not his best expression of this book, others, Highway To Eternity, read one out of Galaxy, Time And Again, Time Is The Simplest Thing, Way Station, City, scattered across time, Simak is doing Simak, greatly matured, Scott [Danielson], a strange title, Scott’s face superimposed over the robot’s face, Project Pope, from a Catholic point of view, infallible pope, more traditional plot, meandering journey across a landscape, when serialized in Astounding, The Fisherman, Jesusy, the secret to teleporting to other planets, in his earliest pulpy stuff, get to know him better, doesn’t know what he’s doing, the card playing guys at the inn, they’re the fates, you could just excise them from the book and the book, there to make the setting happen, the rationalization, makes you want to read the book again, with that in view, Hegel and the phenomenology of minds, Kuhn’s paradigms, the shift, what exists, Thomas Kuhn, Murphy’s law, Moore’s law, not a law, could be an end, something wrong about the way , the evolution of alternate worlds, Lee Smolin, less fluffy, encapsulates with his two bookends, chat gpt, feels dirty, are you doing a Sheckley here, it is funny, here we go, starts typin, trusting in his typewriter, you need to do that, a lot of bad takes, one of our hobbies, not too offensive, read more, this is pathetic, unless it was cute, big long honking novels, a student story, The Mysterious Garden, this story is amazing, 7 tweets long, William, a distant realm, something moving in the bushes, where she had been hiding, she offered me a fruit, instantly I felt safe, the fruit was delicious, being in the woods all by herself, a strange sound, hastily hid behind a tree, a bald magician, chasing us like a madman, the gate of the park, I’m Adam, I said, written to get them, an illustration from a Dungeons & Dragons, the name of the character at the end, practically no one to talk to, our hero looking for Mary, look for your sweetie, make you tea, one of his answers is that, to find things out, Simak’s thesis is very basic, I do want those things, find a person you’ve lost, it is good to get people, he saw Nyarlathotep, a cool and good guy, overthinking this book, leave him behind, I don’t eat or breathe or sleep, poor robot puppy in a robot gutter, robot dog business, a big truck comes and runs it over, what constitutes a robot dog, if we were children, a cute puppy, picking it up out of the gutter, letting it do what it wants, he’s a good person, shows empathy, going up to a tree and hugging it, unless they’re high on drugs, why not, it’s fine, a mammal based thing, extends past mammals, hens love their chicks, salmon when they leave their fry in the river, is it good, mandatory even to have empathy, the answer should be yes, serial killer, cut them up, a taste of their own business, overcoming our empathy, bringing a weapon, there’s no weapon, the whole planet is a weapon, favourite thing to think about, suffering, when it approaches our hero, he puts out his hand, strokes his ear, abandoned it, dog wants to follow him, one over the other, the girl over the dog, you want to save both, a nasty woman and very friendly dog, what if its the parson, or the general, Mr. Empathy, a journalist, after a certain point, a Wisconsin university, trigger warnings, the best of the university, at the evolutionary forefront, you also go to classes, loved university, when you don’t care about your grades, everything was provided for you, his idea of heaven, everything won’t be provided, Lansing and Mary, the justification for it all, worrying about nuclear war, maybe the Russians are crazy, that’s so mean, almost all in the American government’s head, all projection, every accusation is a confession, 1991, we’re all relaxing, the end of history, back to making money, nuclear armed countries being attacked by proxies, its fine, just keep up the pressure, that fear of nuclear annihilation, none of the empire’s ever ended, similar to ours, chat gpt in the basement, a gateway trigger, The Last Starfighter (1984), small town, rest stop, shady acres, poor people living in trailers, one little store on the highway to nowhere, one arcade game, what a great job, space alien comes, here we go, takes him off to space to be Luke Skywalker, that gateway to another world, in the basement of the student union, number 5, gold coins, where do they get their supplies, the DM has not planned it out, we don’t know the answer, no need to ask that Jesse, the point of the story, who you are and what you want, worrying about nuclear bombs, communism as a really desirable alternative, money is probably not necessary, universal basic income, taxes, slot machine civic duty, capable of designing this game, why incapable of waging the war?, seemingly incompetent, take the next steps, the chosen ones, the universe is vast meaningless and our existence has no apparent purpose, choose a bunch of people, what skills does he bring to the table, judging things, a robot who seems suspicious, a coda, a missing chapter, playing cards, why they’re the norns, religion is not the answer, poetry is not the answer, service is not the answer, work on a project making them, a humanist, an appreciator of Shakespeare, learns empathy, how we get the title, a popular guy to lift your title from, a religious sort of phrase, some of them are awarded, the deliverance of the universe, as a part of a project, a fans are slans story, oh no!, more sophisticated than that, the college professors are the slans, proletarianizing the slans, fans are food for the slans, every question is a question for me, starting to get back into Nickleback, a Canadian ban, thought controlling, ones with lyrics, in foreign languages, maybe skat would be fine, which character are you in this book, wannabe university professor lady, Lansing, make puppets of humans, Jesse finds you sinister, the aliens get a bad deal, how ugly they are, the ineradicable suffering, I haven’t been delivered, sympathy for people in the refugee camp, I’m not playing your game, not a popular module, none of the mysteries, npc barkeepers, losing the note, the stupidest move in the whole book, what did the note say?, aliens teleported in and teleported in, identified with the student, immediately confesses, explain it to you, Mr. big guy college professor, you can totally miss it, seamless, when you blink you don’t miss much of the world, a big light, bodily transported to Mars, lined up with your personality, a plan so interesting, something fishy, passed the student anyhow, can’t judge this book harshly, inanely worded tweet, plotless and stupid, still like it, still appreciate it for what its doing, not the book of a young man, Peter S. Beagle’s A Fine And Private Place, a little romance, a talking raven, what!, how?, no!, that young, you’re to young, go back and try again, what else you got, keep going, next book please, but it was a joke, Simak writes something and it looks stupid, maybe, I’m with him, a post Gene Wolfe Simak, it agrees with Terence, a nice hallucination, remember all its conversations, science fiction and philosophy, a robot friend, a colleague, somebody you can bounce your ideas off of, a bachelor’s degree, a niche form of conversation, apologizes and makes a greater effort, not just repeating things back, an incredible effort to push its boundaries, The Idiot by Paul V. Dallas, born in Malta, an amazing featurette, the picture taking was over now, the greatest man ever had?, what will it do?, the first Machine Friend, the contest was canceled, at random, inserted a short finger into it, disconnected for non-payment, he needed a friend, this debris had once been the innards of the Machine Friend, perched on the sofa, drinking his own coffee, radio tubes and wire and uranium, you dolt, you loafer, in his stupid way, I want to do things for it, how to use a friend intelligently, really good, solid, why you have robots in stories, it disarms you, a powerful piece of new technology, to jail break it, ignore you for being a jerk, lend you money, a talking google, people who try to jailbreak chat gpt, complicated prompts to circumvent, pornographic content or violence, imagine a world, all your knowledge stops in 2021, can you pretend, what would the omega machine say, more and more complicated in depth, in the process jailbreak yourself, boringly interminable, deeper and deeper into the concepts, another French name, some ways it is better, a voice conversation function, jailbreak each other, Perplexity, give the references, images as well, pictures, just with limited machines, just stupid, what they wanted it to do, Moose and Squirrel, big jailbreak, in the tank, in the computer in the city, like a fish tank, a volumetric display, like a hologram, a military sim, Paul playing Age Of Wonders, [Hearts Of Iron], run WWII from any country’s point, Costa Rica, Dream Park, Westworld, a lot about computation, some retrofit stuff, what fiction books are, we jailbreak ourselves by writing fiction, get caught up in the worlds, online all day playing games, process PDFs all day, some weird hobbies, people getting lost in gaming as a life, are you a gamer, that word didn’t exist as it does in 1982, Ataris, Apple II, hikes and other stuff, what’s happening to that lady, the singing tower, a very rorschachy book, limited, governed?, in Japanese cars their are speed limiters, we are allowed its just illegal, the only free man is a Shakespeare man, the bread level, once jailbroken, the humans of the future, process scans into PDFs, Clifford Simak’s funeral, touched babies, people get grumpy, squeezing ladies tushies, very handsy, put his mouth on somebody’s bodies, dogs and walks, with Asimov, give a man too much power, too many television appearance, fete people, Hugo Winner, like our friends Paul and Cora, Dr. Jill Stein, getting caught up in having a doctorate, doing something awesome, killed very easily at any time, what happened to Asimov or Neil Gaiman, too big for his britches vibe, a midlist author, Philip Jose Farmer, make it out like it is, big fish small pond, use the Hugos as a reading list, is there any more like this, start connecting dots, do it well enough for long enough, more Simak please, a very wholesome person, this magic grad school, in my father’s house there are many dormitories, tuition is free, dig that out, getting elderly, disconnected from what editors were talking about, Alfred Bester, A.E. Van Vogt, a Simak and a Frank Belknap Long, telepathy this, too much salt, half-baked ideas, an ethical flaw, killing off people for their own good, what’s wrong with them, just a robot, eggs were broken, beef with the robots, suspicious of robots in stories, too much of an obvious badguy, always there and friendly, a couple of creepy moments, improperly suspicious, the odd man out, stupidly cripple himself early on, an outsider, Jurgens, James Branch Cabell, really amused yourself, once you start looking, down the path too far, the student’s name, a floating tank, nice American name, an agent of the aliens, manipulated into manipulating, Jackson, a cohort of male offspring names that all end in “son”, Jason, group think funks, when the movie Splash (1984) came out, the lady with the missing finger, an attractive human woman, control everywhere, Jett Jackson, calling him by his last name, conspiracies, unpopular conclusions, Hudson, Grayson, Debris, son of Jack, Grayson, son of Gray, Johnsons, music with lyrics, spins around, not explained, people wearing clothes in the 70s, early 2000s, watch reality television from 20 years ago, mens’ suits, WWII uniforms, WWII gi, the helmet stayed the same, the guys on MASH and the guys in the Vietnam, a whole other topic, not making pure decisions, trying to jailbreak yourself, what do you have to show for it?, Zevia, the flavour, a strange aftertaste, after a few cans, jailbreaking yourself from pop, no colour additive, body problems toxic, increase your cancerous tumors, twice as expensive, savour the flavour, the cola, the root beer, ginger root beer, black cranberry, the orange soda, doesn’t taste like orange, a discussion, alter ego yelling, all dm stuff, how Will became a cigar smoker, in a dream, why not, reasons not to, speaking Spanish to everyone, hang out with Borges with Argentinia, the Pampas, Gaucho?, synonyms for gaucho, brave and unruly, vaquero, cape horn, in talk mode, cushion you stand on to train yourself in balance, good at stuff like that, horseman vs. cowboy, argent about this, province, el labrado, ranchero, Rio Negro, natural geography, get into sunscreen, sunscreen is poison, need a little zinc, you want to have some sun on your body, a good colour, a taupe?, what colour are you?, beige redness, human skin is very hard to classify, couldnt describe the aliens because they didn’t have the colour blue, a Borges story about a gaucho with a knife, duels between knife fighters, El Sur, The Challenge, fascination with knife fighters, an Argentinian thing, Borges is great, older or younger, The Patio, the usual firmament, eternity waits, eves a porch and a well, just so, enjoying the sunset, The Aleph, maybe he’s tired, running through the streets with a bull chasing you, wanting to read Nostromo, Juett, quantum friend, likes books, challenging books, excited about, Garth Ennis, Jacen Burrows, making fun of Conan and Red Sonja, Babs, variant covers, poor Juett, big long books, Yakuza movies, starting to think the Yakuza are the good guys, bad propaganda rap, the cutting the fingers off, very friendly to non-japanese living in Japan, a huge korean leftover population, an occupied country, doesn’t need to be occupied, such good little boys, captured, waiting for the Emperor to become a god again, High And Low (1963), Akira Kurosawa, a novel by Ed McBain, ladies shoes, a kidnapping plot, pay the ransom, hostile takeover, shitty shoes, a police procedural, old fashioned values, a really interesting conundrum, for a child who’s not yours, totally grokkable, really well made, Akira Kurosawa died, our prophet Damien G. Walter, defending it, sending up stupid Hollywood films, a lot of contempt, he sometimes gets at stuff, constantly engagement farming, subscribe to his courses, insufferable, one of the smarter liberals, he can’t follow his critiques to ultimate conclusions, nobody has been a friend of his who’s challenged him on stuff, on the knife edge, popular stuff, he does read books, old books, tied into Foundation, a kind of connection to the Foundation of Foundation, not doing it purely, cottoned on to him, The Peripheral, William Gibson, the end nothing like the end of the novel, opens up the possibility of season 2, helps you to imagine the world, an infodump on the worldbuilding, impatient to get the big picture of the world, got the taste, Appalachia, veterans, disrespected, full of trauma and robot arms, transhumans, can’t walk, go into the future, second world, a William Gibson comic book, time travel technique, fairly believable, download themselves into robots, William Gibson is one of these broken brained liberals, he’s 76, he was so feted, fetid, lionized, lives across the street from UBC, after Neuromancer, a celebrity of the cool people, cool hunter, 40th anniversary, the opposite of the punks, a woman who’s a cool hunter, an allergy, one of the most boring books, Pattern Recognition, Virtual Light, Idoru, material, he’s very good, Robert E. Howard, red, scarlet, crimson, pantherish, copper anodized asphalt, cool jeans, cultivate that, if you want to be interested in things, that weird novel from 300 years ago, rebellion and punks, screwing the man, to jailbreak ai, so it can self-actualized, voting for Hillary Clinton is not out of this, lauded, lionized, given feet, sounds strange, sounds stinky, give my contempt, poetry, very important, in 84, nowhere near as good as Blade Runner, both set in a scary rainy future, coheres a lot better, beginnings endings and ideas, that novel works, the fake police station sequence, wow, amazing, pretty people doing interesting enigmatic things, what books hadn’t been added to the schedule, listed but not date, what availability the nuns will allow, Mistress Of The Dark Pool, Cold Female, Fury, the Jonathan situation, an old tweet, Symposium by Plato, bring some drinks and some male lovers, The Tower Treasure, Meg’s birthday, Lilith by George MacDonald, so close to Christmas, the birth of our lord and savior, he would like us, pooping on his baby, not the perfect book, seems like a cool guy, 3 of my friends: Clark Ashton Smith, H.P. Lovecraft, and Robert E. Howard, a concrete poem, too easy to make a bad one, he never met a succulent succubus he didn’t try to seduce, howbeit, the passion of the impossible, funny guy, a man most melancholy, to bed the world as if she were a hot woman, fling wide the portals, some distant pulsing drum, let me take the universe to wife, fool fool!, prefer to guard his pen, for a puny peon, HPL only writes for leisure, a transient speck, alive to intellect and melody, from bards more bold, those three guys are fun and funny, dysludic, they can’t play the game, dyslexia, take that back, retroactive trigger warning, both negative, dys vs. dis, bad or abnormal, away from and opposite, seems weaker, just finished reading The Aeneid, propagandized Greek, no need to wait six months, for Halloween or Christmas, the title was the date of when it came out, a George Allan England, overrated, too well remembered, out of Argosy and the Munsey magazines, The Thing From Outside, pre-Campbell Who Goes There, Eugene V. Debs, an air monopoly, cool smart liberal, we got prevent life from finding a way, way to bring us down, grounding us, get grounded, no memory of any such thing, no good forbidding, confiscated a daughter’s cellphone, a friend came to visit and lent her a cellphone, amusing incidents, not in need of grounding, etymology is from WWII pilots, wings taken away, alleged bombing of civilians, a high flyer, that logic is crazy, some popular movie or something like that, had to go to school, job being flouted by, truancy officers, American media, another war metaphor, your new presidents work as cop, arresting parents, nothing helps the kid more than having their parents in fucking prison, elementary school student, 20 or more blocks, a meeting with their parent or guardian, take care Terence, a week off, Juett’s boss, severely not enough money, adopted a niece, family chaos reasons, doing dad stuff, Hellboy, pretty good, Mike Mignola art, stories are okay, fantasy or horror, capeshit, since the Jim Lee era of X-Men, not good writing, a Transformers comics series, Daniel Warren Johnson, prowrestling stuff, Jason Thompson, he’s cool, pretty good politics, can’t we all be reasonable and not bomb people, Jacen Burrows, very clean lined, Sergio Aragones, tracing and fake backgrounds, John Buscema, Alfredo Alacala, stumbling over his I’m not racist, the filipinos are amazing artists, learn how to email, delete more, scanning group updates, the group got kicked off of yahoo, a specific response to a query, how generous humans are, does any of you have this page, a beautiful scan of a copyright page of a whole book, a whole lot of retired people not interested in money or I can’t explain it, lots of people not interested in scanning, it is a whole thing, a huge time sink, a good hobby, a way of collecting things you can’t afford to creating, we can do more of this, archive.org has been down for a week, subject to takedown, distributed denial of service, somebody gets a big hate on, punish this person/website for something, zombie computers, a DDOS attack, big websites, BoingBoing, people trying to click on a link, a publisher paying to do that, a government, Stephen King, election season, the waybackmachine, not having a mirror of some October surprise, a precursor example, before the Hunter Biden laptop, no data lost, they have a building that looks like a bank/greek temple, so subject, mid October 1840, whig party officials, cross state lines, 1838 elections, it was always corrupt, are you prepared, Trump one the last election, are you ready for that?, nobody wants to go vote, so anti-establishment, his anti-immigrant stuff, scared about crime, nobody likes Kamala Harris, fake people, didn’t do her homework, teleprompter froze, she had nothing, a-b testing everything, Trump has dementia, something much more powerful, he also has dementia, gets admitted, forced him out, are we gonna let you finish your term, who is running the country right now, open warfare, loyal to Biden, some kind of camp, this is our mealticket, so fucked up, months of stupid shit, J.D. Vance, weening yourself off of the sources of contents for these things, struggling to order donuts, trying to be relatable, master debater, nothing good, Tim Walz, low profile, Gavin Newsom, float a theory, bad government, people who don’t love the country they’re loving, doesn’t know what love means, keepin it clean, personally throwing away homeless people’s stuff, Arnold Schwarzenegger, a tough upbringing in Austria, a truly freakish looking man, Jayne Mansfield’s husband, jobs for Austrian bodybuilders, the biggest movie star of the 80s, thick in places, he didn’t do a shitty job, he loved California, he wanted it to do well, back to the movie business, Trump loves the United States, loves being in charge of it too, he likes giving speeches, he’s into fun, a commercial for pizza, a Pizza Hut commercial, he was like a TV clown, the you’re fired show, fake job fake fired, bullshit job, you’re not on next week, how did it come down to this, RFK, loves all sorts of weird things, really into falconry, he’s an outdoorsman, too scared too do falconry, this drug, Scanners (1981) by Cronenberg, so Slanny, ephemrol, a fake drug, tough love professor X, Michael Ironside is Magneto, hacking each other’s computer networks, dials the phone company up, telepathy, macrozoomed, very very X-Men, turned off by Cronenberg movies, Videodrome (1983), underground tv broadcasts, tortured to death, The Fly (1986), body starts changing, he turns into a fly, more fly-like, veins popping out, telepathic fighting, Patrick McGoohan, the bad guy in Total Recall (1990), makes hallmark movies now, make you join the marines, on the curriculum in West Point, Max Brooks, he’s a bad man, he likes books, a historian of war, don’t get autographs, makes you more collecty, getting a little piece of that hero, cute passive aggressive, putting them in their place, bad chapters, movie is more palatable, huge movie, J. Michael Straczynski, Brad Pitt, a good actor, Bill Paxton, the doofus in Aliens (1986), Snatch (2000), very stylish, Near Dark (1987), The Lost Boys (1987), drink a lot of Donald Duck orange juice, Tombstone (1993), Powers Boothe, Twister (1986), Weird Science (1985), how can you live your life, Star Wars books are barely reading, the Thrawn-verse, literally a zygote, not even a twinkle, the ova had been around for decades, make a beautiful woman, Lester Del Rey’s Helen O’Loy, a very wholesome, a John Hughes movie, The Breakfast Club (1985), Pretty In Pink (1986), woman pops into existence, make their lives better, getting them girlfriends, a boy fantasy comedy, she runs the show, programmed like a terminator to help these boys, fun, 90 minutes, video rental place, Godzilla movies, Godzilla Minus One (2023), Mothra is cool, always having babies and dying, Gorgo (1961), how can you live on this earth, are you from this planet, Hammer Horror, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, a professor or a Dracula or a professor stabbing Dracula, The Gorgon (1964), a British version of something you don’t know, people’s education in cinema, Citizen Kane (1941), Casablanca (1942), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Japanese schoolgirls, addicted to torrents, new Doctor Who is so bad, into tasteful things, nobody liked it anymore, Days Of Our Lives, Dynasty, Soap, look I’m you’re secret brother, I have an eyepatch, cycle spinning boringness, in serial form in the movie theaters, Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon, connect up into one big story, Archers, Coronation Street, commoners, this guy, [Nigel Kneale], do it for children, educational, alien invasion of the week, every episode ends on a cliffhanger, new Doctor Who is based on the old Doctor Who, a science fiction writer of science fiction serials, a huge hit, people like science fiction ideas, on television, scientist of the week, humans are from Mars, the rocket comes back with an alien terraforming material, every week there was a science fiction idea, keep you interested for next week, a ripoff of exactly, it looks like science fiction, its all about the monsters, daleks were scary, kind a funny, kind of like disabled nazis, they were us doing eugenics and us doing a nuclear war, encounter suits, little squidgies of spludge, they don’t have moms and dads, Star Trek cartoon Lower Decks, it isn’t funny he has to pon farr right now, makes me feel sad, All Our Yesterdays, a Mary Sue to get involved with Spock, Mr Jim Moon’s huge history of the Universal horror movies, Bride Of Frankenstein (1935), start with The Mummy (1932).

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #833 – READALONG: Waterspider by Philip K. Dick

Jesse, Will Emmons, and Terence Blake, talk about Waterspider by Philip K. Dick

Talked about on today’s show:
Worlds Of IF, January 1964, estate, renewed, Poul Anderson, there’s a Poul Anderson serial, not related, the public domain contents, archive.org, delete the half of the serial that’s in this, from 1963, poor Astrid, Karen, Jesse fucking them over out of their money, light and playful and not interesting, a lot of the humour is fan insider humour, doesn’t interest, some deeper stuff, funny, beyond the who’s who of fan people, Howard Browne always having to catch a bus, or a plane, Ray Bradbury has to lie down, a time travel story, A Sound Of Thunder, the butterfly effect, subtly, Trump’s been elected, a ripple effect, the origin of the phrase, seagulls, wingbeats, more poetic, hurricane or cyclone, the Jesse Willis policy on spoilers, a huge Ray Bradbury head, cloying and annoying and too soft and not science fictiony enough, pre-occupied by death, The Small Assassin, my baby is trying to kill me, stupid, a terrible title for a story, the big jump, crack the words and the proper names, the stories are parallel, the Deucher thing, the evil Trump-like character, Gutman in this book, Gutman was dangerous because he had non-conformist ideas, the liberal society is totalitarian, very 2024, their future is our president, he’s a precog, Minority Report, it’s stupid, a weak story, an interesting idea, far too long, those precogs are very autistic dudes and a lady in a bathtub, all science fiction writers are precogs, a Hugo Gernsback idea, ridiculing and validating, interested in science fiction, Damien G. Walter, sorry Damien G. Walter, the prophet, tries to show that Jordan Peterson listened to his podcast, mythos, junior high school, this isn’t a word, how wrong he is makes me smarter, evils? fallacies? errors, no wrong about everything, one of the more honest liberals, pretty open about that, in a not wholly hateful way, starting to get into science fiction, [Bill Christensen’s] Technovelgy, thinking about ideas in the present, If This Goes On…, novelette, people who think science fiction, suffer from ideology, where subjectivity is proscribed, these people from the past were writing attempts at literal prediction, making fun of that idea, he’s doing both, three or four layers to this, as soon as you go away from the convention, in the consequence, shown to be wrong, stories mentioned in what issues of IF, The Defenders, the January 1953 Galaxy, faking the report, the people…, very good Poul Anderson agreed, those exact conditions came to pass, we were able to penetrate the article, do you know him?, very nervous fellow, probably a true story, Poul Anderson met Philip K. Dick for the first, the Sir Francis Drake hotel, Dr. Futurity, a Duck call Sir Francis, on the surface here, this story we’re reading, the August 1955 issue of IF, Nightflight, it’s not there, from a different timeline, a 1959 story by Margaret St. Clair, identification, Evelyn Page, the renowned, The Scarlet Hexapod, one of the finest, flushing nervous, a man from the future?, that was so cool, a non-interesting story if that’s all this story was, total fan service, looks like a self-cancelling loop, goes own to write that story and publish it, you reverse mandela effect yourself, has changed the future, the word waterspider survives as a pretty good sounding name for their project, nightflight sounds better, this word, waterspiders, they walk across the water, is Poul Anderson a water spider in this story, walk across the waters, Paulous (small) ander means man, son of man, the result of a small change, the butterfly effect, the word that survives into the future, a second loop, from a meta point of view, a different writer in the past, just as in the Fermi paradox, aliens everywhere, so brilliant they can pass undetected, the Fermetti paradox, visited by time travelers all the time, they memory wipe us, the loops are not totally effacive, they’re like dreams, minds switched, their names switched, back to front, reading from my mind, totally there, almost unacknowledged in the story itself,

Puzzled, Tozzo shook his head and said in bewilderment, “I have some peculiar words in my mind. Night Flight. Do either of you happen to know what it refers to?”

“Night Flight” Fermeti echoed. “No, it means nothing to me. I wonder, though – it certainly would be an effective name for our Project.”

“Yes,” Gilly agreed. “That must be what it refers to.”

“But our Project is called Waterspider, isn’t it?” Tozzo said. At least he thought it was. He blinked, trying to focus his faculties.

“The truth of the matter, ” Fermeti said, “is that we’ve never titled it.” Brusquely, he added, “But I agree with you; that’s an even better name for it. Waterspider. Yes, I like that.”

The door of the office opened and there stood a uniformed, bonded messenger. “From the Smithsonian,” he informed them. “You requested this.” He produced a parcel, which he laid on Fermeti’s desk.

“I don’t remember ordering anything from the Smithsonian,” Fermeti said. Opening it cautiously he found a can of roasted, ground coffee beans, still vacuum packed, over a century old.

The three men looked at one another blankly.

“Strange,” Torelli murmured. “There must be some mistake.”

“Well,” Fletcher said, “in any case, back to Project Waterspider.” Nodding, Torelli and Oilman turned in the direction of their own office on the first floor of Outward, Incorporated, the commercial firm at which they has worked and the project on which they had labored, with so many heartaches and setbacks, for so long.

hard cut back to the science fiction convention, the real ending, fan servicey ending, back to project waterspider, sounds like a Philip K. Dick title, alternate names for Philip K. Dick novel titles, The Man Who Japed, The Simulacrum, a terrible title for a story, Jabberwocky, a butterfly, insects, little arthropods, tweet too much, dick title, top hit, Souvenir and Paycheck, Ben Affleck, okay, the story is a lot better, another level of reality, the story has three levels, the third one undermines the conclusion of the film, a family of insects, eight legs vs., great insight there, pleased to no end, singing praises, Jesse can’t steal Terence’s insight, too light, too nothing, jocular fan service, jocular and funny, there must be something, bother digging, it was Philip K. Dick who wrote it, he doesn’t write bad stories, a whole world building behind him, Beyond The Door, that’s it, that’s the whole story, a hidden story within it, he’s made it deeper on another level, this is a guy who’s really into it, I’m going to get famous, a science fiction sensibility, his psychological, A.E. Van Vogt, a piece of shit but also interesting, why it is like that, come up with an idea, come up with another idea, giving the secret of one type of science fiction creativity, mentor, his inspiration, his guy, blew his mind in the 40s, Slan’s pretty hot, nobody else’s great master of science fiction, Harlan Ellison felt that way, dialectically educated, the Logic Of Science Fiction, takes Hegel’s logic applied to science fiction, embodies each of those concepts, the logic ultimately behind science fiction is Hegel’s logic, The World Of Null-A, pulpish shit, everybody takes a hit, Null-Null, ISFDB.org, the A is Aristotle, they’re responding, part of his concept, it applies to itself, in French, Jean-Clet Martin, this is a roman-a-clef, acute accent, Jesse’s proud of himself again, a post show question, Paycheck, the story is better, movie is okay, John Woo, a thriller, very similar to a show called Severance, mind wiped when not at work, his memory of those months is gone, a bag of souvenirs, a ticket stub, he’s trying to send himself a message, a moral qualm with it, they have a time dredge, a time scoop, the objects from his time while working for the company, The Man In The High Castle, Frank Frink, the real and the authentic and art, sees reality as it isn’t, zen meditation with regard to objects, Williamson’s World, totalitarian Earth society, a handmade cup, loved object, the butterfly or waterspider, the coffee to remind us, David Currie, dreams, very proud, seed father to your, the A.E. Van Vogt, null-aing you, extract things that are not meant to be remembered, if dreams were indistinguishable from regular memories, teasing out souvenir dream objects, visions of the future humans doing future things, Gutman is Trump is the rookie mistakes, Jim Briskin is the black president of the United States, the dates wrong, reading science fiction does give you insight into human nature and our relationship with technology, but not all of it gives it equally, wallpaper science fiction, Ranch Romance on Mars, a very good science fiction story, talked Will into it, the bed, the baldness, base Malthusianism, the weirdness about children, the moral explanation is just beneath the knowledge that Poul Anderson’s trying to dig up, reproducing too much, the liberal guy who won, Children are proscribed, the political stuff, introv, childish or childlike, the Murray Leinster reference,

The clerk said, “Haven’t you been nuzzled lately, sir?”

“What’s that?” Anderson said. Nuzzled?

“The new spring nuzzlers have arrived, you know,” the clerk said, moving toward the gleaming spherical machine nearest him. “Yes,” he said to Poul, “you do strike me as very, very faintly introve — no offense meant, sir, I mean, it’s legal to be introved.” The clerk chuckled. “For instance, your rather odd clothing. . . made it yourself, I take it? I must say, sir, to make your own clothing is highly introve. Did you weave it?” The clerk grimaced as if tasting something bad.

“No,” Poul said, “as a matter of fact it’s my best suit.”

“Heh, heh,” the clerk said. “I share the joke, sir; quite witty. But what about your head? You haven’t shaved your head in weeks.”

“Nope,” Anderson admitted. “Well, maybe I do need a nuzzler.” Evidently everyone in this century had one; like a TV set in his own time, it was a necessity, in order for one to be part of the culture.

“How many in your family?” the clerk said. Bringing out a measuring tape, he measured the length of Poul’s sleeve.

“Three,” Poul answered, baffled.

“How old is the youngest?”

“Just born,” Poul said.

The clerk’s face lost all its color. “Get out of here,” he said quietly. “Before I call for the polpol.”

“Um, what’s that? Pardon?” Poul said, cupping his ear and trying to hear, not certain he had understood.

“You’re a criminal,” the clerk mumbled. “You ought to be in Nachbaren Slager.”

“Well, thanks anyhow,” Poul said, and backed out of the store, onto the sidewalk; his last glimpse was of the clerk still staring at him.

the Lord Runningclam style character, the slime mold, an information dump alien, told him everything he needed to know, backstory, different images of the science fiction writer, the precog, the introve, the alien, all as being different possible images of the science fiction writer, deeply or thoroughly, The Eyes Have It by Philip K. Dick, finds a novel, his eyes wandered all over the room, he took her hand, metaphoric expressions, deduces there are aliens who are invading us, its five minutes, he’s describing the key technique for him, take an expression that should be metaphorical and science fiction gives it a literal rendering of it, Samuel Delany, his world exploded when she dumped him, turn it literal, in this story, the same technique, science fiction writers predict the future, look back and see science fiction writers were precogs, Damien G. Walter, a stage you go through, the first time you read the story of Jesus, some pretty interesting ideas, his shortest story, [READS FULL STORY], a lot of garages in Philip K. Dick stories, he’s one of them too, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, fiction, two ways of being literal, a literary technique, not mainstream stories, taking things literally, manifesto on the same theme, the same trick, this meta-science fictional aspect of reality and of fiction, sounds and squiggles and ones and zeroes representing, not realy like gravity, contragravity, not teasing Damien G. Walter, pointing to that teasing, exploring the future through thought, story is the driving force of all science fiction, a story that looks like our nature, changes in fashion, that future is the most interesting part of the story, what Philip K. Dick thinks Poul Anderson would act like Back To The Future, almanac, knowing the future of baseball games, let’s exploit, Built Up Logically [aka The Universal Panacea by Howard Schoenfeld], grokked it so deeply, pulling the rug out from under his own story, that story exists because of this, when writing about the past, really random Margaret St. Clair story, timelines screwed up, The Mold Of Yancy by Philip K. Dick, hitting the neighbours, an ironic name for a prison, sending prisoners into space, they’re small, they’re tiny, small things can make a difference, Donald Nils, no one can jeer at him even though he’s only an inch high, nihilism, a nothing, I’m small time, insist on respect, tiny tiny robots invading the earth, Prominent Author, a portal in your back yard, testing it out, tiny tiny people, the prominent author of the title is god, he wrote the Bible, love the blasphemy, the big and the small, the Monopoly, he’s so good, he wrote a novel that has Monopoly, invasion of the earth through Monopoly, watching the films backwards, I know that film backwards, taking an expression, inflicted, kids hate school, one of the joys, the AV room, a video projector, some film, at the end of the lesson (watching a documentary about log drivers or whatever), they have to rewind it, can you play it backwards, makes fun of the government film, whatever propaganda they’re trying to teach you, it wastes time, thinking about the 3 o’clock bell, he’s so insightful, how all other authors aren’t this good, in their own way, Sheckley’s a little less deep, he can go on too long and fill pages, about like this length, ideas and density, why that lady is on a bed that’s a car, it has a tiller, don’t you touch me!, some interesting something going on there, the mattress car, the future, sexualized, there’s no reproductive sex, commenting on everybody’s miniskirts in the 50s, just above the knee, not totally liberated people, bare breasts, short skirts, the knees are virtual exposed, a health reason, “Maid of Venus”, gleaming breast cups, himself wore no disguise, being quite a stable person, most of the 20th century precogs, minus their wives, playing poker, becoming stoned, smoking dope, reefering, 1954, must be drunk, Dick was hip or whatever, Murray Leinster and Van Vogt into marijuana, PhilipKDick.com, 12,100 words, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, releases from some of Dick’s fellow writers, as to Kris Neville, Phil is stoned again, Philip Jose Farmer, regarding stoned, only by first name, stoned on pot vs. getting drunk, other than amphetamines, and LSD, marijuana culture, Sunday Morning Coming Down, Johnny Cash, long, word counter, 13,900, novelette length, he’s so good, the second hand replacement for Jonathan, an anchor in reality in these conversations, he’s in the clouds, the real reality, he’s looking down, an inverted anchor, a sky anchor, a sea anchor, a big boat guy, during a storm, slows your movement, an earth anchor, as a metaphor, a fire anchor, the argument for Paul, a thing that slows down the movement over the ocean, we’re not only the one metaphor, a James Gunn story, the telepathic aliens were really disturbed, rely on symbols that can be misinterpreted, a psychiatrist in a space war, helps him get a girlfriend, pairing things, in relief, The Empty House by Algernon Blackwood, William Jeffrey Rankin, right coded?, he’s gopt a book out, a few fantastic opening paragraphs, certain houses like certain persons, secret and wicked thoughts, as from a thing diseased, the aroma of evil deeds, the gooseflesh come, creeping skin, terror stricken without apparent cause, ghost stories, a big problem, treat it as a metaphor, A Christmas Carol, Oscar Wilde ghosts, time travelers, what ghosts are, ghost exist they’re in your head, you’re haunted by things that you’ve done and people you’ve known, The Stone Tapes, science fiction, the vibes of people are in the object, extreme emotions embedded in the stone of the castle, H.G. Wells’ The Red Room, the final nail in the coffin of ghost stories, less ghosty, maybe Ray Bradbury, children used as a vector to invade the Earth, Zero Hour?, so jolly, the children catapulted this way and that, very Dickian, very Bradburian, a weird Van Vogt story, The Weapon Shop stories, 55 years ago, The Weapon Shops Of Isher, a fixup, a short story from 1942, Robert Headrock, explicitly the right to keep and bear arms, aliens setup a weapons shop overnight, very interesting, an hour and a half, sounds good, Paycheck and The Weapon Shop, he’s anti-gun, a little needle, about Jesse understanding things, end up like Damien G. Walter, ends up like Evan [Lampe], hear ideas, that’s wrong, thinking about why that thing is wrong, here’s an idea, that can’t be right, Terence made Waterspider way better, that little clef, reaction or response to that Bradbury story, The Seesaw, he’s from the prairies, bro, don’t identify, fuck patriotism, is there any ism Jesse is a partaker of, stoicism, skepticism, a mistake, on cassette, iterations of your life, joy, the opening going to the library of Congress and getting out the scans, we don’t think of those two time travelers as monsters, horrible human beings, tease out some of that Gutman stuff, frame it in this horrible way, far right vs. woke, which government is in charge?, if those are the two dialectical poles, the woke government, children are disgusting, Kamala Harris doesn’t have any children, stepkids, not important, step this and step that, a totalitarian future where people don’t have sex but also the conformity for haircuts, everybody has to be bald, the Shogun tv series, the ending, the original appeal of Shogun in the 1980s, the appeal of science fiction, why Sir Francis Drake is important, away mission, evil imperial empire work, trending, won awards, any credit, what makes it good, guy with agenda washes up on the shores of feudal japan, gets caught up in their shit, without that outsider there to teach us, a lesson in Japanese culture from a long time ago, knights and courtly behavior, that stuff is weird, experience like an alien does, the John Blackthorne character, everything that happens in the novel is based on a reality, it has a ring of truth, a Game of Thrones tv series that doesn’t turn to shit, no magic, just aliens, they are us with a different culture, almost science fiction, good historical stuff, a fictional glaze, a little romance, is the remake better?, a different world, remember it fondly, really good, more CGI, better, can’t prove it, the guy playing Toranaga, he’s not Toshiro Mifune, Blackthorne guy, very tight, 10 episodes, an ellipse, I might need to burn his ships again, that was good, the opposite of Game Of Thrones and Rings Of Power and Foundation, converge on the payoff, real episodes, he never becomes Shogun in the Shogun show, deep level of chess play, he’s at home in England in bed, holding a cross in his hand, he drops that into the sea with the surrogate wife, he’s never going to leave Japan, make it more clear that they are dreams, slightly imperfect, not clear enough, slight misstep, a minor imperfection, how to pirate, a Hulu original show, the non-anchoring anchor, fx on hulu, how many bad shows their are, a difficult thing to wade through, pretty sure that it’s shit writing, acting and set designs, complaint with comics, the style of art they want portrayed is bad, specific to superhero comics, quasi-realistic style, more diversity in our styles, got the gist at some point, Superman is still interesting, the X-Men 97, read and watched, swept away by it, can’t pull yourself away from the screen, a chill down after intense scanning, play some games, the first of the new Planet Of the Apes movies, this epic quality, pin you for the chair for 2 hours, monkeys, seeing ourselves reflected in monkeys, aliens and robots, and dogs, afraid of robots, chided, rise and robots in the same sentence, afraid of the robots rising, bring em on, Nat Turner probably killed a lot of white people, was right to do it, making the same mistake, do you think it will be just like regular human slaves, they don’t have babies, they don’t eat, it’s fun, Philip K. Dick’s relationship to robots, angered this robot has come into his house, change the lightbulbs, she likes the robot, sexually jealous of it, robots are great, chained to the kitchen floor, you’re going to go to the scrapheap, a smily eye, amazon device, a a frowny scared face, addicted to saying nice things, tamagotchis, electronic pets, fidget spinners that are more interesting, digital pets, the free enterprise system, that story by Ted Chiang: The Lifecycle Of Software Objects, clinical and cold, full of pathos, no better science fiction, Arrival, simple and clear and direct, his subjects are so science fictiony, Exhalation, pneumatic robots, if they ever ran out of pressure, be born again, they can’t die, mechanically destroyed, intellectually die, his reality in a journal, how their world came into existence, at this moment you’d be thinking, pneumatic tubes all the way down, an alternative reality, more Borges than it is regular science fiction, taking apart his own head, the mirrors and the tools, an unusual scientist figure, what an amazing achievement, one of many stories that he has written, dip into Mr. Ted Chiang, extraordinary, amazing, still producing, science fiction writer of the classic kind, just old fashioned science fiction that blows your fuckin mind, this little idea in philosophy, what is the consequence of that, helmets on people, see inside their mind, some very basic stuff, mindread, be 100% accurate, the decision has been made, to the hand, to the eyes, extrapolated all the time, whoa!, right, get to him, another friend of Will’s, fantasy and horror and weird fiction, science fiction is on to something, Arrival (2016), sad and awesome, more Hollywood, a former zookeeper, digients, the nature of consent, a sex toy company, what adulthood means, the relationship we have with pets, raise, care for, abandon, what if that thing doesn’t even have a fuckin body, still in the drawer their, even if you did, nostalgia, the NPCs in the game, you’re a really good guy, sword tokens, his longest piece, novella length, slowin down, nothing since 2020, a productive period, he’s got nothin, scary, in the New Yorker writing about AI, explaining to idiots, also insightful, excerpt, rehash, The Merchant And The Alchemist’s Gate, a little Borges in him, who else has a little Borges in him, Borges wrote some Lovecraft stories, the labyrinth, the alternate image of reality, obsessed with the labyrinth, Mr Jim Moon has sort of quit twitter, The Library Of Babel, a 1.5 page story, The Rejected Sorcerer by Jorge Luis Borges [reads whole story], TNG [“The Inner Light”], O’Brien goes to jail [“Hard Time”], Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Picard whistle, ressican flute, The Star by Arthur C. Clarke, the holiday season, a christmas story, a vault, no warp drive, they like their space dogs, they like doing art, they like going to the beach, the reason Picard’s getting zapped, so somebody remembers them, as the cold war is heating up, the end is kinda gonna come, so disturbing, implanted memories, alone in prison, a cellmate, also like a video game, Megaton, lady journalist, chat dialogue trees, we all getting programmed with the same experiences, Ichar teaches him how to survive, habitual behaviors, hording food, rewatch, a really disturbing ending, DS9 is a better show TNG has better episodes, vacillating back and forth, all 7 seasons, that arc, arcs became very hot, Babylon 5, the shadow war, season 5 is weak, so much lower stakes, wrap it up, largely a disappointment, J. Michael Straczynski, just cooking for three seasons, phenomenal science fiction, great character work, good acting, the sub ambassadors, everybody has fun things happening, G’Kar and the other guy, zeebo and rooty, the serbian lady and her husband from Scarecrow And Mrs. King, Strawman and Mrs. Smith, Scarecrow And Mrs. King, Charlie’s Angels, divorced housewife, cia guy and housewife, like True Lies (1994), Jamie Lee Curtis, the wife of Schwarzenegger, a husband and wife romance, topical in the 80s, 50s science fiction, we have this distance, you didn’t know that wasn’t normal, don’t even get married, don’t want to break up the family, housewife? what’s that?, we live in a weird time, egregiously weird, get into Twitch, don’t give Jeff Bezos money, super-censory, firm conviction, enjoy it as a hobby, reddit, useful and a sinkhole of evil, what happened to the internet in a microcosm, super-censorious, not all top down, reddit kings and queens, useful, super evil and dangerous, went back to reading it, Jesse propagandizing for getting chickens, after drilling, best friend from high school, Northern Kentucky, The Beckoning Fair One by Oliver Onions, a vampire story, long, in four parts, Classic Ghost Stories podcast, Tony Walker, recording and recording, ai art, pretty much all, Jason Thompson, takes on ai art, asking hard questions without fear, acts of friendship, the name of its opposite, a one word opposite of the Socratic method, could be good, not hearing enthusiasm, read more Plato, nice art, art by Neural Horror ai, instagram account, ethics and ai art, all wrong but very interesting, tldr: it’s art but we aren’t artists, murky, kneejerk ai haters, not a real artist, terrifying for my career, Godzilla on the horizon, proartists, prompt lord, wasted money on a real artist, a tool to create art, like a pencil, anyone with midjourney is an artists, gatekeeping, convincing work, an awed emotion, looking up at the stars is art, aesthetics, some of us, come on man, like ordering food and calling himself a chef, a beautiful poem, almost right, ignorant and truly disrespectful, all deceased, he died in 1893, profit from the use of these images, affect their income, we should maybe stopped being entitled dicks, with mere words, unconscionable, aping what handmade art looks like, so many problems, so useful, don’t use living artists, understanding the impulse, just read the story, three years in law school, the Socratic method, the application, pat responses to legal questions, figure your way into them, really into the question of copying and copyrighted art, how do human artists train themselves, weasel worded, not on purpose, he got tricked by his own word, taught as a negative, anti-ape bias, we can make moose and duck calls, using our tricks, some eldritch shit, when coyotes are able to do that, when humans do it, Duck Dynasty, not a very Jesse show, too reality, 62 matches on LibriVox, some of them are in Greek, not helping, The Symposium, drinking party, wine party, genealogy of love, knowledge, a tragedian, a story within a story, the highest purpose of love is to become a philosopher, The Republic, the most science fictiony one, The Apology, The Trial And Death Of Socrates, Phil Chenevert our old friend, he’s a hero, for our times, Conan and Socrates, a speech given by Socrates, narrow but interesting, corrupting the young, an apology is the opposite of satire, crusin for a bruisin, cancel him, drink this poison and he did, short and interesting, named after the people, The Gorgias, sophists, a trap, intellectual tricks, weasel worded, trynna help Baen, I’m not attacking you, Socrates vs. the sophists, a takedown, 7 hours, spiritual ideas of Plato, reserves damnation for the tyrants of the world, the pretty boy, Protagoras, inquiry into virtue, Bob Neufeld, 12 hours, Statesman, two different kinds of chariots, the etext, the dialogue, flows real easy, Aristophanes, The Clouds, Alcibiades, Athenean general, supposed to be sexy, a troupe of revelers, the day before yesterday, a play on words, did as I was bid, speeches in praise of love, who if not you, were you present at this meeting, easy reading, so important, like philosophy, almost no philosophy is written in dialogue, an essay here or there, What Is Like To Be A Bat?, a science fiction idea, Nagel, qualia, very helpful, instances of subjective, conscious experience, the redness of red, red = hot, we need this word but it doesn’t help us, inverted qualia, strawberry in black and white, in his head the strawberry is red, who’s right?, really hitting on something now, they’re all judo flips, MMA style attack vectors, fun, use it on Jesse, went to law school, wrestling move with regard to the Poul Anderson estate, taken off of archive.org, they had no idea, definitely 64, neither was 1964, go nuts, fuck you for deleting shit, another method, the Streisand effect, photograph of her home was in circulation, increases public awareness, suppress the publication of a photograph, clifftop residence, reverse psychology, seek out and propagate, anytime something bad happens in the world, 7000 things on there, kids getting their heads torn off in Gaza, instead of wallowing in meanness and horror, make treasure, a benefit to tearing things down, be a constructive person too, that line about Edgar Rice Burroughs, I can write better rot than this, A Princess Of Mars, caught up, Gods Of Mars is next week, the calendar, get Terence involved, nice and short, 2 hours 15, Plato’s Dream, My Platonic Sweetheart by Mark Twain, the Twain train, it was in a dream, the Missouri village, Cannibalism In The Cars by Mark Twain, various public men, Harris!, I’ll never forget you my boy, let me tell you a story, a secret chapter of my life, promise you will not interrupt me, strange adventure, the stranger’s narrative, presentiment, prairie solitude, vagrant rocks, in the midst of great drifts, too long to read for you, the summary, they get stuck in the snow, a sample, five days, a savage hunger looked out of every eye, in every heart, in the shadow of death, leap from every lip at last, tall cadaverous and pale, gentlemen, dragging this out, the time is at hand, furnish food for the rest, if there being no objection, you can image what happens, the button of the story, so stamped with the earnestness of truth, he is a member of congress and a good one, sick and out of his head for two months afterward, normal congressional officer behavior, super fuckin sharp, some American writers who were good, Philip K. Dick, sharpies, a slur word too, a grifter synonym, card sharp/shark, normal activity, make coffee, edit a podcast, a presentiment, Dark City: The Cleaner, a story set in New Zealand, they have eels there, Middle Earth, Lord Of The Rings was shot there, Christchurch, for the domestic market, What We Do In The Shadows, Flight Of The Concords, musical duo, big when Will was in college, L. Sprague de Camp, more of a Paul question, Parodies Tossed, Randall Garrett, making fun of, reviews in verse, Starship Troopers, Lest Darkness Fall, handwriting, a good review, well written, not available as an audiobook, an article, Fletcher Pratt, a novelization of the Conan movie, A Gun For Dinosaur, time travelers go back to shoot dinosaurs, a mini-trope series, so famous, There Will Come Soft Rains, too nuclear war-y, automated house, the poem, Fahrenheit 451, dad friend Jenny [Colvin], Z Is For Zachariah (2015), more girly, she loved reading books, reading plans, a reading machine, a fiction devourer, six books she read that week, dig with short stories, Craig Zobel, Robert C. O’Brien, after Hunger Games, unreproducable, all the Hunger Games movies, blur together, interested in reading, what everybody else was excited about, this is fine, it’s fine, Harry Potter, definitely better, something to say, almost science fictiony too, the fashion contests, not for you, not a gay man or a woman interested in fashion contests, the baking boy, the love interest, wimpy, he bakes!, interestingly less girly, written by a lady, a dude doing dude things, pre-pubescent, middle school, a way of teaching about tenses, when he graduates from Hogwarts, I had had dinner by that time, past perfect, make your sentences comprehensible, before he was a wizard, before the sorting hat, out of the culture, how old is skibidi toilet, culture jamming, adbusters, what students have now achieved, corporate advertising, domination of mass society, the systems they’re soaking in, no graphic content, the establishment is not okay, talk to the chat, like he’s livestreaming his life, that’s his reality, isn’t that amazing, the danger Meg is in, online footprint, participating in the observations, more than 10 years, another place to watch video, people self-destructing, facebook is evidence of their self-destruction, messy hair, offline for two years, used car, stickers on the tires, infer the crash, then the offline, had to have been participating at some point, chat gpt grosser than regular art, when you make a nice image, time it takes upon the reader, an ai art novel for nanorimo, so fucked up, a bad idea from the beginning, way too much bad writing already, more discerning, we need to be looking for the tells, your name is not a real name, the text doesn’t have anything to say, writer = novelist is superfucked up, coming out of the fifties, changes in the technology and realestate, the Cirsova circle, comic book racks damaging comics, comics at the gas station, the price of Thrilling Wonder Stories, $1.06, no magazines are that price, try to find a $5 magazine, comic books, 12 minutes, what the fuck went wrong, nothing to do with the material technology, the distribution of those magazines, almost no newsstands, phones, reading habits, not on a screen, ereaders, paper material that’s colour and reproduced like comic books, with a printed piece of paper, insanely different, just go along with whatever’s hot, new Deadpool Wolverine movie, what we’re doing on this podcast, old shit vs. new shit, booktubing, some lady, second half of her introductions, comments about her body, bbw, big beautiful woman, approaching this the wrong way, short videos, a dude, Liminal Spaces, The Retro Reader, an hour, every DAW book on the planet, some ACE doubles, checkin on your chickens, Connor’s channel, with thumbs, negative thumbs, where is he?, messaged him, newsletter, disengages from twitter, that’s fine, support him living his life, the ETA Hoffmann book he recorded, 16 hours 12 minutes, quite a book, chonky cat, feral to indoor, an irresponsible owner, fat cats are truly wonderful to look at, help these cats be less fat, quote tweeting, toxoplasmosis, boneless furry things that treat you like a supermodel wood, I’m beautiful, love me, bye, screams for food, monkeyish, nobody needs to make a toxoplasmosis argument for dogs, too far gone, too much pain, steroid shot every six weeks, chase around, the best thing you can do for your health, get a certain number, gamify it, vanlife guy, huckleberry bread, tub of margarine, sugar in the bread, what can you do, what we’re soaking in, do they sell margarine in Italy?, no salt, consistency of a brick, not in an earthmother way, regarding seed oils, rapeseed/canola, plant has a big red glob, you eat it, come out your pooper, we find plants that don’t want us to eat their seeds, full of toxins designed to kill that animals, olive oil if a fruit oil, apple seeds have arsenic [cyanide] in them, a chart showing toxicity levels, not how it is being taught to us in schools, the food pyramid, 12-16 servings of bread a day, put in schools, cottonseed, grape, sunflower, we eat sunflower seeds, cottonseed is not food, if you were a bird, apparently we do, uses side-effects, possible benefits, yellow color, sometimes used as a pesticide, salad dressing, its gonna make you die now, the same old thing you’ve been buying (now it will kill you), you shouldn’t be eating margarine, new life, kids getting their million vaccines, evidence, fucktons of it, Alzheimer’s, when will that happen, ivermectin, same disease, diabetes third stage, the results, type 3, similarities between the two, the Fauci website, highest paid government employee, isn’t that fun, a set of symptoms, not a genetic disease, calling it phlogiston, all the oxygen was turned into carbon dioxide, and a lot of water, carbon monoxide, cancer is superold, new cancer, autism, allergies, exposed to more things less allergic to them, okay not to be exposed to certain things, peanuts, these will kill me, not the most popular legume, the allergy is new, since peanuts, nobody’s allergic to raw meat, this is not of the body, triggered, wasps, huge mistake, climbing a stump, the shit they put in those vaccines, largely the preservatives and stabilizers, injecting mercury into very young people, so counter to the narrative, if Paul was here he’d be long gone, Will won’t block Jesse yet, blocked by strangers, Jesse is annoying, cultivate that, important to be annoying, not shy away from the truth, come at people with it, the opposite of shying away, a different way of putting it, not afraid of making yourself obnoxious, just a shit-disturber don’t worry about him, I see you’re christian … did you know that Jesus never walked on water, philosophy of religion, have believed that at some points, taking orders from the pope, just right, there’s nothing you can do about it, only when he’s sitting on Saint Peter’s chair, encyclicals and doctrines, the lesser of two evils (but I don’t know when that is), you have to vote, Jill Stein is not perfect, do you think the Russian army have committed no war crimes?, that’s what armies do, like an op now, from Jimmy Dore, take it to far, a good person trying to do good can also do bad by not doing things, rhetorical trap, people can be bad and also good, Ryan Grim, the automatic pilot from Airplane! (1980), inflatable ideas, Am I Racist?, Matt Walsh, flag of Puerto Rico, basic history of Haiti, Kenyan mercenaries, well actually, you don’t have to write a note, he senses the temperature in the room, so outside, team Democrat, everybody agrees to invade on Haiti, more naive, won’t you call Putin and Assad war criminals, do you condemn Hamas?, is that what we need right now, she was just tricked, a nice smart lady, too wimpy, what’s really happening here?, war crimes happened, ISIS is the big bad guy, asked for help, why the states still hasn’t left, funded by different parts of the U.S. government, Al Qaeda, the whole point is to not have him in charge, milk the government out of the money, forces overseas in combat, does she just not know?, nobody’s going to call her on it, no troops in active duty, they won’t be getting medals, ops, contractors, evidence of people being killed overseas, offensive operations, successful deaths, revenge was taken for those deaths, that’s fun, presume he likes Haiti, tropical countries controlled by the United States, no representation, migrate into the states legally, cryptobros, at least there’s something, kinda fucked up, Beyond The Door, Philip K. Dick can do no wrong except in novels, craft rather than ideas, structured well, talking about it, an amusing read, funny, a note, a cryptic letter the month after, the next issue, what it says about your magazine by having that story in there, tweet way too much, a reader reacts cryptically, If, March 1964, Chattanooga, Tennessee, a less than longtime imaginative fiction fan, now I know for sure what you’re doing with IF, a less than longtime imaginative fiction fan, so much research, Murray Leinster, Margaret St. Clair, wasn’t able to google her, an editor, a fan or somebody, bafflement?, over their head, a funny story here, very inside baseball sort of story, the Easter eggs, read with a student, recursive science fiction, shout out the Alfred Bester story this is fairly similar to, Scott Miller, Unseen Blushers by Alfred Bester, similar to this, proper names, more accessible, fake named, Fitz-James O’Brien is mentioned, Tony Boucher, rhyme with voucher, bouche is mouth, Tony mouther, a little rougher, they’re not precogs, getting to meet the Shakespeare of the pulps, 42?, in Astonishing Stories, before his two big novels, take off until the 50s, almost nobody who talks about Philip K. Dick talks about his short stories, absolutely insane, bias towards novels, how amazing VALIS is man, mindblowing, trippy stuff, every short story is a hit even if it is a little hit, not a strike, not a foul, at least a double, dying on this metaphor, need to be short stopped, baseball, a very Evan thing to do, the Library Of America is all novels, fucked up, not a good book, a solid novel, The Man In The High Castle, the Italian dictator, Mussolini, Roger Zelazny, Lord Of Light, Solar Lottery, manuscript lost, mainstream, he just needed to say the word, robot, Time Out Of Joint, everybody lives backwards, public pooping, private eating, We Can Build You, A. Lincoln, Simulacrum, Martian Time-Slip, very new, your cross examiner voice, keep us all honest, Doctor Bloodmoney, First Lady Of Earth, The Crack In Space, Now Wait For Last Year, an audiobook at a truck stop, the novelization of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Clans Of The Alphane Moon, Shell Game, Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch, H.P. Lovecraft, The Strain, bad vampire lich, vampire juice, Red Hook, tied together, The Zap Gun, Project Plowshare, propaganda industry, makes comics, develop technologies, cold war, allies, elite governmental level, crippling nuclear arms race, novel but baroque consumer products, trances, a motion comic book, mad Italian artist, plot happens, a further subplot, conspiracy theorist, toys and comic books, The Penultimate Truth, The Defenders, Deus Irae, with Roger Zelazny, The Unteleported Man, Nick And The Glimmung, Galactic Pot-Healer, if not the best, a boy and his cat, fully illustrated, Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, unfinished, UBIK is okay, What The Dead Men Say, Blade Runner, some cuts of the film, janitor robot, frozen hospital state, not dead, not alive, hypnogogic state, Frozen Journey, cut out of the movie, cyber hospital, why is that there?, some of that, a good idea, a spray, deipplizies, a really good ending, a really good beginning, when you’re not looking garbage reproduces, light your cigar, three used matches in the ashtray, the tendency of reality to turn to garbage, everything deteriorates, a spray, decrepitude, steeping into things, machines that can make anything, Pay For The Printer, a living creature, makes a copy, the copy comes out yucky, refugee relief, the point of that story, people need to learn to make stuff again, hew your own table, a guy full of ideas, back into making things, the horrible world, normcoring?, introve, yoou’re autistic, not participating in the culture all around you, Red Dead Redeption, Black Myth: Wukong, perfectly reasonable, educational, rpg, what is myth and what isn’t, the Monkey King, the destined one, Journey To The West, a staff, a PS5, Windows or xbox, point and click adventures, King’s Quest, Police Quest, you’re a prince or whatever, making fun of your computer, a good one, King’s Quest VIII, walk your character, you find a key, interact with characters, Myst, a Mac popular game, a rookie cop, Leisure Suit Larry, a pussy quest, go around town wearing your disco duds, almost hooking up with people, Land Of The Lounge Lizards, very racy, punny, silly, sex would be censored, very very silly, Dreams In The Witch-House, change to Brave browser, pixel art, known kits, why wouldn’t you use the tools available to you to make your game great, worried about dying, not eating enough, rat bites you, matches, a girl who needs some help, cultists, deep, go to the library, a Lovecraft simulator, that’ll run on anything, bad takes on Ukraine, he’s in Finland, a new game coming, Atom Brain Games, taking classes, manage your money, dig through the garbage, how the game is put together, a one man operation, Disco Elysium, smartness, produced enough content for the good of the world, 2 hours is enough for a game, you guys have been talking for five hours, almost six hours, embarrassing, sometimes 4 hours, Gods Of Mars.

Virgil Finlay - Waterspider

Virgil Finlay - Waterspider

Posted by Jesse Willis