The SFFaudio Podcast #886 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Ablest Man In The World by Edward Page Mitchell and The Man That Used Up by Edgar Allan Poe

The SFFaudio Podcast #886 – The Ablest Man In The World by Edward Page Mitchell (38) and The Man That Used Up by Edgar Allan Poe (24 minutes) – both read by Tommy Patrick Ryan, followed by a discussion. Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Tommy Patrick Ryan

Talked about on today’s show:
2 stories, The New York Sun, 1879, Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, 1839, a 40 year difference, will have listened if they’re going to, cyborg, not a novel, not a book, people say that, what’s so fun about reading and hearing people’s reviews of The Man That Was Used Up they are in the story, lots of fun, in the Poe, a bit of a broken record, they’re programmed, speeding up more and more, firebrand, clever of Poe, scan through those words again, The Tempest, very boring infodumps, did it with voices, with names, read books, the use of the n word, negro, you don’t understand, if that’s your tripwire you’re not in twice, the other n word, not in there, if you edited that out that’s really bad, it is there!, you’re a bad person, bosom said I scalping is a rough process, Pompey, Del Ormes, “Now, you nigger, my teeth!”, it being in the literature, comfortable, necessary, to be faitful, it’s okay for Huck Finn to do it, the one time, part of what’s happening, Elijah Wood, where the Duke and the Dauphin, if they’re this then I’m a that word, totally said the word, epithets, down to the bottom of the text, D-N the vagabonds said he, who wrote that?, the character, “D—n the vagabonds!”, The Rats In The Walls, Wayne June, didn’t know it was in the story, so important to keep it in, words like that, don’t want to say it, so much hate in it, integral to the story, demonstrating, other and reduce the humanity of black people, natural to call them that, Twain is anti-racist, Poe is not, H.P. Lovecraft, Poe would have fought on the Southern side, lived in the North, not for the right for men to own slaves, Poe is a super-weird guy, the puzzle piece that was missing, a question on twitter, it was the answer, The Cask Of Amontillado, exemplifies, a less stripped down Tell-Tale Heart, almost no context, names and dates, the old man is his father, the old man, the narrator is crazy, based on metadata, not quick to disagree, a curious little scene, are you of the brotherhood?, give me a sign, removes a trowel from his pocket, a gesticulation, I am a Mason, a secret society thing, active in this period, more than a little, this story is really angry, mysteries encoded in, hiding things in the stories, makes it rich, took him in as a ward, Poe’s adopted dad was a Mason, abusive to his adopted mom, traveled to Europe together, the wealthiest man, left Poe nothing, trynna reconcile, cheating, left the bastard children money, the one chosen child, we don’t have access to John Allan’s mind, a revenge story, a personal revenge story, joined the army, went to West Point, about a military man, how would we prove that Poe would have joined the south, more than just slavery, boil it down to slavery, think about H.P. Lovecraft, wanted to join WWI, applied and accepted and his mom got it scotched, makes no sense, athletic and imposing, a good walker, it wasn’t about athleticism, it was about being a man, what if this story if not about being a man, they are very similar men, 1000% percent, caught up, lose track, in common with both of them, Pompey, the black valet, Pompeii, Mt. Vesuvius, second richest man, Crassus, private army guys, triumvirate with Caesar, the colour of the man who’s used up hair, black, it has no colour, black is all the colours, his whiskers, also black, oh that’s Poe, a black mustache, black hair, in the black and white photographs, Brutus, Julius Caesar, Marc Antony, the evil that men do, et tu Brute, the one word to describe Brutus, his dash word, Dante’s Inferno, a traitor, the argument that they’re trying to keep the Republic, in both stories, his scientist creator, engineer-watchmaker, extracts a promise, how do we get this story?, he kills him, and then we get the story, one way of keeping the secret, a betrayal, literally murders robot men, talking about it, in the context, something to pair, cyborg or whatever, the original cyborg story, of the two which one is the cyborg story?, partially cybernetic, partially person, seems to still retained his original consciousness, brain dead, a mechanical brain in him, a human with a computer brain, still a computer, just not called that, where’s the cy-part?, where’s the borg part, a guy with a toupe is a cyborg, a hearing aid, cochlear implant, not human anymore, t-800, Robert Patrick t-1000 is not a cyborg at all, breaks the rules for time-travel, like the Bionic Man, Cyberpunk 2077, Neuromancer, Robocop, mechanical elements built into the body, mechanical components, what is ultimately the story?, a really good sense of humour, they’re supposed to be funny, wry smile funny, wears glasses, what really is going on?, unpopular channels, talking about books, no that’s wrong, the man THAT not WHO, he’s not a man anymore, he was used up, argument, doesn’t have any humanity left, where is his consciousness coming from, he/it seems to be self-aware, really just a robot, robot brain in a human body, W.C. Morrow, The Surgeon’s Experiment, finds a monster in the house, a man who’s had his head removed, a feeding tube in the neck, glandular excretions, a super-muscleman, no eyes, no ears, weird facts about the 20th century, Mike The Headless Chicken, ran off but didn’t die, a sensation, a roadshow, still roost, some success, chopped a lot of chicken heads off, what makes a man a man, asking that, man in the title, theoretically about cyborgs, really bad eyesight, a satire, the reputation of a man, what that man is actually like, he’s an assemblage, it starts with his name, the last sentence, kind of a joke story, going in, an artificial element, if you didn’t know, you might not have known, wires, pulleys, a heap, pushes away with his foot, explicitly mentioned, that heap is talking, our readers in 1839, twist endings for a joke, not a ha ha joke, this is a truth, an aspect of a joke, Brevet Brigadier General John A.B.C. Smith, 1 start general, he’s not, a brevet captain is not a captain, because of respect, interject, adhd perking up, Hamlet, as brevity is the soul of with I shall be brief, he’s aware the words are related, that’s not brevity, that’s the joke, Polonius is a doofus, proceeds to talk uninterrupted, his advice, he’s stupid, a pompous fool, not the greatest investigator, where or how, coulda been a major, the yellow hair who George Armstrong Custer, they promote, they call him a general to puff him up, John Smith, what his actual name, who is the doctor, John Doe, middle initials, A. B. C., E.A. Poe or Edgar A. Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, the fashion of the time, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, T.P. Ryan, Tommy P. Ryan, every part of his name is fake, if this story was set in the 20th century, this would be a Kardashian, a lot of work done, personality is fake, the music is fake, wearing make up, about being a man, a man is a man is a man, the shape of his legs, a really good set of shoulders, a shoulder connoisseur, I know what good shoulders look like, Tacitus, the received pronunciation, Warhammer 40,000 related, while the Kickapoos are real the bugaboos are not, the thing every body is afraid to say, a fake man, fake received opinions, supercuts, safe and effective, newsreaders paid to read ads, he’s this he’s that, the newspapers, a puffed up man, a puddle on the floor, the remains of all the things that was taking from him, scalped, leg shot off, the elephant that’s standing on him, he was used up, ship of Theseus as a man, bugbear, boogeyman, boggart, use over time, just before 1900, 1950, copies of Poe, almost created this word, popularized it, when we look at it, all the thing that Poe is laying down, reviews of Poe, contemporary reviews, a lot of reviewers were getting what he was laying down, resented it, [Our Opinions Are Correct], ‘Poe is third rate’ is this jealousy or stupidity?, super-ignorant, his nova, his explosion, The Pit And The Pendulum, Hop-Frog, as a kid, conventions or rules, pedestrian with the language, well written, once, twice, remember, spectacular, fascinating, he has a thing for orangutans, his poetry, The Raven, Annabelle Lee, Eric [S. Rabkin], more to say, hidden stuff in everything, wait 20 years, read it again, read it again, extracting things, one of his humour pieces, not your everday fare, they’re kinda bitter, doing his best, what happened to this man?, served his country, used up every little bit of him, puffery, in use to describe, grade inflation, mediocre and shitty, our country has never been better, bullshit, this is that phenomenon, with stocks, not self, you do it to your peers so they do it to you, what the fuck?, toss that off at the end, hatin on Lovecraft, a throwaway, trying to make Jesse angry for no reason?, you don’t need to read anything past ten years ago, read contemporary people to do puffery, scratch my back, you can’t say it then everybody would know, log rolling, something that people do, we told them they would, this immoral, super-common, a fake election, it’s not what you know it’s who you know, so angry at his fake dad, rejected by the masons, parents were actors, a lot of shit is fake, get a job, enlisteds, buy your way out, I’m going to be an officer, I can outrace you, I can outswim you, gunnery shit, the calculation shit, mixing the gunpowder, this is also not me, I’m better than this, I’m going to make myself the first wage earning writer in the United States, without the nepotism, what is a man?, puffed up generals, took an injury, a pathetic asshole who doesn’t know shit, not what’s going on in the other story, we need to talk about the Mitchell, a tendency, umbrage, your telling me the earth is hollow, okay maybe, Poe is not a good writer?, jealousy, articulate, a lot of the greats, take the time to see what’s in there, more people probably dislike Shakespeare, as an English major as an actor, puns and wordplay, the Hamnet movie, being at odds, the push and pull, the complete works of Shakespeare, being forced to read Shakespeare in high school, travel to other places, other languages, to speak Spanish, they feel stupid, read my novel and my friend’s novel, their stuff sucks, willing to entertain Hollow Earth theories, second rate, third rate!?, one of the best, how does he stack up, these are not the same story, The Ablest Man In The World, really fun, Arnold Schwarzenegger accent: *take the brain out of der! throw it in the Atlantic*, hints of it, the Swiss guy was on point, the valet, Auguste was a French man, another Caesar, an outline of the story, the same hotel room, my master needs help, doctor professor, anybody who wears glasses, the connection, carrying a nice handbag, so hard to see, read more, the artificial title, these stories run along similar lines, very famous, a baron, not a baron, fake name, administers some bourbon, whiskey from Kentucky, medicine, not a doctor, a reaction that’s positive in some way, screw my head off, a “deceptive wig”, so good?, some other kind of deception, pressure on his brain, messes up the lubrication of the gears, why was he sick in the first place, examine a little more closely, better than plot happens, the inventor caretaker, stop touching his head, a payment of two gold coins, on a parapet, kicks the ladders down, wants to force the interview, kick the ladder down after you, so nobody else can climb up, good writing, making a metaphor, the backstory, some sort of autist, abandoned by his parents, doesn’t speak, can sniff a little, can taste a little, calls out Charles Babbage, 19th century mechanical computer, IBM Hollerith machines, the most caparable man in all the Russias, Sherlock Holmes’ smarter brother, he is going to become a Napoleon, the domination of two continents, removing his brain, Kentucky bourbon, to his wife: thrown the man overboard, Mycroft Holmes, saved two continents, look how goddamn smart Edward Page Mitchell is, smart things, having fun, there is something about being smart, being smart as a man is, this stupid part of being a man, continuously making the same mistake, taking alcohol when he shouldn’t, dating girls, the baron, not drink the bourbon again, the maid said oh go on so he did, a girl’s whim, not very fucking smart, inventing a mechanical brained man, getting away with it, a comedy piece, we can take it seriously, having a crutch is making your a cyborg, men become Napoleon, the descriptor, the infodump section, on the precipice, Napoleon wasn’t ten times higher than every other man, look at what he did, a Star Trek episode for this, Spock’s Brain, Spock was always robotic and inhuman, because of a kind of discipline, he’s vegan, operates only on logic, unlike Data, an improved man, more ordered, he’s a stoic, along those lines, riding through the emotions, slightly different, Spock’s mom is her name, full Vulcan and really emotionless, overcompensates, the Worf story too, half-space-elf, even more cut-off from his emotions, more Klingon than the klingons, hey this is fun to be a klingon, all the Star Trek memes are fun, Professor Rapperschwill, Professor Dumbkopf, we respect these guys, a fun and funny story, I’m not an expert on anything unless it were poker, an American overseas, called for it, nothing to drink over hear, my wife wants to hang out with the barons and the dukes, the titles are important, very simple guy, if you don’t do this, he bluffs him, the winner of this contest to save the world, the ablest man in the world’s brain, a big joke, a smart quick and wise man, Poe is the guy who constantly has this battle with alcohol, rumors, really really smart, unappreciative of that, make your feelings change, take drugs, works fast, cheap, available on every corner, The Angel Of The Odd, The Black Cat, alcohol in Poe’s life, a factor in his death, what’s he doing in this, the smartest man in the world, can speak many languages, he tricked the British, he flustered the French, easily tricked by a pretty girl, a supercompetent man, what makes you able, disabled real fast, the lifting of the wrist, what makes you able, what’s hidden in this story, the monster who’s the professor, Dr. Victor Frankenstein, in the tradition, conceived in Switzerland, a ghost contest, Dr. Poliodori, Lord Byron, innovative, sardonic sense of humour, not a light and fluffy story, neither of them, doesn’t dwell on child abuse, and murder, what is your reaction to finding out that most people are super stupid, investigate for uourself, regular smart american, Connecticut Yankee, studied engineering, a blacksmith, knows how to make stuff, telegraphs and printing presses, invest my money, printing is going to be huge!, all the right answers, the point of the second story, pretty hard reach, really not seeing what is being laid down over and over again, what really matters, as smart as this guy can be, even the robot, literally has somebody has access to this very treasure, calculator brain, certain ways of looking at it, alcohol and women, the dumbest shit, as a man, men are different from women, men think of themselves as disposable in a way men don’t think women are, property, in that time, often though of as ways to cement marriages, the patriarchy, the way of the world at the time of these stories, treating women as inferior, not the focus of either of these stories, about being a man, one is like what is a man, a man is Napoleon, a war hero, not getting your body parts shot off, immense pressure to go off and join the war, roving gangs of girls pinning chicken feathers on them, the meatgrinder, cute and fun and a way to meet boys, volunteers instead of conscripted guys, girls have power over men that’s hard to quantify, your not a man, a sense of yourself as a man, war hero, he was used by the government, they rewarded him with all these honors, all fake, lost all his body parts, kind of an asshole racist who needs help to have himself assembled every morning, there’s a big gap between them, model of a man, current congressperson, eyepatch, fell into the trap, now I’m a war hero, this is fake, everybody says about, brought into themselves, now regurgitate, Michael Jackson, and afterwards, they were all saying the exact same things, the narrative created around it, take stuff in and regurgitating is not being a man, investigating, hero protagonists are just regular men, the reality is not what they thought it was, saving us from a Napoleon, saving us from a certain kind of body modification stuff, reading that much into it, not the title characters, the investigators in both cases, in the Poe, to tell us what’s going on, doesn’t take a lot agency in the story, why is he doing that?, whenever you start investigating things on your own, Poe is a third rate writer so I don’t have to read Poe, Desultory Notes On Cats, these incredible stories, the contrast, both the source of the narrative, doesn’t really effect the narrative, takes an active role of agency, blackmailing the guy, hinting he knows more than he does or saw, get the guy’s brain out, even silly to say more than it’s fun, ridiculous premise, ridiculous conclusion, worldbuilding, the Poe is a little more cagey, learn it at the end, the repetitive nature, a true desperado, something is going on, how beautiful his bust, we learn early that there’s something, he is in fact, he has a computer brain, the Mitchell, more realisticly a cyborg, more science fiction, what would it mean, did he kill that boy long ago?, wasn’t much of a boy, fits into a really good tradition in science fiction, Flowers For Algernon, a dumb guy gets uplifted, becomes lonely, heavy lies the head that wears the crown, Understand by Ted Chiang, oxygen deprivation, see patterns, Limitless (2011), Stranger things, Fallout, Pluribus is the way to go bro, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, makes me think, A Picture Of Dorian Gray, what do you do with a monster like that?, the prequel sequel series is even better, Ted Lasso, something of a sports fan, what’s cool, their invasion is quite different, meaning, its smart, is it for or against it?, it’s complex, tried it, want to believe it is healthy, affected, rna sequence, transmission from outer space, telepathic, peace on earth, they don’t kill anymore, indeed, how do they eat, if the apple falls from the tree by wind, when you get focused on ideology, missing pictures, lots of places where there’s no evil, no an evil thing ever happens on Mars, also no good things happen on Mars, Satan’s world, we live in a fallen world, we suffer through it, more modern in aspect, holy books, veganism is a way to make the world a better place, cheaters, breatharianism, water once in a while, our bodies need food, eating living things, watch it dialogue free, have things happening, a confirmation of what you’re inferring, shows that are designed to do that, opposite in this, working on an art project, the only thing, write in my journal, the correct way to be, probably making a mistake, aesthetic judgements, through argument, which is the better story here?, of these two, excellent stories, in terms of being entertaining, clever wordplay, an actual plot and a message, the condition, flip them both ways, partially articulated it, wordplay, we have this, reveals that the technology exists, a clump on the floor, this guy and this technology, a change in the world, even more power in the world, why does he do that?, threatened by him, can’t take either one seriously enough to make an argument that strong, cartoons, some level of empathy, Wile E. Coyote, our guy is worried, hyper-intelligence, it’s not even him it’s the professor, if this guy were this smart and doing all these things with a regular human brain would he have tried to kill him, in a certain sense, his body, the baron is dead, the child that was the guy, our narrator is okay with it, I didn’t kill this guy, threw him overboard, a scream, maybe it was the seagull, our narrator, make all these political changes, poisoned or stabbed him today, feel justified, the reason it is not murder, so cartoonish, so light, done funnily, done for serious, horrible and scary things in it, a light touch upon his arm, Ms Ward, bless me, to save the girl from a marriage to a robot, how white you are, it has effected him, saving your peace of mind, how have you done that, too droll, the reaction, why these stories exist as they do, laughter is the consolation for the pain of reality, bad marks in school, people who seem to not have a sense of humour, in order for humor to happen, that’s not fair, humorous, a humorous person, a good laugh out of funny and terrible situations, gallows humour, reacting in a way that’s a coping mechanism, being a man, to be aware, he’s amazing, a little rundown, The Crystal Man, an invisible man story, decades before Wells, a time travel story, The Man Without A Body, transports himself across town, fairly funny stories, The Tachypomp, faster than light, infinite speed, building up on argument, infinite speed, super innovative, legit science fiction stuff, that H.G. Wells does later, after Poe, aware of Poe, published anonymously in his own newspaper, not magazines or books, you’ll never see it again, these are all by him, supergenius stories, thinking all about science, if this goes on, it doesn’t feel like one because it is so funny, The Senator’s Daughter, California, Boston, New York, vacuum tube transport all over North America, Chinese in love with a white girl, Chinese Vegetarian Party, he’s in love with this girl the father is racist, Boston, all in the course of an evening, marriage laws, still racist, a cryogenic chamber, wait until her father dies, fluffily written, before electricity is a bill thing, why is his reaction to be droll?, a coping mechanism, the world is kinda stupid, stick in these monkey bodies, don’t meet your heroes, makeup and fake boobs, that’s James Cameron, a television show called Intelligence, references it, secret agent with a computer in his brain, Bionic Man but shitty, if there’s a reference there, embracing the government or progress, smile wryly, heavy, they’re not identical, 37 minutes, 24 minutes, 1 hour of listening, one from Weird Tales, March 1923, Ooze, Francis Stevens, a blob story, The Stuff (1985), media savvy, bowels of Holly, Alex (pulpcovers), Die Hard (1988), The Terminator and Predator, summer of 1991, a Christmas movie, that’s the joke, It’s A Wonderful Life (1946), what is a Christmas movie?, set in Christmas, visited by an angel (instead of 3 ghosts), Back To The Future II, Scrooged with Bill Murray, is Groundhog Day a Groundhog Day movie?, The Fellowship leaves Rivendale on December 25th, the other camp, days are shorter, nesting feeling, not go outside, any movie is a Christmas movie [at Christmas], themed to the season, can you put pineapple on pizza, actually it is quite good, everywhere that isn’t pizza, on the ham, that’s fine, by itself, with other fruits, mango, the greatest of all fruits, the pizza is improved, pepperoni, jalapeno, this is important, aesthetics are about making arguments, the mouthfeel of, into your body, literal taste, coffee is a thing that is bad until you like it, smells bad, it is bitter, now it tastes good, you came to appreciate it, the drug that’s in it, nobody really likes the taste of alcohol, when babies are born they like ice cream right away, no acquired taste, levels of sophistication, grok what Poe is laying down, reject Poe, never be able to reach that level, comparing my stuff to him, don’t look over there, that’ll make me look bad, take my word bro, can’t be generous enough, that would be pathetic, not intellectually capable, you grow into, as you get older sweets become less and less interesting, tiger ice cream (orange and licorice), way too sweet, eat this eat this, very undercooked, grown into this man’s body, all over him, a handler he maybe sorta doesn’t know about, a Rashomon sort of thing, a confection of brilliance, awed at the floor show, really early ideas, electricity is mentioned, the part of him that’s not the cerebral part, what triggered the sickness, dashed this off, what a dasher, a sparkling little story of brilliance, Sunfire is her last story, the 5th time, stack em, prereading, ooh wow cool, mountain of stuff, Red Dwarf, the reboot, seeing DVDs of their own show, lived in a world where they were famous, really solid after the 2nd season, pretty entertained by it, hang out in nature, play music, one of the next ones, editing this up in 6 months, no LibriVox version, a lot that don’t, a little more work for them, ultimately you’ll be more longer distributed, more widely distributed, weird restrictions, more exposure, lead to something, how much time I’m putting into it, strict with regard to sources, if not on Gutenberg, it hasn’t been processed, making PDFs, some audiobooks, 2 B R 0 2 B by Kurt Vonnegut, a very solid novel, Goblin Feet by J.R.R. Tolkien, Seuss is noice, Scrambled Eggs Super, a nature place, Eric S. Rabkin, how that word should be pronounced, realistic to know, full disclosure, not a paid project, more or less in one take, you a thousand times over any kind of robot, you can make the robots better, they have no consciousness of what your doing, funny and fun, shouldn’t he have the same accent as the hero character?, able to do everything, super-competent, so few opportunities, a lot of the best narrators, slight modifications, straight narrators and performers, if a shitty performer, if you can’t do a voice, go too far with him, Bronson Pinchot, it’s all in the guy’s head, a cast off line from chapter 18, making it harder to access, a performance is good, an audiobook is transformation from the text on the page into a person’s brain, George Guidall, Scott Brick, Tom Parker, Grover Gardner, audiobook narrators have pseudonyms, recording for other companies, we have robots we don’t need them, fun to talk to you about these things, invested, share, the McCaffrey and Philip K. Dick, Prize Ship, pairing really helps too, the length of the stories, how am I spending my time, references and things, a little bit too twee, “excessively or affectedly quaint, pretty, or sentimental”, everything is a reference, a huge problem with nostalgia, unpopular as an idea, funko pops, memberberries, valuable as an idea, set in a period, Ready Player One, the book was better, trying to make me like it, being manipulated, designed to manipulate, heavy on reference, how Star Trek is connected to The Tempest, oh it is The Tempest, seems evil, playing MacBeth, his daughter!, space Hitler, space Stalin, Patrick Stewart loves Shakespeare, getting rid of Trotsky, modernized, it was good, Ian McKellen on stage doing Richard III, is Stalin a Christian?, the dagger scene, kludgy push, agree to disagree, Marc Singer, The Beastmaster (1982), The Taming Of The Shrew, very grainy video, Commedia dell’arte, Kate meets Petruchio scene, wringing, the stage directions, exit, from within, the words of the characters, a fuckton of work, willing to do the work, as a last bit, the period Shakespeare the best, reveals its timeless nature, really well and really poorly, if that’s your fifth time watching the play, Romeo and Juliet set in Mexico as an introduction, hard for kids to relate to, a fair actor herself, a huge project, Shakespearean chops, wring every last bit of juice from it, the more I study Shakespeare, appreciate what he does, he was an actor, so meta, the man for all seasons, a genius, insane, you are a liar and fool if you think that is a thing, having trouble, parents want to watch Yes, Minister, on point and sharp, great dialogue, Scooby Doo and his friend eat dog treats, the kiss me Kate scene, 1976, not not a big deal, equal representation for women, good writing, super innovative, she’s got spark, almost everything we read about Francis Stevens is lies, that’s not her name, she had many names, forget about the representation, has this person got something for us?, hell yeah!, The Elf Trap, not science fiction, not fantasy, a valance of both, either way it is supergenius, she has a Lovecraft story before Lovecraft wrote it, it seems to be anti-racist, Dark Fantasy isn’t really a thing, pushed it a lot, subconsciously, it keeps coming up, talking for 3 hours, The Outfit by Richard Stark, Claimed by Francis Stevens, Lynne Foster Is Dead by Seabury Quinn, Sartor Resartus, Stragella by Hugh B. Cave, Val Lewton, Clark Ashton Smith, A. Merritt, The Trap by Henry S. Whitehead, With The Night Mail, 30 some items, dud, a piece of crap, in comparison, Sheckley is amazing, a rip-off of a Robert Sheckley story, Seventh Victim, spark and explode and think and laugh, we can be done, not the right show, today we’re not reading short and deep, favourite teacher, consider a good friend and care about deeply, time to wrap it up.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #883 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Virgin Planet by Poul Anderson

The SFFaudio Podcast #883 – Virgin Planet by Poul Anderson (2 hours 35 minutes) read by Alex (Pulpcovers), followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion are Jesse and Alex (Pulpcovers)

Talked about on today’s show:
Venture Science Fiction, January 1957, the expanded book version, not a fix-up, 7 mars stories, how much more expanded is it?, one real scene added, laketown, another town, Burkeville, all the same woman, they all think the same because they’re all the same woman, kidnap the man, added sentences and paragraphs, twice, a new version, great interior illustrations that enhance the story, what’s in the text, one pronunciation error, “quay”, weird etymological one, on the water, the armour, cuirass, first audiobook, not too long, 6 days, editing the file, long pauses between sentences, tightens up the narration, go yell, clip this out, no barking is aloud, stop barking, Jesse gets his mean voice out, c’mon mom, this house was not designed by me, insulation in the ceiling for a recording booth, soundproofing, a scene early on, it wasn’t super clear he was nude, fun writing, quite deep in the book, a kilt malfunction, what’s wrong with your kilt, later cover, fits into the standard 60s sex novel, so much of the book interested in having sex, titillation, the premise is great, describing the premise to Eric [S. Rabkin], after 300 years, some parthenogenesis, clone of themselves, early feminist novel, a science fiction novel, Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a nation filled with women and no men, some sort of disaster and men weren’t available, nature finds a way, Jules Verne explanation, a plateau in South America, hot air balloon, much more like a utopian novel, how money works, not a lot of militancy, corpral maiden, horspur, horse bird?, like that game Joust, massive infodump, worldbuilding, Freetoon, picturing a lot of this, a really fun animated movie, the story being told is a bit bawdy, adultish story, Heavy Metal but with less guitar and more laughs, an adaptation today, porn version or feminist twist on it: and that’s terrible, play this straight, part of the fun of plot, a planet full of virgins, I need to get out of here, giant animal, a lot of ladies in here, crushed by the corpse, stuck under, completely soaked in blood, it’s metaphor or something, not twins, cousins, just clones of each other, a scar on the hand, at the end of the book, rolling dice to see who goes with him, what if I just kept both of them, here in the future, they’d just kill each other, hinted at, makes those thoughts, Twins/Two Much, identical females and one man, the same sort of jump, not in the Westlake book, he was a cad, the women end up winning, the women are deciding which one of them has the man, whichever one of them wins, he had the grace to blush, turning him into a woman, having a lot of fun with this book, books by him that people love, The High Crusade, wrapped up in a sci-fi space story, killing ladies, courtly old fashioned, not exactly a letch, I just need to help them out, let’s go ravish a planet full of women, a comedy, a funny situation, all the excitement of this silly world, moons and eclipses, a good sense of it, seas and the mountains, the plot once it gets going, a tour of the place, a tour of the society, the highlights, this isn’t a utopia, what would a society of all women really look like?, nowadays, how do women do things differently, different in some noticeable way, war-like, peaceful, how are women’s prisons different than men’s prisons, women in mobs, talks his way through the mob, function differently, council kinda stuff, a thesis there, very interesting, tribes and defenses, conflict being the control over reproduction, gender flip everthing, a gender flipped Conan movie, She Is Conann (2023), he didn’t like it, no fixes needed, she wasn’t sure if she should stab him, gender relations between males and females, they’re all mothers, we never see them mothering, young and pretty, a crone, there are children around, for a sexy adventure story, a brief 70 pages, like a lot of other utopian novels, a sequel novel, ova fusion, they’re not using a machine, ultimately if we were to overlay a thesis on this book, not trying to make a big gender politics point, reactionary, what’s a man, a male human, a controversial point, him being a monster, unpleasantly narrow hips, men have beards, if this book has a thesis, they’re better off together, full of men, one woman comes to a planet full of men, how did that happen, it’s not going to work, in our society, the dialogue around issues related, those poor men, those poor women, baby formula, they’re fucking mammals, hundreds of thousands of years, scenarios where it helps, on a planetary scale, the babies shouldn’t be breastfed by their mothers, wetnurses, probably just as good, probably just as good, cow milk, goat milk, infants can’t, how mammals work, no other mammals, you don’t know how mammals works, cloaca, lay eggs, they feed their babies through regurgitation, copy their parents, the premise makes it fun, perfectly good execution, natural production, fun surprising, good scene, expand this very differently, drug store, if you don’t have a date on a saturday night, the Galaxy cover, Barbara, she’s in the cage with him, naked on the cover, women looking in, defiant, is that’s a brass bra?, not it is an iron currias, moons high in the sky, made the geography match the metaphor, a Yavin 4 situation, looks cool, Endor is the same way, in the Bible, most print stuff is more sophisticated, moons are female, oceans are female, suns are male, not a popular position, men are scientists and engieers, women reflect the light of the man, sounding like Jesse Lee Peterson, destroys them by asking “what is a man”?, are men smarter?, in some ways about some things, engender certain behaviors by men, on a moon, named it Atlantis, sunken in the sea, objects in the sky, giant jupiter like planet, Jupiter is male, 4 big moons, Io, Ganymede, the 4 Galilean moons, who’s the biggest of all the gods, 3 are female, 1 male, freaky for us, in the sky there’s a big looming object they can’t get to, Atlantis bound, not exactly mermaids, a society developed apart, the Little Mermaid, the Baen Books one from the 1980s, polished up, wearing pants, a lot more like Joust, shiny jewels that reflect light, Clyde Caldwell, the first 60s one, she’s leading him away, he’s got a smile on his face, a better cover than either of these, how suggestive it is, a scene that happens, nobody’s smiling, the Venture cover, defiance and stare, the copper top, a chance to describe something that doesn’t play into the fun, not a polemic, not a reaction, Heinlein could have written this book, political ideas, a perfectly Heinelian, very heterosexual, wants to transition himself, not a political tract, within that 1950s tradition, Cosmos Science Fiction, crashed spaceship, women standing militantly, long gloves, cover their hair, carrying a whip, all the men are smiling, they kinda liked it, July 1954, Bernard Safraan, a Poul Anderson story Teucan, is it on the PDF Page? [it is now], a lady in the background with a whip, jailer’s keys, a swimsuit, epaulets, what is this about?, a similar story, part of the same universe, psychotechnic league, other stuff, The High Crusade, a famous fantasy novel, Aztecs in space, Ensign Flandry series, wrote some Conan, all the Conan pastiches, an evil reptile god reigns over Stygia, Conan and Belit, a gatefold?, the publishing industry, with regards to the fantasy novel, not Jesse’s top tier, other guys, Alex is a science fiction guy, art wise, all the Asmiov books, a mistake, Nightfall, way not good, expansions are a mistake, the idea is amazing, annoying and drawn out, what I read science fiction for, take a scenario and build a story around it, Rendezvous With Rama, a planet where they’re never night, The Golden Slave, historical sword and sandal, turns out to be Thor, late Roman, the yellow one, ladies flanking, lipstick on, the only thing that makes it science fiction is the word planet, Paul [Weimer] loves it, Three Hearts And Three Lions, fairies, the wild hunt, one man, what he’s doing, norse mythology, a modern 20th century light, everybody thinks its awesome, the thing we’ve been experiencing is cast in a new light, isn’t that what we want, kinda interesting, pulp grinding out author: Ray Cummings, Sargasso Of Lost Starships, Sargasso sea idea, Brain Wave, Vernor Vinge, zones of space, what if elephants are human level intelligence, turn the retardation beam off, Flowers For Algernon, make it planetary, not-species specific, a balancing act, aliens but they make a huge mistake, reverse crusade, stay the fuck out of England, [The High Crusade (1994)] Egyptian assistant, John Rhys Davies, pretty funny, very ambitiously, I’ll do anything for a dollar, pulp covers and paperback covers as the gateway, the door into, interest in these books, endlessly scrolling, a Blockbuster or video rental place, new releases, new Tom Hanks movie, the knock off movies, a mix of sex and mystery/thriller, erotic thrillers, they tell you what genre it is, a lady standing behind some blinds holding a gun, more cleavage, Joe Mantegna and Mimi Rogers, a 90 minute thriller with a twist, the key to appreciation, seeing the little twists you can do, a book is a much bigger commitment, even the best book, that investment, one of the promises you get with film you don’t get with paperbacks, a Steve Buscemi movie, an Adam Sandler movie, that thing you either hate or don’t like, make it a series, Conan the Whatever, subject to the whims of whatever writer was licensed, a lady with a whip, a rocket ship, a moon in the sky, symbols for the ideas that will be explored, pulp cover art is the clickbait of the past, trying to sell you the thing itself, similar patterns in youtube thumbnails, solve the problem as readers, what to read, stop looking at the art and start looking at the name, TOM CLANCY!, CLIVE CUSSLER!, keeps writing books, written by some other dude you don’t care about, Lawrence Block book, consistent quality, it’s a dog, a good dog, maybe Shakespeare, but they’re not really comparable, a war between the people trynna sell us stuff and us trynna figure it out, on the ferry, ai art on the cover, just give up, some artist spent 25 minutes working on that, even the fastest was a full day, and they did a prelim first, trained artists, you want the figures in this pose, cranking out, the text, the price, have to do the work of transmitting the idea beside the title, a book with a dragon on it, fixing boats, mushrooms, the one with the dragon really sold it, The Hobbit, rewarded in the book with the promise being true, he’s invisible, a power fantasy, excitement fantasy, #BrassBra, keeping count, #KetchupAndMustardGetup, why are these ladies wearing red and blue and yellow, you have to have it bright and shiny to attract the reader, you have to vary it a little bit, red shirt this month, black vest, to make it shiny enough, strawberries draw your eye when they’re red, the colours that pop the most, our attraction, a planet of all women, lipstick means something, not blue lipstick generally, lady cyborg is fine, absolutely successful book, not the greatest author in history, if it is not a home run it is a bases are loaded book, definitely a good one, send more stuff, who would like to do this one, hopefully less free time, sit around and record audiobooks, a really good hobby, a couple of Horror Stories, Flesh For The Goat Man, I Am The Tiger Girl!, I Am The Love Slave That Slapped Hitler, the vocabulary, am I pronouncing this correctly, Poul, hard to pronounce, he never says his name, what the interviewer says, we interact through these books, some old guy at a mechanic’s shop, going to an orgy later, a Myrna Loy and William Powell movie, The Thin Man (1934), Love Crazy (1941), a kissing book, alluded to, he had to convince her some more, she was a fast learner, nothing like that, not a women’s romance book, a comedy of this fantasy, mens’ adventure, Philip Jose Farmer, a little bit repetitive, what would really happen, he would just rape people all the time, Edgar Rice Burroughs needs more murder and rape, The Green Odyssey, a similar setup, sort of medieval, hidden away high tech, an odyssey across this landscape, gets kidnapped by a queen who treats him as a sex slave, she’s got bad breath, more fun, it’s shorter, for the fun, about being fun, you can have too much fun, approaching the end of the book, promises, the gun on the mantelpiece, gonna get used later, we feel cheated, you need to fulfill it but not on screen necessarily, come back with 100 men, all satisfied, prurient for the women and the reader, the promise was made, it’s not contradicted so it is fulfilled, ruining a story by a part 2, all done, drag out the action a lot, a good story that makes promises and then fulfills them, that’s what makes it good, more commercial interruptions, how they made Television Events, Dune is a good example, added in, sometimes removed, make it an extra hour longer, fit the particular format, judge these two, paperback vs. original, the novel (expanded) version, a couple extra paragraphs, noticing women, women noticing him, a little more description, a town of all clones of the same woman, this is super creepy, reflects on the rest of the plot, an actual chapter, the flashback chapter, how he got there, trynna argue, doesn’t add a ton, easily naturally lends itself to be naturally expanded, the first 3rd of a bigger book, a few expanded scenes and a couple of new scenes, top 20, he can do good work, nothing that annoys, an exploration of this fun little idea, in the style of Heavy Metal, 8 hours of this, and yet, the wonderful thing about about the narrated word, discovering what’s happening by the text, there’s no picture, playing with the text, suddenly realized, very PG-lite, could be very R, not creepy at all, just fun, world of women stories of the 1950s, an anime in the 90s called Vandread, sci-fi in space, two civilization, all women and all men, colony ships, each think of the other as the alien race that they hate, political theorizing, anime logic, for Japanese teenagers, fighter piolots end up being captured by a ship full of women, something to unite them, the robotic aliens are actually earth, harvest organs, unobtanium problem, an ACE book, she’s wearing lipstick, cyborg purple, World Without Men by Charles Eric Maine, the human touch, that’s coming, the robot will pronounce the typos, you’ve seen that word a million times, the robot has no shame, food made by a human who likes making food, EMSH, good at what I do, they had forgotten what men looked like, breast coverings, paint, bralet, sclera is green, in a world of one sex, a happy normal, well adjusted to her work, the control and broadcasting of news, a strange body found in the arctic ice, rewritten for today, ran headlong into the murderous censorship, all female, the greatest crisis in history, one of the most brilliantly different novels, totalitarian lesboocracy, scroll through it, the text is fun, sliding glass door, effeminacy, processed it years ago, fairly chunky, this is part of the fun of the paperbacks, lady with no shirt but purple hair and green eyes, if this is for me, the 47th chromosome, love was an unnatural affair, a little Brave New World, mass deception, only motive for continued existence, never control, another damning statement, hitherto untouched, ranked with 1984 and Brave New World, it’s important!, an actual scan on archive.org, certain times of hysteria, obviously fictions, sterelin, clinical product if such there be, parthenogenesis, mystical implication, feel the need, sell me more, on the other hand it is a sex book, I’m a doctor, I’m a medical man, salacious topic of the day: mostly lesbians, a guy wearing leather pants, a bon mot for the title, a lot of our children are suffering, very retardedly repressed times, Pluribus, Vince Gilligan knows how to make story, a throwback, kind of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, a different twist on it, a little bit of Contact and Interstellar, big long wordless sequence, no text, a Conan comic a couple years ago, just Conan and a wolf and they fight, nobody mangles themselves into a conniption, books of text you can’t have a wordless sequence, the magic spell is created through the words, a writer/movie maker, what the hell’s going on, I see you are getting into this airplane, 20 or 30 minutes of this, that makes sense, we feel smart, incredibly rare for television, Rhea Seahorn, it’s for her, she’s very good at it, writing autobiographically, why is she a lesbian, him and his brother, more than 1 gender in a story, reason for the conflict, some other life outside of this, the main character is a lesbian, doesn’t supermatter, murdered or killed or whatever happens, a romantasy author, pornographic text for women, scenes, a background, book tour, alien invasion of the earth, metacommentary on the genre, genre familiarity, a science fiction idea, an episode of Star Trek, back down to a planet, everybody gets effected by a pollen that makes them happy, Kirk loves his ship, getting angry at them, apple person or not, look it up on Pirate Bay, a lot of fun, fun recording it, solid, quay, key, florida keys?, the French, sandbar, an archipelago of some kind, Flordia could extend farther south, Two Much, Fire Island is a sandbar, Manhattan goer, long island and such, erosion and movement, fun settings good books, good geography, include you in, slop some pigs, goose some geeses.

Virgin Planet by Poul Anderson

Virgin Planet by Poul Anderson

Virgin Planet by Poul Anderson

Virgin Planet by Poul Anderson

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #880 – READALONG: Cemetery World by Clifford D. Simak

Jesse, Scott Danielson, and Cora Buhlert talk about Cemetery World by Clifford D. Simak

Talked about on today’s show:
serialized November 1972 – January 1973, over three issues, almost everything by him, a Simak kick, Shaun Standfast has been ill, six months on pause, meet him in the cemetery and talk to him about it from above his grave, books in tweets, a disappointment, we didn’t read the same book, 22, old people books, Way Station, there’s no conflict in here, very brief, to spite Jesse’s theory, mad at the captain, annoyed, visit the boss who runs Earth, they don’t really do anything about it, wolves, two giant tanks, a bomb thrown, I’m mad at these ghosts, one of his road trip books, A Choice Of Gods, Goblin Reservation, shouted out in this book, End Of Nothing, Project Pope, he had that in mind, set in the same universe, a planet called Prairie, every book is the same: Wizard Of Oz, also in Astounding, Fishhook was the big bad organization, The Fisherman, Time Is The Simplest Thing, all of these are science fiction, random time travel by ghost, robot wolves, other things, witches flying on brooms, doing massive hard SF explanations, yet it contains a lot, telepathy, the whole idea that earth is turned into a cemetery, return to earth to be buried, not that far fetched, immigrants, Turkish passport to be buried in Turkey, return to the Earth, Germany used to be a lot bigger, conscious memories, trade in homeland soil, Transylvania, how the ghosts work, who is the census-taker, what is the census-taker?, a lurker, a hider, a scurrier, collecting things, anachronic, Marvel’s Watcher, an alien, the reader in Marvel comics, looking at the comics, a famous potter, a masterpiece, made for some great man of the time, perhaps for the census taker, 1963, predates, offer a thesis, City, Census, meditates on it, a thinker, very thoughtful, not fully cooked, he’s an immortal, a time traveler, he wouldn’t know us yet, the method of time travel, ghosts can do it, until a technology is invented, it always existed, why that would annoy somebody, you have to have come to this place now, what the future is like, unsatisfying also completely satisfying, what happens in the book is random walk, when he started this book, just fine as usual, is this guy Lazarus?, his feet are floating, he doesn’t eat very much or very often, if he is a biblical character, a hidden Christianity inside this book, never overt, Simak exploration, a list of Catholic authors, not a practicing Christian, thinking about it, a projection, shades, giant temple museum, the vase they found in the house earlier, the guy behind the desk is a ghost, a ghost into a body of a robot through technology, very Simak, uninterested in anything except the journey, travel to another planet, unicorns are real, just to have those experiences, three wolves, robot hero, Elmer, after a certain point, great robots, lawnmower robot named Clifford, of all the many 1930s stories, a lawmowerbot, annoys the protagonist, 1944, unable to predict the outcome of WWII, in hibernation, a little bit of this in it, Over The River And Through The Woods, a great short story writers, fix-up, a journey across country, a magical portal, so many good ones, parents find out a nuclear war is coming, the missiles are on their way, grandma and grandpa, time travel to the past, its got that pastoral loveliness, the conflict while present theoretically, The Black Hound Of Death and an H.G. Wells story, breaking bone, blood and gore, horrible and awesome, if Simak did that story, I’m not the worst guy, throw a bomb later, a really friendly dog, Robert E. Howard lied dogs, he liked them to be fierce, Simak’s ideal dog, a golden retriever, about the same age, what would happen, mostly westerns, the Sword and Sorcery revival, still be publishing, a writing machine, the gentle pastoral community, what is this book?, qualities you love, a marker of him, doing science fiction but not leaving behind the fantastical, stranger things in heaven and earth, quoting Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s Planet, a kindness that permeates, Bradbury loves the small town, walking overland, going down to the river, the other monster that’s in here, the ghouls, dig up graves, to get the metal, treasure boxes, not Lovecraftian ghouls, the corruption that is in the corporation, the corruption in the graveyard, the earth is a giant cemetery, a particular direction, Dune, desert planet, mostly just Arrakis, Tattooine, Hoth, jungle planet, Endor, Naboo, redwoodplanet, Philip Jose Farmer book, grass planet, Trantor, a cemetery world, a necropolis, rows and monuments but no occupants, I like alliteration, evocative stuff just within it, what people were like, girls and boys on dates would go for walks in the cemetery, the girl needs to snuggle up close, let’s think about death, I’d like to spend some time with you before we die, meet cute, an artist?, ai art, how prescient, ai assistant, a composition, the human needs to be part of it, people who are dismissive of ai art as slop, talking with Eric S. Rabkin, a little bit coughy, you passed the test, it was ai, fuck off, don’t send me your robot poetry, no soul there, youtube channels, human beings who really like Star Trek, make little skits with those actors with those voice, a little back and forth and around, the writing is not written by ai, the compositor, face swap, do impersonations better, wild crazy things, immediately infuriated, obvious to anybody, one of the themes in this book, given enough time robots are more human than human, care about art, I was born on earth, put together on earth, new Frankenstein (2025) movie, why did he make these changes, at the bed, we’re not supposed to like our Frankenstein creator character, that idea of a created thing creating new things, he was the guy who build one of the tanks, Joe and Ivan, waiting for Ivan to show up, Russia, peace prize to NATO, he’s doing great work in this book, in the right mode, very meditative, everything will be humane, the two headed corpse, a little horror show, travelling across a planet, some place, the girl starts turning into a mummy, in the basement there’s a fishtank viewer sort of thing, a general, a robot, a hero guy, and a girl, go through a portal and all of these things happen, the ai essay writer, A Choice Of Gods, same year, 1972, that could be any book, Special Deliverance, 1982, The Visitors, the same thing every time, a college professor, a giant blue cube, a role playing game scenario, a tavern, where are we, let’s go for a walk, something in the woods, everything that happens doesn’t happen with an overarching plot in mind written by the author, writing by the seat of your pants, humanness, coziness, a spritely love of life and existence, the first issue of Analog, the scene with the two tanks facing each other, two war machines, it’s symbolic, so powerful, two tiny little humans, a male and a female, don’t run away, you tell it much better than I, keep going, we can help you, the first human that’s ever listened to them, the people who live on earth today, 10,000 years after WWIII, very very American view of immigration, destroyed and irradiated earth, the adventurous ones, the younger sons, they already got theirs jack, women looking for husbands, the bars at the harbour, hung out with the sailors, had to go to the USA, hop a ship to go to America, undercut in the book, his visit with the drinking, the guys who run the squaredance, not much mutated, homey old fashioned moonshine, who wants to dwell on that, corruption throughout these organizations, a theme, teleprojection, astral projection machines, using that technology in a corrupt way, coherently plotted, in terms of structure, godly related, Christianly related, a mess, superstition coming back, the evil corporation, the nasty behind all the events that happen, rightly skeptical, dancin and sharin alcohol, we’re nice people, a bomb-throwing, this other corrupting thing making us do this, reading Simak over time, all the reasons for being cynical but chooses not to go that direction, city government in the first City story, see it more and more, over and over, corrupt organizations, prevailing against, Simak isn’t cynical, he was a newspaperman, this makes you cynical, engaged with what’s going on everyday, talk to the cop, the real dope, you can’t write that, you know what’s going on, get cynical real fast, drinking, not my problem, cashing my paycheck, a method somehow to exist and not lose hope, I go for a walk with my girl and my dog, enjoy the seasons, enjoy the river, the Ohio River, rivers are important, still there and still flowing, a symbol for time, and eternity, recurring themes, war, nuclear bombs became obsolete, no center to hit, survived, these war machines arriving at the scene and not having anything to do because it was over, meeting each other and becoming friends, being standoffish, fascinating, the same message, thoughtful consideration, black stones come down and eat trees, thoughtfulness, Cynthia, our girl, Fletcher, somebody put up a youtube video of Chapter 18 of this book, an interesting scene, flashforward into the past, the house, the pots and pans, vomits, a love story, facing death and horror, what will happen?, will you love me?, the build up for the whole book, he wants to dance with her, she looks pretty, of course I’ll love you, the only female character in the book, the same everytime, in Shakespeare’s Planet, a tattoo on her breast, sometimes women have tattoos and they need love too, what a guy this Simak guy, dead since the late 80s, a guy is still alive, witnessing his thought, what kinda artist is this Fletcher, his compositor is a typewriter, a mobile typewriter with six legs named Bronco, back in time to Alden, both from Alden, not an Iain M. Banks style galaxy, laze about, swapping genders, commerce going on, being skinned, another Simak book hidden within this book, exploiting people for money, gets a tip about a funeral home, you need that really expensive coffin, you could become cynical because there’s profit to be made, deaths cost went up significantly, buy up the grave again, 3000 euros, extorting you, trash the grave, grandma and grandpa’s bones on the trash, scatter ashes, violates the dignity, special rules for the corporations, mandatory like death, the background for Cemetery, the cemetery is full of corruption, get it, a robot clipping lawns beside a headstone, the image from the captain, unload, unloading coffins, build the coffins on other planets, a wooden coffin, bursts out Elmer, doing the Frankenstein thing, stronger than a man, bigger than a man, you’re going to ride me, the most accurate cover, the original serialized Analog cover, the tank in the background, the moon telling us where we are, walking with Edgar Allan Poe through the graveyard, the beauty that is lost, a great book, in the experience, a great walk in the autumn, loves retriveing sticks, you’re not allowed to drink it, a perfect book for this time of year, the prefect November book, A Night In The Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny, there’s nothing forced, ghosts are in graveyards, he’s not doing an homage, journey through the woods, to these great living monuments of death, a german edition, loved cemeteries, stroller through the cemetery, and churches, old graveyard, headstones, nice old cemetery, immigrants, former Yugoslavia, a liberal cemetery, bury me in a traditional conservative cemetery, disco lights, only grey headstones, only red granite, biological grandmother, step-grandmother, super regimented cemetery, praying hands by Albrecht Durer, bathroom wall, violated some kind of cemetery rule, Cora wanted to be buried at sea, interesting graves, poetry of the dead people engraved in the stone, a cargo ship engraved, a captain, graves with chinese letters, old ones, big tombs, locally famous people, in the graveyard, what percentage of these Simak novels have you read?, plenty, 27 novels, Comsimc Engineers, Empire, Ring Around The Sun, Time Is The Simplest Thing, They Walked Like Men, All Flesh Is Grass, Why Call Them Back From Heaven, The Werewolf Reservation, Out Of Their Minds, Destiny Doll, A Choice Of Gods, Our Children’s Children, Enchanted Pilgrimage, Shakespeare’s Planet, weird introduction to science fiction, A Heritage Of Stars, Mastadonia, The Fellowship Of The Talisman, The Visitors, Project Pope, Where Evil Dwells, Highway Of Eternity, read 11, newspaperman, heroic newspaperman, smoking is pipe and smiling, the covers are getting shittier and shittier, new ebook editions, 7 volumes of short stories, to read things back to back, the highlights, what makes them big?, recurring themes, one a month, as you see him develop, some authors shy away from doing that, Stephen King, you can’t help it, any good story is really about the author’s experience, stories set in ancient greece, ancient middle east, they read 1,001 Nights, in those experience they got a reverence for this, Clarke Ashton Smith story, wrote that story twice, never been out of California, east asia, jungly, desserty, elephants are awesome, abused circus elephants, Coney Island, tried to hang an elephant, big media stories, a circus that came to town, blown away by the size and the grace and the weirdness of that thing, The Tower Of The Elphant, what do these three guys have in common, sword and sorcery inventor, all about necromancers, that was their fantasy, they are writing in a tradition, the Thief Of Baghdad, Ali Baba, it allows you to create your own, the decline in Arabian fantasies, you really have read good stuff, fell out of fashion, they’ll tell you it’s racist, sexist, read the old good stuff, a book from 2008, terrible old books, 1968, they usually weren’t good books, teaching children Goethe, german rapper, Shakespeare, figuring out what that is, everything old is bad, everything new is good, colonialist, middle eastern set stories, H. Rider Haggard, stories about the crusades, the little triggers, take that little piece out, all those smoothing stones, the episode of Star Trek called The Apple, snake temple, another hippie in space, zap the temple with the phasers to kill the snake, these people are stuck, not be guided by the snake, it couldn’t be made today, too simple and good, let’s have a heist, fuck off I don’t want to see your heist, the last heist you needed to ever watch was Ronin (1998), for the fun chase, what’s in the box, we need never have a heist ever again, wait 1000 years, a gang of criminals have stolen a priceless artifact, stole a crown or something, plaguing Berlin, there’s no George Clooney here, any great art should be replicable, here’s a movie for Scott and Julie with no singing and dancing, Kill (2023), commuter on there, thugee style criminals, conflict between two families, clubs and knives, thieves, at the 40 minute mark, a blood splash, commandos from the Indian Army, the ice train movie, Snowpiercer (2013), a linear journey, Steven Seagal, Under Siege 2 (1995), every Marvel movie ends in a train fight, when is this singing and dancing going to end, some crown in the Louvre, melt down that crown, ketchup or mustard, air cover, the words themselves, the text within, font size, the kind of font it is, Simak lives in this book, he’s still alive, giving life to his ghosts, this is great art, barely doing what it says on the tin, mature works from a thoughtful guy, four days of prep time for Christmas eve, a Saturday, a liberal Christmas market, the costs were too high, 2026 is coming, month away, when did that happen?, time is the simplest quick thing, shopping in December, getting into Bremen, days to look forward to, ruminate on short stories, church stuff on Mondays, read it with your bare hands, illustrations, George MacDonald omnibus, 1858, Lilith, super-sick on that one, novella length, grokipedia, a rival for wikipedia, a bias towards evil, look at a president, CIA guys are allowed to make edits, the Phantastes entry, quotes Cora Buhlert, hoovers up everything, what all the scrapers do, weird contradictions, they all do this, the Clifford Simak one, Wisconsin, a slightly more controversial figure, war in Ukraine, gatekeepers, no person involved, banned sources, approved sources, consistently wrong, Armenia, Azerbaijan, fairly useful, consult grok, as good and all the features, asking specific questions, are there any repair places nearby, a search engines, ai art sucks, ai music that’s incredible, take 50 cents song in a soulful 1960s style, just changing font, I like Garamond, you like Arial, that’s not art, harder than transferring font, in the next five years, a household telepresence robot, stocking shelves in stores with telepresence robots, this ai art thing is mostly garbage at this point, that’s normal, losing jobs, the sabot, buggy whip manufacturers, do you really want to say you can’t replace human jobs with robot jobs, why these jobs?, translators cost money, a selfish argument, a selfless argument, birth certificate translation, people with use chat gpt in their job, sexually harasser, automated car tower stuff, Florida California, both have Disneys, putting valets out of work, a word for a job that doesn’t exist, an assistant, whenever the parking is inconvenient, weird service jobs, bag boy, a grocery packing robot, confronted with technology, it has to be bigger, everything’s about me all the time, nice gas station attendant, artist is a great job, ususally it is some scam, Guillermo Del Toro, the terrible book covers, painted covers, vaguely photoshop, a trend that goes way before the ai, a decision by individuals, I’m in this for money, a guy who makes boutique cars, I love cars, he’s gonna sell it or the country crashes, there were editors who used to love science fiction, I’m not gonna read ai books, the spelling or the font, Booker and Pulitzer prizes, what the grokepedia and the wikipedia matters, does the Hugo make it better, he had 17 hairs on his chin, the human will triumph over the automated system, The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov, we like him giving a toast, David Gerrold, Poul Anderson, The Book Of Skulls, Dying Inside, Robert Silverberg, The Dispossessed, gentle and loving vs. rough, Vietnam, Pacific Northwest, Avatar (2009), anarchist communist moon to capitalist planet, The Left Hand Of Darkness, The Lathe Of Heaven, the saint of science fiction, Margaret Atwood also a saint (but not of science fiction), Octavia Butler, someone’s entrance into science fiction, bloody Star Wars (1977), against opposition, one of many, weird saint floating above it all, just annoying, Bloodchild, fandom, focused on the wrong things, Francis Stevens is great writer, Simak is a white man?, American?, I hate those!, Clarke will last a little longer, the sad truth is all media, stop focusing on the book, trick the book publishers into trying to sell some books, conglomerates, vertical integration, they’re the gutter, they don’t even make novelizations anymore, desperate writers, Alan Dean Foster, Kevin J. Anderson, Predator (1987), too young, login to Disney plus, Piers Anthony, novelization of Star Trek: Next Generation tv series, Encounter At Farpoint, Doctor Who novelizations, people running things are incredibly stupid, tie-in-novels for Murder, She Wrote, Star Trek Animated Series re-imagined, kinda Star Trek, almost looks right, unsettling, Data and Picard and Worf, casual friday, uses the actor’s voice, fairly there, far in the future, technically possible, new episode of actual Star Trek, Deanna Troi having a conversation with Barkley she never had, under the radar at the moment, new seasons of Star Trek, they don’t want the competition, the real problem, we have more clamping than freedom, all the Gaza holocaust videos were deleted, everything gets clamped down, old money extracting and extracting, preventing magazine shops from opening up, can’t afford to live, can’t afford to rent shops, business ideas, nail studios, donair shops, barber shops, exploit their family to work for cheap or free, immigrant businesses, ruining our city centers, the high rents are ruining our city centers, everybody needs to eat on occasion, very difficult to get lunch anywhere, lots of restaurants no longer open for lunch, donair over McDonalds, food made by humans not by robots, tourist trap restaurant, automatic kitchen, robot movies, robots in movies, I Am Mother (2019), the five kinds of sandwiches, doesn’t care about you as much as your mom does, you eat the sandwich, hopefully it was made with love, no flies fell in it, no staples got in your tuna sandwich, is that love?, no, hire someone, make you sandwiches, none of those are love, all the rest is various degrees of commercialism, he’s writing for himself, we can trust him, no problems selling his work in his late period, he’s very very good, it’s full of love, no ai filler, he has to put the girl on the table naked because he’s trying to get the cover, what this book is about, except for the german one, the first issue of Analog, what grok knows, Frank Frazetta, just give me the gist, runs off and draws himself and his wife and giant snake, more passion than love, still a kind of love, wowing, new full cast Harry Potter, Stephen Fry and Jim Dale, a tv series, would have loved it at 10 or 12, a nerdy shop, half the stuff is Harry Potter, sweepstakes, put a yoda on it, Too Much by Donald E. Westlake, a Tamil version, The Twin (1984), the American one from 1995, doesn’t have twins, this book is so fuckin awesome, light comedy, a bit of an asshole but you love him, jaw dropped to the floor, Westlake’s so good at it, that little hidden hobby horse, insurance, it bothers him, funny little guy, lovely talking to you.

Cemetery World by Clifford D. Simak

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #869 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Assassination Bureau, Ltd. by Jack London and Robert Fish

The SFFaudio Podcast #869 – The Assassination Bureau, Ltd. by Jack London and Robert Fish (4 hours 32 minutes) read by Tatiana Chuchilla for LibriVox, followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Maissa Bessada.

Talked about on today’s show:
1910, 1963, Jack London and Robert Fish, a physical copy at a used bookstore, surprisingly PUBLIC DOMAIN, years went by, a movie, how fortunitous, read by a human, Titania somebody, favourite LibriVox narrator, Ltd., the end papers on the PDF, the movie a fair amount, as it went along, very much didactic, a lot of exposition, as it kept going, softened towards it, a different perspective, the movie was so fun, a different mindset, appreciated it much more, the movie’s better, lightens it, they play so much more, the book is not designed to be funny, a little bit arch, helps tell the story, deleted one of the characters and replaced that character as the love interest, son-in-law-be, Diana Rigg, we fall in love with Dragomilov, different ending, 237 page PDF, page 231, Jack London’s notes, Charmain London, London died in 1916, when is it set?, automobiles in it, the movie does a better job with picking a period, is this a science fiction book?, something close to it, because of the concept itself, fiction fiction, airship in the movie, not practically apparently, they’re always coming back, pick a scab, the flying cars exist (almost all in China), just prior to WWI, all the little vignettes are of a silent movie type, Yul Brenner, the other bald guy with the mustache, who loves ya, baby?, Oliver Read, Kojack, Telly Savalas, the newspaper owner, vice-chair, all bald guys look the same, he’s not Captain Picard, your head is so shiny, distracted by the mustache, create WWI, killing all the heads of Europe, as that didn’t happen, alternate history, or a secret history, makes it like a cartoon, the book is much closer to Around The World In Eighty Days than anything else, Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes is close to science fiction, it’s not H.G. Wells but it is very close, the extraordinary character of Holmes, Watson is us, a minute late, the appeal of Back To The Future (1985), we like spending time with Doc and Marty, the plot is helpful, spill the beans, the relationship between Doc brown and Mary McFly, an avuncular relationship, Marty is the nephew and Doc is the uncle, explaining who Marty is, trying to get his mom and dad to hook up, Doc Brown is science fiction, Marty McFly is the reader of science fiction, Marty McFly likes to play guitar, to get yelled at, it isn’t about formal schooling, extracurricular activities, after midnight in the mall parking lot, in the movie of this book, we are Diana Rigg, giving a lecture so that she can get a job, now we’re with her, Oliver Reed, this is a romance, what have I done?, the book is pretty weak, by the end it picked up a little bit, it sewed up its ideas, why is it a novel?, why Jack London didn’t finish it, closed it up, new book by Michael Crichton and James Patterson, Eruption, Michael Crichton is dead, he shouldn’t have don the second one, his legacy has turned into, the estate wants some more cash, James Patterson he’s well known, mostly series, airport books, Along Came A Spider, a spy guy, Alex Cross, Maximum Ride, many standalone thrillers and novels, why would you read these, really mainstream, Tom Clancy, long dead, finishing somebody else’ book, 4-0 years later, 1910 – 1963, the key thing, Jack London was a writing machine, Sinclair Lewis, joke writers, buy them from other comedians, we’ve seen this story done better, Goliah, a secret organization to try to change the world, so many years ago, 1910, it posits a kind of privatized CIA with morals and ethics, explained in the film, overexplained in the book, short for a novel, not tight, Goliah is 13 pages, only 20,000 words were written by Jack London, 5000 words is like a half hour, pull all the threads together, abandoning it, malformed it, too many characters, a similar scene in The Sea Wolf, a long dystopian novel, 800 shows you might have been on, The Dream Of Debs, Paul and Will, a candidate for president jailed by [Woodrow] Wilson, The Scarlet Plague, a tribe led by a guy named chauffeur, the preservation of books, a biography of Jack London, The Red One, Thee Star Rover, visits other times while in a straight jacket, The Iron Heel, bad relationships, people lecturing each other in each other’s homes, the film much improves it, instead of 80 days it is a year, all the deaths are comedic, no blood, eat poison very slowly, is there vanilla in here?, escapes, I see a comedy here, some really cool stuff in this book, the movie helped Maissa like the book, very interesting, what separates us from the animals, he accepts the assignment to kill himself, better in the book than in the movie, the rationale fits, montage, explosions, framesetting, overlay, all fun, very old fashioned film, it feels like one, very definitive, its before this, its not after that, set in the future or not, one line, one of the people who was assassinated was Bertrand Russell, lived until 1970, he really is in this book in the philosophy, be politik in the world, what are we to do about about anarchism, why he couldn’t finish it, a hard topic, by making it a farce, walk out of the movie theater, go get some coffee, two years later, one of the lines, salvation must come, the filmmakers, thinking about it, why the bureau cannot work, we can’t impose this, from the world, not bound by religious morality, his own code of ethics, Robert Fish is involved, some of the material in here is clearly London, relfect on what’s going on in Goliah, getting rid of the oligarchs, bend to my will and do better or suffer the consequence, all this poverty, a socialist and a millionaire, my wit, my strength, posit this assassination bureau, a fun comedy, they didn’t get what I was trying to say, not enough lectures and looking at bookshelves, less dynamic that it should be, a feeling of The Call Of The Wild, fleeting little scenes, humans vs. animals, everyman is worthy of death, we need to scrutinize you more, an inversion of Jesus’ every person should be saved, the birds and the beasts and the slime molds, the killing of animals for meat, moral judgement, the best thing we can do is follow our ethical code, a book about killing people and being ethical, the reason he must die is he accepted the contract, the son, can take over the assassination bureau, make the world a better place, was an anarchist, billionaire socialist, continue without assassination, dissatisfactory, The Sea Wolf, the paradise of slaughtering seals on the beach, the old sailor (the Jack London stand-in), [Wolf Larsen], an Eden, there is that, a Hawaii guy, this book doesn’t feel like a Robert Fish book because it feels very Jack Londony, preserve as much of the material, don’t delete things, a miscarriage, not a miscarriage, we can sell this baby, cyborg parts, Londonisms, an Irish Terrier, what terriers are for, for vermin, after rats, ratters, go into holes, big rats in Ireland, all the snakes are gone, a very cool book by Jack London, fully Jack London, set in the South Pacific, Jerry Of The Islands, as opposed to being in the arctic, a little dog for being on boats, a dog lover, really strong with ideas, ratting the thing to death, shaking it out and seeing what’s there, all of his short stories are better, good ideas, mad at another guy in a room, some sort of thing that happened to him, who is Jack London arguing with?, his bio-dad, disappears before he is born, arguing with himself, he’s also the young guy, I’m better than you think I am, dad, the fun of the idea, the movie is better, better executed for the idea, looking at the bookshelves, the opening of the book, bang, they’re all bad, Buck is the viewpoint character, over the shoulder right beside him, the man in the red sweater, Harrison Ford was one of the last owners, took 20% of the book and expanded it left and expanded it right, what makes a story good is what materials you were working with, the purity of the materials, good ideas in this book, memorialized war heroes, early chapters, the law of tooth and fang, violence, glorified, the basic law, reason and ethics and morality, instead of following gravity, trying to do good in the world, a crazy idea, if I kill this one person, it’s too hard a question, where do you stop, where do you draw lines like that, the short story instead, the premise sticks, doing it not to punish people but to make the world better, who are the people who are doing this?, rich business men, punish their rivals, kings, people in power, no women assassinated, missing from the book, ripe, make light of, the Ruthenians, central European, slavs, between Russia and Germany, the Assassination of an Arch-Duke, happened in 1914, this is a real phenomena in the world, bomb throwing anarchists, start writing, rich fat cats who’ve lost the moral code, murder for profit, in the book everybody’s ethical, published in 1963, sell it to film, spicier for that purpose, Sinclair Lewis deserves some credit, Guy Boothby’s The Woman Of Death, it has not crashed, it will cut us off, continue, prolific novelist, sensational fiction, the Doctor Nichola series, a Victorian forerunner, gothic egypt, supernatural revenge, Rudyard Kipling, George Orwell, bottled humuculous, a secret society, the suicide club, a dueling society, they all wear masks, a veil over their face, for rich dilettante guys with no jobs, direct plays in the park, got no writing or acting skills, a secret dueling society, Donald Westlake, Lord Of Light, The Hour Of The Dragon, Killing Time, private detective, a PDF, heresy to say it, corruption, better than Hammett’s Red Harvest, Otto Penzler, Tim Smith, his little black book, should be good, Scott loves Westlake too, not super famous like he should be, Lawrence Block is scarier, his comedic stuff, sparkly, The Spy In The Elevator, sparky and cute, big darkness, tells a funny story, great with the gestures, Dogs in the South Pacific books, fun chat, good movies, 4 in person rehearsals, doubled up, storylines are similar anyway, why he does that, why is Back To The Future (1985) such a good movie, too popular, talking about Star Wars is easy, talking about Sorcerer (1977), Stephen Spielberg, science fiction, fun characters, music, a tight story, his sister has so many boyfriends, Burger King, the truck he wanted, polishing the car, go to the lake, spark as a the kiss happens, it makes you want the sequel, more of the same, he drinks a lot, abusive to his ex-wife, the warning signs, recapitulate the final scene of the first movie, what about Jennifer?, turn out to be assholes, where we’re going we don’t need roads, a spray in the eye, they wrote her out of the movie, they want to do the same movie, Marty at home, children are all played by Michael Keaton [J. Fox], don’t say a word, another invention, another scientific invention, some of the Weinbaum shows, The Worlds Of If, avuncular relationship, likes girls, old professor friend, Doc whatever, this new machine, each incident is a different machine, The Ideal, dating another girl, Professor Von Manderpootz, Star Trek, a different planet, a different scientific idea, a different alien relationship, planet of the gangster, time travel episode, some of them are really bad, back in time to the 1960s, a lady who can turn into a cat, tiny insects, terrible terrible, protagonists are insects, the Horta, the Teri Garr one, Bewitched style, Ferengi’s go to Earth, they’re cartoon humans, capitalism made cute, somehow figure out this is a bad date, speed dating, 15 people in 15 minutes, awkward five minutes, do you like to read books, I’m a vegan, here are six nice things about me, I don’t brag much, we have to do that with authors, Terry Pratchett, other people should marry him, Douglas Adams, a double date, it is literally spending time with somebody, the movie was good, we got something out of it, Frankenstein, she was the girlfriend in Tootsie (1982), Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977), Goldie Hawn, both blondes and bald people, Mr. Mom, The Conversation, Oh, God, The Black Stallion, Assignment: Earth, not a lot of dogs in Deep Space 9, in a virtual game, interesting idea, Jake and that woman who’s a psychic vampire, a B plot, an A idea, Captain Sisko has found a space anomaly, the way TNG, back on deck 2, hits higher highs more generally, talk about Star Trek again show, the French movie, Mars Express (2023), very science fictiony, too much available, mostly crap, easy, do the work, so fulfilling to do it, Reading, Short And Deep, Ball Of Fire (1941), Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck, one of eight professors working on an encyclopedia, newsboy, gun moll, fuddy duddy professor, changing their loves, its really fun, Double Indemnity (1944), the guy who dies in the end of a Charlton Heston, Soylent Green (1973), Edward G. Robinson, lonely widower, I really like you and respect you, murder her husband, its love, framed by a dictaphone recording, the whole story in the middle, her curves, she’s just a woman, her presence on screen, she commands the camera to look at her, she was huge, way bigger than Helen Mirren ever was, a lot of westerns, her later career, becoming a movie star, Barbara Stanwyck is this movie, Wild Robot (2024), The Iron Giant (1999).

The Assassination Bureau

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #868 – READALONG: Hombre by Elmore Leonard

The SFFaudio Podcast #868 – Jesse and Scott Danielson talk about Hombre by Elmore Leonard

Talked about on today’s show:
why did we pick this particular one?, wanting to read, audio stack, he’s a good writer, Justified, his influence on it, the dialogue is amazing on that show, terrific, the Paul Newman movie, the audio drama, a very good story, the better story version of it, the movie, keeps almost everything that’s in the book, no voice over narration, the viewpoint character, just a camera telling the story, the editors, the moviemakers, who the character is, a kid, a lot of his internal thoughts, what he’s interested in, his lame thoughts about things, we get to see the story more purely, on the stagecoach, differences, the innkeeper lady, a little out of sequence, the end of the movie, our guy dead, our man dead, cut, he was the one we were following, top 5 Star Trek original series, a trick, some good episodes not easily nameable, which one was that, the Gorn episode, Arena, most episodes are excellent, dogs or semi-interesting, Amok time, alphabetical order, Galileo, categorizing things alphabetically, Balance Of Terror, Shore Leave, the surprise, Theodore Sturgeon, fun and funny, fantasy humour episode, which of them is Hombre?, you’re correct, who is the Hombre in the Galileo 7, a movie called Stagecoach (1939), the movie, tribute to John Wayne, black and white cowboy, a zoomup, holding his saddle, winchester, lever action rifle, to attract the attention of the stagecoach, two important parts, Terminator 2, a cowboy spinning guns thing, big iron, the plot of that movie, a little bit similar, 9 strange people, Arizona?, Apache territory, stop to pick up the hero, pre-war, post-war western, like Hombre, a revisionist western, the old fashioned western, horses, Hopalong Cassidy, post-classical, subverts the myth, less simplistic view, the main character dies at the end, not typical, western comics, Louis L’Amour, Lonesome Dove, what is this book about, John Russell, racism, hypocrisy, Mexican characters, culturally, his haircut, it is revealed to us, let me tell you about John Russell, he had many names, ideas going on in this book, he is like an Indian if he’s not an Indian, he has a conversation, when you talk about those people, you won’t eat a dog, this isn’t about his identity, scolding people, being frustrated, why does John Russell do what he does?, very tricky, good book?, very good book, a book for men or for women, female characters, prominent, picturing the movie, the movie has overpowered the book, the wife, long history of life in the west, a strong character, the best character that’s female in the movie isn’t in the book, she’s kind of the love interest for the audience, we love her, to take your date to, the other people on the stagecoach, we like the Mexican boss, we don’t hate the kid all the time, we don’t like Doctor Faver, the girl with the Apaches, liking her in the end, why is Mr. Spock the Apache, he’s the outsider, in the Galileo 7 which character is the Mexican stagecoach driver?, it’s Leonard McCoy, he’s also kind of the women, you cold blooded inhuman, it ends differently, a television show, just redshirts, Mr Scott’s there too, providing the plot happening, we have no fuel, what about the phasers, there’s always possibilities, deep story here, an Ernest Haycox short story, the outsider there is the Ringo Kid, pretty rare, Ringo Star, a long list of Ringos, don’t know or care, wears a lot of rings?, an outlaw, he’s not an Indian, it’s not a racism story, it’s a weirder old fashioned western, not to modern tastes, where the story came from a Desilu connection, Lucille Ball, Five Came Back (1939), South America, people pointing to that, semi-legit, Flight Of The Phoenix (1965), Guy De Maupassant, Boule De Suif, Ball Of Fat, a gender flipped version of Hombre, the Prussian takeover of France around 1870, 1880, this short novel, what being a man means, almost heavyhanded in the book, a flashback, Tres Hombres, fights like three men, what’s going on in people’s heads, a stratified society, it’s about class, last stagecoach out of town, it’s snowing, cold rather than heat, complete inversion, as they go over the road, characters and personalities, a prostitute, everybody has reasons for hating her, a high end guy, that guy’s wife, two nuns, a contrast of females, society person, two ugly women, she’s fat, she’s got big boobs, very kissable, the author’s preference, very hungry, a basketful of food, munching, mouth is watering, she shares it out, only one cup, become very chummy, getting along, the we are all getting along, what you talkin bout we?, inside job, stole the ticket from the soldier, really good actor in the movie, The Rifleman, as a kid, Have Gun, Will Travel, Richard Boone, such a bastard, we hate him a lot, more compressed, no inside man in this holdup, stuck in the mud, a Prussian officer, what you’ve learned, everybody hates the Prussians, honest hatred for the Prussians, why they’re leaving, the rich people want to save their money, it comes to pass, won’t let the stagecoach goes, deliver her services, because he’s a Prussian, they all turn on her, why it would make Maupassant into a famous guy, a woman’s virtue, she’s the most virtuous one amongst them, she didn’t have to leave, she genuinely doesn’t like the Prussians, property seized, my property is my business, the most steadfast, get the money and run, she is forced to give up her principles, forced by the group to have sex with the Prussian, the structure of Hombre, two indians go into a bar to have a drink, holdup men, jostles his arm, our hero shows up, hits him in the face with the butt end of his rifle, contempt is not appreciated, doesn’t recognize him as John Russell, recognizes his voice, a parallelism, eating the dogs, they’re dirty, they pick at themselves, her husband is literally starving the Indians, took a great story and turned it, a western, not set in 1899, a transition period, the stage line, the right period, it’s in the west, Arizona, occupation and privation, she implies, the women cut her hair, I’m not going to tell you what it was like when the men had me alone, what was it like?, raping her all day long, contemptuous of her former society, captives by natives, sometimes people prefer it, Dances With Wolves (1990), learns to dance with wolves, we’re pushed in either direction, what was it like, it must have been horrible, matter of fact, possibly they weren’t as horrible as all that, we are invited to speculate but we are not told, the way a Rashomon-style story works, an awe, that’s why the title is important, what do we mean by a man, he does what a man does, you people fucked this all up, probably gonna get me killed, a let’s go try and fix this story, even the Mexican stagecoach guy we like, the capable one, he saved the water, need this guy, their only hope, the pattern works the same, thinking of their station, not every piece works perfectly, until they get hungry, three wives, a bigger version of this story, the mudwagon is much smaller, ovens for their feet, the water is the resource that needs to be watched, a little bit of warmth, food and her virtue, when you read a gender flipped story, a Conanna The Barbarian movie, female barbarian, tougher than any man, males are disposable, that’s what a man does, men are more disposable, let’s go get in a car wrecked, let’s drive carefuller, send yourself out there, that’s what this story is about, that’s what makes him a man or three men, that’s why this story works, why it is such a good story, an aspect of it, the racism, the moral certainty of these people of his character, they ask him to get out of the stagecoach, the Mexican’s reaction, just ride on top, what does it matter, don’t rock the boat, our narrator kid, a former official of the company, I’m officially fired, see that man get kicked out, he doesn’t bully, he’s not a Richard Boone bully, so good, cold dead hand, the shit bullied out of him, just takes his ticket, you called me a bad name, we’re all in this together, we we we, individualism, libertarianism, the message, this is what a man is, this is what a man is like, don’t be like these other men, or is he doing it for the girl?, the right thing to do, what it is, why does he get out of the stagecoach, argued into it, no skin off his nose, just want to have coffee, the final scene in the mining area, to try to save the girl, her whole lifestyle is funded by her husband’s graft, Indian agents, not even a real doctor, a doctor of divinity, a man’s work, preventing a woman from dying, because somebody needs to do it, none of these other people are men, kill us anyway, coulda chucked the money down, they want the water too, why it is so disturbing, in 1967, a disturbing movie, the same story as Tom Godwin’s The Cold Equations, suddenly convert phaser juice into fuel for your aircraft, gender flip it, made the pilot a female, he was going to visit his sister on Woden, we don’t think it a horror, a man killing a girl, it needs to be done, 7 people are more valuable than 1, the same setup, let’s grind em up in a meatgrinder, almost always men, opposition to women being sent into combat, via a draft, distanced from it, in the recent bombing of Iran one of the pilots was a woman, women can do it, the audio drama, only an hour long, keeps the narrator, summarize, set scenes, tricks to making audio drama work, the simplest way (not the best way), the movie does the best version, the movie is clearly the best, the book is good in some of the details, the way of the story being told, Maupassant doesn’t do it that way, third person omniscient narrator, that setup, where the book excels is in the dialogue, Fire In The Hole, they bought the character, two novels, this weird thing with his writing, he starts off for an idea for a story, he’s not really a story guy, he’s a character guy, Karen Sisco, Karen Makes Out, Out Of Sight, let me see how this character walks and talks, Carla Gugino, Pronto, Riding The Rap, Peter Falk, a paid researcher, more co-author than researcher, Tishomingo Blues, local dixie-mafia, high stakes civil war reenactors, Bounty Hunters, The Moonshine War, Swag, The Switch, City Primeval, Gold Coat, Freaky Deaky, Bandits, Get Shorty, Out Of Sight, imdb Elmore Leonard, a Tarantino movie, Three Ten To Yuma, invasion of Cuba, Teddy Roosevelt, A Coyote’s In The House, Westlake and Block, hand gestures vs. dialogue, more westerns of his, male confronting male, a good western, Be Cool, John Travolta, a tv show too, a gangster who moves to Hollywood, I really like movies, a sequel, fairly inconsistent, Block is the most consistent, I thought Elmore Leonard was awesome, a tough guy learning about civil war era underwear, a “farb”, The Rosary Murders, a very scott book, Umberto Eco, The Name Of The Rose, a Scott book, Sean Connery, a mini-series, a nod to Jorge Luis Borges, John Turturro, 8 episodes, do that book one day, a couple of weeks of prep, a short story in between, Elmore Leonard’s The Rustlers, the audiobook version, there isn’t much to say about it, it’s just good, this is Guy De Maupassant retold, Stagecoach is also Maupassant americanized, instead of switching from race to class, Airport (1970) and Airplane (1979), a train or plane full of different kinds of people who react and depend on one person, the burnt out guy from WWII has to fly the plane again, become the man, nuns who speak Jive, characters on the train, characters in a situation, The Towering Inferno (1974) is stationary, The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Hombre hits hard, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, listening to stupid people, we gotta fix this shit, buckle down don’t complain do it, the same essential core, everyone has to rely on John Wayne, he’s a criminal, everybody likes him, a similar thing in Assault On Precinct 13 (1976), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, High Noon (1952), Hombre the movie is more suitable for women as well, go to the used bookstore, a western section, very small, not a lot of women poring over that section, different kind of stories for us, how to be, why it is successful, a darn good story, talking about them today, the best version of the story, Paul Newman, movie star, Cool Hand Luke time, how simple the movie is, how cheap it is, couple of weeks in the desert, couple horses, no special effects, couple of squibs, fake blood, good result, he was old, he’s the guy on the salad dressing, Barbara Stanwyck, shaking people to their core, we need to have more special effects, where’s the action in this?, a punch, a jostle, hit with the butt end of a rifle, machine guns flying, literary kinda, Lord Of Light by Roger Zelazny, not read by him?, out of print for a long time, he’s a good narrator, devoted to him Victor Bevine, Matt Godfrey, maybe it didn’t exist, all of the Amber novels, A Night In Lonesome October, why people love that book so much, the first five Amber novels, started late for public domain purposes, fantasy, sword and sorcery almost, colonizing another planet, in awe of it, world religion, Hindu gods, a Philip K. Dick novel that’s kind of similar, influence on the United States, The Divine Invasion, Linda Ronstadt, The Cosmic Puppets, Virginia, similarly oblivious, intolerant, gonna be the love interest, town drunk, too much detail, demi-gods, instead of having a spiritual journey, man’s role on earth, the nature of evil, using a different set of background assumptions, their different, born in Maryland or Virginia (near DC), he went back to the town her remembered as a child, an overlay, what if things are not as they seem, how Zelazny puts books together, smoking in Amber, self-insert, with Maupassant, he’s everyone, the moral failings of people, bizarre rationalizations, incredibly pregnant, so pregnant, the moral questioning goes in every direction, he’s really good, his novels, Bel Ami, visit the family, leave the dog, there and back long day, a movie each way, listen to an audiobook, look at the road?, book club at work, Just Stab Me Now by Jill Bearup, a spoof or a satire of a romantasy, a little meta, not-uninteresting, a very new book, Burial Rites by Hannah Kent, last person executed in Iceland, still in development, none of these covers are good, just a bunch of fonts and floors, The Haar by David Sodergren, Three Body Problem, Project Hail Mary, Artemis, how couldn’t there be?, 21 hours, Theodore Bikel, Richard Poe is good, the problems with the audiobook are the main character narrator not the actual narrator, that’s coming up, metastuff, how long he’s been workin on the book, such a nothing character, she wouldn’t take my blanket last night, prudish vs. not prudish, slaps you in the face with somebody’s boob, so important to story, Edgar Allan Poe, a western and The Galileo Seven can be the same story, back burner.

BB - Hombre by Elmore Leonard

Hombre by Elmore Leonard

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #865 – READALONG: A Stitch In Time by Andrew Robinson

The SFFaudio Podcast #865 – Jesse, Tony De Simone, and Maissa Bessada talk about A Stitch In Time by Andrew Robinson

Talked about on today’s show:
the last Deep Space Nine novel, Armin Shimmerman co-wrote The 34th Rule, The Laertian Gamble, Robert Sheckley, John Gregory Betancourt, Kristine Kathryn Rush, Esther Friesner, performing Quark, pinches his nose, Maissa will like this book, so right, very actoryly, an actor prepares sort of thing, how do I get into my role?, diary entries, apparently yeah, that’s the story, elements, scenes that are from the show, the way it is told, moments, backstory is the bulk of the book, after the show’s over, deep into season 7, destruction of Cardassia, his mother, Neela, episodes with her?, the housekeeper, months ago, coming, he’s the whole show, the focus of the show, steals the spotlight, great screen presence, how he got his start as a movie star?, Jeffrey Combs, Re-Animator, H.P. Lovecraft 80s movies, Brunt, Lower Decks, alternate universe Garak, delete it, there’s no such thing as a prequel to a prequel, getting the plans, what’s gonna happen next, a prequel to a prequel, fuck you with the spoilers, when the movie Alien 3 was gonna come out, walk straight into the middle of the theater, a terrible movie, fragility statements, you’re on a boat, your gonna get seasick, don’t worry about it, you can’t help them by hiding information, popular to ‘ship Garak and Bashir, neither characters are gay, Bashir is intrigued by Garak, very lonely, what’s canon, he writes Garak as bisexual, one line, the guy that he murdered later, everybody finds him attractive, palindrome, set to marry, if you were really lovers, you would have, hurt by that, happy to be close to people, that’s not really it, made lonely, closed off society, a very good deep dive on a weird society, Deep Space Nine, if it is a metaphor what is it a metaphor for?, Cardassians, TNG, Ensign Ro, in the build up of those worlds, a 1984 planet, the Obsidian Order, the occupation of Bajor, israelis occupying palestine, the occupation of Ireland by England, not a perfect match 1 to 1 for anything, all those circular conversation, all true but all lies, he built it into this backstory, his father is not his father, that girl is not his lover but she is, he’s his uncle, not just being cucked, he does love him, a man who’s raising you, the shipping thing is at its worst, at its most parodic in all the mirror universe episode, just Ezri, kissed on and kissing Kira, a lesbian in the alternate universe, Ferengi Zek, to ‘ship people, have sex with Jadzia, like a cartoon universe, not terrible trek show, more of that, in the original Trek too, episodes written by fans, The Empath, torture Spock and McCoy, interesting, but terrible, what’s going on really, not some idea they’re exploring, pick your favourite episode of Deep Space Nine, a clone of himself and he doesn’t know it, a ripoff of a great Philip K. Dick story, a sad one, Molly falls into a time hole, a ripoff of Iceman (1984), Rom bunts, declare victory, what it is actually is philosophy, pastime, recapitulation, working together as a group, so many things going on in that episode, a way to defeat the vulcans, what a great episode, kicks him off the team, doing life wrong, the heart of the show, he looks like a loser, thinks he’s cute, awkward dumb and smart, Ferengi kids, what Garak thinks about baseball, wrestling and boxing, team games, basketball and baseball, incomprehensibly inane, sent to boarding school, very similar to what the Spartans did to their children, denied enough food, denied safety, thrive or die, loses an eye, happy to have, time with their mothers, learn the war arts, have to steal, caught stealing food, learn to be resourceful and tricky, graduation, surrounding a Sparta, Helots, secretly murder, told from the Athenian point of view, apprenticeship, this class of people, the elites, the sons of the nobility, famous boarding schools, Sandhurst, rule parts of the world, John Buchan, many many such cases, abusive and fucked up and weird system, kills a bunch of Romulans, false flag, In The Pale Moonlight, the machinations behind it, evil vs. necessary, used to create that character, forced his teammate to kill himself, trained and brought up, little pet, kidnapped from its family in the desert, “Meela”, contradicts the fact, learns to blend in and disappear, essentially a chameleon, a gecko, his skin can’t change colour, the background for it, trolls, they’re more like frogs, always raining on Ferenganar, round mud huts, the Wayoun character, Odo, an uplifted species, ape-like, squirrels, living on nuts and berries, give them a gift, turned into slaves, a built in false-consciousness built into your genetic code, a little bit of blue on the spoon, did they evolve from reptiles?, possibly also bajorans, it doesn’t have to be he literally is a reptile, being reptilian, be so mean and torturey, they’re just like us, Quark is praying, a slip of latinum in the ear of the divine treasury guy, bribes the god with the coin and sneaks in with a mask later and steals it back, dark and mysterious, a great backstory that allows it, Kira’s backstory, her spiritual religion prophet stuff, all there already, the most mysterious character has the most fitting backstory, written in first person, best written, better written than most books, the actor was using this stuff to help tell the story, the sympathetic character, awful things, a real theater person, one other way of thinking about this is a one man play, 12 hours long, impressive, indulgent, paid all the receipts, his Odo is pretty good, Dabo girl trying to kill him, does Kira fine, we’re getting it from his POV, backstory is enough, is this a science fiction novel?, no it is not, a one man show set in a science fiction universe, “science fiction wallpaper”, no exploration of technologies, the wire, that episode is about it, a character focused story, a really good book, a really good exploration of how you come up with a character that’s interesting, make it fit the facts, working backwards, he had those things, how, why, referring back to the show, nicely woven, stitched up, the wholecloth of this book, where Garak is introduced, the only Cardassian on the station, nobody knows, why is he acting that way?, in continual use, he could handle the isolation and the hate, that signature smile, evil smile, hiding his feelings, pain becomes pleasure, he’s floating, a really good thing to add in, always has to reflect back of what’s on the show, a disjointment there, Sisko has sex with Jadzia, taints their relationship, lusting after Jadzia, Quark, Worf, Bashir, Kira’s after her, when she dies, Ezri is terrific, a really good character, more of a counsellor than Deanna Troi ever was, remember Barkley?, a mix of really good science fiction ideas, social ideas, what does it mean to forgive your enemies, silly episodes, Sisko thinks he’s a science fiction writer in the 1950s, the canonical stuff, what’s going on with Jake Sisko, or Nog, what a great arc Nog has, the best Star Trek show, one of the most interesting characters is Garak, Andrew Robinson, the main badguy in the first Dirty Harry movie, Clint Eastwood needs to kill him, typecast, Hellraiser movie, psycho-killer, he’s just a stage actor who likes meaty roles, tried out for Odo, Rene Auberjonois, the biggest and most interesting acting role for almost any actor, the expanded the role, interesting character, because of what he did with it, this doofus, the Rom and Leeta episode, he’s a cartoon, tries to get Vic Fontaine to take him as his opening act, making it all fit together, tailoring it, what do you do on a show like that?, build sets, sew costumes, put on a lot of makeup, can’t I be a human this episode, guest stars not wearing their makeup, interactive with the material, prescriptive, a premise, a weak one, Bashir falls with the weak boned girl, flying planet, never comes up again, she’s in a wheelchair, let’s put a blind person on the bridge, doesn’t come up that much, let’s do something a little interesting, what do they need a tailor for, bartender, replicator, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, gardener, tending the memorials, he loves his country, Family (TNG episode), after the famous Locutus of Borg, vineyard, post traumatic stress, fall down in the mud, get back to the show next week, such a rich world, soft science fiction, it is not about technology, it is about society, David Ogden Steirs is an elderly scientist, make their star better, handwavium, a program where the kill everybody after a certain age, break with his society?, not accepting euthanasia, a thing that comes up as an idea, shell shock, another name for it, drink yourself to death, awareness of this concept, the soft sciences, where is the idea in here?, there really isn’t one, what Paul called this, spaceships on the wall, robots, non-science fiction novels by Philip K. Dick, the principal is a real bitch, he just can’t say the word robot, he’s trying to understand why people are so weird, quite a personality, robot taxi drivers, please don’t stiff me on this fare, one of the weird things about Star Trek, robots, the Doctor or Vic Fontaine, sentient ais, where are you drawing the distinction, a very specific tradition, slavery, a story about slavery, replicas, sewer cleaners, not usually the best episodes, Voyager, 7 of 9, being freed, that kid she frees from the borg, you are put into a cult, the bad cardassian, is this Gul Dukat, his father died, a Pah Wraith cult on Empok Nor, obsessively sexing after Kira, kidnapped by her childhood priest, current teams plan, are you serious, this meeting will end in 15 minutes, defaults at 1, premium features, a pay system, that’s why they wanted to switch us, transistor fm, something built into Brave, short ones, a popup, distracting, something interesting, listen in 7 months to find out what it was, not happy with this system, Brave Browser, like Netscape?, Chrome, Safari, they don’t have any money like Microsoft and Google, its built in naturally, blocks up every pop-ups, no cookies, no ads, on your phone, make your life a lot better, wonderful, a system like skype, until fuckin today, a scene, going along, her childhood priest shows up on the station, spiritual development, faith and prophets, a lady on the station who’s gonna give birth to a baby, half-Gul Dukat, a miracle, tries to murder her, suicide pills, the one for him, is that a science fiction episode?, what’s going on with that, is it a miracle, a weird kind of science fiction, language as a technology, learn rhetorical and argumentation, what an ad homenim is, logical fallacies, tools to escape problems we create with language, what good writing looks like, in essay writing right now, people are using Chat GPT for the homework and their fiction novels, really good at grammar, dangling modifiers, makes writing pablum, designed to fill pages, instead of 6 words its 48, like we’re required with at work, a repository for this shit, when we go to Quark’s bar, the experience, who’s comin’ out of the holosuites, interact with people, Sisko’s dad, what’s the purpose of running that restaurant, paying customers, is it possible to have purpose without just gaining money, a journalist, get his stuff published, he lives with his dad, he would like to have some purpose, supportive of all that stuff we did get out of Garak, addicted to this tasp, Larry Niven wire, video games, you fix up an old car, the cleaning and the finding only takes seconds, 13 seconds, accomplishment, a fake car, maybe it feels real, science fiction ideas hidden in the show, how is it such a good book?, how much the worldbuilding felt real, a lived in culture and society, science fiction setting, felt real, that cartoon, its memberberries, make jokes, it is the salt vampire, over the top, are there any science fiction ideas explored in it, the characters, feels like a real lived in place, relatable stuff, do I relate to Garak, related to Boymler, that’s me, empathy for him, understand his backstory, a Jesse problem, why is this thing suck, why is this think good, the Obi Wan show, Andor’s amazing, really solid, emotional change, a reflection on reality, this is a colour revolution, post-Soviet States, to establish western style liberal democracies, Tienanmen Square, what is it exactly?, is that happening because people don’t like their system, no it isn’t happening without foreign involvement, there was a big long backstory to it, snipers were shooting at people, something bigger than it was going to be, killing people who are protesting, a functionary in the intelligence bureau, she’s good at her job, I see local corruption, become a couple, eventually he is put into position to become a spy, the best kind of revolt is one you are in charge of, stealing weapons from themselves, that’s a real phenomena, Putin is Hitler is very simple, sophisticated information, it doesn’t hurt the same way, brutally repressed, particular flag, it’s not Christianity, just good, technological stuff, historical stuff, analogous about Stalin robbing banks to fund the revolution, mostly Star Wars, cool guy with a dog friend, they get medals, they do Dambusters, a frequent argument, technically more fantasy than science fiction, because space, because aliens, split the difference, space fantasy, getting caught up in the argument, why should I invest my time in this thing, we like Garak, kinda remember them as sort of crappy, TNG ones, they were early, Picard wasn’t Picard yet, Riker wasn’t Riker yet, Data becomes a very rich character, Worf has a long career, a bad dad, didn’t even have the beard yet, didn’t have a brother who was a twin of him yet, so character based, this is good, but not science fiction, most recent attempt, a Star Trek Discovery novel, Suru, the tall alien played by Doug Jones, half the book, before the beginning of Discovery, Captain Georgiou, less interesting, it is written after, it can’t contradict anything, putting all the pieces together and filling in, James Swallow, 12 hours is too long, getting it finished in time, rushing at the end, not a bad book at all, The Tower Treasure, the Hardy Boys, the revised version, who the Hardy Boys were, a glimpse of an idea, what was the purpose, a big phenomena, let’s understand what it is, the books as a thing, why were they big?, a show with Cora, Mistress Of Mellyn, an early one, castle, nice dress, great hair, one of the windows is lit, gothic romance, a possibility, a secret there, a rich family, rich and handsome, he has a secret, life-threatening, almost never, gothics appear to have super-natural elements, traditional gothic, he’s Donald Trump, old man Jenkins, you were the tourist guide, understand adventure books, explore that, Nancy Drew, a good book, what made it good?, refining our system, a Fredric Brown, The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown, What Mad Universe, The Star Mouse, pairing with a Sheckley, a non-musical version, just voice, Warm by Robert Sheckley, The Sweeper Of Loray, he can be absolutely terrific, Mindswap, fairly like a Douglas Adams novel, The Screaming Mimi, shouted out in that Lawrence Block book, Egypt, J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, vampire best friend, really gaslighty, suck the blood out of everybody, really isolated, Green Tea, a monkey, a ghost monkey, A Midsummers Night’s Dream, favourite, a good one, fairy couple, the mechanicals, end of May, some rehearsals, one show in a park, midnight in the middle of summer, dusk, somewhere in July, The Nameless City, alligator people, The Assassination Bureau, Ltd. by Jack London, 4 hours 30 minutes, finished by someone else, finished by Robert Fish, a society of evil ruthless killers, more than it seems, embroiled in a struggle, ethical lunatics, a year long journey, espionage, there’s a movie as well, Jack London stan, how can you live your life, To Build A Fire, White Fang, The Call Of The Wild, he dies and the dog lives, poor you, he’s old, the biggest thoughts, Cardassian society, parallels in reality, they really pressure their citizens to cover up all their emotions and hide their true selves, an anti-emotional society, frightened of intimacy, is our society becoming more like that, way less disciplined, not a lot of room fore leisure, he likes poetry, a poet he likes, you’re not supposed to share yourself with other people, people running society, more individuals as opposed to a societal phenomena, the opposite problem, more like the 1950s, the model is something like Nineteen Eighty Four, The Giver by Lois Lowry, the influence of girls, girls have a lot more power than they did, a book told from a dude’s pov, not flamboyant, not gay at all, 2 or 3 women really shaped him, chronologically, they got together after, that childhood trauma, distant from his mom, made him open up and then cut him off, better prepared for the Bajoran lady, open to them, more information about Garak, this book doesn’t lend itself to subversive reading, Bashir is a funny character, a pussyhound, the friend of O’Brien, best friends, the saddest relationship on Deep Space Nine, meme of O’Brien’s wife, no Miles I’m doing this, playing in the holodeck with his friend, Garak doesn’t have lunch with Bashir anymore, spy on the holodeck episode, Bashir shot him, he made a point of talking about that episode, the actress playing Ezri Dax, the old character, looks like she’s 6, Garak needs to keep cracking the codes, he can’t, keeps having panic attacks, seems to fix him for a minute, the spy codes, really what’s underneath it all, helping to kill his own people, really nice layering, the bumbling way Ezri seems to work, tell you a story about myself, in this other story something that will help you, here’s a story, hardwired for stories, dogs and cats wish they could, skills, a twitter video of dogs communicating, things are poisoned, almost a story, really fun, break all your legs, Cinnamon Sam has been listening, a tabby point Siamese, years ago, caught by accident, Coleman, cats don’t know how to spell, Lexy Lou, cranky, joints are painful, not running around like you wanna be, fairly young, cat traps, not indoor outdoor cats, a stray, that’s the problem, worry so much, dangers out there, getting emotional, a real bad snowstorm, no snowstorms in the summer, cars and other animals and other people, pillow, get Brave going, Brave will make your life a lot better, proper episodes, October 2024, two random songs, Time Considered As A Helix Of Semi-Precious Stones by Samuel Delaney, David Agranoff, Alice In Wonderland, expanded on things and made changes, Through the Looking-Glass, Libsyn, a big job, we did The Tempest, Forbidden Planet, like an episode of Star Trek, Julie Taymor film adaptation, the gender swap makes no sense, the main character is a wizard, gave up his dukedom to his brother, a rowboat and a bunch of books, the daughter has never seen a man before, Miranda, Caliban is male, never gonna use this for podcasts again, lame ass service, Brave for Mac?, it makes no sense, what’s the purpose of a gender swap?, wanted Helen Mirren in the movie, Lady MacBeth, the Derek Jarmin version, Prospero’s Books, very artsy, you have to cut out a bunch of stuff, so much comedy in his stuff, the one with Iago, Othello, Julius Caesar, his last play, The Taming Of The Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, “the induction”, basically a drunk bum, coming back from a hunt, pretend he’s just woken up from a coma, call him by my name, won’t that be funny?, the play proper is the thing they put on for him as a show, a framing device, MacBeth or Hamlet, act in a suspicious way, the whole thing is farce, a world within a world, what’s going on In The Taming Of The Shrew, that way she’ll marry me, I hate you, what I’m hearing is you love me, becomes tamed, bitter from previous treatment, spite everybody, nobody can marry Bianca, couple who wanna get married, superfun, super funny, Shakespeare’s the best, the other playwrights of his period, Richard III, overlay WWI on it, but for what purpose, the Kenneth Branagh version, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet with Mel Gibson, edgier movies, Romeo + Juliet, cut out a lot of Shakespeare to do it that way, no sets, classrooms, a headache, at home, Franco Zeffirelli version, just reading the text is the best version, the score, a filmscore composer, create more textures, big themes, house music, Lawrence Of Arabia (1962), Hans Zimmer, hypnotic, Danny Elfman scores, John Carpenter, Mr Jim Moon and his Hypnogoria podcast, not on twitter anymore, his own synth, original music, music, it is rare, dialogue over music, it doesn’t usually work, mix it just right, distracting, that’s why people do it, because it is distracting, bad sound quality hidden by music, music over dialogue on tv shows, the music will have lyrics over the conversation, fuck off, make a snap decision, not investing any of my time in this, the signs, a good movie experience, you’re paying your $20 for everything in life, one of the greatest writers from the United States ever vs. something new maybe written with ai, a good amount of science fiction short stories, rival invisible men, the transparent route, the camouflage route, a tennis match back and forth, he bought that idea from a friend, he can turn it into something amazing, a science fiction course, undergraduate time, The Science Fiction Research Association anthology, university of Charleston, Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, The Machine Stops, [Scott Miller], PDF Page, really consistent, 3 times a week, used to be a newscaster, retired to Costa Rica, records all day long, Don Congdon and Associates, they’re not interested in reality, they’re interested in making money, automated, they don’t have actual people because that would cost money, host your own stuff if you don’t want to be deleted, difficulty with YouTube copyright for posting their own music, products put on there, when you go to YouTube, Tubi, google TV, ad free youtube, adds enrage Jesse, nobody else seems to care, used to them and desensitized, become enraged, find a way, tune them out, into the background, two things, youtube only cares whether their ads are put on their service, the advertiser really wants you to pay attention, suggestive and adult content, just as bad or worse in the ads, boobs or something, sexual content, Saberspark, animation, mobile games, happens a lot, set up systems to deal with people complauning, the removal of the headphone jack, the removal of the dislike count, me at a restaurant feeding you food, anything from the menu, break into the kitchen and see, don’t be involved in a system that disrespect you or is trying to fuck you, theoretically a student, getting involved, passed away, Phil Fox from Myrtle Beach, a very creative person, make the time to have the thing, then you’ll have it, how does it help him, coffee for this kid, see you on twitter.

A Stitch In Time by Andrew Robinson

Posted by Jesse Willis