The SFFaudio Podcast #796 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Cave Girl by Edgar Rice Burroughs

The SFFaudio Podcast #796 – The Cave Girl by Edgar Rice Burroughs, read by Gerald Moe (for LibriVox). This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (8 hour 18 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Maissa Bessada, Will Emmons, Alex (Pulpcovers), and Cora Buhlert

Talked about on today’s show:
serialized in All-Story, 1913, whatever, The Cave Man, 1917, a single book in 1925, Dell Mapback, can we all guess where in the book where the cave man begins?, a chapter title, end of Part 1, went on an on, dizzying, when the Cave Girl takes over the plot for a while, recover the jewels, I guess we’ll leave, the family shows up in the plot, less interesting, here’s the question that will spur anger and debate and make rage quit, classist, racist, or other ist?, really hated Germans too, WWI had not started yet, he likes the French, nasty stuff in some of the Tarzans, classist, no matter what, that race is bad, our heros always have to be Thurston Howell III, the doctor from Boston in MASH, literal count or royalty, every fuckin book, immortal warrior, an officer in a country that doesn’t have an official class, Smith-Jones isn’t even his real name, David Ogden David Ogden Stiers, reestablish the aristocracy, these are my peoples, dallies with primitives, “the main character is a mommas boy intellectual with weak muscles who washes up on an lost island full of cave folks – he disdains muscles, but there is a nude cave girl with a nice smile, so i think i know what’s gonna happen”, contessa in a cave, pirates, The Cave Contessa, just Tarzan, gender flipped Tarzan raised by cave people, rich white boy becomes man in six months, tuberculosis, his cough, the excuse for visiting the South Seas, Robert Louis Stevenson, non-specific cough of death, miserably died, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, Robert E. Howard’s mom didn’t man up, king of the Cave People, doing your way for 1000 years, sharpen a stick, we’re not living in caves anymore, do some fucking farming, limited wars are over bud, obey the king, we slaughter our enemies, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, At the Earth’s Core, the Yale, cannibalistic lesbian pterodactyl people, Waldo Emerson, the advanced peoples, he a momma’s boy, a living father?, wealthy widow, not good enough for her very precious son, luckily he preserved her chastity to impress her mother, hot for him for years, we have to do this properly, turned them all into versions of themself, Nadara, full title, illiterate, sign the book, what’s sign, literally a cave woman, a high grade wife, French countess, brown skinned, that’s the tan, their babies will be white, the white goddess, wearing a skirt at the end, Son Of Tarzan, runs off into the forest, girl rescued from arab slavers, she was French the whole time, no no jesse you stupid fool, of course she’s a countess, Ralph Waldo Emerson Smith Jones, important characters, not of the upper crust, phrenology, sloppy skulls not good for learning Shakespeare, a series of villains step forth, I’m Blow Blow the killer, Flatfoot and the other guy, I was going to kill you a minute ago, I’m a cave man, 20 minutes left, fast friends with a random pirate, what kind of pirates are in the middle of the South Pacific?, 3 ships show up randomly, blackbirders, trans-pacific pirates are not a thing, grow copra all day, cannibals are very romantic, yes, coincidence and pure fantasy, Monster Men, think’s he’s a creature, a girl he thinks he’s worthy of, his genetics are not monster men, genre classify, definitely Edgar Rice Burroughs, anthropological science fiction, the anthropology is really bad, a patriarchal society, women and caves are property, cartoon cavemen, what hunter gathers were like, The Old Way by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, The Origin Of The Family, Private Property And The State by Fredrich Engles, take issue, we’re gonna shoot your dog, do it straight up as a comedy, don’t change anything, the book is funny and fun and totally ridiculous, repetitive, he did no research, he could have researched, Typee by Herman Melville, not a single dinosaur in this book, a lost island, the fantastic element, all the coincidences, Caprona and Pellucidar, not a lost world, just a plateau in South America, did we get the coordinates?, FadedPage, degree, lat 10 south long 150 west, deliberate blanks to obscure the guilty, historians maintan the true answer is lost, Nagula, the earthquake and the monster in the woods, laziness?, pure Burroughs, internal mythology, the only other culture we get, a sewing kit for the sewing bag, sewed a costume for himself, grandma’s grandma remembered the earthquake, adopted parents, the lady in labour, that’s their culture, I am the strong one, King Kong at the end, the whole island sank, an atoll tho, all that’s left after the earthquake, just south of Hawaii, eat raw fish, a whole Mexico south of Hawaii, not a volcanic island, caves, a steaming volcano, used to be volcanic, how did you like the book?, fun without being great, you should check that out right now, The Mad King, lesser Burroughs, the one with the gorgeous Michael Whelan cover, fur suit, what colour is her hair, should be raven haired, if it’s not raven its not right, just a stick, a very very short spear, he’s got a shield, they throw rocks at him, cudgel, hide over a wicker frame, fire harden it?, cave men are very soft, the dialogue tree is very minimal, I’m wearing nagula skin, the morality is very simple, lesser Burroughs, some random person, a place great to get things, Burroughs ought to have a place in literature that’s taught in schools, don’t involve schools in your argument, Tarzan, this argument from twitter is overstated, the professor was a little bit like, travel narratives, yellow cover, Michael Herring, what scene is that though, grabbed on the foot, there’s a scene later, she hits him in the head with a rock, by accident, the cannibals worship her, confused, agreed, suddenly Stark shows up on the scene, need badguys, the random encounter table, a lazy book, especially because of the publication chapter, several years to be serialized out, what happened this chapter?, had to be closer, I gotta finish this thing, from the back, washed ashore, thought his life is over, staring desperately out to see, dark and mysterious interior, savage cliff dwellers, a tiny spark of bravery, with the help of the beautiful cave princess, stripped away, emdash, jum hum hum, Burroughs writing a coward and a weakling, that was funny, the Boston families all had two last names, the tell in 2024, we are very enlightened now, people are marrying money to money, the reason you have that famous last name, that money or status, changed the law, double name, politically active green leaning person, did the husband take the double name?, Saxe-Coburg, legal for a long time, marrying money, call me by my first name teachers, married the heiress of a factory, the reason people do it today, last name is Jobs, Bezos, last name was Boner, more of a left leaning green leaning tell, aspirational, all the activity that the upperly mobile middle class people, mirroring stuff from a long time ago, simulating rich people having servants, it’s a Disney ride, cleaning lady, alcohol decanters, east europeans, literal lawns are that, glass decanters, you’ve got a cask of Amontillado in your basement, or whiskey, the alcohol store, look in the mirror, what you’re doing is insane, the readership of this book, I wanna be a rich guy who marries a countess, lower class people striving to be in the upper class, that’s the fantasy, where is Heinlein showing royalty, go farm in the sky, Heinlein is not a classist, idealistic view of America, kind of a myth, striving for that, political dynasties, Bushes, Kennedys, Clintons, Adams, president of the European Commission, highest ranking person in the EU, minor aristocrat, Angela Merkel, if you’re going to canonize Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess Of Mars, once you start teaching books in school, this book has no answers, given to read vs. forced to study, Mark Twain is great, you’re on a podcast about vintage science fiction, All Quiet On The Western Front, an important book, honour kills his daughter, Nineteen-Eighty Four, Brave New World, the prison guards in that institution, punch a clock, abuse, the canon of school, the Library Of America, some sort of non-profit, funded by the US government and the Ford Foundation, let’s imagine they’re the canon, some of them are public domain, a good list of science fiction books, American science fiction from the 1950s, a Burroughs volume, for people who are Americans, Ralph Waldo Emerson, why did he choose that name, that New England feeling, sickly rich kid, politically different, named after a famous author, academic nerd, George Washington Carver, telling name, Smith-Jones makes it a this is your story reader, you asthmatic nerd you, Charles Atlas, you to can be a strongman, the sales pitch is it sells itself, slings and arrows and pointy sticks we stab into this book, page turning good writing, super-frothy and light, still a good book, read it within 24 clock hours, making things exciting, 15 20 minutes with teenagers, The Mad King, a king had died, a son had been locked in a tower, the mad king had escaped, the horse had bolted, car and horse chase, all go off a cliff, what was that, 15 minutes in, it’s on LibriVox go grab it, Edgar Rice Burroughs should be put in cars (not schools), still fun, just pick up a different Burroughs, Lexington, Kentucky, Ohio, Lexington Green bookstore, visiting family, some big road, Target, cross a road, the exact road, stupid, look at all these bookstores, pedestrian crossing, Caroline Island, the Dell Mapback, nobody living there at the moment, crime novels, murder mysteries, scarce, She, too expensive, Del Rey books, DAW books, Ballantine Adult Fantasy paperbacks, book club editions, stuck with them, coffee table books about ships and WWII, the Hornblower books, shitty women’s fiction, anything left to squeeze out of this very frothy book, his name means naked, did he know what he was going to do with him?, the old crew, William Stark, Burlingame is the captain, taciturnity, martinet, that half of a sentence, the non-cave man badguy who gets the most screentime, go rescue the kids stuck in caves, the real monsters were the civilized people all along, European villains too, a strict disciplinarian, named after the whip, hair cut in not short enough, this makes him a badguy, the sailors don’t like him, ethic common immigrants, the rich guy from Boston, rumors about this old mill, the rumors are always true, clannish religious whackjobs, ignorant, sees his big fishy eyes, Lovecraft protagonist, ready to swoon, any other author, would have been done first person, waking up on a beach, how’d I get there?, who am I?, what makes it funny, unreliable narrator, tries to rape our girl, punched her unconscious, got lusty, inside cave people’s heads, pointing sticks inside their heads, rocks, Nadara’s POV, I can’t marry you now, marrying doesn’t just involve grabbing your hair and dragging you to my cave, funny interaction, prudish, not-religious, doesn’t ever go native, not from the upperclass, fearful of cannibals, life is way better on shore, little work, lots of food, and sex available, made up earthquake, a leopard in the words, has a happy ending, what a classist, his mom dies, forced back to Earth, wife is laden with eggs, getting broody, just makes you get the next book, The Gods Of Mars, if that’s even a word, tied together, anglo-saxon and gallic ruling classes, seven novels in 1913, stinkers, Warlord Of Mars, The Mucker, The Mad King, at the typewriter labouring, he was The Efficiency Expert, the American dream worked for him, he wasn’t begging Farnsworth [Wright] for his cheque, harder, the millenial, he was web 2.0, PayPal guy, Charles Ardai, I’d like to be a sharecropper for streaming, your account is deleted, we’ve demonitized you, you have to, even if google downranks you, Eyes Left, 30 retweets and 1000 views, a huge account, turned off in a second, truth social!, all my devices, Bluesky, If This Then That (IFTTT), calling it like it is, in the bubble, we’re in a bubble, COVID is not over people, Ukraine and Russia crap, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner daughter, focused on her watermelon shirt, Palastine flag, wearing a mask outside, a celebrity daughter, a search, weirdos who take these pictures, always wearing a mask, that’s the story, an OCD trigger, people who have problems, a security blanket now, I’m a good person, she’s not going to die if she get’s COVID, it’s either she’s hiding her face or she’s triggered by it, wearing masks together, mental trauma thing, always COVID people, Trish Matson, outdoor party on the patio, vaccination status, the vaccinations don’t work, sci-fi conventions wear mask, all the killer virus stories we wrote, Glasgow worldcon, vaccination status, get bullied, allergic against these things, at a grocery store, yelled at in an empty room, murderer or something, dropped off on a primitive island, get their health up, cooking?, she made fire, Burroughs didn’t do the research, just eats those fruits he doesn’t even name, crabs, sashimi, fish out of the river, oysters, a girl in the forest he’s afraid of, he’s handsome, skinny rail 6 foot 2 guy, confusing tall for handsome, he runs away, gets his courage up, chases her, end it now, you’re the strongest man I’ve ever met, mischaracterized, perception wrong, I can work with this raw clay, his bumped up forehead, showed it had a brain inside, incompetent, she builds up his confidence, so many nagulas, I’ve never bothered to count, runs away like a coward, build up my muscles, she’s mad at him, he ghosted her, becomes unjustifiably angry, fully justified, dumped her with cave people, I’m right behind you, kidnapped by airpirates, drag me by my hair to that cave over there, unacceptable, needed to have the proper ceremony, honeymoon in Hawaii, fantasy wish fulfillment, gone native, what’s her name for him, Thandar!, Thundar, a Lin Carter name, the brave one, barbarian sounding name, sounds good, the beautiful one, the one with the high forehead, The Outer Limits, a Charles Beaumont story The Beautiful People, perfectly normal looking girl, it couldn’t have been like that, deformed, forehead is too high, Burroughs can’t play that game, he can’t play it, girl gets kidnapped, the same recipe every time, a great recipe, Lester Dent pulp fiction master plot, cut out all the racism and classicism, engage with the classicism, his dad turned out to be ok, the mom dominated the baby, all the languages, compose greek and latin poems, the mom fucked him up, the other girl fixes him with Burroughs, having a nice girl who can give you nice babies, the Burroughs fantasy, they don’t have kings before he shows up, Robert E. Howard had written this, civilization is bad, barbarism is good, have his book learning be useful, if L. Sprague DeCamp had written this, Mark Twain, explicitly a comedy, funny, funny on purpose, always does the same thing, American goes to Mars marries princess, Tarzan was a British guy, goes to Venus marries a princess, in the margins, his mother was an Earth astronaut, John Carter in reverse, this is also Donkey Kong, save the princess from the monkey mother, Super Mario Bros., he’s lower class, a Japanese thing, everybody knows only Americans can go to fantasy kingdom, you work with your hands?, not even an anglo-saxon, fake princess, half-breeds of whatever, not cool with it, make some friends, Woola, maybe that is why they don’t do as well as Burroughs, romance, maybe Will knows, romance is actually for men, men are more romantic than women, a romance for men, a meet cute, standards he is putting on himself, things that don’t make it romantic, maybe there are some kinds of romance books, if you look at what’s going on, Robert E. Howard stand-in, having a buff body so they can be suitable for a trad wife, Michael Crichton’s Travels, fantastic!, Tolkien, H.P. Lovecraft, Frank Herbert, Michael Crichton, right wing tradition, conservative, Howard’s not on the list, his fanzine, anything published before 2010, far right coded, farmers protesting, sympathizing with the farmers, unapproved people are daring to protest, useless rich kids who glue themselves to streets, heirs of tobacco dynasty, will is fuming at this statement, issuing paper, smeared as nazis, reichsburgers, more interested in romance than women, an older idea of romance, situate this, trad dudes who follow you in twitter, they didn’t exist, a mainstream audience of the working man, factory workers, marrying the rich dude, Cinderella, chunky Cinderella, adventure for sure, we do have to constitute it, this might have a grain of thought, men are much more romantic than women, is that really true, makes a very strong, 1912s, as a pragmatic woman, women have to be, a male romance, would appeal to that sensibility, 1913, more appealing, Jane Austen, contrast, which of these brooding men are most secure for my offspring, which of these cave women, a lot of dudes to kill, a lot of missing people in the female department, which of these families that are suitable for me to marry into, Persuasion, of the six, Mansfield Park, the focus, Jane Austen is to women as Edgar Rice Burroughs is to men, lower upperclass, upper middleclass, trying not to be lowered, Napoleonic wars, always stuck with the baby, always the case, baby out of wedlock, a meme, REH people, trad wife and chad, guys with beards, no NPC guy or Wojak, women and children into the lifeboats, CHADS: Yes, more problems, from the Titanic, the first class women, setting aside class, difficult, men saying that, men know they’re disposable compared to women, some other dude’s going to have to raise my kid, built into the men, romanticism, not very practical, giving insight into why it strikes the chord of popularity, class does matter because it is connected to money, a brainy boy, looking down on Nadara, little does she know, I’m going to do something I’ve never done: apologize, The Gilded Age, HBO, Cynthia Nixon, literally not important, his coping mechanism, the dad from Pride And Prejudice, dotty, Harvard or Yale, wealthy family from Boston, died because he couldn’t swim, how did he survive the shipwreck, act of God, act of Edgar Rice Burroughs, three guys went overboard, a huge endowment, every student should know how to swim, prove that they can swim, Columbia university, take a swim class, the 3rd class steerage kids, engineering classes, how many lifeboats a ship should have, lifeboats based on tonnage, added extra lifeboats, capsized at the pier in Chicago, inland waters, the great lakes are their own kinda thing, free shipping, just a highway, a line in this book about that, he looked at the map and saw these trade routes, tramp freighters, the Pacific is kind of big, real world experience, grandfather was a captain on an east Asia liner, the timing, an extended one into the forest, six months, a year, the elapsed time for the book, Gilligan’s Island, Robinson Crusoe, makes capitalism happen, a cross section of society, movie star, scientist, only one worker in this society, makes things out of coconuts, Thurston Howell III, trad wife, Mary-Ann, the movie star, boss, whatever the society tells him to do, a commentary on America at the time, what does it say?, stuck at Atlanta airport, all Cora’s stories: unaccompanied kid, a black woman reading romance novels, Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch, a whole sociological different thing, endless loop, TVLand, close it with the Robinsinade Gilligan’s Island connection, he’s king, trying to reverse the American revolution, the elected king, wanted Washington to be King, a Fredosphere idea, the United States as founded by Pirates, a King Washington descendant in the White House, palace rather than a house, how would things be different, DC surrounded by the Versailles of courtiers, ruled by an upperclass, wouldn’t be that different, kick out King Washington, the slavery question, gone the way of the British monarchy, figurehead, ceremonial head of state, speaker of the house, prime minister, a twitter conversation, I’ve been drinking, the fig leaf of our democracy, you can vote, if the demos had power you would get what you want, the myth staves off revolution, German democracy, blockaded on his holiday, take a helicopter back, she’s gone, the trains are striking as well, overthrow this horrible democracy in Germany, family owned farms, family estates, pork, schweinefleisch, fresh local produce, they should be revolting if the government is fucking up, gynecologist, surname, a dashed name, married to a pig farmer, super-happy, married outside of her class?!, what a scandal!, hate her husband, a small town in Canada, very catty, the green voters, upwardly mobile middle class academics, on the side of the farmers, new stuff added to the schedule, The Seventh by Richard Stark, 1st Sunday in Lent, you have to give up things you love, besides meat, give up smoking, start smoking so you can quit, you can still have fish, a bigger thing for a week, no meat, no twitter the second week, no screens would hurt, can’t get in your car sometime, 2 short stories, Weinbaum/Simak, Return From The Stars by Stanislaw Lem, he was a committee according to Philip K. Dick, W. Scott Poole book, a Connor show, we’re signing up for something, Confessions Of An English Opium Eater, a copyright strike from CBC, the closing credits of the John Carter Of Mars movie, a big nasty take-down strike, watchalongs, music playing in the background, 1821, about a guy explaining his addiction, drug memoir, pre-drug hippy style people, a bit of lingering death, a bad case of death, Lovecraft uses the pleasures and pains, The Mad Planet, a Maissa Will joint, Lucian’s True History, 2000 year old quasi-science fiction from the Roman Empire, What Mad Universe by Fredric Brown, The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown, The Triumph Of Evil, Such Men Are Dangerous, ill, get back in bed, doesn’t really matter, was it covid?, what difference does it make?, attacked Bernie Sanders, working from home, I’ve got COVID I’m sure glad I got those vaccines, DefiantLs, 2 tweets juxtaposed, not being ironic, what the hell dude, you should rest, six weeks of rest, the laptop class, Paul Kavanaugh, a pseudonym, a Florida Key island, not able to have conversations, two drinks every day, he’s gotta list, I want you for a job, hijack nuclear weapons and sell them for a profit, The Last Spaceship by Murray Leinster, interplanetary teleporters, steals the last spaceship, human read, William Sky (Stories From The Sky), a romping story, great old fashioned space opera, the pause at the end, a silent gap for five seconds, let the story sink in, Putin in his power, never read the comments, sell you on The Mad Planet by Murray Leinster, first global warming ever written, human beings have descended into savagery, are their dinosaurs, Burl has spent his entire life, post-apocalyptic nature writing, June 12, 1920, 30,000 years in the future, various forms of fungi, giant insects and arachnids, toadstool forests, you had me at giant spiders, what makes it a Maissa-Will book, Will is a fun guy, listen to the narrator, if you need a sleeping age, wait for the next version, it’s a long life, if we can hold out, long novella, short novel, giant spiders, satire of outlandish tales, presented fantastic of mythical events, travel in outerspace, I doubt it, Gilgamesh is gonna have it, would Hugo Gernsback call it science fiction, he has a good definition of science fiction, trying to sell magazines, satire, parody, only an hour and half long, swallowed by a 200 mile long whale, a sea of milk, an island of cheese, deliver a letter to Calypso given to them by Odysseus, in the original latin or greek, A Witch Shall Be Born, where he gets nailed, one of the most famous scenes, gets crucified, every illustrator does the crucification scene, two semi-naked identical nude women whipping each other, female body inspector, cimmerians are all like that, the only screen adaption of a Howard story, a Red Nails was in production, a fan version, Conan The Adventurer, three TV shows, Kevin Sorbo’s Kull The Conqueror, better than the Conan reboot, would have made a great Conan, the Solomon Kane one, devil worship and shit, good scenes, good costumes, get a writer who likes the material, Max von Sydow, Max von Side-Eye (@SvenTystnad), The Last Of The Last Of The Mohicans (1992), lotta Hawkeyes, fuck the book, Daniel Day Lewis, My Left Foot (1989), Lincoln, this movie is awesome, a very male romantic movie, Edgar Rice Burroughs with noir and real villains, West Studi plays the meanest indian, Magwa will put the greyhair under the knife, a good cast, Madeline Stowe’s the love interest, Natty Bumpo and Magwa, I’m stealing your woman, let’s run through the forest for six hours, a dude movie, so romantic, great ending, Heat (1995) is almost too good, Pacino and Deniro, checkmate, Collateral (2004), Thief (1981), Miami Vice, style, substance, just out of prison, back in the business of being a thief, the mob come to him, I’m out, Willie Nelson, no you’re not you got a girlfriend, so she’ll never love him, burns his house down, before going straight, Jim Belushi, Dennis Farina, a man expressing that extreme level of independence, very Jesse vibe, the Conan thing, I’m not going to take your shit, you have to inform on your friends, may have grabbed a sword, their mistake was letting Conan in the building, Manhunter (1986), very solid, Silence Of The Lambs (1991) came out, did too good a job, William Peterson looking cool, nerd, filmed in Florida, Public Enemies (2009), very 2009, banks are evil, here’s a guy who fought the banks, noble bankrobber, Ferrari (2023), semifactual racecar movies, The Insider (1999), they made the 60 Minutes crew the heroes, The Aviator (2004), they played brothers, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? (1993), The Lack podcast, how many podcast do you listen to?, audiobooks more than podcasts, listening to Damien G. Walter’s podcasts, interacted with him online, poor you, before he was a digital nomad, a columnist for The Guardian, he’s a prophet my dear, people are saying, he prophet greatly, he has takes, deeply ideological, the philosophy is wrong, his takes are bad, he prophet so it doesn’t matter, Sad Puppies hate him, little known writers, fantasizes about killing him, a deleted tweet from Cirsova, thought better of it, grey checkmark, wearing a plastic bag and a mask and a respirator under the mask, it was covid, minutes away, the only crime that occurred on J6, that’s violence, “storming”, revolution, I wish, they had no weapons, defend your lack of liking this deleted tweet, the person who was killed was shot by a cop, the narrative is that it was insurrection, they didn’t bring any weapons, the Capitol building, idiotic protestors, politicians were scared, caused a mess, a Christian holiday, if you drill down, deaths of 9 people, 5 people involved by direct cause, 4 capitol police officers caused by suicides, people don’t know, Ashli Babbit, fatally shot in the upper chest, Brian Sicknick, pepper sprayed, strokes the next day, all that transpired played a role, died of amphetamine overdose, naturally from coronary heart disease, eating margarine, in the days and months that followed, died by suicide, misdiagnosed concussion, in July, found, 15 were hospitalized, some with severe injuries, this is 9/11, the means vs. the ends, a protest, violence is bad, you should allow yourself to be killed, I don’t like these people, what shapes the narrative, flipping over our government, the government doesn’t care about you, fantasy of collecting social security one day, you can make our old people poorer and work longer, the damage done, when you put tear gas at people, furniture, Nancy Pelosi’s lectern, lady climbing through a window, an interesting life, people who have the time to go protest in Washington, D.C., the current president, even saying he has a claim is silly, the words coming out of his mouth, not the majority of the people there, or in Canada, the truckers, these are lies, all the farmers are Nazis, starve to death, buy mangoes shipped in at a huge cost to the environment, look at this, a class things, points his sidearm towards an attacker, tell the story please, broken glass, that guy is pointing a gun at a human being, roving gangs of avengers, super-powers the only way, strong young men from Boston, as only they can, like Tarzan, nosy old ladies in charge of these things, policing in Cuba, weaponize those nosy old gossip ladies, use judgement, a real gossip hound, digging up the boring dirt that is not a threat to our society, makes her really sad, recognizes it in herself, can’t we all just get a long, can’t I talk you down from this, give out a lot of tickets and do what the bosses says, a call center worker, old ladies, couldn’t sell them anything, something very benign, in house magazine for a government funded, Jesse was always at the bottom, not pressuring these old ladies more, Jesse just get off the call, call more people, impolite, Edward Bellamy, the society of the future, restaurants are horrible, a server, a greeter, hostess, that’s security guard, they’re old people, its just like a camera, a living camera, they find you a seat, part of the fantasy, American restaurant, just leave me alone, the ability to increase your wages by getting tips, feeds into each other, automat, a cafeteria, cafeterias in the future, access to a kitchen, this kind of mustard, how many kinds of mustard do we need?, dijon, honey, yellow, visible grain, thomy mustard, comes in a little tiny mug, blue lid, a literal mug, sometimes they’re not good, Bavarian classic mustard, mustard connoisseurs, #MustardAndKetchupGetup, one of the few Chinese words, sauce, tricking people into eating rotten tomatoes, Heinz family, descendants of German immigrants, curry ketchup, currywurst, gypsysauce, a bad word, gyp, sauerkraut, common here, everyday glasses are mustard jars, Hengstenberg mustards, Landsberg mustard, an export brand, other than spicy mustard, questions about Worldcon, Glasgow, what happens at worldcon?, masking, dealer’s room is good, panels, readings, signings, a gaming room, pronouns happens, old bald dude he him, pronoun stickers for your badge, cosplay, guests of honor, fantasy writer, British, Prometheus Award winner, they’re gonna take your Hugo back, take it back, they think they can revoke, don’t read Heinlein!, how dare you, listed on Wikipedia, that could be changed, withdrawn, removed, demoted, panels are a pretty normal experience, a podcast but boring, even a good panel is bad, run out of time, assuming no knowledge, not very much time, way off topic, potentially spicy, frowned upon, a moderator, to keep people from hogging the panel, someone who doesn’t talk, two podcasters who talked a lot, of Tor books, what does Teresa Nielsen Hayden have to say, podcasters don’t usually have a problem talking, kind of hates Cora, muted the thread, hyphenated, all hyphenated people are muted, not spicy enough, the usefulness of the Hugo awards, the trustworthy ones, for the best science fiction and fantasy, what role do they play, they don’t roll much, N.K. Jemisin, T. Kingfisher, Connie Willis, put Hugo after your name, a lot of misses, a lot of hits, became classics, David Brin, Hugo winner, Jesse is a total awards nihilist, bigger audience, following on twitter, pushed over the 3000 mark, meet more people, gets easier, how much did you get paid for the story, how many digits, in the 2 digit range, $2000 a year if they’re a famous writer, a cheque for $78, worthwhile exercise, a worthwhile exercise, a flash story, $25, answer the question, Cora, it depends, use it as a reading list, used to, quite miserable, fine with several of them, hated all of the books but one, Ken MacLeod, probably a lovely person, shitty people and you love their books, nice person and you hate their books, what else you got Will?, keeping up with it [short stories] in a meaningful way, top 15 nominees, just missed, crowdsourcing, big fanbase, goes to every con, great filkers, the nominations for 2023, LadyBusiness, you can add something, very democratic, list of podcasts, American Writers 100 Pages At A Time, Paul, Androids And Assets, for the Star Trek one, a YouTube, Cerebro, Chrononauts, Crafting With Ursula, Doctor Who Verity, Ex Urb Ad Astra, Fanac.org, Filkcast, Hugo Girl, Hugos There, Seth Heasley, cancelled for the Campbell reference, with David Agranoff, If This Goes On, J. Miles Explains The X-Men, vaugely science fiction related, Just King Things, Kalandi, a YouTube, SFFreader, gush about, Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast, second wave, Literature Science Alliance, Are Human, Octothorpe, One Flesh One End, Onyx Pages, Our Opinions Are Correct, won too many people, Radio Free Skaro, Rite Gud, not them they’re terrible, Science Fiction 101, it’s British, skeptical of the British, SFFaudio spelt wrong, host/producer, SFFYeah, SFF180, why do people hate you Cora, good takes to all 6 of his viewers, underpitching it a bit, Staship Fonzie, Steve Sheeves, Stitch And Bitch, Sword And Laser, g4 tech TV, Take Me To Your Reader, The Book Finch, Coode Street, steampunk Victorian people, good that steampunk is over, Gary K. Wolfe, Luke Burrage, Skiffy And Fantay, Shaun Duke has blocked Jesse, 2 Minute Time Lord, all the Doctor Who references, Wizards And Lesbians, Wizards With Guns, dudes with mustaches, fart and poop jokes, Worldbuilding For Masochists, Tar Valen or Bust, Wheel Of Time, Eating the Fantastic, comics people, Tales From The Trunk, Hillary is male, Story Hour, If This Goes On Don’t Panic, two different story titles in one, Voluminous, very good, read H.P. Lovecraft letters, very liberal nice people who have nice, HPLHS, one of them (or both) is gay, made Lovecraft their jobs, actors, Chilean SFF on Youtube, The Cromcast, Rogues In The House, repeating themselves, having fun, doing their podcast only for them, we don’t repeat shows, after 10 years, that’s fine, just do the poetry instead, can only read it once, if you’re going to remake a movie, don’t remake that, stop making that, do it once, move on, Luke Burrage repeats himself, eligible?, a minimum of 4 episodes, recusing myself, since 2023 is now over, they don’t pay your flight, guests of honor, good to get the people nominating on the stage, The Oscars, cosplaying as an unmade bed, evening gowns, the clothes are more weird, actual playback history, Second Shift, an audio drama where 3 teens who work at a pizza place and transported to a fantasy realm, as in the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon, The Last Drive, Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, Scott Miller, great audiobook narrator, a Jesse follower, a Scott follower, too democratic, Buckaroo Banzai, Golan Globus Theater, talk about movies, two Israeli guys, action movies, Charles Bronson, quick good fun movies, ignorant and funny, American Writers 100 Pages at a time, Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Mate, Gabor Mate, 2 Jews talking about what’s going on in Gaza, Gaza all the time, Matt Taibbi, The Lack, Racket To Go, SFBRP, Witchhouse Media, Strange Studies Of Strange Stories, science fiction stuff, liberal boring, H.P. Lovecraft guys who ran out of H.P. Lovecraft, weird fiction, Guy de Maupassant month, takes aren’t spicy enough, more of an entertainment show, the plot of what’s happening, a useful service, Compact Magazine, Nina Power, Mr Jim Moon, Hypnogoria podcast, BBC In Our Time, How Doctor Who Stood The Test Of Time, their opinions are not correct, to get inside the mind and understand people, figure out why people are wrong, the alternative is violence, censorship, the same thing, too spicy, quote tweeting, migrants coming at the border, one A-10 could solve this, that would make him a monster, a very fruitful discussion, murdering a whole bunch of people, a tool for the politicians to do shit, a result of politicians acting overseas, would be very reasonable, not here to defend that tweet, there are people, show them out of the helicopters, seems a lot more reasonable and more cynical, Paul refused to be on a podcast with him, very reasonable, very cynical on the tweets, generic shitposting, naked dick pick, vile antisemitism, free Palestine, why are you harassing us with all of these reports, “one a-10 would fix this”, 15,000 individuals, I can’t with so much pettiness, are these migrants?, daywalk, refugees, farm work for a while, guest workers, replacement workers, scabs, there’s arguments to made here, about as deep as you can get on twitter, severe down-punching, practical and political, the people who replied, cosplaying, cartoon responses, this is what triggers Paul, seems to be a call for violence, doesn’t come across very well in tweets, too vile, if your house burns, we still have the rental car, an engagement point rather than a solution, seems vile, incitement to hatred, parasites, kept denying the holocaust, step back, literally not true, who is in charge of the US airforce, secretary of defense, Joe Biden, whoever is ruling the U.S., a very cynical take, when you can’t do anything, shoot refuges at the German Polish border, he’s not a politician, an aristocratic lady and far right, Tolkien vs. Lewis, Teen-Titans, politics in here, Quakers get wrecked, Biden administration, statue of William Penn, a Quaker teacher once, typical for a government, Cirsova’s politics are political realist, really horrible, feels unsafe, constantly on alert, most San Francisco, gibbering black crack head barely looked human, FAS, a lot of problems in society, mom was drinking while pregnant, alcoholism, alcohol is poison, smoke a lot, baby underweight, very funny, read between the lines, they have no faith in anything that’s political, potholes everywhere, a great place to look at the failure of everything, watching good old movies, charitable, be prepared to do violence, may do and are doing is a big difference, Minority Report by Philip K. Dick, 3 precogs, 2 predict, hence the minority report, I’m not going to do a murder, prediction vs. are doing, so kindly butted into so kindly, David Currie in the UK, fight me, I like him, not a good thing to do, joking with, Guardian article, Russian and Chinese imperialism, could happen in future vs. actually happening now, hypotheticals, most of the bad things that could happen don’t happen, I shouldn’t eat this chocolate, is it good to not eat the chocolate, adulterated chocolate, artificial flavours, Hershey’s, palm oil, seed oils, belongs in palms, not food, no business being in chocolate, they feed it to humans, palm plantations, a food additive, instant ramen, Thailand, Brazil, rapeseed oil, canola, sunflower, which we like, olive oil, actually made out of olives, not human food, feed animals, industrial lubricants into human food, no more margarine for you, make your own mayo, they don’t have flavours, rape oil, canola, people think rape is bad, fields of rape, very Orwellian, not something you should put in your body, might remove some skin oils, when Cora dissed the tobacco industry, fume as in over the tobacco, a little bit tobacco pilled, pumping toxins into the air, continuously, exercise your liver a little bit, more than 10 drinks a day, cigar, you don’t put it into your lungs, the point of the drug, smoking is probably better than drinking, smoke or drink?, alcohol in your food, inherited whiskey, brandy, cognac, mostly beer, the alcohol is dry, I’m never going to drink that.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #438 – That Low by Theodore Sturgeon

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #438

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss That Low by Theodore Sturgeon

Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.

That Low was first published in Famous Fantastic Mysteries, October 1948.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #786 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Radium Pool by Ed Earl Repp

The SFFaudio Podcast #786 – The Radium Pool by Ed Earl Repp, read by Thomas Copeland (for LibriVox). This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (2 hours 43 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Maissa Bessada, Will Emmons, and Terence Blake

Talked about on today’s show:
in Earth language, sorry everybody, Sophie Wenzell Ellis, another radium filled story, avoid radium, taking a long time to get started, WHAT!, so many explicitly catery characters, outer narrator, professor who explains things, meet a guy who who is looking for another professor, another professor, infodumper, chapter 9 tells us despite the counter evidence, that makes sense, me too I agree this story makes a lot of sense, if H. Rider Haggard were boring, Inception, oh yeah, that was a thing, awkward framing, August and September 1929, The Moon Pool by A. Merritt, an early popular science fiction story, sequels, sorry, cool cover with a lady in yellow, old science fiction, some shitty science fiction out there, completely unfuckin scientific, despite the gestures, Jovians from Jove, lovesick guy with a gun, getting the better, cheated by using telepathy, tentacles, a scientific fact, other than it’s a planet, a gesture at the distance, whatever, this story is so fuckin bad, Mars has already been done, there are good stories set on jupiter, Call Me Joe by Poul Anderson, The Radium Poul, Lester Del Rey, good ideas, not being so long-winded about it, Maissa speaks for Will, the same as Avatar, grow a Jovian, as in the original Avatar, a telepathic link, guy just lives in the new body, a centaur with a big axe, Poul Anderson likes vikings, downloading yourself into an avatar in reality, what Justin Trudeau is trying to do, become a leader of the people, the first 2 Avatar movies, waiting til we are ready for it, why they’re all the same, he’s good at what he does, Titanic (1997) is his worst movie, a long and a prequel for Avatar 3, do your own serialization, might as well just talk about Avatar, Jake Sully is fundamentally untransformed by becoming an indigenous leader, a football coach from Cincinnati, for the Navii that’s exotic, why he’s not so boring to them, what’s really happening in Avatar: the American audience inserts themselves into Jake Sully and downloads themselves into the movie during the running time of the movie, six years old and think its cool, he’s not a character you aspire to be, he is you, no qualities, the most frequent expression, the bad guy in the first one, too bad they brought him back, there’s a reason we don’t do a movie podcast, most movies aren’t very deep, playing with the water theme, The Abyss, a cool Cold Equations scene, you need to drown in order for us to live, with a solution, the aliens thing at the end, crazy guy with a nuke is enough, better than Terminator 2, radioactivity coming into its own, radium was touted by doctors and scientists, rejuvenation, it kills cancer, it killed all those women, Marie Curie, watches are time and immortal, some sort of high before you die, unobtanium, when radium is in abundance it has other qualities, scaling, a big pool full, also power your spaceships, homeopathic doses of radium, the opposite, it can eat off your fingers, burn the end of the barrel of your gun, garbage story, something very bad, we’ve all done bad, a humiliation ritual to cleanse, something special about it, from the period it is, a taste of 1929 is very refreshing, the way we think, Jules Verne, hollow earth fantasy, four levels of characters to explain one muscular action, too space-opera in fashion, E.E. Doc Smith, Triplanetary, 1934, the swing of the pendulum, Creatures Of The Light by Sophie Wenzel Ellis, Antarctica, Death Valley, you can’t stand being their too long, lack of research, infodumps, guys feelings, partners for a long time, alien shows up, I turned your girlfriend into my throne lady, a Sleeping Beauty moment, I can throw words at pages, diverges, the peridocity?, Astounding, Science Wonder Stories, more science, throw everything into this pot, king of the university, robot sentry and a wagon and a gun, editor at the journalist desk, we’re not reading the newspaper report, chapter 9, somehow I found it incredibly plausible, pad his expense account, this is not the newspaper report, another step out, censored at the end, plausible we can go to Jupiter, first they’re going to have to find some more radium that wasn’t drained away, a lot of Doctor Who, a serial, Enlightenment, the fifth Doctor, Peter Davison, companion pets, materializes on a ship at sea, Edwardian era sailing vessel, all the officers have telepathy, Turlough and Teegan and the Doctor are thinking, they’re racing in space, solar sail race, crewed by humans, the grog doesn’t work, the aliens who look like humans, so bored, there’s stuff here, cheating, treating the humans like pets, learned a word: ephemerals, word in back pocket, being bored and nothing to do, you can’t waste your time because you have to live forever, three score years and ten, in June Terence will be 70, somebody becoming immortal, mine shit, lord it over, big long speech at him, quite taken with that girl, best possible tautological name: Alley Lane, Jimmy Olsen, just plain ordinary folks with superhuman friends, Spider-Man, earnest reporter who’s on the beat, the twist is he’s reporting on himself, here’s a market for stories about pools, suckered in, pretty girl, not as green as expected, 40 years in the desert, hoping to meet her, got a bad rep, something super-redeeming, this doesn’t have that much, not as tedious as it should be given how it doesn’t pay off, it’s naive, not meta-level at all, several layers of explanatory sauce, a magic formula, I have to put the ingredient of scientific realism in, that way nobody can say, radium parfait, Mimic by Donald A. Wollheim, film’s not great, the problem with the film is just jump scares and has to fill two hours,

“the original MIMIC, the 1942 story by Donald A. Wollheim, is abt as close to perfect a science fiction story as you can find

1. HEAVY EARLY INFODUMP✔️
2. PAYOFF WITH A TWIST BASED ON INFODUMP✔️
3. 4PGS LONG✔️

MIMIC is highly suggestive. leaves u in awe. leaves u with ideas.

the movie takes 1 hour and 45 minutes – the story takes less than 9 minutes to read with your eyes, 13 minutes 34 seconds to read with your mouth

the movie takes 1 hour and 45 minutes – the story takes less than 9 minutes to read with your eyes, 13 minutes 34 seconds to read with your mouth”

stars some lady, Mira Sorvino, Charles S. Dutton, young Josh Brolin, Thanos, Cable, a fun actor, Jeremy Northam, Charles S. Dutton is a cop, buy food from local street vendor, now in the present, killed in his apartment, a metal box, the window is open, not actually a human, literally an insect that looks like a human, his trenchcoat is a carapace, some other animal mimicking another animal, swarm of its babies, chimney suddenly transforms into a predator, there are creatures out there that mimic humans, the awesome infodump, paid off, takes it one step farther, what if…, backstory about cockroaches spreading a COVID-like disease, Guillermo Del Toro, tweeting about Microcosmic God being in the public domain, neoterics, capitalism trying to happen, steal his ingeniousness, Theodore Sturgeon’s great classic, classic mad scientist buys and island and does Edison work all day, make a race of creatures do the work for me, tiny people, meth and probably radium or whatever, an evil god, materials and compounds and alloys, he steals their patents, that guy’s got too much power, same techniques, a nested idea of the story of Edison as a mad scientist creator, it’s also us, we need to build cave walls and sunscreen and french fries in order to survive, Blood Music by Greg Bear, usually he’s a horrible writer, a collection, Wind From A Burning Woman, who’s talking, what’s going on?, children born with mutated organs, wasteage, incredibly intelligent, takes most of the novel, slow with lots of information dumps, Vitals, you’re not good, had he died tragically it would have been must better for him, dead to Jesse, Darwin’s Radio, so slow, even the novel is good, the grey goo problem, make a machine that can make stuff automatically on an atomic level, the paperclip problem, the Grogu problem, cute animals from twitter, should I be sending this?, some sort of deermouse with peglegs eating lettuce, quite relevant, somehow enhanced, here’s a baby muskox eating some lettuce, incredibly racist, two racisms in a row, grappling with the king of the Jovians, a white beast, mental leap to Octavia Butler’s Dawn, tentacles, creepy crawly little tendrils, seem ugly to the explorers, arrogant and condescending, making shit up and throwing it on the page, having characters tell each other its very plausible, the radium powered plausibility machine, drink the pool, how dare you do this to a white man, something about a ‘spic, completely unnerves, Sands, you look like a ghost, you don’t look like a white man yourself, by jingle, second childhood, not the opening character, outback hicks who are racist, I’m second in charge of everything, I could destroy you with a wiggle of my tentacle, then I give a big long speech about how I like your girlfriend, and I keep her on this throne for reasons, and I’m going to take her back to my planet, for reasons, with her dad!, and you notice your gun doesn’t doing anything to me, well that won’t stop you from shooting me later six times in the head and that will stop me, I’m telepathic but I thought you were dead, I hit my wordcount, accepting a lot of shit, as an artifact it is a valuable lesson, understand the progress and changes, there’s some shitty stories too, the S effect, Nerves by Lester Del Rey, revealing atomic secrets, this story doesn’t reveal anything about anything, if this story came out today, would not be popular, the attack vector, it’s dangerous for children because they’re going to eat radium, manipulate the watch, a darkroom to show you that it worked, radium in its pure state, tritium glows green?, is there a dye?, radioactive isotope of hydrogen, luminous because of the alpha particles, phosphorous, most volatile, little bit of green maybe, copper, if you had it in a pool, you experienced the radium pool, no research done, fake fainted a lot, Freud started treating hysterical patients, hysteria was more common, one explanation, so oppressed, rebellious of deviant feelings through their bodies, listened to women, more narcissism, no real feelings, a social change, the evolution of the symptoms, how tight their corset was, special radium ribbed corset, keep your shape, as much as she wanted, marriage ceremony right now, have you forgot I’m a pastor?, the opposite of Chekhov’s gun, Munchausen’s threads, ends suddenly when Alexander the great comes in and chops it off, why should she faint?, telepathically knocked out, they don’t eat anymore, whatever, if you’re immortal, they ate all the radium on Jupiter, the story is stupid, in V they want our water, Michael Ironside, a Dutch historical story about occupation by Nazis, we call the the Visitors, V for Victory, V for Vendetta, the aliens that look just like us, they have to wear sunglasses, sex with the lizard man, lizard baby, the resistance against them, the Nazi party, Nazi occupation of Europe with aliens that were lizardmen, Alien Nation, the show was amazing, oppressed migrants, a movie with James Cann, hardboiled cop buddy movie with an alien partner, the human is racist against the aliens, mild mannered, strange culture, alien lady with no head, they solve murders involving the alien, manufactured by other aliens, the masters are not their, a shipwreck with 100,000 aliens, Fox show in the early 1990s, contemporary with Star Trek The Next Generation, is it weird to have a guy sleep with your wife, dating one of them, 1 full season and then 6 movies, a film first, parallel with, archive.org or youtube, it helps to be able to see things, the 80s is a weird time, women in the work place sort of stuff, Murphy Brown, ten seasons, presidential debate, there’s nothing going here, a different time, weird period of time, of this terrible story, not everything in the past is good, the Olemas sequel, why would I hurt them like this?, The Ones Who Stay And Fight by N.K. Jemisin, condescending and fascistic, goes off into an alley, quote mine it, an alternative universe, send information between alternate universes, observing our universe, our TV shows, a very American world, one of Jesse’s big objections, horrific videos of people being bombed to death, you condescending lady, the Heinlein solution, if you’ve been infected by observing our earth, I know what mis-mal-disinformation, you’re not equipped, its my burden, Ursula K. Le Guin, maybe she’s wonderful, mummy knows best condescension, mommy knows the right people to drop the bombs on, it just takes a few good surgical strikes on what people know, everybody Eloi, one Morlock, the worst treated proletarian, magically, more politically correct, our horrible racist evil world’s ideas, the CIA and the FBI, the secret judges and jury, killing people with the wrong ideas, apologize and sit still, it won the Hugo?, wow powerful story, am I offering good solutions for humanity, patting myself on the back, given what’s happening in Palestine right now, double down, the holy shit people are protesting, 500,000 people in London walking together can’t stop it, the price of being on the wrong team, let’s make a long list, always an excuse to drop bombs and kill people, object to the trolley problem I have to make a choice where the trolley goes, some people are not going to accept it, the response, a response to a false Omelas, a straw-man of Omelas, very much a Bartleby, The Scrivener, grit in the system, taking the metaphor literally, I’m better than Le Guin, sanctioning Biden sending arms and ammunition, I’m going to give you a condescending lecture, a movie that’s an antidote to all of this, Dream-Speaker (1977) TV movie, Cam Hubert, Angry 11 year old orphan Ian Tracey burns down his school, meets an Indian shaman and his mute companion, the authorities find out, blonde white boy, reform school, he’s hung himself, cut back to the Indian and his mute companion, please place me in a tree as was traditionally was done, school is a horror, institutions, it just is a horror, asking kids why they set things on fire, what am I supposed to do with this, residential schools, doing pretty well with their broken family out in the forest, an instinct in people to try to solve problems, cogs to be solved in problems, no alcohol should be imbibed, you think you’re fighting for something good, is there a possibility that you’re wrong, arrogance, interesting, more artistic trolley problem story, another objection, 3829, 1200 and something for Omelas, a lot to prove?, flourishing details, random paragraph, wear wings too, some are invisible, forbid the emulation of beasts, all honored, all sounds very nice, the triggering word is honoured, honouring her feelings, don’t honour feelings, not something to be venerated, kids don’t have the experience you have, couch it in another way, not the right way to frame it, stupid feelings, that was a silly thing to feel, you can wear as many wings as you want, we can still be friends, you need to be destroyed, targeted at race, 2018 and still talking about race all the time, racism exists, ingrained in a racist society, the nadir is the lowest, pinnacle, the worst kinda racism period, look at this huge problem and what caused it?, the kenosis, self emptying, on an ordinary level, maybe one day I will, grope around in the dark, starting with the idea that I don’t know, a big part of the solution, anti-kenosis, infodumping, solution dumping, moral dumping, best done through parable, that’s not a parable, oh my little sweetie, it’s okay that mommy runs drone programs, you’ve got something wrong with your car, sledgehammer, gets rid of the problem by getting rid of the people saying the problem, just delete youtube and twitter channels, mute it, give a warning, violence by having a video, goodreads, Omelas is pornography?, this is about abortion!, offended her kid was told to read, in her school English class, what ever happened, spirit and refreshment, she may not like it, millions of murdered babies, billions of dollars the abortion industry…, pornographic literature, demonic desensitization of our young people, the punishment of a child, about capitalism, if she was standing in line at the grocery store, Peel District School Board, emptied everything pre-2008, unfathomable, somebody talking about the red scare, number of professors fired for being communists, anti-woke (not censoring), a kind of hysteria that’s going on now, writers telling other writers you don’t need to read anything past 10 years ago, because other better writers, and token John Scalzi, you don’t need to read a Lovecraft story, lies you’re telling yourself, trust me the homework’s not worth doing, school library is a place to hide in the school, even in prison they have books, prison book programs, escape the horrors they’re locked in, a bulldozing non-thinking tactic, super-retarded, those people shouldn’t have those jobs, in favour of humans doing ok, because they’re ignorant fucks, mommy or daddy knows best, mommy vs. daddy, daddy’s meaner than mommy in the stereotype, oh sweetie, condescending like I got a boo-boo, old fashioned radium pool drinking black pilled anarchist with tendril face, giving lectures to professors, trolling me, a very bad story, it had a nice cover, produced, not much meat on these bones of the story, what did I do to my friends, not very deep, Thomas Copeland’s narration, university professor in English, his recordings of Paradise Lost, his productions, long stuff, Orlando, Furioso, Jerusalem Delivered, a classical education, unjustly forgotten science fiction, worthwhile, rock bottom, we’ve fasted and we’ve prayed, skeletons hanging on the wall, Lowdown Road by Scott Von Doviak, The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton, watch his movies, an ancestor to cyberpunk, science fiction-ish, watch The Andromeda Strain, good science fiction, race-against-the-clock, he knows his shit, Gilgamesh the King by Robert Silverberg, The Sword Of Welleran by Lord Dunsany, on the other side of the state, find the length, his novels are a little longer, he’s fun, fun and short, Hobbits!, Marimna, a dream story, the kings of all the countries, a cute story with beautiful description that he subverts somehow, Lord Dunsany’s in a restaurant, crazy man runs into the restaurant, The Hashish Eater, a doesn’t think about race at all Lovecraft, whimsy, entertainment for toffs, cozy, even when dishing out, quite cozy, In A Dim Room, a ghost story, a tiger in India, all the subsequent fracas is on Jorkens, very palate cleansing sort of reading, half-sold, Through The Gates Of The Silver Key by H.P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffman Price, The Weirwoods by Thomas Burnett Swann, reactive and doesn’t pull his punches, a sparky conversation, Arkansas, Kentucky, another Kentucky, mountains and hillpeople, reputation for being backwards, very foreward thinking, Sirius by Olaf Stapledon, smart dog book, they all want to get kisses instead of doing podcasts, The Cave Girl, no bad books, just less good books, a good way to start the year, The World That Couldn’t Be by Clifford D. Simak AND The Worlds Of If by Stanley G. Weinbaum, a double good show, the titles, inspired a magazine, kinda like an ACE DOUBLE, chocolate and peanut butter, that will be the homework for the podcast, draw a straight line from, modalized titles, Return From The Stars by Stanislaw Lem, Dark Carnivals: Modern Horror And The Origins Of American Empire by W. Scott Poole, strongly suggested, nuke Nice, take hostages, political experts, political views, The Devil’s Elixirs by E.T.A. Hoffmann, Matthew Gregory Lewis’ The Monk, minor capuchin, said by scholars, sort of a pioneer of a lot of interesting stuff, Poe ripped him off, 200 year old novel, Confessions Of An English Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincey, Drug Of Choice, At Time Of Changes, with beautiful art, mentioned in a Lovecraft story, interleaved the art, of things that are hot, 41,000 views over 11 years, 5 hours, comments on this video, transformed my life!, all addicts?, this is really interesting, learned more about drugs by not taking them, read it 50 years ago, well written, hallucinatory style, not modernist prose, from the era of the Romantics, 1821, here’s what I found, no image remains, the pains of opium, a BBC In Our Time, still a good show, podcast, did we miss anything?, parodied in Elder Scrolls, Morrowind, Scottish opium eater’s POV, Mount Analogue by René Daumal, the surrealists really loved it, symbolically authentic non-euclidean adventures in mountain climbing, treated in a science fiction way, famously finished on a comma, an audio comma, producing a short film festival, have lunch, commune, participation, fear to recommend, that would be homework, trick-or-treaters, not a light to turn on to summon them, never big in france, society is going to hell, can’t wear masks and demand candy?, protestors, invite them in, makes Jesse cynical, she’s popular, take it at face value, a good reply to Le Guin, way worse ideas, a big answer rather than posing a question, very American and not very universal, take it to Australia, right to be distressed, James Wallace Harris’ review, fairly bland takes, very clear writer, not a radical, doesn’t have strong opinions, angry ripostes, that’s sad, Lester Del Rey is a bad writer and great writer, Greg Bear is a great writer and a terrible writer, banger after banger, filling my brain with interesting stuff, is this the same character as the one on the previous page?, so good at sparky ideas, full of anger, go on to write Halo novels, so horrible despite the good ideas, despite the fact that Blood Music is great, he didn’t ruin it, Asimov ruined his stuff with Silverberg, married Poul Anderson’s daughter, fairly litigious about estate shit, nude pics of her cosplaying of Dejah Thoris or Red Sonja, Karen Anderson, 85 now!, temporary and long term, just recent stuff, Hardfought, great!, an old telephone operator switchboard, 10 hours on youtube, from Recorded Books, fake audiobooks, that’s not a human, Bears Discover Fire by Terry Bisson, the idea yes, cozy American, marshmallows around the fire, they don’t need fire, look manually, read with your mouth, creates an image, read with fingers, counting on your fingers, precise title, Frederik Pohl, Luke Burrage has mentioned it, an essay, Consumership by Margret St. Clair, Meem, kind of light, a lot of good worldbuilding for no reason, Three Worlds Of Futurity, A History Of Science Fiction Without Holes, The Man Who Sold Rope To The Gnoles, the title, take an ordinary expression and interpret it literally, one of the big secrets of science fiction, he knows diddly squat about science, there’s a Bevatron, even if he’s not New Wave, that forces you to be in a scientific background, go one step further, the whole and your life that way, that’s Philip K. Dick, a pure case of science fiction, being able to solve things, somebody tried, wanna use this for the cover of your book?, seven minute stories, need to be inspired by something, this is a really good story, Jesse, sent it to Eric, an excellent little story, pioneer uplift stories, build a robot and marry her in your basement stories, why everything is working, weird, and arrogant, The Basket by Jesse, this is a very good story, why shouldn’t you do a show on it?, lead the dance, maybe it is a great idea, not having other authors on to talk about their own work, what’s there to discuss, brings stuff out, not Dickian enough, The Exegesis, but what if, where’s that goddamn novel?, put on a different hats, story about hats and baskets, this picture is a story, how writing techniques work, The Man In The High Castle with the I, Ching, what’s the penalty if they don’t, get their grammar fixed, students play the game, boys love competition, they think it’s treat, Isaac Asimov’s Super Quiz, Bruce Jenner will be in there, pick a card, get to keep the card, aka the smartest person in the room, defeated their brother or this other kid in the room, that’s how kid brains are actually, busywork, makework, indoctrinated into school horror, sometimes it’s super-hilarious, who got up?, Bobina, young kids who need, could do anything, the program was more and more edulcorated, putting sugar in, the final exam, we’ve removed 1 result from this page, the only result has been censored by a copyright claim, medieval latin, India Love, the pornstar’s onlyfans, Instagram, allegedly infringing boobzone, a sex move, very rapidly, exam copies, straight-away, count as correct even when it wasn’t, very hard to get bad marks in English on the exam, special methods, minimum knowledge, some very short stories, half page stories, three minute videos, a minute and half, I’m against school, I’ve failed my life, I’m a school teacher!, that’s why we don’t like it, egodeath, killing your conformist self, the whole literal, Edward D. Hoch, the most delicious sin, the ancient sin, what is this sin?, mummifying himself, the story is profound because I don’t know what it means, suicide, this Karl Jung quotes, the one is the shadow of the other, seems interesting, psychological types, the four functions, the rival psychologists, Alfred Adler, Friedrich Nietzsche, like that Luther show, beyond Jung, Elmer Gantry audio, I could grow to love me, she’s a lot like the characters in The Fountainhead, a dominatrix, real love has all sorts of elements, I like reading his stuff, sharing his works, deeply flawed novels, dreading his phonecalls, shitty love, purified form of love, I don’t want to have power over you, hence the job of parent, more to make you think, a schema, will to power is not power over others except in its lower forms, to will it over and over again, because it has the name attached and picture, too guru, an all or nothing sort of thing, very ultimatumy, not even true for Jung, his alchemical phase, tortures and crucifixions, weird hermaphroditic result at the end, it has the shadow in there, a sentence, is that true?, this sounds interesting, makes sparks start flying, Omelas makes sparks go, you’re a monster, am I supposed to think you’re a monster?, a feel good libertalia, she’s tough love, I kill you if you think the wrong thing, maybe they read it and say you are so evil in this story, Beggars In Spain, yes, I’m a slan, the Hillary Clinton mentality, the most qualified person in history, whip me harder, mom, hence Trump, he has the right enemies, the joker card, a card working under cover for another card, he only works for him, all about him, the existence of billionaires, not a deep man, not my first choice, capitalism creates egomaniacs, one is an honest egomaniac, why this Jung stuff is so interesting today, all shadow projection, this Cirsova guy (Alex P.), we go back and forth, his critiques are pretty good, Paul has a problem with him, integrated into the microcosm, he’s on a team, reacting what’s going on in Israel and Palestine right now, same story as Ukraine but more heated, The Jimmy Shore Show covered Ryan Long’s skit, it would be really convenient to be a coma right now, at the end they’re dead, the reason the left hates Nazis so much, because they killed 27 million communists, pretty sure she’s not, see something they don’t like inside themselves, just trying to hate that person, poor vocabulary, Justin Trudeau, literally calling people to Nazis and then giving a standing ovation to a guy who worked for Adolph Hitler, there’s Nazis in Russia, what Putin is saying: we’ve got to root out the Nazis, they are definitely on the Nazi team given the Nazi imagery, totenkopf is one thing, dumped the imagery but kept the guys, kept the unity and the symbols and dumped the Jew hatred, nothing political on twitter at all, good for jokes, for links, get to meet people that way, either hyper-religious and autistic or mentally ill, I never see that, might be a listener to the podcast too, Roof Bears, weird people to get new insight into the world from, most of the time no feedback, one of them will bring good reaction, for maybe 10 years Jesse’s been poking Wayne June, what ancient wisdom was ruthlessly torn from the sacred archives?, are they fit?, what twitter is good for, poked Jonathan, a great sense of humour, ok robot, he’s very very dry, too dry, piss off?, hard to do tone, his communication system is too different, The Wall (1982), big long music video, Roger Waters words, politics, he gets stuff wrong, a great attitude, love Dawn Of The Dead (1978), it needs to be seen by political people, responds by becoming a fascist, The Quiet Earth (1985), Jesse is not a music guy, must be missing something, Wagner’s good, philosophy, science fiction, nothing, Tangerine Dream, music over the end credits, a beat in a scene where you get a montage, that’s something you like, we don’t need no education, political speeches, active politically, 1979, 1982 in the cinema, wife to be, Blade Runner (1982), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), El Topo (1970), acid western, Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013), this new Dune movie, dumbing it down, what they did to Jessica, can’t stop weeping openly, we’re not allowed to have narration or voice overs, one-dimensional, like a Cliff’s Notes, multidimensional, the TV adaption, why Lynch’s Dune is reviled, a book medium, people decoding each other, even Heinlein, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress has some action and some visuals, the martian one, Stranger In A Strange Land, of his adult novels, Dune is better than Stranger In A Strange Land, you need the ideas, you need the doubt, you need the multidimensional, different grids, good science fiction in writing, you need a demanding film, how much Blade Runner is able to extract from the novel, Mercerism, the owl, that’s enough, the dove, he’s a video guy doing a video medium, a little bit of this book, no fake police station, I want more life, fucker, the elevator scene, the eye scene, Gaff, a real idea movie, little stick man, a robot and robot love story, why the sequel is a failure, here’s the bad guy for the next movie, pretty good for being what it is, Ridley Scott has dumbed himself down, we didn’t need Harrison Ford, children and garbage, the political woman, we all whole through that, very N.K. Jemisiny, film editing, The Matrix (1999), took everything out about Zion out as irrelevant, take away the battery scene, The Thirteenth Floor (1999), eXistenZ (1999), David Cronenberg, he can’t help his fetish, bodies, opening them up and getting weird, Barry Convex, tripping over his own fetishes, kinda gross, long live the new flesh, even The Fly (1986), Crash (1996), vagina surgeon twins, Dead Ringers (1988), lingering over body trauma, reaching into his belly and inserting videotape, Lovecraftian, Videodrome (1983), with some judicious editing, The Electric Ant, he likes boobs, mainstream fetish, fit them in regularly, they don’t rot or explode or melt, very William Burroughs, with RoboCop guy, Peter Weller, Naked Lunch (1991), like a Cohen brothers movie with Cronenberg added, non-intellectual class, this is basically a film about cockroaches, Brazil (1985) a similar movie with political resonance, comedic riposte to Nineteen Eighty Four, the state we’re in right now, kids don’t get to mine back movies, old movies, almost impossible to find anything old on streaming services, the Orson Wells movie with the sled, people who enjoy making movies, Citizen Kane (1941), William Randolph Hearst, stuck with the dross, unwatchable, Oppenheimer (2023), Barbie (2023) by other means, a big ad for that, very meta, socially critical, unless Red Letter Media covers it, seeing this as a science fiction film, Tenet (2020), paradoxes, does the universe re-arrange itself, you’ve seen it played through hundreds of times, nonetheless, really clear, Goddard movies, traffic going by, Robert Goddard made movies?, Breakthroughs In Science by Isaac Asimov, lots of stuff in common between his fiction and popularizing history and science, the Roman Empire and the Roman Republic, see Foundation in a new light, figuring out the worth of things like that, don’t read anything since 2008, throw dice for the Hugo finalists, unfortunate, not in the microcosm, when some of the Hugos made sense, read science fiction all alone, starved for good books, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka, fan clubs, media people, like dressing up, they found their people, a little like university, you’re going to have a lot more interaction with people who like books, just enough true, Greg Bear was there, Harlan Ellison, Connie Willis, Robert Silverberg, Larry Niven falling asleep, the panels were like very weak shit podcasts, so many names mentioned, going through the list of all the names mentioned, here’s a long list of reasons why SFFaudio Podcast hasn’t won a Hugo, that’s exactly what it is, read a trilogy, three years too late, very time based cheerleading, we can still talk about an old book and be happy about it, a cheerleading squad for people in our niche, mostly not good, mostly very fluff, that show is so fucking long, goes hours and hours, Luke Burrage did an exercise, focuses on new books, some fantasy stuff, Alzabo Soup podcast, the Gene Wolfe Literary Podcast, The Fifth Head Of Cerberus, made it real enough to plunge into the stories, Marooned On Mars podcast, novel by novel, Kim Stanley Robinson, the other podcasts who follow new writers, some of them are good, somebody else’s job to read it for Jesse, that 1812 book, kicked around for 200 years, probably something to it, Hayy Ibn Yaqdhan by Ibn Tufail, two ibns, more intelligent than us, how dare it!, a good phrase, a Sufi scholar, re-written in the first person, Robinson Ibn Tufoe, in A Time Of Changes, without language you can’t get access to reality, it was good, reading all Silverberg is a life, Scott Miller’s Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, The Thing Behind Hell’s Door by Robert Silverberg, inside out world, a really good source, his enthusiasm, famous authors and some obscure thing, some obscure science fiction author we’ve, Watchbird by Robert Sheckely, going Sheckley crazy, shitty Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett humour, Sheckley was there first and better, a more diverse range, a lot like Philip K. Dick a little more sane maybe, R.A. Lafferty and John Sladek, Harry Harrison, The Stainless Steel Rat, just having fun, Bill The Galactic Hero, the narrator who did the whole series for Brilliance, what’s going on on facebook, heterosexual man got nude pictures from a teen girl, he was a good narrator, maybe he broke a law, Phil Gigante, Commentary, Rusty Rockets, Russell Brand, they took his monetization away, they should promote cancelling people, so very public, keeping him on there is pure profit that week, almost 5 hours.

The Radium Pool by Ed Earl Repp

The Radium Pool by Ed Earl Repp

The Radium Pool by Ed Earl Repp

The Radium Pool by Ed Earl Repp

The Radium Pool by Ed Earl Repp

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #780 – READALONG: Sheba by Jack Higgins

Jesse, Will Emmons, Alex (Pulpcovers), and Jonathan Weichsel talk about Sheba by Jack Higgins

Talked about on today’s show:
Seven Pillars To Hell, Sheba, 1994, 1963, all the seven pillars into the desert, we see one we hear about two, the temple had pillars, the trail into the desert, temple to Ishtar, Astarte, Venus, a play on Seven Pillars Of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence, pre-show jokes, hated this book, garbage, void, fluffy, airport lit, threads would get picked up and nothing would happen, Spanish fascists, Nazis, Hitler is busy inading Poland, part of the rewrite, a great script for a movie, Cain, get better again, cartoon Nazis trying to blow up the Suez Canal, worse and worse, judging it fairly harshly, a good novelization of Raiders Of The Lost Ark, fairly similar, events, Nazi base in the desert, blow up the plane, girl gets captured, trapped in the temple, no supernatural objects, suffered because of that, no metaphysical content, Jonathan is right about that, Casablanca (1942), stock characters, Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, all explained by airport fiction, kinda forgetable, Alastair MacLean but second tier, something lacking, discontinuities, a time jump, fast forwarded through the video, new destination, scrub forward, not Harry Potter style scene based fiction, in the rewrite, every man in the world loves an airplane, show yours, choose only one airplane?, how stupid the premise is, you could blow up a gate, block ships, fucked things up, a secret city base in the desert, I can revise my book, Raiders is kind of a trick, decieved, novelty, perfect execution, tricked us into liking it by being perfect, sequels, shows us the error of our mistake, all stories like this, they have to be like this or they’re the Quentin Tarantino let’s kill Hitler movie, paid attention to the history, biblbical historical supernatural element, blame too big of government, “top men”, Warehouse 13, back to the warehouse, in The Crystal Skull, a way to solve a problem, we can’t have the power of god in the hands of the allies, all the stuff is tricks, superhero villians, so WWII can happen, Lex Luthor has to exist, doomed to fail, stated discontinuities, WWII movies/books, this is not Eye Of The Needle, The Eagle Has Landed, the opposite of tricks, no craft, [Ken Follett], zone off, Will feels that, by the time the plane exploded, ready for the book to be over, just over 6 hours, 4 hours, 2 hour movie, heard how big Raiders was, Storm Island, Donald Sutherland, hates the British, Robert Duvall, the Valkyrie historical figure, the guy with the eyepatch, Jesse’s brain doesn’t work very well, Michael Caine plays a Nazi, kidnap Churchill, whole team is dead, nice Nazis accidently killed a little girl, this kind of genre, something that could have happened, has to fail, a much worse direction, Inglourious Basterds, made a promise of genre, we know that didn’t happen, a wrecking of genre, Overlord (2018), American paratroopers, a black NCO commanding white enlisted, executive order 9981, we changed history, the officer scene, super-compelling, see Hitler machine gunned very well, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, saving a historical film actress, the day Jesus was born somebody shot him with a crossbow, post-modernism, breaking the rules, bending genres, being free of the rules, we’re beyond rules, 1900-1960, future obsessed, fuzzy science, high culture vs. pop culture, meaning is important, meaning is relative and open ended, it will say “yes”, who else would be like this?, Cronenberg, is he postmodern?, The Fly remake, Videodrome (1983), this book is not post-modern, the rules of a promise, if you put a rocketship on the cover of you book you’re a liar, those are bad people and bad books, people will buy it, they’re just liars, man on the run, Hitchcock, pretty good, semi-historical figure, attested to in history, blocks of stone from almost the period, her name, she only exists in the bible, outside of the bible, archaeological hints, scientifically, the rocks, stones and statues, we the reader, metaphor in fiction, an incomplete metaphor, why is it called Sheba?, a McGuffin, it doesn’t tie in, who doesn’t like the way it sounds?, political activities of the Kings of Sheba, Yemen, for some reason Jesse knows a little bit about Sheba, where Sheba is, dispute, two areas claim the queendom of Sheba, Somaliland the empty quarter, Jesse’s brain is really good at background work, The Nameless City by H.P. Lovecraft, Iram of the Pillars, enjoyable, unless you’re just fighting the weather, Salim, a corrupt German (or French) archaeologist, especially girls, they have the up the stakes, human trafficking, this whole genre, Clint Eastwood in a Nazi uniform, make a book out of it too, Where Eagles Dare, comes out of literature, airport style fiction, what your grandpa or dad was reading, cowboy hat, range in the title, a horse, it won’t matter, not a classic for the ages, hanging out with Hitler, going into Hitler’s office, the prologue was fun, should add to the resonance, that old poem by Shelley, Ozymandias, Hitler built a temple to himself, white sam browne belts, we can assume the MP-40s, MP-38, not enough Catalina action, the revision was badly done, a 30 year gap, died in 2022, any other historical errors, there are prototypes man, random bedouins, a hare brained scheme, Ritter had showed up in the desert, we like him too much, WWII movies, girls probably don’t like it as much, Guns Of Navarone, Force 10 From Navarone, good actors in it, murky, the plot is terrific, a great read, more like a Jonathan story, is it worth it?, two genres, A Bridge Too Far, The Longest Day, as close as we could ever come to being in Operation Market Garden, actors playing themselves, a huge cast, capture every bridge, one big push, Robert Redford in a canoe, Anthony Hopkins totally outgunned using his umbrella, actually happened, actual airplanes flying into the sky, late 60s, The Dirty Dozen, 1981, The Big Red One, the end of this era, Mark Hamill, Lee Marvin, a series of vignettes, German and Russian, Das Boot, 100 WWII movies that you’ve seen, Ilsa She Wolf Of The SS, Jesus Franco, a Will movie, Spaghetti, exploitation characters, the prologue reflects on this temple that’s gone, makes it better, this book is broken, ahistorical, this temple plot, combining the two, I hate Hitler, let’s see some Nazis, archaeology, not-competent, the Spanish ones, bored because he’s a courier, trying to carry about a plot, a comedic sense, you want them to fail, not that bright, watching this Cain fellow, an interesting story in there, gone back and forth, meet at some point, until they show up and blow up, a weirdly wasted character, learn how to fly a plane, sea-captain, he’s the Mary Sue, a bastard of a book, it doesn’t meld together, motivation, he’s gotta save the girl, simply in it for the money, $6000, the British archaeologist lived, we just get the wife, the Casablanca element, the Humphrey Bogart character, we’ve beat up on this book, a small axe to grand, no rule against cringe, only black character cannot speak, tried to write dialogue with him, a 1970s movie decision, the loyal retainer, he’s Chewbacca, like a dog, the Somali, the Arab, the Greek, the German, endlessly interesting utube channel, drills down on the history the number of SS legions, foreign legions, there’s an American one, Arabic legions, Danish, they’re trying to setup an international system, the communists, the Romans, not just for propagandic purposes, Spanish Nazis, the Greek Nazi, part of the criticism we can all have for this book, him being a very successful market, seems interested in his subject, generally gets things right, just so happens there’s a lot of men out there, do men think about the Roman Empire everyday?, WWII everyday, wish you were here Paul, building civilizations, empire building, standard sorta male mindset, in reaction to/in spite of, Spanish Civil War was the prelude, can’t do anything that matters, Harry Turtledove, getting out of the desert alive, stuff happens, fuel tank being emptied, the plane they crashed, the MP-40s being a little early, technically well done, stories in the corners, blocking the Suez Canal, drop mines, airport lit fiction plots, out of the desert for no reason, an excuse to getting into the dessert, seeing the queen on the wall, big king with a star of David, the guy’s name is Cain, mark of God cain, a killer, smuggler, pilot, ship’s captain, what isn’t he? real, the mythological archetypal American, very El Borak, Robert E. Howard constructs better, sentence by sentence, Kirby O’Donnel, The Fire Of Asshurbanipal, tsk tsk, bad Jesse, a really good audio drama [blue hours], a lot like this story, Bedouins, a forbidden city, death trap, giant jewel, Weird Tales, beautiful cover, a demon bound to the jewel, puts in the sorcery reluctantly, ancient cursed city lost in the desert, The Curse Of The Golden Skull, King Kull, millennia go by, Lemuria, some guy with a beard, a snake came out of the skull, supernaturally in the curse was upon his bones, that story didn’t sell, more of a vignette than anything else, any sorcerer can be killed with steel, a stout blade is a hardy incantation, the best WWII movies, designed to make Jesse mad, The Notebook, The Great Escape, a WWII movie with Bronson, Come And See, Germans rolling in, very biblical movie, number of tanks fielded and trucks burned, adopted by the Nazi, The Imitation Game, all 19 years old Dunkirk, Jojo Rabbit (2019), Scarlett Johansson as a Nazi, Stalingrad, Defiance, Black Book (2006), Soldier of Orange (1977), maybe it’s amazing, Empire Of The Sun, Christian Bale as a baby, The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946), America has changed so much, looks like a comedy, straight drama, William Wyler, Arrested Development, smiling, get weepy, ironic, the hardest years, Patton, Rescuers Down Under, Hardcore, The Last Run (1971), a play, directed by George C. Scott’s sons, gambling addiction, famous son, rented a huge theater, Jesse doesn’t brag enough, Jesse loves old movies, Letters From Iwo Jima, a pendant to Flags Of Our Fathers, The Dirty Dozen, very of its time, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, much better WWII movies, the scene on the beach, Burt Lancaster having sex with a nice lady on the beach, the meme movie: Downfall, Hitler in the bunker movies, Hitler finds out about x, The Thin Red Line, Terrence Malick, an artsy WWII movie, the actor list, a good cast, a cast of white guys, Nick Nolte, directing the war from the boat, on an artsier scale, Life Is Beautiful, one they would show you in highschool, a good movie, Alex just doesn’t like really sad movies, funny bits, a funny looking guy, fun times in the holocaust, not a lot of laughs in Shindler’s List, Jerry Lewis’ lost clown in the holocaust movie, an offensive concept, [The Producers], Midway (2019), Pearl Harbor (2001), the other Bridge, Dennis Quaid, Randy Quaid, the handsome, Woody Harrelson plays an admiral, 3 hour youtube documentary, Woody Harrelson’s dad was involved in the assassination of JFK, Natural Born Killers, Das Boot, the reboot of Das Boot, in the gym, pretty good, adds in girls, an on shore element, girls working for the Nazis, Dutch them, Grave Of The Fireflies, hanging out with the anime Cirsova guys, older, born in 1978, one anime every 5 years, space western anime, Robotech, Casablanca, its basically a play, where do you think the French went?, technically set during WWII, not a battlefield movie, Quentin Tarantino’s top 11 movies of all time, Sunset Boulevard, dead in a Hollywood lady’s pool, Five Graves To Cairo (1943), five stops in the desert, a British tanker, crawls out of the desert, waitstaff in a hotel, based on a play, actual tanks on screen, Nazis come up with unecssarily complex schemes, it takes Americans to…, Robert Shaw plays a blonde SS panzer, The Battle Of The Bulge, The Bridge On The River Kwai, 1957 movie starring Obi Wan Kenobi, a biopic about the actor, a WWII vet, Pierre Boullet, Saving Private Ryan, a good beach scene, the rest of it is terrible, very solid, a lot of movies have plots, Tom Hanks is ok, non-threatening, Greyhound (2020), based on a C.S. Forester, really nice low stakes, a pattern, Jonathan noticed a pattern, WWII battles, wants to be a movie, shooting, hardware, aircraft, support the invasion of Poland, set before WWII, Raiders is not a WWII movie, one of the plans, keep these guys in prison, death march them, some criteria, fill in the holes somewhere, The Man Who Never Was (1956), homeless man, remade it recently, not a better movie, some up and coming officer with a limp and an eye-patch, same plot as Where Eagles Dare, a double bluff, the plans for D-Day, recapture or kill, spill the beans, if they make computer game levels out of it, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, give it away for free, just a multiplayer, The Guns of Navarone (1961) map, Where Eagles Dare, his son said, my dad is really depressed, best WWII movies, high on the list, a lot going on, best WWII movie not on the list, small stakes, not a D-Day movie, get some men off an island, just go around Crete, fixed gun emplacement on a beach, a really good film, tomb raiding book, Easy Go, missed every John Lange book, a lot like Anthony Quinn’s character in Guns Of Navarone, half-greek half-german?, his mother was a whore, before the shore, you never read them, how any of them is relevant to the book except as a title, to tie in as a metaphor, King James, 1 Kings 10, 29 sentences, punctuation, the name of the Lord, prove him with hard questions, the lovely Robert E. Howard language, went back in time, camels and bare spices, when she was come, communed with him, not anything hid from the king, where he told her not, the meat of his table, unto the house of the Lord, no more spirit in him, howbeit, behold the half was not told me, thy wisdom, hear thy wisdom, because the Lord loved Israel forever, an hundred and twenty talents of gold, the navy also of Ophir, almug trees, pillars for the house of the lord, psalteries for singers, all her desire, royal bounty, she and her servants, beside that, in the forest of Lebanon, another archaeological thing we can dig up, she’s just there to show how good Solomon is, inferences, a kingdom in Africa somewhere, Song Of Songs, the two disputes, the pretty part of the Bible, good reading, sexy reading, sexy reading is important, beautiful art, there was good writing in here, bastardized, a thirty year gap, something we’ve seen, King Solomon’s Mines, hokey romance, people shooting at each other, one of the malest books, true story, a very male writer, by and for dudes who watched the History Channel, the WWII channel, The World At War, here’s what’s happening, WWII by tweets, here’s what’s happening in the war, this is what happened, leaving tons of stuff out, Russia invades Poland, leaves out the context, if California invaded Oregon, boats and airplanes, borders that are always moving back and forth, in bed with Hitler, dig into this again, maybe they want to be allies, the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact, hidden pacts, we’re gonna defend France, France, we got your back, start with a sketch, forget about the pejorative part of it, drill down, really crazy details, Hitler’s Bodyguard, Churchill’s Bodyguard, protagonist from a men’s fiction novel, a WWII movie, someone on twitter reviewed it, Paperback Warrior, I’ll read that, response to Dial Of Destiny, it is a fun book, explores a part of the world not a lot of books are set in, Arabia during WWII, searching for Sheba, a Lost City with sentient gorillas, a tomb full of treasure, except for that one necklace, the femme fatale shows up looking for her husband, reinforcing the WWII stereotype, Son Of Kong (1933), giant gorilla movie, not a jewel movie, hold the girl or hold the stones, she doesn’t and she dies, Reading, Short And Deep, a Bros. Grimm story, The Woman In The Wood, tap the tree twice, cup of milk, friends with the bird, hollow tree with a door in it, witch lady in there, go into the back room, a table full of rings, pushes past the witch in the little house, the curse lifted, Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade, this is the cup of a carpenter, lifted straight out of movies, or the Bible, antikythera mechanism, another treasure hunt movie, Donald Pleasence as a Nazi, The Treasure Of The Amazon (1985), Treasure Of The Sierra Madre (1984), Cannibal Holocaust (1980), he’s a lot of fun, topless natives all over the place, exploitation feel, the bag of jewels, just sand, trick em all, gets the jewels at the end, that was kinda messed up, you can just kill somebody, that’s kinda messed up of you, a really cool dude, sounds like a boy movie, based on actual facts that occurred in 1958, Gringo, Bradford Dillman, Marathon Man (1976), Lawrence Olivier, High Risk (1981), Triple Frontier (2019), James Brolin, Lindsay Wagner, Cleavon Little, James Coburn, Ernest Borgnine and Anthony Quinn, drug lord, go to Hawaii and film this movie, good movies that are low rated, Tubi, Midnight Pulp, Shudder, Tubi is owned by Fox, Assault On Precinct 13 (1976), drop everything your doing, Siege (1983), evil presentism, understand, when talking about silent movies, silent films are more work, people don’t like work, half lazy, you’re on an airplane, Thomas Burnett Swann, saying you love farts, Safety Last (1923), The Lost World (1925), that guy’s an athlete, Antonio Banderas, how could you expect a movie from the dawn of movies, 1920, the 1990s is the problem, charismatic, Catherine Zeta Jones, Michael Douglas’ wife, a nice digression, Jesse’s thoughts on what makes a WWII movie, some books are designed to be movies, spec for a movie, the storyboard, why didn’t he just re-release it?, Stephen King, he’s a shitlib now, he had to fix it, he’s not Richard Bachman anymore, The Hunt For Red October, Jack Ryan, TOM CLANCY, dead for 10 years, still an executive producer, Eartha Kitt, Dirk Pitt, fundamentally broken, the girl plot, the promise of blowing up the canal, The Eagle Has Landed, Kelly’s Heroes (1970), 9th novel out of 75, more successful better selling pen-name, a drawer novel, a retelling of Of Mice And Men with a kidnapping, poured shitlib sauce all over it, famously right wing?, both parties are in favour of war, what do you mean when you say right wing, Steinbeck, the distribution of wealth, the ultra wealthy are against the distribution of their wealth, old money vs. new money, JFK to 9/11: Everything Is a Rich Man’s Trick (2014), George Herbert Walker Bush, the head of the CIA, 1963, his middle names, those are the people who run the state, WWI or not, let’s invest in Hitler, Henry Ford, full size painting of Henry Ford, IBM, Hitler used IBM, the Hollerith counting machines, James Tiptree, Shakespeare’s Planet, The Night Land, a lot of wading through a lot of kissing, mostly kissing, pining for kissing, 6 hours and 12 minutes, one is very very genre, one is very very experimental, a long tradition vs. pioneering, fantasy, Heavy Metal magazine, power armour, chainsaw lance, William Hope Hodgson, The House On The Borderland, James M. Cain wrote it, a super-good read, trippin balls, fishing trip in Ireland, a crevasse going into the Earth, assaulted by pigmen, sister is sleeping, his dog turns to dust, Lovecraft before Lovecraft, skulls being boiled, the whole concept of the hero, reject the idea completely, grown, the squeecore, let’s eat food and talk about snappy dialogue, the books that win Hugos, fiction inspired by Joss Whedon, perhaps a little uncharitable here and there, they all have MFAs, go to Clarion and pay the $6000 to be in the union, pal around enough, slip up and say something racist, a real phenomenon, changing your ways, buy a Hugo on ebay, how you gonna stop someone, you could get sued, products you can’t buy on ebay, you can’t buy an oscar, a rocketship, trade her some masters of the universe in the spot where one of her broken Hugos was, Your Haploid Heart, The Werewolf Principle, Project Mastodon, The World That Couldn’t Be, Our Children’s Children, thriving tribes of genderless natives, Gavin Duncan didn’t care, the berries cured mental illness, ten rows of vua, dead friend Gregg Margarite, LibriVox, Hellhounds Of The Cosmos, conflict, internal conflict, peach pie vs. apple pie, just a place and a setting and a story, stories with no conflict, that’s not a story that’s a display, no money for pizza, no problem, The Gift Of The Magi by O. Henry, the pornographic Gift Of The Magi, three wise men show up at the door with a pizza, well after the holidays, original art, who doesn’t like Clifford Simak?, everyone should, the way Douglas Adams, since I was a teenager, the right age for it, doesn’t hold up too well as an adult, get to the fucking point, getting annoyed, flying by the seat of his pants, the concepts are pretty heady, it helps to be young and thinking everything is dull, fun and hilarious, a frictionless surface, old science fiction story, No More Friction [by David H. Keller], Portals Of Tomorrow edited by August Derleth, it feels perfect, can’t stop rubbing it, do a double, Weinbaum is Mr. Sparks, an army psychiatrist, Death By Snu Snu, Weird Tales, psychologically deep, about writing, reality changes, The Hypnoglyph by John Ciardi, how short is it?, page 3 to 15, never ever have to take a show down, the Weinbaum list, had he not died of cancer he’d have been bigger than Heinlein, John Ciardi, actual 54, A Grocery Of Limericks, procastinating projects, Justified, very Elmore Leonard, Raylan, his last book, a cash grab, set in Kentucky, Graham Yost, TV Ontario, a movie family, arcturian space crystal, a cat likes to be stroked, tropism, every surface of the body, innately happy, objects for rubbing, old Chinese medicine, curio stuff, netsuke, chairs irresistible to the buttocks, sexual potency, his last child was born when he was 84, good dreams, the natural tactile organ, it is pleasant, pleasure is absolutely irresistible, I want less than you do, a curious coincidence, poisonous cheroots, do we collect so we can tell yarns, I’ll collect you, a new audience a new opportunity, the humidor, sachets, a terrific story so far, denubian brandy, a pause before the yarn that no story teller can omit, last blast into space, killed the wanderlust, being filthy rich is hardly the worst fate imaginable, an asteroid belt just popping, just an asteroid belt, pure diamond, federation prize money, a hunting implement, a snare, there are queerer things than that in space, a culture was founded on it, you’re not ready to believe, a yarn’s a yarn, that’s what space is, the constant reoccurrance of the incredible, unless you’ve got a prehensile hand and supra-orbital arch, the hand is good for picking things up, examining them, beginning to get ideas, an ungulate couldn’t use a tool in a billion years, that’s the sort of argument that gets hot in space, sidehumans, we didn’t make a report, as if running an inventory, buried in thought, coming up from a caveshaft, over the little polished dimple, the treasure room, what a lovely target I’ve made for a blackmailer, terrans can mate, I seem to be beyond surprise at this point, such lush pickings, still stroking the thing, too sound, reasonably proximate common ancestor, convergent evolution, without a common ancestor, deep space, the polished thing in his hand, to get back to DK-8, the hair and the skin structure, perpetually misty, all tropical, a fur covering, diffuse sunrays, die of suburn, nature always has a trick of trying to deal two cards at once, a tremendously developed tactile sense, their tropisms, it simply cannot stop, down into and over, a tactile science, tool culture, tactile culture, a rigid tribal matriarchy, working up a little voodoo, tactile gratification, they grow incredibly obese, a survival characteristic, such perfect control of their skin surfaces, strangely well proportioned, such hard wood, grainless, a huge seed, something like an avocado nut, extremely hard, then men set them out in the forest, these gadgets take care of all of that, they just can’t stop, the ruling clan of women, the slaughtering compound, his politeness was unfaltering, the men used to have unmanageable spells, hypnotize them, stops thrusting, breeding the life-wish out of the males, hardly enough men left to work the traps, the tribal leaders, new vigorous males, fresh blood for the lifestream, why I came back alone, the only male ever to leave DK-8, never, really, left, it, a puff of smoke, his eyes remained fixed straight ahead, only the fingers of his right hand continued to move, a door swung open, something huge and pale, a very Jonathan story, first sold story Going Native, humans and aliens mating, your cheroot is getting to you, getting over the covid cough, human in a legal sense, no matter how much they look human, anthropologist are busy learning if they can mate, a real challenge, complicated taboos, one species committing genoicide against the other, you like autism, autism in fiction, the OCD, not internal, an external force, The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell, August Derleth, the best of 53, Philip K. Dick, Robert Sheckley, Alfred Bester, Margaret St. Clair, Henry James, Anthony Boucher, James Blish, Mildred Clingerman, Clifford D. Simak, every story is a winner, such a good year, in future episodes, Anthony Boucher, a trilogy of novellas, One In Three Hundred by J.T. McIntosh, Earth is going to be destroyed, at least the first one is public domain, the government of the world, now we all gotta go to space, all going to go to Mars, one random dude, the most worthy people, elderly folk has wisdom, Orphans Of The Sky, piloting it from Earth to Mars, they give the rich people the good ships, One Too Many, abusing the comparison, reminds me of Poe, structured like a Poe story, The Cask Of Amontillado, little jokes about it, Behind The Curtain by Francis Stevens, very Poe, very sexual, getting his alien girlfriend a man, not prudish, psycho-sexual, use this piece of wood, a fidget spinner, it saw the future, very autistic, hypnosis is a very 50s thing, reading more David H. Keller, psychological depth, Binding Deluxe, The Little Husbands, a male bookbinders club, they’re all misogynists, of all the men who were mean to me, kinda sexy, Encyclopedia Britannica, one letter of the alphabet is missing, likes to see men tied up, tattoo on his back, turned into books, a subset, always got a wife going on, set in Africa, a forgotten writer, he’s on the second tier, Nictzin Dyalhis, a Weinbaum guy, A Martian Odyssey, a sequel, Worlds Of Weird, The Sapphire Goddess, Slaughter Of the Innocents, Weird Tales stock characters, not written for print, not hearing a strong preference, Sam Moskowitz, The Lotus Eaters, all of Weinbaum’s writing, The Hidden Planet, Donald A. Wollheim, Robert E. Howard, Frank Belknap Long, need short stories, enough time to discuss, The Sea-Thing, Giants In The Sky, really weird, the k is silent, The Horror Expert, The Man With A Thousand Legs, Mississippi Saucer, The Dog-Eared God, The Man From Time, The Man The Martians Made, The Ocean Leech, a sea-vampire story, The Sky Trap, The Timeless Ones, the pulp crew, the Cirsova-sphere, Asimov’s got good short stories, a boy who speaks with badgers, 1975, is this how you identify, getting into Avicenna, Canadian farm, half of Canadian children’s literature, Owls In The Family, My Side Of The Mountain by Jean Craighead George, makes friends with animals, Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, 5 hatchet sequels, very well written for a children’s book, Brian’s Winter, back to the hatchet, hatchet with a girl, live in the forest as an adult, not into pleasing people, decades, centuries into the future, he’s rubbing a clitoris, super-sexual, reflecting back on petting cats?, the surface that’s irresistible to touch, design work, look good feel good, the whole Ikea thing, as cheaply and with as few materials as possible, paper with a thin veneer of plastic, a pile of paper with a plastic coating, the opposite problem, this design school from the late 20th century, nostalgic for comfortable furnitures, 4 hours versus material, those young bladders can go all morning, Jesse will be talking in the background, solved a lot of the world’s problems, Galaxy: 30 Years Of Innovation, good magazine, a shadow of its former self, each story has an introduction by the author, the scene there, all the authors are living in New York, Alfred Bester wrote a story about that, Roman a Clef, recognized himself and was quite offended, Horace Gold is Galaxy magazine, John W. Campbell, nobody is super-mad at Horace Gold, homophobic fascist!, far right wing, too conservative, he’s a fuckin nutter, The Cold Equations, a reactionary old man, people get hung up, Frederik Pohl’s a communist, when you read C.M. Kornbluth, only 7 pages, she’s never going to be public domain, killed her husband and had no kids, murder suicide, suicide pact, probably definitely a lesbian, we’re both CIA, my husband says its okay, hangs up the phone, holding hands and a gun, Cost Of Living, the first one slid by, that boy of his, would he mature and take his place in society?, always kidding, he’d committed suicide, it would have been great to be a rocket pilot, a different ending, that pisses off author, that doesn’t piss off squeecore readers, the later one is probably Sheckley’s, bow out, the introduction, Jesse loves Sheckley, he’s my fave, this guy was an important science fiction writer, Scott Miller, narrator, Watchbird, autonomous drones that will zap people who are thinking about murder, a pre-crime thing, I’m not going to commit a crime, that’s why you’re dead, I don’t understand why we need civil liberties at all, the public domain version, not today, Philip K. Dick stories, a father a son in a house, future gadgets, some of his novels are meandering, highly influential to Douglas Adams, Mindswap, one damned thing after another, Candide by Voltaire, it came up, the etymology of Candide’s girlfriend, pussyhinge, giant aliens, Micromegas, novella, a long time, low on the battery.

Seven Pillars To Hell by Hugh Marlow

Sheba by Jack Higgins

Sheba By Jack Higgins

Sheba by Jack Higgins

Sheba by Jack Higgins

The Hypnoglph by John Ciardi

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Reading, Short And Deep #425 – The One Who Waits by Ray Bradbury

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #425

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The One Who Waits by Ray Bradbury

Here’s a link to a |PDF|.

The One Who Waits was first published in The Arkham Sampler, Summer 1949.

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Reading, Short And Deep #422 – Frozen Stiff by Lawrence Block

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #422

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Frozen Stiff by Lawrence Block

Here’s a link to a |PDF|.

Frozen Stiff was first published in Manhunt, June 1962.

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