Tag: telepathy

The SFFaudio Podcast #908 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: People Of The Black Coast by Robert E. Howard and Stragella by Hugh B. Cave

The SFFaudio Podcast #908 – The People Of The Black Coast by Robert E. Howard (28 minutes) read by Connor Kaye and Stragella by Hugh B. Cave (1 hour 15 minutes) read by Mike Vendetti, followed by a discussion. Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Alex (Pulpcovers)

Talked about on today’s show:
The SFFaudio Podcast, who is this Hugh B. Cave guy, and H.P. Lovecraft were from Providence, a beef, quoting Samuel Johnson, anybody who writes for anything other than money is a fool, the pure amateur, a beef over magazines, some amateur society, the representative for this area, a $10 fee, in their documented letters and interviews, hand-written letters, twitter in longhand, is exceedingly brilliant, a better artist than his theories indicate, a splendid story, Dead-Man’s Belt, the main characters are black, living in the city dump, stretch your legs a little bit, philosophy of why anybody writes anything, wrote poetry for free, miss a class, wouldn’t tutor for free, the money is necessary to take it seriously, a rationalization, put his writing behind other people’s writing, his good name, seeing the two here, the superior story?, wow!, bold claim, better than Stragella, not an S-Tier Robert E. Howard story, crab-man story, a first draft, an attempt at something, Black Vulmea, Isle Of Pirates’ Doom, ideation, setup, the whole war with the crabs is one page, great concept, out for vengeance, he died, where’s the rest of my story, 2 more chapters, The Cave-Girl, fightin trogladytes, I Am Legend, the weird telepathic crystal, dungeon full of human people, scribbled it down, later famous and dead, desperate for more Howard, strung it out, so short, the PDF is 11 pages, it’s really short, not two columns, you could do a sequel to this, self-contained it was, this is a note in a bottle, another 3 bottles, I found more paper and another bottle, short and hideous history, the red hour, dawn, blood and dawn, perfect Howard, the backstory, where’d she get that airplane, she’s Amelia Earhart, goggles and white scarf, Genndy Tartakovsky of Dexter’s Lab and Primal, from Manila to Guam, he goes mad with crab rage, moans over that, did they eat her?, experiments, super-creepy, this weird lab, grafted into a crab body, weird crab mad science, developing hands instead of clippers, give me something, an iron rod, very sketched, a complete story, not quite as Almuricy as Almuric, who would be the market for it, horror weird thing, The Noseless Horror, the mongolian werewolf, the guys who loved King Kong, 20 pages, down endings, Chinatown (1974), so horrible, suicidal charge, a little more crab meat, cracking of their shells, some kind of actual vengeance, doom the species, they’re afraid of him, super-intelligent and advanced, the kind of crabs they are, japanese spider crabs the size of horses, basalt island that goes up in tiers, feels artificial, a redoubt, why are they not in the water, a little more story, he managed to sneak in his favourite thing, he is the barbarian, always the goodguys, the guy from the backcountry, a counterexample somewhere, maybe Solomon Kane, atavistic throwback, a guy on the frontier, flying in the high tech thing, contemporary America, lots of cool stuff, charismatic magnetism, everything’s telepathic, A Princess Of Mars, the alien though process of the crabs, to impinge upon, unnamed narrator, Robert E. Howard running around on the beach, really fun, in those eyes, not even fear or hate, looked at in that manner, even the eyes of a human enemy, a certain acceptance, a worm about to be struck, they never could fathom, we were of different species!, of diverging order, exterminate some pests, is it possible that all life came from one stem?, they had progressed, along different lines, watching them do their homework, walkin sideways, so suggestive, guided by definite though inhuman thoughts, cutting off the need for more explanation, his version of The Shadow Out Of Time by H.P. Lovecraft, more explicitly ancient, it’s not a coast, wedding cake shaped island, looking for this story on google, please stop, the only way you’re going to find it, a very obscure story, 1969 publication, lots of good things to like about it, vampires vs. giant crab alien people, confused, the story got the cover, a scene depicted, Stragella is standing in front of people, a tiger, a giant snake, when that happens in the story, its called an “orgy”, ghosts?, the vampires bring them back to life to torture them again, a vhs tape being replayed, they can’t become vampires, reenacting their deaths, for our own amusement, makes the story more spectacular, in their to get the cover, a great cover, the other illustration, in the rigging, holding the lantern, looking down into the hold, until the firearms came out, supposed to be a contemporary story, 1932, Miggs, the dying copanion, Knells Yancy, psychoanalysis of the story, understatedly smart, gets to Serbian, set in the Indian Ocean, the Bay Of Bengal, they ate everybody, the Demeter from Dracula, the permanent coffin base, hide it off the coast, come to land and feed, a good scheme, they need some netflix though, as a vampire story it is very good, the double setup, William Hope Hodgson story, the giant sea snakes, like vultures, a derelict ship, super-poetic, written to order, it’s too long for what it is doing, a chronology of the story, lost in a storm, a persian priest who jumped over board, drank salt water, floating, the fogbank, enshrouds the ship, a tramp frieghter, bring back tramp freighters again, make tramp freighters again, Captain Katanga in Raiders Of The Lost Ark, tramp freighter media, admiring it, how he got the tattoo, draw whatever you like Professor, ornate crucifix, walks around with her shirt open all the time, double protection, the ship’s bible tucked into his belt, too obvious, overly constructed to do what he did, suddenly it turned out to be, video game item pickup, a scrap of paper, it was in the bat boxes, like a videogame, a big long rpg like FALLOUT, a new mission, item discovered, the next action sequence, a novel or a lot shorter (a third off), this has potential to be excellent, where to put the blame, he does the poetic, wailing of a dead wind, good opening, not Lovecrafty, horror vibe from the 30s, not enough here for what is here, why is it just Miggs?, Miggs is there to die, sniffing the flowers, what’s up with the flowers, the cursed flower, smelled too sweet, Strega Nona Russian witch character, Strigoi, straggling, the flowers are coming out of her coffin specifically?, the ghost scene, apes, the tiger, monkeys, the Indian crew, she goes to each of them, they become skeletal after she caresses them, her mom and dad?, all supposed to be Serbian Gypsies, add more characters to be eaten, the afterword, the Andaman islands, seems like years, characters don’t do anything, he pulls up the anchor, sets the ship adrift, holes the ship, sets it on fire, he’s a sailor, their coffin ship, isn’t this fucking cool, CRAB PEOPLE!, maybe they’re building a rocketship to go to other dimensions, their whole history, every parts, The Night Wire by H.F. Arnold, a double man, what Edison was, two mens jobs at the telegraphy machine, different messages, witchcraft!, weird party trick, a useful man, his whole Edisony thing, horror movies, watch the VHS tape, the lady in the well, The Ring (Ringu), a foreshadowing of, Robert Barbour Johnson’s Far Below, Lovecraft’s ghouls in New York, a war of extermination, genocide is my job, in the television adaption, so traumatized, the old chief, you turn into a ghoul if you stay down there long enough, it’s his wife, quite short, a swift kick punch, short on action, quite nice, this amazing little classic, here’s another Dracula, wildly popular in his time, named on the cover, wrote a lot of stories, no one talks about him anymore, suggesting that it was a weird menace story, Terror From The Deep, much more Dracula than anything else, a nautical Dracula story, the genres, weird horror, more towards the horror, the style in which it was written, high poetic language, Spaceway, don’t let that influence you, these are aliens, aliens from the ocean, do they harvest under the water?, we never go into the cliffs, so attenuated, more tantalizing than anything else, snipped off his girlfriend’s hand, keep goin, how great could it have been?, ideas awesome, more of him in the raging vengeance mode, very little bashing, down for more weird menace, is it anywhere close to the top of anything in Weird Tales?, no, enjoyed it, very solid, b plus, a grading system, had it been a third shorter it could have been two thirds better, or make it 4 hours, too long for what you get, what is a novel for, what is a movie for?, when most people say they want to be a writer…, they know what the shape of a novel is, how interesting the idea is, with only Miggs (along with Yancy), where the story fucks up, in the captain’s cabin, he finds two bottles, he leaves them there, later he goes back for them, putting together a really tight plot, why someone needs to be alone, it should be a perfect jigsaw puzzle, why did he leave those behind?, random, like computer game logic, the tarpaulin, tarpaulin is cloth embedded with tar, what’s the etymology of tarpaulin, maybe it needs another pass, tightening up, could be a vampire classic, as maximally awesome as possible, a big fan of maximally awesome, an episode of Primal, dumps out of dinosaur and caveman, Victorian haunted house, as you would expect anyway, the ring of Thoth Amon, past lives, serpent man, modern people wrapped up in a prehistorical cursed adventure, almost completely wordless, Pingu, Mr. Bean, functionally a silent film, Wings In The Night, massive font, that maximally awesome, Hills Of The Dead, standing on top of a cliff being attacked by hordes of zombies, nobody has done it as well, doing it without the dialogue, in the UK they had a theatrical release, see them in the movie theater, I guess we’re done, still on team People, on the crab people’s team, an invader in their land, take over Manila, colonize Guam, get the fuck off our island, going ham, locking in, crashing out, roid rages, reefs around the island?, ran out of fuel, a seaplane?, make it a novel, coast in to shore, whatever horrible vengeance, zip up his arm, so suggestive, one of his best stories, weird mysterious fog bound islands in the Pacific, fragment of Lemuria, a giant fence, ancient ruins, primitive natives, a new one, Fragment by Warren Fahy, way off Australia, the last piece of some ancient supercontinent, mantis shrimp, copper based blood, The Uncharted Isle by Clark Ashton Smith, they can’t get off the island, get in and explore it, eating through the tanks, eat everything, a Michael Crichton knock-off, Jurassic Park, off of Costa Rica, a list of stories that are that, 11 pages, same as Stragella, ghosty stuff, sacrificing their children to an ape gorilla god, oars for his boat, escapes the island, one of the oars is over the bar, island stories are essentially like science fiction stories, Star Trek, planet of the week, The Odyssey, from island to island, different guest host relationship problem, will watch in theater, refusing to see things for twitter reasons, Nolan movies, he has a problem with sound, why does he do that?, he doesn’t care about dialogue, just doesn’t matter to him, greyer and greyer, set photos, filmed on location in Greece, azure sea, ashcloud everywhere, stripped all the colour out of it, people on twitter, ai fixing silent movies, people ai fixing Nolan movies to make them more colourful, silent films are difficult to watch, take title cards that are used, The Mark Of Zorro (1920), Safety Last (1923), really good solid jokes, soundtrack, stings, none of that was recorded, sometimes you see the actors saying words, impersonator, maybe subtitles, he objected, the mouth moves a whole lot, lip read what he’s saying, the title card with what the guy’s saying, playful and smart, solved rather quickly, A Murder In Hollywood by Michael Crichton, random virals vs. mutual, the joke about the nobody wrecked your home, he doesn’t like humour, being clever and witty, comes back to punish him, hubris, why Helen of Troy killed Agamemnon, two different characters played by the same actress, their not twin sisters, to such an extreme degree, led to some confusion, subverting something.

People Of The Black Coast by Robert E. Howard

People Of The Black Coast by Robert E. Howard

Stragella by Hugh B. Cave

Stragella by Hugh B. Cave

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #907 – READALONG: Highways In Hiding by George O. Smith

Jesse and Scott Danielson talk about Highways In Hiding by George O. Smith

Talked about on today’s show:
Space Plague, the Spanish title: Caminos Occultos, 1956, 1955 for the serialization, a 70s vibe, the previous book was more 50s, the way the space drive worked, a road book, a plague from space?, no space, pick from the following writers, Floyd C. Gale, Sam Moskowitz, Sturgeon, which do you like, let’s here from Sturgeon, Adventure Science Fiction, November 1957, type and time, buy it instead of food, selling you on, revised paperback, the field needs more of this by George!, a review of Two Sought Adventure, the shortest review, another?, Analog, July 1968, E.E. Doc Smith, both scientists, interplanetary communication, telepathy and dirty work, so John W. Campbelly, Satellite, February 1957, resident review, Gnome Press, the electronic laboratory, the pace and high level of interest, one of the years best fantasy books of the year, pretty positive, the first Hugo awards, it’s a science fiction novel, a lot of it was fantastic, Floy C. Gale’s five star shelf, lie Bester in The Demolished Man, an ESPer, a car pile-up, a perceptive such as he, his fiance has disappeared from the car without a trace, a tickling memory, something wrong with the highway signs, tangled of morass of paths, Mekstrom’s Disease, you’ll go for this, hardboiled dialogue, all positive reviews so far, from Infinity, Damon Knight, the yearest dumbest sounding title, an underground organization, from Maine to California, the fleur-de-lis, disarmingly cheerful and vigorous, the only known carrier, pretend she was never there, woman-hunt, hypnotized from, Rhine institute, a telepathy or clairvoyant, surprising firmness, psionic dead stop, neologism, #you dirty slob#, Heinlein’s worst, the virtues of first rate science fiction, a lot less superficial than it used to be, to stand there and watch the eyes of a woman, poignant touches, cheerful bloopers, the law of least reaction, piracy and pillage, in the realm of grammar, a tin-ear, science fiction is literature, I hope that whomever he was, Astounding, 1956, P. Schuyler Miller, Van Vogtian melodrama, a rattling good yarn, incurable fatal, they disappear, an ingenious network, much action, rapid juggling, out before the deadline, Anthony Boucher, easily Smith’s best book to date, wild melodrama, seeking to control a mysterious disease, indestructible supermen, plot contrivance, unflaggingly excitingly, rich in typographical errors, what do you think Goodreads has to say?, a 3.68, slightly above the average, full of misogyny, the bad guys are woman haters, really interesting, the ESP, a road trip, Venus Equilateral, in Astounding in the 1940s, a rocky relationship with John W. Campbell, a Scott guy, an electronics guy, tons of parallels between this and Hellflower, a road book with lots of cars, not as good as Westlake, the venn diagram, people who write in a plain way, super-effective, exactly the same set up as the last one, before the book started, a space accident, she wasn’t there in the first place, tapped to be a secret spy, go undercover, he thought he did it himself, exactly the same plot, different baddies, intriguing, a space accident later in the book, the girl crashes the car, the art for the original serial, April, May and June 1955 issues of Imagination, a woman stepping out of a completely wrecked car, a 227 page PDF, introducing the author, create loyalty to the magazine by making the authors real, William Hamling, cluttering up science fiction magazines, 100,000 words per year, I write science fiction because…, 20 years in the electronics field, oatmeal box, a radio set of my own build, atoms were still indivisible, Mt. Wilson, distant galaxies, “island universes”, Pluto was confirmed and named, astronomy and celestial mechanics, liberally peppered, honest fact and bafflegab, a technical background, just excluded almost every modern science fiction writer, a traffic ticket for jaywalking in Cincinnati, fell heir to a typewriter, magazines pay money for printable material, writing yarns that I like to read, 3 subsequent replacements for item 1, melodramatic, a hotel detective, everybody is gaslighting him, one of the most damning indictments, a stuff happening book?, the gaps and the ESP and all that, two different groups with solutions from a disease, different motivations for wanting to keep it secret, make it for the elites vs. give it to everybody, almost a Simak idea underneath, sees evil in the world, going for a walk with your best girl and your dog, my girlfriend is a liar, overall pretty good, not just stuff happening, not a comics guy, totally X-Men, mostly action things, clairvoyance and remote viewing, on the bullshit wagon, ESP things, maybe there’s something to some of this, fucking testing this forever, the dead areas thing is never explained, natural depleted mana zones, the Niven method, The Magic Goes Away, a wasteland of telepathic ability, not reproducible, the dead area kind of explains that, underexplained, scratchin my chin at the end, the Rhine institute, making everybody telepaths and espers, the heroes, Professor X, the gene, a cross or a helix, recruited to help humanity in a secret way, the League Of Evil Mutants, are we the baddies?, lead by Gandalf (Magneto), in the concentration camps as a Jew, on a mission to let any of his people be controlled or killed by the government, not on the government side, what to do in a post-mutant society, what this book is about, the medicalized rhine society, doctorates of telepathy and physiognomy, all of them have superpowers, Cyclops, shoot light out of his eyes, they get pounded on all day, Wolverine, hardened skin, nearly indestructible bodies, this strain coming out of Analog, call from his mom, his father had died in the night, a twitter thread, an essay by Mark Twain, Mental Telegraphy, a letter came to him, travelling with his lawyer, held the letter up to his head like that Johnny Carson bit, it is kinda uncanny, if you squint a little bit, really well explained, driving down the highway, radio and microwave radar, listing to something happening elsewhere, almost like telepathy, to see through things, what an MRI or x-rays, knowledge and speculative thoughts, if those were in human bodies, make it longer, that happens some more, another one by George O. Smith, much like Simak, shares that space with Simak, in the Fishhook book, Time Is The Simplest Thing, so many gimmies at the beginning of this book, I bought it, he sold it, some of his books are like a kitchen sink, feels like thinking through, feeling your way, ends quite abruptly, why the book exists, a common technique in writing, a space, a page break, capitalization of the first word, doesn’t show up well in audio, the coda without saying coda, inoculating the families of the victims, we’re still underground for two reasons, unless you have trouble, Steve Junior, further plans, what makes the book even better, stop at the gas station to fill up, cleaning the windshield, at the spinner rack near the checkout, this makes it an underground book, written for the underground, what’s this book really about, about the underground railway, they look like us but they’re not like us, it isn’t about racism, it’s about moral intention, the question of race, how do you tell if someone is good or bad, perceive them with your esper skill, they’re intention is good, team elite or team bottom up, the tension between the two, this figure within the movement, us reading it and saying I’m inspired, these groups have merged, defeating the baddie at the center, reorientation, Babylon 5, Brad Dourif, [Passing Through Gethsemane], entirely demolished, built up from a blank, he suffered demolition, did our hero get manipulated to do everything in the book, hypnogaged?, sniffing out the highways in hiding, the whole world becomes maybe, there stories line up, a solipsism, the girl was against him, what do you do with that, not quite on the level of The Demolished Man, this might have been a science fiction classic that everybody talks about, these three concepts, there comes to be a character who is both telepath and esper, one of the best movies ever to come out of Hollywood that’s an original science fiction idea…, Rogue One, The Book Of Eli (2010), Gary Whitta, he’s not blind because he sees the world as god sees it, or as Daredevil sees it, the best literary exploration of this, innovative things, following the letter, a piece of his girl’s cloth, he goes and sits by the mailbox, Apple airtag, a psychic airtag, a book in your desk drawer about me, not this, Van Vogtish, every 2000 words change everything, he does spark, long enough to do the thing, quite beautiful to explore, things blossom in conversation, this big Simak read, books that don’t use action plots, making the girls more girly, his thinking voice, his writing voice, she [Jessica Martin] had to do all the girls, if she [Jessica Martin] could have been a male narrator, a very excellent narration, miscalculated, Spacemen Lost aka Lost In Space, the alien spaceships were watching and waiting, The Fourth “R”, an electromechanical educator, a stuff happening book!, extraordinary intelligence, Operation Interstellar, those who don’t want him to succeed, Three Skeleton Key, in the Atlantic, waiting for rescue, covered in rats, the rats took over the ship, they ate the crew, this tall tale, swarm all over the lighthouse trying to get in, a really good radio drama, waves of rats, taking over their little island, thousands of them, the same appeal as all the zombie stories, they’ve taken over, a horror story, Leiningen Versus The Ants by Carl Stephenson, I am German I will stop it, the story of a siege, escaped from a prison, Papillion (1973), like Playboy without the nudes, Esquire, catering to the same class, high class rich middle class set in the 1930s, Fred Greenhalgh, Suspense and Escape, radio drama can do things that nothing else can do, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, J. Daniel Sawyer, his name came up, got to his website, auto-didactic, talking about Heinlein stuff on twitter, For Us, The Living by Robert A. Heinlein, the plot barely exists, get out of the house, now they go to San Fransisco, a crush on, in the future you can like more than one girl.

Highways In Hiding by George O. Smith

Highways In Hiding by George O. Smith

Highways In Hiding by George O. Smith

Highways In Hiding by George O. Smith

Highways In Hiding by George O. Smith

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #906 – AUDIOBOOK: Highways In Hiding by George O. Smith

The SFFaudio Podcast #906 – Highways In Hiding by George O. Smith, read by Jessica Martin.

Highways In Hiding was first published in Imagination March, April, May, June 1955.

This UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK (9 hours 1 minute) comes to us courtesy of LibriVox.org.

The next SFFaudio Podcast will feature our discussion of it!

Highways In Hiding by Roy G. Krenkel

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #905 – READALONG: Time For The Stars by Robert A. Heinlein

Jesse and J. Daniel Sawyer talk about Time For The Stars by Robert A. Heinlein

Talked about on today’s show:
Time For The Twins by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Raistlin and Caramon, twin boys, one becomes a wizard and the other becomes a muscleman, lawful evil and lawful good, wow, this is really cool, illustrations!, you don’t get that anymore, there’s a checklist, who wrote this book?, he marries his grand niece, Time Enough For Love, The Door Into Summer, the young girl is grooming the older man, her plan works out, Heinlein’s relationship with Ginny, he wrote it on her honeymoon, I’m a cradle robber, the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, already descending into alcoholic psychosis, Leslyn went so far around the bend, back together, ran away and got married, honeymooned at a hunting cabin in Colorado, he’s looking for the door into summer, wrote the whole book in a week, an older bitter woman, write what you know, Dan Davis, Ricky, Riki-Tiki-Tavi, Heinlein was definitely Kipling pilled, Three Men In A Boat by Jerome K. Jerome, Thomlinson, The Gods Of The Copybook Maxims, M.I., mobile infantry, he’s a book guy, how engineering and invention works, a house robot, Bill Christensen, the robot that doesn’t work properly, MG, the Lucas Electrical Systems, as all the boomers are dying, they don’t make the parts anymore, the prince of darkness, they chose positive for the ground, prior art, six months to a year, much better, Toyota MR2, the literary allusions in this book, A Picture Of Dorian Gray, walks in and sees his twin brother there, the Long Range Foundation, the Howard Families Foundation, The Long Now Foundation, something people don’t actually believe but is very true, the world’s richest man, his inspirations are more Heinleiny, Peter Thiel is all Tolkien, Palmer Lucky, seed round, Grok, massive impacts, the right hands at the right age, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, [the Bobbsey Twins], to argue with Heinlein, a statement, all wars are wars of population conflict, Malthus, that hasn’t ever been the case, in a starvation setting, you could argue it into that, make breathing room, living space, super-taboo at the moment, Isaac Asimov, Make Room Make Room, Harry Harrison, Hitler’s not even quoting Hitler, the conventional wisdom, 1860 – 1945, world tour, The Star Beast, a proto-fascist in an H.G. Wells sense, social credit, an evangelical tract, the educated class, material uplift, level cultures, administer world resource, very WASPy, very socialist, down in the trenches, the cultures are so different, anarchist bent, government can solve problems, Friday, a character invent a technology and not patent it, The Number Of The Beast, if it is a novel, 20 year window, a reasonable length of time, who owns the Statermeyer syndicate books now?, estates as liches, Dr Suess’ estate, Agatha Christie’s estate, Tolkien, how crappy the control, there’s competition to be faithful, there’s competition for art, the ones from the official estate, riddled with typos, cost $1500, get another stack, kickstart it, there are other juvenile science fiction novels, written some of them, the imitators, the competitors, the critical mass, year after year for twelve years, Dal Tigmar book, an Alan E. Nourse novel, first space voyage, alien buddy, its good, Heinlein wants you angry at him, how Heinlein doesn’t really have villains, the replacement captain, acting unwisely, shakes his hand, maybe you should go to school too, is this anyone’s favourite, most similar to Starman Jones, Finnish people in space, the breeding program, Citizen Of The Galaxy, Sisu, space gypsies, land monsters, centaurs or hippogriffs, move alongs, all the books are similar, a propaganda of the learning, the love of science, investigation, engineering, culture, overtly propagandistic, the math, reading the classics, Shakespeare, Heinlein’s imitators, autodidactic, the cultural canon, Hadrian’s Flight, The Wolf Of Venus, the broad base, the deep base, Mormon culture, Orson Scott Card, might be even stronger than Heinlein’s following, different eras, hit harder in the 1980s, new books comin out, the depth and the breadth, star rankings, compare books to each other, a competent writer, trying to build a book, squeeze out a really interesting book out of Farmer In The Sky, the conflict between the company and the colonists, can that book be greater than it is, probably the worst juveniles, the smallest idea, the twin paradox, school curricula, Have Spacesuit, very relatable idea, homeschooling parents, which one do I start my kids with?, Treasure Island, trial before the gods, a really interesting relationship with loving but distant parents, abusive parents, orphan, Tom turns into an abusive parent, Patricia, controlling abusive person, the book you give to an abusive home, Red Planet, a gun culture, an abusive school system, Star Beast, Between Planets, get rich quick scheme, controlling land, starving people out, real life stuff, space and on other planets, families, let’s do something about it, while listening to it, he’s the worst, most unpleasant, he’s not a bad boy, he’s weak and manipulative and self pitying, unsympathetic characters, this kid’s diaries, he’s a kid, he grows up by the end, what a little shit he is, he’s being a little self-pitying, the psychology of his brother, raging narcissist and a sociopath, precocious, the action is quite limited, the rescue of people, feels shorter, Rocket Ship Galileo, it’s plot is much butter, a Tom Swift book with Heinlein flavouring, more deft with what he was doing, very slick, I’m gonna stay, pulls the rug out, all your work was for nothing, that sometimes happens, Space Cadet, these huge initiation rites, just qualifying them for adulthood, the first chapter of the next journey, facing the bully, give up his dog, the transition out of juveniles, more of this too, I’m a real girl now, I’m gonna have a baby, space hooker makes good, Mata Hari, more manipulated, more annoyed, The Puppet Master, your sister who’s not you sister, don’t look at her with your penis out, cool book man, let’s have so more arguments sir, it isn’t Mary Sue wish fulfillment thing, he likes to piss his audience off, on multiple levels, the top level argument, an element of satire, when you reread some of those scenes, isn’t that the power of being a smart reader, now can dismiss them, first contact, my ability to fight back, the checkboxes, always in there, transgenderism, he goes to the ship’s psychologist, just thing of me as Doctor Whateverhernameis, with his pets, the subject of the book, the secret of the book, we’re all stuck in our own heads as well, the problem of solipsism, self satire in “All You Zombies”, the only thing that happens is the story, more humorous, a really smart guy, a Philip K. Dick story Foster, You’re Dead, you nailed, by just talking about it, most of his short stories are solid, several of his novels are crap, the rest are interesting, the latest bomb shelter, subscribe to the new bomb shelter, during the COVID thing, maybe I can stay in the school bomb shelter, the fear of a child, nailing something very specific, Tony And The Beetles, the relationship of India to Britain during the time Gandhi, you’re my friend!, reading the newspaper 1944, bonus points, free writing materials, the Japs, victory gardens, The Man In The High Castle, the Japanese could invade at any time, that’s how you get that powerful amazing stuff, judge it based on what it is, a pastiche of Kim, some Conan like scenes in it, Citizen Of The Galaxy, a story about slavery, he discovers he’s a slave at every level, opts for the slavery, why are time travel stories so full of incest, a Robert Silverberg incest time travel novel, there better that way, Chekhov’s Gun, a thematic purpose, your inhabiting your own heritage, connecting with that bodily, good writing, everybody loves Back To The Future (1985), Timerider: The Adventure Of Lyle Swann (1982), the avuncular mad scientist, Marty McFly and Doc Brown, the reader, the viewpoint for this exciting idea, surrogate father, saving his own father, even more necessary than a present father, uncles being there, a series of surrogate uncles, mentors, Tremors (1990), Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985), he’s his own grandpa, Edward Page Mitchell, The New York Sun, time travel, the invisible man, faster than light travel, a cyborg story, a robot with human skin, a Star Trek style transporter, The Balloon Tree, contact with a god, The Soul Spectroscope, Edgar Allan Poe, Washington Irving, The Senator’s Daughter, cryonics, veganism before vegans were invented, they’re gonna take pills, a war with China, all comedy, humorous, The Clock That Went Backwards, cars haven’t been invented yet, knickerbocker roots, a clone of their aunt, the Tardis Doctor from Doctor Who, 1 page of the newspaper, Weird Tales, a good science fiction story doesn’t have to have knowledge of Heinlein, a really good mind behind the linotype, documentary, this is behind almost everything, kitchen sized typewriters, Predestination (2014), The Door Into Summer (2021), an extra step to the loop, I missed you terribly, it brings out the fundamental tension, individualism vs. duty to society, isolated from himself, it’s hard to make novels into good movies, Project Hail Mary (2026), when an author does a good joke, Grace is the only one left, the reason you read poetry, triples the meaning, $45, a dragon on the cover, does it really need to be that big?, the Dune books, book 4 is the best of the series, the first 6, potboilers, The White Plague, Hellstrom’s Hive, The Jesus Incident, poetry, all the stuff that Campbell likes, telepathy shit, The Demolished Man, Alf Bester, the Psi Corp, Highways In Hiding by George O. Smith, Dimension X, X-Minus One, Clifford D. Simak, Shawn Standfast, Shakespeare’s Planet, late Simak novels, Wizard Of Oz style narrative, put them on the road, see where it goes, Ring Around The Sun, free houses and free cars, The Fisherman, three different ways, small town newspaper, he has to write it, what’s really going on in this company, what is the effect of the Vietnam War when a whole bunch of people go away, he doesn’t really do villains, mobs exist, witch-hunts, a part of human nature but we can all live together, the mid-west, Simak’s books get better, he feels more free, all good, all slightly different, a robot, a girl, what it means, a wizard of Oz for adults, men who’ve lost there wives, university professors who’ve had to grade students, crowdfunding, his later books, kinda weird, a crowdfunding goal, studying late period, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, To Sail Beyond The Sunset, The Number Of The Beast, rewriting The Divine Comedy, the last chapter of each book, facing down the devil (Robert Heinlein), anagrams of Robert Heinlein, a description of heaven, describing Tertius, the Enochian books, a whole bunch of layers open up, Heil aka Successful Operation, Assignment In Eternity, as by Lyle Monroe, Ray Bradbury’s not paying anybody, he wrote short stories, The Man Who Travelled In Elephants, parts of Tenderfoot In Space, Satellite Scout, Nothing Every Happens On The Moon, a diligent renewer, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Draco’s Tavern, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Lord Dunsany, not actually a good novelist, I’m old now I’ll take the money, medical bills, a financial scramble, apparently Silverberg did really good and nobody knows how, how dare you, he’s indispensable, a few clunkers, doing things nobody else can do, profoundly impactful, Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys, cleanup when you have a picnic, be charitable, hearth and home, let’s pretend to be the Black Hand, the time of coming into your masculinity, the heroism of the individual, inspired and changed the world, a few of his non-juveniles are profoundly impactful, the wealthiest man in the world, D.D. Harriman, Musk in his rockets, he hasn’t been up in one, the other rocket boys, influencers, he read a book when he was kid, he ain’t faking that part, how genius works, the general aspects of intelligence, cognitive psychology, the higher levels, the flavour, he has hobbies and interests that aren’t just cash, sleeping on a cot for three months, the accumulation of money, making cool shit, sideways imported, Dan Davis, Ted Chiang’s Understand, feted vs fetid, William Gibson, author voice, a very flat dry voice, even more easily parodiable, John Steakly, he likes the sound and the feel of the word in his mouth, Neil Gaiman, a big ponderous book, Douglas Adams, an amazing short story writer, Seeing Ear Theatre, giving people what they want, short story and fairy tale tradition, mostly what he does, he redoes it and does it nicely, Charly (1968), Flowers For Algernon, you keep combing it, how do you write somebody smarter than you, Brainwave by Poul Anderson, they understand words and concepts, a dutch shepherd, they’re real smart, elephants, ponderous, it’s built into them, mountaintop hideaway, naked in shoes with a gun, an appendage to humanity, what we’ve been doing with herds, co-evolved symbiotes, cats, the feed store cat, they know their business, they assign themselves jobs, humans are boss here, local crows work with the local eagles, scares the crows off the property, a whole ecosystem, 200 times in the last two years, he’s always got a pet, a cat guy, a comedy of manners, Oscar Wilde, Pixel, Schrodinger’s Cat, an embodiment of quantum uncertainty, a really good cover, Robert Vaughn, Tom Weiner, McDonald’s is an Irish restaurant that serves German food, what have the google brothers done for us lately?, investing in life extension, space travel companies, spacesuits and life support systems, expose of the early 2000s tech culture, institutions vs. individuals, the wives, philanthropy arms, got snowed, the NGOs, the global censorship complex, feel very betrayed about it, sorry about that, it rhymes with the westcoast, 10am pacific, Skype, they lost so much money on it, a blight on humanity, satellite internet, except Skype, long distance, that company collapsed, a technological or engineering thing, some Russians, some Iranians, total light pollution, monopoly locally, he literally teaches you stuff, this is the book that got me into physics, he did it twice, the hyperspace, necessary for the McGuffin of the book, it’s his gimmie, one big gimmie, what’s the plot of Ringworld?, the theme is sex, sex comedies, a very funny guy, the main character is Niven, J.C., The Day The Earth Stood Still, J. Michael Straczynski, healed by Lorien, Harlan Ellison’s contribution, he had a vision, the 1989 strike line, Walter Koenig, kept him motivated, financial problems, A View From The Gallery, their lower decks episode, Peter David, Londo’s wives, one of the best villains ever on television, a tragic hero, nobody actors given Shakeperean roles, Lady Galadriel, he’s a lizard man, the story was done so well, if you just take the audio from episodes of Babylon 5, you don’t need the special effects, his first sales, Alien Worlds, his politics and his attitudes, the media he’s in, very independently minded, brittle personalities, Jeremiah, a lot of shitty stupid people who get in the way of shit, written by the same guy, interested in the same things, likeable male protagonist alone by himself, the great secret, in love with good stories, Lin Carter is not a good writer except when he’s writing about things that he loves, this Robert E. Howard really knows what he’s doing, David G. Hartwell, resentment is poison you take to kill someone else, call balls and strikes, it winnows away the problems and attracts other stuff, mediocre or worse, a joy when you find good stuff, good stuff that you don’t like, tried to like anime, it’s the writing that sucks not the drawing, how many good comic book writers, no new Garth Ennis, Alan Moore, Charlton horror comics, rip off good stuff, we made it happen.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #874 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Shining Pyramid by Arthur Machen and The Body-Masters by Frank Belknap Long

The SFFaudio Podcast #874 – The Shining Pyramid by Arthur Machen (50 minutes) read by Ben Tucker (for LibriVox) AND The Body-Masters by H.P. Lovecraft (38 minutes) read by Darrell T. Smith, II for Quasar Spectra, followed by a discussion of both (beginning at 1 hour 28 minutes). Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Scott Danielson and Cora Buhlert

Talked about on today’s show:
The Unknown World, 1895, 1935 issue of Weird Tales, late 1934, you don’t see the connection between these 2 masterpieces, not like twins, are these twins?, what if one of them is the black sheep twin and the other is a cyborg twin, both supposed to be weird fiction, not published in Weird Tales, a lot more like science fiction, infamous Weird Tales editorial, what Weird Tales publishes, didn’t have any of the words yet, some schizm in Weird Tales, one is set in the present, one is 5000 years in the future, oddly obsessed with the 20th century, behaving like a Babylonian, exquisitely contrasted, sun pool, hair and eybrows, seized by slim hands, help me out darling, more appropriate, an adorable form, boyish rapture, set IT down, the disc in her bosom, implanted a fervent lingering kiss, pneumatic lips, letters and numbers, J78, a patient on a surgical table, men and women won’t really change, husbands are still gonna get divorces, could have sold this to one of the science fiction magazines, early Astounding, a bit to much sex in it, prudish, not really well written, very fun, kind of silly, it’s interesting, genuine attempts to envision the future, women in the future will still not work, live in the suburbs (a 55 story building), the world city, the influence of Metropolis (1927), sex-bot, 1st sexy robot, Maria from Metropolis, a lot of Long?, unusual, kind of famous for being a disciple or friend of Lovecraft, The Hounds of Tindalos, 1929, how much weird fiction have you read, Lord Dunsany, a really fun story that’s pretty badly written, like a cartoon, it’s funny, phonographs in people’s chests, at the world’s fair, Elektro, you have to coordinate your questions with his answers, surviving footage, you can’t have sex with, him it would be dangerous, Robbie by Isaac Asimov, contrast it with Machen, The White People and Other Stories, little people, a series character, a detective character, weird detective, occult detective, like a Sherlock Holmes story, The Hound Of The Baskervilles, the answer is: little people, this is the opposite of a gothic, mysterious perhaps supernatural experience revealed to be natural, classic Scooby Doo, haunted playground, old man Withers, phosphorus all over the dog, very bad for the dog, a murderer on the loose, what girl is saved in this story?, she was lost? or sacrificed, lost or kidnapped, sexual element, we have to read it that way, tame in its descriptions, not exactly rape gangs, people who are gonna wreck things, about WWI, The Angel Of The Mons, having visited, The Bowmen, huge cemeteries, warning signs, don’t go off the path, unexploded little people, full of little people, gnomes and so on, they’re garden gnome sized, my little people aren’t evil, The Great God Pan, Ballantine Adult Fantasy, more like Frankenstein, a scientists doing experiments on a girl, to see beyond, if they don’t know anything else, very dark, loss of an innocent girl, brain surgery experiments, do surgery just the right way you can see beyond the veil, the gland surgeon, if you remove these, demanded, they’re not living in a democracy, hormones, what glands do, behavior modification, Doc Savage, a reality, lobotomies, one of the Kennedys was done, Rosemary Kennedy, politicians, disabled by a lobotomy, considered a slut who was sleeping around, doctor doctor my wife is misbehaving, we can fix that, trends, take things out of you, they put things into you, give you drugs, connections, almost a farce, horrible dystopia, newborn child, my son my daughter, the guy from work, b17, I love you b17, love is not allowed anymore, Equilibrium (2002), gunfighting, standard type dystopia, a Hollywood movie, killing each other within days, German soap opera star, a horrible human made dystopia, god made things a long time ago, the horror in Machen is contrasted with the beauty of nature, the morning after, a gangbang/holocaust, transforming a girl into their world somehow?, last lines of the story, the pyramid of fire, Worms Of The Earth by Robert E. Howard, atavistic little people, fading and degrading, Picts against the Romans, John Buchan’s No Man’s Land, thinking about genre, seems like they have nothing in common, we three are used to it, neither of these stories is a boss is gonna fire me and my wife is cheating on me story, so weird, Redbook not Bluebook, strip out the science fictional stuff, 1899, they save the girl, the little people are more like troglodytes, figure out what fiction genres become, slotting things, Planet Stories, between planets, Wonder Stories, the future on Earth, gigantic contraptions, Frank R. Paul, giant wheels, the Foundation tv series, where do Lovecraft stories take place, the contemporary world, when things get weird they go underground, Antarctica, a place that’s not well explored, I wanna see the giant penguins, I wanna see the shoggoths, travel ad, if youre gonna see the weirdness you have to go underground, a lost city, science fiction tends to put it in outerspace or in the future, the horror that exists you have to do it in the darkness, where are these little people, has their been any gypsies, 1930s hobos, hobo signs, maybe a dwarf sailor?, rounding up all the prejudices, something about the Irish, you can’t trust the Spanish, little tiny Jews, not a mythological dwarf, screening before birth, famous actors, late 40s, people are aborting, gland surgery on people, he murdered his wife, it wasn’t your fault, it’s your parents’ fault, I’ll have you on my table, a horror world, put her in a locker, scripted conversation, jump down the pneumatic elevator, wife on the couch nuzzling, just like in Futurama, in the opening credits, how silly and humorous the story is, super-dystopic, human hubris, a Dictator of Emotion, worse than anything Hitler did, approved lists of names, they didn’t do numbers, good Aryan children with good latin name, Jesse Owens, Taylor Swift, those are terrible names, most popular names of 2024, Olivia, Noah, Liam, Oliver, Elisha, Irish names, old testament names, people naming their pets, super-hero characters, despair for humanity, a woman named Taylor, named after ancestor, picking amongst a list of ancestors, women named Maj-Britt, born around 1960s, a Swedish actress, the Kevin problem, completely unknown in Germany until the Home Alone movies, we got a problem with humans, Madison, the 2nd most popular name given to girls, the movie Splash (1984), the avenue of commercialism, a male president of the United States, look at the dates, when the movie came out, the girls grow up, I’d like to name our daughter Madison, it’s the Little Mermaid, programmed, popular culture, a super-popular name for dogs, Kahleesee, kids named Anakin, Belanna, Tonks from Harry Potter, a female wizard, it’s a dog, it’s fine, your physical human child, Snape or whatever, Luke is a biblical name, Leah, it’s about conformity and programming, not a new phenomenon, kids named Hamlet, Shirley, a man’s name, Charlotte Bronte, Marilyn, Catholics use saint names all the time, we know these people, they’re all around us, a nickname, Wendy didn’t exist before that book, nefarious, it is horrible, The Love Slave And The Scientist, not just the body being screwed around with, Arkady, Debris, pile of stuff that got broken, registry office says nope, a gnome from a children’s book, a couple of kids, names that were not possible, Forgive Me Father For I Have Sinned, Repent Or Burn In Hell, if you are really believing, the state to come and take your kids from you, some issues, culture, what are your groups, family names, an honorific, a connection to your past, Khaleesi, Adolph, certain mustaches, making a connection with your actual family, mandated, given, the price of freedom, we don’t want the state naming the kids, if their culture is Splash, walking to work, more chains, a lot fewer mom and pops, nail salons, skin salons, dental whitening salons, personality improvement salons, therapist, psychiatrist, the dog food places, selection of things to choose from, why are you naming your child this stupid name, something we just don’t value, all immigrants, their parents are immigrants, actual education outside of the school system, outside of regular programming, upwardly mobile immigrants, home school, they should, taking the reins, the state schools and private schools, a religious school of some kind, the Germans did invent school, homeschooling, plenty of issues, parents can’t handle it, mom’s at work and dad’s at work, lots of problems, make things better for everybody, the middle class child, helicopter parents, immigrant kids, poor kids, disabled kids, Leonie, Prussian royalty names, out of fashion for centuries, we live in a culture, a metaphor, acculturated?, purposeful, government entity, Brian Grazer, they didn’t do it for a nefarious purpose, some cultures say dancing is bad, music is bad, television is bad, programmed by other people, eventually they both got televisions, bad for children, per-approved, nowadays it is ticktock, moral panics, anti-Gaza exposure, top down, Facebook is already under control, what the top wants done to the bottom, nice Christian names, to program them, kill the Indian in the child, taking the kid from the parent and making the institution, the Hayes Code, the Comic Book Code Authority, pressure from above, the cultural product makers, this is how people are, really broken stuff, a title, she’s a monster, she herself has been programmed, subject your poor kids, going back to Futurama, they put an armband on his wrist, also to program him, everybody’s got to do what they gotta do, reasons to be sent to a lunatic asylum, refusing to join the military, Salvation Army, tobacco and masturbation, laziness, snuff eating, novel reading, Charlotte Perkin Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, needs some books to read, going out into nature, notice things, somebody had picked up of the sidewalk, still there, fell off of somebody’s wrist, a shoe, an elderly woman, pick it up and put it in a prominent place, some disney character on it, electrical boxes, graffiti, not for me, who are they shouting it out to?, you notice an arrangement of arrowheads, an eye that no regular Englishmen, a lot of assumptions, government use of the same symbol, your everyday life is happening, somebody missing on a hike, peice it all together, Achilles and the Tortoise, insoluble, the eyes are counting down, a certain height, Sherlock Holmes of seeing beyond the veil, the cousin who wanted the title, notice things that are real and concrete strange occurrences, something that seems supernatural, we can pretend, being upset, naked making a pyramid on top of something, a triangle, what makes it shining?, flint, a looking backwards in time, to an earlier age, the original inhabitants of Britain, before the angles and the saxons come in and genoice them, problems with reproduction, also in Lovecraft, the Deep Ones, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, they need our fecundity, the silliness of their marriages, The Tissue Culture King by Julian Huxley, 1926, 1927, the Hugo Gernsback science fiction magazine, a Wakanda if you will, a body cell, to do mind control, take bits of the actual king, worship it, give it what it needs, the original story tin-foil hat comes from, telepathy, huge in science fiction, maybe telepathy is a metaphor, it’s a lot more sinister, The Demolished Man, The Mule from Foundation, get angry, already ruining, might still pull off the twist, terrible tragic backstory, terrifying telepathy, comic characters, why is our oligarch so upset, where the police are telepaths, how do you get around the telepathy, being outside the system, being able to read people’s thoughts, there’s no good guys, the Psi-Corps are badguys and so is our oligarch, a Madison Avenue guy, a little jingle, Aldous Huxley, a super-dystopia, destroyed, isolated lighthouse, they jeer at him, he’s hung himself, the only escape from this horror, 1932, his brother, rivals for science fiction, we didn’t have the term then, a famous novel, an obscure short story, referencing real things going on, Rockerfeller, old rich family, Rockefeller Institute, Rockefeller University, to control, all behavior is regulated from top down, parents weren’t going to church, people are sponges, the people they interact with, who are they hanging out with online, the old means of control, programming them a lot better, social media bans, websites, the rest of us, children might be learning things, anti-Israel, Adolescents, never fully innocent, what is the central problem?, a marriage problem, men want to have sex, women want attention, substitute guy, very poetical, people falling in love with their ai, how to make a noose, gonna help you, it can’t love you, firefox, how about no?, make money from extraction, usually when we think about divorce, as a popular thing, in the 20th century, so much about, mechanically separated, you can’t live near your family anymore, you need two incomes, fashionable, an engineer for Airbus, new housing, other wives, all the wives got divorce, a social contagion, fertilized by the economics and the laws, not romantic anymore, focusing on the wrong things, romantic comedies are all about meet cutes, the falling in love, a firm commitment, it doesn’t have to be a sinister government plot, where it is coming from, Catholic guy, Humanae Vitae, a contrast, sex without consequences, as the only woman here, victimized by a pregnancy, birth control, anything beyond basic schooling, about to divorce, died of cancer, she had a kid, marital instability, a soup of different things going on, what is he trying to do with this story?, sell a story, sexy robot, Avon Fantasy Reader cover, sex-bot illustrated by Margaret Brundage, in the scene, a caption underneath, he’s a surgeon, the story is quite good, so interesting, it is not considered cheating, dallying too long with the script, push himself into the tube, his work is cutting people open and giving them glands, a gland surgeon, less adrenals, castrating people (mentally), chemical castration, sex criminals, SSRIs, paxil and zoloft, a big thing, might end up like the guy on my table, a big long speech, whispered to by the robot, he attacks the robot, completely fake, if you’re fucking sex bots, I will order my mechanical companion to be decommissioned and scrapped, poor sex-bot has to be scrapped, don’t listen to what the dictator of emotions tell you to do, World War 1987, 4 World Wars, stupid 20th century people, we read the book, The Guns Of August, some random guy in France, the head of the bank in Germany and the US were brothers, pinning chicken feathers, be as Amish as possible, not fall into it, Autism rates, over diagnosed, officially diagnosed, in the family for a long time, belied by the fact you had functional people, borderline functional, diagnosed quite young, by accident, a local politician, autism charity, more and more, I’m pretty sure I’m clinically depressed, how did it come to be?, lots of theories, google ngram, a sharp spike, gluten intolerance, gluten free, borderline people, diagnosed, wheat in the US is quite bad, contaminated, look at the trends, allergy to peanuts, deadly to a lot of people, an inciting incident, a history of medicalizing, a lunatic asylum, underlying problem, a chemical imbalance, no science behind that claim, extreme relief, on it for 25 years, numbs emotion, pointing at a very real place, ai chatbots, gland surgery, drugs, confined to asylums, drugs don’t really really get going until WWII, an evil horrible society, feels brief, nature is beautiful but there’s horror hidden there, the unknown, neolithic tombs, we don’t know what they were doing, Cornwall, the graves of giants, local legends, cursed him, turned to stone, the Devil’s Punchbowl, another of these weird hollows, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, the description of the light, how nice it is to live in the country, how nice to live in the city, the business in the dark, fairies, ecstatic experiences in nature, a regular divorce story, a drama, just another variation, about human perception, we can modify it, make people conform to it, isn’t that horrible, just beyond our preceptions, might we not find out a thing about reality, technology and humanity, nature and god, all German parents like hiking, prime of their life, dragged through the woods, I’m a knight, I’m going to save the kidnapped princess, in order to find the princess, a clue, a signpost, a marking on a tree, it’s a clue!, we can find the princess, where was the girl going?, her aunt’s house, she never showed up, Little Red Riding Hood, it isn’t a world, no-one ate the aunt, she never even saw her, waylaid along the path, vacant eyed, no way to rescue the princess, supernatural detective, a writer?, he’s Arthur Machen, from a wealthy family, 1890s, a lot of John Buchan stories, grew out of the gothic novel, mystery and crime fiction, horror fiction, Sherlock Holmes, C. August Dupin, this joke: I really hope it isn’t the case that Edgar Allan Poe’s stories of monomania, Berenice, The Tell-Tale Heart, recent diagnoses, autism stories, the drunk scale, took opium, depression, autism spectrum, self-medicate, you change your brain, psychiatric drugs, lethargic, an old age depression, the older the drug the better we know it, tobacco, unrelated to smoking, positive benefits to smoking, it stinks, American Spirit, spiked with chemicals, simple old fashioned tobacco, vapes, even marijuana has been fucked with, a B.C. Government Cannabis Store, government employees working at a government store, Scandinavian countries, wine at the supermarket, you can’t get beer at the 7-11, semi-legal, required to check my age, Hugo awards, mixed cocktail, bleep, look at me I’m obviously, the dictator of emotion has announced, chocolate with liquor in them, so panicky, when gin came into the UK, people still drink gin in the UK, fashionable, a technology that can change our body, the effect that it has, the mechanical changes that it has, The Black Cat is a satire of teetotalling, axe your wife in the forehead, it was pretty wild, suffrage, Enola Holmes (2020), teenage girls or younger, Guy Ritchie for 12 year old girls, womens right to vote, raise the daughter, running the country, just as smart, super handsome, Henry Cavill, very very handsome, lightly touched on, not historically close to what’s going on, a Disney Princess movie, equally smart sister, a prince that falls in love with her, in about 15 years your going to get a lot of little girls called Enola, sex jokes, 1980s, The Goonies (1985), when you were pregnant with your first daughter, Second Foundation, Kayla, American soap opera, Days Of Our Lives, the greatest names, little bit bottom up, new school, into different things, hockey cards, GI Joes, wearing the wrong shoes, reeboks and nikes, whatever my mom bought me, understand what’s going on there, you can’t be juiced into needing to be going to McDonald’s, interested in 1986 Toyota, doesn’t have the same effect 20-30-40 years later, why are all the boomers doing reverse mortgages to go live on cruise ships now?, pushed on younger people, pools, waterslides, it’s disneyland for boomers, tropical islands, enclosed holiday camps, built for an airship, semi-tropical pools, the vacation ideal, evening wardrobe, don’t forget the casino, you can wear your jammies, you can have as much food as you want, spend it now!, swarm the same few port cities, a few souvenirs, just cause trouble, secret cabal, cruise ship companies trying to make money, airtravel, passenger travel, shipping companies, passenger liners converted to cruise ships, containerization, nearly killed the shipping industry, in a ridiculous way, wealthy older people, dialysis machines, The Love Boat, Das Traumschiff, page 9, disintegrated her, busy with his surgical dressing, a semblance of normality, just top down, your parental supervisors, men often killed their wives, hideous bloodletting contests, exalting the primitive, selective mating, we’re blind, war was awful but love…, was worse?, doing brain surgery on the guy, normally thought of as for girls, to keep up his courage, high-minded and impartial and serene, bound and helpless, a cool impersonal cog, corporate state, curse them!, with the glands removed, anti-social action, a pale blue antiseptic, your digestion will be checked, super-horror, a Spaniard who killed a family for just a few possessions, covered in blood a few days later, murder, rando kills for money, which world with you rather live in?, stinky smokestacks in London, super-dystopia land, thank you so much, maybe we’ll meet again, text message, see you on Twitter, a silly article, Why We Don’t Read The Golden Age Anymore, Rendezvous With Rama, 1973, aluminum, a sterile and not good book, New Wave science fiction, his golden age, a kick out of it, completely eviscerate, older science fiction, missing out, Alien Earth, Murderbot, exemplifies the whole thing, Zuckerberg, any sufficiently advanced technology, then he says Asimov instead of Clarke, pretending to be smart, no excuse for this sort of thing today, you wouldn’t look it up because you know it, just look it up again, it’s Clarke, when he’s writing the script, written by committee, writers rooms, expecting the actor to know it, they’re all written by the one guy and sometimes with someone else, Noah Hawley, Fargo, Legion, Bones, X-Men comics, locked in an asylum, yes, not really an SF guy, interested enough to misquote it, it adds something, an overlay of Peter Pan, trying to recreate Neverland, robot bodies, less interesting than something to do, push this idea into the Alien universe, for no apparent reason, the smartest boy in the world who doesn’t wear socks, Beast, sits at a microphone and reads from the book, make sure the audience knows, why is he recording this?, is it for a podcast?, making audiobooks, no role in the story, eaten by an alien, the writing is not great, over Alien, linked it to Predator (1987), no wonder she was depressed, mental issues towards the end, not herself anymore, hip replacement, stuck in the hospital during COVID, intermediate care drugged her up, too many painkillers, high on aspirin, ibuprofen, paracetamol, lethargic, drugged them up and wanted lots of money, happy note to end on, the medical profession, old old Microsoft installation, they’re deadnaming you, dinner.

The Love Slave And The Scientists by Frank Belknap Long

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #858 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Tissue-Culture King by Julian Huxley and The Tachypomp by Edward Page Mitchell

The SFFaudio Podcast #858 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Tissue-Culture King by Julian Huxley, read by Brian Fullen (1 hour), AND The Tachypomp by Edward Page Mitchell, read by Ben Tucker (33 minutes), both for LibriVox. The discussion of both with Jesse, Will Emmons, and Tom Pace begins at 1 hour 33 minutes.

Talked about on today’s show:
a mistake at the end of the recording [excised], Steven Page Mitchell, musician?, Canadian band?, singer songwriter, Bare Naked Ladies, the music at Jack Layton’s funeral, narrator, weird story Will, even more racist, super rich with one central idea, publication, important to the text, 3 publications very early, Amazing, August 1927, Yale Review, 1926, Cornhill Magazine, suspicious, a different text, we’re getting the Amazing text, Yale and Amazing are in the states, 15,000 words, 6,000 words longer, the rest of the paragraph is missing, a swamp the size of Yorkshire, and so on throughout the day, steamy mess, at last we were out, dotted with big trees, like a fortification, a word change, spiky barricade, the green wall, trackway, alert, caravan, guttural exclamation, ponderosity, second head, remarkable monstrosity, supernumerary eyes, lost to view, a man-made path, abridging, doesn’t damage the text, redundant writing, some details, description of the man they’re peeping on, added stuff, the voice proceeded from an enormous negro man, 7 foot 6 or 8 foot high, prayer or incantation, a little carved ebony stand, about the size and shape of a microscope slide, what the fuck’s going on?, the exact location: equatorial Africa, cut down for the American publication, pretty amazing for some things, there’s stuff in it, tin-foil hat, not called tinfoil, not for microwaves, for telepathy, pretty interesting, what you want out of science fiction, a mishmash, biological ideas, hypnosis and psionics, interesting historically, not interesting as science fiction, can we treat it metaphorically, telepathy, Astounding, a dominant thing in science fiction, The Demolished Man, entirely dependent on telepathy, John Wyndham, as a metaphor, setting aside the racism, a little thread from January 2024 on last year, edited by Leonard Huxley, his dad?, subtitled “a biological fantasy”, a more general meaning, a science fiction story in the style of H.G. Wells, the father of Julian and Aldous, super dystopia book, utopian, before the white men got there, tissue culturing, I’m an old man, drops the mic and runs away, what the core of this story is, “tissue culture”, when it was getting really popular, late 19th and early 20th century, produced this way, tissue cultured garlic, a university in New York explicitly referenced, “an institution”, Halcombe, The Rockafeller Institutes, higher education for medical people, buncha women, service these cultures, make the king everywhere, culture the king’s flesh, focus on the really interesting part, a cellular network of mind control, alive or dead exists in tissue cultures and controls the state, genetic experiments on people, fat thighs, big asses, nicki minaj, making dwarves and giants, and perfect dwarves, metaphorical way of looking at it, science is evil, scientists are evil, propaganda, on the money?, science is integral to everything going on, this pure thing, I believe in science, always doing something, working for someone, one set of powerful people here, The Tachypomp, one tutor doing everything, Edisonian mythology, massive staff, prop up the god king stuff, ancestor worship, not exclusive to one group, pretty west African, China, burning money to give to your ancestors in the other place, the one word, pointed out to Boogala, the doctrines of kingship, archive.org, multiply the king’s tissues indefinitely, quantity, mode of life, agreeable to the king, undreamt of power, such innovation, great resistance, the average businessman in their lack of prejudice, as a dig, read this subversively, the end, as to the best methods, in our scheme, scientific advertising, war propaganda, regal tissues, from the ranks of the nobles, sacred tissues, laborious and expensive, a portion of the royal anatomy, sub-culturing, a new way of doing your religion, totalitarianism, making the king everywhere, the television watching you in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Kira on Deep Space 9, the caste system, revert to that, damaging to our society, just goes along with it, a terrible artist, reintroducing the caste system, suspicion of religion, submission to authority greater than yours, do my own research, super-evil, using science to do the job of religion, science has more potent effects, a very valuable story, invented the *tinfoil hat*, where is the other story, abridged, story, tended to be the redundancy of the writing, getting to the ideas, overly long as it is, 40 minute long ideas, could have been shorter, the characters are horrible, some more clues, the Amazing text, a microscope, it’s a tissue culture being observed, why is the toad there, genuflecting to the god, pray to the god, growing properly, almost like a cargo-cult version of what’s going on at that Rockafeller Institute, African empire hidden by a swamp, a modern day lost world, intrigue stuff, important, this is the kind of tech, Facebook and Twitter and Bluesky, ai, television, radio, ai, influencing and mind controlling people, the complementary thing, public religion, research would be limited, more resistance, the state is controlling what science is doing, the way the state is fleshed out in this story, eugenics, they were racist about it, clung longer, after WWII, racists like it, too hubristic, the state telling people who should breed together, sterilize those people, the mistake is that it is unwise, unintelligent behavior, so called smart people, what good genes are, special susceptibility to hypnotism and telepathy, our ideas about losing themselves in weird primitive dances, bound up together, the Plateau of Leng, the deep darkest deserts of Australia, underground in Wales, not on any map, 3 days of swamp, 10 years later?, not Julian Huxley, Planet Stories, set on another planet, analog, bootstrapping stuff and using it to get to places farther ahead, even more impressive, early doing a lot of stuff, you could almost question, public domain, fell asleep, fell into a daze, imagined this situation, just like The Tachypomp, a nightmare, this Robert E. Howard story we started with, less seriously racist, hefty, a mature man wrote this, a plan rather than a story, this man should be fought, If I Were Dictator, Thyroid Dictator, evil on the level of Fauci evil, their religion, moderating thing, full of slaving, accidentally got time traveled to the American south during slaving, do something illegal, arm slaves, foment rebellion, monetary means, a colonialism story too, Rwanda, the outer scientist, Hascombe attained to an unsurpassed degree, but to what end did all this power serve?, will to power, a perfectly good end, fasten the yoke of a false religion, religions as true or false, true and false in this connection, truer or falser, the telepathy actually working, the obvious moral, gradually being accumulated for them, the truth about the way things work, condemning institution science, took a little piece of King Charles, when Ferengis die, tissue culture style trays, little discs with a lid, collectibles, pulp magazines in slabs, relics, a piece of Quark, a parody of us, they don’t even bury themselves, sell the body parts, a very solid story, not a good story for Scott Miller, what do I do with this story?, did a podcast on it, pre-show threads, much lighter and also fun, a Will problem, explain this story like I am dumb, not a math guy, it was all a dream, the tutor, the stand in for Edward Page Mitchell, C. August Dupin, Edgar Allan Poe, 1878, a precursor to Sherlock Holmes proper, the sweetest girl, the daughter of his math professor, reason to worry, experiences a dream, increasingly eccentric, not perpetual motion, how to reach infinite speed, layers of linear accelerators, the smoking car, keep stacking linear accelerators, wind resistance, making a vacuum tunnel, essentially invented a particle accelerator, a rail gun, the one at CERN, donut shaped one, they didn’t have the curves, near lightspeed, in inventing that, solved the problem of how to get to infinite speed, pretty simple, dream framework, the simplicity of the idea, square the circle, our inner hero, before he goes into the dream, like a Frank R. Stockton The Lady Or The Tiger?, electrically expensive, when electricity is just starting be the normal thing, all a thought experiment, an expectation that it is real, his friend, awesome excitement, get paid too, students who are not asleep, teach things and learn things, discounting ordinary intelligence, the stern father’s good will, crunchy writing, meager reward, Jean Marie Rivarol, Gutenberg Australia, Alsace, Teuton in nature, by education a German, the dumb guy, good vocab, bad math, Stanley G. Weinbaum’s, Von Manderpootz, Pygmallion’s Spectacles, Manderpootzian, Francis Stevens, half German half Japanese scientist, falls into a vat of some sort of metal, Samson, mix two races, two personalities, Jules Verne, this people are like this, the Germans are rockheaded, Professor Rockhead, Phileas Fogg = Fog Lover, obsessed with time, precision, clockwork, Paspartou, very French, stereotypes about people, mix them together and get science, Lorraine, profession: omniscience, foreordained mysteries, Tahoe water, Lake Tahoe?, unmitigated stupidity, the skirts of the university, a plethora of purse and paucity of ideas, the awesome Jesse hero, transplant brains, occasional in, the names have to be jokes, students good at math, just there, all the other students are good, injection, early Simpsons episode, the gifted school, all the kids laugh, Bart is bad is school, Lisa is good at school, high vocab, we’re dumb, we’re living in a time of stupidity, Polyp University, Professor Surd, Abbie Surd, fun stuff, a comedy piece, The Senator’s Daughter, The Man Without A Body, wired teleportation, a funny story, a science fiction idea, about the problem of how to get to infinite speed, as long as you don’t believe in later stuff like Einstein, this is impossible, a very fun fun thought experiment, what he cares about, my uncle is a judge, nothing to worry about, just needs to come from a good family and be rich, Mr. Furnace, an angle close to The Raven, Poe is influencing here, The Purloined Letter, Murders In The Rue Morgue, central Frenchman, a proto-Sherlock Holmes, sees and observes, one of the most popular characters ever created, explore the idea of can we get to infinite speed, an infinite number of cars, there’s problems with space that could prevent that, acceleration problems, energy required goes up, 40,000 trains going forward, what defeats this story’s idea ultimately, as a kid, nothing that can faster than the speed of light, The Raven is a psycho-pomp, speed, let us discuss the tachy-pomp, quickly send, takes your psyche to the place of the afterlife, the ferryman Charon is a psychopomp, the Neil Gaiman Sandman stories, still haven’t defeated this idea, a special triangular ruler, they tell me I can’t communicate faster than the speed of light, ansibles, subspace communications, make it as long as the distance to another star, instead of sending things along it you turn it left or right, received data on the other side faster than the speed of light, you can’t make a ruler that long, you can’t build one that long, sort of been replicated in some effects of twinning atoms and electrons, make them harmonize with each other, their reactions, what you do to one effects the other, a potential form of this kind of communication, on a subspace level, some fundamental law of the universe level, written that up as a giant triangular stick, knocked out by neptune and space debris, a metaphor for the understanding, he’s right, if Newtonian physics were the ruling physics of the actual universe, subsequent beliefs about what’s going on, made frivolousness, for the entertainment of it, a hole dug, a natural phenomenon, came up through a trap door, clogged up with financial creditors, Kerguelen Islands, the antipodes, what becomes of any poor devil, a comfy looking chair, skeletal arms wrap around you, the only thing you’ll ask for is the bill, a hole through earth’s center, suspected it, Huygens, 1400 fathoms, you stand upon it, Mrs. Grimler’s Cellar, a galvanic experiment on a cat, Re-Animator, a yawning shaft, came up again, the angry Grimler, acquired momentum, 8000 odd miles, time after time, oscillation of a pendulum, I am not slow, a creditor of the trap, a touch of rhyme, outside my chamber door, Poe was getting pretty popular, in the center of the hole, so much air resistance, over that long journey, even if he threw it, velocity in the other direction, follows the same logic, invents with his mind, the antipodes of the Kerguelen, near Antarctica, find Sri Lanka on a map, a couple Iles Crozet, Kerguelen cabbage, a lot of the places there are named after Jules Verne things, explored and named, the Kerguelenn archipelago, where this story is presumably set, to make the train happen, New York, the border of Saskatchewan and Alberta, real but fudging, electrical energy supply, what squaring the circle is, a mathematical thing, alchemy, hermetic philosophy, numbers are a real thing in that they are self consistent and predictable, Pi, what appears to be infinity, we’re doing approximates, the functional version of the theoretical approximate, the perfect perfection that is numbers, fallen asleep, perpetual motion, trip him up, entirely imaginary, tutored in his home, plaster busts of Artistotle, Archimedes and Comte, the benign brow of Martin Farquhar Tupper, he always roosts there, a bird of no ordinary mind, ab is a root meaning from, ab-stract, cut from, cut from the absurd, cut from the same cloth, so funny, my masterpiece, an android, only partially complete, confute the schools, Albert Magnus, Roger Bacon, Sylvester the 2nd, a Brazen Head that held discourses, Thomas Aquinus got wrathful, laws as definite, this is chatbots, this is ai chatbots, a manakin, Reverend Dr. Alchin, Paul Anapest, vulgar fractions, compose sonnets, talk to you about positivism, Mr. Mitchell is good at craft, supposed to be fluffy, startlingly early stuff, sending DMs to Bill Christensen, older science fiction stories, the tin-foil hat thing, not a household name with regard to people who know about science fiction, doesn’t take itself seriously, Douglas Adams is very good at science fiction, a discourse/conversation/fight on Red Dwarf, time travel, implanted memories, played for comedy, idiots and selfish, serious in that it takes its ideas seriously, it doesn’t negate the story, keeps it light, made Will have to do it, so be it, fantasy and science fiction and what the genres do, indie authors, indie publishers, science fiction as different window dressing for fantasy, boring and for nerds, dorks, disprove this point, we’re dorks, dorky, a third story, The Last White Man, not for dorks, for people who like adventure fiction, not fantasy, both of these are pure quill science fiction stories, 1878 no such thing existed, Julian Huxley, maybe H.G. Wells, need not be, scientific romances, for novels, science fiction after the fact, a real thing, do it without self-consciously doing it, seeing how they work, in the context of society, doing something totally different, gotta save the girl, the sword is I got some money, Kurt Metzger on Joe Rogan, Ctrl Alt History, The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton, a brain implant that fucked a guy up real good, ethical stuff, wrapping tinfoil around his head, microwave transmissions, to control his mind, mind control shit, the mind control implant, standing in front of a bull, brain-chip, a little transmitter, what happens in the book, a really great read, experimental brain surgery or face prison for murder, makes a plan to escape, a feedback loop, a killing machine, fugue states, very interesting, two meanings for terminal, through a remote terminal, a keyboard and a monitor, dumb machines that just connect to google.com, what google chromebooks are, none of the processing is happening on your computer, you are a terminal people, can program you remotely, programmed, i’m 50 now I need to get the shingles vaccine, just gonna cause a rift between us, gonna increase your chance of getting shingles, not the common knowledge, people are programmed by society and corporations and governments, perverse incentives, repeating talking points you heard from youtube, state funded media, a very unpopular youtube channel, or from RFK, a righteous underground, do you want to get shingles?, for you to get that, look into it, when you look into it, where’d you get that, lotsa research, wouldn’t give it if you asked for it, not the right age, shingles vaccine, BC health link, a series of 2 doses, flu vaccine, covid vaccine, CDC, all adults age 50 and older, what are the benefits?, the best way to protect you, prevents more than 90%, 70-90%, after being immunized, just so we’re clear, that’s not a traditional vaccine, the NDP has been paid off by Pfizer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, what’s the percentage of people who get shingles?, weakened immune systems, preservatives etc., what caused Paul to drop the podcast, the facts are COVID vaccines increase your chances of getting shingles, this isn’t a zero sum gain, gene therapy, bad things, blood clots, from personal experience, hurt from these lies, Fauci is not a good person, we knew this, not number one on Trump’s list, the flu vaccine, one cut above homeopathy, a reaction to bad medicine, huge abuses went on there, institutions are institutional, turning regular humans into robots, most doctors don’t do any research after they graduate, too uppity about it, why are they pushing it, time usually reveals, why were black people in the USA more resistant to COVID vaccines, they were experimented on before, maltreated by lying doctors, The Constant Gardner (2005), Kenya, a movie to watch, the fictionalized story is what literally happens, PayPal, ebay account, almost 30 years old, before ebay bought it, a reputation, stealing, banning, you can’t send money to truckers, get your account frozen, their Billpoint system, cheques, not an institution in the same sense, still owned by ebay?, probably an evil corporation public traded, an individual, the closely held, family owned business, very trusting of the family in general, grandma vs. a hospital, the bad outliers, bad grandmas, homeopathy grandma, needed a blood transfusion, the local newspaper (now gone), during COVID, a mother and father disputing whether their newborn should get the COVID shot, the judge did way less research than the dad did, this is how you get autism at the massive rates that we have, by what standard does the judge make the decision, two parents in dispute, set a precedent, not mandatory for babies to get vaccinated, 6 months olds and higher, developmental disabilities, the vaccine schedule, the amount of autism has matched, the reason we have more queer people, more free now, more autism friendly, we diagnose them more, a Philip K. Dick novel, it was rare, now it is normal, reboot of Doogie Hauser, The Good Doctor, idiot Savant, an American show based on a Korean show, such a serious problem now, what’s going on here, measles used to be considered a good thing, now it is considered a deadly disease, not yet, adult onset autism doesn’t appear to be a thing, less than 3%, aspergers included, not diagnosed anymore, sometimes the disease are defined away, a “dis ease” as opposed to a “syndrome”, downs disease vs. downs syndrome, old eggs?, just look into it, I should be more skeptical, a lot of money on the line, the devil’s website, the NIH, that NPR chatbot podcast reader, convenient for that, a conversation about an audiobook, a better digestion, sometimes it glitches, the fake laugh, as Terence [Blake] pointed out, put Jesse out of work, for older kids?, more out of work, kids raised by LLMs, language learning model, a prison therapist, when kids have been institutionalized, sent to school, public or private, do these exercises, the hurt, goes in the trash, make a drawing of a horse, I’m putting this on the refrigerator, very rare, publish it in a journal or something, a litmag, The Capilano Review, the number of students, can’t really have care, student teachers ratios, most of the population involved in educating children, watching youtube videos, very obscure channel, very interested in reading, what he’s been reading about, very American based, conspiratorial, psychic surgery craze of the 1960s, dudes in the Philippines and Brazil, seems pretty sus, uses his hands to psychics remove tumors and stuff from your body, exposes after the fact, James Randi, famous for debunking claims of magic, fishguts, not doing it for money, non-financial incentives, the number of people want it, you really don’t want surgery, an invasive healthcare system, injections, replacements, forget about youutube and NIH, what doctors have done to her, left a drill bit in there, we’ll try to get it out another time, put bolts in your ankle, prednisone, a steroid, a whole bunch of that stuff, addictive, causes problems, my cat is on that, a shot every five weeks, the solution to muscles spasm is botox, kills the muscles, immensely painful, full of preservatives, hair falls out, horrible things happen, falling and breaking some ribs, second covid shot, almost die from bloodclots that immediately happen, all actually what happened, a frozen, leg, at age 70 whatever, if you’re just a regular person, not as skeptical as she should be, more interested in breeding chickens than finding out the truth of these things, cases where your relative gets cancer and they don’t have cancer after a number of years, incompetence and institutional stuff, re-reading, Edward Bernays’ propaganda, rich, 2004 introduction, all about real serous guiding, the invisible government, secret influencers of society, heavily invovled with the tobacco industry, poisonous, he made his money he could move on, turn the tables on it, how do you produce a true truth, a corporate truth, LibriVox, well worth doing, it has to be an active sonar or radar, it can’t be passive, actively trying to understand, going to buy a car, you’re fucked, what cars are being made where or why or how, was the case, Japanese cars were the best, year over year improvement, keep refining it, change the direction, this commitment to refinement, a Toyota from the 1990s you can’t go wrong, swapped the engine for a Ford, commitment to year over year improvement was unparalleled, people are there to try and fuck you, perverse incentives everywhere, okay dad, more of an uncle, beautifully naive, the canny individual, being wrong many times, defer to other people’s judgement, two kinds of oil, synthetic or regular, either one will work, fuck and find out, the consequences of that are possibly dangerous, take it to an expert, a corporate outlet, a mom and pop, in it for the longhaul, getting bought up and destroyed, sold his business to a chain of carguys, owned by Blackrock or Vanguard [or Blackstone], not a conspiracy or everybody knows everybody, New York real estate, they’re not owned by individuals, owned by corporations who own blocks of things, owned by stockholders, the company or companies have to crash for that land to get sold, that’s sort of the essential problem, mom and pop business, The Communist Manifesto, 1848, true in England but not in Germany in 1848, a pamphlet, a utopian novel, a manifesto and an essay, leave no Jesse unturned, vampire, children’s fiction, fantastic fiction, six in progress, sort by release date, Ham Jones: Scientist, 16 years, what class?, economics, philosophy, it wasn’t offered, a German studies class, German Socialism, East Germany, 19th century stuff, Dastardly Criminals In Space, Watchbird, Conspiracy On Callisto by Frederik Pohl, Manly Wade Wellman, The Incomplete Theft, Tom Godwin, Robert Silverberg, Bratton’s Idea, “Old Bratton, janitor at the studios of Station XCV in Hollywood, was as gaunt as Karloff, as saturnine as Rathbone, as enigmatic as Lugosi.”, what other radical science fiction authors could we dig up, is it good?, no way of knowing, about robots?, inventions fiction, robots, Mike Vendetti stuff, The Curious Experience OF Thomas Dunbar, the first superhero story, Edmond Hamilton, Weird Tales, apple books, audible listing, imagine if you will, age immediately or regress to when they were youths, nefarious inventor, a lot of money, sound familiar?, causing panic, more adventurey fiction, Spawn Of Inferno by Hugh B. Cave, Clark Ashton Smith, anything by him, a darkness that settled like a black cloud, blackness, a thing from the outer darkness, ghastly appetite, The Thing From Outside by George Allan England, like The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood, The Willows, badly told interesting idea, badly told?, not well told, we benefited it by being massively abridged, made it shorter, very short, from Connor [Kaye], Who Are The Dead?, we like that about him The Black Abbott Of Puthuum, Averoigne, nice art, Margaret St. Clair, corresponded, fuckin cool, she’s San Fransisco, a real homebody, Tommy Patrick Ryan, still be interesting to have read it, works for Margaret St. Clair as well, her story about fake meat, up on Bill Christensen’s website, Juciveal, technologies in stories, broad beamed, pleasantly easy to answer, Jucipork, Mr. Angst of Gourmond, a culinary editor, Veristeak, Lazarus, an interesting topic, the surprise, it’s alive, it’s made out of meat, Terry Bisson, Chicken Little, The Space Merchants, The End Of The Line, Clifford D. Simak, both Americans, provincial Americans, pastoral, countryside guys, not city-boys, loves the countryside, whole adult life, kept returning to the countryside, Talking Man by Terry Bisson, a wizard, time is a circle, fixing cars, a dude who knows how to do things, the first episode of Doctor Who, two teachers, math and history, a student they have, she’s so remarkable, she could teach the class, she’s fuckin time traveler, gets evasive, eager to learn, follow her home, parents wont meet, a junkyard, the sign above the junkyard, I.M. Foreman, her grandfather, three doctors down the road, John Smith, I’m from the future bro, an alien, subsequent stuff, no alien stuff at all, very fun, alternates between dystopian future or alien planet, historical entries, The Romans, weird episodes, the whole ocean is acid, a puzzle planet, weird amazing science fiction, the closest thing it starts off as is a rip off of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, companion viewpoint characters, cave people times, the secret of fire, 11, 12, 13?, really well done, science fiction windowdressing, monster of the week, The Pyramids Of Mars, 19th century England, re-doing The Mummy, the mummies are aliens, a tomb on Mars, Osiris was a real character, The Mummy (1932), ancient aliens are gods story, entombed on Mars, 1 tv show a day with dinner with Meg, comedy about a hospital, The Office, St. Denis Medical, animals doing stuff, The Henryiod, straight adaptations, Shakespeare, old school, women played by men, pretty straight, Shakespeare’s great, the histories, Richard III, Julius Caesar, Marlon Brando, British accents for the Romans, I, Claudius, among the top 5 tv shows ever done, if not in the first slot, Derek Jacobi, 6 hours maybe, shot on videotape, stupid British, amazing performances, great blocking, where they place the camera, helps tell the story, receiving the speech, help tell a story, old Claudius, Robert Graves, Augustus through Tiberius, Nero, Caligula, the story of the story, Patrick Stewart plays Sejanus, good acting, getting stabbed, Praetorian, suicided, poisoned, slaves running around in the background, 4 different versions of Ben-Hur, well dressed, no outdoor scenes, in tents, inside a hall, the Senate, by torrenting, that’s drama for you bro, it was huge, so many good actors, John Hurt, Sian Phillips, The Elephant Man (1980), British stage actors, become iconic, high quality production, shot on videotape, they’ve lost episodes of it, animating missing episodes, real science fiction stories, it was illegal to pirate the show, happy to take your pirate copies, owned by the British government, revenue bro, all on tubi right now, the best streaming service, The King Tide (2023), shot in Newfoundland, hard to see things, living on an island, fishermen, mainlanders, a baby crying, 10 years later, miraculously heals, cut-off from the rest of the world, the secret, a child who can heal sickness, adoptive parents, amazing baby resource, human resource, the center of the island’s attention, weirdo drunk guy, while she’s reading a book, lineup to get in, the healthcare provider, having fistfights for fun, poison themselves, she loses her power to heal, she was spending time with some bees, all the bees died, only while she’s asleep, take sleeping pills, this island is fucked, promised never to leave, a kid being abused, this doesn’t go well, everybody on the island dies and maybe the whole planet, the execution was poor but the idea was good, a little bit Lovecraftian, maybe a fishkid, giving her sleeping pills, serving Omelas, make fish appear in the nets, the enrichment, Labrador, on the mainland, a special kind of rum, kiss a fish before you drink the rum, videogames might have been a mistake, kissing the fish, a time suck, accent is similar to Irish, not apart of Canada until 1949, a colony of Britain, out of work, 2-4, 3 hours, too much time writing a few days a week, drink some coffee, smoke a little bit, dive right in, exhausting yourself, a break, accomplished something, 5am for every start, before church, a paper route, still morning, a nice feeling, it’s so late, bedtime, staying up pretty late, awake quite late, up at 4am, when the sun goes down, various weasels, doing stuff since 4am, sick in December, missing work, felt really useless being sick, contempt, drifting from thing to thing, twitter accounts, bitter about Ukraine, angry about Israel, do some stuff, write a book, why video games are a mistake, huge mistake, they’re so fun and non-productive, productive in Minecraft, it’s fake, use it in moderation as a reward for actual production, immediately became obsessed with it, girls and boys, boys love to dig, sandbox, because you’re boy, stacking, chopping, stacked and chopped, housebuilders, natural, monkey with tools, tie things together, Gilligan’s Island, bamboo and string, also Ginger’s cool, the rich guy, the doofus and the boss, girl next door, Mrs. Howell, lovey-dovey, all they have is money, do you ever think about the Black Death?, Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman, gruff knight, very gently, spoil it for me, secretly God, sounds bad, really good, you don’t have the Christianity background, Will’s biggest deficit, Flesh + Blood (1985), the Heinlein movie, Paul Verhoven, lock themselves up in a castle, a statue of St. Martin, their totem to keep them safe, degenerates, contamination, Rutger Hauer is amazing, Brion James, a pretty long movie for 1985, semi-produced by Hollywood, he’s got a lot of good movies, Hollow Man (2000), Showgirls (1995), Black Book (2006), dutch WWII stuff, Soldier Of Orange (1977), national colour, The 4th Man (1983), bisexual writer, ignorant of one of the greatest artforms around, Basic Instinct (1992), Total Recall (1990), RoboCop (1987), become disciplined about it, 4 movies everyday, The Last Emperor(1987), quite amazing spectacle, you don’t watch it for fun, become edified by it, Death Wish (1974), to understand the concept, why there were 8 Death Wish sequels, a Bronson disciple, produced in, I don’t care about Jill Ireland, he really does, that’s interesting, an interesting character, roughest background imaginable, beating eachother for breakfast, coal mine at age 9, a real something to see, 15 – 20 years ago, I have a certain set of skills, Irish actor, Liam Neeson, Taken (2008), spends the rest of the movie killing people, set decades apart, a thread that started a long time ago, dismiss whole categories of movies, have met many men, an example, Lawrence Of Arabia (1962), colonialism in Dune, the personal story, a beautiful film, tube tv, on laserdisc, stunning on a 55 inch widescreen tv, there’s an intermission, really good book, the 1959 Ben-Hur, the 1925, the cartoon version, narrated and performed by Charlton Heston, the 2016 version, they didn’t have movies in 1888, had to do it through books, cast of thousands, before it was a movie it was a stageplay, treadmills, how the medium has changed, on Broadway, the number of horses that died, so round, took a long time to film, seize the medium while it is ripe, get to it before you die, Sorcerer (1977), Tangerine Dream, The Wages Of Fear, driving rotten dynamite across Brazil, the worst roads, leaking nitroglycerine, mostly no talk, William Friedkin, backstory, reasons to flee to Brazil, on the poster is a truck crossing a rope bridge, what’s going to happen, came out the same week as Star Wars (1977), The French Connection (1971), To Live And Die In L.A. (1985), musicals, Jonathan Weichsel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), fucked women up, Marilyn Monroe, imaginary reasons, conspiracy theory, backed by stuff, feels right, probably true, Will had trouble with the subtlety, “dumb bitch”, she’s a nice girl, dam, ewe, dam, ewe, the projection is hilarious, maybe he’s doing something right, tv work, SVU, victim’s fathers, so for boomers, Law & Order, the one that is so dominant, very special rape, what makes the special, 26 seasons, it’s got what the people want: raped from the headlines, Criminal Intent, Organized Crime, Hate Crimes, this is the one about sexual assault, Law & Order Sex Crimes, Sex Criminals, the first volume, some lurid thing going on, Americans are special in that they’re more prudish, love violence, shaped, broken glass as a standin for blood, everybody has had the experience, cut their foot, it means blood, streaming clips, blood is turned green, when mom walks into the room, paying for your Prime, green mist, green spurt, that’s not blood, reality is shaped by the requirements of the prudishness of a certain set of people, in 15 years, radio stations, exactly 100 years old, first radio stations, Hugo Gernsback, ham radio guys, KDKA, in the car, to avoid commercials, BBC radio, it shouldn’t be, declined during covid, if television is around in 15 years, radio is dead, in the car, an old car, drive around town, it was a thing, SNL, vanishingly rare, half the year, Timothee Chalamet, what the current liberal hivemind is thinking, who’s famous right now, that one video, vote for Kamala, reviews phones or cars, Jerry Rig Everything, breaking phones apart, a Mormon, pretty diverse, a disabled wife, wheelchairs, wealthy from youtube, always getting wealthy, busy getting married and networking, supports getting rich, support, a nation within a nation, busy breaking phones, what phone should I get, ads for phones on tv, phone services, drugs, insurance, car and house, iphones and samsungs, free phone, phone plans, co-op advertising, talk over the ads, while the tv is yapping at you, while the tissue culture king is praying on your mind, actors from SNL, tattoos and dates, tattoos removed, other reasons, Sarah Sherman, droopy dry, dandruff shampoo, subject, fancy bath products, a nice experience in the shower, go beyond a neutral experience, if this were the middle ages, a perfumed bath, audiobooks in the shower, racing the alarm, just stop showering, sorry to listeners, pee and coffee, Eternal Lover/Savage.

The Tissue-Culture King by Julian Huxley - AMAZING

The Tissue-Culture King by Julian Huxley

Abbie

Posted by Jesse Willis