The SFFaudio Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #665 – READALONG: Revival by Stephen King

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #665 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Marissa VU, and Evan Lampe talk about Revival by Stephen King

Talked about on today’s show:
2014, pushing it, the Lovecraft connection, the dedication, I was already seduced from before, the dedication:

“This is for the people who built my house: Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Donald Wandrei, Fritz Leiber, August Derleth, Shirley Jackson, Robert Bloch, Peter Straub, and ARTHUR MACHEN, whose short novel ‘The Great God Pan‘ has haunted me all my life”

literally responsible for building this book, Shelley, Stoker, Bloch, the fake Latin title, works the psychological horror mindset, slightly misremembering what that book has in it, the mad scientist, what’s beyond the veil, planting the seeds and the seeds don’t fully grow, more Shelley than Machen, if the pastor were the viewpoint character, it takes forever, teases the cosmic horror, W.W. Jacobs, W.F. Harvey, August Heat, Guy de Maupassant, Edward D. Hoch, mystery magazines, Startling Mystery Stories, Health And Knowledge, the “mysteries” of the worm, religious stlye mysteries, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, is reality as we think it is?, weird fiction from before Weird Tales, The Faceless Thing, the old house, the collapsing house, an old woman, the horror of childhood becomes a lifescar, he thinks he killed her, he was the one that killed her, guilt, ghost, setting the stage, worth the journey, personal horror vs. cosmic horror, the terrible sermon, I’ve been lying to you, a crisis of faith (a revelation of the reality of the Earth), the visions at the end, the ants, the human connections, that downer ending, opening argument, the audiobook, a few moments, all guitarists have a limp fish handshake, putting your brain in the characters brain, pretty good, therapy vs. an asylum, a flubbed ending, a psychic shockwave, The Call Of Cthulhu, an inevitability, not strong enough, the gun with five bullets shot out, one bullet left in Chekhov’s gun, a very Lovecraftian homage, that weird long pacing, hypnotized by the autobiography stuff, more horror, waiting for the other shoe to drop, the car accident, such a cool moment, ghoulishly enjoying the description, he needs to grow up, evil villains, a heroic moment, The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward, an evil alchemist, Victor Frankenstein, the mysteries of Joseph Curwen, a mini list, Beyond The Wall Of Sleep, a curious case, an insane asylum, back country folk, The Lurking Fear, From Beyond, become super-thin, the servants have left, the pastor and the 6 year old boy, Herbert West–Reanimator, The Statement Of Randolph Carter, fear -> follow, fractured himself, Hypnos, pulsars, black holes to the true reality, all up in Hypnos, Ex Oblivione, the key, from nothing into nothing, to the null, plays towards, life is the only way to escape the horror that death will bring (and drugs), escorted to the Other Gods, become a lich, Cool Air, life is punctuated by puppies and butterflies and nice sandwiches, feeling pain all the time and everything’s horrible, a blasted wasteland, The Black Hole (1979), Bloodborne, the protagonists are old, Pet Semetary, death is better, a side effect, “you brought me back it’s fucking horrible, I’ve seen beyond!”, you fucking monster!, he doesn’t share his research, root childhood trauma, symbolic lightning strike, a conventional morality play, why his wife is punished, red herring, the alcohol in the glove compartment, ideas of addiction, from what we see of her life, I drank because you hit me or I was a lesbian or whatever, being a lesbian in the end, Imma woke now!, small towns and rumors, symbolic mirroring, to avoid the nightmares, an electrical storm in the brain, the problem of evil, tornadoes, True Detective, Rustin Cohle is Thomas Ligotti, a truth that makes me feel bad, talkin to boomers, John Brennan is a monster, terrible truth, where’s the lie?, deluded the whole time, people over there are dying, that original cosmic horror is 100% real, why his wife could be drinking, the lies that everyone lives in small towns, a way of lashing out, you’re making me feel bad, rye or bourbon, too painful, The Devil’s Advocate (1997), Al Pacino’s monologue (God is a sadist), the unvarnished character, where did the secret come from to begin with?, how and why, he’s not menacing, the narrator’s memory, a more menacing light, the shotgun method, 2013, a lot of this could be unreliable, he found himself doing this, murder, where is this document going?, a creation of the creative process, still thinking about the magic, professional reviewers talking about the ending being screwed up, the actual ending, visiting his brother in Hawaii, becoming the next Jacobs, left with an unfinished story, its weird, they don’t know what he’s referencing here, Elizabeth Hand, Quatermass And The Pit, the funeral shading of Arthur Miller’s tragedy, atavistic pleasure, don’t look behind you, “a bit odd”, “a turn for the ridiculous”, “a little silly”, a slow build, a shaggy dog story, sprawling voice, a leisurely stroll towards eventual horror, such a cool idea, this stormcloud full of horror, Wayne June was a musician forever, limp handshakes, they’re all Innsmouth look guys, that opioid crisis, pain management gone wrong, the fifth business, The Fifth Business by Robertson Davies, story construction tropes, why Jesse thinks he’s a super-genius, green doors are magic doors, The Door In The Wall by H.G. Wells, a beautiful garden, a nice lady sitting on a throne, tigers and lions and wolves [actually just two panthers], a book with his life, popped out outside the wall, the point of the story is mysterious, what lies beyond, connected to childhood and personal obsession, when he’s constructing the hill for his soldiers to fight on, a footlocker, his sister kisses him, his favourite present, the krauts can hide in there, the crumbling house, the lightning rod, the cave of shadows, the house of shadows, Skull Mountain, Goat Mountain, the interleaving of themes, the ants, he’s having sex with her on the mattress and there’s a black ant crawling over the mattress, we’re all just like ants, a more subversive way of reading, being drones in our lives, Earth and existence is Hell, Null and Beyond as Hell, an afterlife, not everybody sees the same thing, heroin addiction, “something happened”, his hand is raised up, naked with one sock on stabbing a fork into his arm, post-hypnotic suggestion, gives him a glimpse through the keyhole, brain surgery, the witness, we’re going to see via her what lies beyond, prions up in her brain, a window to that alternate reality, the black paper sky, a long line of marching soldiers, what he’s been programming himself to believe, Kult (RPG), a scary fundamental truth people don’t want to really talk about, there is no immorality or horror on Mars, all the other planets with no life, no pain, feral kittens, a beautiful murderer, we’re going vegan, I don’t want to contribute to the pain of this world, tigers are compelled to have babies, we are the demons of Hell, trying to mitigate some of the horror, trying to make the cat vegan, there is no real escape, we are deluding ourselves, do as little harm as a conscious being, its wrong for me to murder people, that gift of knowledge thing, Marissa found her cat’s diary, she’s a bad person but she doesn’t know that, let the cat out of the bag, we never think about it, we are so versed in the horror of reality, having kids is a horrible responsibility, even worse you’ll give pain, The Place Of Pain by M.P. Shiel [is a rip-off of The Moon Stricken by Bernard Capes], he enjoys hikes, there’s a waterfall, a natural telescope, what was going on on the moon, the Moon is dead and just a mirror for looking at Earth, a headless squirrel, enjoying its nuts, hoping it doesn’t rot under there, the beauty of the babies, Stephen King always avoids talking about the real issues, not really a problem in this world, Ray Bradbury’s carnies, oatmeal cookies, nowhere in this book is a demand for healthcare, comfort food, the major business of the fifth business is health care, Oral Roberts, fake medicine, Trump rallies, revival meetings, electricity bleach same difference, Nyarlathotep, like Tesla, Menlo Park, 14 hours, maybe Tesla isn’t a thing, he’s asking us to do google searches, he’s inviting us to say this is real, the narrator is apolitical, music and girls and army men and cars, in the heroin and oxycontin crisis, everybody is independent, boomer obsessions, meant to feel real, other connections to King things, Joyland, Dark Tower connections, the unfound door, Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe, doors in the Dark Tower, move people between worlds, portals, a door that lets you go where you want, a universal door, Salem’s Lot, a horrible monologue, shattered faith, confronting the Dracula, enter into Roland’s world, the fallen preacher redeeming himself, There Are Doors by Gene Wolfe, a novel of obsession, green doors, like memory of Dinosaurs, the bottomless ocean of a magic forest, the irradiate refuge of sleep, under strange stars, what’s cool about reading weird fiction is its almost like the promise of the secrets of the universe, then…, we’re tapping into our own psychology, why do people fly when they’re in dreams, flying dreams, Paul’s dreams, Samuel R. Delany, a keyword search of a thousand dreams, combining real life interests and real life worries with symbolic universal, what is important about green?, how people depict it on the cover, always a church with a steeple, their church had no steeple, lightning is very important, before the novel started, near the resort where the rich people live, the only politics is all about distribution, a lot of the covers have crosses, the crucifix, not really a Christian book, praising God, praising Jesus, little toy Jesus, a red desert, the telephone poles that look like the cross, there’s no people, artists tasked with giving this book a cover, Marissa wishes it wasn’t true, deluxe versions with beautiful interior art, a nice book cover, had not Evan been pushing it with the magic words, where’s the climax of the story, in the Catskills, The Lurking Fear, the Martense’s old mansion was repurposed, resorts in the Catskills, weird joy, Paul skiing, speaking of Paul, that name is not an accident, Daniel, peripheral characters, Astrid Soderbergh, the fundamental mistake of not putting people in the scene, a family walking towards the church, connecting to our realities, changing colours, Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown, a Stonehenge style pagan temple, the prologue, there’s a secret that will be revealed, more SF than the opening might lead you to believe, based on a weird story, the Binding of Isaac, God says: realllly?, God says: jk, sky god with his electrical bolts, an electrical aspect, the stuff about the eels, the transfiguration, skull mountain (Golgotha), Marissa’s favourite review, atheists should be terrified of this novel, a trend on Twitter, hey and check out my Instagram, be seen, the latest Stephen King book is out John 11:12, why Evan likes to go to baseball games, John 3:16, how the Mormons send their kids off, preach the word, all your eyeballs are looking this way?, photoboming, N by Stephen King, an experience that leads to OCD, The Music Of Erich Zann, That is not dead which…, he remembered it, the quote is about Cthulhu, Paul would say Astrid was bisexual (not a lesbian), she loves cigarettes more than anything, aging, hey you’re bald now, you got really fat, did *I* change that much?, really good, really talented, a downer, always was bi, his sister kisses him, he loves his mother, discomfort, life pain, it could have been a greater novel, background life, the null mother, his visions of his family and the cake and the ant, this is The House On The Borderlands I am forever mindblown, better on the second read, such a wonderful villain, many many searches, most people don’t read, the amount ink spilled on whether the movie is going to get made or not, pages and pages, what’s about the actual book, certain scenes, the lightning rod, the terrible sermon, life slices, the mystery, he hadn’t done any research, fake surgeries, little Bradbury, too much play on the term itself: “revival”, playing to the title, its a metaphor, to condense it, the letter about Astrid brings him to Tempest Mountain, a TV series about Jacob, they’ll fuck it up, The Troop by Nick Cutter.

Revival by Stephen King

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The SFFaudio Podcast #665 - READALONG: Revival by Stephen King [ 2:34:52 | 112.98 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The SFFaudio Podcast #664 – READALONG: The Rolling Stones by Robert A. Heinlein

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #664 – Jesse, Maissa Bessada, Evan Lampe, and Will Emmons talk about The Rolling Stones by Robert A. Heinlein

talked about on today’s show:
1952, Tramp Space Ship, Boys’ Life, October November December, Farmer In The Sky, Space Family Stone, London, travel is conducive to reading, New English Library, the band?, so turgid, corny, when Grama Hazel almost died, why is my throat constricting, some good sentiment in there, this book is really corny, the scourge of the spaceways, at the bottom of the toxic lake, the Houdini trick, the twins needed their moment, it’s good for kids, they’re Fergengi, Heinlein kills off female characters, Hazel Stone is in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, one of the founders of the Luna republic, the Martians, how many eyes does a flatcat have?, do they have three eyes?, Lowell gets to see a Martian, Red Planet, Evan really enjoyed this book, such a 50s traditional kind of story of entrepreneurship, radical gender politics, women in families, the most significant member of the family, the leaders of the family, who gets the least screentime, does medical stuff, it doesn’t star the twins, Meade doesn’t get that much attention, a democratic family, the politics of the family, collective decision making, the entrepreneurial side, trying to make a buck selling bikes, selling the scripts, the profits were the friends they made along the way, this is how its sold, Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945-60 by Elizabeth A. Fones-Wolf, union busting in the 1950, Creating The Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations And Corporate Imagery In American Big Business by Roland Marchand, themes, somebody gets sick, Lowell gets “space sick”, groundhogs again, the step-sister in Farmer In The Sky, governments being inefficient and hyperefficient, for the good of the family, the regulation, a trade deficit, mostly its about family, get some money to buy some comics?, their hobby is the free enterprise system, a frost-free rebreathers, they’re geniuses, that’s me, a genius with a functional family, very yes dear, prospecting for uranium, the most sit-commy book, very quippy and dialoguey, they don’t really kill people off in sitcoms, except for Roseanne, a Planet Of The Apes reference, The Connors, Dan Connor had died but they brought him back to life, when they reboot this series in another 35 years, this book doesn’t invite pot-stirring, not very good science fiction, constant propaganda: math, free enterprise, and the family, making fun of Flash Gordon and planetary adventure, space opera, oh what a concept you have Robert Heinlein, Trouble With Tribbles, Will’s correct assessment, the history’s not that important, they cheated on their history test, just take more math, they’re audibly wrong, everybody in this family needs to know math, play chess on a scooter while facing death, Jesse’s not great at math, the planet Lucifer, is English tutoring more lucrative than math tutoring?, basic coin arithmetic, setting aside the propaganda, if you don’t have a family you die, earned not just assumed, a race with the Soviets, boy scouts need engineering degrees, Sputnik’s fear, anticipating and driving it, we’re mammals, or we’re dead, like Will’s porch kittens, snakes don’t have families, not as experimental as The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, everybody can write the TV show, the mentality of my audience, the relationship between tribbles and flatcats, Klingons and fake Klingons, more tribbles or whatever, David Gerrold, I stole it from Ellis Parker Butler’s Pigs Is Pigs, the officiousness of bureaucrats, the pet rate and not the livestock rate, 14,000 guinea pigs, Heinlein stole so much from this, is their TV show a radio show? no, they do a radio drama when advertizing the flatcats, Maissa loved it, a Galactic Overlord?!, who put the note their collection of bicycles?, can Lowell even write?, who’s Edith?, where are the children dear?, the heroic moment in the epidemic, Hazel maneuvers her son into things, the lowest IQ, very 1950s, to write a book, hear from him on civic matters, is this taken from Heinlein’s real life?, you weren’t dying dear, he loses his facemask in the shower, is this Heinlein?, Heinlein had trouble breathing, he had consumption, tuberculosis, a Larry Niven story, “The Return of William Proxmire“, Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary, mathematical dumps, writing hard SF you need to do the math, they have sliderules, they don’t have a computer on their ship, the ship is scrap, gyros on a scooter, mechanical computers, when Jesse’s car breaks down, the boys save their grandma and little brother was math, mass and math go together, this book is super quotable, wherever their is power and mass to manipulate Man can live, Elon Musk is right we could live on Mars, we have those things free on Earth, the worm in the slime, we are the worm that crawled out of the slime, grew hands and started grabbing stuff, grabbin’ slide rules, headed to Titan, Meemaw wants to see the rings of Saturn, to the other planets, its cold out there, Titan has methane seas, is Paul right?, Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312, the Mars trilogy, becoming more skeptical as time goes on, we could lay the keel for the Starship Enterprise right now, and have it in orbit, the replicators and the transporters don’t work, the shuttle would just clang around in the shuttle bay, Charley’s feet are his hands, we thought Hazel was gonna get married, Heinlein subverted the trope, more Evan complaints, very fun, the state got in the way, Hazel’s convincing speech, the twins are in jail again, surprised at the regulations, creating drama, put all your capital into bikes, Mars is under development, they almost go to Venus, Mars as a newly independent nation, generate tourism, what makes something a luxury good, when we get to the Asteroid Belt, the Moon, Mars and in transit, the Asteroid Belt is libertarian, Murder on Maris is a civil matter, Heinlein logic, spacing people, Heinlein plays it both ways, when he gets out the belt, an enlightened 1950s guy, beaten with a belt, corporal punishment in Chinese schools, little emperor, domestic violence, divorced women in China is about affairs?, the generations before were disciplined by teachers, paddled in school, I really want to hit your kid, it definitely changes your mood, playful and insulty vs. fearful, affective, education, International Correspondence School courses, a boat trip to Toba Inlet, distance education courses, so far away from the mainstream, singing him to sleep, contralto, a wonderful family experience, Dealer Dan, The Hungarian, the government surplus yard, war materiel, pickup an old Beaufighter, coming out of a real situation, WWII surplus DC3s etc., surplus corvettes, travel the seven seas, a rich person’s dream, no sense they are ultrawealthy, the cash flow problem, this funny show they don’t really respect, the worst juvenile, where’s the big science fiction concept?, that we could do this at all, surplus Elon Musk rockets, obviously bullshit (but not for everyone), we don’t see any class in this book, just people and the state, this judge is able to recognize Hazel, who populates the state, regulations they’ve invented for themselves, utopian, they’re never going to make any money, the libertarian commune, everybody’s broke, who settled the Moon?, the settlers of the Moon were prisoners (equally low), the Russian and American revolutions combined, more wuffie, what happened to the Mars people, an adorable little moment, heading for Mars, looking back at the Moon and the Earth, a lovely little Science Fiction moment, a great book to read while traveling, the big lie they tell about Heinlein: he’s not readable, a made up complaint, Our Opinions Are Correct, is Jesse is milking that?, writers talking to other writers, just read the modern stuff, was Clarke a pedophile?, racist, Paul says nobody needs to read Heinlein today, how to live your life in the asteroid belt, he really has ideas, Evan has a math minor, you don’t have to read either, the need to read, Edgar Allan Poe did just fine without reading Heinlein, stealing from Rudyard Kipling, why mine the past?, steal from the ancients, steal from Pollux and Castor, identical or fraternal?, both red heads, they took each other’s tests, which audiobook, Tom Weiner narrated a Philip K. Dick novels, buying a jalopy, space jalopies, Full Cast Audio, Heinlein doesn’t use much attribution anyway, almost nothing was abridged, one actors playing both twins, that would be so fun, exactly what the space family Stone does, table reading, Tom Weiner’s a good narrator, Pollux had cracking voice, another Heinlein juvenile, Time Enough For The Sky, Time Of The Twins, identical twins, telepathy, its not science but its an idea, Heinlein created the ideal family that he never head, wearing guns around (subverted), a pez dispenser, the competent doctor, the competent man who’s dumber than everybody else, the four kids he never had, he really, really, really wanted to be a dad, in my day I got whipped with a belt, you’re going to have to live with what you’ve done, how could anybody dislike this book?, too corny, old fashioned, its not hip, Heinlein was not a hipster, endearing corniness, this book is for me!, as a piece of history, not a good read for kids today, Rick Riordan, 40 years after the book came out, Nancy Drew, if a kid wants to read, missing the LGBTQ representation, barely any sex in this book at all, a lot of sex in this book (amongst the flatcats), Meade is going to find a husband, you’re husband high now, free will vs. determinism, free will is a golden thread running through the frozen matrix of fixed events, Predestination (2014), “All You Zombies”, mate with yourself and give birth to yourself, the concept is amazing, incest, are they just splitting off?, tribble sex may be initiated by petting, parasites, pretty funny stuff, no knock, corn is good, a nice spot in the solar system, Between Planets, a lot of connections to other Heinlein novels and stories, Evan needs to do a podcast on all of Heinlein, the most American Science Fiction writer, except no excuses, To Sail Beyond The Sunset, The Number Of The Beast, the Robert E. Howard letters to and from H.P. Lovecraft, the later Lovecraft revisions, the Star Trek Sex Book, what offends Evan, the sheer fucking hubris of Picard, Red Letter Media, make robot Picard gay, robot gay vs. regular gay, being from Milwaukee, Star Trek: Discovery, what Picard could have been…, Star Trek: Enterprise season 3 they’re in the Expanse, a Bing Crosby – Bob Hope movie, a cultural exchange with aliens, a thumb drive, future science fiction Star Trek world has no copyright, Dixon Hill, no culture in the 2100s, Buck Rogers in the 25th century, future music is just disco, two draw upon and make it deep, Nick And The Glimmung -> Galactic Pot-Healer, Heinlein’s future history, series as marketing rather than customer based demand, Fast And Furious 9, a lot of Fast And Furious lore, Will is being the devil, can’t a book just be a book, Luke Burrage, the Mission Impossible series, or the Marvel series, to make you repurchase something you’ve repurchased before, Transformers is dribble, well done dribble, every Marvel movie ends with a fight on a train, elevator -> bus -> train, The Fast And The Furious (2001) is a rip off of Point Break (1991), surfers vs. car thieves, dodge a juvenile, To Sail Beyond The Sunset, swinging sessions, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, Farnham’s Freehold, On The Beach, Swiss Family Robinson, angry or excited, blacks enslaving whites, uppity whites gets castrated, Evan’s excited now, controversial, the provenance, Charles Stross, a privileged white male from California, an anti-racist novel only a Klansman would love, I appreciated what Heinlein was trying, the modern Conan comics make Jesse upset, they heard Conan was a pirate so they put gunports on his pirate ship, making Belit’s crew not black, they’re fearful of being racist, Robert E. Howard was not fearful of being racist, you hire a racism consultant to read your book, sensitivity readers, selling you racial indulgences, how many of the characters were coloured, the Icelandic guy, the Ferengis showing their true feelings for their fellow Ferengi humans, Heinlein doesn’t ignore it, reading it again, Stross’ read on what Heinlein is, Heinlein’s appointment to Annapolis through a senator, privileged discourse, a meager property owner, this is a challenging book, 320 pages, a marital rape scene, why is it the way it is, why is it in there?, Red Planet is a little lighter, a cartoon adaptation, the Heinlein martians, the Fox Kids X-Men cartoon, science advisor, inside the house everybody’s a nudist, what is Heinlein’s masterpiece, The Moon Is The Harsh Mistress, Starship Troopers, him or her, the computer’s great, Manny’s missing a manual hand, French Revolution hats (phrygian caps), Marianne wears one, super-goofy, Stranger In A Strange Land, Evan’s return to Taiwan, Paul represents the reader’s perspective, Paul reads all of the modern books, being torn in half by the political discourse, reviewing, Revival by Stephen King, yummy, The Wonderful Adventures Of Phra The Phoenician by Edwin Lester Arnold, Gulliver Of Mars, A Princess Of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.G. Wells, icebergs full of dead people, Arabian Nights, a magic carpet, the comics, headless squirrel, family values (teaching your offspring to dismember squirrels), why Earth is Hell, pain and death, we’ll be as moral as Mars, no pain on the Moon, that cute little puppy has 9 dead siblings, that cute cat killed and decapitated that cute squirrel, not a luxury for a suckling pig.

The Rolling Stones art by Steele Savage

FULL CAST AUDIO - The Rolling Stones by Robert A. Heinlein

BLACKSTONE AUDIO - The Rolling Stones by Robert A. Heinlein - read by Tom Weiner

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The SFFaudio Podcast #664 - READALONG: The Rolling Stones by Robert A. Heinlein [ 2:25:19 | 85.3 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The SFFaudio Podcast #662 – READALONG: Three Hearts And Three Lions by Poul Anderson

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #662 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Scott Danielson talk about Three Hearts And Three Lions by Poul Anderson.

Talked about on today’s show:
Lawful Good, a novella, 1953, 1961, Appendix N, The Dungeon Master’s Guide, garish sky, the alignment stuff in D&D, the axes on the alignment, true neutral, lawful, neutral, chaotic, cosmic battle, all the problems Jesse had with Dungeons & Dragons, its ideology, a war between the baddies and the goodies, the lawful forces and the forces of discord, implying our reality, mapped as evil, our swanmaid, lots of grey, the framing story, playing the lawful good role in both worlds, hence he’s a paladin, everybody has to pick an alignment, neutral evil thief and a lawful good paladin, deliciously great roleplay, sticks in their mud, a good role player takes that to heart, character drama, flexible morals, against the enemy of his god, an impediment to the adventure and the swashbuckling vs. character dramas, so codified, the rules are there to be discarded, the rules are there to help you, the one true way, a meta-game, applying it to human beings, Captain America is Lawful Good, Spiderman is just plain good, everything is way more complicated than that, the nine different possibilities, Odo in the top left hand corner, Gul Dukat in the bottom right hand corner, Quark is neutral good, what constitutes these things, a grievance against Gary Gygax, this whole matter of France mythology, Charlemagne, Anthony Boucher’s introduction, “the possible and the impossible”, science fantasy, Groff Conklin, Great Folk Epic, The Vault Of Time, H. Rider Haggard, The Incomplete Enchanter, Fletcher Pratt, L. Sprague De Camp, Roland, travel between worlds, taking from Matters, martial paladin focused, a different kind of heroism, riddles, the outer narrator, not that great a book, a grab bag of different adventures, the order of the episodes, the creatures in the woods, a bear, a lion, an owl, material to furnish, very cozy, bookending the story, Edgar Rice Burroughs, later serialized in F&SF: Glory Road by Robert A. Heinlein, a dwarf and a lady princess, transported to a fairy realm, more playfully comic, not a humour piece, the portal aspect, a museum in England, more of a satire, a fantasy romp, does Jesse just not like fantasy?, unstructured, romping around, referencing, Graustark, another Zenda ripoff, playing around, a quest, The Wizard Of Oz, he stole that too, a crossover episode, more time with the Dane bicycling around Europe, WWII adventures, chaos vs. law, a force for law in all the worlds, he had saved Niels Bohr, the audiobook, Bronson Pinchot, a slog via text, Huckleberry Finn, accents in the text, Danish accent?, the drift, an Arnold Schwarzenegger impression, the dumb Scandinavian, pumps you up like McBain, read more H. Rider Haggard, Eric Brighteyes, the point of the story, a straightforward muscleman, the ladies think he’s very sexy, be a sophisticate, ElvenQuest, one of the these fantasy authors, eight book in the series, contempt for his audience, the “chosen one”, his dog is transformed into a human, all about the stereotypes, the fantasy enchanted forest with a silly name, the trolls work the same in both ways, about the tropes, the evil point of view, he’s got your eyes, the ur version of that, if you make it a comedy…, humorous but not a comedy, Stephen Mangan, the Dirk Gently TV show, problematic stuff?, the Swanmaiden, cat-fighting, every D&D player, troll regeneration, Tolkien’s trolls in The Hobbit, entertaining, the Wild Hunt, fatalistic pessimism, elegiac, The Broken Sword, contemplative vs. upbeat, things to notice, Bertrand Russell, Logical Positivism, this is a real guys, this is real guys, most things in philosophy are massive failures, history is the study of failures, reaching in a way that Dunsany doesn’t, going Catholic in the end, he’s picking a team, Christianity is a true religion, assuming medieval role, team order, he believes in beer, kind of all over, crafting vs. spinning, Tolkien vs. Anderson, crafted vs. a product of craft, a Poul Anderson Planet Stories story, going in to fight chaos, the length?, the werewolf and the witch and the nixie, collecting a crew, the dwarf just shows up, the Muslim knight, Papillon, no payoff, Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court, a satire, the analog for Papillon, mental energy, maybe mind was transferred into the body of another guy, what is the explanation?, magic, interesting, not just a secondary world fantasy, not enough to justify anything, why do I need this entrance into this world?, a payoff in a meta-way, konking, Guardians Of The Flame by Joel Rosenberg, the opening sequence and the first episode of the Dungeons And Dragons cartoon, I know spells I guess, hey look there’s Tiamat, a lost Scandinavian epic, writing in that vein, the meta-setup, quasi-science, a grab bag of different ideas, Vancian magic, Jeffro Johnson’s Appendix N, finally the explanation, the ideology of alignment, if we impose this on the system, Darth Vader is Lawful Evil, Jabba is Chaotic Evil, Anakin as a kid is Neutral?, can kids have alignment?, age of maturity age of reason, suddenly I’m neutral evil, something wrong with this system, Hoger?, name conveniently placed on the saddle, saddlebag stuff, not the most law-abiding type, the outer-narrator’s explanation, God has provided, the “balance” of the Force, like magic, implying the universe comes up with that, a meta-flaw, as soon as Obi Wan Kenobi spins up a bunch of lies, Ming the Merciless, a roguish guy, neutral good, when Obi Wan was lying to you he was doing it for a good reason, Yoda on Dagobah, Zen koans, don’t go into that cave, don’t save your friends, that stuff was stupid, tear it all down, abandoning the alignment system is so meta, we need it to to have a film, a conflict of good vs. evil is replaced by a conflict with the alignment system itself, broken from the beginning, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser are thieves, neutral at best, Paul’s range of alignment only includes good and neutral, are there people who you want to spend time with who play lawful evil?, tear it all down, for NPCs, if we go to Ivanhoe, the restoration of law, fighting an evil law makes you chaotic, confine the alignment system to lawyers offices, the Duke boys on The Dukes Of Hazzard, Boss Hogg is evil but lawful, want to steal Daisy Duke’s cutoffs, the top of their car is evil, what knights really are, they’re samurais, very egoistic, the heraldic crest, all very fun, villain means serf, taking the sides of the elites, ultimately there’s something wrong, fantasy is dangerous, God brought him his horse, hence his conversion to Catholicism, when God gives Jesse a horse he’ll have to convert to Catholicism, the super-fantasy element, the escapist element, what he was doing in his own life was interesting enough, finding a way back, looking through Grimoires, shouted out in The Number Of The Beast by Robert A. Heinlein, a podcast we recorded seven months ago, The Pursuit Of the Pankera, giant problems, way longer, all science fiction and fantasy is in it, they 666 worlds, parallel universes, more time on Barsoom, more time in Oz, E.E. Doc Smith’s Galactic Patrol, not your best intro to Heinlein, go with Glory Road or Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, the book that broke Paul, Star Ship, Tau Zero, Sargasso Of Lost Starships, Flight To Forever, Brain Wave, The High Crusade, a fun idea story that’s not too long, Virgin Planet, terrorbirds, The Golden Slave, Lord Of A Thousand Suns, Out Of The Iron Womb, Swordsman Of Lost Terra, Tiger By The Tail, stuck into Thieves’ World, Inside Earth by Poul Anderson.

SPHERE - Three Hearts And Three Lions by Poul Anderson

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The SFFaudio Podcast #662 - READALONG: Three Hearts And Three Lions by Poul Anderson [ 1:20:09 | 58.37 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The SFFaudio Podcast #658 – READALONG: Dancing Aztecs by Donald E. Westlake

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #658 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Scott Danielson, and Trish E. Matson talk about Dancing Aztecs by Donald E. Westlake

Talked about on today’s show:
mid-1970s, questions, longest novel, why it is so weird?, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1965), Westchester, Pennsylvania, a bold claim, a huge collection, Rat Race (2001), this quasi-genre is called “epic comedy”, The Cannonball Run (1981), Aston Martin DB5, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr., a diocese in California, a really stupid movie and really good, atypical for Westlake, a huge cast, funny as heck, ever scene is very Westlake, overall the picture is unWestlakian, 40 people and a hawk, omniscient point of view, chapter titles, the structure, he’s a master at this terrible genre, entertaining, light, Somebody Owes Me Money by Donald E. Westlake, a problem somewhere in New York, Westlake showing us New York, a member of this neighbourhood, everybody in New York is looking for something, the second day of the search, fifteen hours from South America to New York, the inferred bar fight, so good, you could put this right on film, Westlake movies, very filmic stuff, in novels characters would never do this, the master of the novel form, at the height of his writing powers, he’s using his powers for simplistic movie comedy, Cannonball Run is trash, super-cute, he’s enjoying himself, self-indulgent, Farrah Fawcett, they’re inherently bad for you, The Good Place, The Cannonball Run II (1984), Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines (1965), Those Daring Young Men in their Jaunty Jalopies (1965), Wacky Races, Dick Dastardly, a plague we’ve gotten through and over, the Harlem Globetrotters on Scooby-Doo, mid-60s into the 80s, the Scary Movie series, parody movies, a cast of famous actors in Airport, the airport sequels, Airplane!, big cast novels, The Gods Must Be Daring (1997), a wonderful assemblage, leaning on ethnic stereotypes, bigoted stereotypes, n-words and other ethnic slurs, how it was back then, we should do better now, Harlem, in the parade of truckbeds going by, a chapterlets from the point of view of the two kids watching the parade, in dialect, the Brer Rabbit stories by Joel Chandler Harris, Uncle Remus, Brer Fox he lay low, Brian Holsopple, dynamism, no restrictions, all out zany, so wide so broad, hanging out with Pedro is a book by itself, ravished, so many people end up happy, there’s only one winner, they all had fun in the race, all in the journey, the best episode of Deep Space Nine is about a crew of Vulcans and the Deep Space Nine raggamuffins, they don’t win they declare victory, go back to Quark’s and have a raktajino and enjoy they’re muscles being sore, the familiar plot, the setup, The Fugitive Pigeon, The Maltese Falcon, the Westlake Review blog, The Mourner by Richard Stark, how Westlake often does something, how he created Dortmunder, a comedic scene, derailing your hardboiled protagonists, cozy versions of Stark plots, back to Paul’s poll, side series, sidekick heisters, a criminal job at the airport, he’s a wonderful guy, only the hawk isn’t criminal, so much meta writing, as a professional writer, always looking for ideas, when he hits on an idea, how the aztecs are genuine, how many scenes where suddenly the action stops, a Sherlock Holmes story, The Adventure Of The Six Napoleons, the strange circumstances that brought about these events, a squash court for a certain park, congratulating themselves, “I believe my subject is bewilderment”, bewildered by reality, how it could possibly be, sixteen Dancing Aztecs, why are they moving like that, they have a reason, heisted from an ATV by Americans, a British coup in Antigua: Under An English Heaven, Kahawa, a coffee train heist book?, hustling, gritty, only New York, decades ago, Robert Moses, a sense of place, Westlake’s job is to go out in the city and observe and say “wow”, two travelers, places to go in New York, amazing experiences you can have, the real treasure of Westlake, a sanitation worker with a big route, the park on the weekend, the beach in the winter, a billion corners of New York, how many nooks?, various spots that need pooping on, an archaeologist looking at the mid-1970s, the father in Somebody Owes Me Money was always working on the insurance papers, gimme twenty books and only one was written by Westlake I could find it because of characterization, the bewilderment scenes, he must be a private eye, the private eye said, weird glomming on, the mom smells like a tomato, at the park with his kite (on fire), he’s got a B.B. gun, almost like magic realism, you can’t say no to it, the wry affection he holds for most the characters, gentle fun, Jane Austen, “the hero”, he likes them all, gold, how all the different statues got broken, a twist at the ending, 150 pages earlier, the wrong statue, a sleight comic novel of skill and craft, Westlake at the height of his powers, an unreliable narrator, the Westlake review writer is very expert, an FBI agent who had been fired years ago (but thought he was under very deep cover), throw a monkey wrench in, create scenes, Robert Redford is a thief, The Hot Rock (1972), Sidney Potier as an agent trying to stop him, absolutely zany, a filmic only genre translated into a book, something that is difficult to do in a book, the power of his amazing characterization, Westlake showing off, the answer is yes, pretty impressive, Bank Shot, Smoke, The Spy In The Ointment, in dialogue with other authors, Lawrence Block, past comic novels, Art Dodge’s greeting card company, Two Much (1996), Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas, the V.S. Goth Cab company, like Edgar Allan Poe the French love Donald E. Westlake, an unauthorized Stark adaptation, big in France, Drowned Hopes is Westlake’s retelling of The Colour Out Of Space by H.P. Lovecraft (kinda, not really), Smoke by Donald Westlake, The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells, audio doesn’t get archived on the Waybackmachine, ground out of the internet, forever is not as long as we though it was, Travelers Far And Wee by Donald E. Westlake, this explains all the traffic in New York, something that’s easy to miss in Westlake is that he’s very philosophical, he’s surprised he’s an author, the fake publishing agency, its a fuck book, Westlake wrote those, the market’s not there (the Science Fiction market), they all have day jobs, less and less reliant on getting that publisher, where there’s a demand to be an author there’s going to be a scam, these comic crime capers are all about himself, they’re all getting scammed, the wonder, the absolute bewilderment, its unbelievable what people ill trick themselves into doing, calmer and calmer the more they fight, he likes being a cuckold, the other Oscar, best adapted Screenplay, Jim Thompson, The Killer Inside Me, one of the joys of this podcast, re-reads, the secret of what podcasts are for: its , The Curse Of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold, everybody needs a good excuse, Larry Niven, allowable as long as it is homework, a mental block, assignments for podcasts, how many podcast has Scott got going?, two readalongs per month, all in good fun, a Luke Burrage show, Amazon and Google searches have greatly degraded, use an adblocker, adblocker browsers (Brave), the central Andes, the maximum extent of the Aztec Empire, a fictional South American country, what research did he do? his whole life, a Richard Stark novel set of the coast of Cuba, Lawrence Block’s novel Killing Castro, a very political time, he’s really good at hiding the politics, his weird personality, very different from most SF writers, Robert J. Sawyer makes his full time living as an SF writer, wife with a job, lives in a condo, no kids, hundreds seeming thousands of TV writers writing terrible shows and making very good livings, seemingly no interest in books, the history of the 20th century, the Teapot Dome Scandal, all the other people in the family that amounted to zero, billionaire, Elon Musk did something interesting with his money, putting a car in orbit of the earth is stupid but cool, Joachim Boaz writing about Larry Niven’s inheritance “at least he’s honest about it”, stuff on the moon, expanding the Dortmunder world, the recent film adaptation of The Colour Out Of Space, the HPLHS, The Voluminous Podcast: The Letters Of H.P. Lovecraft, little Auggie Derleth, C.L. Moore, the redemption we all wanted him to have, mea culpas, his political transformation, if this is what a conservative sounds like sign me up, economic philosophy, more people of the elite class need to have that feeling in order to change, he thinks he’s better than everyone else, and he’s failing at school, writing a newspaper column as a teenager but can’t finish high school, straight from the source biography, the destruction of Uncle Hugo’s bookstore, the website, H.P. Podcraft has a patreon, Houdini, more professional than premier prestige podcasts, what a triumph their podcast is.

Dancing Aztecs (ITALIAN) by Donald E. Westlake

A New York Dance by Donald E. Westlake

A New York Dance [interior dustjacket] by Donald E. Westlake

Dancing Aztecs by Donald E. Westlake

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The SFFaudio Podcast #658 - READALONG: Dancing Aztecs by Donald E. Westlake [ 1:58:35 | 90.69 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The SFFaudio Podcast #657 – READALONG: The Ganymede Takeover by Philip K. Dick and Ray Nelson

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #657 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Marissa VU, Evan Lampe and Will Emmons talk about The Ganymede Takeover by Philip K. Dick

Talked about on today’s show:
Philip K. Dick and Ray Nelson, Philip K. Dick’s font is HUGE and Ray Nelson’s is tiny, very Philip K. Dick, tidied up a lot by Ray Nelson, a device full of microcircuitry, miniaturization, Philip K. Dick’s various flying cars, an ionocraft, even more seedy and disrepair than the first, a shabby little used interior, not apart of the fleet, I’ll convey you to the neegparts, are you safe to ride in?, I do what I like, it’s legal for a class 1 homeostatic mechanism to own a tom, many alarming creaks and clankings, a very Philip K. Dick paragraph, I mean I sort of smell bag, I smell like cat wee, insecure machinery, a robot owns a human being, stupid and hilarious, one of his more competent novels, where the Tennessee thing came from, Blacks and Indians, pretty interesting, not a great book, a prelude, we’re in the takeover, time jump, pre-invasion, Dr. Bloodmoney, supposed to be a sequel to The Man In The High Castle, the Japanese were replaced by the Ganymedians, made Paul uncomfortable, it is what Paul signed up for, Philip K. Dick is not racist, Ray Nelson is not racist, the USA in 1965 was pretty racist, superior and resentful of them, physically beautiful, Counter-Clock World, Our Friends from Frolix 8, why didn’t Evan do this for his podcast?, psychology and psychiatry, YUP is the opposite of NOPE, gender transitions, pronoun stuff, gender transition, oppressor class, what are the NeegParts? Negro Partisans, why Tennessee?, the great mixup, all Black people and Indians in East Tennessee now, Colorado, the neutral zone, the Appalachian Mountains are a wild place, secret agents, the narrators, the audiobook, 2012, Gregg Margarite, Eight O’Clock In The Morning, aftershow talk, Jen Murtha and Steven Davis, dual narrator audiobooks, Jen Murtha does all of the non-dialogue and Steven Davis does everything else, Jesse has no friend in South Africa, Jesse ended up liking it quite a bit, Jen Murtha is laughing a lot, a charming amateur production, having fun doing this, this book hasn’t been published in a long time, no copyright information, 5 and a half hours, chaypter won, a school project?, a pretty good book, the top half of Philip K. Dick novels, Marissa’s favourite version of Philip K. Dick, minimal breasts, obsessed with the one woman in the novel, Percy X, one of them kills her without her dying, kills her with a bust of Sigmund Freud, touch fingertips, the strength of non-sexual touch, vocal jazz thing, a beautiful scene, where Paul Rivers reflects on his sexuality and identity as a man, really sensitive, the men are all horny Philip K. Dick, their descriptions of what a woman is like, the huddling together moment, the individual vs. the gestalt, Galactic Pot-Healer, individuals and identity, A Maze Of Death, a collective experience, obvious in retrospect Percy X is Malcolm X, Perseus?, the occupation is so weird, comedy, petty villainy, the vidphone rang, psychedelic research, always thinking about the United Nations, I’m a sick man, a character who doesn’t want to get out of bed, a device that may be able to stop the invasion of the earth, functionary psychiatry character, they’re all in a crazyhouse together, almost like The Zap Gun, a parody of itself, I’m fulfilling a contract, they took some acid and started messing around, a fairly polished piece, Philip K. Dick is very sloppy, the passages and the ideas, the plot is stupid, some Philip K. Dick short stories are beautiful others are mechanistic, Now Wait For Last Year, Time Out Of Joint, Philip K. Dick isn’t very good at novels, beautiful gems of polished awesomeness, the models of planes, authenticity, replicas and fakes, Nelson forcing Philip K. Dick to explain something (how telepathy works), a theory of human consciousness, a quasi-scientific explanation, bottom half books, here’s the situation: I’ve got all these phrases, technobabble, the psychiatric element, the concept of the Nowhere girl, super-detached, the best girl ever because she doesn’t care about anything, that’s how he sees his wives, the more drugged out and detached they are the more fun they were to hang out with, he wanted the gestalt, female partners, relationships, the aloof woman, Clans Of The Alphane Moon, Eye In The Sky (the Bevatron book), a 1989 copy, lacking the gravity and conviction, this Mekkus character is basically a head, wormlike aliens, Dune by Frank Herbert, mostly a head, Dan Dare Pilot Of The Future, the Mekon, turning pages with their tongues, Deus Irae, Tibor McMasters, one of the people you’d see in the asylum, a flotation tank, become a nothing, political stuff, a WIK, a wormkisser, a musicologist, overt resistance to the worms, characterization is unusually weak for Dick, the Hellmachine that distorts reality, all the themes floating around, the experience on the battlefield, Robert E. Lee, the Black Freedom movement, the Vietnam War, the Peace movement, the Civil War, maybe everything kind of exists but we aren’t paying attention to it, a theme from modern fantasy, a little ironic?, a lot of sex in there too, tiny lesbians pulling out people’s facial hair, delusions of grandeur, the old confederate money factory, a fantasy of the old south, another money scene, what’s on the money, historical figures of science and literature, Euros are like that, the Queen and the Prime Ministers and randos to represent science, Franklin and Hamilton, nobody has confidence in these people, appropriate for 2021, maybe 2022 will prove something different, free floating Philip K. Dick parts, he did LSD twice, Ray Nelson was always trying to get Dick going, therapy, psilocybin, mechanically driven drug scenes, large or medium doses, there is no Ganymedian occupation of Tennessee, as a metaphor it doesn’t make any sense, looking at SF as a criticism of society, science fiction is about analyzing today, Ganymedians are Philip K. Dick unable to finish this book and Ray Nelson is Percy X, an idea in mind, what is authenticity mean, finding authenticity, meaning and work, identity and empathy, what’s this book about?, psychiatry is a big theme, psychiatrists trying to control everything, the only free people in the world are up in the hills, sinister, a heavy scene, he beats a robot to death, another Philip K. Dickism: Abraham Lincoln, Robots are not robots, they’re people, an inability to empathize with others, this is boring, Paul Rivers kills Percy X, the free person is killed by the psychiatrist, not many benevolent psychiatrists, We Can Build You, Vulcan’s Hammer, mental asylum planets, distrustful of psychiatrists, Radio Free Albemuth, A. Lincoln Simulacrum, Philip K. Dick’s bathroom tiles, the Dickheads Podcast talks about Divorcepedia, we’re getting two people’s psychology, in that headspace anymore, not so resentful and angry anymore, it isn’t one person’s idea, amazing scenes, California, Tennessee as a myth symbol, very Confederate, Orange County, the San Francisco Bay Area, a backward part of the country?, mostly set in space, in their plush pleasure palaces, people camping in the woods, a bit of Norway, everybody is speaking Norwegian, seeing the password through their eyes, Dick had his wife institutionalized, in a housefire, an important impact on your life, the commitment scene is just like an interlude, mostly dialogue, I wanna be able to commune with another person for reals, fuck it let’s blow up the planet!, what would be the point, becoming interested in the novelties of American culture, getting rooked, a fake tchotchke, Nelson’s first novel, 1963, the inspiration for They Live (1988), We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, We Can Build You (wholesale), responsible, “Mistakes were made.”, somebody made the decision, a guy who wants to be the king, a funny self-sabotage scene, I should be in charge because I’m a clown, Emperor Norton, President Breslin, The Crack In Space, the TV news clown, Tucker Carlson, game show hosts, anyone can be president if he can be president, make him king anyways, I’m a useless clown, I’m a racist slob vote for me, I’m a simple guy, I’m this intellectual who’s better than you, A Face In The Crowd (1957), a very American story, Arkansas, “I’m so exhausted”, “I’m a sick man”, we’re going to set you up, man, they’re in every part of the novel doing something sinister, yeah I smashed her head in but it doesn’t matter, make you feel horrified, the skinning people was pretty nasty, Blacks are called Bucks, Toms are Uncle Toms (sellouts), its all tuck, how good it would feel to roll around on the pelt, these are weird thoughts, he’s the bad guy (kind of), cartoon horror, we don’t need to take this too seriously, the hotel room is great?, you trying to escape from this place?, Ubik, Richard K. Morgan’s Jimmi Hendrix hotel (Edgar Allan Poe in the TV version), idea filled, a literature of ideas, that may be changing, the ideas in here are not potent, more like a regular genre, when people think science fiction fiction today (what Netflix produces), here’s a premise, Three Body Problem, Allan Quatermain, Eric Brighteyes, Vikings are dumb, Paul says we’re done, Evan’s Philip K. Dick podcasts needs addenda, losing track of everything, The Simulacrum, his 1960s books are really well packed, his 70s and 80s books, not as busy, quickfire character changes, very not modern, modern books are technically better, are they as idea packed?, adventure and revenge, trying to be a Norse story, an author’s voice, he’s the dumb blond doing what the witch tells him to, Allan’s Wife, not a good novel to learn real facts about Zulu people, kinda short, main themes.

The Ganymede Takeover by Philip K. Dick and Ray Nelson - art by VINCENT DI FATE

URANIA - The Ganymede Takeover by Philip K. Dick and Ray Nelson

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The SFFaudio Podcast #655 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Gulliver Of Mars by Edwin Lester Arnold

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #655 – Gulliver Of Mars by Edwin Lester Arnold; read by James Christoper. This is an unabridged reading of the novel (6 hours 6 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Maissa Bessada

Talked about on today’s show:
Lieut. Gulliver Jones: His Vacation, Richard Lupoff, this is amazing!, I’m going to change the name, the spelling on Gullivar vs. Gulliver, this modern decadent age, Gulliver’s Travels, more subtle, Lieut. Jones Of Mars, the author is not American, Edwin Lester Arnold, subtitled His Vacation, he’s vacated his premises and he’s nowhere to be found, listened twice, Jesse’s not a re-reader, read and listened, looking at the etext, listening is reading (tho not identical), reading with your fingers, reading with your eyes, reading with your ears, reading aloud, what colour is sorrel, a reddish horse colour, did you have a chance to look at the comics?, Gullivar Jones, Warrior of Mars, horror, westerns, kung-fu comics, Shang-Chi, Iron Fist, the barbarians push, Conan The Barbarian, Savage Sword Of Conan, now is the time when we do barbarians, Thongor, Thundaar, Crom the Barbarian, John Carter, DC/Marvel, Roy Thomas, competition for DC’s Edgar Rice Burroughs, American military officers on Mars saving princesses (or semi-saving princesses), the magic carpet becomes a floating disc, Lupov is a magic wizard, an inside joke, chestnut coloured, a green vegetable, the comic book adaptation, Jesse was lied to, not a rival for A Princess Of Mars, a well meaning bumbling doofus, he bumbles his way across the planet, open to a sequel, sequel possibilities, The Prisoner Of Zenda, John Carter (2012), The Pursuit OF The Pankera by Robert A. Heinlein, The Number Of The Beast, a queen dowager, basically around Barsoom, adventures on Mars for fun, low stakes, influenced Edgar Rice Burroughs, set on Mars, Planet Stories, 1905, 1911, having it set on Mars, Dynamite Comics crossover between Edgar Rice Burroughs and Gulliver Of Mars, the two Marses, the White Apes, the Tharks, the Red People, laying eggs, an alien planet, they seem to have pigs and horses, identical to Earth, disappointing, Earth analogue, She by H. Rider Haggard, the book within the book: The Secrets Of The Gods, first they came to Earth as Isis and Amon, populating these planets, Stargate, Paul fell into Jesse’s trap, how did you like this book, Maissa kinda liked it, a mishmash, Arabian Knights, a magic carpet, adventure to adventure, Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, it didn’t feel science fictiony, similar to Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, it was ok, it entertained Paul for 6 hours, the mundanity of Mars, a missed opportunity, he doesn’t know about the two moons, a comet that gives off heat and causes a drought, the hurtling moons in the sky, a sword over his head and two moons, super-naked, Mars is hot!, deserty tropical weather, Paul is more wrong and Maissa is wrong too, super-duper interesting, a satire, what is it a satire of?, chapter 2, this is not Mars of Barsoom, much more like H.G. Wells, the boy who he lands on, Ahn, takes him like a cigar and plunks him down on Mars, bounced onto a boy giving a lecture on gravity, they tumble down a hill together, that lecture’s over, they explore the society, she’s a priestess, a slave and a girl, the hither and the thither societies, this guy’s a doofus, weird situations, what is Jesse missing, how many flowers show up in the story, convolvulus (bindweed), his very antipode, Princess Heru, pulling a blue convolvulus bud to pieces, the language of flowers, most flowers have other names, the colours of flowers, marriage bonds, a golden pool and a silver fish, a scene as good as any in A Princess Of Mars, which implies delight to these people, he’s just a dumb strong American, fairly honest and very hungry, the drawer, these peace soaked triflers, slowly pulling a convolvulus bud to pieces, what things look like, to see the decadent ruined empire that is the hither people, endless food and no need to work, taking tribute, the story of Athens and Crete and the Minotaur, the Theseus story, a railroad kind of role playing game, find the key to unlock the door, an azure convolvulus flower, some barbarous and barren district (the United States), growing their boats, a repeated theme, the gentle damsel, damsel flies, pallid flowers, blazing like a bonfire, the heiress was swept aside, dragging Heru with them, her milk white arms, her face as lovely as a convolvulus flower, all was piece hear, the sky a lovely lavender, heavy scented convolvulus flowers, a skiff with a half dozen rowers, unconscious loveliness, tiny little detailed threads, he’s making fun of something, its definitely making fun of or engaging with The Time Machines, the Eloks and the Morloi (Eloi and Morlocks), Paul has read The Time Machine, Stephen Baxter’s authorized sequel, the official manga version of Anne Of Green Gables, she’s huge in Japan, normal time travel stories, most are to the past, the very first place he goes to is a future England the workers of the UK have turned into the Morlocks, mechanism vs. poetry, their entire world is a garden they don’t know how to take care of, the Morlocks tend them like sheep, the underclass now physically eat the upper class, those who went to university and studied poetry and their brains grew smaller, making dynamos and fixing trains, the slaves and the regular people, the slaves have no slave-masters, the priestesses of immaculate conception of humanity, the guardians of the great hopes and longings, triflers, dominoes coming down, evolution going backwards, their society became slothful, popular at the turn of the 20th century, the United States is Gulliver Jones, he’s a sailor, the water, he has to chase him down and wrestling him to the ground, he learned wrestling from the Chinese, he pulls out his sword and plants it in the ground and claims it for the United States, John Carter is not satire, going in the wrong direction thinking its an allegory for something, told from the point of view of a Brit, this up and comer, an ancient society with castles and palaces and tonnes of resources, they don’t have money, the marriage ceremony was fascinating as an idea, the hither people know money exists, the Canadian health care, wait in line for 3-4 5-6 hours, we are aware that things cost money but it doesn’t hurt us in the same way, see this as a non-currency society, plagued for endless ads for drugs, its insane in the United States, they have an economy they have to worry about, a terrible useless king has to give tribute to the thither people, the hairy barbarians, one female, we’re going to beat you about the head, Gulliver spends the majority of the story in barbarian lands, he meets a woodcutter who wants to fight him, they keep thinking he’s a ghost, we’re missing something huge going on in this book, a graduate thesis that would pay off in incredible dividends, a lot of girls, I have to ask you a personal question: be you a dude or be you not a dude?, nice to meet you, he loses everybody, a lady on an island, she’s cooking food in a pot, he drinks the entire stew, he at her fish, where they’re growing boats, imagine you’re a hunter gatherer in South America and plucked you into 1840s UK, wow, I’m a fish out of water, these gourd plants to make some navies, he’s a dumb sailor, what the implications, food grow without weeds, boats decanted from moulds, they’re all my boat, rideshares in the Netherlands, he’s trying to pay for everything with his buttons, it could be gold, the most interesting thing that happened to me, another guy just like me from the blue planet, he can barely get two words out a week and he’s all wispy, super-rich, almost none of it is science ficiton, picaresque bildungsroman, Jack Vance, Planet Of Adventure, suppressed by all others, one of the similarities, the palace library, a book being used as a mousetrap, given the gift of speech, he doesn’t have the gift of reading, all really awesome, straight out of the Bible, so boring, the breakfast gong sounds, let’s read more, key to understanding what reality is vs. breakfast, abusing an ancient tome, a baby or a puppy with a Gutenberg bible, heir to an ancient empire, the yellow dressed slaves, a brass bikini and yellow skin, not a good fit with Barsoom and John Carter, a satire like Gulliver’s Travels, the description of the carpet, the veil that separates the known from the unknown was rent, reviews behind paywalls, Evert Bleiler, Science Fiction The Early Years, 1990, science fantasy, interplanetary romance, a sea-dog, Polly Brown, a stange old man, a carpet with a sense of hummour, a simulacrum of a star map, a Schiaparellian Mars, telepathy, my teacher said the same thing, a romance with the Princess Heru, rigs the drawing, engaged for a year, King Hath, the tributary arrangement with the woodmen, the most beautiful woman with the court, the city of Seth, too drunk, the meat of the book, various perils, entombed in ice, he loots her remains too, he’s a bad guy, pretending to be a spirit, two tasks, his previous grave-robbing, Jones’ lust sated, taken by the slaves, the magic carpet transports him back to New York, promoted, off on a colossal bender, deflecting javelins by the power of will, Egypt, a trivial worked, badly planned, badly written, not proven, The Encyclopedia Of Fantasy, 1997, the common influence of Haggard’s She, not really trying, he tries, playful, philosophical devices as props, restlessness dissatisfaction, rein, The Wonderful Adventures Of Phra The Phoenician, an unsuccessful farmer in Canada, a TV show adaptation, trivial, badly planned, badly written, the land of the dead, he keeps encountering females, he sees a princess on a raft, she falls on him, she’s dead, attacked by corpses, frozen people, a glacier of dead people, the baubles that come off the fingers, his rooming house, his land lady, steak and red tomatoes the colour of sunset, he eats a lot, missing buttons, his pants slid down a mountainside, I’ve been promoted, a good candidate, write the story don’t focus too much on the girl, a number of meta-peices, this book would not be in your hands picked up from a Broadway bookstall, worthy of another read, a map of the planet, conflating trivial vs. fun, its not Moby-Dick, Gulliver’s Travels is fun and not trivial, the marriage stuff, I don’t mind reading about Mary Sue characters, Mary Sutopias, other ideas on how to live, feudalism,

I am less bothered by Mary Sue characters than I am by stories set in Marysutopia. A lot of classic SF suffers from that. Authors created societies in which their own personal preferences became the social norms.

Heinlein’s like maybe we could have weird kinds of marriage, how weird it would be to have marriage shuffled like that every year, post-apocalyptic, memory wiped every four years, an idea book, the gourd boat seeds, he got a tour, I picked up the seeds that the lady showed me, he keeps looking in his pockets, his belt pouch, finds the tailors’ bills, the pips of an orange that Polly had thrown at him, a hopeless romantic, how’s the economy work?, how do family and raising kids work, look young until they grow old and suddenly die, mentally a child, super-powers, it has got to be satire, deeper than most seem to want to credit as middling adventure romp, another whole book, trying to turn it into, with a six-shooter, he has a sword but he doesn’t hit people with it much, Jack Burton in Big Trouble In Little China (1986), one of the best movies ever made, orientalist, Kurt Russell, he thinks he’s the hero, the movie acts like he’s the hero but he’s the comic sidekick, David Lo Pan, misunderstanding what the movie is doing, he arrives on a magic carpet, who was the guy?, the carpet and the locket, it went nowhere, it went into his pocket, he could have another adventure, Gulliver on Venus, Gulliver on Ganymede, bumble through more things, why you have to read Gulliver’s Travels, shownoting something from 6 months ago, the horse people, Planet Of The Apes, all he wants to do is spend time taking care of his horse, watching the horrible things happening on the news, you can really rely on your garden, utter contempt for humans, admiring the horses so much, the GULLIVER’S TRAVELS miniseries (1996), Silverlock by John Myers Myers, a ken doll for rich lady giants, placed between their breasts, savage takedown, how did this get on the schedule?, too much of a lead time?, even if Paul listened 6 months later, they’re already on they’re next writing, let me tell you about the book I’m reading now, what we were thinking 6 months ago, laughing or crying at jokes, what things were like 6 months ago, what things were like in 1905, oh professors of later day, so much per unit, an audiobook for this bike journey, back to electric cars, he tries to pay her for the inflation, a babelfish equivalent, huge mistake, everybody had clothing on (fucking stupid), number 1 mistkae: Dejah Thoris had clothes on, Disney Princesses, clothes for the ken doll of John Carter and Dejah Thoris, when he goes swimming he takes off his uniform, he’s drowning!, even ghosts want to kill themselves, a huge meal of elk, deer, and something very much like salmon, I had to go save a princess on another planet with a magic carpet, telepathy and simplicity, Sola is a slave like Ahn is a slave, minor mind powers, the warring groups, the books are so different, apples and potatoes, Creatures On The Loose, he’s a Vietnam vet!, a former marine instead of a sailor, a snarky attitude, he actually says he was a soldier prior to being a sailor, up for promotion, his folly, a terrible mission, maybe more important than we know, audio of Phra The Phoenician?, yay! suspended animation!

Creatures On The Loose, Gulliver Of Mars