The SFFaudio Podcast #481 – READALONG: Exhibit Piece by Philip K. Dick
The SFFaudio Podcast #481 – Jesse, Paul, Marissa, and Evan Lampe talk about Exhibit Piece by Philip K. Dick
Talked about on today’s show:
If: Worlds Of Science Fiction, August 1954, its okay, a lot better than initial impressions, Evan loves this story, Marissa enjoyed it, Paul thought it was deeper than he thought, set apart from the Electric Dreams adaptation, the tropes of TV are not the tropes of Philip K. Dick, Real Life, Sookie Stackhouse and Terrance Howard, a strong script, slightly inspired by Exhibit Piece, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, Anna Paquin, a male fantasy, I’m a lesbian supercop, flying cars, pubtrans (a fucking bus), a suburban utopia, dystopia, juxtaposing, idiocy of television tropes, vs. a 1950s science fiction story, why are they cops, that’s what television does, the end, does a lot happen at the end, oriented for television, what is the plot in the two worlds in Real Life, they killed my partners (all 15 of them), those fingers your not eating, the french fries are the flapjacks, the physical trauma in the story vs. punching and shooting, the murder of his wife doesn’t matter, tracking down the murder of the cops doesn’t matter, all the threads in the short story, the concussion is hay-fever in the story, total world destruction ahead, demolish (The Demolished Man), Mr. PKD doing your job so well today, a schizoid embolism, Total Recall (1990), Paul Verhoeven vs. Arnold Schwarzenegger, back to the ambiguity, time portal, the best episode so far, the more you look at it, the psychology stuff, ultimately there are no threads you can pull on in Exhibit Piece that can make the story fall apart, The Commuter, wearing robes, Fleming, officious and a jerk or constructive truth, even the robot bus driver is upset, how much time PKD spent in university, Xeno’s paradox, weird one-up-man-ship, manifest in academic departments, historians in TV shows (don’t exist), some wisdom we’re missing out on, cosplay, powdered wigs, AP history exam, singing Stan Rogers’ sea-shanties, subtle!, I wish you could see this side, Carnap. Freedom, limited government!, no euthanasia!, he lives in a department dormitory, the Spartans, a psychotic break, a terrible shame, malice, they live in a dystopia like hell, political correctness, Small Town by Philip K. Dick, life-size, just beyond the paper-route, like the dioramas in the American Museum of Natural History, they gender flipped it!, a lesbian and a person of colour, George Miller, the fantasy world is the television world, billionaires and cops, Network (1976), the guardians as Plato described them, how many times does PKD use cops, drinking coffee and getting lost in bathrooms, the Eisenhower administration, the cobalt bomb, setting it in his period, oh my god!, I want to escape into the future, that great turn, from a utopia because it has flying cars and lesbians, advertising and VR, a clue, that whole world revolves around our main character, many lesbian supercops in the future, so egotistical, did they or didn’t they resolve it, survivor guilt, her mind is completely wiped, what about all these murdered 15 cops, the partner story doesn’t matter, the unresolved stuff with the husband trying to get revenge, it’s a dream, her wife gets killed, a personal Hell, a form of torture, Evan’s take, this can’t be real because my life’s too good, labour saving technology, the bad world must be real, our vacations are dystopias, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Windup Girl, it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, the one with the hot wife, when things are good we write dystopias, during wars we write the utopias?, Evan wants utopias back, The Walking Dead, no capacity for cooperation, Doctor Bloodmoney, an optimistic post apocalypse, seeing examples of solidarity and heroism, Gary K. Wolfe’s How Great Science Fiction Works, exposing cracks in humanity, Evan’s not a Hobbesian, being an anarchist, nasty, brutish, and short, a billionaire, lackeys, gun fight, Bruce Wayne, a lampshade, Ronald D. Moore, nostalgic 1950s restaurant, TV cops, neither one is a reality from which one could escape, they’re both fantasy worlds, a fear of the future being dystopic space, no ability to quit your job, a genuine fear, many people had that life goal, a car in the garage, the Russian River, that subtlety, page 2, no standards of your own, these words mean nothing to you, post Fordism (scientific management), The Variable Man, value from our working lives, William Whyte’s The Organizational Man, David Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd, The Mold Of Yancy, conformity in the 1950s, 60-40 or 70-30, there are good things about our society, he’s absolutely not a communist, losing track about people weaved their own clothing, the early modern, Souvenir, everyone walks everywhere, the board, the soviet, the committee, Edwin Carnap, N’York, the World Directorate, there are no other countries, the World Series, there’s no place on Earth for him to escape to, tobacco, why this story is so good, an Ouroboros style circle, nothing loose or falling out, cementing the circularity, kapok, George Miller was so much like Philip K. Dick, holding on to his art, the weird eccentric guy, this period, Time Out Of Joint, seeing the 1950s like an alien, like time travel, page 68, a picture of the 1950s, Don and his brother Ted, the woman, sprinkling soap flakes, slumping down at the kitchen table, vividly embodied, what was happening?, the sights and sounds of people, how could he be sure, a pink plastic apron, old man Davidson, a tall white-haired old man, downtown San Fransisco, tight sweaters and perfume, two sides of the same country, the authority figure of Davidson is paralleled in the future world by Fleming, a wife and car and two kids, a new prison, a delightful prison, Futurama, transformed language, why is this story so long, material, full, subtle, nothing flashy, why are these kids here, the very progressive 2018 version, a gratuitous lesbian sex scene, eye candy, we’re so progressive we’ve got to show the eye candy and the gunfight, recollecting, the details of a dream, building a world you’re immersed in, delusional or not, like a dream confabulation, amazingly strange, the visual tropes, wakes up with fire burning all around, thrown into the deep end, dialogue, TV cop trope: “whadawegot?”, infodump us, as you know Bob, “wegottanuthaone”, he never loses consciousness throughout the story, both worlds have technology that doesn’t exist, Black Mirror, going to the psychiatrist, such a PKD scene, you could start it the other way, having the same effect, Time Out Of Joint, a whole future outside the town, he writes about this stuff all the time, the Capgras delusion:
Mrs. D, a 74-year-old married housewife, recently discharged from a local hospital after her first psychiatric admission, presented to our facility for a second opinion. At the time of her admission earlier in the year, she had received the diagnosis of atypical psychosis because of her belief that her husband had been replaced by another unrelated man. She refused to sleep with the impostor, locked her bedroom and door at night, asked her son for a gun, and finally fought with the police when attempts were made to hospitalise her. At times she believed her husband was her long deceased father. She easily recognised other family members and would misidentify her husband only.
the Truman Delusion, The Father Thing, the theory as to why deja vu happens, sense data misinterpreted as a memory, brainfart, when you start noticing the operating system, a general production fault, we see the world with our brain, feelings are completely non-existent in the universe except inside this grey stuff, Gatecrashers by Patrick Tomlinson, The Gameplayers Of Titan, the threat of us being just a simulation in someone else’s dream, either it was too long or two short, something missing, where is their connection, one voice all the way through, maybe it would make a good VR game, a VR game about a VR game, Existenz (1999), put the bead on her head, playing with the media, how hip we are!, they used to care about Science Fiction, we only care about cops and billionaires, Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man has both billionaires and cops, although 20th century Americans laid their own floor tiles, Ragle Gumm, little weird things in bathrooms, the Hellenistic empire, obsessed by plumbing, individualism, Athens, the skeptics, the cynics, the stoics, an inter-cultural space, the ruins of Roman London, Celts running around Egypt, melting pot, he paid the robot, from the pre-Christian division, the atomic engine exhibit, it looks like a squashed Jurassic lizard, what is it all for?, a post-apocalyptic Hellscape in recovery, one of the threats of communism is conformity, the officiousness, the government oversight committee, we need spies, history is really important, World War VI, even in communist Russia they have museums and language learning, yes you’re supposed to study Americans but you’re not supposed to have Elvis’ haircut, the briefcase was a power authority symbol, transforming my relation to empathy, dig me?, look I’m important, the tie is the accoutrements, why profs go crazy, beards and sandals and sweaters, Stalinism, we totally misunderstood the Soviet Union, through a glass darkly, maybe that’s why this story feels like he did time travel, Back To The Future (1985), the nylon hose, the woman’s boudoir, he’s nailed the 1950s, he’s skewering his possible future, I’m making a living as a science fiction writer, The Americans, the Dead Hand, a dead-man’s switch, looking at the 80s with the knowledge about if from the present, watching the news, propaganda, when you were reading those history textbooks about WWII, the Americans defeated the Nazis at Normandy, 27 million dead, Stalingrad, grinding horror forever, little bit of rationing, other than Blade Runner the flying cars trope, the focus for the movies, I was promised a flying car, bureaucratic technologies, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, The Land Ironclads, helicopters are the flying cars for billionaires, the Aerocar, the future is not evenly distributed and may never be, Black Panther, Thor: Ragnarok, Spiderman: Homecoming, Hulk’s really great, snappy, What We Do In The Shadows, Guardians Of The Galaxy, why is everything about vibranium?, a flower that gives you superpowers, if you had this drug, you’re fucking monsters, a Rick And Morty, Message From The King, American street politics vs. fantasy fantasy fantasy, why we need a Robert A. Heinlein, to do a political job or teach a particular lesson, the third Iron Man movie, Battlestar Galactica, narratives of Africa, dreaming of Liberia, new world values, projecting dreams onto Africa, a fictional country made real, the whole afro-centric narrative, not just the Greeks, Greek philosophy comes from Egypt?, afro-centric philosophy, Ant-Man, the villain is so believable, an amoral corporate suit, the Iron Man villains, Robert A. Heinlein’s gay deceiver, spanking with their own swords, Blade Runner made it manifest, that’s the evidence, probes on Mars, telescopes in orbit, what we don’t have is the iconic Science Fiction cars, Real Life is worth watching, look advertising outside your window, nothing new, all derivative, not Promethean technologies, police, how many TV shows are set in the classroom, schools, teacher makes a difference movie, Head Of The Class, the learning experience or the teaching experience, what’s the inherent drama?, it’s easier to follow the trend, Exhibit Piece exemplifies actual science fiction, the story need not be published in a Science Fiction magazine, Netflix and Amazon are science fiction crazy, Paul is sad, we only like flying cars and cops and billionaires, bad endings, smoking a cigar, had it been a Black Mirror episode, too safe, the Zhuangzi, Taoist text, The Butterfly Dream, just go with it, making a choice, you shouldn’t make a choice, nostalgia, Ready Player One, nostalgia is not healthy at all, South Park, member berries, Magnum, P.I., a fantasy world that is acknowledging it is maybe a fantasy, same helicopter, the same Ferarri, a Haole, the Navy, based on issues about Hawaii, all the things, an action explosion show, Call Of Duty, Hollywood is eating itself, a terrible way to end this podcast, everybody gets lesbian flying car wives from billionaire cops.
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #481 – READALONG: Exhibit Piece by Philip K. Dick [ 1:46:38 | 62.36 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadThe SFFaudio Podcast #480 – READALONG: Jack London: An American Life by Earle Labor
The SFFaudio Podcast #480 – Jesse, Paul, Bryan Alexander, and Evan Lampe talk about the audiobook of Jack London: An American Life by Earle Labor.
Talked about on today’s show:
Tantor Media, 2013, dynamo, biography, H.P. Lovecraft, non-fiction, after 1899, as a kid, the future, the turn of the 20th century, Evan’s 100 Pages podcast, black writers, important fin de sicle, Victorian to Edwardian, a time of massive change, his parents and his quasi-parents, to see where London came from, looking at the past, don’t watch the news, William the Conqueror, seances and spiritualism, 30 years into spiritualism, morphing into other practices, the Chinese believe in ghosts, Americans believe in all kinds of things, UFOs, angels, credulous, Warren Chase, Wisconsin, utopian socialism, the Civil War, free labour, free soil, the connection between all these ideas, pamphlets, autobiographies, the rise of science and capitalism, Marx and Darwin, what are the laws?, utopians, the Horatio Alger story, I’m gonna make my fortune–and I can, coming from poverty and misfortune, complaining and bragging, Martin Eden’s problem, when Jack London was in Australia, died at 40, debilitated vs. lively and fierce, the noseless stranger, John Barleycorn, a novel to take as truth, alcohol, alcoholism, whiskey, a philosophical tangent, white logic, pink elephant, fatalism, existentialism, filling Nietzschean logic with religion, Steen Hansen, when still a teenager, delivering newspapers, teeth knocked out, hoboing around the United States, sheer physical movement, London’s connection to socialism, child labour, incredibly hard and varied work, the family economy, supporting his parents, travel, love of literature, the London epic, blown away, London’s Klondike experience, perfidy by Canadians, how many stories, the blood brain barrier between life and fiction, frequent life raiding, worship and fascination, The Call Of The Wild, Buck is sitting by the campfire, seeing a caveman, a race memory, a kind of brilliant thinker, hackwork, this is horror, enjoin, The Red One by Jack London, ancient astronauts, a dark and twisted story, Jung, symbol laden, lying sick and unable to move, astounding to see, Philip K. Dick, neighbours and wives, reworking his own thoughts as fiction, he interviews himself, thinking aloud on paper, how close Earle Labor got to understanding Jack London, more accurate, defining my position, the rent man, hope, the half-baked economist, the stout gentlemen, they wouldn’t be socialists they’d be beer sodden wrecks, scabs, full fledged graduates in anarchy, he’s a firecracker, George Sterling, the Weird Tales circle, Clark Ashton Smith, tilting the whole continent towards San Fransisco, Ambrose Bierce, the giantness of London, London’s mother was 4 and half-feet tall, punching Japanese officer in the face, not like another writers, J.R.R. Tolkien, going for walks and smoking pipes, Charmian and he were restless, Jack London couldn’t stay still, England, People Of The Abyss, on Jack London time, smoking and drinking, not sleeping enough, The Shadow Out Of Time, a Yithian takes over Jack London, conflicted about the work ethic, The Sea Wolf, Brisenden = Sterling, he didn’t have the spark, Weird Al, is Jack London still in school libraries?, White Fang, The Iron Heel, older dystopia, It Can’t Happen Here, London’s engagement with racism, the mestizos of Mexican Revolution, so many of London’s stories are skewering stupid racism, the white race lives on the destruction and putrefaction of the societies they’re crushing, The Wisdom Of The Trail, adopting the white man’s mentality, white men’s burdens are to be carried by red men, surrounded by racism, everyone around him people are using race as an excuse to do things, a whole critique of social Darwinism, the peak of European imperialism, it doesn’t get you anywhere, loneliness and despair, To Build A Fire, China, British literature, committed to teaching, he still glowed and grinned like a madman, bonding over Melville, War by Jack London, mad mythic, Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, living in extreme cold (in Vermont), “the cold of space smote the unprotected tip of the planet”, science fiction, looking at reality, not about the relationships between people, look at this fascinating phenomenon, psychology or economics, The Cold Equations, a hard Science Fiction story, muscles in motion, when he does it it becomes, man against nature in the extremis, a story about spacesuits, Thomas Huxley, a literary critique of race in London’s work, Jack London’s Racial Lives: A Critical Biography, Campbell, the state of nature and the state of art, Herbert Spenser, The Shadow And The Flash, sibling rivalry, the mind at work, The Scarlet Plague, a social Darwinian document, the Chauffeur tribe, old idiots are interested in book reading, The Strength Of The Strong, Moon-Face: A Story Of Moral Antipathy, The Cask Of Amontillado, Guy de Maupassant, seeing into the mind of the other, empathy, “my-culture-is-not-your-prom-dress-ism”, cultural appropriation, dogs, Wolf Larsen is an odious character, academic arguments, Wolf Larsen is like Tony Soprano, Edward G. Robinson, a weird disease, was Jack London a precog?, seeing the psychology at work, Jack London (1943), A Thousand Deaths, a deserter, torture, wow!, almost everything in this story happened, I am not your father because I was impotent at that time, six marriages, fewer divorces, a hard mother, a family curse?, the seven year itch, looking for father figures, the man of action in the salon, Everhardt, Doctor Who, worshiping the man, Irving Stone’s Sailor On Horseback, the dream sandwich, The Star Rover, everybody should read Jack London, mapping reality.
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #480 – READALONG: Jack London: An American Life by Earle Labor [ 1:42:54 | 60.85 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadThe SFFaudio Podcast #478 – AUDIOBOOK: The Wolf-Leader by Alexandre Dumas
The SFFaudio Podcast #478 – The Wolf-Leader by Alexandre Dumas, read by John Van Stan.
This UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK (8 Hours 12 Minutes) comes to us courtesy of LibriVox. A PDF of it is available on our PDF Page.
We will discuss The Wolf-Leader by Alexandre Dumas.
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #478 – AUDIOBOOK: The Wolf-Leader by Alexandre Dumas [ 8:12:14 | 328.78 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadThe SFFaudio Podcast #477 – READALONG: Dune (Book II of III) by Frank Herbert
The SFFaudio Podcast #477 – Jesse, Paul, Marissa, and Will talk about Dune: Book II “Muad’Dib” by Frank Herbert aka the second third of Dune.
Talked about on today’s show:
the second third of the first and only Dune novel, exposed in the desert, Liet Kynes talking to his dad, more philosophy, infodumping, that surviving chunk, he couldn’t murder his darling, sand grasping, so long, he’s dying, a beautiful way to tell us about it, George R.R. Martin, why is he telling me this?, the Miniseries, terraform Dune, an invitation to pick up the torch, sort of Homeric, our moral purpose, his life is just as worthy as the others, Villeneuve, two movies?, David Lynch’s version, The Hobbit movie debacle, powerful scenes, the camping scenes, struck with, Chani was the daughter of Liet, parallels, they’re made for each other (dead fathers in common), you shall know them by who they despise, they hate Harkonnens together, both fathers killed by Harkkonens, the dream girl, a come-on line, when he sings her that love song, his mother is his enemy (in that moment), chilling, what Herbert does with psychology, people sometimes have criticisms, “you should more women writers”, 90% or higher, women understand women and men understand by men, the scenes where Jessica is talking to her daughter, Herbert’s a good writer of women, women aren’t just one thing, just like that scene in Dune, doing drugs when she was pregnant, you should’ve told us you were pregnant, the Bene Gesserit scolding, controlling the gender of babies, why did Jessica choose to have a daughter?, kind of a hole, Jesse knows how wise he is because he tells himself he is, two kinds of pie, the ability to choose vs. letting such thing happen, sunk costs, choosing badly, is the directive off?, 38% through, a prophecy of Paul’s, “only to serve”, mucking around with the Emperor, Irulan, ending the Emperor’s line, he has self-restraint, not manipulable, “I’m holdin’ off”, Count Fenring and wife, a fascinating couple, a power couple, a voice Will wanted to hear, sequelitis, why this book is so great, great backstory, why J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord Of The Rings is so great, backfill for a whole universe, using the religion to keep them obedient, Mission Protectiva, the channel Jessica uses, bringing the jihad, Bene Gesserit on ice planets become snow-witches, “wild”, Kynes’ father is responsible for the jihad, Cortez and Quetzalcoatl, a white skinned deity, a unnerving series of coincidences, “we’re taking this land guys”, horses, armour, disease, the Aztec Empire was ripe to fall, doing the legend, Paul territory, the Jesuits teaching the rules, special communications powers with the God, Catholicism, long term less thought out, the Protestant Reformation, North Vancouver, abuse of power, the Orange Catholic bible, mystical religious figures, multiple levels of interpretation, when Paul quotes from the OC bible, no expectation that you need to read the bible, a mediated thing, “Gods!”, Gurney and the Harkonnens and Jessica, tempt not the Gods of the desert, “Gods! What a monster!”, are the sandworms the only aliens?, the patterns of life are mimicked by the alien life brought to it, Caladanian plants?, slime on Gedi Prime?, the jungles and rice paddies, sounds like Vietnam, terraforming jungles?, the following five books…, Lois McMaster Bujold, 10,000 years later, one mixed thing, a native plant?, the Goodreads reviews, meta-reviews, subtle trolling, ‘couldn’t have been written today’, a thing veiled description of reality, John Kerry, squeeze and squeeze and squeeze, plastics factory, coffee, oil, the economy is run on oil, the spice must flow the oil must flow, a retelling of Lawrence of Arabia, the Harkonnens are the Ottomans, is spice-coffee made of spice?, coffee substitutes, chicory, coffee extender, fungal masses, the pre-spice mass, chaga coffee, a positive psychoactive effect, plus you, everything is made of spice, addictive like cocaine vs. addictive like oil, a metaphor, once you start farming with tractors, once you get on the oil, melamine, food made out of oil, sugar, horses and hay, inventing synthetic fuels, not just about fuel, an ideology in itself, a galactic economy, motivations, their computer technology, we’re going to have a Butlerian Jihad, proving you’re not a robot, against the ownership of AI, every phone has a button or an assistant, Alexa, Siri, we’re making our lives so easy we’re only responding, God made Arrakis to train the faithful, their goal is to become soft, a very Greek idea, the Spartans, the Persians were living easy lives, soft like the Ottomans, lion’s mane and chaga, Thufir taking stims, poison transmuted into a psychoactive sex party drug (ecstasy), just “look within”, manipulating the chemical bonds, a cool trick, weird fuel, acid and bile, transmutational effects, the magic in it is science based, aligning your chakras, prana bindu training to squirt the chemicals, the two kinds of alcohol, methyl and ethyl alcohol, drunk and blind, regular grain alcohol is an antidote for wood alcohol, extending regular alcohol with wood alcohol, it isn’t a book about one thing, politics, the Suez Canal is not just for fun, for moving product and controlling empire, a longer process, Jefferson, Barbary Pirates, the shores of Tripoli, doing lots of mushrooms, sex, when Fenring hums and haws, Feyd, everybody has a pink pouch of a mouth, the Windsor nose?, formic acid, this is amazing!, ethanol cures methanol poisoning, parallelism, Paul 1st kill vs. Feyd’s 100th kill, how much time is spent with the whole Jamis situation, expressing opposite societies, Feyd is the shadow version of Paul, Paul’s loving mother and father vs. Feyd’s creepy uncle and creepy cousin, an individual as deplorable as Sting, Sting’s smirk, the scene between the Baron and the Beast Rabban, the beast is on the ball, his spies and his addictions, they’re all flawed, Lady Fenring thinks Feyd was raised wrong, part of the failing of the book, I’m a prince and therefore I have a right to rule, King of North Korea, the rule of life, nature is really cruel, powerful monarchies, the rule is to try to be as tough and wily as you can, breeding a super-being, eugenics, breeding smart people, Ramses the III vs. Yao Ming, great writers who are the sons of great writers, Stephen King and Joe Hill, Kevin J. Anderson composing novels on hikes, Hitler’s son, opulent in their luxury, immigrants to Canada, Sardaran rote, going to Salusa Secundua, the Marine Corps, the tool of a bunch of tools, super-geniuses making huge mistakes, a thirty car pile up of different plots and plans, Thufir’s fuckups, the hawk symbol on the gladiatorial slave, trying to kill and help Feyd, a Harkonnen he can control, Feyd as Thufir’s weapon to kill the Baron, suppose Paul and Jessica died in the thopter crash, who would be the next emperor?, if the Kwisatz Haderach plan failed?, lighting round statements, respect for the truth comes close to the basis for all morality, a book of wisdom, poor princess in the tower, what do you despise? by this you are truly known, Michio Kaku, the future doesn’t exist, you cannot back into the future, an Uber car backed into the future at 88 miles per hour, Jesse’s Row, Row, Your Boat theory, life is but a dream, life is not real, the blue pill, we can never see the future, Barrett Brown, disrespect for authority, an amazing and hilarious writer, Thomas Friedman is wrong about everything, tricks and tropes, just read “Thomas Friedman”, why Noam Chomsky doesn’t have a column at the New York Times, your pustules are so beautiful my Baron, a suck-up to power, consistently wrong, a great philosophy, on drugs and about to have sex with Chani, we’re gonna make a baby, the hard part is not seeing the future but seeing the past from the future, tripping amazeballs, what is an Usul?, “that’s that scene where she said Usul!”, is the future known or is it experienced?, a nexus moment, a cloud, déjà vu, we have déjà vu, “ah! It is the prophecy, she is the sayyadina!”, the opposite of science, science isn’t in the business of proving anything, very meta, holding a physical copy of the book, Paul has the Wikipedia entry for certain chapters or certain scenes, the effect of magic mushrooms, everything is connected and seeing things as they are, The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called “spannungsbogen” –which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of getting it, the self imposed delay, delayed gratification, Jamis was pleased, “I was a friend of Jamis”, a political speech, constant tension, a sometime prophet, just a teenage kid, “my mom is so stupid, I hate her right now”, Gurney, dispersed, taking up new positions, mercenaries, going rogue, short shrift, smugglers, live to fight another day, learning a lesson, Staban Tuek, very honorable in a very interesting way, gratitude, cool your sorrows with water, green grass, the beauty of women, rich with characters and stories, really good writing, a weird book, no chapters, Halleck turned, landscape face, the shadow version of the Fremen, a stone is heavy, playing a circumspect game, destroying the witch, Hawat didn’t see the traitor, rumors and hunches, likely not even their bones will never be found, differences between the audiobook and paperbook, the number of Fremen, dragging that foot and walking without rhythm, an interesting parallel, young and trainable, no value in the mom (except the water), the water discipline, the middlemen between the Fremen and the Guild, fascinatingly interesting, a story amongst all the structure, systems within systems, so good, the worst scene in the book, no more terrible disaster could befall your people than to fall into the hands of a hero, meta-commentary, by not killing himself or his mom, “show me the eighteen moves of pleasure, woman”, Kynes was seduced, the wife of Hitler, longer and stranger, when Jessica uses the voice she has to have them talk for a while, Chakobsa, the power that Bill Clinton had, winning the room, using the words, legit the voice, the voice of command, pressing the buttons of what people want to hear, “Axis of Evil”, right to the root of the brain, when someone comes up with a new metaphor, everything is metaphor, a new martial arts attack, move and counter move, Mixed Mental Arts, chattering heads on TV, the Atredies win the room, winning the action, so good!
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #477 – READALONG: Dune (Book II of III) by Frank Herbert [ 2:34:51 | 88.43 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadThe SFFaudio Podcast #476 – READALONG: Sales Pitch by Philip K. Dick
The SFFaudio Podcast #476 – Jesse, Paul, Marissa, and Evan Lampe talk about Sales Pitch by Philip K. Dick
Talked about on today’s show:
Future Science Fiction, June 1954, the notes that PKD wrote, The Collected Stories Of Philip K. Dick, in the late ’70s, The Exegesis, remembering vs. projecting, his revised ending, he doesn’t understand the mindset he was in when he wrote it, really sensitive, obsessed with tiny little details, his wives and wive characters, what this story is really about, why he doesn’t like the ending, the adaptations, the radio drama, the Electric Dreams adaptation, loose, they’re trying to figure it out, messing up, suddenly the UK doesn’t know how to do science fiction at all, plots vs. scenes, not well thought through, as it was unfolding, doing so much, no through-line, unified thought, why is it called Crazy Diamond?, Jesse doesn’t listen to music, noticing music, colonized by music, chamber music was important to PKD, little details, the name of the boat, John Dee vs. John D., John Dowland, one of two pseudonyms PKD, sixteenth century lute music, Jack Dowland, Jacks and Jills, androids and gynoids, their replicants, what’s wrong with androids?, throwaway technology, what is this story about?, by attacking it from the outside we can work our way in, homages or in-jokes or fanservice, a FASRAD mention, I had a dream, dreams have their opposite meaning?, no coda, thematic overlap, Easter eggs and thematic episodes, entropy, the shoreline, artificial world, a construct, The Truman Show, hoping for a reveal, holding the record, the world is sterile and fake, diners and McDonald’s, fake but they know it is, no growing your own food, understanding this episode, why is their a pig lady?, to make it quirky, just a pig-lady to talk to, the ending is terrible, interesting but they don’t really understand what they’ve got, action movies, ways of adapting these things, callbacks and nods to other shows, 1950s stories, straight up adaptations, Double Indemnity, James M. Cain, let’s do a gender swap with the ending, the girls are teamed up against the guy, it doesn’t make any sense, all the IVF treatments, as a whole it is a failure, useful for analyzing the story, a lead in, escape, El Dorado, Cockaigne, Ultima Thule, 2050 is a nightmare but 1950 is perfect, Time Out Of Joint, near and dear to Dick’s heart, something static that has to be escaped from, the frontier, The Man Who Japed, Solar Lottery, political dystopia, Vulcan’s Hammer, Doctor Futurity, stagnation, on the right page, the third choice is suicide, relentless advertising, a fourth choice, none of this, the way our ancestors lived, no stove, the proper choice, imposing our intellect, the proper choice is to buy the FASRAD, the FASRAD would liberate her, Evan’s podcast: American Writers (One Hundred Pages at a Time), interpretation based on life experience and life goals, Rorschach, Evan’s plan is to buy land in Wisconsin, homesteading, a Pink Floyd song, rubbing his record, no attribution on the label, all very interesting, musical flatulence, erotic loveplay, personalized google ads, does this happen to you?, gastric processes, bully crossed nag,
“Men!” an unctuous voice thundered on all sides of him. “Banish internally-caused obnoxious odors forever. Removal by modern painless methods of the gastrointestinal tract and substitution system will relieve you of the most acute cause of social rejection.” The visual image locked; a vast nude girl, blonde hair disarranged, blue eyes half shut, lips parted, head tilted back in sleep-drugged ecstasy. The features ballooned as the lips approached his own. Abruptly the orgiastic expression on the girl’s face vanished. Disgust and revulsion swept across, and then the image faded out.
brutal!, so funny, what is the solution?, to replace your intestines with a plastic chute, the skin salon and the hair salon and the nail salon, less animals, prettier and less farty, what ads are for, having your least used eye replaced with a augmented reality google glass, being replaced by your robot, the real threat to Ed Morris is the robot is going to replace him as the husband and at his job, how did this story come into existence?, door-to-door salesperson, fuck you go away I don’t want to hear it, really good at sales, Immanuel Kant would say, a means to an end, Jesse consistently the worst salesperson, robots that endlessly horribly peruse you, they have no feeling, vacuum sales and repair, door to door vacuum sales, learning to repair vacuum cleaners, you’re going to be amazed, Electrolux, FASRAD-style, this wonderful delightful machine, the Jones’ will be so jealous, the job of a husband, a threat to him as a man, no kids, impotence, the PKD-stand in character, the “mute” button, there’s something fascinatingly interesting about this story, we need these appliances, there are advantages to living in the city, a really horrible house-guest on coke, machines need to shut up, totally relating to this story, DVDs and Blu-Rays, the mandatory FBI warning, the state advertising itself, is their anything you can’t do, I’d be insane to buy you, they follow you around until you die, our life, Twitter isn’t the real world, electricity and central heating isn’t the real world, a certain kind of reality, the real world is inaccessible, the reality of bots, ad blockers, the most insidious ads, comments, favouriting everything, falsely identifying people at bots, bots can’t care, a means to an end, the horrible thing about about robots as sales people, the horrible ending, stuck in that loop, military, a whole different track, tapes, bot-like behavior, you’re the product!, soldier versions, replacing humans (or men) in their places of work, Jesse is worried about his dishwasher taking over the podcast, finding yourself as friendship with a bot, ego growing for years, Blade Runner androids are emotionally stunted, they can care about stuff, a horribly wonderful ending, a horror ending, Ed abandoned his wife, empty an vacant, the horror of the world, night and darkness and cold wind, a good night’s sleep, all day, all night, sheer dress, when you’re far away you can see her shapely form, things are worse when you get up close, translucent up close, farther away it is sheer, when married couples go on dates why do they dress up?, right about the story, the story is all about gender, proving his masculinity to the robot, paying on installments, becoming middle aged, he’s worried about being replaced, automation, the Trump voters, what the market says is productive labour, with [Karl] Marx, a philosopher in the morning a fisherman in the afternoon, what to make of our lives when not tied to the market, a liberatory technology, as a labour historian, 35 years of exhaustion, automation as liberation, undermining this particular story, other robots pause, a good story for looking at our reality today, people will be lining up at the Apple store, the door-to-door sales technique, the product is a good one if you can tone down the mouth, working in a sales room, being unable to defend yourself against a sales-person, falling into traps, learning the skills, a sales person is a person, the L.A. Festival of Books, people on scripts, easily influenced, full of compassion for people, bizarre question, do you like books?, I like to eat animals to punish them, do you know how many fish are in this jar?, the Consumer Electronic Shows, booth babes, reviewing video cards, the mid-America Truck Show, catching a booth babe on her lunch break, they can turn it off (a lot of them), there’s never a point when the FASRAD says “when you buy me I’ll shut up”, commuting is a whole thing, the process of driving down the road, Puttering About In A Small Land, a massive amount of stress, the most fearful driver on the road, very important, how many times coffee and mashed peas, big boobs, advertising, commuting, a device that makes you read your boss’ mind, it’s telepathy, seeing the scene with PKD behind that dashboard, honking horns, 60 million miles a second, The Jetsons, as close to pure comedy, the “Doc Labryinth” stories, The Short Happy Life Of The Brown Oxford, the self-driving car, hypno-motor control, Elon Musk, advertising as a whole, performed a crucial function in democracy, inexpensive or free media, TV and radio advertising, the buyer-seller relationship, ensuring media is distributed to people, BFM radio station ads, enjoyable ads, movie trailers, when the money is going to be expensive, the Superbowl ads, write something that people won’t hate, why isn’t everyone crazy in my particular way, Adbusters magazine, Occupy Wall Street, getting information to people who need it, the Tide ads, don’t eat the Tide Pods, new Coke vs. old Coke, who’s setting the agenda, that is horrible, that’s mind control and it works, we’re poor everyone else is rich, how come your phone is nicer than mine, you cannot understate how powerful advertising is, advertising paid for media that they wouldn’t have access to otherwise, the other stuff subsidized the news, CNN doesn’t seem to have reporters outside of their studios, their product is fear, who can we hate this week?, political parties paying for newspapers, magazines without ads, CBC, BBC, the Age Of Persuasion, Network (1976), The Jimmy Dore Show episode in which Ed Schultz explains how he got fired, the system is all set up, six media companies own everything, adding oxygen to an anaerobic environment, the ad breaks, out of the goodness of their anonymous hearts, they are controlling us, political advertising, doing ads for The SFFaudio Podcast, ads for vodka, ad for gas remedy, ad boob extender, quivering breasts, a comedy piece he also enjoys, your wife is sexually attractive but not so intellectual, Sally swept into the room her breasts quivering with excitement, don’t be a dick, given the world we live in, public funding for media, even PBS and NPR have been captured, as soon as you step out of propaganda you know what not propaganda is, is this really a big deal?, how everybody thinks, so tailored to your inadequacies, Structube, an online furniture company, structural tubing, that is the bots, because they are literally robots, the FASRAD can never quit, generic shitty advertising, tampon ads, Maybelline, Minority Report (2002), Facebook, Pure New Zealand, googling murder weapons and IVF stuff, the 13 twitter trolls that swung the election that the 6 billion in free advertising didn’t do, how robots were going to save the world, the way robots are running our world, not the kind we envision, value of labour, bots are working for corporations and institutions, a Roomba, Roombas going door to door selling their services, Jack London, The Iron Heel, Everhart, you’re just Luddites, private hands own the robots, a type of socialism, the people have to control the robots, 200 years in the future,
“Trans-Solar Products greets you!” an immense voice boomed in his ear. Morris groaned and hunched down in his seat. He was getting near Terra; the barrage was increasing. “Is your tension-index pushed over the safety-margin by the ordinary frustrations of the day? Then you need an Id-Persona Unit. So small it can be worn behind the ear, close to the frontal lobe –“
is that an ad blocker?, anti-anxiety, cigarettes and coffee, the mood organ from Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, we wouldn’t have a lot of PKD stuff if he wasn’t so stressed out, a science fiction comedy, Ray Nelson’s Eight O’Clock In The Morning, weird stressed out and paranoid, a moral judgement, don’t take the Soma, Bryan Alexander is a jet-setting homesteader, the dream of The Hitch-hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy is fulfilled with Wikipedia, the novelty hasn’t worn off, Verne Troyer is trending, we are becoming subject to what Google wants us to search for, we’re getting shaped, the anticipating is making things harder, a very good story, the story is very meaty, resonance, the two illustrations by Luton, a giant beckoning woman in space, Blade Runner: 2049, the FASRAD, you’re going to buy me!, this stubborn looking dude, great illustrations, how other people interpret, what they’re seeing in it, was Solar Lottery‘s cover was commissioned then the story was written around it, The Zap Gun, the darkness of the world, fiddling with shoelaces useless, what inspired a scene-let, you’ll feel better after you’ve turned responsibility for me, they took the other ending, Sally becomes Ed, the inversion, they’re muddled, so much in here, I’m sure it will mean something, it fell apart, Annihilation (the movie and the book), the moving tattoo, that movie works because they had a plan, plans are made in the process of editing, a committee, what if there’s a heist!?, the Robin Hood thieves in the forest, why is that there? No reason, what the hell are the QCs, are we all really dumb, going senile, how this world they live in works, why is the food rotting, entropy, Ubik, sometimes a thug or a hood will attack a person at night, The Hood Maker, the twin Beetles, twin broken down trucks, what’s the boss doing, you stopped the crime and then the crime happens?, playing him out?, the editing and the script doesn’t, drugged up by the drugs in the commercials you don’t notice, there’s only one fence in England, do these stories work in England, more French than English, everything’s so fucking small, one foot square garden, they don’t have a living room, there’s a bar in the house, and a den, these stories do not work in U.K., Western and mid-Western America, cedars, the dismal night wind, the radiant lens, Upon The Dull Earth, part of the issue, a cultural mis-translation, too American for a British production, The Impossible Planet, a cup of tea (not a cup of coffee), the most widely used legal brain-stimulant, the smoking rates in Taiwan, cigarette smoking around the world.
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #476 – READALONG: Sales Pitch by Philip K. Dick [ 2:12:14 | 75.8 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadThe SFFaudio Podcast #475 – READALONG: Dragon’s Egg by Robert L. Forward
The SFFaudio Podcast #475 – Jesse, Paul Weimer and Maissa Bessada talk about Dragon’s Egg by Robert L. Forward
Talked about on today’s show:
1980, hard science fiction, Mission Of Gravity by Hal Clement, first contact, the surface of a neutron star, moving the idea Forward, 2016, Tantor Media, this is a terrific book, a Jesse book, big ideas, the human characters, the ideas of this book, how do you do biology on a neutron star, a civilization running much faster, the writing brought it down, the TV Tropes page, minor details like plot and character, very heavily written, really different aliens, a culture, a society, an arc of civilization, from the Stone Age to the Space Age, the religious subplot, forgive them they know not what they do, the Wikipedia entry, this isn’t a metaphor for us, I’m doing a little thing here, the sex scenes are hilariously interesting, all of my egg sacs, body-stiffening, touching all the sensitive parts, under their eyes, I haven’t drooled that way since I was an eggling, made of neutronium, the opposite of Star Trek, The Orville, Star Trek: Voyager, they surpass us, the way the cheela deal with the humans, a slow robot for fast humans, early culture and early problems, visiting H.G. Wells’ writing career, the hominids, cave man society, cave cheela, inventing math, seeing how you can get from there to here, agrarian farming, the tasting plates, knots, the 2001: A Space Odyssey moment, Thus Spake Zarathustra, putting on a book like a new pair of pants, in the constellation of Draco, 30au, more poignant now, giving up on the space program, set in 2020-2050, the Soviet Union, neither government is willing to spend the money, a spacefaring civilization, an old relic of a book, a big dumb object, how the cheela perceive reality, this is amazing!, magnetic lines, the hard direction, bootstrapping that, seeds, full of idea science fiction, what I want from my science fiction, slowing down, let it wash over you, hard to understand, carrying a slide-rule around while you listen, problems that need solving, trusting Forward’s math, getting the gist, loving science, not about bullshitting, why they would visit the neutron star, mechanically putting the plot together, delivering the ideas, “a textbook on neutron star physics disguised as a novel”, monopole technology, a theoretical concept, handy for Larry Niven novels, Infocom’s Starcross, mining monopoles, what are monopoles?, regular matter, 80s novels, generating monopoles from monopoles, nuclear fusion, if we had a hammer…, a bonanza of hard science fiction and medium soft medium hard sf boiling around in the 1980s, space opera, napoleonic war in space, technologies, math is a kind of technology, James Burke’s Connections, the creation and invention of tools, how the airplane got made, streamline the parts, a made up rhyming history of our technology, dismissing new tech that is unuseful now (is a mistake), blockchain technology, valuable properties, cryptocurrency, inventing or discovering an element or a property, wait 50 years, when you’re zipping through time, million times faster, turns, a guy with a sword, Maissa got knocked out, knocky, no leftover sexism, predominantly female, failed tyrant queen, immortality by vegetation, barracks emperors, megalomaniac, kill all the scientists if they fail, eating their dead, they’re not humans, Soother separating her eggs from the others, Pink Eyes, a religious conversion, out in the desert for 40 turns, laugh out loud moments, the antics of these tiny cute weird creatures, nobody’s getting married, their culture is based on their biology, their biology is based on their chemistry, their chemistry is based on their physics, minimal ecosystem, Flatland: A Roamance Of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbot, afraid of math, written by A Square, invasion, straight lines are females, invasion literature, a Cosmos episode, The Orville, our world is shaped like an egg, having a ball, real worldbuilding, long rectangular lines, big and sticky, Eric Rabkin, thousand, why is the world named mescaline?, a math book, what beings would have to be like at the surface level, a thousand times faster, slow as in stupid, turning up the speed, 1.5 times speed, gear up (with a lot of coffee) operating at a higher speed, certain countries, the day seems to go longer, we are able to operate at a higher speed, Luke Burrage’s Science Fiction Book Review Podcast, getting certain things done, running around naked, crystalline vegetable matter, they don’t have oral communication at all, tremor sense, marching up the hill, give your peace cry, don’t get punctured by a woman, how would this work?, no wheels, a game of Civilization, many barbarians to conquer, sad news, curing breast cancer, flood her with x-rays, Robert L. Forward died of cancer, you don’t need a sequel, we didn’t need that, planting little clues, “here read this!”, no Prime Directive, Machiavelli, Napoleon, just a phase, Larry Niven, Lucifer’s Hammer, Lester Del Rey, Isaac Asimov, Charles Sheffield, John Campbell would have loved it, Frank Herbert, more interested in ideas than anything else, let’s go on another adventure with the serial numbers filed off, the same but different, psychological thrillers, the fan of real science will love a book like this, narrator Todd McClaren, funny and hilarious, very sexy grains of sand that want to be sandwiched, Downpour.com, I really like Dragon’s Egg, take a book and pass it to your friend and they like it, the joys of an author and their work, I need more rubles for computer time, a good mix of people, pretty cute tuckerizing, more messed up, if a neutron star entered the solar system, robot space probes, no Hoffmann transfer orbits, all Greek?, anecdotal scenes, superconductivity, this is a vacuum, aerospace physicists, extracting electrical energy from the vacuum by cohesion of charged foliated conductors, Hendrik Casimir, the Casimir effect, quantum vacuum fluctuations, getting energy from nothing, free energy from reality, as we go…, spending money, dropping more dumb bombs, never look forward, seeing more clearly when you look backwards, why were we so obsessed with that thing at that time, what’s this like?, kind of silly, energy levels, regenerating, wish fulfillment, seeing changes in its society, Olaf Stapledon, blowing along through geologic time, struggling against, they’re vegetables?!, god hand-wavy world creation, how to get the kind of brains we have, advancing when going in the hard direction, we have overcome to advance, I’m not getting this, cuneiform accounting a brilliant book.
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #475 – READALONG: Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward [ 1:09:32 | 40.04 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadFeeds and Resources
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