News, Reviews, and Commentary on all forms of science fiction, fantasy, and horror audio. Audiobooks, audio drama, podcasts; we discuss all of it here. Mystery, crime, and noir audio are also fair game.
The SFFaudio Podcast #554 – Featuring a complete and unabridged reading of Shadows In The Moonlight by Robert E. Howard
First published in Weird Tales, April 1934
It comes to us courtesy of Protecting Project Pulp and is read by Nick Camm.
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #543 – The Elf Trap by Francis Stevens; read by Josh Roseman.
This unabridged reading of the story (51 minutes) comes to us from the Protecting Project Pulp podcast is followed by a discussion of it.
Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Marissa VU, Terence Blake and Fred Heimbaugh
Talked about on today’s show:
Argosy, July 5, 1919, Fantastic Novels, Virgil Finlay, elvish or trappy, a fizzy wine, the colour of the wine is golden, yellow, gold, fin de sicile, The King In Yellow, the 1890s is yellow, the Yellow Peril, Yellow Journalism, the Gilded Age, yellow road, yellow mud, white robe, honeysuckle, very image based, the blue of her scarf, her brother is Elfo?, the invitation, white and silver, signifies for the opening and the closing scenes, the effect of the nested narratives, an outer outer outer narrator (Francis Stevens), old wives’ tales, recrudescence, related by a well known specialist in nervous diseases, the doubling or tripling, Dr. Locke?, prescription for me?, Wharton is the inner narrator, Theron Tademus, a listener, a comedy?, why don’t you read this to me?, Locke is a fool!, I don’t need to hear any more of this, the best part is coming up, a sex story, pretty chaste, two roads diverged, the negro caretaker, a yellow track and the other goes to Carcassonne, a Carolina mountain road, a confusion in his own mind, the gypsy camp vs. the artist’s camp, a tripling of reality, two Reading, Short And Deep podcast, The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, The Rutted Road by H.P. Lovecraft, a very sly and sneaking poem, written for a friend, walking tours of England, the power of a poem, everybody has Fred’s take, everybody else doesn’t understand it, being playful, close to the message of The Elf Trap, he met death (or something), his physical form is destroyed, very Lovecraftian in the non-tentacled way, Celephaïs, The White Ship, happy or sad ending?, happy in the way people joining a cult are happy, evil or good or other, categories that can truly escape the good evil polarities, a valedictorian speech, I took the harder path, me looking down my nose at the snobs, career choices, very meta, more gloomy, Terence has heard the podcast on it, La Belle Dame Sans Merci by John Keats, 1820, Marissa is excluded, a gender queer fluid, they’re elves, that line from Aliens (1986) about Arcturian poontang, John Waterhouse, an interesting name, the best social interaction he’s ever had, so striking how, racist sounding, a bit of a dick, ripe for the picking, science vs. romanticism, he’s a microscopist (a cytologist), setting you up, life and feeling and warmth, science is basically a dead bug pinned to a card with a latin inscription underneath it, the limitations and the ugliness, the blindness of his scientific vision, the simplest interpretation, there’s a trap, the iron trap vs. the silver trap, it can re-get ya, a community, crafts (vs arts), a bit of fun, bringing an easel on a manhunt, hilarious, he could have been taken away by either group, the “rural ruins” kick (#ruralruins on Twitter), old wooden barns, collapsing barns, the appeal of melancholy ruins, now is the time to start photographing them, Southern Michigan, ex-urban, cornfield, the southern exposure, Minnesota, a going native story?, if Evan were here…, Typee by Herman Melville, beautiful clean, the white ivory flute, tending his disgusting grandmother, clean beautiful people, pretty colours, he needs somebody to break him out of his crabbed world of scientific examination, his passion for science, a tension, a fit of pique, she’s racist, terrible relationship, you’ve got to stay with me forever, that yellow dog, cur, mutt, mongrel, wearing the elf-glasses, a silver bell, everything that’s inviting him in is yellow, everything turns to gold instead of yellow, honey wild and manna dew, roots aren’t sweet, root beer tastes like medicine, it tastes like Chinese medicine, the etymology of drug, Buckley’s Mixture, relish sweet, this switch, everything that’s horrible becomes wonderful, he doesn’t have thought in his head, uh huh, and how much can you sell it for?, there’s something fundamentally wrong in his life, his Doctor’s name, how important names are, John Locke has the most beautiful signature, freshwater goldfish, dysteria, out of the loop, he almost escapes, his racism, their skin is whiter, he sees them in this white way, science sobers him, he’s very unwell, there’s something unwell in science at this time, mongrelizing, everybody’s suffering from Russia-gate-ism, how many rubles did you get paid?, here’s Nazism in 1919, racial theories and breeding programs, it was in the water and everybody was drinking the Kool-Aid, Irish travelers, the black servant, the airy fairy artist community, the sheriff with a posse, if Mr Jim Moon was here, midsummer, a nightwalk, a misreading, a morning walk, up all night, instead of through telescopes he’s looking through microscopes, Ambrose Bierce, Edgar Allan Poe, Pygmalion’s Spectacles by Stanley G. Weinbaum, Wonder Stories, June 1935, Galatea, The King In Yellow story that’s the opposite, Robert W. Chambers, The Elf King, belle epoch Paris, Virgil Finlay, he put on the glasses and fell in love with a dream, A Martian Odyssey, Fitz James O’Brien, The Diamond Lens, super-racism, The Atlantic (1858), the best microscope ever, falls in love with a little tiny lady, SCIENCE!, “Dysteria ciliata. Dysterius giganticus”, his love for the microscopic world, what the painter sees, seeing things as generalities on the surface vs. details in the lens, clumsiness, largeness, the anvil, Tolkien elves, frills and paisley, the blending of crafts and arts, William Morris, The King Of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany, a reaction against science, poems about butterflies, you can love science AND poetry, William Blake, double vision, Auguries Of Innocence by William Blake, behind that is a veil, a hidden life of their own, Theron learns double vision, the elves inside the gypsies, a whole world, there Elva is blind, twofold vision, monsters that want eat him and liberators who want to free him, what does he bring to the table?, culture and community, 37 year old professor, infertility, outsiders, his charismatic attitude?, he brings novelty, something fresh and different, an Elva shaped hole, time is different for her, telepathically grooming Wharton, soulless, he’s lost his soul, big clumsy hulking brutes, an outsider without a soul, indeterminate, maybe they trapped him because he was trappable, is she a Scientologist, Projecting Project Pulp, Mech Muse, too early in podcasting?, more audiobooks, if Fred follows through, Unseen, Unfeared by Francis Stevens, spiritual themes, blogs are good but suppressed by Google, Tellers Of Weird Tales, Terence E. Hanley, death dealing shells, light over darkness, dark fantasy, a 21st century and academic conceit, one of the simplest of Stevens stories, built like a puzzle box, relativity, analytic cubism, where lies reality, a happy ending?, a pleasant reading experience, could have been written only by a woman, a deeper meaning in the man’s name, Jesse’s theory, Theron Tademus, tall?, hunter?, animal, tadpole, mouse, tall tailed mouse, mousetrap, she’s playing with it, pointing, the hunter and the hunted, not necessarily a happy ending, we praise thee oh god, he trusts science, he trusts her, he loses his last name in her world, they need some tall genes, one good name was good enough for one good person, a coordinate system, binomial nomenclature, Carcosa?, fantasy engaging with science fiction, Brigadoon, he has never danced or loved, beyond the veil, the deeper reality of the spirit, love and art triumph over materialism, the sky blue scarf, you’re all alike, you love is for gold (or freedom), she enslaves people, saved from science, his red notebook, looking at flowers in the forest with your girlfriend, beckoning him, driving Jesse mad, Carcassonne is a famous tourist trap, a medieval walled town, the tabletop game, it’s a trap, traps can be beautiful, a Florida based Star Wars Disney park, $40 light-saber, the rural ruins of Star Wars, tourist ruins, dinosaur ruins, South Dakota, Rapid City, north of Mount Rushmore, the Blue Ridge Mountains, there is in Kentucky, about as rural-ruiny as it can get, did she go there?, is this a true story, Carcassonne post office, a train stop maybe, America is filled with failed towns, Carcassonne Road, Carcassonne Community center, trampoline and a pool, an unincorporated village, if you squint and take off your classes, once every hundred years, if you’re Blakeian enough you can see it, there’s a guy who saw things differently, angels in the fields with the workers, something pagan about Elva, the Cathars, Kingsport, took the train into Asheville, something happened, I want to believe, Thousand Sticks, Mount Blackmore, American flag, Google Maps was magic, guess where in the world, the signage is in Spanish, we have magical powers our parents didn’t have, in the per-internet age, the state library in the capital of West Virginia, wait for the internet, lost and suppressed by google, if you know the address (the magic word) you can find it on the WayBackmachine, Protecting Project Pulp, Friend Island, a male reporter, women control the world, the grim and gritty sea-side tea house, an old sailoress, the only ships are trading ships or peace ships, shipwrecked on a man on an island and the island is female, Mother Nature is angry, funny on purpose, we need a president, Margaret Thatcher wasn’t that good, Hillary Clinton, policies and intentions matter, what is he basing that on?, hello Keats, much more arguable, male gazing, if you read it as a subversive ending, femme fatale, Black Widow (1987), Bound (1996), if it were written by, squamous squalid, not enough degeneration, love of place, very subtle, entertaining, so well put together, this story is cool, all that nesting of reality, it doesn’t tell you this is what happened, something artificial about the outer narrator, why do you need these characters, Edith Wharton, to make it seem more journalistic, framing stuff, The Oval Portrait by Edgar Allan Poe, about 60% is framing (and its all front framed), a turreted room, armorial trophies and portraits, falling in love with a portrait, there’s no outer frame, all set-up, Jesse cant remember the name of Henry James, The Others (2001), The Turn Of The Screw, take it as journals like Lovecraft, My name is Jervas Dudley, framing as throat clearing, imagine this was true, we’ve been trained, The House On the Borderlands by William Hope Hodgson, Rene Girard, triangular desire, scapegoats, mimetic desire, taking on the object of desire of someone else, aggression, Trump, Peter Thiel, advertising and Facebook, this is how their manipulating, writing about advertising, they use it all day long, I wanna be like them, BMW ads, projecting yourself into the vehicle, “ultimate driving machine”, the object of desire, we keep changing sympathies, I have a story to tell, he had a story to tell, he tells it to another guy, lampshading, who are we sympathizing with, that complication, perspectivizing through, filtering through, Rashomon effect, three visions of the dog, The Blair Witch Project, Scooby Doo, the whole point is the Gothic explique, gothic time!,
THE chateau into which my valet had ventured to make forcible entrance, rather than permit me, in my desperately wounded condition, to pass a night in the open air, was one of those piles of commingled gloom and grandeur which have so long frowned among the Appennines, not less in fact than in the fancy of Mrs. Radcliffe.
Jesse’s amazing news, The Garden Of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges, change the trend, if they’re so impatient, if you don’t hook them in the first paragraph they’re going to walk, the perception in publishing, a whole bunch of readers who liove the slow build, the publishers are enforcing that rule, its anti-science fiction, Inconstant Moon a line only written by Larry Niven (or Jerry Pournelle), that ending line, Footfall, the humans are more conquery and tankie, giant elephants, The Tower Of The Elephant by Robert E. Howard, an adulteration, why are we being told this, changing microscope magnifications, micrometer, a blurry chaos becomes crystal clear, The Outer Limits, Fitz James O’Brien’s The Wondersmith, How I Overcame My Gravity, What Was It?, a haunted boarding house, smoking opium in the backyard, an invisible creature, plaster of Paris, The Horla by Guy de Maupassant.
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The SFFaudio Podcast #552 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Marissa VU, and Evan Lampe talk about City Of Endless Night by Milo Hastings
Talked about on today’s show:
another book with that title, Preston/Child, True Story, June 1919-November 1919, Children Of Kultur, revisions, pictures, pretty amazing book, blown away, more 19th century than early 20th, the chapter titles, more Victorian than Edwardian, so much effort, spoilers for each chapter, Paul fell into it, anticipating, a ruby necklace metaphor, a confrontation, the real Karl, undercooked, bought-off with jewelry, that’s the misogyny speaking, attention to the plot, how is this guy’s german that good, the number of fingers in Inglourious Basterds, just go with it, a treasure trove, it’s amazing, a late Verne?, global hegemony, the ideas!, very forward thinking, he got Nazis exactly right (it’s crazy!), there complete ideology, there breeding programs, their final solution, clearly it was in the culture already, Mein Kampf, Jesse’s hate list includes Bernarr Macfadden, Jesse holds him largely responsible for P.E. class, Physical Culture, an anti-vax column, eight kids with names starting with the letter “b”, Clutch Of The War God by Milo Hasting, “I’m buff, I’m going to live forever”, nutritious breakfast snacks, smoking constantly, anticipating a war between the USA and Japan, aircraft carriers, flat-top ships, under house arrests, obscenity, a beauty contest, all this shit is interconnected, eugenics, Macfadden was a bad guy, scolding the federal government, an extensive amount of research, more science fiction, deep into chicken breeding, THE TALE OF THE ORIENT’S INVASION OF THE OCCIDENT, AS CHRONICLED IN THE HUMANICULTURE SOCIETY’S “HISTORY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY”, maybe someone on LibriVox, she was really good, obscure vocab, USA’s war with Japan, USA’s war with Germany, a cold war after WWIII, the German monarchy, the communists, Maximum German Expansion in the Second World War (1988), League Of Nations, again, did Hitler read this book?, a reflection of American propaganda about Germany, an extant philosophy, distilling and capturing an actual strain of pre-fascism and pre-Nazism, the House of Hohenzollern, the workers, the weird, Germany’s 1919 failed workers revolution, the Wiemar Republic, William the Great (aka William II), if Heinlein was doing it, zeroing in on the origins of fascism, Evan’s favourite book on this: Fascism by Mark Neocleous, the worker’s revolution is inevitable, the general strike, the centrality of will and struggle, working class resentment, Das Kapital by Karl Marx, Benito Mussolini, these ideas were floating around, something changed, the enlightenment framework, fin de sicile pessimism, Arditi, the CSA vs. the Union, resentment, echoes long after, the strongest fascist movements were losers, Hungary, Austria, Germany, where Hitler came from, people hearing him speak, all my friends died and this is the shit we have to eat?, Italian fascism, there is no action that can have no consequence, you can’t just suppress and hide the shit that you’ve done, Germany will rise again, entirely foreseeable, the logic, the natural masters of the Earth, science and industry, the subtle explanation for the power dynamic, 300 million people in Berlin, that ray, the worker controls the society in the way the king doesn’t, science advisors to the king, an alternate universe version of our Nazis, this is also Saudi Arabia, 15,000 members of the Saudi Royal family, analyzing it from a feminist perspective, control of women bodies, in what sense are the women free?, super-interesting science fiction (and tech-free), breeding and nutrition, perfect himself, eat the right foods, vegetarianism, scientific management of breeding programs, Germany’s obsession with it, Nazi breeding programs, Himmler was a chicken farmer, Gregor Mendel, former chicken farmer, get a few hens together, an egg a day, evolutionarily wasteful, costly to the chicken, getting that much calcium together, one of Milo Hastings patents, a million egg incubator, a [fascinating] fact about eggs, baby chicks are hot, birds are hotter than mammals, waste heat from late eggs to heat early eggs, a machine, a grey goo problem (but with chickens), what the breeding program is, Ford’s scientific management of a factory floor, apply it to the human production industry, social policy, married couples were forgiven loans when they had four children, early on, the map of the levels in the Syracuse newspaper, 147 children, one cock for a whole bunch of viable hens, roosters wanna kill each other, why so few women, no time spent with kids, the Lebensborn 1935-1945, these aren’t families, the visit to the school, the teaching methods, that classroom is insane, genocide, a mandatory pork eating law, an emigration policy, its hard to get people to leave, Jews in Shanghai, John Rabe, a WWII show, German jews, Polish jews, gassing people in trucks, taking German interests and beliefs, Germans were really into chemistry, lens-grinding, alchemy, synthetic drugs, synthetic gasoline, coal into gasoline, raw material under Arctic ice?, the main character is a chemist, chemically produced food, modern processed foods, petroleum products turned into food, lab-grown meat, he isn’t making this shit up, a replicator, what does Evan make of the factory strike, Germans went on strike a lot, true to life, depoliticized the working class through voting, the whole philosophy of the state was really well thought out and fascinating, socialist, elections every year, just like us, lands of the inferior races, movement cultures, struggle is important, solidarity, divide and conquer, the power and importance of solidarity in achieving goals, fascinating and true to life, workers don’t strike in China, workplace democracy, the propaganda is complete, the education is by movies, they do their education through video, books are for the officers, the propaganda department, a science fiction movie of what it will be like when we conquer the rest of the world, one of the members of ABBA, bringing the Aryan north into Germany, a mixer, you better have a good reason, the endless war of conquering the earth, very widespread, pseudo-scientific breeding, germ-plasm, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, the Master of Hatcheries, making workers genetically suitable for their jobs, Bernard Marx (Bernarr?), man most responsible for gyms, William Hope Hodgson, BOOM, an amazingly fascinating cultural artifact, was this mentioned in The Ministry Of Truth?, listener suggested?, a reference to Bellamism, another Bellamy echo, rationing vs. cornucopia, once there’s post-scarcity…, robber barons, the money is for attracting women, there’s no point in money, a million marks you can’t spend, buy her a necklace, strange economics, The Prisoner Of Zenda by Anthony Hope, Ruritanian romance, a blending of Bellamy with a Ruritanian fantasy, it’s all a dream, The Prince And The Pauper by Mark Twain, more competent than the person he replaced, a whole thing about creativity, that’s science fiction thinking, Dragon’s Egg by Robert L. Forward, by Hal Clement, reading hard SF, social science fiction, he’s basically fucking nailing Nazi Germany because he’s really thinking through…, the people who are pushing eugenics, I have an evil plan…, sterilizing native people, its fucking evil, I’m going to do zis, he’s just a chicken farmer tapping into what’s in the air, H.G. Wells’ stuff, The Land Ironclads, tanks, WWII is all about tanks, you can’t take land with airplanes, you can’t win without tanks, all those people who died from tanks, Fortnite, kids don’t know what a fortnite is, World Of Tanks, he’s pretty much describing tanks, what it would mean to the tactics, what science fiction is, Jules Verne, there’s all sorts of consequences to that, the ending, Evan’s proper ending for this book, this guy really loves his new job, he meets the emperor, he gets promoted, he wins these awards, the Royal level, he’s going to marry someone in the royal family, a memoir of someone who has lived his whole life in the upper echelons, the safety valve, a ticket for the first show, the glory of the dynasty, turning away from his United Statesians, found amongst the papers of a traitor, the library, the rise of the anti-Nazis, working in the system, we’re living in insanity world, the number of people internally, so rudely signed out, all of Jesse’s diatribes, anti-Nazis, the army and the navy, the submarine stuff is very German, Valkyrie (2008), when FDR is on the rise, the Business Plot, Smedley Butler, happening again, educated folks who are trying to be reasonable, how can that go on Saudi Arabia, a royal problem, carbon problem, Hong Kong, Janette Eng’s Hugo acceptance speech, 40% of China’s income was generated in Hong Kong now it’s 2%, a lot of upset folks, how do you negotiate your way out of that, Woodrow Wilson’s official state racism, the 14 points and the League Of Nations, take note of the tiny detail trends, Hastings’ alternate history, a lot of blame towards the USA and the League Of Nations, a dangerous situation, LibriVox narrator Kate Follis, Algernon Blackwood, E.F. Benson, A Little Book Of Profitable Tales, follow the amateur narrators, “George Guidall can do no wrong!”, Frank Muller, American Gods by Neil Gaiman, when Mr Wednesday came back, he’s back!, a terrible motorcycle accident, don’t ride motorcycles, addicted to audiobooks, audiobooks are very addictive, Luke Burrage, Jesse’s mom is reading Clark Ashton Smith’s novel TWO BLACK DIAMONDS, Arabian Nights, Clark Ashton Smith: Emperor Of Dreams, “magnificent!”, a lot more to say, a strength of worldbuilding, take this man to the hospital, sneaking on board the submarine, how he got him in there, a coincidence, his own face on the dead body, a tradition behind it, an excuse to do that, News From Nowhere by William Morris, get in there and tell that story, really good, a lot of tension, oh my god, investigate himself, a whole adventure, the title change, kultur, this Brute Beast, WWI pickle helmets, treating them like Nazis, more technically correct, one more thing, a confession, we were all fooled by the girl who borrowed the book, that same feeling, our last big surprise book, Mockingbird by Walter Tevis, betrayal, soooo on point, being assertive, making a persons way in a terrible situation, sitting around this virtual table, I didn’t like your little book (we don’t like her because she doesn’t like reading), it makes sense, give herself some dignity, that’s what I do, yo, a singer but her voice wasn’t good, an actress but she had no empathy, a tradition femme fatale, parallel, there’s this woman out there who knows him really well, why are you going to the women’s level, he needs socialization, barracks situations, assimilating so well, Maissa was supposed to join us, “Yes alas – although I didn’t really like endless night – although that would probably have made interesting conversation.”, did she finish it?, up to a third of the way through, it might be an evil book, not ultimately an evil book, it just has features, its not propaganda that’s trying to promote autocracy, the anti-Nazi characters, characters who are into the system, what makes it a dystopia exactly?, if you really had this situation, synthesizing and rationing, withholding information, a good follow up to this, on the list of approved books for LibriVox, Thea Von Harbou’s Metropolis, Fritz Lang and Thea Von Harbou, speaking to the audience, a bias against silent films, a trial, watching I, Claudius (shot on videotape), the audio drama adaptation of Metropolis, so many parallels to what’s going on, Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, a girl who sparks an interest, was Metropolis, the audio drama is so good, it’s cyberpunk, a BBC production, super-great, astoundingly great, totally idea based, the depth of power an hour long program is able to achieve, this guy’s really tantalizing me, two assignments for Kate Follis: please spend 6 months of your life recording for us, a YouTube version of it, a great read!, ever since we read the Ministry of Truth, gender politics, Dollar Hen by Milo Hastings, the bible of chicken rearing, if the weather is too cold for raising hens just move away, good advice, public domain, chickens are super-easy food, urban (and suburban) chicken farming, hipster farming, BoingBoing’s Mark Frauenfelder, coyote raids, free eggs, sharem and givem away and sellem, the permaculture people, sustainable vs. industrial means, red peppers and hot peppers, a styrofoam tray, students were hostile, you’re not helping us Evan, give us the keys to Harvard, we (the Chinese) don’t have time to fuck around with hippie shit, industrialize and build up your industry, the Chinese communist party (20 million?), inequality in China is on par in the United States, pro and anti-Chinese demonstrations, funded by the Chinese government, the Falun Gong, there’s good evidence, Taiwan, liberty vs. authoritarianism, Jimmy Lai and John Bloton, neo-liberals, all the allies are pretty gross, a better hope, the future of the left in Hong Kong, Democracy Advocate: bread and roses, the Communist Party of Canada, a moral and economic failure, defining poverty, the number of students, recruiting foreign teachers, form a fucking union, things are so unequal in China, state socialism doesn’t work, an anti-authoritarian complex, the oranges, the greens, the blues, the reds, the blues, some tie between not ruining the rivers, you can be pretty stupid and be an environmentalist, libertarianism is an immature philosophy, anarchist people to follow, fucking stupid memes, the Solarpunk Anarchist on Facebook, Murray Bookchin, social ecologist, leftists groups, Stalinist, weak socialists, not pushy enough, the NDP, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, universal pharmacare, voted to bomb Libya, the Christopher Hitchens left, liberty is a better foundation for socialism, Max Blumenthal, more bars open, pretty fuckin secular, don’t make me go to your church, the story on Syria, a comic book reading communist lawyer (Will Emmonsky) from Kentucky, Elizabeth Warren vs. Bernie Sanders, having principles, the pitchforks are coming, she’s a capitalist to her bones, Sanders’ movement, smart people in the elite realize you’ve got to do something to stop the pitchforks in the next few years, the last choice if Biden fails, Southern redneck communists, anarchists, your dudes, disarming the working class is a bad idea, is the working class becoming more fascist?, crazy people with guns, naked guy with a gun, the Black Panthers position, the John Brown Gun Club, super-principled, against the bad stuff, Jacobin Magazine, somebody is going to be president next year, in change of the U.S. empire, Elizabeth Warren blows like reed in the wind, Bernie Sanders IS principles, Mitt Romney’s whole thing was “I have good hair”, Hillary had writing off people, just listen, be honest, reading about it from the outside, I got mine jack, how you end up like this, racist white coal miners who worked with black coal miners, why Fred Hampton was assassinated by the FBI and the Chicago police, what’s really going on about racism, racism is a way to divide people who have things in common, history, PBS’ Carrier, almost no one is racist, south asian kids, what kids do, looking for differences, exercise of power, racism is best flourishing when there’s top down stuff, remembering being racist as a kid, I did not want to be considered a dark person, “the darkies”, he’s fucking it up, New Zealand, Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, anti-racist books, what the fuck, the most anti-racist, Steen becomes incensed, subject to racism and racist, being in a culture by a majority, being more humble, being ensconced in it, xenophile, Jesse’s mom is kind of a weird lady, barfi, here I am in my anti-racist bubble, cultural issues, a cultural problem, leaning towards communism, principled ideas, libertarian, Ron Paul, reading conservative stuff, flags, Burkean conservatives, inherited rights, the logo of the Communist Party of Canada, black conservatives, public schools and land reform, cultural conservatism, respect but reject, the populous right, drugs, science, production, knowledge, this book’s got us thinkin, social cooperation, their examples are so stupid, so divorced from reality, what do you think about Japan?, Scotty Kilmer, very practical advice, a British motorcycle, a Suzuki copy of a British motorcycle, knock-off cars in China, a Chinese Jeep Wrangler, Philip K. Dick novel, Japanese copy of a British destroyer, iterating after copying, Huawei, Japan has seen that, isn’t that China’s future?, Japan’s funny history, a mature industry, so weird, almost no foreign cars (or products) in Japan, isn’t there something there?, super-racist too, Japanese homesteaders, going back to the land in Japan, who needs Infinity Stones just wait, a fast forward version of something, China and Korea, the Korean birthrate, a demographic transition, capitalism could find a way, Marissa has one projector, a monitor, Jesse has 11 monitors, the Impossible burger, Beyond Meat, half the pigs in the world are consumed in China, a vegetarian going back to meat, a bar meatzvah, the suffering that animals face, unprincipled on many other things, Eric Rabkin is a vegetarian, jerked tofu, an ethics class, that was horrific, no problem with death, the cruelty is not in us its in our nature, tigers are not unethical, they care a lot about food, giving up french fries, how to make a dinner without meat, the opposite of a foodie, Hitler was a vegetarian, he loved his dog, its kind of a religion, playing PUBG with Peruvians, xenophile, the Indian-English accent, reviews of science fiction, vegan, vegans who go to the gym, I’m 58 look at me, so gross, vegan tattoos, those pants, we are the one crucifying Christ through the rape of the Earth, ?, weird Catholic ecology, look at that guy, he’s a fruitarian, what you eat is magic, I’m gonna live forever because I’m pure, Bill Maher, scorn, I live in this society, if I were a cave-man…, go off to Nassau and be a pirate, you really can’t opt-out, are your clothes made by slaves?, violating intellectual property laws, what does it matter where its made?, what does it matter where its manufactured, books are printed in China, nobody trusts the food industry in China, wont that all be fixed in 20 years, production matters, Karl Marx, the magic of currency, commodity fetishism, a show on bitcoin, hidden by the market, such a time investment, pick your battles, arbitrary, I was a fool to be in the apple system for as long as I was, don’t fall into the trap even farther, this sneaking idea, systems and institutions can’t love you, I don’t wanna give Jeff Bezos my money, Jimmy Pattison.
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #546 – City Of Endless Night by Milo Hastings, read by Kate Follis.
This UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK (9 hours, 35 minutes) comes to us courtesy of LibriVox. City Of Endless Night was first serialized as Children Of Kultur in True Story Magazine, May – November 1919.
The next SFFaudio Podcast will feature our discussion of it!
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #550 – Jesse, Evan Lampe, and Terence Blake talk about A World Of Talent by Philip K. Dick
Talked about on today’s show:
Galaxy, October 1954, MASTERPIECE!, copyright stuff, really angry, starts off really well, an autistic son wandering around his own house, no humour, big noodle, candy from out of nowhere, fighting between a husband and a wife, novel-like, 42 pages, mutant stories, Psi-Man Heal My Child, The Golden Man, the mutant is something that we should fear and will replace humanity, The Crawlers, aborted fetuses, a mundane threat, cruelty, the wife is so difficult, Terence’s first read, full of interesting ideas, John W. Campbell’s editorial note about The Legion Of Time, the stories are the mutants, a big mutation, small mutations vs. big mutations, Galaxy mutated away from the John W. Campbell model, Philip K. Dick was diagnosing the nazi side of John W. Campbell, the naive idea of the superman, we read it as creatures, Slan as the perfect example, this is the future, no one can write about the future of man without talking about PSI, this isn’t science, the beginning of the movie Ghostbusters, a buxom young lady, parapsychology, there’s no evidence for it, its all bullshit, the X-Men, such a good allegory, Slan is a terrible allegory, John W. Campbell was a fucking idiot, a chauvinist, broken ideas, the Dean drive and Dianetics, we the readers of science fiction , Isaac Asimov’s Super Quiz, excluding the sports and movies, Jesse is a super-genius, if Slan is not science fiction as an imagination of thwat the future is…, a metaphor, taking it more seriously, homo superior, Deadpool (2016), H.L Gold wrote under the name Campbell in Astounding, stodginess, analyzing Dick’s own psychology, mental disability, games, another theme, its in the art, the big chess piece, a pretty damn terrific ending, what’s going to happen next?, in the context of Philip K. Dick’s life, marriage problems, should we put him in a special school?, the way the whole story opens and closes, as an autism story, Martian Time-Slip, Earth is thinking of eradicating all the mutants and post humans on Mars, murdering all the kids, the plots are very different but the background is similar, the global intrigue vs. the personal, getting his wife back, his son turned into a god, Adjustment Team, most people won’t notice, one of the futures will go the right away, a lot of arrows could point to this story, Avengers: Endgame, Infinity War, looks at all the different futures, picking and choosing of timelines, she’s alive in all the other timelines, a distant and arbitrary god (with a dad), it doesn’t help poor Big Noodle, an allegorical aspect, just naive, stupid, we don’t know what Philip K. Dick’s image of revolution was, an element of resistance, drug dealers as a resistance to the state, Our Friends From Frolix-8, The Simulacra, The World Jones Made, seizing hold of the means of production and the power apparatus, the meta-humans, the Maoist idea, creating the new means of production, toying with both ideas, Fairchild’s vision, a multicultural prosperous society, genetic purity, post-colonial struggles, a Hindu-Muslim secular state, ethno-nationalist movements, anti-colonial stuff, theme: Earth is invaded by aliens who the majority of people welcome, mut = mutants, norms = people without psi-powers, precogs, anticipating bickering, a funny situation, the kid’s acting weird, “try to hold an objective orientation”, people as blotches of colour and a cacophony of noise, a philosophical objective orientation, blobs spread out in spacetime, a very clunky robotic speech, War-Game, The Game-Players Of Titan, games are serious, if that true…, acting like a god, giving money from the bank in monopoly, if games are serious…, games as a model for reality, cheating is acting as a god, Small Town, disgruntled husband, I don’t like all these casinos as an bars, a really interesting theme that goes all his stuff, Cosmic Puppets, the one with the Bevatron, Eye In The Sky, I don’t like to think about sex so now nobody has genitals, there was a revolution against a king in England, the outside perspective on the American Revolution, fast forward a couple hundred years and there’s another country in Europe, this repressive government IS John W. Campbell, all mutants are positive mutants, Impostor, if you were in the room long enough with John W. Campbell and you had your ideas totally marshalled, I have a new way of solving my own mental problems, of course!, all the things we did with physics we’re now going to do with the mind!, If, I don’t have a problem with mutants (because my own son is a mutant), I need to think about it, he goes both ways on mutants, the pretend supermen in Nazi Germany, imagine what the real supermen could do, Amazon Prime’s The Boys, dickish humans, the mundane mutant, Captive Market, instead of stopping a nuclear war, The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch, his mechanical computer shrink, figuring out the next fashion, Galactic Pot-Healer, Tim seeing the Others, more different from humans than the mutants are, reading Frank Herbert after Dune Messiah, God Emperor Of Dune, artificial intelligences, anticipated in the Dick story, favourizing the creation of anti-PSI talents, short circuiting each other, blur or block psionic powers, Dune was published in Astounding, everything that Campbell was looking for, it’s all mushrooms, maybe he didn’t like yoga, Alfred Bester, Babylon 5‘s PSI-CORP, Philip K. Dick’s PSI-CORP, surveillance capitalism, the corporations that supply the CIA and the NSA are actually running things, you don’t see the machinations or the hands, how all of this works, the plot stuff vs. the personal story, doing some exploration, John W. Campbell set the table in this totally unscientific idea, maybe we’re defining these terms too strongly, Jesse is a precog (just not a very good one), how we dominate the world, that’s the insurance industry, Foundation by Isaac Asimov is precognition on a macroeconomic scale, China’s on the rise, China’s massive population and old infrastructure, reading history, if you think about it that way (especially the way we define it), hard to falsify, studying parapsychology, if you don’t really understand how science really works, Karl Popper, Khunian normal science, Popperian revolutionary science, philosophy of science, spiritual stuff, how to deal with the pain of reality, a philosophical fiction writer, there’s no science in this story at all, birth defects, just evolution, the new men, the evolution of human intelligence, there not on spice, Mentats, Numen = numinous?, the opening is really well written, Jesse reads the opening, this is what we previewed half an hour ago, a lot of weird smells, corpsman, I don’t fully trust the corps, at age 20 something happens, Progeny, military camp/residential school, it comes up again and again, norm and psi-guests, an objective narrator, Philip K. Dick style, in the melee, nothing existed there, robots everywhere, is this a key party?, why is that line in there?, sour like spoiled milk, The Father-Thing situation, this sets up so much for what goes on later, the left and the right, the beginning and the end of the timeline, its a stranger’s home, wander around looking for something interesting, a ghost, no wonder he acts so weird, to give pleasure to Evan (anti-pleasure), VALIS is the anti-surveillance society, Ubik, the witch in this story, he gives her a token, the bedroom’s not occupied yet, now she’s mad at him, you’re not supposed to bring them home, there’s literally some cheating going on, what kind of party is this an analogy for, Clans Of The Alphane Moon, a bunch of patients of a psychiatrist conspiring to rebel against their doctor, a wife-swapping world, let’s talk about Big Noodle for a minute, a picture on page 21 of the PDF, Jesse thought he had no bones, the power of telekinesis and teleportation, is that why he’s a big blob?, you can predict the future (because you write science fiction), an allegory of the defense department, he literally is the defense department, the way he talks, Eisenhower’s farewell address, he was president from 1953 to 1961, The Hood Maker episode of Electric Dreams, Jesse talking to Julie Davis, shuts down and collapses the whole thing, “Imagine if the ants are talking about me!”, Jesse recapitulates the plot of Expendable, his whole world collapses, Misadjustment, the women just block it, the opposite of Tessa (Kleo), BoingBoing.net’s motto is “Happy Mutants”, homo superior, meta-humans, post-humans, meta-beings, a time traveler, All You Zombies, Predestination (2014), The Big Time by Fritz Leiber, Alfred Korzybski’s animals are space binders and humans are time binders, possibility binders (science fiction), a feminist equivalent, Charlie Jane Anders’ Six Months Three Days, you see I was right, gaslighting as reality bending, Francis Fukuyama, thinking about his theory on autism, two theories, open to all sense data, seeing other aspects that we can’t see, they’re not stupid just cognitively different, how they will be when they’re dead, she’s gonna be dead soon, the skull beneath the face, momento mori, a totemic limitation, he’s always talking about the “tomb world”, people die, what’s next?, why stories can be beautiful like that, Philip K. Dick can make a random crappy story really good, but in real life…, the mundane allegory, with an act of will you can make a difference, by an act of creativity you can inject at some moments anti-entropy, acting like Cornell West, is this even a science fiction story, meta-fantasy exploration of philosophical ideas and bullshit science fiction ideas, the very end of Martian Time-Slip, the significance of the return, closure,
We are better off not being able to look ahead, she said to herself. Thank God we can’t see.
a vision and a return, what parents of autistic kids are worried about, pretty traumatizing.
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #549 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Maissa Bessada, Julie Davis, and Terence Blake talk about Mockingbird by Walter Tevis
Talked about on today’s show:
a question on Twitter, Julie, how it even got on the schedule, A Good Story Is Hard To Find (110), June 2015, Mark Woodword, how we’ve never heard of this book, Julie’s mom, very weird, a near masterpiece of Science Fiction, Walter Tevis, The Man Who Fell To Earth, David Bowie, not about music, Queen’s Gambit, The Hustler, The Color Of Money, one PDF on the PDF Page, it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism, post apocalyptic, a post-capitalist society, a post-scarcity society, a downer, a slow slow slide into the long dark night, uplifting (also), the state of humanity, they way he reveres reading, enjoy an omelette, re-watching Star Trek, the Animated Series, The Next Generation, it gets better, Mark Zuckerberg, Andrew Yang, take away all goals, stripping us of our humanity, drugs, hippies, an anti-marijuana book, a critique of the hippies, silent movies, a world you didn’t know, when this old man dies, a different view, Spoforth, pensioning off Paul, reading is not valued, Paul teaches Mary how to read, looking for pornography, he was teaching pornography and mindfulness, a savage critique, who’s the mockingbird?, he wants to know what’s going on, genuine examples of humanity, Julie is being so mean to Paul, Paul in the book, Bentley, spaw-forth or spoof-forth (and multiply), struck to the heart, revealed as the villain, he’s not even sure it’ll work, kill humanity to kill ones’ self, kinda dark, sympathetic, did he intend to kill the child right from the start?, detector, a lot of twists, no diary, a hard shift, switches to Mary Lou, I don’t like this book anymore, not who I imagined her to be, love as a projection, maybe she was blind to herself, or emotionally repressed, when he gets thrown in prison, hanging out with the baleens, a horror novel, shifting around, an impressive world, standard mainstream good writing, built up this whole world, premises are revealed to us, is he a bad guy, an abortionist, destroy humanity, he didn’t invent the system, he’s cursed with an inability to die, massive, a total dystopia, Brave New World‘s children, Huxley was optimistic, self immolation, political protest, a political act, a religious act, a sacrifice, people can’t string ideas together, going to the same cafe, they’re singing, what is the motivation, psychology, Annabelle, SEARS as a church, A Boy And His Dog (1975), a revelation, different genres, my pet Biff, New York City, the Adam and Eve theme, story is how we find truth, books get us in touch with other minds, what a masterpiece, have you got to the monkey bacon yet?, bacon for monkeys?, clever ideas going on, a lot of biblical stuff, this is Jonah, he’s vomited out, the thought buses are like the friends in Job, they’re something else, that thought wasn’t finished, the true inhabitants of the city, a line relevant to our times, cars were promulgated by a cabal of oil manufacturers, dealing with the consequences of a world we never made, a mass transportation system, look very deeply back at old stuff at the time, reading TV Guide from 1980, it’s fascinating, yo, a good magazine about the technology of TV, what television will be like in 1990, they kinda nailed it, gay behavior will be more popular, the trends we see here, the 1980 Olympics in Russia, the invasion of Afghanistan, anyone who would invade Afghanistan is obviously a monster, the fossils of a previous generation, A Streetcar Named Desire, streetcars around the world, one more reason to go to Nice (France), I say that in Jes(t), she picks a fruit, its artificial, what they’re being taught in school, quick sex is best, it comes from the same place, reconstructed all the greatness in science fiction, a mainstream book with a deeply science fiction world behind it, the zoo is all fake, even the children are fake, the Adam and Eve thing, when he comes back to Marylou, Jesus!, Mary, the notion of felix culpa (the fortunate fall), remembering her action, he explicitly remembers, it isn’t going to be as bad as you think, thank you Terence, so loaded, Spoforth is a good carpenter, the poem from T.S. Eliot, the songful simian, a Christ figure, the little sparrow, like the end of Blade Runner when Roy Batty dies, the same problem in the other direction, a sort of love, joy, compassion, influenced?, a lot of Philip K. Dick elements, artificial emotions, the symmetry trick that works every time, it’s beautiful, an act of mercy and love, the poor guy, condemned to Hell on Earth, I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison, I Am, keep sliding towards oblivion, actively seeking death, the mercy that he wants the mercy he’s trying to give humanity, the behavior of humans is not good, an Arthur C. Clarke vibe, The City And The Stars, that world is perfectly broken, the only thing you can do is appreciate the abstract, blotchy moving colour shapes and sounds, no more music, the heart and the center of the book, the robot toaster factory, a whole novel, a mindless parody of productivity, those grey uniformed sub-morons that all look like Peter Lorre, and then he fixed them, suddenly people are getting toasters again, the warmth and the light (a preview), its a rebirth, what happened in real-life that you didn’t see on twitter, looking for stuff on Netflix, Year One (2009), cave man comedies, fur bikinis, One Million B.C. (1940), science fiction stories, H.G. Wells and Rudyard Kipling, The Wonderstick by Stanton A. Coblentz, the wonder of the wheel the wonder of the stick, a retelling of the bible, Harold Ramis plays Adam, David Cross is Kane as Paul Rudd is Abel, that tree of knowledge, only the mockingbird sings at the edge of the woods, that’s really powerful, all the characters, Simon, the alternative father for Marylou, why she’s so different, monstrous and straight out of Brave New World, we recognize all this biblical stuff, you get both, there’s gotta be something out there, an The Brick interview with Walter Tevis, it felt very Lawrence Block-y, “Mockingbird’s about coming out of alcoholism.”, “But I don’t do any outlining. I don’t do any researching. I was tempted while writing Mockingbird to start watching silent movies, you know, and see if I could pick some interesting stuff to use, and I realized that would’ve been just a dodge to avoid the typewriter. So I never research anything.”
LD: You paint a pretty bleak picture in terms of literacy in Mockingbird.
WT: It comes from twenty-five years of being an English teacher.
RW: Do you see a decline in literacy? I do, but do you?
WT: Oh, you hear about it a lot. Yes, I’ve seen it a bit, but my private experience as an English teacher has been that Americans don’t read books. They didn’t read books in 1949 when I started teaching. They don’t read books now Television did make a difference. It deepened the slack of the slackjaws and gave another great quantity of garbage for people to fill their lives with. But, you know, there was other garbage around before television. Mockingbird does sometimes, I think, weaken into an attack solely on television and on the modern world, and “weaken” I say because I’m not completely convinced of all those things that I say. But what I am convinced of is that it is very bad for people to find substitutes for living their lives, and that’s what I hope I do say, and say well, from time to time in the book.
reading is the tool that opened up his mind and taught him how to think, a photograph of notes to the editor, the surprise that she’s going to narrate, destructive to our view of his wonderful relationship, she came to appreciate him, he forgot her too, what they had wasn’t super-deep, she was Dante’s Beatrice, Edward Hopper, there’s no door in Nighthawks, alone together, some lady sitting on a bed looking out a window, beautifully painted, what makes us care about his paintings is the emotions in these characters, the emotions that make Hopper’s paintings so powerful, a criticism of the kind of television being shown in the book, stimulating arrangements of color form and design, the psychedelic, Tevis’ take on Hopper’s quote, yeah exactly, four things you can get from films (books), manipulating one’s mental states, a means of learning something about the past, why memory is not enough, sympathizing with other people from other times, knowing about other people’s feelings you discover your own feelings, he captures that experience, jokes from 200 years ago, a line that crystallizes something you’ve always known but never seen before, before Plato, the only book he never reads is Gone With The Wind, See Spot Run, the alphabet is arbitrarily ordered, this is science fiction, the scene in Frankenstein where the creature learns how to read and speak, Paradise Lost, Plutarch’s Lives, his creation book (Frankenstein’s lab notes), this is a Frankenstein-fixed story, the creation of the world, how to service robots and thought-buses, a masterpiece, nature is always pulled in, puzzling over how to fix the thought-bus, a large dramatic spiderweb, the moon, made of pure light, the elaboration and power of life that could make such a design, this makes me feel something, Julie’s favourite Psalm is Psalm 19, so mysterious, the way you hold that cup, so much bigger, the human experience, he wrote it for us, the earlier scene with the spiderweb, the court is a plastic building, you go clean the judge’s face, yellow powder, they all have the same look on their face, the system turns on and gears up, other prisoners, the prison sequence, I didn’t see this coming, Belasco, tattoos, Queequeg!, rule breakers, paintings of trees and birds, have a fire on the beach, as free as people in that world can be, a temptation to stay there?, the escape itself, a community of people to help him toughen up, the beginning of his journey, The Handmaid’s Tale. reading is powerful, the way we got there, our own fucking laziness, go along get along, rage rage rage against the machine, read a fucking book, you’ll like it it’s good, not just shore-dinners, a so coddled society, memorizing your life, a kind of writing, a book that feels like its in dialogue with Fahrenheit 451, drop out communities, finding the libraries (it’s treasure!), insistence of family and community, Annabelle becomes his mother, enriched by other communities, great risks to my individuality, the robots who taught me, yup, individualistic, you’re not letting me help anyone, a balance, a really good job of pointing that stuff out, it doesn’t feel like a sermon, super-funny, Buster Keaton, he’s baptized in the mall, the SEARS (catalogue) was a big part of Jesse’s life in 1980, a book of pictures of things, the world in the background economically makes sense, could you game in this world?, a survival game, rebuild society, back to board-games, Scrabble, role-playing games, a very New York thing to do, California, The Last Chase (1981), how the credit card system worked, the pricing, what are they teaching in those classrooms?, yoga and meditation?, sopors, soma, give yourself to the screens, Terence is right!, social media, stream everything, everybody is literate now (to read stop signs and instructions), people who never read anything (maybe a magazine once a year), a super-nice person, what is wrong with you, there are these parallel societies, Anabelle is that representation, part of this is looking at creativity, Spoforth wasn’t creative but he learned, Exhalation Stories: (The Lifecycle Of Software Objects) by Ted Chiang, the whole him trying to find his earlier incarnation, recapture what he had lost from his earlier mind, in the dream, its a baby, just before he dies, the missing peice in the puzzle of his dream, in Westworld for recipe for an intelligent robot is a reverie, the reverie we get from literature, its made him more human, he’s trying trying trying, another element of information, what humanizes him, he felt love, the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen, I love you, still strange, the mockingbird sings from the edge of the woods, Scott Danielson, “Whose woods these are I think I know”, the mockingbird is the creative artist, always in association with creativity, a deepening sadness, more creative than we give him credit for?, the boy’s drawings, it works on multiple levels, the fake, the marginal, mocking, a mockery of a man, the emotions of a man and he can’t connect, this mock level, mockingbird songs, things stung together, Tevis is the mockingbird, there’s this hybridization, a very literary book, To Kill A Mockingbird, it sings its heart out, to deal with race again, is it because you’re a black man, it’s 1978, the most advanced beautiful man ever, he was the pinnacle and they made him a black man, still enslaved, in his dream his feet are white, Typee by Herman Melville, an Anabelle like character, only one person’s working hard all day line, Bentley see this as an injustice, is it an injustice?, her choice, making something of value, cooking is work, its still good to feed the kids (even if they can’t thank you), making the mistake of thinking humans are all one way, objectivism, let’s be greedy together, reading Ayn Rand, is Anthem a rip-off of We, moms being moms, I’m a loner, everybody’s talking to each other all the time, invading privacy is the worst thing, it was the robots that did it, the society happened almost by accident, quite beautiful, we fall into the trap of amusing ourselves to death, John Savage likes pain, they twist it against him, “that’s illegal”, those people are all around us, he had his stash, dumping herself full of Valium, him living in her house, thank your mom for us, how many people heard about it through you through her through this podcast, Marissa would have been here very happily, the Westworld connection, good choice, thank you!
