The SFFaudio Podcast #804 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Mad Planet by Murray Leinster

The SFFaudio Podcast #804 – The Mad Planet by Murray Leinster, read by Roger Melin. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (2 hours 44 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Miassa Bessada, Will Emmons, Terence Blake, Alex (PulpCovers), and Jonathan Weichsel.

Talked about on today’s show:
Argosy 1920, posthistorical, prehistorical romance, H.G. Wells, Jack London, Stanton A. Coblentz’s The Wonder Stick, an Edgar Rice Burroughs book set on Earth, Under The Moons Of Mars, the princess, thoughts and loins, no dialogue, can communicate a little bit, he had no words, he speaks in a masculine way: a war cry, internal monologue, an external narrator, he looks just like rodin’s thinker, very well realized world, a nice Virgil Finlay illustration, butterflies and moths and giant, mushroom fire, bright and colourful pulp, colourful dark pulp, a very dark world, giant insects, apocalyptic taken the extreme, a natural apocalypse, global warming, very subversive of him, unintentionally so, carbon emissions, fissures underground, carbon capture, vast reservoirs, the african lakes that suddenly burps, everybody dies, offshore, frozen methane at the bottom of the sea, free methane, carbon captured a long time ago, this will happen this has happened, with humans is the shocker, very Clark Ashton Smith world, gone to Venus, heavy growth, pulp Venus Earth, the shape of the story, one guy out in the woods for the whole book learning things, not much of plot, great setting, unique, kinda slow, their ears wiggle, the smartest, the fastest, John Carter inspired superman, atavistic throwback, his ancestor was John Carter, I could make shoes, stick it with this poky thing, not even hunter gatherers, just gatherers, didn’t make it through 8th grade, an autodidact, inventor’s lab at home, The Last Spaceship, genius inventor, being your standard 1950s smart guy, way behind the slowest of our forebearers, a progenitor, the beginning of the new, the minimal plot, The Cave Girl, The Men In The Walls by William Tenn, Will’s second show, a great funny story about a human future where giant aliens (bigger than skyscrapers), women have litters, the alien kitchen crumb, theirs cockroaches all over this house, sprayed with chemicals, the insects are now giant and the humans are small, Fantastic Planet (1973), a french movie, breed with this other pet, more like pests (than pets), the reversal, we do care for our pests, a mouse in your house, maybe some vegans don’t, feral humans, levy whatever critique, enjoyable setting, where William Tenn succeeds, anthropology or sociology, an uncle, way deeper, like a savage or a child, it failed on the level of having interesting characters, breathing toxic fumes, doesn’t come across like a satire, an Edgar Rice Burroughsy feel, the setting is the showcase, indomitable human spirit, extreme environments, the spark still survives, rekindle the human flame, the connection to Burroughs, what if this was a little more realistic, using the weapons, I can leap really high, work and think and develop, the guy in The Cave Girl, cook meat or whatever, a framework to allow our guy to climb back up, a plot device, small triumphs, the line near the end, Burl saw the mighty armour, envied him his weapons, the juicy flesh contained in those armoured limbs, he need flee, in his hands he bore a long sharp chitinous spear, there’s no wood, remaster the earth, the dawn of a new-mankind, the proto-human in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and he won the girl, he did it for the girl, that was terrible, a voyage into weirdness, CO2 in excess, they’re not really trees, gets back home and gets the girl, nothing innovative there, Day Million is 7 minutes long, a guy is excluded from his tribe, invents the bow, spooky action at a distance, he tames a dog, learns how to make fire, invents the wheel, now he’s a hero not a nerd, club him on the head with their club, the exclusion, got separated, the tide took him away, the only real interaction we have is his thoughts, he likes sharing her with her, this whole thing is cute, strange character dynamics, a little more repetitive, the florid description of the flora, over and over again, Samuel Beckett does that, a hypnotic type style, a good invention to repeat, getting the girl, any pulp story, gesticulates at that, odyssey into weirdness, mid-20th century than pulp, before Amazing, 24 years old, the Campbell puzzle stories, with the fish, stuck in the spider web, the fishoil, a very Campbellian idea, ahead of its time, genuine science fiction, the title, [The Forgotten Planet], Electrical Experimenter, Hugo Gernsback, mad as in crazy, a narrator from a distance, a direct descendant, he’s recounting this period in history, made it through the giant mushrooms, in some Burroughs books, a frame, I’m getting these psychic images from the future, the Gridley wave, we don’t have a universal republic, the international geophysical institute, ways of framing the story, crazy and angry, if it was published in the 1950s, as we go, as we progress, as we iterate, non-linear progress, walk around long after you’re dead, people get confused, nutzo, if this was published in 1955, everyone knows what science fiction is, the title would be 30,000 years, Earth In The Grip Of The Mushrooms, Giant Spider World, people going into strange lost valleys, Empire Of The Ants, giant spider story by Robert E. Howard, people just spend their time enjoying their time and occasionally supervising machines, we’re scavengers, was it a sin that we did?, burned too many fossil fuels?, its scientific name is this, quick wikipedia look ups, that looks cool, lactarius deliciosus, mmm milky, abundance of food, everybody is eating everything, scientific name, very different and very cool, munching, spongey, lady with a dress and a whip, a gun and a spaceship, any educational value in here at all, the Chinese still publish science fiction, making it science fiction, caveman stories are considered science fiction, the process of technological acquisition and distribution, get the bow going, that phenomenon where we have to learn something, a setting rather than an exploration of that idea, we all would get like shoes, shoes are a good idea, strapping those on their feets, enough free time and resources, a lot of tribes today, material and or time, full time job to make shoes, gorging themselves and lying around, they’re lazy, a fantasy of the native, not anthropologically sound, a lot of lazy activity that gets people doing art, hiding in a cave?, fled to the mountains, huddling together for warmth, an old anthropological theory, the culture of poverty, considered racists, all impoverished civilizations are the same, an idea of social strata, through the lens of a higher social stratus, for poverty there has to be affluence, the potlatch, hard to understand, get together with their neighbours, a giving contest, making giant presents, foods, delectable items, bentwood boxes, massive amounts of luxury consumer goods, status and power, like the hobbits, people aren’t turned into chattel, trading, the culture we see in The Odyssey, just a series of home invasions, you’re never leaving, a lady who wants to have sex with you, turned into farm animals, delicate relationship between host and guest, stores, I could steal this, usually a refrigerator, a place to do commerce, you don’t have an economy, good relationships with your neighbours, a friend and an ally, reciprocal debts, family and friendship and bonds, a bit of leisure time, poverty, people starving to death, some external problem, hunter gatherers, decorate their bodies, making jewelry, weird things we can’t understand, stupid and not for Jesse, tell stories, probably a lot of gossip, have you seen what janice is wearing in her hair?, why isn’t Paul on the podcast, tattoos from strangers, your bunkee wants to practice, disrailed?, people that you actually know, a cool tattoo store down the street, bring their own designs, means something, words, words all over this guy’s arm, these worlds are valuable, pure hunter gatherer behavior, what people do when they get a little bit of money, sailor tattoos, grading, crossed the equator, circumnavigate the world, tramp stamp, no tattooing in this book, decorating?, lie around, not doing art, no culture at all, no songs, no stories, the feast of the full moon, they don’t even have a moon, is there food in my mouth?, food is their primary concern, they need to have a refrigerator, food everywhere, reread Dune, they eat worm shit, this is what people do, carbon dioxide poisoned, carboniferous, an impressive gene, an uplift story Children Of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky, spiders could evolve intelligence, more intelligent than us, savages as if they were human, anthropological science fiction, self-uplifting of proto-humans, matters of life and death and food and safety, comfort and luxury, technology is uplift, genetic resurgence, smoke those spider legs and centipede feets, put them in your cave, cave out of shells, how many other human groups are there on the planet, pretty terrific, The Integral Trees by Larry Niven, humans have been voyaging to other planets, found a star with an orbiting gas bubble, giant trees, revolving due to winds, squirrel people, their tree is rotting, termites, dexterous feet, they don’t even know, so many generations, a hard SF story with ridiculous premises, more time spent with the tribe and the culture, not being for a good reason, flashbacks, how to gather mollusc feet, live up to be like my grandpa, Argosy’s pay rates, it doesn’t make economic sense to do a second draft, trynna fill pages, readers want to be satisfied, give em what they want, two more followups, it explains much, still pretty good, infected Jesse’s dreams, dark things in it, moth’s tortured pains, hunting killing eating, our world, carried off by a spider and screaming, nobody focuses on that, his learning moment, in a rather unpleasant fashion, that’s a pity, that old gentleman since, never entered his head, say of the year 1920, pick a year out of a hate, doesn’t have hypothetical questions, pure immediacy, getting to hypotheticality, that’s the point of the story, hypothesis building, if!, there’s the science fiction word for you, it’s wild, sense of wonder, it’s crazy!, those ants, the army ants, right after WWI, burn themselves up, a repeat of this whole situation, this new prototype kinda guy, adjacently classified, Leiningen Versus the Ants [by Carl Stephenson], castle doctrine, late to the game Robinson Crusoe, indomitable German will, almost robotic, let yourself be put into the gears of this machine or not?, not perfectly aligned, sheared off, mechanisms in society are machine like, don’t get involved with the police, the robotic aspect of these unstoppable creatures vs. individual fights, the one with the fish, hunter vs. prey, the army of ants, once you join the army, go over there and get shot, got caught up in something, explored in later books, this is an unstoppable thing, like the fire, techniques, firebreaks, helicopters with water, incarcerated firefighters, what happened to the earth already, unstoppable, humanity was doing really well, wasn’t a robot uprising, shit happens, funny stuff, higher ground becomes expensive real estate, climate change!, melted into the sea, a bunker in Nepal, in case, fun, engages with this idea of 30,000 years around, tiny mammals hiding in holes, Science Fiction By Gaslight by Sam Moskowitz, London is destroyed by carbon emissions, 1890something, Earth is destroyed by carbon emissions, who is right?, The Doom Of London by Robert Barr, The Forgotten Enemy, Freaky Trigger, A Bite Of Stars A Slug Of Time And Thou podcast, a deserted London, it’s the ice age, a glacier slowly griding its way into London, the opposite way to go, flooded out vs. frozen out, global cooling, new ice age comin, New York suddenly freezes, The Day After Tomorrow, new Ghostbusters movie, ghost freezes New York, The Real Ghostbusters, read the fixup, mash em together, rewriting to make it flow, The Red Dust, has become the leader, 30 years later, needed the fixup, a terrible idea, defeats the whole purpose!, let’s do The Red Dust, not a lot of capacity, Return From The Stars, that’s a mental book, especially if I get to shit on it, about the same length, you who have read the Mad Planet, the world in the far distant future, tiny Man, acclimated to change, our hero Burl, nothing compared to the deadly red dust, thrusting his spear, shiny back, meat eating beetles, what does Bleiler have to say?, Blei this up, Moskowitz, a timeless classic of the pulp era, well written, fun, short, an interesting idea, the aesthetic is good, it has more depth, much better world building than Edgar Rice Burroughs, video game levels, designed for an adventure, still feel some enthusiasm, no invention in it, the new LibriVox of The Stainless Steel Rat on LibriVox, science fiction setting, Slippery Jim diGriz, very Futuramalike, future tropes, the police are robots, this other mode of reading science fiction, not what we do here, what a champion E.F. Bleiler was, just science fiction the early years, Gernsback’s life, closely typed 1115 pages, plot synopsis, would be great to have it, on the Internet Archive, searchable, google books, a supernatural book for all the Weird Tales stuff, The Last Spaceship, some more Murray Leinster, dubious quality, the very future future, 50,000 years in the future, a lady in a bathing suit in a belt and wristbands, mushroom guys, beautiful right?, Stories From The Sky (William Sky), This World Is Taboo, Mark F. Smith, a presumed plague carrier, but hey if he did the smart thing we wouldn’t have a story, Ray Cummings, as long as the audio is good, its a human, British (possibly human), pretty inhuman, homo sapiens non-roboticus, Thomas Burnett Swann, Popes, Japan, last December, June 2nd, A Spell For Chameleon, the minotaur books, human-minotaur love, an archive of our own?, wtf is it?, fan-fiction, won a Hugo, The Weirwoods, sail the high seas, records his crimes, not illegal, The Soul Of Man (Under Socialism) by Oscar Wilde, The Not-World, lure of the little folk, magic pen, one of the finest and most piquant, spicy!, Thomas Chatterton, mingle their fates with Arachnae, spider woman, drowning before sex, objectionable, everybody on the internet, objectionable, on Goodreads, very erotic, middle erotic, focused on Eros, eroticism deferred, not Gor, rapidly becomes weird fetish porn, a lovely novel, a smidgen of alternate history, the worst review, not helpful reviews, like the narrator, doesn’t understand the concept of what fiction is, a 30 year old novelist, a young sailor, you can disinvite Jesse from your birthday party, not-father’s day, the other Alex, regular Alex, never listened to an audiobook for this podcast, audiobooks when hiking, you wont miss anything by listening to the audiobook, popular long running series, a parody of Starship Troopers, Bill, The Galactic Hero, 45 years ago, Slow Horses, find it good, almost binge watch, fortunately/unfortunately, have a good Nice, new laptop, where Alex works, hear the insults roll in, perfect except the speakers are terrible, Lenovo Yoga, screen is so good, speakers are better, a lot of ThinkPads (but not for good reasons), all instant, $60, addicted to fixing up old laptops, Windows 11 (Tiny 11), the Pro matters, Brave browser, Microsoft Edge, Tubi.com, what looks like an app, no ads, works for everything that way, its amazing, in 7 months, get that Brave Browser going, running it as an app, never tried Plex, ad scammed all the time, Yes, Minister, this is not Scooby-Doo, nice and short, hits so fuckin hard, 79-80, stuff everybody should know about how government and the deep state works, any story in government, i’d like to reform things somewhat, loses completely, the language is amazing, Shakespearean doubletalk, he’s a right-honorable, the gossip network of other drivers, why the bus/train system sucks so much, if you were forced to take it, why the NHS sucks, force the PM or the premier to go to the hospital, truths that people that don’t understand, why govt fails to work, bureaucracy rather than corporations, meeting with the BBC guy, complaints about the BBC, something that is out of date, bribery and scandal runs everything, why don’t you get more female high end bureaucrats, a great idea, the Saudis won’t like it, they all have excuses, this one woman promoted, a really good satire of what is happening now, there’s some great stuff and nobody gets to see it, not on Plex, on the deep schedule, Darker Than You Think by Jack Williamson, puts on an alien planet, thinking about it as a writer, you don’t really need to, once you get idea, the Simak story, stuff like that, Bradbury?, as a novelist?, he smokes, the first Amber book, writing it by the seat of his pants, writing skill, that series, Larry Niven, supposed to be famous, Ice World by Hal Clement, Jack Williamson, not sci-fi, Legion Of Space, Gordon Dickson, a lot of series, a lot of repeated covers, a 2.5 hour one, Phil Chenevert, inhabitable planets, extremely young, covered with all kinds of life, should have not had a chance to even begin to develop, paleontology and geology and archaeology, a review or Bleiler?, Dorsai!, the first in a series, with an exclamation mark!, military SF, most valuable, The Genetic General, is maze a verb?, a short story that’s been expanded, genetic engineering, creating super soldiers, pee, look at Hal Clement reviews, Jesse puts everything in, there’s nothing cut, a champion of podcasting, the ones from 10 years ago are an hour long, [The Genetic General was copyright renewed RE0000404051 ], LibriVox, no women in it, Maissa is gonna love it, our base is old men, people smoke in this story, Attitude by Hal Clement, somehow in the empty rift, their captors had not harmed any of them at all, from Astounding in 1943, becoming a Campbell guy, Dianetics, Mission Of Gravity, Kurt Vonnegut, Galapagos, Slaughterhouse Five, life is stupid and crazy, isn’t that funny?, not chill, Mr. Sheckley, read by Phil Chenevert, 60s stuff, 40s is good, a good length, The Status Civilization, solid satire, thoughtful and interesting, interesting not just fun, The Journey Of Joenes, The Blue World by Jack Vance, an imagined future, a picaresque, Mindswap, fell completely off the rails, an ocean of terror, another Stanislaw Lem, Neuromancer, don’t get hit by that bus, bought a bombshelter with free crawdads, they would eat each other, arthropods don’t have our values, shoeless mouse people, The Star King, complaints: this is not science fiction, science fiction wallpaper, he can write good ideas, The Man In The Maze by Robert Silverberg, similar to Thorns, a penal ship crashlanded, giant lily pads, forgotten their origin, caste system, giant lobster, monster stories can be science fiction, the latest John Scalzi, The Kaiju Preservation Society, a stuff happens book, how to get metal, they’re criminals, a good Larry Niven, read his as a teenager, Ringworld, the whole focus on that book is about sex, the puppeteer wants to reproduce, wants to have sex, win a name, young nubile woman, we’re gods, its a sex book, they get worse as they go, more than one Ringworld, The Seascape Tattoo, all about sex, the first third, a monthlong break, Louis Wu being kind of a perv, cat-men, the complete list of all of the novels, Protector, World Of The Ptavvs, Lucifer’s Hammer, racist guys at the beginning, just putting his name on, he’s awesome, super-smart, a mean sense of humour, but not cruel, short stories, Neutron Star, early short stories, comedy stories, The Draco Tavern, young people real old SF, how young are these young people?, how the relationships are forged, dubious of young people, no longer feel like a young person, an organization with young in the name, young DSA, middle age DSA, Man Of Steel Woman Of Kleenex, you know the meme, which is a problem, can’t be long stories, is there beyond the meme, the kids comics version, to fully understand you’re going to need to read the book, Inconstant Moon, New Twilight Zone, the dad on Growing Pains?, another tv dad, anytime people quote Shakespeare, God Save The Mark, it was a good one, a perfect book, Outer Limits Season 2 Episode 12, Michael Gross, Michael J. Fox’s dad on a TV show, it’s the end of the world, a woman he has known for many years, he’s been in love with her for a long while, a few hours to make up for his foolishness, good right?, an episode of Doctor Quinn: Medicine Woman, 6 seasons plus TV movies, a corporate law lady who decides to become a public defender, bougie friends, woman professional story, Bess Sullivan, The Trials Of Rosie O’Neil, Ponderosa, Bob’s Burgers, short and lighter, in a two person home, mutual boxes, watching bureaucrats talk politicans out of things, it’s educational, if you don’t beleive this is exactly, ripped from the non-headlines, an anti-West Wing, Yes, Prime Minister, hugely convoluted long sentences, Obamaisms, Joyce Carol Oates giving Obama an award, a better time, for who? for whom?, inflation wasn’t as bad then?, the president had all his faculties, aiding and abetting an active genocide, H. Jon Benjamin actor is Archer, you can rewatch them, character based humour show, Pam, the HR department, a very dumb one, sniffing glue, pushing Picard and Crusher together, that’s not what this show should be about, professionals acting professionally, Moonlighting was a good show, not even a zygote, hatched in 86, became a feotus in 89, she has mammaries, a platapus, what colour milk would it be?, Carthoris, flows beautifully, only one kid, the second novel, each individual entry has a different lead character, Korak, side characters, Tarzan, such a legend, 24 books, 12 Tarzan novels, husbanding them, diminish returns doesn’t apply to economics it applies to art, Young Indiana Jones is a separate animals, early 20th century history, look at art, this is amazing, look at this!, look at this piece, a weird thing to do all day, art The Executioner Of Venice, Harry Lemon Parkhurst, Spicy Mystery Stories, September 1942, science fiction stories, how good are they at science fiction?, not all visual art, fiction, poetry, can’t we just do this all day long?, a pretty good position, report cards, be honest without hurting anybody’s feelings, not here to rebuke you, grading is horrible, learning something, what poetic devices, you’re getting this, it is important to love what you’re doing, hobby business of selling books online, sold to PulpCovers, had you scanned them, two scanners for sale, Herbert Schmaltz (artist), Zenobia, Palmyra, chained up, a comic series, Magnus Robot Fighter, has a nice backstory, stop them with your fists, the most stunning thing I’ve ever seen, another Zenobia, facial expression, Cleopatra by the same artist, boobs exposed, mammals love mammaries, birds other than the evil evil cuckoo, they give them barf, duck around, keep them warm at night, ducks might like you, they’re less like humans than cats are, cats are very catty, their default behavior, not quite individual animals, nothing like dogs, household pets, cats are very different, sometimes cats like you, dogs are loyal at least, pirate cat [Anne Bonny], allergy to her own saliva, saliva cats, lots of hair comes out, kinda wild, do your best, a big Jesse theme, copying Jason Mockman Thompson, he’s got good politics, he’s a dad with a toddler, a twee year old, the city in the distance under the dome, silver key in his hand, so much great art, Lauren somebody, Blue Book, Tarzan: Guard Of The Jungle, better in the pulps, more elemental, with the #LegCling and #KetchupAndMustardGetup, why are they so powerful, the combination of red and yellow, everything means something, reading the original magazine publications, ERB didn’t like to be edited, the sixth martian novel, 30-40 magazine pages, you have to drill down, the only way, the Amazing Stories Annual, the operating room table cover, available as a scan, Frederik Pohl, blew his mind, how come those ones didn’t blow your mind, how come that one blew his mind, a voracious reader, I want to be a science fiction writer, editor and agent, famously unsuccessful at making money, $30,000 in debt in the 1950s, no audiobook, too obscure, no champion, the Pohl estate?, can’t even get a Robert E. Howard biography audiobooked, Mark Finn, Philip Jose Farmer’s books, speaking to somebody who doesn’t understand, that sounds like something you’re saying, Frederik Pohl audiobooks, the Heechee series is not good, kinda broken, the main character is mentally ill, as a kind of a theme in later books, seeing a robot therapist, you can make anything good, fictional robot therapist, ideological objection, therapy is probably a mistake, talking about your problems in a structured environment, insane, hangups about making mistakes, is that true?, double negative, get confused, the whole point is it not?, especially with kids, very impressionable, most people don’t understand how impressionable people are, did it have the effect that was intended, even knowing that you’re being manipulated, offered her food, more dangerous than teaching or parenting, the thing that they know is true, school is prison, the reason that people become teachers, fall into it, a pretty good job, the school district you’re in, being a prison guard is a good job too, painful for the children and the teachers, catbird seat, you’re not going to get fired, teachers can do harm, many students only one teacher, teachers can single out a kid and fuck em up, parents can fuck their kids up for sure, indulging them, get any toy they wanted, how can anyone have this much money, casual with their toys, if every thing goes easy, if every thing goes hard, lift em up when they fell down, say: you’ll live, go superreligious, to fill them full of hangups, you have to come to terms with everything, hell was the scariest idea, let’s take this kid who is acting like a child and get them professional help, you need professional help, a way of saying I’m better than you, there’s something wrong with you, an old man who lives in the basement, big long fingernails and he smells bad, I can’t handle you, I’m going to outsource this to a professional, a master’s degree, how important it is to be thinking about what the kid is thinking about, a handle on their vocab level, a handle on their brain, cloistered, sent to school and sent to after school, we can have a really negative influence, you’ve been wetting their bed, a problem of a being a baby and something go wrong in your life, dangerous, it’s like knives, children are vulnerable to institutions, parents deferring their authority to experts, that living thing came out of my body, especially moms, it’s really really hard, in a random sampling, there are great people in the world, raising both hands, how much of a responsibility it is and all the things that can go wrong, takes your freedom away, spinabifida, drown the kid, a huge mistake, structured talk therapy for adults, talking about your problems, get past or through or around, wallowing, some people make their living, the effect in school, school counselors, what did they do?, becoming more confident, understanding how the world works, knowing who you are, most people don’t know who they are, model, a mentor, a lot of the time the best thing to do is to get outta there, the solution (often) is to not be there, traumas that we experience, that shouldn’t be what you think about all day, get out in the field and fix a boat, people who can help you, just like in the medical industry, milk customers, what do you think?, a number of very bad therapists, this video by Louis Rossmann, very religious Christian woman, buy a lot of scented candles, older woman nearing retirement, underconsidered psychological approach, biofeedback, behavioral therapy, literally experimenting on you, hate to opine, a little senile seeming, skeptical about the DSM, the big book, for the benefit of insurance companies, the laws, their theory of human brains, how things will be punished, constantly evolving, our theory should get better and better, a coding manual for insurance purposes, obsessed with death, as long as six months, these people are not regulated by an ethical code that makes exposure of unethical behavior public, very sketchy, old boss went to prison for sketchy behavior, defrauding medicare and medicaid, measuring, an outside check, an adult who is thinking I will submit to this system in the hopes it will help me, I yell a lot, regulating people’s behavior medically, the dismal science, at least they make predictions, criminologists and sociologists, an ongoing feud with psychology, care about methods, is it an art?, not all artists are equally good, Foundation, a fun idea, Paul Krugman, you’re just hearing about science fiction, predicting technologies, futurism and futurology, a specific Italian movement, Bryan Alexander, going out of business, massive endowments, declining to enter, full of administration, it can be both, it is really bad, do you value yourself more than a broken Macbook, a little autistic, he reads the comments, he responds prophylacticly and after the fact, went to therapy, trying to find a good therapist, online therapy companies, not everybody is the same, there are good therapists, active in looking for them, is there a good doctor, a serious problem, as a child you have no instruments, my mom is sending me to therapy, whisper networks, an adult who knows something, adults that know stuff?, people managing to float by in life, very skeptical of doctors and politicians and everything, Scanners Live In Vain [by Cordwainer Smith], Day Million, Paget’s hierarchy of needs?, Ted Sturgeon, Pruzy’s Pot, a living toilet, Microcosmic God, Gateway, The Voices Of Heaven, a great book for Will, gigantic caterpillar like beasts, he’s good, Kornbluth has a sharper edge, more biting, The Advent On Channel 12, about Disney under another name, basically Winnie The Pooh, feels very New Wave, a little early for the New Wave, prefigured before it happened, where Scanners Live In Vain, The Other End Of Time, the beloved leaders, are these replicas capable of reason?, characterized it differently, seems like a cool guy, Tunnel Under The World, Heechee is so overrated, what it must be, a lot of hype?, preorders are love, look what happens in this story, characters in folktales don’t say I love you, they give each other food, how mother bird feeds its child, I have something in this bag do you want it, I made you like me more, many bad teachers do all the time with candy, a zap, behavior cognitive therapy, you can trick people or manipulate people with praise or candy, the thing that was important was food, everything that’s in there for a reason, a story Connor wrote, finds a dead woman in the bog, she’s beautiful, parents in his head, why are there two parents rather than one?, for a reason, why does Tarzan have only one child?, if it is not for a reason that’s bad, The Brady Bunch‘s premise, evil Nazi scientist, Flesh Eaters (1964), Gilligan’s Island with a Nazi, there’s good thing in it, the dialogue works, that part of the script was well written, so good as it is, a budget for five actors and no budget for a set, a beach, an airplane for one day and five actors, solving problems, applies equally well to essays, passionate about good writing (not chat GPT), as a tool for helping students get through school, it’s humourous, it’s also evil, the corporations are there to maximize profits, extracting value from children from a system they’re unwilling to reform, art stuff is even more insidious, Jonathan did a poll about a robot narrator, publicity, trying to move books, controversy sells books, Chuck Tingle, are they meant to be read?, that fact that Chuck Tingle is a name I know, really stupid, just designed to get attention and publicity, doing life wrong, just talk to Will, we like to talk, spicy takes, he’s got a game going, fears disagreement, verboten!, zees vords!, need Cora here, sounds a lot scarier than it is, not in massive discord on it either, very extreme, tweet dream about weapons, right on, even if it is a dream, taking the discourse to a reality, it’s a show for them, gamestreaming debate bro, Destiny being called a gusano, talking about Mao, subconscious refers to the state as a million dudes with guns, a body of armed men that holds itself about society, proud of ability to record, they have to be done in the first moments, barely awake, a flow state, you can’t record everything, difficult to record, a textual expression of a virtual experience, your roof was domed, decorated not just with Star Trek curtains, Simpsons curtains, tacky admirable Star Trek curtains, not the biggest Enterprise stan, Deep Space Nine, not enough to speak about it intelligently, Enterprise’s entire run, the copyright system, servers full of movies, getting paid still, make infinite copies, mostly laser guns, phaser fights is not the point, a good Star Trek show almost never needs its phaser, those are the worst episodes, the ship has guns on it, very specifically not the point, a more martial show, it becomes a serial show, what it does is excellent, more consistently good, start with a good one, of all the pilot’s that the best first episode of any Star Trek, Encounter At Farpoint is garbage, captain beep, Spock goes haam (hard as a motherfucker), speaking not as a gen xer, Millennial Hunter (2023), his car is murdered by a millennial, kill all millennials, she’s a genXer, a daughter who is a zoomer, working for a big online website, something AF, almost great, this is amusing, meta genre?, clever, Chazz AF, give our listener a break?, a question about H.P. Lovecraft, listeners still listening, popularity waned during the cold war?, Bobby Derie, how old is he?, balding, people in their thirties can’t be balding, solidly a boomer, very useful information, google NGram, broke the cold war up into different eras, levels of exposure, Arkham House, really gets rolling in the 80s, the game, but also the movies, with the rise of Robert E. Howard in comics, Savage Sword Of Conan, reviews of books that are related, H.P. Lovecraft ripoffs, replicated for many other people of contemporaneous period, after life as a skinsuit magazine, a 70s startup, a current skinsuit, disconnected, the Ligotti period in the 80s, a paperback for three issues, a long weird history, there was movies in the 60s, a band called H.P. Lovecraft, what could he think about any of this stuff?, amateur press association, dedicated HAMF, hard as a motherfucker when it came to art, that doesn’t compromise, this is a story about art, sculptors and painters and musicians, even in the comedy ones, his focus is on art, that is unusual, Robert W. Chambers, models and painting, what it means to be original, his amateur press career, not well written, Sonia Green doesn’t have the gift of prose, the story as it is, biographical detail, why stories exist as they do, an old school thing, doesn’t drill down on Lovecraft, the reason she’s going to marry him, she believes like he does that amateur journalism is a good unto itself, I’m gonna fix him, making him able to do art, like believing in blogging and podcasting, download distributed without interference, steal wreck and exploit, Podcast Addict, Downcast, not married to it, the Fairphone, fair as in just, try not to use child slaves, operating on Linux, Framework (laptops), repairable, fixable, upgradable, old piece of tech, the Apple tax, into the playground, all the competitors, vertical and horizontal integrated, the ultimate Apple product will be you in a white sphere that has no buttons and no exits, the Apple car, Apple TV, Homepod, overpriced, google goggle, $2300?, really expensive, make your laptop in your face, artificial reality, just buy a monitor and don’t wear a mask on your head, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 wasn’t cynical enough, see you on twitter.

The Mad Planet by Murray Leinster, Argosy, June 12, 1920

THE MAD PLANET - Virgil Finlay

THE MAD PLANET - Virgil Finlay

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #792 – READALONG: The Weirwoods by Thomas Burnett Swann

The SFFaudio Podcast #792 – Jesse, Will Emmons, Cora Buhlert, Jonathan Weichsel, and Alex [Cirsova] talk about The Weirwoods by Thomas Burnett Swann

Talked about on today’s show:
1965, 1967, DAW book?, ACE, Alex was a big fan, how come I never heard of him?, the audiobook existed, nobody had pirated it, special work, a list, why this particular one, the old Ace paperback, The Minotaur trilogy, most well know, Cry Silverbells, The Forest Forever, The Day Of The Minotaur, fun fantasy, a particular kink, good narrator, he was okay, the female voices, a female narrator, feminine language, same takeway, chapters 1 – 4 are perfect literature, seducing, the rest of the book 5 – whatever are imperfect, the flaw is in the plotting, go from one place to another, why does Arnth return to the town, Swann knows this, no real reason, Tannaquil, no motivation, well I escaped that net, a slave uprising, the weirones, a little more careful plotting, the language, the imagery, the themes, the worldbuilding, really magical, the naivete, that it had a plot, the kidnapping, enslavement, a sex fantasy, even the ones that are knowing we’re naive, erotic artwork, Pompeii, even cuter, traveling exhibitions, fauns and satyrs, Herculaneum, a classicist, a student of classic period, vast encyclopedic knowledge of antiquity, what if all of the myths from antiquity were literally true, a Dunsanian mold, why are they heartless?, they’re fairy creatures, they’re not human, they’re not gods, centaurs have two hearts, mythology, celtic mythology, the Christian god, god was getting tired late on the 5th day, fully antiquity, the meta-narrative across all of his books, the retreat of fey up until Christianity, The Gods Abide, early Christian Rome, because of the spread of the Christian faith, compatible with some other set of beliefs he had, ancient Etruria, UNESCO World Heritage protected, narrow to the exact year, the Rape of the Sabine, having happened, we can do it though, set in our world, panisci, the corn sprites, what about the fossil record, does that mean they don’t have bones, a weird kind of fantasy, set in our world, Robert E. Howard, urban fantasy novels, vampires or werewolfs, Doggerland, why am I even focused on this?, let’s talk about you having no heart, fossils, approaching this with hard SF bone, her heart starts beating, mostly what this book is is sex fantasy for everybody, chill and relaxed, until everybody gets killed, that’s a sex fantasy too, a Marxist with 7 cats, orgy of revolutionary violence lead by cats, making a claim about the past reality, everything we know about the ancients is true, science fiction brain, when they die out how do they die out, stopping having children, what do they do with their dead?, sarcophagi, buried archaeological things, temples underneath the earth, speaking of buried, our bear barely gets to do anything, Ursus, the eye-patched bear, he got a girlfriend in the end, dancing or trained bears, Eastern Europe, animal cruelty, the romance, that seduction scene, one of the most amazing things I’ve ever read, the central core idea of the book, French erotica movies, Emmanuelle (1974), have big passions, not remotely artistic, Sylvia Kristel, softcore erotica, late night tv, non-erotic movies, airplane accident movies, the decline or death of the fey, the macroscale, the meta-narrative, their encounter with humanity, tragic, leads to a little bit less magic, fey has to retreat, the resentment of the fey, kill all the fauns and centaurs, the sprite sorceress, costs her her life, a meaningful connection, temporary and passing, pure sensuality, feeling pretty bad, not that sympathetic, a violent guy, kills all these people, you only hate him because you didn’t know what he was or refuse to see it, throws himself on the axe, his own hands that do him in, homosexual themes in these books, a Biblical one, how are the mighty fallen, rubbing the wine off, sweet musician, just friendship, breaks him, fey people, pretty interesting, that Jesse is obsessed with, she becomes the thing she says she will never become, becomes obsessed with him, pure and innocent person with a real love and passion for her that she’s met, is this like a joke?, the heart of the book, our main character is not having sex with women because they’ll trap you, can’t bear his child, not the right class, playing with some interesting stuff, chronic white girl syndrome, my compassion will be reciprocated, magnanimous gesture for someone who is low class, these people resent her, she didn’t want him to be her slave, she wants to help free him, she’s shocked by the notion, once he’s murdered and their chains are off, give it multiple readings, a little wolf-puppy, grows into a wolf and eats the family, wicked and evil and heartless, she’s a spoiled rich girl, she’s so great, they rise up and kill her, the wicked slaves, the book intentionally gives these things the double meaning, the book intentionally doesn’t pick sides in these sociological debates, the sensuality, the food, the warmth, the cold, the bodily feelings, drinking the wine, the immediate attention to sensuality, Dunsany is ironic, cutesy, there’s no bent toward sexuality in Dunsany, Clark Ashton Smith, a celebration of life, and the joys of living, the rustic, the pastoral, the pastoral vs. the urban, an attention to the body, people’s skin like an otter’s skin, Sutrium is small, taste, texture, smell, every meal, the coziness of somebody in your sleeping bag, hammocks, can I sleep in your hammock, do we have to sleep?, assume this is throughout all of Swann, a particular fetish, really cute, his biggest influence is A.A. Milne, Winnie The Pooh, tea and honeycakes, 100 Acre Woods, everybody is fucking everybody else, Piglet and the sad donkey are getting it on, Kanga’s got a baby, Hobbiton, look there’s an elf Mr. Frodo, nobody in Middle Earth fucks anybody else, there’s no female hobbits, reproduction, incredibly focused on the sensual, visit Italy, a book of the mid-60s, early 20th century, Science Fantasy, Donald A. Wollheim, David and Jonathan having a relationship, a very specific kink, fits as fantasy, a writer writing what he’s interested in, literary, the magazines that would take him, fashion for retelling Greco-Roman mythology, out of time, read another one of these, barely a plot, stuff happening, sensuality and spending time with a bunch of fey in the forest, unique, doing something off in his own world, if you work on the internet, people who are passionate about Swann, producing these audibooks, doing reprints, the reviews online are hostile, 2 stars on audible, an audience mismatch, an American thing, very prude Americans, people just don’t understand the breadth of fantasy, sword & sorcery, a Tolkien clone, cosy sensuous fantasy set in antiquity, the sex element, depicting sexuality is wrong, this is the focus, tastefully hand, it’s beautiful, he really digs it, cottagecore, big push, fake cover, “everyone is gay for minotaurs and now you are too”, hampered, always 10 years ago, died way to soon, dying early is not great for being remembered, posthumously published, a body of work, the last handful of books aren’t as strong, a professor of English at the University of Florida, A Spell For Chameleon by Piers Anthony, a hero’s journey type plot, the late 70s, the good one, English language books, import book shop, Poul Anderson, set on actual Earth?, borders Florida, a magical border wall, exiled from the world, exiled to Florida, very cute, probably a good thing, Galactic Star, 55 years late, good that he won, a Hugo or Nebula nomination, the letter pages, because they don’t fit anywhere else, harmed, Good Show Sir, dunking on the covers, local independent bookshop, that book on that one cover, George Barr, Mark liked him so much, a brief biography, 1928, Korean War, Duke, Florida Atlantic University, literary scholarship, poetry, traveled extensively, WWI poet, The Not-World, DAW 1975, the last hideout, 2 centuries ago, the lore of the little folk, master of fantasy, one of his finest and most piquant, Thomas Chatterton, a balloon fight, Arachnae, spiderwoman, transposed to England the same sort of idea, against series, not a true series, some of the same characters, reverse chronological order, reconcile the differences, Cry Silver Bells, The Gods Abide, the final retreat of fey, The Green Phoenix, The Dolphin And The Deep, mythic Greek antiquity retelling of the Little Mermaid, will investigate his public domain status, mass market paperback, Wildeside, John Betancourt, a mix of public domain and regular, getting a narrator, never heard of him, writing really interesting books, why not, booking into the new year, Queens Walk In Dusk, the collected, a romantic type relationship, German fantasy author, Michael Ende, relationship with a minotaur, way too adult, Wonder And Whimsy: The Fantastic Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market, consequences, fucking a centauress, gender, consequences for sex, even more dire, reliable contraceptive, sensuous, a problem for human females, kinda weird that he chose, paniscii, not the product of dudes running around the forest having sex with animals, the most reasonable impersonation, dudes are having sex with goats, minotaurs, half human half animals, we are our own separate creation, fey, transposing, Greco-Roman mythology, tweeting about how Swann treats the morality of the fey, touch on it, an alien morality unto themselves, what humans could necessarily understand, spitefulness, chaotic, unpredictable, morality, moral code, when humans have sex, they just do it, a right interpretation, tapping into something, that’s really cool, one of the two main influences, A Most Exquisite Specimen by J. Manfred Weichsel, Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, etymologist capturing butterflies, human butterflies played by ballerina showgirls, take the pin out, little dance number, a different plot, August [2023], Fall or Summer issue, see you in cyberspace, a pretty good show out of this good book, Mildred Klingerman, a young woman and a minotaur, Shirley Jackson, modern trad wife, Galactic Suburbia writers, domestic stories, Zenna Henderson, post-war domesticity, Letters For Laura, 6 pages, using euphemisms and language, copyright renewed, unlikely to happen, sure why not, if this show gets taken down, delete you from reality, full speed ahead damn the torpedoes, one of those, Dear Mom, A Cupful Of Space, Ballantine books, time travel, Love, Laura, my breasts are displayed in the style of ancient Crete, not who but what?, that’s the trouble with books, ancient Crete, so the minotaur wouldn’t eat her, they’re not as prude as people think they were, super-mainstream, visual, quite prudish, Clingerman stories, women’s magazines, now they’re both hungover, sleeping it off, working on his stuff in the garage, birdwatching, a dream that an alien is birdwatching her, exposing her lady parts, bye bye hangover, not super-prudish, stories for women, stories for men, Kay Tarrant, kinda prudish, there for fifty years, excised the erotic stuff, children read the magazine, prude, Slow Season by Robert Sheckley, Clark Ashton Smith, The Prize Of Peril, Das Millionenspiel (1970), better if you are German, such a different attitude towards sex, 1961 vs. 1965, double language, if you’ve seen those pictures there’s no top, with English subtitles, famous German comedian, The Running Man by Richard Bachman, Richard Dawson, the problem is he’s young, Family Feud, 1 year old in 1987, a unique style, human hunting, Suzanne Collins, Battle Royale (2000), PUBG, violence, hangups about violence, Evil Dead (1981), a censorious country, voluntary self control, if Jonathan took that job: “good I can censor some films”, juche, very particular to the Korean peninsula, worker’s uprising crushed, relying on other countries, allies turned their back on them, starve for a decade, the craziest stories about North Korea, a crazy story, Yeonmi Park, always lying, had to push the trains, local TV station, engaged in Pyongyang, desperately want to be a normal country, millions of people, Ukraine War, free fire zones, no buildings standing more than two stories tall, they didn’t lose, that’s amazing, they don’t want to win wars, they just want to have them, Grenada, Iraq – Kuwait, Bush War 1, Bush War 2, heating up in Iraq, seems like things are pretty bad, they wouldn’t put you in charge, Jonathan is the great unifier, a radical centrist, in a podcasting zone right now, sleeping 16 hours a day, contribute around the house, a lot of comics, mediocre comics, Mœbius, Jean Giraud, The World of Edena, have to eat natural foods, we should go to that planet, get yourself very dirty and roll around in it, dangerous in Canada, Quebec is very insular, engagement outside of Quebec, essentially its own country, East Germany, lovely talking to you, Franco-Belgian-Dutch[-Flemish] comics, a thank you, great bookstore employees, something expensive, one day she’s going to grow up and have money, Eurocon in Rotterdam, Confessions Of An English Opium Eater, how many languages does Cora speak and read?, decent at Dutch, sell me on it, 19th century, most popular youtube video ever, an old book, LibriVox narrations, assigned at universities, the comments are interesting, Martin Geeson is the narrator, serialized in the London Magazine, upset and shocked by it, 1821, long walks, too happy to observe, humorous, interesting, drug literature, glorious imagination, acute speculation, Edgar Allan Poe, Jack Kerouac, Charles Baudelaire, Boston Blackie, barn full of books, The Lone Wolf, radio drama, the early part of next year, Valentine’s Day, go die now, drink some coffee, The Cave Girl, the Lawrence Block, a thin volume, feel better, get better.

The Weirwoods by Thomas Burnett Swann 1977

The Weirwoods by Thomas Burnett Swann ACE

The Weirwoods by Thomas Burnett Swann SCIENCE FANTASY, October 1965

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #791 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Through The Gates Of The Silver Key by H.P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffmann Price

The SFFaudio Podcast #791 – Through The Gates Of The Silver Key by H.P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffmann Price, read by Ben Tucker (for LibriVox). This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (1 hour 29 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Mr Jim Moon, and Jonathan Weichsel

Talked about on today’s show:
Weird Tales, July 1934, a lot of Lovecraft, The City, a nice little poem, kind of a Christmas story, a miracle happens in the winter garden, blooming flowers, holly and hollyberries, a little Christmas image, The Nameless City, one of his terrific stories, The Outsider, so sequelly, all the greatest hits, the pillars in Irem, The Statement Of Randolph Carter, The Festival, The Silver Key, a lot more, Hypnos, spheres of reality out in space, what happened here, hey I love you fiction, favourite Lovecraft story, a long correspondence, Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard, visit him in New Orleans, he had a car, give it a go, play with his ideas, supportive of that, Crypt Of Cthulhu, 6000 words, as he is wont to do, less than 50 words of mine left, keep the core concepts, the facets, the ultimate gates, very theosophical ideas of souls being reincarnated, scattered all through time, ran with them, the missing link between Dreams In The Witch House and The Shadow Out Of Time, everybody in the room in Carter, matrilineal related, a Sackville-Baggins sort of scene, not huge into Lovecraft, stupendous, they’re ok, the plastic and the dream world, weird cosmic, weird juxtaposition, more artificial in the sequel, you know what I love is character, the idea, a book about a guy who remisces too much about his childhood, does dreamwork, The Tomb, super-lonely and isolated, he is wrong, some aspect of him is trying to be another aspect of him and be him, The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward, am I not myself?, Harley Warren always dominated me and I feared him, trying to recapture golden youth, a startraveler and an immortality, is the guide he has a night gaunt?, what night gaunts do, maybe that’s even Carter, gone beyond the ultimate gate, he’s every character in the book, By His Bootstraps or All You Zombies, any females in this book at all?, yithians have no gender, a repeat of the scene with the camera in a different place, come with me, ok, ugly, at the very end, goes in a circle, Farnham’s Freehold, The Door Into Summer, he steals his own car, less time travel, about the frame, does it help the story?, okay but how does this Indian guy know this story, annoyed rather than made curious, disappointed in it, being a teenager, the lore, little glimpses and hints, it’s not a Call Of Cthulhu or a Pickman’s Model, very Dreamlandsy, Dreamlands 2.0, completely cosmic, drawing a lot of these ideas from, Philip K. Dick kind of cosmic encounter, Agatha Christie style denouement, Poirot, like Glass Onion, Randolph Carter behind the mask, mittens?, cheapens the other ones, The Festival, this friendly guy behind the mask, invites you into his house for Christmas, he’s not human, a King In Yellow situation, that’s not as good, mythos, some basic, R’lyeh gets a mention, nods to other stories, super-cosmic mystical context, awesome and terrible, not alien monsters, weird things in robes in cosmic hyperspace, a bit new age, alienation, cozy alienation, everybody is everybody else, a source of real horror stories, the new horror, the next horror, the greater horror, no evil here, the annihilation of ego and self, Ex Oblivione, a mini-version of The Silver Key, it’s great to be non-existent, thrust into a body once again, re-incarnation is the horror, writ large, everybody gets to be a king, more fanboy than it should, Lovecraft’s literary manifesto, a character based on him, we lose that in the sequel, it doesn’t feel like Lovecraft really, he’s made himself the chosen one by being such a prodigious dreamer, other people around the table, dividing the estate and getting the money, a more traditional narrative, The Wonderful Adventures Of Phra The Phoenician, 1890, reincarnation, The Star Rover by Jack London, experiencing life on earth, his own past, nostalgia, other worlds and living on other worlds, The DreamQuest Of Unknown Kadath, going to space, 100,000 years, a rocket ship and cloak yourself, through other dimensions, astral plane and the ethereal plane, Hell is not down it is out, another planet, that’s what this book is, having fun with this, Randolph Carter is his stand-in, Samuel Loveman, bits added, The Unnameable, some milksops complained, The Loved Dead is so funny, mad recluse who was incredibly uptight, he seems like just a regular writer, good at selling stories, his interests are in here as well, loving time, a phrase that only repeats twice, the unknown outer sky, in the context of the story, about self-revelation, losing the amnesia that you had, an astonishing achievement, a lot of repetition, to make it more clear?, saying the same thing twice, a very similar form of repetition, when he went long, saga mode, it doesn’t quite work, less the sum of their parts, the structure of the story gets a bit too loose, a lot of action, not orchestrated, run to the end now, a torrent of images, when Jesse co-writes with somebody, not trying to steal the show, to help someone else, a fan boy, the Lovecraft legacy, Stephen King’s It, told through the mode of Stephen King, collaborations, The Mound, Zealia Bishop, bombarded with all these images, what it would be like to float disembodied through the cosmos, layers of reality, to what effect?, the same effect by having a montage, you don’t actually have to show it, flip between them, he does do this at points, I spent 10,000 years on this planet, pick one idea to develop, oh that’s a story I’ve read, an annotated one, this is a reference to some other story, I love you work, I wrote this thing, oh my dear boy, out of control, writing for me, writing for someone else, they have a hand in it, a failure on Lovecraft’s part, shorter, comic book adaptations, you’re better off sticking to the team, The Nameless City is so solid, it turns into The Silver Key, this is really good, an inherited view, that terrible biography by L. Sprague De Camp, the proper Lovecraft, not right at all, it could be Cthulhu if you want it to be, not a word misplaced, it’s building, where is this going, he’s gonna crawl out of here, at the end how is he even telling this story, some cop comes up in the park in the middle of the night and pokes a bum with a nightstick, sleep it off, fun things in it, cozy, not the Lovecraft that Jesse really really loves, a masterful self-analysis, an adventure with some of the ideas, the math stuff that’s in here, more successful in some ways, Magic Carpet Magazine, Spicy Detective Stories, Spicy Western, published in the 1970s, a renaissance in the 60s and the 1970s, I’ve got some new stuff, The Devil Wives Of Lee Fong, his lovely wives were really serpent demons, 1979, alive til 1988, either in Weird Tales or Oriental Stories, a much more felxible and salability, co-writing, Adolphe De Castro, a sudden scene where it’s actually good, back to the crap writing, since you don’t pay me, fix the punctuation and the grammar, cthulhu monster, competent, with great taste, more to be said, disappointed, don’t read sequels, maybe there’s something great in it, gonna forget it, missing that x-factor, that one is beautiful, true beauty in it, how much nostalgia is poured into it, that aspect, somebody from the past is trying to dominate you, that isn’t in here, Randolph Carter’s back because they don’t want Bag End to be sold, bodiless, using it like a magic wand, a lot in here, you don’t think of Lovecraft this way, such a different portait of the time, the 1920s and the 1880s, Steinbeck, The Grapes Of Wrath, the Dustbowl, makes you look at history different, one of the great benefits of reading Lovecraft, the reality that was his, the racism is what most people latch on to, some of that in them too, where is his power coming from, way more horrific, says the occasional word we don’t like, didn’t hurt anybody, very kindly, [Lovecraft Country] a way to get angry about stuff, this is beautiful picture, how cozy his youth was, for us to time and space travel, Providence, Boston, Randolph Carter was richer, a dilettante who can go on adventures, he had a car, there’s King Carter, Kuranes, to reign as a king, 11 beings from earth, 7 of them humans, half of those guys are carter (if not more), there is a gold piece in here, a cool idea, so filled out and so decorated and so checkboxy, collaborative works that are good, more responsible, just the premise, picked up and ran with it, more out of it, just doesn’t pull everything together, a structural pacing problem, heavy metal, heavy rock, ding ding ding ding ding ding ding, once it gets up to speed, gone to 11, no where else fore the story to go, after the cosmic voyage sequence, an invasive demon, great wizards, getting notes, a precis of the story, feeling it sentence by sentence, the descent, blind and then he see, revelation, all being told in past tense, one guy at the meeting, if you insist on proof I’ll give it, Clark Asthon Smith does this a lot, Sadastor, an incubus makes a succubus have a baby, everybody’s evil, they like evil, a flight of imagination, as a decorous thing, what August Derleth is doing, all connected into one big thing, the easy instinct, the Cthulhu Mythos section of Deities And Demigods, takes the mystery and delight away, take the dreamlike quality and make it plastic, one big pantheon, Abdul Alhazred, the more constrained, who tore Abul Alhazred apart?, the alligator cat bulldog people, it’s symbolic, his yogsothery, happy to contradict himself, built that in as a feature not a bug, the real bad boy was Lin Carter, couldn’t leave a reference alone, dim visions through the window, size, weight, eye colour and phone number, editorial introduction, an utterly amazing novelette, so far transcendence human experiences, titanic!, for sheer imaginative daring, the joint product, rejected originally?, some sort of fight going with Farnsworth Wright, a beef against Lovecraft since the beginning, not been able to produce a magazine, most of them are dross but you have to fill pages, competent but not memorable, everybody has their thing, if he could just bring himself to move to Chicago, editing a magazine of weird fiction, no, can’t do it, editing a magazine, the problem is he’s kind of broken, broken is a way that is beautiful, able to do some great work even when he has nothing to say, seeing greatness in other people’s writing, other than taking Lovecraft, in the early issues of Weird Tales, occasional gems from unknowns, fanboys and girls of Lovecraft, Seabury Quinn on the cover?, not commercial at all, wary of taking on the role of editor, rejecting stories by people he liked, not the same guy, he’s so fuckin weird guys, he can’t do some things, his first fictions to weird tales, take em or leave em, these are pieces of art, live on beans rather than compromise his artistic vision, the City Of Singing Flame, not a real sequel, a semi-sequel, Jungle Jitters, the Action Girls, a movie within the world of the book, rethinking a lot, this scene goes here, tedious busy work, that first revision is where the magic happens, Mr Jim Moon as a podcaster, more than the regular, the monster movies, 17 weeks homework, that one sounds great, wish there was a checklist, audio of Jim Moon stories into the feed, dabbled with writing, took stock, about 20 now, a new ghost story for Christmas, releasing them on your podcast, no spelling for these things, pioneering a lot of stuff, podcasts that come and go, the best of the 2020s, doing your own thing, an interesting phenomenon, don’t know what everyone else is doing, research, writing the music, coding and design work, coding and designing for your own podcast, chasing trends, a true crime podcast, BBC is producing another Lovecraft story that’s not Lovecraft at all, comedians get their shows announce their dates and interview each other, releasing your fiction through your podcasts, 3 shows released today, the audio advent calendar, The Signalman, a Commentary Club episode, most of December off, a lot of catch-up to do, transcribe podcasts, so much work already done, ghost stories, general weird fiction, a novel in 31 parts, huge narrative chunks, a cozy zombie story, Beating The Bounds, a Christmas sequel, Cirsova magazine, an anthology called Mighty Suns Of Hercules, write a few short stories, magazine credits, a fun way to get your stories out, Anvil Magazine, it feels good to get published in a good magazine, doing it very differently, Hypnobobs, 15 years now, scrolling back 17 years on a weekly show, The Adventures Of F. Bolger, the hobbit who stays behind, waves goodbye to the other hobbits, he goes shopping sees farmer maggot, gets some pipe weed, runs into some ringwraiths, they have a smoke, don’t know nothing about Mr. Frodo, huddling like it’s COVID, the other Hobbits come back and completely ignore him, Pippin and Merry are a foot taller each, a cozy story, a cozy fantasy, Thomas Burnett Swann, centaurs, fauns, nymphs, panisci, satyrs, and they all have sex, a professor in Florida, studied ancient stuff, most of his books were not published until the last few years of his life, 1967, archive.org, published in the U.K., compared to J.R.R. Tolkien, a connection there, too risque for swan, Henry Treece, The Viking Trilogy, viking kid joins crew of vikings to viking, a quasi-fantasist, The Green Man, 1968, sword and sorcery and savagery in King Arthur’s time, Piers Anthony, how can I make this popular?, a good amount of sex, cuter, funnier, a classical feel, more conventional, too weird for a lot of people, weirded out, uptight, A Spell For Chameleon, bawdy humour, grotesquery, ribald jokes, a coming of age story, you say people…, mythological creatures, everybody has a magic power, gonna be banished, exiled from the land, a classical setup for a myth, Joseph Campbell, The Weirwoods, laughed out loud many many times, there’s no way to read this without thinking its supposed to be funny, pure treasure, very subtle, an irony there, almost all Eddy, other people are allowed to write terrific stories too, Pity Me! by Bertha Russell, sex with the dead bodies, a Spanish lady had died, get the goop in, she fell on me and she was alive, I finished the job for you, let me tell you about how depraved I am, a tombstone for his writing desk, nothing funnier, got Weird Tales in trouble, pulled from the newsstands, Eleonora, The Canal, Everil Worrell, angry a long time ago, what Evan said, the tightness, more free flowing, it must exist, a PDF of The Green Man, unjustly forgotten, a lot of historical fiction, considered juvenile, caveman boy story, C.S. Lewis gets all the rest, no champion, the estate is defunct, get neglected, it’s not fair, treasure that’s hidden, in a limbo, we need more Henry Treeces, more Swanns, you do need a champion, Edgar Rice Burroughs has Moorcock, Nevil Shute doesn’t need a champion like Henry Treece does, little dog for a last walk, big snow, a good book, had a lot of fun with that one too, guy goes for a hike in California, discovers a weird spot, ends up in another dimension, a moth to the flame thing, more coffee and more sandwiches, discovering a whole other moth people and aliens, throwing themselves into the fire, The Bright Illusion by C.L. Moore, Logan’s Run, more Howard than any of them, that kind of fantasy, Lord Dunsany, so weird cosmic and trippy, an emotional core, goes to that cursed thread, Cultural Critic, 25 books that should be on every school curriculum but isn’t, The Gulag Archipelago, I think I can dismiss this list, 75 hours long, twitter accounts fishing for attention, not making serious suggestions, exercise account, makes fun of these things, getting his account banned, a way to have fun, 25 more books, is this a list this person has read?, Think And Grow Rich, Guns, Germs And Steel, a list of books, how to do 17 crunches, post a wrong answer to get a right answer, playing for engagement, why would you retweet that Jesse?, part of conversation we’re already having, this isn’t nonsense, more like hyperbole, every school child should read the history of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, a really good way to send links, things to scan, people to be on a podcast, Alex P., interesting tweets, manga mindset, good to be in touch, a cynicism that isn’t depressing, skepticism, Robert Ingersoll, that’ll make you cynical, a fellow who you can really see is not lying, Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary, Ingersoll quotes, a Christmas Sermon, totally depraved, tormented in eternal fire, against organized religion, as an adult, how to deal with bad ideas, you literally have to learn that, why kids learn to lie, just like the sun being in the sky, child abuse, harmful and hurtful, when people don’t have full access to the facts, learn intellectual self-defense, people who are miserable, things imposed on them that they have no defense against, how gender affects climate and climate affects gender, everybody’s good at the table, falsities, Sylvester Stallone is frozen, goes into the future, Demolition Man (1993), people don’t know how to deal with violence, they predicted, the plot is stupid but the world is quite interesting, form a cult and takeover the world, create a lot of weird beleifs that make absolutely no sense, cut people off from everyone else, very insular, dietary restrictions on them, bottom up, these ideas come from the internet, from the media, magazines and articles and tv shows and movies, I’m gonna be a vegan, comes out of vegetarianism, being closer to god, deprecating the body, animals are nice and cute, why should we eat them, you’re a meat eating animal, how do you reconcile this?, they might not know it comes from an animal, nobody says, meat that I slaughter myself, a slaughter house is really depressing environment to work-in, scream and die, somebody will lose a finger, that’s not the end of the story, just one thin that’s happening.

Through The Gates Of The Silver Key by H.P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffman Price

Posted by Jesse Willis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Radium Pool by Ed Earl Repp

The Radium Pool by Ed Earl Repp

The Radium Pool by Ed Earl Repp

The Radium Pool by Ed Earl Repp

The Radium Pool by Ed Earl Repp

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #775 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: No-Man’s Land by John Buchan

The SFFaudio Podcast #775 – No-Man’s Land by John Buchan, read by Connor Kaye of The Eldritch Archives. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the book (2 hours, 13 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Will Emmons, Connor Kaye, and Jonathan Weichsel

Talked about on today’s show:
a much delayed show, war torn Europe, elves living in a cave, came back traumatized, your eulogy, trolls, he went to Poland, Germany, slipped in to Ukraine did some fighting, Connor’s life is getting very meta, plaid, Scotsman wear plaid, the Scottish weave, granite, in geology class, amazed Australian, accents, two years ago, listen back, damn it I missed that, Munaroar, why in Scotland they’re all speaking Gaelic, spoke Scot, national version, Welsh, part of France, basques, Celts in Turkey, dialects, talking to the caveman, starts makin sense, a Robert E. Howard version of this story, The Little People, a theory of where this story came from, a sphere of influence, trace back to Arthur Machen, Coven 13, the official Del Rey text, essentially this story without the outer narrator, a brother and a sister, the sister gets kidnapped, she’s a flapper, she can tell her sorority sisters, the brother goes nuts, told in 15 minutes, a Pict, a connection there, similar themes, an ancient forgotten race living in the British isles, The Shining Pyramid, hidden in the hills, they abduct people for their own purposes, degenerated, cro magnon man, rolling around in that gravy, flint arrowheads and cudgels, the most influential, you would know [if you’d read Machen], kinda like Lovecraft but Welsh, detective stories, an archaeologist on the trail, prehistoric people, some guys who find some prehistoric relics, 1895, five years before, abduct a woman, The Novel Of The Black Seal, The Red Hand, 1899, knowledge of those stories?, inspiration there, Howard read Machen, Out Of The Earth, a 21 minute story, Mr Jim Moon, WWI, Machen’s reputation today, The Bowmen, Robert W. Chambers, a romance novelist, his weird fiction, before he became a smash sensation with The Thirty-Nine Steps, still in university, the Governor General of Canada, ceremonial headdress, if mentioned at all, very fun, badly written, weird fiction, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Weird Tales, the comparison to the Robert E. Howard, dwelling and a great swoon, this was lifechanging, changeling, one of the shepherds, I’m nuts, what ya readin’, sis?, tearin his shirt off, boxes a pict, the ghost of an ancient druid shows up, great power, The Grove Of Ashtaroth, The Wind Through The Portico, folk horror-ish, weird came later, interesting precursors, The Black Cat, no it isn’t, The Thrill Book, H.P. Lovecraft, “survival”, The Call Of Cthulhu, [Algernon Blackwood], the Munsey Magazines, “different stories”, “off-trail”, skinsuit, buy the license, generic stories of today, “The Unique Magazine”, a collection of stories that were weird, a jumble of junk, the good writers, Robert E. Howard, Lovecraft, the magazine that Edgar Allan Poe would publish in, adventure stories, a feature, not a regular western, somehow different, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Black Mask, crime stories rather than mysteries, to mean off the normal trail for that particular magazine, The Mystery Of Sylmare, filler material, the idea is so good, a weird fiction story, vampire fiction, the reproduction of trees using humans as fertilizer, not a normal werewolf story, there’s a vampire story in Sherlock Holmes, The Hound Of The Baskervilles, at least very strongly hinted, opposite of the original Scooby-Doo gothic, what is the author going for, very meditative, sells all his pict books, he goes back, he has to overcome that, a usual horror story, body horror, infected with a parasite, The Troop [by Craig Davidson], how do we really know, a sciency thing, carrying some ivermectin around, stuck on an island, based in history somewhat, the Picts, Julius Caesar, i’m calling a pro-vince, Engullund, there’s some druid’s yo, fucks off for 2,000 years, then the Germans say: we’re Germans!, Picti, the picture people, tattoos, woad, Braveheart (1994), going all pict, painting themselves blue, no longer distinct, likely what really happened, hid underground for 2,000, Bone Tomahawk (2015), beggar, first class ticket, low and stinky fellow, the furnaces going, an interesting image, an oriental stories story but set in Britain, Machen does this for Wales, turning foreign lands, exotic places, souks and hareems, you go underground, you find a lost world, industry, hidden in the mountains under thousands of pounds of rubble, a completely different interpretation, late romantic period, the romantic authors, going back to nature, something terrifying, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, kissed by an elf, Lamia by John Keats, disconnected from nature, walking, hiking, fishing, the natural world, modern encroaching on a natural space, learning pulls him both directions, learned university types, go out for a walk, a cave, a civilization, these degenerate, swoon, wight (vs. knight), wench, and no birds sing, so haggard and so woe begone, a faery’s child, pacing steed, fragrant zone, sweet moan, relish sweet, honey wild, manna dew, her elfin grot, so kissed to sleep, the latest dream I ever dreamed, death pale, horrid warning gaped wide, this is why I sojourn here, picked up a lot, reverses it, a grubby male, she’s an elf/nymph, connecting it to brownies, an elf sort of creature that does household tasks, boggles and boggarts, integrate folklore into science, by discovering the truth about what the folklore was connected to, moral horror, abducting women every twenty years, human sacrifice, recounting their history for him, the fabled ale, gold this and gold that, this was a rich land, these people are the dispossessed, the lack of physical description, the lore, 10,000 words of rich lore, a received document, he’s burned a lot of his papers, reconstructed for us by the editor, Blackwood’s Magazine, read backwards to find more stuff like you like, some of the differences in the ending, later versions, the original 1899, a huge insert, polite scorn, refused by the editor, primitive peoples of the north, unanimously rejected, another little insert at the end, his obituary, you can go and dig up and find this story is actually true, it is not for me to decide, an untrodden desert, The Shadow Out Of Time, Yithian civilization, the moors, at the time of Caesar Scotland was covered in trees, deforested the entire island, giving up on then hillbillies of Scotland, you want me to go to the police?, an insane asylum, a criticism of the way Scotland is treated, if you take London out of Britain England is very poor, the GDP has been fucked, interestingly political, lorded and put in charge of Canada, very smart, diplomatic, the call to action, the names of chapters were bizarrely changed, The Darkness Under The Earth, jumbled up, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, The Troubles Of A Conscience, The Watcher By The Threshold, go back to the earliest source, the abridged version, the most accurate, the good news about FFM, art for this story, where Heart Of Darkness was first serialized, from the period of Poe forwards, a story or essay, quasi-ghost stories, a story of colonialism with an overlay, journey into the underworld, ghost stories, in Victorian times, an examination of reality with a suspicious chip on its shoulder, the footnote in FFM is the same, written by the editor of the last chapter, editing stories for space, reprinted, fixed columns, A Princess Of Mars, reinserted, the first book publication, ended very suddenly, I jumped in my horse and rode off, in retrospect, most of it’s in there, looking at the first book publication, creative control, the author’s revision, Poe recycles, fill two pages, this illustration we have licensed, fiddling, improve, wight to knight, people like the idea of knights on horseback vs. guy, it wasn’t supposed to be set in the middle ages, walks, ride, the romantics are out romanticizing nature as it is, A Predicament, lifting from the European tradition, the magazine has an editor, Galaxy magazine, Horace Gold, the author’s version, which version to do, the expanded version, the art, the magazine that attracts you, Margaret St. Clair, Ray Bradbury, reprints from Munsey’s magazines, Virgil Finlay art, the covers for Skull-Face, Fantastic Novels, artists almost never renewed, lucky for us, a shame for his estate, fuck his estate, keep changing their company name, Heroic Signatures, hello, Elon, people ask for them, by his auntie or his cousin, mostly locked down by legal threats, Sword Woman, Black Agnes stories, trademark, legal bullying, fucked by Justin [Trudeau], Mistress Of Death, Blades Against France, international treaties, if you are interested, Wikisource, Oriental Stories, Magic Carpet, Weird Tales, crusader story, Clark Ashton Smith, let’s talk about No-Man’s Land, exoticising the familiar, the rednecks, the hicks, a heartland hinterland thing, North·West Romances, RCMP guys arresting minors and indians, prospectors, Jack London exploitation, a western genre, could’ve been a bear, if it was a bear it wouldn’t be weird fiction, the indians are effected by the white people showing up, the white man is the burden, indoctrinated into the white man’s beliefs, a weird inversion, most people don’t live in the north, Scotland isn’t that big, British Columbia is way bigger than England, the inability to talk to regular people, back from Iraq, shell-shocked, exoticising the heather, a fisherman, social gossip with the ladies, who his target audience is, Scottish dialect, phonetically, strong brogue, started off lighter, the ostler, hostel, The Inn by Guy De Maupassant, The Shining by Stephen King, hostler, the local who takes care of your horse, as all Australians and every New Zealander has, cheap flophouse, a source for local lore, the locals can’t understand me, slow down, boy, guy joins the police, [Far Below by Robert Barbour Johnson] a CHUD story, we have to keep their numbers down, a slow genocide over decades, you can’t talk about it with the regular people because they won’t understand, to expand the frontier, Antarctica, underground, Mars, defamiliarize yourself, The Matrix (1999), literally underground, the world behind the world, the shepherd and his sister, the devil, only in the darkness, they poke holes in my sheet, they leave arrowheads on a stone nearby, not a very scary story, the creeps, pricking the hole in the neck of sheep, they smoke their meat, gaining sustenance the strange way, living on the moors, if you don’t have a fire, on the train back, a Hawthorne story, smelters, 700 episodes, while academia is arguing, it’s your doctor, stage five cancer, reevaluate, will prep, romance pulp, the predicament that Graves has, the editor steps in, insert character, the other scene, the pricking of the throats, weird straw, a reed, what instrument is used, they’re chupacabras, swimming across the lake, when you seee the art in FFM, a scary interpretation, and he can hear the arrows, in true darkness, disorienting and upsetting, an almost alien landscape, the scarts, nick of the threshes, primordial beings, studying up on his whole life, oh shit, I’m in real danger, when he gets into the lake, they can’t swim, if he can just get ahead of them, three very delicious cups of coffee, hunting him through the night, read it the second time, long strong arms that can grab you, a terrifying thought to have, completely different style of horror, some gothic, The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis, a long labourius book, Jesse will find out in 7 months, a very Victorian idea, a 20th century idea, searching for the truth, shut their ears, shut their eyes, this is ridiculous, slightly outside the box, politics is in the academic world, all the shitty scientists, people on the periphery, bunch of rich dudes, Marie Curie and her husband, shit that’s really bad for them, it’s amazing finding these things out, a new element inside a puddle of black liquid, regularized, taught in schools, academics of science, [Ben] Franklin is doing science, who gets the credit, crazy time travel idea, the idea of time travel, la la la la la, so dangerous, you’ve got to be careful talking about that, the whole academic thing (they’re very close-minded), a quack, his career thus broken short, the recondite and the quack, the end of the obituary, terrified to be considered quacks, right now they’re talking about UFOs in congress, the 1940s, saying the same thing openly, rejecting his ideas, very dogmatic, the guy who has the facts and experiences vs. the regular ordinary people, a transformative experience of revelation, the framing device for The House On The Borderlands by William Hope Hodgson, Ireland, a house hanging over a cliff, a found document, pig-men, fever dream, parts of the manuscript are burned, the textual experimentation of the found manuscript, The Little People, putting that as part of the story, life imitating art, next thing you know we’re in the middle of a sentence, the man of bronze, he’s got his fists going, pig-men coming out if a portal, see you on twitter, Dermod’s Bane, don’t got visit ireland, don’t go fight that ghost, goes out and punches the ghost, modern American whose ancestors are from the old land, had Lovecraft written it the ending would have gone a different way, mentioned in Supernatural Horror In Literature, The Lurking Fear, some similarities, Worms Of The Earth, a pict warrior, Bran Mac Morn, the last Pictish king, trying to fight the Romans, the art from Famous Fantastic Mysteries, a quote, Algernon Blackwood, found among the papers of the late…, Of such great powers or beings there may conceivably be a survival, folklore is our connective tissue to history and a people, they just start telling their story to him, they don’t write things down, oral culture, quite beautifully connected, the way Lovecraft would have done it, degenerate, our projection rather than his intentions, native peoples of the area who have been driven underground, folk horror style, a lady to sacrifice and a dude to do the sacrificing, awesome, squamous, rugose, pretty horrific, almost reptilian, the sens of the underground, a woman in danger a man there to help, Lovecraft takes the romantic man saving a woman out of it, the lady led him down the garden path, digs into a grave and comes into a tunnel, he is one of them, Innsmouth, The Thing On The Doorstep, the body snatcher, a car trip, they go underground, freaky, a gold pillar and a scary lady who wants to have sex with him, certainly interesting, as always, connecting all these dots, a fun phenomena, when you know the great book of Eibon, creating the bookshelf, the literary connection, seeing The Shining Pyramid mentioned, being a literary detective is fun, Billy Buchan?, how is he connected to this story, archaeology, a similar idea around the same time, parallel thinking, six other stories, Pan is everywhere in the 1890s, Adrian Ross, poetry, a motif and an image, like lightsabers today, Starship Troopers, what do the kids like?, lady with a giant sword, cosplay and videogames, a sword so big you wouldn’t be able to lift it, go out the woods and get scared, wendigo, hanging out with the natives, they don’t necessarily explain, this is sacred, you can’t videotape this, someone a long time ago bunched with another someones realized that was a solution to a proble, there’s a hollow log and in that log was history, you can’t see what’s going on isnide there, there’s a smell, what weird fiction does with that kind of phenomenon, I can’t go passed my death, stick a little straw in there and see what comes out, From Beyond, what happens when you invent the microscope or the telescope, that’s really cool, teasing out someone we believed in, Will was a baby in the 1980s, Gremlins (1984), they’re cute but they’re evil (kinda like kids), don’t let them stay up after midnight, a chinese shop, this exotic pet, do this and don’t do that, Mogwai, all the things go wrong, the history of gremlins comes out of airplanes, Captain Kirk, kill the gremlin, Roald Dahl, airplane difficulties, what caused it?, saying to your armourer: you fucked up, scapegoat, a way of solving problems, who’s stealing the things, who made the milk go sour, the miscarriages, the evolution from a house spirit, a way of solving problems, a diplomatic way, be on the lookout for this thing, an actual creature that stalks the muskeg, pine forests of Ontario, people going nuts is bad, The Good People by Hannah Kent, changeling, swapped with a ferry, bad baby, swapped baby, justified infanticide, Mr Jim Moon [of the Hypnogoria podcast], a birth defect, to help on the farm, in this desperate situation, the same thing, boggles, introduction, a friend who is a bit kooky, the precursor of our main character, enthusiastic about it, a former professor on the street, there was a reality behind these things, a historical basis provided, making these connections, an explanation for it all, causing problems with the sheep, stuff they can eat that poisons them and is contagious, a legitimate explanation, fits well into the horror framework: we’re going to expand your worldview, where everybody is, angels six, bandit means enemy plane, bogie means unknown plane possibly enemy, presumably hostile, bugge, frightening spectre, bogeyman, boggart, a tool to control children, the boggart’s going to get you, genus loci, spirit, a household spirit, household animals to go lame, brownies, perform various, pre-girl, swearing loyalty to a queen I’ve never met, the brownies, badges for obedience, household elf, connecting it to the things in the past, introducing a new idea, learn about nature, channel it in a good way, in both contexts, the girl scouts, the cubs, little bears, to domesticate them, helping grandmas cross the street, light fires, totally disconnected in our childhood minds, references to folklore, it’s what you’re used to, we’re the brownies, they recognized that term, the sweet dessert, cute, decades go by and it becomes lost, let everything go, let it wash over you, an experiencing on it on one level, engaging on another level, key to enjoying the experience, The Player (1992), the medium of movies vs. the medium of a book, gone through before, if you’re going to extract all the juice, audiobooks are not great for a lot of that experience, it depends on the book too, depending on the author’s writing style, this is very dense, making an audiobook, listening five or six times, by modern standards, The Count Of Monte Cristo, it’s hard to get through, not for a casual listen, when you’re ready for a deep dive into late 19th century fiction, barely, a good introduction to this, if you’ve got through this podcast so far, listen to the audiobook again, he’s really fun, a faced paced and fun book, a short novel, John McNab, bored aristocrats decide to go poaching, oppressed by ennui, that’s his audience, that’s him as well, a Lord Dunsany figure with more scrappy Scottishness, he started off as an upper class twit, landed gentry, Lord Tweedsmuir, Adrienne Clarkson, a media figure, journalist, a lot of politicians would have come into peripheral politics, he isn’t going to offend you, cater to his audience, Lt. Governors, ex-politicians who didn’t offend anybody or ex-media figures, for propaganda, service to the empire, the tail end of the empire, died in office, 1935-1940, born in 1875, professoring, readers, actual pay, adjuncts get fucked, ex-academia, academia is as lame as shit, plains indian headdress, we care about you, you are now part of the tribe so don’t fuck us, they all sign that, power struggle stuff, when the United States wants to coup them, kicking out the queen, dismiss the prime minster, socialist policies, the chief scout, he’s your boss’ boss, do they have all the patches?, extracted all the juice, the differences, Out Of the Earth, they’re evil children because they’re small, the corruption, The Bowmen, taking it as a true story, a cool idea: children are becoming corrupting, a criticism of war measures, if you wrote that story today, a trucker metaphor, Nazis, Trumpists, hard to imagine, we turned Nazi into a bugbear, sonnenrad, totenkopf, saluting like Julius Caesar, how do you tell the difference?, pop culture media vs. folklore, superheroes, Batmans, Elon Musk is supposed to be Iron Man, he’s like Tony Stark, licensenced things, owned by Disney, your own folklore metaphor, harder to tell stories that are cool, the enclosure of the commons that happened to stories, what makes these stories cool, the place where, criminalizing poor people, tenant farmers to wool industry, as you cut up reality and turn it into capital you reduce the ability to tell stories, you have to go to the periphery, or to the moors, or to Mars, Mars is the innovation, Planet Stories, stories on Venus, A Voyage To Arcturus, create a secondary world like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, the secondary world of Hyboria, the sorcery part, a short story set in ancient Mesopotamia, The Voice Of El-Lil, a prince rides out to a hermit, lay a curse, tell information, do a favour for me, you have to kill someone for me, one stroke, completely circumvented, Oriental Stories, October-November 1930, his King Kull is Atlantis, just in service of the plot, someone’s betrayed him, talk to a guy who just tells him with magic, disposable, magic is almost unnecessary, vampires or winged men, out of body experience, the fantastical landscape of Africa, authentic Buchan experience, is that what I’m going to do with my life, a fun psychological story, that trainride back, the swim away, into the psychology, transformed over the course of the story, new aspect of reality, messes you up, Jesse’s thesis, the heartland hinterland thing, people are on their own and fucked in the country, make your argument stronger, really cool, page 18 of the original blackwoods, some form of mutton, ewes, a little smoking, the tasteless morsels, dry with thirst, the vessel was of gold, a miracle of flavour, I had known that flavour all my life, the sweet things of the moorland, that lost delicacy of the North, the heather ale, hidden mine of the precious metals, Cairnsmor, Gledwater, glen, home of gold, that secret of their heather ale, corries, freely without a scruple, not enclosures, then like a clap, this too spelled death, no fear of betrayal, the first time he’s there, making him a part of the ceremony in the perfect victim kind of way, The Wicker Man (1973), the food is not cooked properly, that’s lost, tasted before he was born, tolerable kindness, I had spoken their language, a wooden box in the corner, their orgy around the fire, why is everything gold, subject to England, ran the empire, talking to the poorest guy, the fires of industry burning, using it as a metaphor, the leftovers of colonization, it’s there, hmmm, a racial element to it, the biblical god (not capital g god), the fate of one is tied to the other, a capitalist colonialist thing, built an estate in this wilderness, The Lurker At the Threshold, syphilis, slowly going mad, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Ethan Brand, pretty close to done, the amazing novel I found, it’s Australian, an anonymous novel from the late 1890s, Gay Life In Melbourne, girl gets turned into a prostitute, controversial, am very excited to share, a spicy novel, 32 racy chapters, you should want to read this to me, Help! Help!, unmistakably feminine, the distressful sounds, a masculine form, confused mass of dainty draperies, an expression of agony and terror, “blazing eyes, it’s all right, miss”, the light from the lamp fell softly on her countenance, her fresh young beauty, he came out from behind a tree guard, what do you suppose, mustered up a blush, smiled, no-no, he did not effect his purpose, she takes it pretty cooly, smoking hot, a peculiar smile, a ladyfriend, missed the tram, so you live with an auntie, do you?, equally of course, put in a little hug where he thought it would do the most good, what his precise thoughts were cold print refuses to express, a party tonight, that peculiar smile on deck again, queer, this time of the morning, why it got canceled, racy, and Victorian, what year the tram started in Melbourne, probably 1890s, Trove, Police Gazette, would you like to be lectured about cultural sensitivity?, there’s racist stuff in here, we called them something bad in the past, one photo, about 9 hours, three months to do, maybe that time would go fast, you’d have a gay time doing it, she’s holding his neck, tiny little feet, minuscule, a big head, smoky eyes, she’s smoking hot impudence, unadulterated, what we’re about to witness, it’s wonderful, adultery, Auntie is the madam, they’re not friends they’re customers, interesting slice of Australian literature, modern cases, Little Sisters bookshop, constant lawsuit from the BC Civil Liberties Association, trynna make prude, way earlier in upside down books, how to do jiu-jitsu, buy the VHS, by a pamphlet, Hodgson’s story, Frederick Bailey Deeming, a candidate for Jack the Ripper, a good mustache, convicted and executed, six victims, more time free, The Harder They Fall (2021), too stylized, power fantasy, we’re supposed to think she’s powerful?, brinksmanship, Heinlein says okay, Mr. Heinlein I hate you so much sir, threatening to press the nuke button, the dialogue, all the shooting and the style, the focus was on the wrong things, the Bass Reeves story, Hell On The Border (2019), a historical novel trilogy, pretty good, Boss Level (2020), one of the Purge movies, a science fiction idea, what happens when you turn of the law, seems like a Heinlein thing, Niger is trying to get out from under France, French government pornography, pornography reduces sexual activity that produces babies, people can have babies if they want to, Onlyfans, you know our whole businessmodel?, regular streaming, fake communists pretend to yell at each other, Twitch, a way to record clips, kids staying at home, going outside, people playing games, non-important things, understand the appeal, social media platforms, influencers through traditional media, YouTube is very deep, doesn’t Evan do YouTube, supermodel asses and bitcoin, two things that appeal to a lot of people, finding hot things, giving money away, lady fixes up old cars, it’s her job, the giving away is to attract attention, Bryan Alexander’s youtube, a recorded meeting, reference material, stamina, having a manic spell, talking about the wrong things, the people interested in old books are all psychopaths, digging up and collecting things, a male thing, lesbians acting like men, for cars or music, deep dive on music, collecting, construction ones, books: nobody likes those, how many hours to find a bookstore?, how far to find a slurpee?, how many doors to find an x-box?, owns a pulp magazine, you aint gonna get popular, a popular podcast, compared to what?, almost none of the followers, Penthouse Comics, a good ratio, a key indicator, following way to many people, spillover, Pulpcover’s is crazy, 35,000, follows 62, he knows you, asking you to scan those, can you scan these please?, his website’s very useful and comes up a lot, all the evil corporations trade him around like a hockey star, Lenovo, Raytheons or something, spill all his known guts, Mr. Pulpcovers, fun interaction, old pulp stories, a pretty good facebook group, old guys who’ve read a lot of pulp stories, not easy to find, incredibly easy, real life access, when there was a bookstore, magazines for sale, pulpfest places have actual stock, acutely aware, enthusiastic, an extra scanner, cheap it works well, still supported by modern windows, $50 bucks, shitty printer eats your ink, its good to have a printer so you can print up stuff you want to read, you also have the file, do the whole issue, be a contributor to the renaissance, between the Greeks and the middle ages, this Arabic renaissance, a cultural renaissance, shit gets sent back to Europe before copyright, because of all those copyists, it’s immoral if you don’t copy, it’s good for them, they need to do it, a Cirsova tweet, he’s gonna be on the podcast, The Weirwoods by Thomas Burnett Swann, Christina Rossetti, she’s so good, so incestuous, and lesbian, fully illustrated, Goblin Market, some sexual excitement, since pornography has been banned in Niger…, look at the beautiful illustrations, trimming her hair, her sister, the goblins are gathering round, drug or sex-withdraw, come buy!, all ripe together, taste them and try, figs to fill your mouth, that’s what the goblins are saying, 21 pages, Lizzie veiled her blushes, fingertips, pricking up her golden head, hobbling down the glen, her glossy head, one bears a plate, no, no, no, their evil gifts would harm us, one crawled like a snail, in the pleasant weather, like a rush embedded swan, forced rhymes are hard, leering at each other, brother with queer brother, rough nuts brown, was still their cry, in tones as smooth as honey, your turn, good folk I have no coin, all my gold is on the furze, gorse, buy from us with a gold curl, sucked their fruit globes, man-rejoicing wine, that juice, that juice, cloy, too sweet, she sucked and sucked and sucked the more, she sucked until her lips were store, an orgy, a food party, 1859, wise upbraidings, the backstory, wore their flowers, sought them by night and day, then fell with the first snow, kissed her, on their mother twigs, my teeth have met in, pellucid grapes, pure the wave the drink, it’s fun right, like two pigeons in one nest, like two blossoms on one step, gold for awful kings, not a bat flapped, cheek to cheek and breast to breast, cows, house, cakes for dainty mouths to each, as modest maidens shou[l]d, most like a leaping flame, plucked purple, the sunset flushes, the bank was steep, the most sexual poem about fruit, the customary cry, sugar baited words, brisk fruit merchantmen, I dare not look, you should not loiter, each glowworm winks her spark, what should we do[e]?, come buy our fruits, her tree of life drooped from the root, her pitcher dripping all the way, gnashed her teeth, day after day night after night, exceeding pain, hawking their fruits, burn her fire away, her kernel stone, watched for a waxing shoot, the sandful breeze, and would not eat, cankerous care, she heard the tramp of goblin men, sex with a whole bunch of men, Lizzie’s the non bad-girl, the goblin had their way with Laura, she lost her virginity to too many goblin men, where the plot comes in, feared to pay too dear, fell sick and died, first glazing rime, frost, The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, knocking at death’s door, gorse again, running, leaping, crowing, pulling wry faces, wombat-like, snail-paced in a hurry, hugged her and kissed her, panniers and plates, French for bag, a bread bag, pluck and them suck them, pomegranates, figs, eat with us, our feast is but beginning, be welcome guests with us, give me back my silver penny, proud, cross-grained, uncivil, turned from seduction into a rape, held her hands and squeezed their fruits about her mouth, flood, obstreperously like a beacon left alone, a fruit crowned orange tree, like a royal virgin town, mad to tug her standard down, she’s a city under siege, grind their fruits into her mouth, shocking, 20 cannot make her drink, mauled and mocked her, lip from lip, juice that syrruped all her face, some scudded on the gale, knew not was it night or day, copse and dingle, her penny jingle, she ran and ran, dogged her, jibe or curse or something worse, windy paced, out of breath, Laura up the garden, suck my juices, goblin dew, eat me, drink me, flung her arms up in the air, the fruit forbidden, kissed and kissed and kissed her, mouth, drought, angry mouth?, her lips began to scorch, wormwood, rent all her robe and wrung, beat her breast, like an eagle, female eagle, a flying flag when armies run, overbore her lesser flame, which an earthquake shatters down, headlong in the sea, pleasure past, is it death or is it life?, getting close to the end, dinner, cooled her face, golden sheaves, new buds with new day, Laura awoke as from a dream, more modest now, not one thread of gray, when both were wives, her early prime, the haunted glen, blood?, how her sister stood, wow, bid them cling together, there is no friend like a sister, to lift one, to strengthen as one stands, super-sexual, the good sister, covered in jizz, sticky, citrusy and delicious, apparently, your sister’s your best friend, don’t have sex outside of marriage, sex is wonderful and exciting, you gotta hold back, none of the men will wanna date you, unlike Jeannie, get dignity back somehow, her refusal to have sex with these goblin men, somehow allows her sister to get her dignity back, licking the juices off of her, about the images, I like fruit, the moral is the point of the story, sex is a reality how do you deal with it, having orgies with men, male female dynamic, more subject to the consequences of sexual drives, babies you have to give away, striking, thank you for sharing that with me, Korean takeout?, divorced from her Korean heritage, Meg And Will’s?, generic North American, pizza is a popular choice, Mexican places, while we still have choices, people in seven months will be excited to know what Will had for dinner.

No-Man's Land (The Watcher By The Threshold)

No-Man's Land

No-Man's Land

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The SFFaudio Podcast #773 – READALONG: Sailing to Byzantium by Robert Silverberg

The SFFaudio PodcastJesse, Paul Weimer, Will Emmons, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about Sailing to Byzantium by Robert Silverberg

Talked about on today’s show:
a very accurate copy of Terence, go by Jonathan, Asimov’s, February 1985, Silverberg has a problem, his skills, he loves literature, doesn’t know much about science, loves history, children, all of his stories are about marriage basically, not every story is a marriage story, I think my dog knows aliens, that doesn’t involve relationships, an inversion of Passengers, The Roller Coaster by Alfred Bester is more Passengers than Passengers, Jesse’s focus and primary point of interest is ideas, cuz I’m a dude, gender stereotype this, as far as Jesse is concerned, once upon a time, came to understand and appreciate, still immature, pleasure and value, idea first and foremost, when characters are pushed, the high point of the book, that he is an android, Jonathan is smarter than Jesse apparently, the known simulacra won’t obey him, did you command it?, that’s good, the other hint, I remember New York, that’s because he’s Robert Silverberg, Dark City (1998), programmed that way, rented on Laserdisc, Director’s Cut, too crazy to be released in cinemas, narration in the beginning, inferior product, Charlez Philips, Yankees, hot dog, presumed this was another in the tradition of C.M. Kornbluth’s The Marching Morons, William Morris, the revelation, internal thinking, what he’s thinking about what this guy’s saying, the opening description is repeated three times, it’s beautiful, description of the dawn in Alexandria, the writing is beautiful, the concept is solid, The City In The Stars by Arthur C. Clarke, what the plot is, guy has girlfriend, guy loses girlfriend, guy searches for girlfriend, the writing… so good, perfect length, I read a piece of literature and I have something to say about it, Downward To The Earth, Heart Of Darkness, the Yates poem, responding to the poem, his one trick, he’s a guy who loves literature and science fiction, knows a lot about ancient cities, Gilgamesh The King, Silverberg is really good, Up The Line, a tourist book, tourism, The History Of Tom Jones, A Foundling by Henry Fielding, the novel not the singer, a Tom Jones of timetravel, not trying to hide it, hey I’m doing this thing, The Secret Sharer, I read this amazing thing let me respond, very solidly, William Coon, I got an iPhone with GPS, childless, there’s no children in this world, there’s no adults in the world, our main character is the adult, go for characters, Paul try to defend her, she’s an Eloi, there’s mostly all Eloi, a little more conciousness, the robots are the Morlocks, you can’t be here, the unpaid proletariat of the society, money is meaningless, who is actually fixing these robots, other robots, this doesn’t need any addition, a very small idea, deconstruct it as well as a scientificly plausible future, a new person for the city, a guy from the 1960s who wakes up in 2023 and finds out his phone has GPS, how a post scarcity economy becomes a society of spectacle, where we had Mark Twain on, Enter a Soldier. Later: Enter Another, Innocents Abroad is about the invention of tourism, modern tourism, nice and stable, Americans going to Europe, travelogues, vacations vs. tourism, you build things for the tourists, Paris needs the Eiffel Tower, everything becomes insubstantial, you need to see the centaur grazing, tourism is a negative, taking the tour vs. living somewhere, some ad man, the Seven Wonders of the World, sex tourism, let’s go get some slaves, tourism is about the middle class, getting lots of bums in seats, tourist facilities, at the airport to take you to a hotel, the hotels haven’t been invented yet, Evan is in Thailand, a vacation destination vs. tourism, their whole lives are vacations, the only thing that dies in this world is the cities, Rome is the Eternal City, Paris, see the thing that Hitler and Hemingway looked at, a touchpoint on a checklist, the particular theme, the actual plot, we broke up a little bit, we’re back together, a very cynical take on what immortal people are like, they’re very shallow, juxtapose it, Ian Bank’s Culture novels, self-actualized, we’re in China, the emperor sitting on his throne waving his hand being fanned, impossibly drunk, wakes up having sex, conspired, he’s being raped by her, here’s my problem with the scene, emotional consequences, oh well that happened to me, they haven’t programmed him to have, pre-neanderthals, sexy cave woman sidles up to sexy cave man, people are people, people are not even people, a robot with personhood, glands and hormones and emotional reactions, he’s a primitive, coasts along, acculturation, like an Eloi, a strange lack in the programming, violent, goes with the flow, his love is real, he’s a robot that can be programmed to be drunk, cultural expectations, he’s just a very 20th century man, the hidden robots, this place is closed, it’s not a place anymore, his creator, mobile tourist attractions, his future, New Chicago era, don’t you know you’re a robot dude?, I’ve been bewitched, what you’re saying is witchcraft, imagine if Philip Jose Farmer wrote this book, more sex, Tarzan lives 10,000 years ago and lives all of time, historical character to spend time with, Elizabeth and Drake and them, what am I gonna do with my life, just a guy living in a world, his girlfriend’s run away from him, they’re indistinguishable, one is worried about getting old, he’s just riding that, the call to action is the girl leaving him, the catalyst, he doesn’t know he is, he doesn’t know he has that problem, the plot requires him to have a problem, what is his solution?, you become immortal like me and become a robot, just a way of ending the book, the plot is not important to this story, Downward To The Earth, Congo planet, say sorry to the elephants, the elephants sometimes get violent, checking in on people he used to know, meditating on a good book, the poem, 3 minutes, 4 stanzas, Sailing to Byzantium by William Butler Yates, on reading Silverberg’s novella length discussion of this poem…, making it the setting for this poem, a secular heaven, where the movie and the book got it from, the ending of the novella doesn’t go far enough, they should have gone to Byzantium to find the planners and become planners again, you need imagination and curiosity to recreate all these ancient cities, that is what would absolutely happen, a very modest tired science fiction story, Mockingbird by Walter Tevis, sad and meditative world, illiteracy is the center of the book, it should be a satire, university professorships and everybody is illiterate, if this goes on…, doing drugs all the time and experiencing a new media, a couple of people who don’t fit, live near the zoo, the journey to find the truth of their world, you need to go into the tunnels and find the planners, a big computer program, an explanation will be a letdown, the way Arthur C. Clarke gets out of it, everybody’s an artist and an art critic, very chaste, how did these people predict the future so accurately, go to other planets, only one city now, in the same universe, this could be a period of The Forever War, Forever Peace, Forever Free, struck to close to home, connected with people long enough your brain changes, it did not work for Paul, very unrealistic, a priori, connecting to and using drones, the drones thing is very solid, his solution to peace, about the peace thing, any plan to achieve world peace is going to be a nightmare, mind-control, manipulation, Mindbridge by Joe Haldeman, he didn’t write as much as Silverberg, inactive, confusing somebody, Camouflage, Buying Time, Work Done For Hire, makes them horny for each other, this sounds good, won the nebula, they like the fancy writing, reward each other for fancy writing, has a little bit of fancy writing, you’re a guy and you wake up in the future and everybody’s gay, it’s the 70s, he’s the pervert, I’m the only heterosexual man in the universe, why it’s a good book, different from Heinlein, an answer, a riposte, an echo, with a different brain doing the work, we have started on reading half of Tor Doubles, Gene Wolfe, that’s a problem, hit Jesse with the “it’s a problem” stick, that’s a problem for this podcast, there are too many books to do, best decisions Jesse’s life, a great formula, Seven American Nights by Gene Wolfe, is the writer reliable?, a 19th century story, a Norman Spinrad story, visit the fallen New York, the Brooklyn Bridge, a big stack of Tor Doubles, A Meeting With Medusa, mature Arthur C. Clarke, Nightwings, Greg Bear’s Hardfought, went off the rails, no be like H.P. Lovecraft die of cancer from eating beans, Eye For Eye by Orson Scott Card, no, Hawksbill Station, Color Of Neanderthal Eyes by James Tiptree Jr. and Michael Bishop, the ideal podcast, in some cases, he’s not likely to give permission, refuse to do a book by someone who is so anti-queer, his religion is bullshit, he can have it, Salvation Army bucket, a 19th century spinoff of the temperance movement, they really are an army, charity thing only now, rope people in with their homeless shelters, where they indoctrinate you, when Orson Scott Card dies will it be okay?, Ender’s Game and other things, a cigarette pack that says cancer kills, as a part of the canon, weird and distorted people, Nancy Kress, find traces, they way Heidegger was a Nazi, resistance from Heidegger scholars, finding ways to prune that list, Pugnacious Peacemaker by Harry Turtledove, a sequel, The Saliva Tree by Brian Aldiss, The Wheels Of If by L. Sprague De Camp, Saddam Hussein’s fantasy novels, required reading in Iraqi schools, rushing to finish his latest book, very passionate author, Bill Clinton’s espionage thrillers, two branches we can go down, somebody did this, back to Silverberg, see something, tweet it at me, very good but not super controversial book, visiting over the shoulder, Asgard, so impressed with Silverberg, you’re clearly not an ancient astronaut guy, Hindu nationalists, very weird western dudes, Born With The Dead, French language SFFaudio, a collection, soon to be a motion picture, The Silent Invaders, A Time Of Changes, that’s the thing with the pronouns, obscene I, coming to a consensus, a famous one, a first contact one, Thorns, tourism but not ancient, all around the universe, super-depressing, Kurt Vonnegut, life is meaningless, Vonnegut is funny, Thorns is not funny, a depressed version of Vonnegut, it’s Liggoti, I cried with Born With The Dead at the end, saddening or depressing, aliens disfigured him, a recluse, people look at him weird, donating 100 of her eggs, she’s got 100 babies she’ll never see, Mark Zuckerberg, emotional vampire, across known space, inability to form a real relationship, Letters From Atlantis, mind in other people sort of thing, ancient Atlantis, it has Silverberg’s strengths, A Hero Of The Empire, a Roma Eterna story, a Paul book, the consensus I’m hearing, worried about being depressed, this pronoun is forbidden, a powerful mind altering drug, a message of liberation, a cult favourite, 1971, October 22, some troll was in my schedule, Scott is listed there, maybe Scott was trolling, The Weirwoods by Thomas Burnett Swann, a fantasy book, semi-erotic fantasy novels, Tolkien’s level, cool looking ace cover, bear with an eyepatch, time of the Etruscans, Cirsova submission, sexually explicit, pornography on this podcast, imagine Piers Anthony was a serious author, how these prompts work, the female characters show the most growth, male water sprite is kidnapped, an actor who is travelling through, go to my girl in the waterworld, oh are you a virgin?, what no maybe I don’t know, have you been to an orgy, I’m horny now, you’ll be horny later, 5 hours, thank you, very enjoyable book, I like the short, more depth to it, more going on, different ideas, characters, concepts, weird aquatic animals, a safari vs. tourism, spend time with the natives, Thorns is like a space-cruise, Up The Line, from a poem?, pretty obscure, Up The Line by Robert Silverberg, Paul Boehmer, a time courier, a lusty Greek, a sex book, uber eats guy, goofballs goofing off, the Time Patrol, labour stuff, sex with my ancestor, I’m gonna go make myself, I’m gonna become rich, a weird attitude, you can’t break the rules, they’re managers, serialized in Amazing, has good art, a sex comedy, Hot Tub Time Machine (2010), very deep, as a man, a feature or a bug, definitely one or the other, straightfaced is weird, commentary on the 1980s, also our world, people create avatars for themselves, playing with real people and NPCs, Skyrim with AI companions, go kill that big bear over there, says something snarky, people are normally playing against NPC with scripted conversations, NPC companions helping you to kill other NPCs, barely real, scene fillers, one of the amazing things, follow that person, see where they’re going, where reality takes us, business and agenda, I’m going and buying the thing I was told to buy, I’m wearing my mask, make the dog poop, buy a newspaper, early 20s in New York, ticket scalper, rich people buy $1000 Broadway tickets, a concierge at a hotel, people walking by, Grand Theft Auto, The Truman Show (1998), functions there, the same people going back and forth, very educational, a weird form of nature, being inside of somebody’s spleen, catch on fire, speaking of firetrucks, is Will still covered in cats?, dog is having seizures, an intercranial disease, it was joyous, cheeseburger for my dog please, not permanent, new cats coming in all the time, covered in its own feces, it was like that, what does this have to do with making money for capitalism?, acquiring capital, conceivably, put em up on some website, record it, God Save the Mark by Donald E. Westlake, should be fun, very relationship oriented, more than year, he’s gotta educate people, nun’s business, she’s good, she’s got some meanness in her, all about the kindness, Jason Thompson was tweeting about cruelty, honesty is something you need in your life, cruel and not honest, cruel and honest, at least with words, ideas are potentially cruel, The Screwfly Solution isn’t an indictment of men, subject fleshy creatures, let’s all play nice, when Paul says “no, Jesse”, is the pope raping children by not shutting down his empire?, pedophile priests are a thing, we should be suspicious, do I look fat in this dress?, no, you look fat in every dress, cruel truths coming out of fiction, does that help answer your question, it’s important, is The Colorado Kid a western?, set in Maine, a Hard Case Crime book, illustrations, real bad man, such a shitlib, occasionally make a mistake, when the drugs went the talent went, the Trump derangement drug, much better as a cruel mean drunk, The Running Man is so good, reading for meanness, Lord Tyger, Philip Jose Farmer, Tarzan Alive, A Feast Unknown, 150 pages-ish, short Stephen King with a great cover and interior illustrations, a concept, Mr. Mercedes, Cell, he does characters really really well, really good book, on a lot of things, not substanial in the way science fiction can be, his fantasy is his own construction, peripherally crime book, crime books are good, Lawrence Block, Raymond Chandler, formula, Jim Thompson, cruel guy, The Killer Inside Me, The Grifters, Westlake wrote the script, a great movie and great book, harrowing, the paperback on the spinner wrack, gut punch on page one, waiting for your bus, getting off the bus, you finish it that night, character driven literature, crime is an interesting situation, how can I get the police involved, the police are a new invention, they’re a bad thing, why Breaking Bad is very interesting, empire building, the wife is there to say what you’re doing is wrong, that was always inherent with that show, what were the bad things he’s doing, killing people is bad, he has cancer, disrespected, no health care, accepted his buyout, wealthy billionaire, a man’s dignity, it’s not about Walter White or Heisenberg, that ain’t what Star Trek is, what Star Trek really is, fuckin terrible, crime is the philosophy of how to be, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce by James M. Cain, a little bit of outside of society, chess pieces, the criminal mind, moral dilemma, I’m going to lower myself, he knows that he’s doing wrong, he’s the weakest character, Jesse Pinkman is a much stronger character, he’s just a dumb guy, yo, he thinks of himself as very high, he’s brought low, he destroys the things that he loves he says, the show is trying to moralize at the end, he has to be brought low and feel bad about what he’s done, Better Call Saul, all the characters are strong, a better show because it doesn’t have the wife and kids aspect, to setup the fall, Jimmy McGill, at sea on his own, stupid and lucky vs. smart and unlucky, really interesting American stories, Double Indemnity, so greasy, he never did anything nice to me, I guess I’ve got to kill him, they betray each other, super-short, makes you love reading, a good movie, Fred McMurray and a lady with a wig, Edward G. Robinson, Mildred Pierce, so good, very successful, Jim Thompson, a Greek tragedy, they also cut each other up with knifes, his writing is bloody, turn the page and cut your arm, movies that went underground, This World The The Fireworks, Billy Zane and Gina Gershon are lovers and brother and sister, Flowers In The Attic, a funny stream of pro-incest propaganda, ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore aka ‘Tis Pitty Shee’s A Whoore, forbidden love, go with your heart, okay enough, daughter, suitor, dorks, if I can’t have you sister, nobody can, not as flowery as Shakespeare, has sex with his sister, pulls her heart out with a dagger, a huge monologue with a beating heart, and on that note Terence leaves, Farnham’s Freehold, Pirates Of Venus, subsequently shownoting in, Ill Met In Lankhmar, add Scott to the conversation, it’s X now, Elon pictures, Twitter building with an X on top, very Christian, a sideways cross, Brave New World, he wants twitter to be like We Chat, Space X etc., the hub of their social credit system, editing up a whole other podcast, might be too fresh, John Buchan wrote The Thirty-Nine Step, spy fiction, weird fiction, Algernon Blackwood, a very competent upperclass guy, later Governor General of Canada, his weird fiction is pretty cool, how’s Connor doing these days, since he went to Germany, pretty active for an inactive guy, lost his twitter account for a while, Moon Of Skulls, already confused, The Warriors, plus movie, the original version of the movie, re-edited, 7 hours, 19 minutes, a lot of books we want to read, how do I winnow the books I can read, read more books, consider leaving twitter, there are many options, Facebook groups to join, being controlled by evil giant corporations, how they get you trapped, same story, going to Burger King, never read Donald E. Westlake, he’s also known as Richard Stark, puttin’ you down, fancy spellings, he won an Oscar for that, he wrote a script for a James Bond movie, a fifth of Hard Case Crime in the early days were Westlakes, a real life coup, comedy and crime books, Brothers Keepers, Somebody Owes Me Money, Anarchaos, also about insurance, Lee Marvin, Mel Gibson, love his series, so good, Might Sons Of Hercules anthology, communists vs. conservatives, can we agree on that, throw each other out of helicopters, the bad takes, full of bad takes, get into tea about, the showing up for the podcast, Mirko (the German guy), @MrLovecraft, I was browsing through our messages down to 2016, mostly take pictures of random stuff, a bowlful of tools, I know what he smells like, I need to sniff it everyday, his whole cowboy hat collection, archives, complete access, archive.org, the secret, mostly all the time, look for pulps, only processed stuff on the PDF page, so much good writing in one magazine from April of 1899, Guy De Maupassant, Maurice Level, a successor to Maupassant, weird mean stories, the first translations into English, horrible syphilis, The String aka A Piece Of String, string collection, the cops come by, did you steal a wallet, somebody saw you, and yet you refuse to explain, dropped it into my other pants, too embarrassing, The Necklace aka The Diamond Necklace, Bel Ami, dissatisfied with her life, she could’ve married much higher, the governor’s ball, kinda like Cinderella, saving up money to buy a gun, trying to save money, you have that friend, you’re brilliant, the event goes swimmingly, she’s lost the necklace, they retrace their steps, what are we gonna do, mortgage and borrow and replace it, 20 years go by, just finally paid off the debt, scrub maid, looking elderly now, so proud, cost me all these years of work, walk away bleeding from the page, he’s just so mean, a social climber, corruption in the third French republic, why don’t you just become a reporter?, that’s okay it doesn’t matter, get a good wife to do the writing, love triangles, meanspirited, a really good portrait, impressionism or naturalism, what’s right in front of us right now, rejected, jotting down descriptions of people, it can be very powerful, a Fyodor Dostoevsky novel, one of the vampire guys, Uma Thurman, so good, in school, Scaramouche by Raphael Sabatini, no Westlake, no Sabatini, pirate books, Captain Blood, a contemporary of Johnston McCulley, huge in their day, lasting influence, a lot of Stephen King is loving Westlake, TV writers, to survive after you die, to champion in, Lovecraft, Kafka, C.L. Moore, her second husband, Philip K. Dick is trying to suppress, Charles Burnett Swan, why is he unknown now?, a little dirty, a little embarrassed, their are no heirs, his publishers, Space Viking, Little Fuzzy, Omnilingual, very off, posting more, pulp collection, Alan Muller, The Skull, Black Priestess Of Varda, The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer, the secret is Will’s been in hiding in South America, not knowing what to say, come up with a brilliant thesis that everybody hates, she’s secretly transgender, everybody accepts this, double novel sucker, remaindered, Tor business, I might read half of it, Ace Doubles, just in case, Ace Doubles, there’s no time, The Sioux Spaceman, And Then Town Took Off, Conquest Of The Space Sea, insane cover, reading glasses, go back far enough in Luke Burrage’s podcast, audiobooks, what are those?, only does audiobooks, almost exclusively audiobooks, washing dishes, scrubs toilet, how can you not want to do it all the time, slow reading, a DAW Yellow Spine, to be sitting and staring at a piece of paper, I’m done, Riders Of The Purple Sage, Zane Grey, gonna be sparky, a weird writer, antiquated, everybody’s having all these emotions, the phenomenally successful author, the Ohio Valley, violent opposition, turbulent, Lewis Wetzel, Girdy Bros., seems a little long, more cattle rustlers, Tales Of The Lonely Trails, Elmore Leonard, good but not deep, dialogue is so good, Out Of Sight, the other Batman who lives on Lake Como, Clooney/Lopez, a TV show, Karen Sisco, a test story, Justified, expand the idea and keep the character, colour splashing, the same recipe, Quentin Tarantino championed Elmore Leonard, nothing else is an adaptation, Robert Forster and Pam Grier, revisiting with Sam Jackson, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci is not in Heat, Rum Punch, set in Florida, Florida books, shallower and deeper, more style, Get Shorty, it’s fine, more of his own thing, Florida writers, Carl Hiaasen, cat lady books for men, character descriptions, superficial writing for rich people, their character description is their bank statements, Mario Puzo, Fool’s Die, big sprawling book about a guy and his story, I am the master of magic, a tour de force of writing, Grover Gardner, Grover’s voice is much like this, Paul hates it, don’t let self-doubt hold you back, thesis optional, see you in cyberspace, a ghost writing gig, a really big one, famous celebrity?, chat GPT, people don’t understand what a writer does, done their research for them, in 7 months, do it!, nobody listens, she died a long time ago, research for her historical screenplay, large famous Hollywood family, it’s Sunset Blvd. (1950), she was a hasbeen, Griffith Park pit bull, two writing assistants, lying bed and dictating to her, writers are very disposable, it’s a set of skills, mercenaries, there’s art, technical skill, ask questions, answer questions, fill places, plumbers, it needs to be plumb, a lot of writing is going to change, you can’t replace Westlake with chat GPT, entry level positions, assistants and help backing them up, people coming in, hide their assistants, George R.R. Martin has six assistants at at time, Elmore Leonard had one, sometimes writer dry up, Silverberg, a burning problem, Lawrence Block’s newsletter, he’d retire and come back from a vacation with another novel, they flow out of him, those people are pretty rare, a mental illness, a compulsion to write, a letter to CBS about Burt Lancaster as Moses, grad students he wants to fuck, Roger Zelazny, Ursula Le Guin, paranoid navel gazing, hypergraphia, a brain thing that’s happening, I need to understand, I need to question, Rosicrucian organization, you can’t read that all day long, people’s brains are different, Tishomingo Blues, Piers Anthony, so dirty, very entertaining, not great, A Spell For Chameleon, there will never be a movie, sad, leering, misogyny is fundamentally integrated, Paul won’t like it, she changes according to the phases of the Moon, full/beautiful/dumb, new/hideous/smart, all theses are fun, some theses are better than others, the lady who invented wifi they always say, smart beautiful woman, Hedy Lamarr, weird sex jokes, Satyr, female centaur, centauress, reaches over grabs her boobs, she gets angry and embarrassed, boob armour?, kids enjoy sex stories, girls are gross, girls are boring, you wanna play with dolls, jumps on motorbikes, weird period, why they were popular, Robert Lynn Asprin, paranoid, Christian parents, he wasn’t allowed to be the DM anymore, not allowed to watch The Simpsons anymore, people were a little looser, the end of free range kids, H.R. Pufnstuf, Jim Henson, 17 seasons, sidewalk sale, a guy singing, Uncle Floyd, an old soul, old stuff, L.A. for ten years, Marilyn Monroe, an empty movie theater?, a library?, 1 screen movie theater, new-fangled building, arcology?, they all have movie theaters, all the new buildings have movie theaters, Jesse is very out of touch, news to Jesse, a big screen TV size, home theaters, laserdisc, bigscreen TV, people make fun of Jonathan, a tiny tiny gym, gyms are standard, everybody is elderly, an amenity for elderly people, your dog’s already been pooped, Scarlett Johansson is a Russian spy, ballet and sex, Red Sparrow (2018), Joker (2019), the old people loved that.

Sailing To Byzantium by Robert Silverberg - art by Hisaki Yasuda

Sailing To Byzantium by Robert Silverberg

TOR DOUBLE - Sailing To Byzantium by Robert Silverberg

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