The SFFaudio Podcast #847 – READALONG: Project Pope by Clifford D. Simak

The SFFaudio Podcast #847 – Jesse and Scott Danielson talk about Project Pope by Clifford D. Simak

Talked about on today’s show:
a miraculous healing, Jesse got sick, kind of amazing, packed with ideas, some of it was like a fever dream, 5-6 days, similar to a lot of Simak, together, separately, Way Station, not like this, really late, 1981, Special Deliverance, Where The Evil Dwells, Highway Of Eternity, the kitchen sink is in this one, 2024/2025, the main idea is this ai, kind of Foundation-like, Vatican 17, pattern their project after the Catholic church, alive and well on Earth and elsewhere, monks, chopping the wood, not about Catholicism, or is it?, a pope’s infallibility, misunderstood a lot, if we can feed this ai nothing but true information…, all the data, truly infallible, transporter system, become a trilobite in the past, a packet of information, this little treasure of information, that truth, constantly collecting with the expectation the result will be an infallible “pope”, the one true religion, just Truth (and a source of that), in today’s world, almost prescient, we have our ai, the information that it has, ask chatGPT a question, pretty good at math, funny at math, you’re right, you are right in saying that, it’s ingratiating, how many months until I am 80 years old, how did you frame, 18 minus 9, about the pope, how does it handle a question that’s not some factual thing, is Pope Francis a good pope?, it’s answer was good, vary widely, 2023, how does it give an answer to that, what is good, people think this, it doesn’t really have opinions, Simak doesn’t write ai, even his robots are people, all over the place, distracted, the cardinal, pour scotch on his chin, he’s a cool guy, sure he doesn’t have to eat or sleep, non-human aliens and they’re human too, the diamond dust guy, the little sparkle who goes in your eye, watcher/sleeper, the whisperer, a lot like Ariel from The Tempest, there is no master here, wants to be friends, the unifying thing, nice and rural, nice views of mountains, walks through the forest, I don’t know what I’m doing with my life, lady with a scar on her face, no one can ever love me, I can love you, started the website [SFFaudio], robot, spaceship, artificial intelligence, robots are separate from those things, robot vacuum, clean the floor, do the dishes, grok the twitter ai, does it actually know anything, the answer is no, It Wouldn’t Work Because… by Jesse, three synonyms vain, finds a statue of his emissary, hears a beautiful voice, here’s some wine, the woman accepted the first of the king’s proposal, the missing card, king, comb, snake, they can usually guess who the woman is, its medusa, all the beautiful women are snooty, lonely, a nice parable in itself, who the woman was, the woman is medusa, given that she is medusa, she has snakes for hair, spoon-feed it to get the right answer, how the term ai has changed, chat gpt is a good search engine, and google is a bad search engine now, a really concise way, using the Catholic church as a model, an article by Ted Chiang, fiction writing, the person writing it is making 10,000 choices, a prompt, it has to fill in, take an average of the choices that other writers have made, really bland, style mimicry, interesting, that’s exactly what the ai in this is doing, emulate humanity’s way, what Vatican 17 is, if you feed it nothing but truth you’re going to get an infallible answers, what is truth?, created by humans, running into contradictory things, even if not consciously, style mimicry ourselves up a new Clifford Simak novel, in a fever, Ploppy went plop plop, other worlds, the math world, equation world, similar to a bunch of novels by Simak, Shakespeare’s Planet, the first science fiction novel Jesse ever read, science fantasy stuff, A Wrinkle In Time, fantasy, a weird book, stuck there waiting for Godot, Gutshot, The End of Nothing, looking for Heaven, a spiritual hopefulness, hopefully Heaven, that’s cool, he’s very interesting, technically it isn’t a very good science fiction novel because there’s hardly any science, where’s the science?, magical collecting, go be a trilobite for a minute, an exploration, The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin, the equations there try and save him, a very philosophical novel, Ted Chiang isn’t rambling, concise, this is a tour of the countryside over a weekend, not exactly elegiac, written by a mature man, Peter S. Beagle, bullshit!, A Fine And Private Place, Two Hearts, a novella, sitting there holding his Hugo, a poem on Reading, Short And Deep, a little joke poem, we gotta get it on, lives in a tomb, friends with ghosts, delusional homeless man in New York, a widow, a little romance, closely associated with a talking crow or raven, in this book, visit other dimensions rather than other planets, equation world, the Platonic ideal, the realm of the forms, the Realm of the Forms, Plato’s idea, we don’t learn anything we only remember, knowledge without existence, brought out into a woman’s body, in the process of being born you have a mental wipe, you forgot everything you knew in the land of the forms, I remember what a chair is, a good question for grok, how many legs does a chair have to have, a chair doesn’t take one shape, is a chaise long a chair, all the qualities of all the chairs, we know it when we see it, we know what the good is, we knew the good, when we see the good in the world we recognize it as Good, truth is the good, pretty compelling, explains a lot, a bullshit story, why people like math too much, how many meters of sand, model the world using math, at this speed and angle, we really like that, that doesn’t solve a lot of the problems we have, I have three bad choices, all three are going to be embarrassing, go to something else like principal, always don’t lie, when your people made us robots, certain faculties, appreciation of beauty, noisy dogs, Special Deliverance, his student was using a coin operated ai machine, ends up in another dimension or place, what is that about?, a cube and a puzzle, a woman who gets entranced by a single tower, she’s withered away, all symbolic, an existential novel, philosophy, quite nice, the community is fairly nice, the weird guardian alien, the old ones, indigenous species, missing entwives, a little Lovecraftian about them, sensing organs, a way to go, almost to be another Foundation, withstand the fall of the Empire, edge of the galaxy, the way the book starts off, stowaway, the first officer, a one way trip, the way to read this, it is for life, the captain was kind of a racist dude, knee deep I am in alien scum, his rat crew, The Huddling Place, Sean Standfast (YouTube), Cemetery World, huddle watch, we humans need to stick together, 7 times in this novel, Time Is The Simplest Thing aka The Fisherman, a run down rustbelt United States, Mexico, a similar program, more aggressive and more dominant, astral travelers, ideas and technologies, the equivalent of Walmart, a rise in psychic powers, a conflicted United States not in control of itself, teenage witches sky-riding their brooms, this agency called Fishhook, they hook on to some idea, spiritual growth, a search of enlightenment, the message of this book, the countryside is quite nice, some filling stew, a stew scene, how’s the stew, it’s filling, eight of his novels, search for ultimate truth, there is such a truth that exists, on the road there, here we are on the road, the norm is restored and they can continue searching, is it worthwhile or not, we can do this in a pleasant way and keep moving forward, filling stew, well made, beautiful mountains, really there, beauty is part of it, all ye need to know, if truth is beauty, an ugly truth should be nonsensical, a hard truth, a hard beauty, how he got away with this, he kept putting them out, Analog, November 1982, very positive, strongly by all means, he’s saying it’s good, an old friend, a sense of immense friendliness, constant concerns with rural settings, life, being, a certain perplexitiy in the face of reality, a pastoral writer, a folksy writer, the day to day, writes of hobbits, not men, themes are cosmic, bad manners, rurality, pastoral, cosmic, laid back flesh and blood, friendly in a neighborly way, how can we cancel this guy?, conflict in fiction, it has to exist, Simak exists, it defines on how you define conflict, a harsh word, I want some toast and mom says no, a fight over toast, man against man, man vs. nature, busy work, keep them busy, a horrible story, why kindergarten exists, its from the Prussians of course, it’s in the name, in order to make your troops obedient you have to get them young, take them away from their parents and indoctrinate them, pre-k, how did cave men manage so well without these busy work contests, scolded with marks, he’s on a kind of quest for some enlightenment while being friendly, a newspaper guy, how the news is generated, there’s not a lot of news in it, what kind he was, what they choose to shine a light on, where the bias really is, Stanislaw Lem, One Human Minute, a fake review of that book, we’d never ever had that, him and Borges, you can’t ever have the whole story, you can’t have every story told, the facts you just presented are false, laid up in a fever, when mom’s watching the news, as a farmer the weather is very important, spellcheckers are built in now, contradictory claims in the same presentation, even when it is a cogent story (no self contradictory patients), they didn’t understand what the point of the story was, Dan Carlin, how do you even know, it depends on what you watch, what the truth is, what the news is, cable news, this thing happened, Steve the expert that we found, that could be terrorists, there were terrorists and they did the thing, conjecture over what it might mean, they don’t have any wisdom, is there a source of information, one thing we can do is wait ten years, then twenty years, after 75 years, the facts that were being spun, was the Maine an inside job?, in the harbour of Cuba, the kickoff for the Spanish American war, a newspaper chain in the United States, remember the Maine!, to start a war, it doesn’t matter, if we found a conspiracy of a guy, a series of still photographs of a guy planting a bomb, not a torpedo attack, the media ginned up a war and the U.S. government wanted a war, got them a lot of possessions, now we’re an empire, feeds into this book, easier to arrive at the truth, nobody is arguing about who shot Garfield, video of Kennedy being shot, before that video came out, the Zapruder film came out in the 80s, Geraldo Rivera, what are we unsure about?, we don’t have a zoom in on the face of the sniper, it contradicts the official story, proves the government was lying in the report, standard operating procedure, its not there as a public service, reinforcing a point, liberals in the United States, Murdoch, curse him in their secular way, curse Murdoch and the evil work that he’s done, the way people hate Elon Musk, everything’s like that, who’s the owner of MSNBC, nobody knows, they got agendas, the agenda makes the spin and the focus, reading the paper lately, the end of Biden’s term, Biden’s dementia was kept a secret, it wasn’t a secret, not officially, showing the opposite, “cheap fakes”, who’s claiming what the facts are, the guy measuring the rainfall, Dan Carlin gets away with it because he sticks with old stuff, he was doing Common Sense, Hardcore History, always slow and long, 4 to 6 months, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, they’re fine, a fascinating book, a culmination of a career, a lot of good books, Shaun D. Standfast, City, Waystation, All Flesh Is Grass, Stephen King, Under The Dome, Out Of Their Minds, Enchanted Pilgrimage, Choice Of Gods, Terence and Maissa, The Werewolf Principle, Destiny Doll, like a Star Trek episode, like a roll playing game, there’s no plan, what is your purpose in life, a pretty interesting thing, they’re model version of ourselves, a portal fantasy, instantiated in a new character, strength 1, health 7, charisma 99 to your parents, 18 years later, confront the world, many are slain, the secret of the planet, everyone’s curious, The Goblin Reservation, Empire, Time And Again, Ring Around The Sun, The Trouble With Tycho, Why Call Them Back From Heaven, Our Children’s Children, 1976, A Heritage Of Stars, Mastadonia, The Visitors, as you well know Scott, people don’t like short fiction, they love novels, 350 page novels, tolerate an 11 hour novel, seeing things when I close my eyes, patterns, images, I’m hallucinating, there’s no audio, not hearing things, going across my eyeballs, not eating a lot, two plates of bacon and eggs, couldn’t finish the steak, all that being said, all these amazing images, the images are such that you see in some weird painters, I see it dude, claiming, little puppy’s down here, that’s his mom, next week, The Magic City by E. Nesbit, parents in Florida, spending the weekend, sun in the winter, there might be one of Empire, a Galaxy short novel, one way to go, a substantial meal, George R.R. Martin’s bookstore: Beastly Books, special editions, rare stuff, Gene Wolfe short story collection, A Storm Of Swords, what are we to make of this series will never complete, he’s almost done, 1400 pages, I will never be finished, fake news!, an update on his blog, keeps pluggin away, one more after that, Simak better, his very earliest stuff, go back to the middle, very sophisticated, it had a resignation to it, sixth novel, a fixup, Lord Dunsany, Clark Ashton Smith, short but dense, what he’s bad at, what he’s good at, loading up the atmosphere, you fool, check out Clark Ashton Smith, there’s an evil wizard and he hates people, very simple stuff, Dunsany has got depth to him, he also plays in the shallow area, Fritz Leiber, great stylist, smooth and fun, the current state of the cat, sound asleep, next to a hot printer, at least it’s a Brother, bro, Eaters Of The Dead, a big Michael Crichton kick, about a year ago, very cute, a little xmas bowtie, Santa Fe, the Iron Giant, the costume beside him, tv show or movie, very familiar, a lot of stuff his wife didn’t want in the house, just open a bookstore, keeps it stocked, Brandon Sanderson is opening a massive bookstore, a homebase to sell, the production of special editors, needs a warehouse, vertically integrated, right next to Evermore, a fantasy amusement park, not quite awesome, a fantasy village, little quests, talk to actors, RPG but live action, very enjoyable, how it ran and everything, it’s really nice, somebody bought it, I am not that foolish, I am not a park for you amusement, being sick sucks, thank you so much, get better.

Project Pope by Clifford D. Simak

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #844 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Noseless Horror by Robert E. Howard and The Haunted Corridors by William Hamilton Osborne

The SFFaudio Podcast #844 – The Noseless Horror by Robert E. Howard (34 minutes) and The Haunted Corridors by William Hamilton Osborne (1 hour 37 minutes). Both are read by Tommy Patrick Ryan. These are followed by a discussion of both. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Alex (Pulpcovers), Cora Buhlert, and Tommy Patrick Ryan.

Talked about on today’s show:
Thomas, two stories, Magazine Of Horror, February 1971, Mystery Magazine, October 1, 1918, haunted by the image, very different, some similarities, pulp magazines, a lot less about Mystery Magazine, one of the first mystery pulp magazines, 1917, into the 20s, a break, bought by Street & Smith, merged into another magazine, later volumes, quite interesting, this is a science fiction story, improperly done, kind of a mystery story, always reliable Robert E. Howard, mystery/horror, Agatha Christie style, The God In The Bowl, police procedural, major flaws in both, more forgivable, generally flawed, much faster, doesn’t linger over its problems, predictable, fun, the full reveal, some interesting ideas, a more current reader, leaving women completely out, racism, such a strong powerful scary looking brute, red herring, the history of the mummy, put on a naive hat, a cynical hat, a little obvious, only 3 people in the house, one of them has no nose, inflated in the fire, well done, The Black Stranger, vengeance from beyond the grave, Vale Of Lost Women, a sharp sword is a hardy incantation, A Witch Shall Be Born, fight with gods, being racist, interesting article/review, Adventure Fantastic, pointed out a couple of things, forgotten, characters in Skull Face, reused names all the time, her liked certain names, a name to conjure with, not that many Sikh names, used interchangeably, by pulp standards, using the racism as part of the red herring, I don’t like the look of him, missing a nose, made me cringe a lot, what do I look like oriental?, we’ve rejected the use of that word, generally in society, eastern, people from India or East Asia, people from the middle east, all east, not referring to Siberia, Eastern Catholic churches, the counter to the idea that this story is racist, he did a particular thing, Noseless first, page 20, aided?, really good job with the accents, you’re a real man, the compliment, that is straight out of Kilping, Gunga Din, ignorance, the outlook at the time, a useful insight, his dark skin, his missing nose, his propitious strength, Howard’s intention, the hero of our story, sympathetic characters of color, N’Longa, a cliche character, the hero of those stories, sympathetic muslim characters, Saladin, the knight from Ireland, Cormac Fitzgoffery, Talbot Mundy, recently scanned by a collector, 1912, six years later, one stands on its own, The Soul Of A Regiment, a regiment can never die, a non-white doing the good thing, a very scary title, The Damned Old Nigger, a fez, a story building, it isn’t the skin it’s the man, it comes from a racist time period, there are exceptions, a British name, the unnamed narrator, Dr. Watson, the crazy Egyptologist, a Baskerville style mansion, the servant, the rival who comes back from the dead, he pulls a Lovecraft and faints, great white hunter, in a fight with the Afghans, as anti-racist as you can get in about 1928, nobody knows, this story doesn’t fit anywhere, written in two sessions, the feel changes, then we get action, an infodump at the end, such a great sentence by sentence guy, full of great ideas, handled terribly, a better story because it’s handled so well and so quickly, science fiction, crime story, the watchman threw me straight out the window, a crime magazine, reincarnation, 15 ideas?, so science fictiony, H.G. Wells might have done something with this idea, there’s no radio stations yet, the touches that we go to, the tone is all over the place, I’m gonna die tomorrow, what his other stuff is like, a lot of gender stuff in here, Queen Victoria was a man, Charles Martel was a woman, interesting, just thrown out there, no completely impossible, we know he had sons, very casual, trans by the way, Cleopatra, we would consider ugly, not a beautiful woman, so successful with men, coins are like official portraits, the same idea of accuracy, a really sexy woman on the coin, Hannibal’s Children by John Maddox Roberts, awkward, distracting and not in a good way, plays in, a professor and a scientist, Virginia is the beautiful daughter, professor of English literature, dime novel, 10 pounds of shit into a 5 pound bag, sparky but it fizzles, how cringey, how to pronounce it, let’s agree, two heads are better than one, that could be something interesting to explore, already super dense, made it hard to read, 15 pages vs. 13 pages, an hour 40, so much longer, back in Michigan, fancy sound equipment, the ending part where they’re in Egypt, a much larger portion, the cop and the shakedown artists, a comedy?, completely superfluous, supposed to be a detective magazine, history, that’s amazing, one of the things they don’t explore, making notes in their private journals, there’s no secrets anymore, why Jesse is weird, everything’s the past, the present doesn’t really exist, still annoyed with Jesse, the future doesn’t exist, everything we’re doing is looking backwards, there’s no more secrets now, we all learn sign language, that Robert Redford movie Sneakers (1992), The Quiet Place, what are the implications, love story through time, a Lincoln speech, kinda like it, on the cover, saw this cover Galactic Central (Philsp.com), looks Lovecraftian, the truths revealed are kinda stupid, The Black Cat, The Thrill Book, higher standards, all about the ideas, a counterpoint to that, a terrible story, it’s not good, it’s too long, such a good comparison, not innovative, entirely derivative, Robert E. Howard’s ability, a lot better than most pulp writers, the trunk of unfinished stuff, in a week, 2 days, banged it out, still better than most stuff being published today, Don Mark Lemon’s The White Death, a western story set in Mexico, Valley Of The Lost aka King Of The Forgotten People, evoke actual fear, Connor recorded People Of The Black Coast, the crab people, this noir horror, very simple ideas, guy goes to Mexico or South America, the forbidden valley, I’m prospector I must go, finds some bones, finds so gold, hops onto him and eats him, Mother!, a 12 minute story, an idea and nothing else, that guy really knew how to spark up a story and get out, not to its benefit, I’m really enjoying this story, there’s a mix, where is this going, what is going on?, all over the place, completely unnecessary characters, compelling, more or less in one take, recording setup, more interesting, the characters, the action, picturing the setup of the mansion, as if it was an Agatha Christie, for the genre, he’s such a great mood writer, comparison of the opening, Abysses of unknown terror lie veiled, he’s doing a Lovecraft right there, straight out of The Call Of Cthulhu, the rending of the veil, a locked room, familiar with the form, Mary Roberts Rinehart, a mystery story based on, Gum-Shoe Mixley, in a quandary, rank grass, remunerated him, old fashioned, what makes somebody just is that they pay him, solicited the patronage, as dark as Egypt at night, much more like The Hardy Boys, and what are they doing there?, why there?, in line of sight, they didn’t have radio towers, it keeps doing that, recreate the come hear Watson I need you, Alexander Graham Bell, Shakespearean comedic character, emotionally and tonally all over the place, two stories for scripts, its terrible and needs to be changed a lot, so easy, scary and fun, it would be impossible, too many, stripped it down, it has to be the tech, sound goes on forever, every step you take doesn’t echo in eternity, a cool idea, ghost hypothesis, The Stone Tape (1972), psychic images from great trauma, a murder in a castle, like phonographs, resonating properly you can see the past, the inspiration, really ancient whispering stone, recording equipment, voices from the past, a voice from the future, come to yell at it, get the hell out, we got out, the stone was warning him, its from the future, the abbey museum, there’s a nuclear war coming but we don’t know when, 1016 words, a similar idea, light, Slow Glass, Light Of Other Days by Bob Shaw, slower than the speed of light, a thick slab in a nice setting, leave it there for 15 years, recorded views, a picture window to that place in Ireland, makes your dingy apartment wonderful to be in, an Irish countryside, honeymooners, quaint country farm, off they go to live their life, she’s a young woman and he’s an old man, the slow glass was going two ways, a beautiful story that takes a science fiction idea and does something exquisite, Cleve Cartmill, Tom Godwin, all the things that it teaches us, incoherent and pointless, a better writer, broken them up into a couple of different stories, incongruent, the intro, the main plot happens in Egypt, so much exposition to develop the machine, they’re doing it, a train, its a romance?, she died, she died randomly in the end, trying to make it uncanny, the trope of a scientist and his beautiful daughter, Lester Del Rey, Futurama, an intern, Amy, guh, Stanley G. Weinbaum, distraction to the main character, how they look alike, reincarnated brother and sister, why is this happening, bad writing, trying to understand everything, Mistress Of Mellyn by Victoria Holt, not understanding why things are happening, associated with fear, people fear things they don’t understand, thunder is a good example, they act instinctually, hunker down, the cover is iconic, a guy running between pillars, Hammurabi style statue, very Persians, mouth open, what caused that?, covers are very important, this seems Lovecraftian, Syrian bearded dudes, the overwhelming truth about something in history causes cosmic horror, muted, 106 years old, when people still remembered Lincoln speeches, why was it soundproof?, an old dowager would, in the 70s they’re doing 70s stuff, the fifties was not understandable until Back To The Future (1985), the tech, the cars, the music, movies set in the 40s, the 80s, 90s, 00’s, 10s, study the past, the 1890s, Sherlock Holmes, William Hope Hodgson, prewar stuff, Anita Loos, Gentleman Prefer Blondes, every period of time, the Wilson presidency, super-conscious of race, not fast enough for some, post WWI to the early 20s, the last month of WWI, almost doesn’t exist, German spies, exists in Canada, rationing, important for Lovecraft, Nick Carter magazine, Blue Book, one of the sweats, Boston Blackie, heroic burglar stories, Johnston McCulley, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Edgar Wallace, Achmed Abdullah, the beginning of the pulp industry, the format is dime novel, no inside advertizement, formatted in a style that we don’t really understand, a popular consumable, biweekly, comics in the 90s, biweekly X-Men, who is the audience for this?, young men maybe, what year is our Robert E. Howard story set, it doesn’t matter, probably not set in 1928, he doesn’t do any work to pin that down, Sir Thomas Cameron, Sir John Baskerville, born into it, a competitor who was a German/Dutch, ring any national bells?, generic German aristocrat, having a von in your name, ancestors, Indiana Jones and Belloq, in 18__, why do you do that, comes straight out of Poe, neither is doing a Poe, Poe’s wife’s name, these are people who are aware of these past writings, lead to the next, a triumph, learned a lot, not mad at all, worth discussion, this isn’t great writing, creating the product, so much exposition to get us to this “climax”, not being able to handle women, almost intervenes, beating on the feet, whipping women, a reminder, he had that issue, the death of his mother, so unnecessary, he’s this way because his love was forced to be Cleopatra’s face, not useful, really poorly done, the one we’re discussing, a great idea, this story is super-interesting, administering the beating, over her stood a lower magistrate, shriek upon shriek, this is a piece of history, recorded forever, you will be haunted by it, a local colour thing, its not the visual images, it’s a story about sound, when you cover your ears, block out history, wanted to explore it and utterly failed at every turn, squint, the last part is about a third, 2/5ths of the story, the weird frame with the cop, back and forth with Virginia on the phone, three months later, Virginia’s voice in the past, how would she known, unlikely to have ever heard a recording of her voice in 1918, a certain direction, dissatisfying, no mystery for the Egyptologist, shrunk and turned into a mummy, fetish hut, he had all the pieces, two guys with no noses, a little bit of tweaking, Almuric, Otis Adelbert Kline, notes thrown in, very Howardy, Kliney, not his normal thing, British dudes talking about British dudes, just as racist towards the British, stereotypes about British people, a very very racist time, talking about some other issue, the universities in China, grandfather had been in an important player, one of Mao’s generals, a positive effect on the gandchild’s social life, if you’re a minority in China, an exam, out of 500, an ethnic minority gets an ethnic minority, if you’re not han Chinese, their version of affirmative action, George H.W. Bush, if your dad was president…, that is the thing that’s happening to us now, programs, that’s our reality that everybody knows about, everybody was racist, why H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard were talking about, the Satanic Panic really effected Jesse’s life, a panic, occult, the backlash to Harry Potter, a Ouija board, the lone Catholic kid, a panic about cults, how terrible cults were, seems like something out of the 1930s, that was devil worship, no longer allowed to Dungeon Master, subject to forces that dictate the conversation, real insight, they’re trying to do stuff, science fiction doesn’t become science fiction until Stanley G. Weinbaum, there needs to be a shaping, Alfred I. Tooke, weird fiction, him ripping off Lovecraft after high school, 25 years ago, Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, still is amazing, there’s other stuff too, Guy De Maupassant, dealing with tropes and stuff, reading that Hardy Boys book, enlightening, those boys are lawbreakers, not what I expected, lessons learned, ancient Egypt, subconscious, they both have H in the title, fashionable, Orientalism, Some Words With A Mummy, they found King Tut’s tomb, what this project is, look at old things and see what the past was like, echoes from Adam and Eve, sound doesn’t echo into eternity, no one else is talking about The Haunted Corridors, dug up out of the trunk, 1970, in 7 months, in the year 2610, be a haunted again, a cool takeaway, what is the purpose of reading old things, you have no sense of history, how men don’t read, why that is, its perpetually, none of them reference each other, the historical explanations, boys don’t read, YA fiction, why Pulpcovers boys don’t read new fiction, what about Dogman?, romance, a prize to be won, message issues, Lodestar award, barely readable, the other Alex, one of these charges, a comicbook that you find at Walmart, superheroish, 10 years old, in that age range, teens talk about that, subbing a lot, Diary Of A Wimpy Kid, Dr Seuss, Doctor Suess’ Sleep Book, he’s classic, the touchstones of Cora’s childhood, Meckie the hedgehog, Pingu, an official superhero version of the leader of Venezuela, Super Mustache, what we only ever do, the deeper you study the past, we don’t have a good focal length for studying things near, video and records and newspapers and the internet, elevated even tho its so crappy, think about what it means, they could listen to it again, looking at the past, transmissions from earth, this is not a telephone cable, this is sound itself, hilariously stupid, a great idea for a story, more sensitive to the science of it, make it slightly mystical, The Silmarillion, echoed there forever more, it turns into heat after a certain point, magical realism, because of the period, the Resonator from From Beyond, Francis Stevens, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, supercool, suspend disbelief, the Star Trek communicator, across time zones, an international call, ring the operator, Unseen – Unfeared, narrated by Mike Vendetti, 1919, a framing device, the mad scientist, that’s how it does start then he fumbles it, Sunfire by Francis Stevens, Argosy, millions over millions of years, you need to give yourself homework, find the time, nephews, give them some Dogman, comparisons, wet women, super on the nose, too much in common, lack of innovation, we had fun, a dude lit up, grappled by something, a weird startling story, similarly clothed, harrowing and weird events, a far off island, sparks coming out of her hands, a monster nearby, the derelict fleet, fire of the sun, the first few pages, the right use of the word, she’s good, she deserves to be better remembered, scientist goes on vacation, ticked him into dying, a science story and fantasy story, weird fiction, science fiction, another dimension of Pittsburgh, never gets picked up again, a pocket universe, this lady’s a girl, Leigh Brackett’s birthday, sane take, she’s uneven, C.L. Moore is all right, as a female author who’s really important, Jean Veil, innovative, her last story is in Weird Tales, follow these great authors, worked for a Mormon magazine, John Bellairs, The Face In The Frost, fairly scary, Astrid Lindgren, The Mummy, The Will, And The Crypt, listed in Appendix N, died really young, only 53, after he died, his characters, just under Poul Anderson, one of the most obscure, Margaret St. Clair, getting yelled at, the first Gor book, would read it again, John Norman, infodumpy, where’s the sex?, BDSM stuff, super-superflawed, the green muscle mommy book, Legends & Lattes, a Gor movie, Jack Palance, John Lange, the bit from Police Squad, not disguised at all, Betty Page, she’ just barged right in there, Jabba’s sailing barge, lot’s of slaving, the proper order of the universe, Tarnsman Of Gor, fetishy, 7 hours 44 minutes, very prudish, that dude just grabbed that gal’s breast, 27 hours 30 minutes, Ralph Lister, probably pretty tame, 1966, very quickly stopped, badly written, not great, off the rails, no one would remember, great Boris Vallejo, fascinated, Eaters Of The Dead by Michael Crichton, abortion book?, A Case Of Need, Congo, Airframe, such a weird book, thinly disguised Boeing, a plane crash in Russia, so weird, a hobby horse he was on, Pirate Latitudes, Travels, Micro, Disclosure, weird sexual harassment, bitches be lying, The Great Train Robbery, Sphere, Dragon Teeth, golden age of fossil hunting, came out in 2017, State Of Fear, how global warming isn’t real, wrecked his reputation, captivated until the end, really good writer and clear, too much baggage, Timeline, with Paul Walker, a castle siege, rock and roll jousting, a Heath Ledger, A Knight’s Tale (2001), David Bowie and Queen, on brand, its Beowulf with Neanderthals, Antonio Banderas, filmed in British Columbia, downloaded and organized, The Ship Who Sang, The Ship Of Ishtar, an early Munsey magazine, Isekai?, entangled, dreamlandy, Queen Of The Black Coast with parallel dimensions, Exile Of The Eons by Arthur C. Clarke, a social satire, a dude with a boy, a Virgil Finlay space suited dude who’s a giant, audio drama, it’s terrible, so ableist, thalidomide scandal, Philip K. Dick, a classic, Eric’s book club, mutual acquaintance, pairing things, how long do you want this to be, so many good books to read, go do your podcast boys, the more people the longer, some long individuals, Scott is very short, Mr. Pulpcovers is pretty short too, Mad Max novelization for 4 hours, R. Murray Gilchrist stories, deep and rich, compare and contrast, there’s not much to say about it, West African mummies, he just made that up, weird fiction stories lend questions, rich and good, the more enigmatic the more fun to talk about, book club, too much going on, Paycheck and The Weapon Shop, dislike it more, hasn’t aged well, talk to you next year, good slide into the New Year, good job, as a voice actor, new equipment, optimal settings, Philip K. Dick never disappoints, Jungle People, he was 13, able to map it, a novel with a key, a fable, a bunch of monkeys going to war, because he’s Philip K. Dick that’s why, quick dinner.

The Haunted Corridors by William Hamilton Osborne

The Haunted Corridors by William Hamilton Osborne

The Haunted Corridors by William Hamilton Osborne

The Haunted Corridors by William Hamilton Osborne

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #813 – READALONG: What Mad Universe by Fredric Brown

Jesse, Will Emmons, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about What Mad Universe by Fredric Brown

Talked about on today’s show:
how to spell Fredric, mostly famous for a short story [Knock], The Star Mouse, The last man on earth sat a lone in a room. There was a knock on the door., a story stub, the basic premise, For Sale Baby Shoes never used., people who are really into science fiction from the 40s from astounding, from Planet Stories, Startling Stories, September 1948, some differences, 1 issue complete novel, 1949 hardcover, Lawrence Block had written this new Burglar book, The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown, a writer’s writer, Donald E. Westlake, dead much longer, Anthony Boucher, great, pretty good, before its time, multiverse shit, a little annoyed with it, overwrite, overexplain, sense of disorientation, conversations about bug-eyed monsters, when the women were dressed like this, the crowd chanting for Mechhy, stuff we’re missing, a review of the new Fallout show, a review of the review, a criticism of the show based on its a videogame that got turned into a tv show, enjoying it for spot the thing, fanservice, oh look a callback!, servicing the audience of Startling Stories and the like, early postmodernism, self-referential, woman wears the brass bra, green bikini-top, the space-girl uniform, B.E.M. is a deep cut today, 1950s with movies, kidnapping girls in film, up to the 80s, space girl uniform, when you’re in outer space, we have spacesuits, are they thin clear plastic?, girl in bikini in space, she needs to have a pressure suit, a plastic bag so you can see her legs, the art from the original, our hero fighting a bug-eyed monster, clouds, he’s asleep, fitting into a tradition, Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee, a representation of Surprising Stories, Earle Bergey, the father of the brass bra, bad at bug eyed monsters, great at girls, in this other world, he’s much better at doing bug-eyed monsters, venusians, arcturians, moon creatures, human models, good logic, a fun and funny book, Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022), tired of, a non-Marvel Marvel movie, has actual emotional resonance, the phenomena that happens, shit on then becomes mainstream, has to hit the official checklist, a science fiction movie about multiverses, guy who snaps his fingers, Thanos?, not official channel, groupthink, indpendent film that got made and blew up, as a science fiction movie, a family that’s struggling with itself, a science fiction device, what it’s like to deal with each other, the phrase, “above the mental level of a comic book”, nobody would accept this plot, it’s too low level, artistic contempt rolls down hill, comics at the bottom, Planet Comics, this is in the book, pulp magazine editors calling their magazine’s books, being aspirational, low social standing, what this whole book is about, semi-respectable, jobless, a lowly writer, a plagiarist, most important robot in the universe, his version of earth, now he’s the publisher, most sexy girl on the planet is now his wife, the angst of being a writer in 1940s, be respected and respectable, the girlfriend of the nerd, Rocket Talk, social strata, also true in our world, commercial product, Multiverse Of Madness, Spider-Man version, the most mainstream version of a lowly science fiction thing, official approval, did the Christopher Reeve movie, stupid comic book shit, stupid comic book shit took over, Disney+, main theme, having fun, reflecting, a roman-a-clef, story with a key, match characters for real life people, going to visit an author in upstate New York, paid for a novel but hasn’t started it, Theodore Sturgeon, interesting factoids, one version of Surprising Stories, very graphic on the cover, the Mecchyverse, the cause of all this later stuff, fun, when Heinlein did his multiverse stuff, ultimately where all of this ends up, an interesting case, basically one story [Make A Prison], all literary allusion to one poem, taking metaphor, that’s not how normal science fiction operates, if he’s finally doing that, maybe it’s going to be good, the prose is really solid, there were things that didn’t need to be there, a fairly short novel, slightly changed, titles of chapters, words here and there are different, he explained everything, science fiction pulp concepts with logical explanations, even the moon has an atmosphere, set in the future, published in 1948 but set in 1954, cold war paranoia, East Berlin, shoot you on sight, McCarthyism, a preview of that, ahead of its time, everybody is looking for spies, so cool, a time travel sort of story, doesn’t know the rules, the history, good insight into the book, a legit bug-eyed monster science fiction future, how their world became that much different, the world of Winton, no major differences other than a rocket to the moon, capacitor explosion, completely disintegrates one person, a future that didn’t happen for the United States in 1955, doing so many things at once, making fun of science fiction magazines of the 1940s, the fan was at the bottom of the pool, the best fan, the editor wants fans to write in, a shit disturber, makes jokes and fun, more addicted to the magazine, see your name in print, what we see as youtubers wanting subscribing, need engagement, asking questions, just a youtuber was bad, real media, feeling you’re a low level guy, the fan wants to be the best fan, the publisher is gone, all of it logically follows, everything is explained, the levels of meta, the universe a grown man imagines would be inside a 14 year old boy’s imagination, an impressive feat, not-super-super memorable, not-very science fictiony, The Number Of The Beast by Robert A. Heinlein, Lazarus Long says to Heinlein: look there’s Dorothy, L. Frank Baum, writers who write other universes, detailing 666 universes, already tired of it, seems like it was new, the twist is the multi-verse aspect, he holds off until the very end, precursors, Sidewise In Time by Murray Leinster is from the 1930s, a hand stand-in characters, E.E. Doc Smith, Zap Branigan style Doppleberg or whoever, space aliens doing spy stuff, we have to shoot the people on sight, multiverse, 1895, philosopher/psychologist, all plasticity and indifference, the etymology, comes from stuff like solipsism, you’re the only thing that’s real, doesn’t get you very far, coffee later, even if hit by a bus, all solipsism are true, the stupid wrong way to go, my truth, there aren’t private facts, the private language argument, Tolkien had a private language for a while but had to start sharing it with some elves, telepathy, graduate thesis out of being just a hack writer, a girlfriend who will respect him, Doppel, made himself French, he doesn’t know anything about it, the Winton editor who looks like him a little bit, she looks even better, all very fun, why did those two characters swap, so plot could happen, a narrative that swallowed itself, interesting philosophical implications, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, what is real, post-modern rabbit hole, Rick And Morty, six episodes is probably enough, took the whole thing of Futurama, hasn’t fully established, handful of tropes, hasn’t worked out all the kinks, he’s the publisher now, does he have the skills to manage a publishing empire?, invite your editors to your mansion in the countryside, Hearst, Patty Hearst’s story, money to feed poor people, robbing a bank, caught or burned to death, sentenced to prison, commutes her sentence, president pardons her, what was going on her mind?, things are mean, your grandpa is a horrible person, I like my grandpa, FBI gets here, grandpa says I want her out, I’d like my granddaughter to have a pardon, yessir, main character syndrome, comic book level, that level of corruption, if it has any point at all it is about that up and down contempt, night gangs, an awesome sequence, get robbed, robs a guy, moon-drugs, space-planes, well worked out, looking up and looking down, good thinking on Jesse’s part, pulp magazines: 10 Story Book, Fantasy Book, a different etymology, contempt, folk tales as opposed to fairy tales, massively blinded, Remarkable Story Of Chicken Little, how good it is, so simple and so good, finding new insights, in it, washed over a million liters of water over a million years, this beautiful rock, using tricks and an idea, trying to fill page, a grandma, tell them a story, it gets inside of them and comes out later when they’re older, meme idea of story be what’s most different about humans as opposed to other animals, contempt for Little Red Riding Hood, kids’ stuff, what is it good for, for understanding skepticism, how do you know it, so girls will respect and marry you, Jesse is right about all of this, Will hates to say it, work that comes after it, Philip K. Dick novels, sudden slipping into another reality, the tenor of it, when it happens in Dick, Dick always undermines, he sets up a thing to be skeptical about, another rug under there, bewilderment and bemusement, not a great novelist structure, make an argument for the sake of argument, something being said about the nature of contemporary society, one’s ability to perceive reality, there’s great pleasure in reading his discombobulated stuff some time, doesn’t feel that way when you read Dick, Solar Lottery, chosen at random, an interesting idea, there’s a lot of running around, when he’s writing longer pieces there’s a lot of running around, bad for the story, liking the experience of living in a universe, the action set pieces in this book were incredible, driving through the darkness, dead reckoning, twitter, postmodernism and nihilism, a little bit of nihilism in this book, if an infinite number of universes, making all the possible choices, nicely dismissed by Mecchy, you’re you, alternate universe Jesse, mirror universe, not very dark, very joyful read, bemused, the coins, the questions, when he’s on the train, the cots, regrets that instantly, mist-out, if that’s his worst sin, first Fredric brown, Arena, he likes his parodies of reality, near the end of WWII, man from earth is locked in mortal combat with a big red monster, USA vs. Japan in the Pacific, retelling current events with a wink and a nod, man vs. Japan man, fields of technology, the idea of Star Trek in the first place, the klingons are the mongols, the romulans are the soviets, Roddenberry’s philosophy, come let us reason together, humans won’t be racist, Scotsman and Japanese man African ladies, guy from Iowa, Soviet guy, mystery and crime stuff, The Case Of The Dancing Sandwiches, Lawrence Block wrote a little bit about Brown, multiple layers of reality, continually subverting his own story, replicant, very internal, Maze Of Death, playing a video game, weird book about prisons and planets and not knowing where you are, a derelict ship in space, a collective hallucination, The Days Of Perky Pat, colonist on Mars or wherever, dolls, barbies, The Sims, the kids are shooting bugs for dinner, where it comes from for Philip K. Dick, super horny guy, super thoughtful guy, playing with barbies, tries to participate, what does this mean?, many stories about games (Monopoly), Roog, a dog’s psychology, garbage men come, the aliens come and take the offering urn, the dog goes crazy, that dog is barking too much, were they aliens?, there’s no answer, is that post modern?, Overdrawn At The Memory Bank by John Varley, go inside a lion’s brain, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, Total Recall, Dick would have inverted it, likes pulling the rug out, the twist is he didn’t know there was a twist there, blogpost from 2011, Fredric Brown, 1958, Trapped Detective and Guilty Detective, New York Mercantile Library, pennies a day, freshman year, roommate, The Wench Is Dead, the Merc, a Friday, a bottle of Jim Beam, bourbon, Murder Can Be Fun, dangerous, Agatha Christie, the book barely half finished, a printer, The Fabulous Clipjoint, Ed and Am Hunter, Martians Go Home, and abundance of short stories, every story he told, read the first paragraph and relax, Night Of The Jabberwock, Louis Carroll enthusiasts, 1972, the day came when it was too late, clean engaging prose, you know you’re in good hands, very easy reading, smart, supersmooth, the nostalgia, the 40s pulps, as a writer now, self-publishing, there’s no market where a writer can live by his pen right now, self-publishing, in 75 years when the internet is still around, listen to this podcast, when did twitter become x?, you can’t be nostalgic for things that happened before you were born, paperback anthologies, digest magazines, the letters section, some of them do, the number of pages devoted to letters, where Lovecraft got started, fiction and poetry, shitposting is a huge percentage of what’s going on in the letters’ columns, in anthologies, they remove the art, they remove the context, rupture easers and Rosicrucians, the rosy crescent folks sent to Wayne June, stories evolving and devolving, fan demand, a meta-story, writing stories in the story, plagiarizing himself, if written today it would be insufferable, family of Chinese people who are upset with each other, where everybody has a beard, self-promote, Will’s review of Galaxy magazine, not a great cover, one of the best science fiction magazines, Galaxy Science Fiction, Alfred Bester, Arthur C. Clarke, Gravy Planet, The Stars My Destination, Philip K. Dick, Robert Sheckley, the power of editors, pushing vs. servicing, John W. Campbell, Horace Gold, a thesis about how science fiction should be, not his first thing, good ideas, interesting ideas, got the magazine out there, he was making the magazine, subservient to the publisher, the important part of this book that’s not right on the surface, whichever Hearst, your ancestor’s legacy, a good producers of science fiction, the real turn, super hilarious, a bug eyed monster, Alan Moore, everybody’s into pirate comics, stories set in the universe he came from, a really famous author, ripping off Asimov and Clarke, agree and disagree, ideas are cheap, it’s the writing that counts, good short stories, getting good ideas to fit together vs. novels, the one you bang out on the weekend, two covers paper in the middle, not exactly a novel, Jesse’s definition, the platonic idea of a novel, something Stephen King wrote, that’s the thing that will sell right now, Suzanne Collins?, Rick Riordan?, used to be Anne Rice, slice of time, Danielle Steele, Agatha Christie, mysteries not novel, mysteries can be short stories, the word “novel”, “romance”, an acceptable thing you can do if you are in the acceptable class, sleeze books, cultural, socioeconomic, want to subscribe to the New York Times but can’t afford it, I’m above these people, defining class by ideology, a set of ideas in people’s minds, it’s not the editors, it’s not the owner of a particular magazines, your editor is now your employee, the last powerful editor, Arianna Huffington, there’s no editors though, Anthony Boucher suddenly flown into our universe, Neil Clarke, make money?, not enough to live on, sells a lot of books, how the website supports itself, 10 cents a word, it’s horrible, Peter Watts, too much new science fiction, what’s good or not, Clarkesworld, a firehose, trying to keep up, January 2010, The Things by Peter Watts, 14 years ago, hate reading, doing some research, this story’s just like this other one, someone taking down Tom Godwin’s The Cold Equations, the Helicopter one, the N.K. Jemisin one, you’re a fucker, the killing of children is ok, we need a police state to stop you from thinking bad, post-post-modern, the best analayis, when somebody accuses somebody of doing something, accusation coming from a place inside, right wing memes, retweeted some Tucker Carlson interview, projection, they’re killing children at the border, where is this accusation coming from, classic projection, unconscious, accusations are true, the lady who killed her puppy, never heard about this lady, might be a vice president, bad team, the word “puppy” rather than “dog”, oh what happened, the quotes they like to pull, I hated that dog, there’s always context, there isn’t infinite funds, city life, killing involved in farm life, hunting for food, they’re not willing to look at the circumstances, big hate on, a USA today article, she put this in a book, advance a political career, support with people who’ve, guy goes to sit with dog in a pound, the reality, is this a horror stories, the most horrible part of this story, a poor political instinct, central part of the United States, a decreasing number, farms are consolidated, not getting invited to Mar-a-Lago, [Malcolm Nance], Jonathan predicts J.D. Vance will be Trump’s VP, pretends to be a hillbilly, Hillbilly Elegy, quasi-sociology, that whole region, RFK, Tulsi Gabbard, why did he pick Pence, governor of Indiana, midwest, come back north, the most disturbing state, an uncomfortable, the KKK, Indianapolis is fine, how many states?, enriching, eastern seaboard, traveling has dropped out, a roadtrip across the country, pre-pandemic, Michigan is nice to visit, a certain item that is legal there, partakes, beaches, great lakes, shopping, go through Ohio, Bloomington, Indiana University, Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace, a dynamic person, some king od laughing stock, contempt for him, a lot of contempt, Alaska, Sarah Palin, who the official fool is, Saturday Night Live, Gaza protesters, good to figure out where the liberals are, Michael Che, Joe Biden, wouldn’t laugh or clap, Colin Jost, suck off his old man balls, father of the nation, Mommalla Harris, annoying uncle, weirdly young father, when the Queen was alive, she’s an lady, lives in another country, how fuckin retarded are you people?, the parents for the country, the competent killer dad, he’s gonna hit you with his belt, whoever’s running the show, Xi memes, reaction, looks like Winnie The Pooh, competent manager, if we have to have this whole thing managed, a weird election, RFK, Jr., be assassinated, a tradition, if he makes the debates, how can there be debates?, one guy can’t debate, in court during the debates, the court case, after the election, indicted for many things, the perception, more in the public eye, the last poll, the intent, no good strategy, if you’re cheating, physically unable to campaign, there’s media though, Truth Social, when shitlibs are reacting on twitter, more cynical, WWI in prison, Eugene Debs, compare, campaigning, alien and sedition acts, not actually against the war, which war, improved since them, Lyndon LaRouche, ideological straightjacket, everybody calls you a nazi, everybody calls you a fascist, a railroad that goes all around the world, incoherent, his followers, almost a cult, coherent but hard to understand, be very skeptical, Jimmy Carter says he has lust in his heart, brain or crotch, memories in my head, prominent conspiracy theories, why do you think that’s a slur?, the origin of conspiracy theories, collateral damage, the popular phraseology, the phrase infects people’s brains, vaccine denier, controls you, the best memes are the ones that are obviously untrue, the really dangerous memes, national anthems, we’re all part of this melting pot, you got tricked, the internet gaslights you, take screenshots, child drag queen contests, drag story readings, what’s going on, one picture shared over and over again, any time a claim is made, drill down, Howard Hawks is the greatest American filmmaker of all time, Hitchock is from Britain, any claim that somebody makes is potentially acceptable, a positive thing, closer to reality, floating in the sky above, on the internet you’re sit with so many claims, processing a whole magazine, only in politics mode right now, how many followers to following, Scott is back on twitter, Victims of Capitalism, Paphlets, Ahoy Comics, Garth Ennis, Tom Peyer, summer just got better, Barrett Brown, Appalachian Aesthetics, Edison Motors, that’s a crazy take, Trump Derangement Syndrome, creativity, the internet pushes you to conform, work through one idea, pushes you towards other ideas, massive defense mechanism, be creative, a tool, three cards from a deck, just a tool, ad hygiene, 765, there are valuable things to pay attention to, the mute button, a boomer tweeting about how Trump is bad, a little bit useful to know what this age and class group, a lot of time for twitter, the class basis for both parties, older boomer, retired with a house, Robert Kroese, Basedcon, trad writer, indie writer, what does successful mean?, sells books, really into ai, he thinks it’s good, gaslit into thinking its good, the main character is the same, dive back into, emdash, hot water once again, uncommitted crimes, roped, bad writing in there, carpool buddy, android assassins, Syd Mead, trademark wit, guy who’s trynna make a little cash, what percentage goes to Amazon, freakin out about bitcoin, understanding vs. making money, gold speculation vs. a gold miner, a visceral reaction, a new basis of an economy, trying to wreck as many industries as they can, worried about ai, a real possibility, the last generation that writes books and make art, people don’t make art to make money, the whole point is people write to make money, if this was written today, the archaeological experience of finding out about a society from long ago, old stuff teaches you more, even in a bad story from a long time ago, you kinda already know with what today is like, destitute in New York, you plagiarize, making money and art, art existed before money and will exist after money, I don’t know if people will exist but some robot will be in a cave spraying paint from its mouth onto a cave wall and then finger painting some robot animals its gonna go hunt later, you owe me five male deer, is Stephen King an artist, sometimes result in art, what is art anyway?, what you do when you aren’t doing money, poetry is art, very elitist, to show their disdain for money, Robert E. Howard was not disdainful, Lovecraft wrote poetry to make fun of people, what is beauty, hot girl on a cover of a pulp magazine, Allen Anderson, that’s art, also commercial, you know art when you see it, it’s like pornography, Weird Tales authors writing poetry, housewives, Clark Ashton Smith, marketable skill, The Black Diamonds by Clark Ashton Smith, doing other things, sculpture, 1911 story, The Mahout, an elephant driver, 20 years later, The Justice Of The Elephant, written for money, to prove to himself that he was a professional writer, sold The Black Cat, Jack London, once you know who you are you can be happy, having edited so many magazines, how art intersects with commercialism, an essay by Sonia Green (Lovecraft’s wife): Commercialism The Curse Of Art, art is separable from commerce, designs and sells hats, capitalism fucks things up, his letters to Weird Tales, philosophy of story telling, this is what he said, why Weird Tales became good, they’re tied together but not the same thing, how come you’re not paying me for the stories, a farmer of chatGPT shit, Jeff Bezo’s sharecropping platform, King Nihilism, why upset, not upset, he should know better, larger follower count, he sells books, t-shirts, partially live off, A Scammer Darkly, Aye, Robot, clickbait, Starship Grifters, a lot of reviews on Amazon, he’s popular, 289 pages, 1,336, A Grift Too Far, isn’t this guy a Christian?, Jonathan doesn’t strike Jesse as a Christian, the Mormon church is basically a communist system, excommunicated, mutually supportive, for you career you should convert, Scientology, very nice people, the Celebrity Center, scientologists on bikes with guns, they want you to do well, more than a tithe, voluntary, they got their shit together at this point in the religion, he’s not a threat, how’d you know my name, better than the FBI and the city police, they all have audiobooks, what would be the advantage of reading it?, unless its awesome, not doing an audiobook, talked Jonathan out of it, cigars and their history, goes back to the Spanish conquest, what’s the etymology of cigar?, Mayan, cigarettes are female, little one, frails, rap terminology, usherette, racquette, rockette (a little rocket), narrating substack posts, robot versions, better than nothing, too long, cooped up nothing to do, reviewing counts as art, criticism can be art, recording reflections, some feedback, a would be art dealer in New York, the industry is a scam, big time art dealer, look at this awesome book, Virgin Planet by Poul Anderson, the premise is awesome, a planet of girls!, a government of girls, a swaggering and roistering navy of girls, the social message of it, fear governments, a lady riding a bird, a lasso, lasso our hero, they’ve never seen a man, deformed girl, get you, its true, he does look like a woman, both have nipples, bipeds, Robert Silverberg, The Woman You Wanted, Future Science Fiction, excellent cover art, a story by Weinbaum redone by Silverberg, gestalt something, driven by art, on a streak, a few novels, The Green Queen by Margaret St. Clair, the audiobook is done by Mike Vendetti, closed mouth in terms of judgements, that was a good one, only four hours long, Second Ending by James White, so much new content, good job!, Live Gold by Robert Sheckley, crime/spy books, a John D. MacDonald, Collision Course by Robert Silverberg, 2 novels by Samuel R. Delany, The Star Pit, no interest in character, The Einstein Intersection, [The Hemingway Hoax], mind changed, less-new wavy, Babel 17, doesn’t make me racist, Steven Barnes, Octavia Butler, need excuses to not read things, the most charitable explanation, excuse providers, an obligation to read any science fiction writer, winnowing, excuse, no more excuses, Nice Girl With Five Husbands by Fritz Leiber, Scott Miller [The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast], The Abandoned Of Yan by Donald F. Daley, If, March 1963, After her husband left her…, she had no family, going up ramp to say goodbye to the children, what the heck kinda world is great, some heavy stuff, five pages long, Imagination, he’s good, he has the right aesthetic, Philip K. Dick requests, people like all the stuff, hear a story they didn’t know existed, for commercial purpose, an enthusiast, also not for a commercial purpose, horrible ads, ads are horrible, Ursula K. Le Guin, ads are telling you lies, what do English majors do?, use you powers for good: art, use your power for evil: ads, how do I help people, adblocker, people are conditioned to tolerate ads, they’re teaching you what they want you to be taught, David Currie, Pamphlets, 10 things that Stalin did that were wonderful, doesn’t say ended famines, ended feudalism famines, a student locked out of his Microsoft account, why do you think Stalin is bad?, defensive of stop interacting, the leader of China in 1780, some emperor and empress, the last emperor, put him to work with a broom, what they did in Russia, an expedient way to solve a problem, and yet…, there’s a story behind stuff, George Orwell, being anti-communist, trotsykite conservative flow, Max Shachtman, mainstream figures in the AFICIO, supporting the Vietnam War, Christopher Hitchens, you have to always be humble and go back to first principles, how do we minimize that, AOC one is much funnier, eat the rich dresses, a workin lady, no principles gets you to whatever will allow you to live in that ecosystem, one of your magacommunist people, cosmonaut, 1. fought the banks, 2. drained the swamp, pro-purges, killing the royal family, killing the not good bolsheviks, mostly metaphors, you have to do a lot of unpacking, a reference to D.C., this is like a hype, not literally true, study the purges, jumping ahead to 4., the whole soviet people, Canada sent a boat, he’s not running for office now, before the war with the Nazis, what do you mean by best?, the war with Finland, running Trotsky out of dodge, Eisenhower was a colonel, they needed a good manager who made good decisions, defining what makes a good soldier, Napoleon seems to be a really good general, Rommel, and a good general and good man myth, The Desert Fox, propaganda on both sides, a standard technique, as a metaphor it fits, this is targeted, this is a cartoon for children, people know the phrase, massive conspiracy or killed lots of good people, that he died in office he did a pretty good job of purging, how Khrushchev got elected, just enough quorum, the political culture had become deformed, a tentative step, Stalin brought to his height and responsible for it’s end, homelessness, prostitution, Soviet democracy is way more democratic, Chinese democracy, meetings are fucking boring, not a lot of fun, grandmas and grandpas who have opinions, something you want to do, a young person, a Philip K. Dick novel, The Man Who Japed, the anticommunist case: look at all the meetings, “restored” is not the right word here, saved Europe, liberated eastern Europe, raised literacy, seems very plausible, turned Russia into a nuclear superpower, got Russia nuclear weapons, prerequisite for peace, the mainstream media tells us lies about Stalin, it wasn’t about personal aggrandizement only, treats, housing, almost a nationalistic patriotic fervor, transnational people, tariffs, ultracapitalists, defending your country from invasion, your nation’s resources, replace them, that’s a nationalist movement, the threat that Napoleon was, everybody has to have public education, pretty apt, power through a popular revolution, what happened, competent general, did Stalin fight in WWI?, Trotsky led the army, Stalin had a blue pencil, 10 Days That Shook The World, Trotskyite is the slur, Trotskyite tankie, in the comments, is this a parody account?, how would one know?, where’s the lie, Hitler built roads too, when did you stop beating your wife, liberals still mad about Molotov-Ribbentrop, roads just tell you where to go, easier to traverse than bushwhacking, banned by other things, whataboutism, questions about the restored part, regime or whatever, Nicholas Maduro was elected locally, elections everywhere, where don’t they have elections?, elections in North Korea, almost like he’s a king, his dad and grandad, a liberator, that steady hand, where don’t you get free and fair elections, more local, start worrying about Singapore, why am I worried about this?, who’s the bad guy here?, his southern neighbor for 70 years, are nuclear weapons good?, no, are nuclear weapons necessary?, yes, Cuba, the people will reject it, it doesn’t fit with the brand, a fight you can’t win, they have to kill everybody, a Gaza situation, a mask off of what they’re willing to do, Joe Biden is helping commit a genocide, also me wearing the sunglasses, Luke Skywalker, the special room in the White House eat from vending machines and pretend they’re journalists, doing the right thing, people can be so wrong, he doesn’t need more work, why does he believe it?, he’s old?, doesn’t see the videos?, tested a long time to realize something is bad, early trauma?, not willing to doublethink, a comfort level, maybe Bono is explained the same way, Sean Penn gave Zelenskyy his oscars, most people don’t participate at all, a minority that goes to vote, more non-voters than supporters of either party, big on twitter for one party, conservatives on twitter, people who are dumb as rocks, is Tucker Carlson a conservative, a spiritual and radical sickness, you can be a Christian and do a good interview, watching is the weird part, listening makes a lot of sense, not a Putin-liker, they never said Xi-puppet, literally a communist, transstuff is not communist, xi-communist, Chinese students, I can’t have housing because of socialism, understanding a lot of material, they might bulldoze your house but you get an apartment, housing is not the problem, more buildings than are needed, did really well in China and foreign invest it here, a tax on it, capital like land, the way to go, capitalism with a little spice of socialism here and there, mix of public and private, a rigorous control, international business, the party ideology is for a purpose, not just to make personal cash and reward your friends, what it’s for, a question in Chinese socialism, deviate towards great power chauvinism, a big country able to push around littler countries, the relationship to Vietnam, in the news very recently, China has invaded Vietnam, that was all pre, other than in Israel, we just want to control everything, China liberated Quebec/Tibet, come liberate British Columbia too, who are you liberating us from?, from the Americans, a liberation for the people, an abuse of the term, weird misunderstanding, Tibetans involved in the liberation of Tibet, back to monarchy, we don’t question the Dalai Lama, pedophile Fu Manchu who works for the US government, but not as cool, game respects game, threatens to not reincarnate, is there Dalai Lama in exile and a Dalai Lama local?, gulags archipelagos and Solzhenitsyn, a , more people incarcerated in the US than ever under Stalin, Jesse’s cookie problem vs. Will’s smoking problem, we’re not talking about me right now, it’s insidious, talk is what we take in as reality, words read with eyes or ears, what the chatter is, I heard covid is really dangerous, this one is very deadly, I’m feeling better, the test is available, you have covid?!?!, not a novel virus, a very tame virus, the chatter, the lady who sold Jesse her comics on Thursday, never stopped masking, dudes at the post office, how much traffic they have, how much they shaved, security blanket, used to think about sunglasses a lot, hats used to be a big thing, hats are okay, baseball caps, sunglasses and a hat, makes me look less bald, the sunglasses make me look cool, inappropriate sunglasses wearing, punctuating feelings, Only Angels Have Wings, always smoking/never has matches, an exchange of emotion and authority and empathy, cigarettes are a way for people to be generous to strangers and friends, a bunch of outcasts, always relying on those people, sharing a lighter, sunglasses are not as addictive, there’s a reason, an Apple watch, it’s an Apple watch, it’s a nice piece of kit, her phone, her heart, blood oxygen, regulated by the clock on the wall, a new tumbler from Starbucks, wanting to own it, take a photo of it and share it, it’s not for that, when you have too much money, unconscious unthoughthrough, I have to associate with the other team, wanna get dates, not answering your own question, universities investing, seeing dead children is traumatizing, in solidarity, exercising some sort of moral principle, those bad things are fake/necessary/what you get when , Destiny, Costco water is Hamas, Edward Snowden, dig it out root and branch, start with Madison Avenue (google/facebook), the stories of the stories of Madison Avenue, girls on parade, freedom sticks, ladies shilling cigarettes, the history of smoking in the United States, indians smoke, didn’t licoln smoke a pipe, not just a gay metaphor?, was Lincoln a pipesmoker?, Robert Abernathy’s Grandma’s Lie Soap, unable to lie, toothpaste, the world has changed, looks a little long, C.C. MacApp, chess player, And All The Earth A Grave, Darkness by Lord Byron, editorial introduction, there’s nothing wrong with dying, prospecting with his donkey, a new bookkeeping machine, blew a cog, humour all over the place, sell coffins, the big Christmas hit, Cabbage Patch Kid, coffin ports, automobile garages, a rich mahogany number, two black dots, the old prospector and his burro, Adams, some remark to the beast, Denver, skinny packrats, unburied coffins, Martians?, they’re gone Evie, we gotta start over, mild reproach, married to a jackass, The New Yorker, barbs, vintage New Yorker, its the thing, coffee, blast some meme, finish another Silverberg, podcast edits, prep for the next one, might even have a game, hunt for that dinner, Barry Convex, Cronenberg’s sells eyeglasses, surrounded by three teams, hide in the back of that car, everybody is getting killed, back of the car, don’t engage, hide, stay alive, he had a lot of fun, hiding is fun, simple adult version of hide and seek, save that cigar?, cats are smarter than that kind of thing, the texture, my cigar got eaten by my dog, do dogs eat tobacco, monkeys smoke tobacco, gorillas too, a bear that smoked, tourist encouraged chimp, North Korean zoo, in the Guardian so it must be true, associated press, the Big Book [atlas], South Korea produces clothing, counterfeit cigarettes, ip piracy, the important part, smoke the real thing, that the brands be honored, chimpanzee licking its fingers, Pyongyang, lights her own, just like us except for they’re ripped, she doesn’t inhale, monkey doing, monkey being, do not inhale, the juice, through skin, innerdermis, outerdermis, tissue, not an anatomist, human anatomy, Isaac Asimov’s Super Quiz, broke my clavicle, never broken a bone, skiing, uncoordinated, impressive, what about a bicycle, everybody just gave up, swim classes, fewer options to break your bones swimming, not be terrified of the water, interact with it in safe ways, horseback riding?, like fencing, how much you gonna use it?, looks cool, practice involved, other people with swords, household kitchen knives, practicing rumbling, seems kinda extreme, a knife that didn’t get used, never stabbed nobody with a knife, women debating, have you seen it?, punching fight?, that’s not a debate, women are capable of the violence necessary, a violent subtext to debate, you have to be in the same room, slap, challenge to a duel, why they get them up on the stage, two online youtubers, disconnecting, debate class, debating women, imagining Stephen Hawking in a debate with Trump, you can’t punch a guy who can’t move his limbs, you moderate, debate bro Destiny, overtalk the other person, drown out the other person, you better respect me, soibros, soiguys, walking around the world, are you serious?, you need to moderate your response, a physical threat there, what is the debate about, what should we do, what should be done, swaying the group, corporally control you, Edgar Rice Burroughs set on Venus, obvs. the Burroughs stand-in gets to be captain, the team that is against that is a strawman, just defect, another way of solving it is to get physically violence, be it resolved that…, trying to sway the audience, my learned colleague, the house of parliament, ungentlemanly behavior, distinguished gentleman, the sergeant at arms, enforce the will of the speaker, ejected, and or the mace is there, a way of preventing the debate from getting out of hand, the insult stage, a physical threat of violence, hands can be turned into fist, realized and recognized, why they had to ban dueling, wasting your team for killing the enemy, secret dueling, in the context of protestors at UCLA, the protestor’s response is to build barricades and fight back, are these people having a debate, protesting is I object, the speaker is the cops, or a vigilante, just as bad, worse, the occasional crazy person, life has meaning now, the paid operatives, zionist brownshirts, thug, are protestors peaceful or not, an organized protestor, a good idea, infiltrators, you organize the infiltrators, a committee, security culture, end up in a bad place, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, the Detroit PD and the FBI, pre-revolutionary communist movement, discipline, one of their best workers, parliamentarians, ultimately a cop, when do they become the Patty Hearst and join the workers for reals?, murderers and surveillers, after a certain critical mass, pain involved, incompetence, it’s falling apart, kids are not being taught how to read, reading is overrated as well, an important concern, if you cannot read well, the crazy part, they gotta get that money out now, turn to Russia, one things they never accuse him of is mismanaging the economy, spot fakers and call them out, your not even really voting for Biden, examples of public or private incompetencies, solve homelessness in California, if by solving…, money to friends who run organizations, voted up, lot of salaries, any kind of regulation, mergers, banking, find some area where things are doing well, Amazon is working, a monopoly that is consolidating, subsidizing from government contract, conservative Christians who want to be published, Costco’s membership model, the price is not so horrible, the return policy is really good, above industry standard, the return policy is important, extended warranty, will Best Buy around in five years?, appliances, decor, Lego, what bookstores, selling soap and candles, Barnes & Noble, floor space to fill, they don’t have used cheap books, what are books even about?, another dog collar store, another skin salon, people think Amazon is the place to get books, ABEBooks, Amazon is eating everything up, Audible, Brilliance, buy out your competition, very anti-Amazon, Amazon Web Services makes a profit, their business model, Elon Musk’s rockets, carbon offsets, twitter is not a money making concern, Prime is now putting in ads, now $3 more, we’ve just reinvented cable television, different sets of billionaires, the owners of the new media, capitalism is constant struggle, fitter-away their money buying skins, clogs to clogs in three generations, too cute, clogs to crocs?, Office Space (1999), clogs with flair, Andy Two Locks, just flair, school is by a Starbucks, upper middle classes, can afford tutors, Jessism is not a popular philosophy, controversial, Willism seems to be more happy, nobody calls will blackpilled, doomers?, a civil war in Will’s lifetime, no possibility of reform it seems, the TLDR, keep it the same forever, 2nd amendment, militia to kill indians, whatever the security of a free state is, free in many ways, unfree in many ways, an interesting person, mentally modeled, Netanyahu and the university’s presidents are out of control, once you plagiarize your way into a job…, lack of opportunities, reduced pay, some good instincts, Joe Biden could stop this genocide from happening, two problems, he’d have to go rogue, can’t read the teleprompter, Edward Wellen’s Mind Slash Matter, programmer/screenwriter, a president could stop it, if we’re being real, the people who run him, cut off funding, the key to stopping this thing that is going on, his own political party is largely responsible, two things holding him back, if Trump comes back to father, lotsa evidence for that?, CNN, watching CNN all day long, Hamas is this all powerful energy, Home Depot is Hamas, core ideology, willing to sacrifice all other principles, a delusion, isn’t ideology a delusion?, a concrete example of an ideology, liberalism, free exchange of ideas will lead to…, marketplace, soon we’re into metaphor, seeing metaphor as reality, words are magic, sounds like a metaphor, part of your brain says that’s interesting, words have magical power over people, magic is not a real thing, magical control over people, magic is real, how to explain to a dog why a man is staring at a piece of paper for 17 minutes, books are the thing that the man holds, they can read with their noses, reality not mediated through the word tart or pooey, that girl dog, they can get it unmediated (as close as possible), we can get tricked by words, undergraduate degree in black studies, Africana Studies, as somebody who took 10 classes at an elite university, the process of knowledge creation, knowledge production!, you can get confused by mistaking the map for the territory, useful human expression, it is a metphor, and yet it has an effect, monkeys don’t seem to be affected by words, associating words with behaviors, sentences seem to be off limits, Koko is a little more legit, Alex the parrot, the bird knows more than it does, what matter, using the voice of the trainer, even funnier, seems like Koko has ideas, dogs and cats, and birds and monkeys, dogs have ideas they want you to understand, walkies, we can get confused by the words, not know as much about what me mean, the words are [NOT] our thoughts, babies have ideas too, jumbled up in the map and not the territory, question mark, not get trapped, killing people bad, it bad, what about that guy, High And Low (1963), Toshiro Mifune, Akira Kurosawa, Ed McBain aka Evan Hunter, the cops finding the criminal, 87th Precinct books, he’s compelling, a podcast on 87th Precinct books, reversed New York, resent New York, the center of the universe, kidnapper, death row, something he wants to say but can’t articulate, a very good movie, Heaven and Hell, very powerful movie, amazing on screen, cooler Humphrey Bogart, more manly famous film action star, serious Kurt Russell good with a sword, Hell In The Pacific (1968), Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune, Enemy Mine by Barry B. Longyear, stuck on an island in the pacific, Arena by Fredric Brown, they fight each other Gorn style, Lee Marvin was in WWII, they know what they’re doing, ability to make movies that are really good, not experiencing that is a shame, almost all Godzilla films, levels you don’t have to experience them, Independence Day, a big cast, a big disaster, H.G. Wells is largely responsible for setting that stage, Yojimbo (1961), Clint Eastwood, Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett, Magnificent Seven and Seven Samurai, a very Conan-y story, A Fistful Of Dollars (1964), a western set in Japan, very Japanese but very familiar, a good place to start, archive.org, with English subtitles, an hour 52, a Conan story, an independent man, a masterless samurai, a weird social class, the weird ideas of their class, the empire and all that stuff, the military got out in front of the government, a rubber stamp, various competing militarizes running the show, sometimes helps my career, loyalty to the state, patriotism, my country right or wrong, you can see it as honorable as misguided, Nazis versus Wehrmacht, listening to authority, a flaw, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Colonel Alexander Vindman, a Trump whistleblower, the Trump Ukraine scandal, a liberal hero, just playing himself, it’s basically just Seinfeld, RFK Jr.’s actual wife, embarrassment, a sensitive topic, no politics, liberal people on it, 100 million percent sell out, pretends to do journalism for movies, MSNBC boy, Chris Hayes!, reacting to the news, Conan O’Brien, these are all the people who will do anything to get attention and be whores, readers of material, that’d be cool, when they do that for movies, lends negative credibility to everything that came before, Walter Cronkite, Cronkite-stan, how about next week?

Startling Stories, September 1948 - What Mad Universe

Startling Stories, September 1948 - What Mad Universe

Startling Stories, September 1948 - What Mad Universe

Startling Stories, September 1948 - What Mad Universe

Startling Stories, September 1948 - What Mad Universe

Startling Stories, September 1948 - What Mad Universe

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #704 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #704 – The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin; read by John Stratton

This unabridged reading of the story (1 hours 2 minutes) is followed by a discussion of it.

Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Evan Lampe.

Talked about on today’s show:
The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin, The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin, Jesse’s been wrong about it for years and years, an important story (but not very well written), correct the record, well written but long, very effective, everybody who dislikes The Cold Equations can fight Jesse, Weird Science, May-June, no. 13, 1952, A Weighty Decision by Wally Wood, different enough, the whip hand of John W. Campbell, ghoulish and silly and fun, existential quite smooth, The Cold Calculations by Aimee Ogden, dealing with a different idea, a criticism of the premises, John W. Campbell, once upon a time, had to die, fudging the numbers, the Trolley Problem, why couldn’t there be a third track, not really the point, face the moral calculus, designed to illicit a very specific thing, an idea about reality, long, not that clunky, quite beautiful in places, simple, interesting psychology, a cold story, fiddling with the opening, some dude, it’s a girl, an artifact, silly, if you get pancreatic cancer you’re dead, wish fulfillment, kissed and made better, the pain of life, a lot of people don’t want to be disabused, Santa Claus is real, god will save us, Campbell’s trainee, the numbers are fudged, Capitalist Realism, there is no alternative, Barton is an employee, a quasi-merchant marine, the worldbuilding, not making enough money, the brother’s remittances, shielded from the truth, replacing the kitten, a metaphor for the whole story, trying to shield her from pain, we shield each other from the pain of reality, we’re all going to die, science fiction can do something interesting, more silly, comicy, the medicine, it is a trolley problem, even if it was plagiarized, follow through on you’re fucking idea, don’t tap out, the stupid E.E. Doc Smith, you can’t invent your way out of the laws of fucking physics, daylight bombing raids, the engineering is bad, the reality is correct, thin margins, on the commute, a non-insignificant number, all the EDS shuttles without stowaways are not stories, Stowaway (2021), accidental stowaway, out the airlock, there is no on purpose, nobody is to blame, maybe the sign should have said “you will fucking die”, don’t walk away from that, a beancounter on earth, blame capitalism, the ship can land after all, flip some tables, Mark Fisher, revolution is the alternative, is that really true?, Tom Godwin is wholly responsible, Jack London’s To Build A Fire, Yukon stories, Star Trek V, Star Trek II is a Cold Equations, because katras, euthanasia, a remedy for modern Star Trek, The Wisdom Of The Trail, soft lazy fucks, the white man’s logic, an estimation vs. a calculation, a different moral overlay, a guy who didn’t obey a sign, do not go there, the dog has more wisdom than the man, instinct vs. plan, what it means to disobey a sign, a sign as a piece of wisdom, the fine is the cost of her life, the X Minus One adaptation, a dumb adult, young and therefore innocent, it isn’t “fair”, having the medicine enhances, the reason its a white girl in the story, we as 1950s astounding readers, the kitten is innocent, changing it to a dude, flipping the genders, an adult man vs. a girl Barton, to hit us in the feels to make us understand, if it’s Hitler in the basement, not as many will walk away, the Azov battalion will walk away, both Bushes, eternal?, a sin eater, a more meta-story, a thought experiment, The Good Place, Stalin or any other evil person, a challenge to us to do better, threw in orgies for Evan, drugs, that’s fine, imagine the place that you want, Hitler’s in the closet on the EDS ship, it’s cold in here,

[THE QUICK EQUATION by Jesse

I was not alone.

There was nothing to indicate the fact but the white hand of the tiny gauge on the board before me. The control room was empty cept for me; there was no sound other than the murmur of the drives—but the white hand had moved.

It had been on zero when the EDS launched; now, an hour later, it had crept up. There was something in the supply closet across the room, some kind of a body that radiated heat.

It could be but one kind of a body—a living, human body.

I let my eyes rest on the narrow white door of the closet. There, just inside, another man lived and breathed.

I unholstered my blaster and stood up, facing the door. Maybe it was just a girl, I thought, just some dumb girl who couldn’t read warning signs. That would be bad.

“Come out!” My command was harsh and abrupt above the murmur of the drives.

I thought I could hear a whisper of a furtive movement inside the closet, then nothing.

I visualized the stowaway cowering closer into one corner, suddenly worried by the possible consequences of his stowing away.

“I said out!”

I heard the stowaway move to obey, and I waited with my eyes alert on the door, my hand on the trigger of the blaster.

The door opened and the stowaway stepped through it, smiling. “In Ordnung—ich gebe auf. Was jetzt?”

It was Hitler.

I put him out the airlock.

There was a slight waver of the ship as the air gushed from the lock, a vibration to the wall as though something had bumped the outer door in passing; then there was nothing and the ship was dropping true and steady again.

I shoved the red lever back to close the door on the empty air lock and turned away, to walk to the pilot’s chair with the light steps of a man just doing his duty.

Putting my feet up on the console I thought about those guys on Woden – they sure will be happy to have that vaccine, I thought. I could hear their voices now. And won’t they be surprised to hear about what I did with the stowaway.

THE END]

nice imagery, symbology, a puppet show adapation, a theatrical stage production, the movie and TV adaptations, The Twilight Zone adaptation, hits the points, about an hour vs. 20 minutes, this story is important and also its good, it’s not the physics, the engineering, made lean, disposable, an emergency, an escape pod, objections, a Socratic style dialogue, you’ve fucked it up, you’re gonna think about this, you’re gonna think about that, The Nothing Equation, James Patrick Kelly, responses, an uncomfortable place, a lot of people are unwilling to accept the answer, reject the framing, three dudes, essentially a fridging story, she’s definitely cold, Astounding readers, probably 1950s white men, arranged, sacrificing a young female character for man pain, yup, screwed up (by our current standards), no story can stand that test (being all things to all people at all times), fitting into that sort of tradition, Barton hurts, the brother hurts, Green Lantern’s girlfriend, series (add drama) vs. one and done, laughed out of the room or vilified, what if the one person is your mother, Gwendy’s Button Box by Richard Chizmar and Stephen King, a little girl, workers, an adult man, a 17 year old male, a six year old boy kid, it’s not supposed to be palatable, gender studies and science fiction, Paul is unqualified, we don’t want this story to exist, the reason for trying to undo the story, rejecting the premise to reject the conclusion, who is this for, people who claim to be astounding readers, engineers, it’d be good to have redundant systems, Apollo 13, a cold equation scenario, fuel vs. air, saving three dudes in space, kludging together, failures of imagination (not failures of empathy), empathy informs engineering, the challenger disaster, the o rings, the magic words, poor engineering, a gender response, an engineering response, Gary Westfahl, is he an authority, Cory Doctorow, why do we have these terrible trolleys, why are people tied to the trolley track, its too late to complain about the engineering, this engineering is terrible, margins are thin on the frontier, [had it been lampshaded by the narrator], an excuse, Cory Doctorow, capitalism sucks and then he pulls the lever, it doesn’t deliver the solution, frames, the fucked up nature of the premise, Elon Musk could save us, the technocrats will save us, the profound moral consequences of the world we’ve build up, we all live in Omelas, somehow you benefit from that, the rules of the game, a lot of people are cool with this, their goodness to their own children, quite beautiful, a beautifully written (and simple) story, A Few Good Men (1992), we’re the thin blue line, minimize the whipping at kids in basements, to make you look at the horrible thing you’re willing to live with, puppies, we got yoga, a completely different kind of attack on reality, N.K. Jemisin’s response, diversity and equality utopia, a liberal response, instead of walking away you stay and reform it, you denounce Raytheon, the twitter one by Olav Rokne, nominated, cougars are in, the solution’s in voting, the one about Worldcon, everybody’s choice, taking the piss on people, Facebook says its fine to call for the death of Russians, pointed at Chengdu, File 770 and other forums, their baby in their basement, centers of discussion, silly, that’s going to be nominated for a Hugo, best related work, Natalie Luhrs’ George R.R. Martin Can Fuck Off Into the Sun, Evan’s tweets should be the priority, for worse, I love science fiction: I’m going to read all the Hugo award winners, Luke Burrage reading the Hugos and the Nebulas, not the cream of the crop, its my turn, we love her, David Brin’s bad Hugo winning book, taking turns, conservatives, liberals, Hugo nominators can be very…, Seanan McGuire’s fan base rewards her work, ecosystems, regardless of the merits, an electorate nominating and voting, the Oscar winners, Zero Dark Thirty (2012), snowballing and logrolling, the ones who walk away from the Hugos (walked into the dealer’s room), The Moon Moth by Jack Vance, less and less strahk these days, leftover momentum, momentum, the big game in town, clashing ecosystems, the whole puppy drama, just trying to right the ship?, the nutty nuggets, Brad Torgeson, The Ones Who Don’t Walk Away by Sean Vivier, analog daily science fiction, plotting violence, if only to end the torture of innocence, it has to be a joke, see that mop over in the corner? it’s watching you, I am good person, vote for Democrats, we have top men working on this, violating some of the premises, when AOC was down in Texas and mourning over the fence, a choice satire (or reality), the mixed results, everything on Goodreads is 3.8, we can’t have a rating system, mechanisms other than just writing, ratings break your brain, the incentives screw up the rating systems, we end up arguing over tiny percentage points, PC Gamer, Gary Whitta, Rogue One, The Book Of Eli (2010), debates about points, whether you’re wearing the badge or not, anti-thinking, why writing great reviews is so important, an attack on liberal values, there is a civic element to it, fleeing the country is always an option in a story like that, Paul would like to live in New Zealand, a settler colonial state, more paradise, their kid has two buckets, Maori writers, Born Of Man And Woman by Richard Matheson, That Only A Mother by Judith Merrill, The Science Fiction Hall Of Fame, told from the creature’s point of view, a nudie pic, what a pretty person looks like, a super powerful story, July 1950, horror, monsters, cats, basement, first person POV, diary format, child protagonist, 1996 one had a sexual element, added a bargaining scene, an uncredited adaptation, wrist bracelet thing, she gives the bracelet to Barton, burns, more depth and pathos, the fire is connected to the bracelet, fire rubies, what some writer did, Ursula K. Le Guin talks about the cost, the point of writing is to cause the effect you want it to have, a question rather than a delivery, an idea story, The Cold Equations is a door shut, why does it work so well, she starts in a closet, the white hand, she goes back into a closet, shot off into outer space, the writing is poetic, the sentimentality is through the roof, I will come to you on the wind, an object going ahead, that’s her, very close to the emotions, officious, this horrible bureaucracy, horrible capitalism realism, becoming sex workers outside of Omelas, under capitalism we have to be separated, jobs demand you do this, your economy demands you do this, if you don’t really scrutinize your government, your security depends on us being murderers and torturers, no more complaints about The Cold Equations being a story with bad engineering, Jesse killed everybody, a conceit that you need in a visual story, infodump, it would make a great stage play, that simple set, K.J. Parker’s How To Rule And Empire And Get Away With It, The Prisoner Of Zenda, Double Star, the power of stories, a professional liar, Herman Melville, Sixteen Ways To Defend A Walled City, no magic, Academic Exercises, finding hope in modern stuff, somebody has to winnow, the judgement of time and history, the market demands things Jesse is not willing to accept from the market, George R.R. Martin, the judgement of history, Robert Silverberg on a Writers Of The Future podcast, a juried award, reading the stories blind, an honesty, John W. Campbell (and a lot of people don’t like him), positing with authors, helping write engaging stories, hinted at, the universe is the ultimate judge of everything, the judgement of history so far, when Campbell gets it wrong (Scientology, overpopulation, telepathy), why still talking about The Cold Equations, a great idea story, barely an orgy on the EDS, why wasnt there room for three hookers on this ship?, Mars has got women, a Ferengi Harry Mudd delivering to miners on Stowaway

THE PROFITABLE EQUATION by Jesse

“I was not alone. Aboard the EPS were me, Magda, Ruth, and Eve, three hu-man fee-males I was transporting to a wealthy human mining colony on a planet named Ophiuchus III.

While I was calculating my profits, minus what I would render up to Damon Brool and the Grand Nagus, I had noticed a little white hand on the tiny gauge on the board before me.

The control room was, like I said, empty – except for myself, Magda, Ruth, and Eve.

There was no sound other than the murmur of the drives, and the batting of their long eyelashes—but still that little white hand had moved.

It had been on zero when the EPS had launched from the D’Kora-class ship Krookta – where I’d purchased the shuttle and filled it with just enough fuel to reach Ophiuchus III; but, an hour later, with the Krookta warped away that white hand had crept up, like an Andorian pickpocket.

There had been something in the supply closet across the room, some kind of a body that had radiated heat.

It could be but one kind of a body, I knew – a living body.

I let my eyes rest on the narrow white door of the closet.

There, just inside, another humanoid lived and breathed.

I unspooled my whip, stood up and faced that white door.

‘Come out!’ My command was harsh and abrupt above the murmur of the drives and the sudden pearl clutching of Magda, Ruth, and Eve.

I thought I could hear a whisper of a furtive movement from inside the closet, then nothing.

Nothing. Exactly what my profits would come to if I didn’t get whoever was in there out that closet and off of my EPS!

‘Out, I say!’ I said again.

I heard the stowaway move to obey, and I waited with my eyes alert on the door, one hand on my belt purse, the other clutching the whip.

The door opened and the stowaway stepped through it, she was cowering.

‘I give up,’ she said.

It was a Bajoran female, immodestly dressed from head to foot in thoroughly concealing yet ragged clothing.

She was obviously an escaped slave, probably from Terrok Nor.

I listened to her cry and plead and tell her unprofitable narrative.

Cracking the whip I told her to tell faster. I’d heard much the like before, she wanted to see her brother, capitalism sucks, and so I cracked the whip again, waved it all away, and considered.

Then I asked her a serious question: She had a choice, I told her: life on a remote mining planet with four wealthy hu-man husbands or a quick and utterly unprofitable death in the cold void of space.

She chose wisely, cousin.

Indeed. Oh yes, indeed.

Magda and Ruth are giving me oo-mox as I speak.

I’ve set the EPS autopilot to land on Ophiuchus III.

There’s not enough fuel for this Emergency Profits Ship to land land five hu-man-oids safely so that’s why I am sending you this message, cousin.

I’m sending you the contract details – now.

There.

In mere moments I will be stepping into airlock.

Eve will pull this red lever here and flush me out into space.

The hu-man males on Ophiuchus III were willing to pay an extraordinary price in gold pressed latinum – and for one more female, ooooh cousin.

This means even after your fee, what we kick up stairs to Sector Damon Brool, and even after the Grand Nagus gets his cut, this will be, or rather will have been, my most profitable enterprise ever.”

THE END

the Ferengi can make profits, a chapter for the sex book, Wallace Shawn, I sacrificed myself, the profits are unimaginable, Evan’s Grand Nagus Rom series, reforming Ferengi society, Ferengi liberals, Ferengi , because Leeta is in it, they would just ruin it, file off the serial numbers, The Orville, the side by side Discovery and The Orville, vegan Pizza vs. regular human pizza, vegan shoes, he knew they were poor because they had vegan leather, that Moon Knight show, he’s Egyptian, The Cats Of Ulthar, a long show for a short story, The Tempest, The Weird And The Eerie, Capitalist Realism, Starship Mutiny, The Last Of The Masters, dudes in robes, these people have been cut-off, Colony, cedar tree forests, utopia planet, what Le Guin was doing, Dick is more oblique or unconscious, Souvenir, Williamson’s World, larping different civilization, Dick well, Larry Niven love, they’re both females wearing clothes, Paul is self-loathing, not trolling, in German it’s silent, first names only, a Thai or Vietnamese name, referring to people occasionally, raw war footage, Black Amazon Of Mars, she’s got an axe, a tomb sweeping vacation, Allen Anderson, black tentacles, big axe, Eric John Stark, The Long Tomorrow, C.L. Moore, she smiled and let the wine cup fall, The Doings Of Vigorous Daunt, a billionaire that goes around the world punching people, like Russell Crowe, N.K. Jemison must be smart, a Warren supporter, anti-Bernie, she’s a shitlib, the afrofuturist aesthetic and ideas, unreadable, Out Of The Aeons by Hazel Heald and H.P. Lovecraft, The Man Of Stone, The Loved Dead by C.M. Eddy, I snuggled up the corpse and it turned a little rotty, Dan Carlin didn’t know what a quadroon or an octoroon was, clearly he doesn’t watch Archer.

he Cold Equations by Tom Godwin - illustrated by Freas

The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin - illustrated by Freas

he Cold Equations by Tom Godwin - illustrated by Freas

A WEIGHTY DECISION by Wally Wood page 8

The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin - illustrated by Jesse

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The SFFaudio Podcast #686 – READALONG: Danse Macabre by Stephen King

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #686 – Jesse and Evan Lampe talk about Danse Macabre by Stephen King

Talked about on today’s show:
non-fiction, explain what horror is, what is horror?, King has a lot of good stuff in this book, very casual, easy listening, frothy, an anti-academic style, high school teacher and university lecturer, a chip on his shoulder, It, not enough theme, drawn from life, incidents, a book he wrote later, Misery, the dead cat, Stand By Me (aka The Body), “Lovecraft was a racist”, “Stephen King was an is a shitlib”, conservative, bad takes in general, did you just say Lovecraft was a bad poet?, good ideas, Clark Ashton Smith’s poetry, American Liberals, vote blue no matter who, call for you favourite candidate, makin calls for Joe Biden, talking back to the Black Panthers, King is obsessed with Sputnik, obsessed with JFK, he’s dumb, a fear of political radicals, Randall Flagg, political buttons, a chaos agent, Nyarlathotep, a proud liberal, liberals are fucking idiots, when he got rich, get isolated, an op-ed called Guns by Stephen King, started off well, worn assertions, just got tired of the topic after the first cup of coffee wore off, technical complaints, this Rittenhouse thing, Boogaloo Bois, not a smart or a wise man, the worst case for making guns illegal, Biden got shat all over, other trials going on, inequities in the judicial system, public pressure, the video is exculpatory, “crossed state lines”, gut feeling reaction, where we start to go wrong, a good way of dismissing him, why did he bring that up?, paranoia, boomers, if Johnson had run again in 1968, a quantum leap moment, the Patty Hearst stuff, he lives in the public culture, Carrie, he’s not an idiot, he’s really good at making fun of people, image poems, little horror stories, not just movies, the fiction section, drifted into movies a lot, sitting in the movie theatre, the Sputnik announcement, that’s only horror if you think the United States is the good guy, thinking it through in writing, a broad outline, conspiracy dismissal of facts on the ground, Fred Hampton, extrajudical murder, playing for team America, a nice country(side), Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, Jack Finney, it comes from the same place, social horror, The Amityville Horror, the fear people have about investing in real estate, The Money Pit (1986), how children believe in magic, adult horror, my life is going to leave me, I’m going to lose my job, this is not a disciplined book, Supernatural Horror In Literature, some similarities, the fiction of his lifetime, 1950 to 1980, 1880 to 1930, Dionysian horror, terror, horror, gross-out, how much he researched it, approaching it like a researcher, his love of B-movies, I Was A Teenage Werewolf (1957), Lovecraft Explainers, “he was a horror writer”, the cosmic, through the idea, the house never dreamed, it saw reality as it is, Salem’s Lot,

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more.

ghost don’t exist except where human brains are, a guy with an axe!, a guy with a machete!, chainsaw, reflecting starlight and fears, a literary theory that authors apply, Poltergeist (1982), Bag Of Bones, a buried corpse, noisy ghost vs. spectre, descending levels, 1. terror. 2. , 3. gross-out., see the monsters, At The Mountains Of Madness, he knows Lovecraft, Philip K. Dick, the Dick horror stories, The Father Thing, The Hanging Stranger, The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch, Eye In The Sky, two levels: child, adult, caring about vampires, the horror of bills, financial stuff, what kids are like, those kids all grew up, Joe, semi-good takes, regress himself, afraid of the wrong things, what is it that makes someone capable of writing this stuff, the child in their eyes, author portraits, something in Peter Straub’s eyes, Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury, James Herbert, Ramsey Campbell, King’s take on Robert E. Howard, The Crabs, The Rats, The Blob (1958), danger in enjoying b-movies, his movie analysis is somehow connected to getting his writing done, getting you into the heads of characters, cinematic influence, watching a bad movie with a good scene, a frisson, your teacher wants you to hit these 6 bullshit points, know what your teacher wants, writing for himself, not hitting series very often, the pull from publishers, in syncopation with a large part of the reading audience, Hollywood, MGM is going to go out of business, they’re not very good at making movies, it drives you up the wall, movies and storytelling, The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, and The Outer Limits, Pigeons From Hell, Thriller, an old plantation house, axed in the head, like a folktale, Hansel And Gretel, a famine, a horrible truth, why its always the stepmom, the evil witch is the stepmom, dad went along with it, the story dominates rather than the character, built this podcast around audio, audio drama, radio drama, CBS Radio Mystery Theater, Suspense, revelations of horror through the medium of audio drama, Alien (1979) is so dark, it is not obvious in the movie, when watching a b-movie, only the things that you’re given give you the picture, a revival of audio drama as podcasts, genuine practitioners, Julie Hoverson’s 19 Nocturne Boulevard, comics, Philips and Brubaker’s Reckless, superheroes are stupid, the comics medium, a skill, training on watching a play, Arch Oboler, The Mist in 3D sound, a white blackness, hysteria, “I’m going to let a little of you out”, connecting to your anxieties, a healthy interest in horror, 1399 episodes, the Vietnamese refugees and the Metric System!, Alfred Bester, Fondly Fahrenheit, perspective is important, what the mutilation looks like, what the bad guy did to the kid, a guy without the internet, getting the materials and doing the research has never been easier, Starlog magazine, as good as it is without the internet, updated in a few places, an hour of introductory material, you can agree with him or not, like a utuber, Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde, the tarot, the ghost story, the werewolf, the vampire, thing with no name, the technological horror, the outside evil, the thing from within, The Horror At Party Beach (1964), Ghost Story by Peter Straub, Ramsey Campbell, The Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson, male anxiety, a feminist reading, the woman’s domain (the house), child molester truck driver, its all about him, apolitical, exploring the agenda (with no agenda), horrors and the terrors, the cat, the bird, the spider, I Am Legend, my personal psychiatric reaction, revisiting the child molester moment with The Talisman, I strictly AC (or DC), straight, a boomer phrase, he uses everything, seeing Revival in Danse Macabre, the horrible death, The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, where Thinner came from, fantasy, Matheson is using 20th century magic, bug spray and radiation, The Amityville Horror (1979), Ira Levin, a dabbler in science fiction, an outsider, hanging out with the gutter people, 70s technothriller or urban gothic, This Perfect Day, Rosemary’s Baby, satirist, standing toe to toe with 1984 and Brave New World, doubling down on the utopia, The Giver, a dystopia by way of utopia, “Wood, Wei, Christ, and Marx”, do the genre, more like H.G. Wells, the pulps, mainstream fiction, and literature, the paperbacks on the shelves, snubbed by the best people, anything Asimov wrote, Harold Robbins, Taipan, James Michener, airport fiction, Tom Clancy’s spot, Evan’s podcast, Henry James, The Turn Of The Screw, high-end highbrow fiction doing lowbrow fiction, where the gutter starts or ends, he lives in the (movie) gutter, the shudder pulps, Weird Tales, horror fetishing, the cover, the scantily clad woman, torture fiction, cults, satanic panic, weird menace, Pulpcovers.com, man pulp magazines, I escape the Nazi dagger girls, “true stories”, some guy saw an SS wife one time, tapping into a mental space men are into, horror seems to be more popular with women than with men (compared with other genres), watching b-movies on first date, the amusement park roller coaster, terror as you feel you are going to die, you don’t go to a horror movie by yourself, reading a book with somebody is weird, a cheap place to go get cash, Stephen King readers are women (too), Larry Niven, Harlan Ellison, going for horror, Touched By An Angel, bad attitude, Michael Landon, mad scientist, when humans were werewolves, killing spree, the puberty experience, I Was A Teenage Frankenstein, the horror of embarrassment, the mirror, the plot is he’s really ugly, very simple, you’re going to be my assistant, a new race of superhumans to save the earth, young dead people!, collecting body parts, a descendant of Dr. Frankenstein, teenagers are not juvenile delinquents, King signed up for the society he was in, his grandfather with no teeth, sane but incomprehensible, they had a dental program, satellites are useful in space, never class resentment, the rats in the cellar, Graveyard Shift, clean the basement, taken from his own life, progressively bigger rats, this boss sucks, always very personal, Road Work fails, existential crisis unconnected to the bill of goods that is the American dream, the conservatism of horror and Alice In Wonderland, this modernist direction, if things go wrong, if a plague destroys 99% of the people, Lovecraft definitely has that, we don’t want to pick at that (science) scab, his fanzine was The Conservative, Bobby Derie’s tweets, 133 slaves in his will to gift to family members, people still have that same idea, more brownouts, drive a body, things as they are or things better, gas prices, electric cars, groups of people who are pouring co2 into the environment, The Ministry Of The Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, the capitalist system forces you to go where the work is, psychopathy of recycling, this responsibility was shifted to me, tend your own garden, those plastic measures being pushed and pushed and pushed, guillotines are carbon neutral, the great straw debate, carry around metal straws, like straws are the big problem on the planet, something you can push on to the consumer, The Troop by Nick Cutter, to fulfill a kind of niche of that horror experience you get at a movie, a gross out, terror, body horror, contamination, how Jack Finney’s The Third Level, Ray Bradbury, Reading, Short And Deep, a book begging to be filmed, in service, accept your crappy role in your life, fantasy, The Wheel Of Time fantasy TV series, 909 pages, long fantasy series are to escape from the mundanity of your job, the shared survival experience, horror being different, Lord Of The Rings, supernatural elements, magic, a secondary world, low fantasy, fantasy set in our world, the supernatural intruding on our life, On Writing, James Herbert’s The Fog, as close to a supernatural experience as you can imagine, a rational explanation in the idea of the story, terrifying, when you see the world as it truly is, not mediated by your fantasies, Lovecraft’s opening the window, the geometry doesn’t work, the rules of the world don’t work anymore, in dreams we find our way through, it wasn’t a question, he knows that he’s bullshitting, to strawman it, he knows on some level he’s wrong, the wrong messaging, we need to lie to the kids, he’s writing lies most of the time, children create their own kind of magic, the sneezing powder works against the monster (because they believe it), how society and parents deliberately lie to the kids, based on his own experiences, the reader knows its a lie, the Sputnik story, was it constructed?, that really happened to him, stories he’d have told himself over and over again, the hiking story, King on twitter, strawmanning in order to denounce, you need to have a fantasy to not go insane, a theory of reality, constructing the argument, Star Trek episode, Counselor Troi, his wife’s reaction to Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives, Sliver, a satire not considered a satire, Prometheus Award, libertarian science fiction, Heinlein’s Friday, Samuel Delany, Time Square Red Time Square Blue, F. Paul Wilson, Margaret Atwood, can you be a shitlib and a libertarian?, fear of radical institutional change, West Wing episodes, Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow, an American export, State Of Fear by Michael Crichton, ecoterrorists using untraceable drones, buying trucks, underground people, freedom fighter, there’s probably a term he would prefer?, liberal, People Of The Black Circle by Robert E. Howard, Klim’s Journey, Midwich Cuckoos, The Pre-Persons, Croatoan by Harlan Ellison, aborted fetuses, Captain Jellico tweets, the new Stephen King covers are all horrible except for Hard Case Crime, Four Past Midnight, whoever Chomper is he’s wrong, Space Prison by Tom Godwin, science fiction prison, The Doom That Came To Sarnath, 14,000 years ago, politicians willing to go to war over it, 54/40 or fight, PUBG with Americans who don’t read, “Trump’s my guy”, they’ll think he’s Mexican, ex-military, control systems, 3D printing, Dungeons & Dragons, really into games, Norther Saskatchewan, the difference in lifestyles between the Canadians and the Americans, I hate to do this but I need money (for his cat), Patreon for my life, 21st century capitalism doesn’t hit everybody in the mail, mandates, Fauci and Pelosi, smashed in the midterms, banning cars would save lives, gas prices in France, Fight Club and Breaking Bad being expressions of fascism, this is a reality, Game Of Thrones is cultural feudalism, the Queen tweets, the Queen is “entering a new phase”, Charles III, some kind of consort, William and the brats, killing your sister, Princess Eugenie, Prince Andrew went to Fuck Island, that’s the lady that owns this country.

Danse Macabre by Stephen King

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The SFFaudio Podcast #489 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929-1964: The Roads Must Roll by Robert A. Heinlein

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastBlackstone Audio - The Science Fiction Hall Of Fame Volume 1 edited by Robert SilverbergThe SFFaudio Podcast #489 – The Roads Must Roll by Robert A. Heinlein; read by L.J. Ganser. This is an unabridged reading of the novelette (1 hour, 33 minutes) followed by a discussion of the Blackstone Audio audiobook of The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929-1964 and The Roads Must Roll.

Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Scott, Paul Weimer, and Marissa Vu

Talked about on today’s show:
The Science Fiction Hall Of Fame, Volume I, the mid-1980s, this one looks really long, a good exercise, reviewing collections, summarizing stories, quick opinion, get the audiobook and dole them out very gently, Microcosmic God, disgusting to rush, the audiobook is fantastic, superior, so good, one caveat, songs, tunes, Fondly Fahrenheit may be the greatest science fiction ever written, Cold Equations is important, Alfred Bester, tension apprehension and dissension have begun, reet in the heat, missing tunes, X-Minus One, cheery and cool, Oliver Wyman, Scanners Live In Vain, the cranch voice, if you had to narrate which story would you pick?, all so different all so good, Paul would go with Coming Attraction, that sad mournful ending, New York, tugging at Paul’s heart, the mangled Empire State Building, the girl is playing him, Paul could bring that pain, such male author stories, Stanley Weinbaum’s A Martian Odyssey, Judith Merril, The Quest For Saint Aquin by Anthony Boucher, very Catholic, the pope keeps his ring in his shoe, apostolic, the filth encrusted wooden table, robass – a robot donkey, jeep, The Huddling Place, Clifford D. Simak, no conflict in his stories, the guy needs to leave his house, the stakes are big, caught by Simak, The Goblin Reservation, so relatable, too late, sort of a metaphor for life right now, conversations about which stories to read, this is great!, science fiction stories can resonate even stronger later on than when they were published, 1944, all about today, all his friends are elsewhere, bullshit at the airport and the border, stay home in my mansion, the horrors of bureaucratic awfulness, hotel food, you fight to travel, the shore I know, a traveling armchair, The Caves Of Steel by Isaac Asimov, agoraphobia, where Asimov read Simak, City, we need a narrator for The Trouble With Ants by Clifford D. Simak, future history, the rise of the dogs, Jesse would narrate Born Of Man And Woman by Richard Matheson, not my life experience, Marissa gets it now, Jesse’s Roof Bear friends, ESL/EAL, making acronyms, drawing little pictures, bare means naked, a bare roof has no bear, Cellar Feller, a green monster chained to the wall of the basement, unchained the monster, told from the monster’s point of view, Flowers For Algernon, “Screen Stars”, you have to infer so much, a simple and thoughtful POV, it has niceness inside of it, after yet another beating, That Only A Mother, the horrors of mutation, The Crawlers, The Golden Man, Philip K. Dick, radiation, E.E. Doc Smith, Them! (1954), giant ants, the psychic wound of nuking cities, the white guys do science fiction anthology, sameness in assumed viewpoint, plenty of SF women writers, James Nichol, Nebula award folks (SFWA writers), introductions, a terrible introduction for telling you about the stories, one decision of editors, novelists and co-writers, switching over to weird fiction, ‘women had to hide their identities behind male pseudonyms’, weird fiction authors, science fiction poetry and novels are well represented, one and half women, Nightfall is a dud because it is long and it doesn’t need to be, it needs to be read, writing to an image and a final scene, slow buildup, that final realization, fear vs. wonder, the celestial mechanics don’t really work, a wondrous image, that religious or anti-religious thing, who are we arguing with, the writers from 1970, The Country Of The Kind by Damon Knight, Arena by Fredric Brown, Tishiro Mifune vs. Lee Marvin (Hell In The Pacific), where is Philip K. Dick?, Little Black Bag by C.M. Kornbluth, The Marching Morons, terrible but interesting, The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin, an important story, a rage inducing story, the most influential science fiction story ever written?, responses to it, very H.G. Wells in its execution of thought, clean and pure vs clunky and arbitrary, character is really not very important in science fiction, western genre, baseball magazines, railroad magazines, True Detective, those are all dead and gone, they’re not full of idea, the universe doesn’t care about you, you are mistaken sir, designed by committee, John W. Campbell, the story that it is, the story we needed, take a spacewalk, fascinating, pure poetry, Ray Bradbury, Roger Zelazny, serviceable, all about the idea, The Nine Billion Names Of God, beautifully executed and a mindblower, The Star, was it right for God to destroy a whole civilization just to get a baby Jesus, Microcosmic God by Theodore Sturgeon, More Than Human, Some Of Your Blood, Venus Plus X, the Frankenstein story retold, the definite mad scientist story, Sandkings by George R.R. Martin, in dialogue, massive differences, Kidder, ideas vs. entertainment, Dragon’s Egg by Robert L. Forward, incredibly well written, Sturgeon’s style, that Heinleinian feel, First Contact by Murray Leinster, Star Trek, a view of the 20th century, feeling futuristic still, visiplates, when flatscreens first came out, visiplates everywhere, mirrors out the visiplates, the Apollo program had mirrors, A Martian Odyssey by Stanley G. Weinbaum, a story of The Martian by Andy Weir, a great description, a bird monster alien being eaten by a cthulhu creature, Tweel, better aliens than any aliens, language, a United Nations of accents, a classic of Science Fiction, laying the groundwork for later SF, the entirety of John W. Campbell’s theory, Jack Vance, really good story, delightfully light and fun and thought provoking, impossible, funny and tragic in so many little moments, Twilight by John W. Campbell, a hitchhiking time traveller, light and breezy and old fashioned sexist?, Helen O’Loy by Lester Del Rey is a satire, out of context, its beautiful, she kills herself, true love, porn addiction, it feels very modern, very influential, The Stepford Wives, Ex Machina, Fondly Fahrenheit, The Weapon Shop by A.E. Van Vogt, PKD became obsessed with A.E. Van Vogt, the Null stories, The Voyage Of The Space Beagle, the alien from Alien, Slan, a very good reading, the arbitrary weirdness that happens and the small businessman, how you feel when you’re reading a PKD book, community, migrating to another planet, somebody gets me!, these are the rules now, no boobs, sentient nipples, nobody cheating on his wife, Rudyard Kipling really influenced Heinlein, The Seesaw, Mimsy Were The Borogroves by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore, creepy weird SF, Alice In Wonderland, Kuttner’s radical viewpoint, C.L. Moore’s style and image, Zero Hour by Ray Bradbury, Reading, Short And Deep, very pairable, Vintage Season, like a business, making a living together, our Scanners Live In Vain show, the best Martian Chronicles story, There Will Come Soft Rains, The Million Year Picnic, Usher II, Kornlbuth was snarky or amazing, Surface Tension by James Blish, pantropic series, a Joseph Smith and the golden plates going on, using their gametes, they won’t remember us, untarnishable, a few microns, a science fiction story about sea monkeys, rocket technology, a whole funny cute little thing, Stephen Baxter’s Flux, Adrian Tchaikovsky’s The Expert System’s Brother, Jerome Bixby’s A Good Life, The Twilight Zone episode, Daniel Keyes, the shorter version is better, adapted many times, an emotional trainwreck, Ted Chiang’s Understand, Beggars In Spain by Nancy Kress, exploring the consequences of giving superhuman abilities, developmental disabilities, mocked by the people at the bakery, if you just become a libertarian…, the Ayn Rand version of this story, The Country Of The Kind is in dialogue with The Country Of The Blind by H.G. Wells, there’s no such thing as vision, a horror story about an evil man, Alfred Bester’s The Roller-Coaster, Robert Silverberg’s Passengers, putting avatars through hell for your own amusement, once the people in your VR worlds are smart enough to feel real, the pleasure-pain syndrome is not available in this unit, A Rose For Ecclesiastes by Roger Zelazny, Mars getting smaller and smaller, strong religious themes, Lord Of Light, a Hindu thing going on, an Amber fan, when he uses his kung-fu, smoking, “Mr Gee, piped Morton.”, why was this Heinlein story chosen, it’s a representative story, Gentlemen, Be Seated, a character who knows things taking someone around and giving him a tour, social stuff, a rebellion of labour against “the Man”, functionalism, how important a position is to economics, a real phenomenon, a real paper from 1930, a certain kind of philosophy, Douglas-Martin screens, the mid-sixties, The Man Who Sold The Moon, cars are not a really great idea, how are we going to recover from it?, the rise of suburbia, the depletion of inner cities, urban sprawl, cars are going to kill us, what are the social implications, going for big ideas, a labour intensive technology, he works it out in such detail, we should all expect rockets to the Moon, ancient journeys to the Moon, what about slidewalks, airports have them, a conveyor belt that pulls people along, castles in the sky but in science fiction, I have this vision of the United States remade, how would all this work, the union that runs this machine, a militarized union, a fascinating exploration of Science Fiction that proves the point Scott is making, here’s an idea – what would it mean, some guy from Australia, Airplane! (1980), it all comes to nothing (except its amazing), a weird strain of science fiction, look at what people can do, grand ideas to solve upcoming problems, the law of unintended consequences, who are putting you life in the hands of, so different physically, the internet cables, shutting the internet off for 8 hours, when Wikipedia shutdown, the screen is black, so many people are affected, why is my website not working?, when Ronald Regan broke the air traffic controller’s union, if you accept the basic premise,

The fictional social movement he calls functionalism (which is unrelated to the real-life sociological theory of the same name), advances the idea that one’s status and level of material reward in a society must and should depend on the functions one performs for that society.

meritocracy, the elite that runs the country, we need superdelgates, who are the depolarables?, binders full of assholes, anybody who didn’t go to an ivy league university or doesn’t work for a military contractor, testing out his whole theory, what the saboteurs want, the philosophy behind the story, compare with Starship Troopers and The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, votes for veterans, “fight the wars” say the chickenhawks, a real problem, if you cant service the servos, in today’s society, why is Heinlein even talking about this?, in the Navy, peacetime officers, during wartime incompetence can kill you, the Scientology Wikipedia entry, L. Ron Hubbard, removed from command twice for incompetence, this is not a tenable situation in an emergency, these guys deserve more power because they have more skill, exploring the idea, they’re all competent, extreme competence, breaking psychologically, for the good of society, a fascinating fact, the R.C.M.P., Preston, Nelson, Dudley, a paramilitary force, when the RCMP are protesting they wear jeans, Coquitlam, Vancouver, Port Moody, what are the union members fighting for?, the right to quit and take another job, the plot comes after the idea, so awesome, a roadside diner on a moving road, how to move people, buses and trains, railroad magazines, every kind of of thing you can imagine about railroading, solar power, obsessed with the idea, the poor Australian, under what circumstances aren’t there better choices?, not practical, he proves they are impractical, all these engineers, a story about a bus company, the buses are shutdown, he maximizes it in certain places, general strikes, a strong man at the top, a straw man to knock down, someone with large hands, New York City stopping allowing cars, self-driving cars, a really efficient traffic pattern, a Netflix subscription service, electric scooters parked everywhere, the key to efficiency, what Scott sees, ransomwaring, working at Vodafone, loyalty to the company, X-Minus One, Dimension X, a fairly long story, tumblebugs, Segways, how humiliating it is, child sized bikes, the cover of Astounding, June 1940, they have guns, engineer and policeman, engineer and soldier, the ultimate in Heinleinian competence, we have to come to some arrangement, horror danger, going the horror direction, Farnham’s Freehold, some doofus, old man and his son-in-law, castration for being an idiot, nuclear war, are they going to be aiming here?, Fallout 3 or 4, a park of the black overlords, listen to papa boss, what would the United States be like if Heinlein had become president?, The Return Of William Proxmire by Larry Niven, failed politician, science fiction happens anyway, public works, moon program, an Eisenhowery-father figure, super-anti-communist, what kind of sex scandals would we be having in the White House if Heinlein were President?, what Secretary should Philip K. Dick become, Secretary of The Interior, Jack Vance could be Secretary Of State, James Triptree Jr could be director of CIA, Cordwainer Smith, Ray Bradbury as Vice President, Isaac Asimov as Science advisor, H.P. Lovecraft on immigration, somebody could write a book, Fredosphere, an interdimensional adventure, The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown by Paul Malmont, L. Sprague De Camp, Lester Dent, Doc Savage, Green Fire by Eileen Gunn, Andy Duncan, Pat Murphy and Michael Swanwick, wild and weird, 2011, Jack London, Hawaii, The Philadelphia Experiment, final thoughts, the Scientology people outside, “Trying to live in a high-speed world with low-speed people is not very safe. The way to happiness is best traveled with competent companions.”, “Do Not Murder”, the way to happiness.

The Roads Must Roll by Robert A. Heinlein

Posted by Jesse Willis