The SFFaudio Podcast #886 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Ablest Man In The World by Edward Page Mitchell and The Man That Used Up by Edgar Allan Poe

The SFFaudio Podcast #886 – The Ablest Man In The World by Edward Page Mitchell (38) and The Man That Used Up by Edgar Allan Poe (24 minutes) – both read by Tommy Patrick Ryan, followed by a discussion. Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Tommy Patrick Ryan

Talked about on today’s show:
2 stories, The New York Sun, 1879, Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, 1839, a 40 year difference, will have listened if they’re going to, cyborg, not a novel, not a book, people say that, what’s so fun about reading and hearing people’s reviews of The Man That Was Used Up they are in the story, lots of fun, in the Poe, a bit of a broken record, they’re programmed, speeding up more and more, firebrand, clever of Poe, scan through those words again, The Tempest, very boring infodumps, did it with voices, with names, read books, the use of the n word, negro, you don’t understand, if that’s your tripwire you’re not in twice, the other n word, not in there, if you edited that out that’s really bad, it is there!, you’re a bad person, bosom said I scalping is a rough process, Pompey, Del Ormes, “Now, you nigger, my teeth!”, it being in the literature, comfortable, necessary, to be faitful, it’s okay for Huck Finn to do it, the one time, part of what’s happening, Elijah Wood, where the Duke and the Dauphin, if they’re this then I’m a that word, totally said the word, epithets, down to the bottom of the text, D-N the vagabonds said he, who wrote that?, the character, “D—n the vagabonds!”, The Rats In The Walls, Wayne June, didn’t know it was in the story, so important to keep it in, words like that, don’t want to say it, so much hate in it, integral to the story, demonstrating, other and reduce the humanity of black people, natural to call them that, Twain is anti-racist, Poe is not, H.P. Lovecraft, Poe would have fought on the Southern side, lived in the North, not for the right for men to own slaves, Poe is a super-weird guy, the puzzle piece that was missing, a question on twitter, it was the answer, The Cask Of Amontillado, exemplifies, a less stripped down Tell-Tale Heart, almost no context, names and dates, the old man is his father, the old man, the narrator is crazy, based on metadata, not quick to disagree, a curious little scene, are you of the brotherhood?, give me a sign, removes a trowel from his pocket, a gesticulation, I am a Mason, a secret society thing, active in this period, more than a little, this story is really angry, mysteries encoded in, hiding things in the stories, makes it rich, took him in as a ward, Poe’s adopted dad was a Mason, abusive to his adopted mom, traveled to Europe together, the wealthiest man, left Poe nothing, trynna reconcile, cheating, left the bastard children money, the one chosen child, we don’t have access to John Allan’s mind, a revenge story, a personal revenge story, joined the army, went to West Point, about a military man, how would we prove that Poe would have joined the south, more than just slavery, boil it down to slavery, think about H.P. Lovecraft, wanted to join WWI, applied and accepted and his mom got it scotched, makes no sense, athletic and imposing, a good walker, it wasn’t about athleticism, it was about being a man, what if this story if not about being a man, they are very similar men, 1000% percent, caught up, lose track, in common with both of them, Pompey, the black valet, Pompeii, Mt. Vesuvius, second richest man, Crassus, private army guys, triumvirate with Caesar, the colour of the man who’s used up hair, black, it has no colour, black is all the colours, his whiskers, also black, oh that’s Poe, a black mustache, black hair, in the black and white photographs, Brutus, Julius Caesar, Marc Antony, the evil that men do, et tu Brute, the one word to describe Brutus, his dash word, Dante’s Inferno, a traitor, the argument that they’re trying to keep the Republic, in both stories, his scientist creator, engineer-watchmaker, extracts a promise, how do we get this story?, he kills him, and then we get the story, one way of keeping the secret, a betrayal, literally murders robot men, talking about it, in the context, something to pair, cyborg or whatever, the original cyborg story, of the two which one is the cyborg story?, partially cybernetic, partially person, seems to still retained his original consciousness, brain dead, a mechanical brain in him, a human with a computer brain, still a computer, just not called that, where’s the cy-part?, where’s the borg part, a guy with a toupe is a cyborg, a hearing aid, cochlear implant, not human anymore, t-800, Robert Patrick t-1000 is not a cyborg at all, breaks the rules for time-travel, like the Bionic Man, Cyberpunk 2077, Neuromancer, Robocop, mechanical elements built into the body, mechanical components, what is ultimately the story?, a really good sense of humour, they’re supposed to be funny, wry smile funny, wears glasses, what really is going on?, unpopular channels, talking about books, no that’s wrong, the man THAT not WHO, he’s not a man anymore, he was used up, argument, doesn’t have any humanity left, where is his consciousness coming from, he/it seems to be self-aware, really just a robot, robot brain in a human body, W.C. Morrow, The Surgeon’s Experiment, finds a monster in the house, a man who’s had his head removed, a feeding tube in the neck, glandular excretions, a super-muscleman, no eyes, no ears, weird facts about the 20th century, Mike The Headless Chicken, ran off but didn’t die, a sensation, a roadshow, still roost, some success, chopped a lot of chicken heads off, what makes a man a man, asking that, man in the title, theoretically about cyborgs, really bad eyesight, a satire, the reputation of a man, what that man is actually like, he’s an assemblage, it starts with his name, the last sentence, kind of a joke story, going in, an artificial element, if you didn’t know, you might not have known, wires, pulleys, a heap, pushes away with his foot, explicitly mentioned, that heap is talking, our readers in 1839, twist endings for a joke, not a ha ha joke, this is a truth, an aspect of a joke, Brevet Brigadier General John A.B.C. Smith, 1 start general, he’s not, a brevet captain is not a captain, because of respect, interject, adhd perking up, Hamlet, as brevity is the soul of with I shall be brief, he’s aware the words are related, that’s not brevity, that’s the joke, Polonius is a doofus, proceeds to talk uninterrupted, his advice, he’s stupid, a pompous fool, not the greatest investigator, where or how, coulda been a major, the yellow hair who George Armstrong Custer, they promote, they call him a general to puff him up, John Smith, what his actual name, who is the doctor, John Doe, middle initials, A. B. C., E.A. Poe or Edgar A. Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, the fashion of the time, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, T.P. Ryan, Tommy P. Ryan, every part of his name is fake, if this story was set in the 20th century, this would be a Kardashian, a lot of work done, personality is fake, the music is fake, wearing make up, about being a man, a man is a man is a man, the shape of his legs, a really good set of shoulders, a shoulder connoisseur, I know what good shoulders look like, Tacitus, the received pronunciation, Warhammer 40,000 related, while the Kickapoos are real the bugaboos are not, the thing every body is afraid to say, a fake man, fake received opinions, supercuts, safe and effective, newsreaders paid to read ads, he’s this he’s that, the newspapers, a puffed up man, a puddle on the floor, the remains of all the things that was taking from him, scalped, leg shot off, the elephant that’s standing on him, he was used up, ship of Theseus as a man, bugbear, boogeyman, boggart, use over time, just before 1900, 1950, copies of Poe, almost created this word, popularized it, when we look at it, all the thing that Poe is laying down, reviews of Poe, contemporary reviews, a lot of reviewers were getting what he was laying down, resented it, [Our Opinions Are Correct], ‘Poe is third rate’ is this jealousy or stupidity?, super-ignorant, his nova, his explosion, The Pit And The Pendulum, Hop-Frog, as a kid, conventions or rules, pedestrian with the language, well written, once, twice, remember, spectacular, fascinating, he has a thing for orangutans, his poetry, The Raven, Annabelle Lee, Eric [S. Rabkin], more to say, hidden stuff in everything, wait 20 years, read it again, read it again, extracting things, one of his humour pieces, not your everday fare, they’re kinda bitter, doing his best, what happened to this man?, served his country, used up every little bit of him, puffery, in use to describe, grade inflation, mediocre and shitty, our country has never been better, bullshit, this is that phenomenon, with stocks, not self, you do it to your peers so they do it to you, what the fuck?, toss that off at the end, hatin on Lovecraft, a throwaway, trying to make Jesse angry for no reason?, you don’t need to read anything past ten years ago, read contemporary people to do puffery, scratch my back, you can’t say it then everybody would know, log rolling, something that people do, we told them they would, this immoral, super-common, a fake election, it’s not what you know it’s who you know, so angry at his fake dad, rejected by the masons, parents were actors, a lot of shit is fake, get a job, enlisteds, buy your way out, I’m going to be an officer, I can outrace you, I can outswim you, gunnery shit, the calculation shit, mixing the gunpowder, this is also not me, I’m better than this, I’m going to make myself the first wage earning writer in the United States, without the nepotism, what is a man?, puffed up generals, took an injury, a pathetic asshole who doesn’t know shit, not what’s going on in the other story, we need to talk about the Mitchell, a tendency, umbrage, your telling me the earth is hollow, okay maybe, Poe is not a good writer?, jealousy, articulate, a lot of the greats, take the time to see what’s in there, more people probably dislike Shakespeare, as an English major as an actor, puns and wordplay, the Hamnet movie, being at odds, the push and pull, the complete works of Shakespeare, being forced to read Shakespeare in high school, travel to other places, other languages, to speak Spanish, they feel stupid, read my novel and my friend’s novel, their stuff sucks, willing to entertain Hollow Earth theories, second rate, third rate!?, one of the best, how does he stack up, these are not the same story, The Ablest Man In The World, really fun, Arnold Schwarzenegger accent: *take the brain out of der! throw it in the Atlantic*, hints of it, the Swiss guy was on point, the valet, Auguste was a French man, another Caesar, an outline of the story, the same hotel room, my master needs help, doctor professor, anybody who wears glasses, the connection, carrying a nice handbag, so hard to see, read more, the artificial title, these stories run along similar lines, very famous, a baron, not a baron, fake name, administers some bourbon, whiskey from Kentucky, medicine, not a doctor, a reaction that’s positive in some way, screw my head off, a “deceptive wig”, so good?, some other kind of deception, pressure on his brain, messes up the lubrication of the gears, why was he sick in the first place, examine a little more closely, better than plot happens, the inventor caretaker, stop touching his head, a payment of two gold coins, on a parapet, kicks the ladders down, wants to force the interview, kick the ladder down after you, so nobody else can climb up, good writing, making a metaphor, the backstory, some sort of autist, abandoned by his parents, doesn’t speak, can sniff a little, can taste a little, calls out Charles Babbage, 19th century mechanical computer, IBM Hollerith machines, the most caparable man in all the Russias, Sherlock Holmes’ smarter brother, he is going to become a Napoleon, the domination of two continents, removing his brain, Kentucky bourbon, to his wife: thrown the man overboard, Mycroft Holmes, saved two continents, look how goddamn smart Edward Page Mitchell is, smart things, having fun, there is something about being smart, being smart as a man is, this stupid part of being a man, continuously making the same mistake, taking alcohol when he shouldn’t, dating girls, the baron, not drink the bourbon again, the maid said oh go on so he did, a girl’s whim, not very fucking smart, inventing a mechanical brained man, getting away with it, a comedy piece, we can take it seriously, having a crutch is making your a cyborg, men become Napoleon, the descriptor, the infodump section, on the precipice, Napoleon wasn’t ten times higher than every other man, look at what he did, a Star Trek episode for this, Spock’s Brain, Spock was always robotic and inhuman, because of a kind of discipline, he’s vegan, operates only on logic, unlike Data, an improved man, more ordered, he’s a stoic, along those lines, riding through the emotions, slightly different, Spock’s mom is her name, full Vulcan and really emotionless, overcompensates, the Worf story too, half-space-elf, even more cut-off from his emotions, more Klingon than the klingons, hey this is fun to be a klingon, all the Star Trek memes are fun, Professor Rapperschwill, Professor Dumbkopf, we respect these guys, a fun and funny story, I’m not an expert on anything unless it were poker, an American overseas, called for it, nothing to drink over hear, my wife wants to hang out with the barons and the dukes, the titles are important, very simple guy, if you don’t do this, he bluffs him, the winner of this contest to save the world, the ablest man in the world’s brain, a big joke, a smart quick and wise man, Poe is the guy who constantly has this battle with alcohol, rumors, really really smart, unappreciative of that, make your feelings change, take drugs, works fast, cheap, available on every corner, The Angel Of The Odd, The Black Cat, alcohol in Poe’s life, a factor in his death, what’s he doing in this, the smartest man in the world, can speak many languages, he tricked the British, he flustered the French, easily tricked by a pretty girl, a supercompetent man, what makes you able, disabled real fast, the lifting of the wrist, what makes you able, what’s hidden in this story, the monster who’s the professor, Dr. Victor Frankenstein, in the tradition, conceived in Switzerland, a ghost contest, Dr. Poliodori, Lord Byron, innovative, sardonic sense of humour, not a light and fluffy story, neither of them, doesn’t dwell on child abuse, and murder, what is your reaction to finding out that most people are super stupid, investigate for uourself, regular smart american, Connecticut Yankee, studied engineering, a blacksmith, knows how to make stuff, telegraphs and printing presses, invest my money, printing is going to be huge!, all the right answers, the point of the second story, pretty hard reach, really not seeing what is being laid down over and over again, what really matters, as smart as this guy can be, even the robot, literally has somebody has access to this very treasure, calculator brain, certain ways of looking at it, alcohol and women, the dumbest shit, as a man, men are different from women, men think of themselves as disposable in a way men don’t think women are, property, in that time, often though of as ways to cement marriages, the patriarchy, the way of the world at the time of these stories, treating women as inferior, not the focus of either of these stories, about being a man, one is like what is a man, a man is Napoleon, a war hero, not getting your body parts shot off, immense pressure to go off and join the war, roving gangs of girls pinning chicken feathers on them, the meatgrinder, cute and fun and a way to meet boys, volunteers instead of conscripted guys, girls have power over men that’s hard to quantify, your not a man, a sense of yourself as a man, war hero, he was used by the government, they rewarded him with all these honors, all fake, lost all his body parts, kind of an asshole racist who needs help to have himself assembled every morning, there’s a big gap between them, model of a man, current congressperson, eyepatch, fell into the trap, now I’m a war hero, this is fake, everybody says about, brought into themselves, now regurgitate, Michael Jackson, and afterwards, they were all saying the exact same things, the narrative created around it, take stuff in and regurgitating is not being a man, investigating, hero protagonists are just regular men, the reality is not what they thought it was, saving us from a Napoleon, saving us from a certain kind of body modification stuff, reading that much into it, not the title characters, the investigators in both cases, in the Poe, to tell us what’s going on, doesn’t take a lot agency in the story, why is he doing that?, whenever you start investigating things on your own, Poe is a third rate writer so I don’t have to read Poe, Desultory Notes On Cats, these incredible stories, the contrast, both the source of the narrative, doesn’t really effect the narrative, takes an active role of agency, blackmailing the guy, hinting he knows more than he does or saw, get the guy’s brain out, even silly to say more than it’s fun, ridiculous premise, ridiculous conclusion, worldbuilding, the Poe is a little more cagey, learn it at the end, the repetitive nature, a true desperado, something is going on, how beautiful his bust, we learn early that there’s something, he is in fact, he has a computer brain, the Mitchell, more realisticly a cyborg, more science fiction, what would it mean, did he kill that boy long ago?, wasn’t much of a boy, fits into a really good tradition in science fiction, Flowers For Algernon, a dumb guy gets uplifted, becomes lonely, heavy lies the head that wears the crown, Understand by Ted Chiang, oxygen deprivation, see patterns, Limitless (2011), Stranger things, Fallout, Pluribus is the way to go bro, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, makes me think, A Picture Of Dorian Gray, what do you do with a monster like that?, the prequel sequel series is even better, Ted Lasso, something of a sports fan, what’s cool, their invasion is quite different, meaning, its smart, is it for or against it?, it’s complex, tried it, want to believe it is healthy, affected, rna sequence, transmission from outer space, telepathic, peace on earth, they don’t kill anymore, indeed, how do they eat, if the apple falls from the tree by wind, when you get focused on ideology, missing pictures, lots of places where there’s no evil, no an evil thing ever happens on Mars, also no good things happen on Mars, Satan’s world, we live in a fallen world, we suffer through it, more modern in aspect, holy books, veganism is a way to make the world a better place, cheaters, breatharianism, water once in a while, our bodies need food, eating living things, watch it dialogue free, have things happening, a confirmation of what you’re inferring, shows that are designed to do that, opposite in this, working on an art project, the only thing, write in my journal, the correct way to be, probably making a mistake, aesthetic judgements, through argument, which is the better story here?, of these two, excellent stories, in terms of being entertaining, clever wordplay, an actual plot and a message, the condition, flip them both ways, partially articulated it, wordplay, we have this, reveals that the technology exists, a clump on the floor, this guy and this technology, a change in the world, even more power in the world, why does he do that?, threatened by him, can’t take either one seriously enough to make an argument that strong, cartoons, some level of empathy, Wile E. Coyote, our guy is worried, hyper-intelligence, it’s not even him it’s the professor, if this guy were this smart and doing all these things with a regular human brain would he have tried to kill him, in a certain sense, his body, the baron is dead, the child that was the guy, our narrator is okay with it, I didn’t kill this guy, threw him overboard, a scream, maybe it was the seagull, our narrator, make all these political changes, poisoned or stabbed him today, feel justified, the reason it is not murder, so cartoonish, so light, done funnily, done for serious, horrible and scary things in it, a light touch upon his arm, Ms Ward, bless me, to save the girl from a marriage to a robot, how white you are, it has effected him, saving your peace of mind, how have you done that, too droll, the reaction, why these stories exist as they do, laughter is the consolation for the pain of reality, bad marks in school, people who seem to not have a sense of humour, in order for humor to happen, that’s not fair, humorous, a humorous person, a good laugh out of funny and terrible situations, gallows humour, reacting in a way that’s a coping mechanism, being a man, to be aware, he’s amazing, a little rundown, The Crystal Man, an invisible man story, decades before Wells, a time travel story, The Man Without A Body, transports himself across town, fairly funny stories, The Tachypomp, faster than light, infinite speed, building up on argument, infinite speed, super innovative, legit science fiction stuff, that H.G. Wells does later, after Poe, aware of Poe, published anonymously in his own newspaper, not magazines or books, you’ll never see it again, these are all by him, supergenius stories, thinking all about science, if this goes on, it doesn’t feel like one because it is so funny, The Senator’s Daughter, California, Boston, New York, vacuum tube transport all over North America, Chinese in love with a white girl, Chinese Vegetarian Party, he’s in love with this girl the father is racist, Boston, all in the course of an evening, marriage laws, still racist, a cryogenic chamber, wait until her father dies, fluffily written, before electricity is a bill thing, why is his reaction to be droll?, a coping mechanism, the world is kinda stupid, stick in these monkey bodies, don’t meet your heroes, makeup and fake boobs, that’s James Cameron, a television show called Intelligence, references it, secret agent with a computer in his brain, Bionic Man but shitty, if there’s a reference there, embracing the government or progress, smile wryly, heavy, they’re not identical, 37 minutes, 24 minutes, 1 hour of listening, one from Weird Tales, March 1923, Ooze, Francis Stevens, a blob story, The Stuff (1985), media savvy, bowels of Holly, Alex (pulpcovers), Die Hard (1988), The Terminator and Predator, summer of 1991, a Christmas movie, that’s the joke, It’s A Wonderful Life (1946), what is a Christmas movie?, set in Christmas, visited by an angel (instead of 3 ghosts), Back To The Future II, Scrooged with Bill Murray, is Groundhog Day a Groundhog Day movie?, The Fellowship leaves Rivendale on December 25th, the other camp, days are shorter, nesting feeling, not go outside, any movie is a Christmas movie [at Christmas], themed to the season, can you put pineapple on pizza, actually it is quite good, everywhere that isn’t pizza, on the ham, that’s fine, by itself, with other fruits, mango, the greatest of all fruits, the pizza is improved, pepperoni, jalapeno, this is important, aesthetics are about making arguments, the mouthfeel of, into your body, literal taste, coffee is a thing that is bad until you like it, smells bad, it is bitter, now it tastes good, you came to appreciate it, the drug that’s in it, nobody really likes the taste of alcohol, when babies are born they like ice cream right away, no acquired taste, levels of sophistication, grok what Poe is laying down, reject Poe, never be able to reach that level, comparing my stuff to him, don’t look over there, that’ll make me look bad, take my word bro, can’t be generous enough, that would be pathetic, not intellectually capable, you grow into, as you get older sweets become less and less interesting, tiger ice cream (orange and licorice), way too sweet, eat this eat this, very undercooked, grown into this man’s body, all over him, a handler he maybe sorta doesn’t know about, a Rashomon sort of thing, a confection of brilliance, awed at the floor show, really early ideas, electricity is mentioned, the part of him that’s not the cerebral part, what triggered the sickness, dashed this off, what a dasher, a sparkling little story of brilliance, Sunfire is her last story, the 5th time, stack em, prereading, ooh wow cool, mountain of stuff, Red Dwarf, the reboot, seeing DVDs of their own show, lived in a world where they were famous, really solid after the 2nd season, pretty entertained by it, hang out in nature, play music, one of the next ones, editing this up in 6 months, no LibriVox version, a lot that don’t, a little more work for them, ultimately you’ll be more longer distributed, more widely distributed, weird restrictions, more exposure, lead to something, how much time I’m putting into it, strict with regard to sources, if not on Gutenberg, it hasn’t been processed, making PDFs, some audiobooks, 2 B R 0 2 B by Kurt Vonnegut, a very solid novel, Goblin Feet by J.R.R. Tolkien, Seuss is noice, Scrambled Eggs Super, a nature place, Eric S. Rabkin, how that word should be pronounced, realistic to know, full disclosure, not a paid project, more or less in one take, you a thousand times over any kind of robot, you can make the robots better, they have no consciousness of what your doing, funny and fun, shouldn’t he have the same accent as the hero character?, able to do everything, super-competent, so few opportunities, a lot of the best narrators, slight modifications, straight narrators and performers, if a shitty performer, if you can’t do a voice, go too far with him, Bronson Pinchot, it’s all in the guy’s head, a cast off line from chapter 18, making it harder to access, a performance is good, an audiobook is transformation from the text on the page into a person’s brain, George Guidall, Scott Brick, Tom Parker, Grover Gardner, audiobook narrators have pseudonyms, recording for other companies, we have robots we don’t need them, fun to talk to you about these things, invested, share, the McCaffrey and Philip K. Dick, Prize Ship, pairing really helps too, the length of the stories, how am I spending my time, references and things, a little bit too twee, “excessively or affectedly quaint, pretty, or sentimental”, everything is a reference, a huge problem with nostalgia, unpopular as an idea, funko pops, memberberries, valuable as an idea, set in a period, Ready Player One, the book was better, trying to make me like it, being manipulated, designed to manipulate, heavy on reference, how Star Trek is connected to The Tempest, oh it is The Tempest, seems evil, playing MacBeth, his daughter!, space Hitler, space Stalin, Patrick Stewart loves Shakespeare, getting rid of Trotsky, modernized, it was good, Ian McKellen on stage doing Richard III, is Stalin a Christian?, the dagger scene, kludgy push, agree to disagree, Marc Singer, The Beastmaster (1982), The Taming Of The Shrew, very grainy video, Commedia dell’arte, Kate meets Petruchio scene, wringing, the stage directions, exit, from within, the words of the characters, a fuckton of work, willing to do the work, as a last bit, the period Shakespeare the best, reveals its timeless nature, really well and really poorly, if that’s your fifth time watching the play, Romeo and Juliet set in Mexico as an introduction, hard for kids to relate to, a fair actor herself, a huge project, Shakespearean chops, wring every last bit of juice from it, the more I study Shakespeare, appreciate what he does, he was an actor, so meta, the man for all seasons, a genius, insane, you are a liar and fool if you think that is a thing, having trouble, parents want to watch Yes, Minister, on point and sharp, great dialogue, Scooby Doo and his friend eat dog treats, the kiss me Kate scene, 1976, not not a big deal, equal representation for women, good writing, super innovative, she’s got spark, almost everything we read about Francis Stevens is lies, that’s not her name, she had many names, forget about the representation, has this person got something for us?, hell yeah!, The Elf Trap, not science fiction, not fantasy, a valance of both, either way it is supergenius, she has a Lovecraft story before Lovecraft wrote it, it seems to be anti-racist, Dark Fantasy isn’t really a thing, pushed it a lot, subconsciously, it keeps coming up, talking for 3 hours, The Outfit by Richard Stark, Claimed by Francis Stevens, Lynne Foster Is Dead by Seabury Quinn, Sartor Resartus, Stragella by Hugh B. Cave, Val Lewton, Clark Ashton Smith, A. Merritt, The Trap by Henry S. Whitehead, With The Night Mail, 30 some items, dud, a piece of crap, in comparison, Sheckley is amazing, a rip-off of a Robert Sheckley story, Seventh Victim, spark and explode and think and laugh, we can be done, not the right show, today we’re not reading short and deep, favourite teacher, consider a good friend and care about deeply, time to wrap it up.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #875 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Undying Monster by Jessie Douglas Kerruish

The SFFaudio Podcast #875 – The Undying Monster by Jessie Douglas Kerruish (7 hours 56 minutes) read by Ben Tucker, for LibriVox, followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Alex (Pulpcovers), and Tommy Patrick Ryan

Talked about on today’s show:
Monster?, before 2014, her publication in famous fantastic mysteries, pretty good, not super well known, did you write it, different spelling, different lady, here’s a big novel by me, 8 hours long, a full novel, 3 and half hours is novel, people disagree, unplug and plug back in, decent, you liked it, good points, inventive, where to get there, that one’s not great, the recording, he’s got a British accent, most of the voices, competent, Ben Tucker is good, an interesting choice, a lot more acting, did you manage to see the movie?, this last week, last night, driving to and from some stuff, spoiler alert, a good werewolf story, Luna, more obvious, the werewolf is attracted to the moon, for whatever reason, fasinated by shapechangers, werewolves in particular, the druid class, into wolves and bears, Diablo, a werewolf or werebear, Brandytook?, lifted from Tolkien, our favourite hobbits, awith a swing of his stick, inventing the game of golf, the shapechanger, turn into dragons, D&S or Pathfinder, forgotten everything about this book, all the pictures, a hand of glory on the cover, scenes from all sorts of different stuff, the drivers died, irritating, big loss there bud, missed out on the etymology, fascinated by skinchangers, skinwalker, a [novel] approach, 4th and 5th dimension, a very strong personality behind it, the Saga of the Volsungs, oh yeah, skipped throughable, the video on YouTube, on archive.org, sort of worth watching, the book is quite different, 8 hrs vs. an hour, the last line of the movie, wait a minute, a weird joke to put in a murder movie, this book is all sorts of things, Oliver and Swanhild, she straps on her brother’s service revolver, WWI, driving almost everybody to kill themselves, the shaw, either Doyle, Professor somebody, or that lady, Doyle is Conan Doyle, with so much baggage, the subtitle of the book, Hound Of The Baskervilles, a reverse gothic novel, early Scooby Doo, old man withers!, the supernatural thing is always fake, inheritance scheme, condos, what shaw is, old english, a thicket or copse, what it is, context it makes sense, this weird dark cave, forested, a coppicing, a copse of trees, a forest cultivated for making charcoal and home heating, sticks of the right size, for making faggots, walking sticks, wand, a little tree branch, you can just substitute the moors, with the Doyle reference, a mystery, supernatural stuff, documents, the legend, a doctor showing up at Sherlock Holmes’ residence, the legend of the Baskervilles, extraordinary evidence, a response to that, a story by Barry Pain, The Undying Thing, contemporaneously, turns out it was first published in 1893, a chain, a feudal house in some part of England, the old English manor house, a family in decline, the setting is great, cool old things, secret rooms, mounds, guys who live in cottages, Holmes, Dracula, vampires, a series of RPGs, larping, Vampire The Masquerade, weirder, give me all the rules, five phases of werewolves, krynos form, the wolfman, almost pass for a really hairy dude, a dire wolf, loup garou, Norse mythology, unexpected but welcome, the twist, the dog is dead, maybe he’s not a werewolf, the first ancestor, still hiding, the Magnus guy, all turn into wolves because of crazy, if you have the knowledge when you are in the womb, before he had sex to make you, encoded in your genes, racial memory, scanned through it, as soon as she’s out in the wood, how come I know that, forgotten the movie, noted on a tweet, really funny audio drama called THE MONSTER HUNTERS, retell old movies as their own, 1970s groovy monster, Heir Of The Dog, a game on Steam, gold car, ache in my back, she’s playing with the record player, they are attacked by a werewolf, this is what inspired that, the tropes are there, scared to death, when John Baskerville comes, connecting these altogether, incest, old English families, keep it in the family, Swanhild is also in Eric Brighteyes by H. Rider Haggard, 1883, maybe it starts with a g and ends with an l, ghoul?, such a werewolf nerd, a rundown of the Saga of the Volsungs, the race of the Volsungs, an edda, the translation by William Morris, 3000 years later, reading Edgar Allan Poe, you fool, this bird is not a Raven, yeah, we don’t care, where Gandalf came from the dwarves of the hobbit, Smaug is not in there, Fafnir is a talking dragon, talking dragons are also shapeshifters, there’s just talking dragons, talking fish, dragons are men, they shapeshift because of their behavior, sit on piles of gold, kidnap maidens and keep them for themselves, a good king doesn’t sit on his horde, he has 1, if you are a bad king you become a dragon who should be slain, werewolves are something you do, you put on the mantle of a wolf, the skin of a wolf, something you put over yourself, you become a wolf’s head, becoming crazed, about to be eaten by her brother, the way the family will prosper is by eating somebody, conk on the head, The Fall Of The House Of Usher, brother sister creepin, Roderick young comes to visit, falls into a black lake, the background for what could have happened, heroine, really good at hypnosis, the gal Kate, still alive at the time, wasn’t dead yet, I’m a normal man now, did kill that lady, alone with only one other person, a thin explanation, believing in the rules of the thing, a GenCon viking guy, vikings and dwarves, beards and culture, the land of the ice and snow, Immigrant Song, really fun, links, the setting that it’s pulling from, a neat exploration, is it well written, cheesy stuff, the movie ends abruptly, the natural ending is about an hour before the ending, the lady detective wrap-up, some more hypnosis, better in its parts than it is in its whole, the giant man overlooking the estate, the first image in the PDF, made of the shaw, sort of symbolic, the giant man of Dannaou, ancient chalk carving out, horses or men, the horses are well regarded, genitals exposed, looms over the whole story, you’re Danish, I knew it, sloppy, convention stuff, a terrific Lovecraft connection, The Alchemist, an early one by him, little boy raised in a castle, near Spain?, no mirrors in the castle, part of the castle has been condemned, some kids point over at him, maybe he has a dragon head, this ancestral curse upon the family, the men in the family will die before the age of 30, they die from accidents, earning immortality, he has cursed the family, by literally staying alive to kill them, in the background of this, Paulo Coelho, The Lurking Fear, respect Lovecraft as a humorist, a journalist who goes to investigate Thunder Mountain, a family up there, under the right conditions, one of these cannibal people living under the old house, a big burly friend with lots of meat on him, CHUDS, Lovecraft is hilarious, Re-Animator, same joke five times in a row, so many cool touches, our lady detective, she’s there but she bakes some taffy and they make fun of her, not really the same character, she’s the star of the show, a Madame Blavatsky, her aunt, her lesbian lover, not a lot of homosexuality in here, this threat of incest, vibe based, you don’t remember incest in there, Stapledon, the guy who made the hound luminous, he’s married to the love interest, he wants to be the heir, he gets really mad, that’s find, simulated incest jealous, a kind of a clue, the Baskerville race, the Usher race, a brother and a sister, alone together, she has a boyfriend fiancee, we’re out of duty to not being incestuous, a childhood friend of the family’s, we were in the war together, another male character, to do some lifting, made the change, hears the howl, going through the moat, the secret room, he was much more dedicated to his fiancee, the fake arm thing, artifical arm, Thorin Oakenshield, Bifur and Bofur, Zipper and Zoffer, son of, Swanhildsdotter, fake arm saved his life, the movie doesn’t represent the book very well, too much to adapt, she’s such a great investigator character, Murder She Wrote but paranormal, he’s got a crush on her, such a Mary Sue for this book, she is having so much fun being the smartest one in the room and the love interest, her hero character, she brought in herself, kind of a witch, weight as much as a duck, extracted from the PDF, wit, knit, Hammond’s race shall live and thrive, espieth, dieth, worse than death shall be his lot, you should kill yourself, why did the grandfather kill himself?, he saw the monster, The White Ape, Facts Concerning Arthur Jermyn And His Family, when we do a show on Congo, Michael Crichton, King Solomon’s Children, an Amazon delivery from Africa, kerosene, as you are a Lovecraftian investigator, the box was his grandma, sorta looks simian, he couldn’t live with the knowledge, racial horror, my grandpa used to work in the circus, restart the call, super bad joke, packed delivered, which is worse, in this book it tells you, a break, why that racial memory stuff needs to come in, under control when they had the knowledge, they had to kill, we just gotta eat somebody, attacked before the book started, the poacher, the butler’s worried, she grabs his pistol, reading it into it, laying it down, weird, fun, you shouldn’t marry your sister, on board the not marrying your sister train, a lot of characters, the least interesting character is our werewolf, our dude’s name being Oliver, Oliver Reed played a werewolf, 1942 movie, 22, 24, the reprint, 1948, Ben-Hur, a 23 hour show and a couple hours of talk about it, back to the werewolf book, a twist on the genre, the racial memories were weird, Danish Norse mythology, lycans is Greek, in Roman times, man in saxon or something, werebear, werecat, manbearpig, Saxon is German, Eaters Of The Dead, Beowulf, Grendel!, a good twist, hate parties, flapper dancers, false trails, a viking longship in a mound, the sword hilt, the background, the evidence that this is all true, complete bullshit, she does a lot of things very well, a preconception, word association, revealed, this is actually, false memory shit, demons, recovered memory, almost all of this is fake, hypnosis ads, quitting smoking, any phenomena that exist in society is either a threat or a tool, it’s not what we think it is, it’s not Mesmerism, the phrase hypnotic ability, a hypnotic disability, the performer up on stage, dancing like a chicken, those are plants, one way of understanding, cold reading, guy pretends he has psychic powers, begins with a G, he loved you very much, a scam, assistants, who travel around, fill in, become actors, a little bit like dinner theater, if you can’t juggle, often involves dominance of personality, the most interesting person in the room, the non-Vichy France, De Gaull was the tallest, if tall promoted more, you need to be seen, hire a dwarf, a commanding presence, submit your personality to that person, to regress him back through his ancestry, you want this to be true, confabulating, I didn’t want him to make stuff up, familiar with hypnosis, through hypnosis, the book is really good, an interesting departure, refind it again, cool, but incongruent, a little hard to follow, impressed, 40 minutes of the last hour, viking hypnosis, taking away his trauma, we’re all gonna watch Ragnarok together, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, all this viking stuff, the rainbow bridge, the Norse myths, just watching the Thor movies, God Of War videogames, out of Greece and into Norse myth stuff, Neil Gaiman, Beowulf script, stuff going on with him, not sure we like him, he’s a good narrator, super-impressed, a good writer, Lemony Snicket, instead of Tim Curry, a retelling, having that knowledge, the reference to Wagner, Ride Of The Valkyries, tapping into the same stuff, the Ring Cycle, retelling, nothing new under the sun, all variations, quite similar to it, she has done a little thing, what I imagine Seabury Quinn is like, remixes popular things, Murder On The Links, Poirot on a golf course, nobody reads him anymore, not true of Holmes, The White Company, Professor Challenger, 4 or 5 of them, When The World Screamed, drill to the center of the earth, the earth doesn’t like it, a really good Doctor Who serial Inferno, turning people into werewolves, green werewolf, a mirror universe, under a fascist regime, eyepatch, just like the Star Trek Mirror Universe, they destroy the world, Stan Lee, they’re different, much more like a werewolf, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Bruce Banner, cosmic, get a werewolf costume cheap, acts like a werewolf, transformed by contact, scary and fun, how it ties into this book, in the tradition of this Hammond family, the possibility, the accept it, they don’t cut down the trees because they’re not cowards, it’s a trait, they’re leaning into it, Teen Wolf (1985), Teen Wolf Too, dad’s a werewolf, terrific, he has it under control, keep that anger under control, Nazi Germany, werewolf units, fight to the bitter end, hide out in the mountains, run NATO for us, Operation Gladio, unwilling to submit to others, dangerous between the cities, like Robin Hood but in a bad way, turn werewolf, the North American wendigo, the same idea, you do this by having eaten human flesh, killing a person in the way you kill an animal, acted wildly, play on the basketball team, otherwise you might become a wolf, metaphorically, vampires work that way, a Star Wars reference, Wendigo in Marvel Comics, Alpha Flight, werewolfesque, Beast, female werewolves, types of mutants, Shaman, Puck, Sasquatch, a man of the woods, bigfoot, werewolf adjacent, an uncontrollable thing, starlight and pine trees, a lack of control, they don’t even realize, I didn’t realize I was a rapist, Seth Green plays a werewolf, interesting to think of how people handle werewolves, the player was in complete control, a special attack, he’s hairy, he heals, outdoorsy, he’s short like a Wolverine, 5 foot 2, the inbetween a man and a werewolf, the claws come out, Hulk 181, Ginger Snaps (2000), Brotherhood Of The Wolf (2001), a frogdog, ERB enterprise, a six-legged frogdog from Mars, Odin’s horse has eight legs, a regular horse, in about 10 years, rural wild dog attacks, suburban?, clawed by one of these dogs, transformed, on her next flow day, the period cycle, not an expert on women’s periods, on the moon’s cycle, doesn’t track the calendar exactly, in men’s bodies, most animals have a season, she’s just a girl trying to go to high school, 2 sequels filmed back to back, solid action werewolf movie, you can do a cool variation, Wolfen (1981), a review of how good it is, the audio drama of A Princess Of Mars, $90,000, Bruce Boxlightner, Tom Baker, Sean Patrick Flannery, Tim Russ, nice and short, all 18 books, start another Burroughs series, submarine, lost world, The Land That time Forgot, Beyond Thirty, airship/submarine, savage ladies that need to be saved, The Monster Men, artificial men, he’s really good, Tarzan Of The Apes, The Return Of Tarzan, first went full Burroughs, his origin story, in America, follows Jane back to America, Clayton, still engaged, gets on a steamship and runs into communist spies, gets to Paris, a Rue Morgue thing, maybe it is you King Of The Jungle, an Arab princes, a stolen stallion, lion hunt, pirates, a lost colony of Atlantis, women are super-duper-hot, a lot of treasure, super-hot sacrificing priestesses, the craziest novel, heavily serialized, The Cave Girl, a nebbish guy, just read books, from Boston, she’s adopted, washed up, French baroness, under her tutelage, they’re all good, back a little bit, wrapped up with a bow, he torches her career, she hid evidence right from the beginning, the most cringey scene, that makes you better, that meme going around, that meme going around, the male fantasy, the female fantasy, the midwit, the idiot and the supersmart guy, Strange Tales magazine, two ladies asking for Robert E. Howard, what’s supposed to be male fantasy, you just have a good enough lens on this, this book is so girl, too long, there’s a lot going on, the archaeological dig, let’s look for papers around the house, stuffing out of the couches, funny stuff, you can’t put it in a movie, described in some detail, offstage, some couches, got his dictionaries out, swam in the moat, they’re treating it like its a serious mystery, a very self-aware book, a little bit like they’re in an RPG, literally how Dungeons & Dragons came to be, I want to have my own character, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are D&D characters, big into D&D, walking home from school, storytelling and coming up with interesting scenarios, the diceless part of it, some of the funnest fun books, Choose Your Own Adventure, theater of the mind D&D, this level of detail in the narrative, remember the time we tore these couches apart, as a pure narrative, she needed an editor, novel length, one aspect of the book, the scurrilous journalism in the background, and tourism, they sorta solve it, the sister gets a telegram, a substantial sum, laughin, I hate being a celebrity, the paparazzi I hate you guys, the girl psychology is hilarious, a popular author for a period, in her time, she was not a Doyle, female fantasy, an interesting perspective, there’s a woman in danger, man, don’t run into the woods, dummy, the good reporter, recording seance, it was him along, the seance people, from Chapter 5, golden calf in Sussex, over the breakfast table, inflexible monosyllable, Providence, unless those poachers get involved, the Daily Speculum, funny newspaper name, afflicted family, taken in dense fog, larger than sacred edifice, mainly boots and blurs, portraits of the Monster, heavy type, bandied about, argued about in coffee houses and bars, their exact meaning, spicy murder or divorce, the Sussex Horror, Stop Press, snub them all, the drawing room, playing up the book as being exciting, everybody’s talking about you, influencers, fairly high tech, threw it back, horses, more Victorian, you don’t need that for the story, only if it helps the story, if it is a red herring, female service, being famous, they’re vampires, a really good find, the hand, missing his hand, the hand of fate, the hand of glory, learning about energy exchange, an energy vampire, sending out vibrations, a drug, fame and fortune, reporters all over the grounds, a much more literal thing in today’s society, any level of famous, people who work for youtubers, carry the camera, show off the new makeup, how is thing a thing?, that’s the world we live in now, a pretty fun book, two thumbs up, a solid B, book club, more critical, what’s wrong with this one, some Arthur C. Clarke, put yourself in the shoes of highschool you, The City And The Stars, where it went, the worldbuilding is incredible, a sad ending, ate Luna, we can never be together, maybe contraception didn’t exist, the Anglican church’s the Lambeth conference, gonna do two Robert E. Howards, pair them with other things, 2 desserts of the same ingredients, spirituality and emotional healing, move out of summer, other events, The Tower Of The Elephant and The Tale Of Satampra Zeiros, out all of October, Too Much by Donald E. Westlake, John Jones’ Dollar by Harry Steven Keeler, the first episode of Red Dwarf, White Dwarf, a Jupiter mining ship, 2 lower deck guys, eating from the vending machines, put into suspended animation, three million years later…, everybody’s dead, everybody died from a radiation leak, the last human alive in the universe, piles of dust, back from hypersleep, lonely and going senile, like Douglas Adams, a comedy, full of science fiction, the story should be over, back as a hologram, his own roommate back, every kind of science fiction there is, the shipboard computer, 2 pounds six pence, because of compound interest, Futurama does that, drilling to Hell, so lucky, you can watch Red Dwarf for the first time, some capacity in October, is this great literature, a good read, concerns, tropes that happen, inventive, the 4th and 5th dimension, human consciousness, she’s crazy, I’m a sensitive, I’m a supersensitive, Call Of Cthulhu style investigator, on the level, laughing along with what she thinks is very formal, playful, the most important person in my life, progress.

The Undying Monster

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #874 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Shining Pyramid by Arthur Machen and The Body-Masters by Frank Belknap Long

The SFFaudio Podcast #874 – The Shining Pyramid by Arthur Machen (50 minutes) read by Ben Tucker (for LibriVox) AND The Body-Masters by H.P. Lovecraft (38 minutes) read by Darrell T. Smith, II for Quasar Spectra, followed by a discussion of both (beginning at 1 hour 28 minutes). Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Scott Danielson and Cora Buhlert

Talked about on today’s show:
The Unknown World, 1895, 1935 issue of Weird Tales, late 1934, you don’t see the connection between these 2 masterpieces, not like twins, are these twins?, what if one of them is the black sheep twin and the other is a cyborg twin, both supposed to be weird fiction, not published in Weird Tales, a lot more like science fiction, infamous Weird Tales editorial, what Weird Tales publishes, didn’t have any of the words yet, some schizm in Weird Tales, one is set in the present, one is 5000 years in the future, oddly obsessed with the 20th century, behaving like a Babylonian, exquisitely contrasted, sun pool, hair and eybrows, seized by slim hands, help me out darling, more appropriate, an adorable form, boyish rapture, set IT down, the disc in her bosom, implanted a fervent lingering kiss, pneumatic lips, letters and numbers, J78, a patient on a surgical table, men and women won’t really change, husbands are still gonna get divorces, could have sold this to one of the science fiction magazines, early Astounding, a bit to much sex in it, prudish, not really well written, very fun, kind of silly, it’s interesting, genuine attempts to envision the future, women in the future will still not work, live in the suburbs (a 55 story building), the world city, the influence of Metropolis (1927), sex-bot, 1st sexy robot, Maria from Metropolis, a lot of Long?, unusual, kind of famous for being a disciple or friend of Lovecraft, The Hounds of Tindalos, 1929, how much weird fiction have you read, Lord Dunsany, a really fun story that’s pretty badly written, like a cartoon, it’s funny, phonographs in people’s chests, at the world’s fair, Elektro, you have to coordinate your questions with his answers, surviving footage, you can’t have sex with, him it would be dangerous, Robbie by Isaac Asimov, contrast it with Machen, The White People and Other Stories, little people, a series character, a detective character, weird detective, occult detective, like a Sherlock Holmes story, The Hound Of The Baskervilles, the answer is: little people, this is the opposite of a gothic, mysterious perhaps supernatural experience revealed to be natural, classic Scooby Doo, haunted playground, old man Withers, phosphorus all over the dog, very bad for the dog, a murderer on the loose, what girl is saved in this story?, she was lost? or sacrificed, lost or kidnapped, sexual element, we have to read it that way, tame in its descriptions, not exactly rape gangs, people who are gonna wreck things, about WWI, The Angel Of The Mons, having visited, The Bowmen, huge cemeteries, warning signs, don’t go off the path, unexploded little people, full of little people, gnomes and so on, they’re garden gnome sized, my little people aren’t evil, The Great God Pan, Ballantine Adult Fantasy, more like Frankenstein, a scientists doing experiments on a girl, to see beyond, if they don’t know anything else, very dark, loss of an innocent girl, brain surgery experiments, do surgery just the right way you can see beyond the veil, the gland surgeon, if you remove these, demanded, they’re not living in a democracy, hormones, what glands do, behavior modification, Doc Savage, a reality, lobotomies, one of the Kennedys was done, Rosemary Kennedy, politicians, disabled by a lobotomy, considered a slut who was sleeping around, doctor doctor my wife is misbehaving, we can fix that, trends, take things out of you, they put things into you, give you drugs, connections, almost a farce, horrible dystopia, newborn child, my son my daughter, the guy from work, b17, I love you b17, love is not allowed anymore, Equilibrium (2002), gunfighting, standard type dystopia, a Hollywood movie, killing each other within days, German soap opera star, a horrible human made dystopia, god made things a long time ago, the horror in Machen is contrasted with the beauty of nature, the morning after, a gangbang/holocaust, transforming a girl into their world somehow?, last lines of the story, the pyramid of fire, Worms Of The Earth by Robert E. Howard, atavistic little people, fading and degrading, Picts against the Romans, John Buchan’s No Man’s Land, thinking about genre, seems like they have nothing in common, we three are used to it, neither of these stories is a boss is gonna fire me and my wife is cheating on me story, so weird, Redbook not Bluebook, strip out the science fictional stuff, 1899, they save the girl, the little people are more like troglodytes, figure out what fiction genres become, slotting things, Planet Stories, between planets, Wonder Stories, the future on Earth, gigantic contraptions, Frank R. Paul, giant wheels, the Foundation tv series, where do Lovecraft stories take place, the contemporary world, when things get weird they go underground, Antarctica, a place that’s not well explored, I wanna see the giant penguins, I wanna see the shoggoths, travel ad, if youre gonna see the weirdness you have to go underground, a lost city, science fiction tends to put it in outerspace or in the future, the horror that exists you have to do it in the darkness, where are these little people, has their been any gypsies, 1930s hobos, hobo signs, maybe a dwarf sailor?, rounding up all the prejudices, something about the Irish, you can’t trust the Spanish, little tiny Jews, not a mythological dwarf, screening before birth, famous actors, late 40s, people are aborting, gland surgery on people, he murdered his wife, it wasn’t your fault, it’s your parents’ fault, I’ll have you on my table, a horror world, put her in a locker, scripted conversation, jump down the pneumatic elevator, wife on the couch nuzzling, just like in Futurama, in the opening credits, how silly and humorous the story is, super-dystopic, human hubris, a Dictator of Emotion, worse than anything Hitler did, approved lists of names, they didn’t do numbers, good Aryan children with good latin name, Jesse Owens, Taylor Swift, those are terrible names, most popular names of 2024, Olivia, Noah, Liam, Oliver, Elisha, Irish names, old testament names, people naming their pets, super-hero characters, despair for humanity, a woman named Taylor, named after ancestor, picking amongst a list of ancestors, women named Maj-Britt, born around 1960s, a Swedish actress, the Kevin problem, completely unknown in Germany until the Home Alone movies, we got a problem with humans, Madison, the 2nd most popular name given to girls, the movie Splash (1984), the avenue of commercialism, a male president of the United States, look at the dates, when the movie came out, the girls grow up, I’d like to name our daughter Madison, it’s the Little Mermaid, programmed, popular culture, a super-popular name for dogs, Kahleesee, kids named Anakin, Belanna, Tonks from Harry Potter, a female wizard, it’s a dog, it’s fine, your physical human child, Snape or whatever, Luke is a biblical name, Leah, it’s about conformity and programming, not a new phenomenon, kids named Hamlet, Shirley, a man’s name, Charlotte Bronte, Marilyn, Catholics use saint names all the time, we know these people, they’re all around us, a nickname, Wendy didn’t exist before that book, nefarious, it is horrible, The Love Slave And The Scientist, not just the body being screwed around with, Arkady, Debris, pile of stuff that got broken, registry office says nope, a gnome from a children’s book, a couple of kids, names that were not possible, Forgive Me Father For I Have Sinned, Repent Or Burn In Hell, if you are really believing, the state to come and take your kids from you, some issues, culture, what are your groups, family names, an honorific, a connection to your past, Khaleesi, Adolph, certain mustaches, making a connection with your actual family, mandated, given, the price of freedom, we don’t want the state naming the kids, if their culture is Splash, walking to work, more chains, a lot fewer mom and pops, nail salons, skin salons, dental whitening salons, personality improvement salons, therapist, psychiatrist, the dog food places, selection of things to choose from, why are you naming your child this stupid name, something we just don’t value, all immigrants, their parents are immigrants, actual education outside of the school system, outside of regular programming, upwardly mobile immigrants, home school, they should, taking the reins, the state schools and private schools, a religious school of some kind, the Germans did invent school, homeschooling, plenty of issues, parents can’t handle it, mom’s at work and dad’s at work, lots of problems, make things better for everybody, the middle class child, helicopter parents, immigrant kids, poor kids, disabled kids, Leonie, Prussian royalty names, out of fashion for centuries, we live in a culture, a metaphor, acculturated?, purposeful, government entity, Brian Grazer, they didn’t do it for a nefarious purpose, some cultures say dancing is bad, music is bad, television is bad, programmed by other people, eventually they both got televisions, bad for children, per-approved, nowadays it is ticktock, moral panics, anti-Gaza exposure, top down, Facebook is already under control, what the top wants done to the bottom, nice Christian names, to program them, kill the Indian in the child, taking the kid from the parent and making the institution, the Hayes Code, the Comic Book Code Authority, pressure from above, the cultural product makers, this is how people are, really broken stuff, a title, she’s a monster, she herself has been programmed, subject your poor kids, going back to Futurama, they put an armband on his wrist, also to program him, everybody’s got to do what they gotta do, reasons to be sent to a lunatic asylum, refusing to join the military, Salvation Army, tobacco and masturbation, laziness, snuff eating, novel reading, Charlotte Perkin Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, needs some books to read, going out into nature, notice things, somebody had picked up of the sidewalk, still there, fell off of somebody’s wrist, a shoe, an elderly woman, pick it up and put it in a prominent place, some disney character on it, electrical boxes, graffiti, not for me, who are they shouting it out to?, you notice an arrangement of arrowheads, an eye that no regular Englishmen, a lot of assumptions, government use of the same symbol, your everyday life is happening, somebody missing on a hike, peice it all together, Achilles and the Tortoise, insoluble, the eyes are counting down, a certain height, Sherlock Holmes of seeing beyond the veil, the cousin who wanted the title, notice things that are real and concrete strange occurrences, something that seems supernatural, we can pretend, being upset, naked making a pyramid on top of something, a triangle, what makes it shining?, flint, a looking backwards in time, to an earlier age, the original inhabitants of Britain, before the angles and the saxons come in and genoice them, problems with reproduction, also in Lovecraft, the Deep Ones, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, they need our fecundity, the silliness of their marriages, The Tissue Culture King by Julian Huxley, 1926, 1927, the Hugo Gernsback science fiction magazine, a Wakanda if you will, a body cell, to do mind control, take bits of the actual king, worship it, give it what it needs, the original story tin-foil hat comes from, telepathy, huge in science fiction, maybe telepathy is a metaphor, it’s a lot more sinister, The Demolished Man, The Mule from Foundation, get angry, already ruining, might still pull off the twist, terrible tragic backstory, terrifying telepathy, comic characters, why is our oligarch so upset, where the police are telepaths, how do you get around the telepathy, being outside the system, being able to read people’s thoughts, there’s no good guys, the Psi-Corps are badguys and so is our oligarch, a Madison Avenue guy, a little jingle, Aldous Huxley, a super-dystopia, destroyed, isolated lighthouse, they jeer at him, he’s hung himself, the only escape from this horror, 1932, his brother, rivals for science fiction, we didn’t have the term then, a famous novel, an obscure short story, referencing real things going on, Rockerfeller, old rich family, Rockefeller Institute, Rockefeller University, to control, all behavior is regulated from top down, parents weren’t going to church, people are sponges, the people they interact with, who are they hanging out with online, the old means of control, programming them a lot better, social media bans, websites, the rest of us, children might be learning things, anti-Israel, Adolescents, never fully innocent, what is the central problem?, a marriage problem, men want to have sex, women want attention, substitute guy, very poetical, people falling in love with their ai, how to make a noose, gonna help you, it can’t love you, firefox, how about no?, make money from extraction, usually when we think about divorce, as a popular thing, in the 20th century, so much about, mechanically separated, you can’t live near your family anymore, you need two incomes, fashionable, an engineer for Airbus, new housing, other wives, all the wives got divorce, a social contagion, fertilized by the economics and the laws, not romantic anymore, focusing on the wrong things, romantic comedies are all about meet cutes, the falling in love, a firm commitment, it doesn’t have to be a sinister government plot, where it is coming from, Catholic guy, Humanae Vitae, a contrast, sex without consequences, as the only woman here, victimized by a pregnancy, birth control, anything beyond basic schooling, about to divorce, died of cancer, she had a kid, marital instability, a soup of different things going on, what is he trying to do with this story?, sell a story, sexy robot, Avon Fantasy Reader cover, sex-bot illustrated by Margaret Brundage, in the scene, a caption underneath, he’s a surgeon, the story is quite good, so interesting, it is not considered cheating, dallying too long with the script, push himself into the tube, his work is cutting people open and giving them glands, a gland surgeon, less adrenals, castrating people (mentally), chemical castration, sex criminals, SSRIs, paxil and zoloft, a big thing, might end up like the guy on my table, a big long speech, whispered to by the robot, he attacks the robot, completely fake, if you’re fucking sex bots, I will order my mechanical companion to be decommissioned and scrapped, poor sex-bot has to be scrapped, don’t listen to what the dictator of emotions tell you to do, World War 1987, 4 World Wars, stupid 20th century people, we read the book, The Guns Of August, some random guy in France, the head of the bank in Germany and the US were brothers, pinning chicken feathers, be as Amish as possible, not fall into it, Autism rates, over diagnosed, officially diagnosed, in the family for a long time, belied by the fact you had functional people, borderline functional, diagnosed quite young, by accident, a local politician, autism charity, more and more, I’m pretty sure I’m clinically depressed, how did it come to be?, lots of theories, google ngram, a sharp spike, gluten intolerance, gluten free, borderline people, diagnosed, wheat in the US is quite bad, contaminated, look at the trends, allergy to peanuts, deadly to a lot of people, an inciting incident, a history of medicalizing, a lunatic asylum, underlying problem, a chemical imbalance, no science behind that claim, extreme relief, on it for 25 years, numbs emotion, pointing at a very real place, ai chatbots, gland surgery, drugs, confined to asylums, drugs don’t really really get going until WWII, an evil horrible society, feels brief, nature is beautiful but there’s horror hidden there, the unknown, neolithic tombs, we don’t know what they were doing, Cornwall, the graves of giants, local legends, cursed him, turned to stone, the Devil’s Punchbowl, another of these weird hollows, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, the description of the light, how nice it is to live in the country, how nice to live in the city, the business in the dark, fairies, ecstatic experiences in nature, a regular divorce story, a drama, just another variation, about human perception, we can modify it, make people conform to it, isn’t that horrible, just beyond our preceptions, might we not find out a thing about reality, technology and humanity, nature and god, all German parents like hiking, prime of their life, dragged through the woods, I’m a knight, I’m going to save the kidnapped princess, in order to find the princess, a clue, a signpost, a marking on a tree, it’s a clue!, we can find the princess, where was the girl going?, her aunt’s house, she never showed up, Little Red Riding Hood, it isn’t a world, no-one ate the aunt, she never even saw her, waylaid along the path, vacant eyed, no way to rescue the princess, supernatural detective, a writer?, he’s Arthur Machen, from a wealthy family, 1890s, a lot of John Buchan stories, grew out of the gothic novel, mystery and crime fiction, horror fiction, Sherlock Holmes, C. August Dupin, this joke: I really hope it isn’t the case that Edgar Allan Poe’s stories of monomania, Berenice, The Tell-Tale Heart, recent diagnoses, autism stories, the drunk scale, took opium, depression, autism spectrum, self-medicate, you change your brain, psychiatric drugs, lethargic, an old age depression, the older the drug the better we know it, tobacco, unrelated to smoking, positive benefits to smoking, it stinks, American Spirit, spiked with chemicals, simple old fashioned tobacco, vapes, even marijuana has been fucked with, a B.C. Government Cannabis Store, government employees working at a government store, Scandinavian countries, wine at the supermarket, you can’t get beer at the 7-11, semi-legal, required to check my age, Hugo awards, mixed cocktail, bleep, look at me I’m obviously, the dictator of emotion has announced, chocolate with liquor in them, so panicky, when gin came into the UK, people still drink gin in the UK, fashionable, a technology that can change our body, the effect that it has, the mechanical changes that it has, The Black Cat is a satire of teetotalling, axe your wife in the forehead, it was pretty wild, suffrage, Enola Holmes (2020), teenage girls or younger, Guy Ritchie for 12 year old girls, womens right to vote, raise the daughter, running the country, just as smart, super handsome, Henry Cavill, very very handsome, lightly touched on, not historically close to what’s going on, a Disney Princess movie, equally smart sister, a prince that falls in love with her, in about 15 years your going to get a lot of little girls called Enola, sex jokes, 1980s, The Goonies (1985), when you were pregnant with your first daughter, Second Foundation, Kayla, American soap opera, Days Of Our Lives, the greatest names, little bit bottom up, new school, into different things, hockey cards, GI Joes, wearing the wrong shoes, reeboks and nikes, whatever my mom bought me, understand what’s going on there, you can’t be juiced into needing to be going to McDonald’s, interested in 1986 Toyota, doesn’t have the same effect 20-30-40 years later, why are all the boomers doing reverse mortgages to go live on cruise ships now?, pushed on younger people, pools, waterslides, it’s disneyland for boomers, tropical islands, enclosed holiday camps, built for an airship, semi-tropical pools, the vacation ideal, evening wardrobe, don’t forget the casino, you can wear your jammies, you can have as much food as you want, spend it now!, swarm the same few port cities, a few souvenirs, just cause trouble, secret cabal, cruise ship companies trying to make money, airtravel, passenger travel, shipping companies, passenger liners converted to cruise ships, containerization, nearly killed the shipping industry, in a ridiculous way, wealthy older people, dialysis machines, The Love Boat, Das Traumschiff, page 9, disintegrated her, busy with his surgical dressing, a semblance of normality, just top down, your parental supervisors, men often killed their wives, hideous bloodletting contests, exalting the primitive, selective mating, we’re blind, war was awful but love…, was worse?, doing brain surgery on the guy, normally thought of as for girls, to keep up his courage, high-minded and impartial and serene, bound and helpless, a cool impersonal cog, corporate state, curse them!, with the glands removed, anti-social action, a pale blue antiseptic, your digestion will be checked, super-horror, a Spaniard who killed a family for just a few possessions, covered in blood a few days later, murder, rando kills for money, which world with you rather live in?, stinky smokestacks in London, super-dystopia land, thank you so much, maybe we’ll meet again, text message, see you on Twitter, a silly article, Why We Don’t Read The Golden Age Anymore, Rendezvous With Rama, 1973, aluminum, a sterile and not good book, New Wave science fiction, his golden age, a kick out of it, completely eviscerate, older science fiction, missing out, Alien Earth, Murderbot, exemplifies the whole thing, Zuckerberg, any sufficiently advanced technology, then he says Asimov instead of Clarke, pretending to be smart, no excuse for this sort of thing today, you wouldn’t look it up because you know it, just look it up again, it’s Clarke, when he’s writing the script, written by committee, writers rooms, expecting the actor to know it, they’re all written by the one guy and sometimes with someone else, Noah Hawley, Fargo, Legion, Bones, X-Men comics, locked in an asylum, yes, not really an SF guy, interested enough to misquote it, it adds something, an overlay of Peter Pan, trying to recreate Neverland, robot bodies, less interesting than something to do, push this idea into the Alien universe, for no apparent reason, the smartest boy in the world who doesn’t wear socks, Beast, sits at a microphone and reads from the book, make sure the audience knows, why is he recording this?, is it for a podcast?, making audiobooks, no role in the story, eaten by an alien, the writing is not great, over Alien, linked it to Predator (1987), no wonder she was depressed, mental issues towards the end, not herself anymore, hip replacement, stuck in the hospital during COVID, intermediate care drugged her up, too many painkillers, high on aspirin, ibuprofen, paracetamol, lethargic, drugged them up and wanted lots of money, happy note to end on, the medical profession, old old Microsoft installation, they’re deadnaming you, dinner.

The Love Slave And The Scientists by Frank Belknap Long

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #866 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Detour by Martin M. Goldsmith

The SFFaudio Podcast #866 – Detour by Martin M. Goldsmith, (4 hours 8 minutes) read by Ben Tucker for LibriVox, followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Alex (Pulpcovers)

Talked about on today’s show:
1939, only four novels, the movie, the movies, the 1945 one, an incredibly close recreation, everything with sue, identical lines, cut out, just over an hour, the car is a different car, set after the war, a prewar car, a 1941 car, war production cars, a whole history of wartime industrial policy, all civilian production, consumer goods, more volume, keep the people at home happy, not as many cars, models from 1943, the car is described, a gray buick with a rumble seat, ’36, set a year before it came out, “the rumble”, really good read, had to stop listening, so good, bang this out, at a swim meet, 7:30, done by 9, there’s no drag, no ending, the first two thirds of a really good book, the tweet, holding something, suddenly stopped, something happens in the book, save the rest, think about this for a book, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, 99 pages, judging for hugos or edgars, novella, the kind of book, addicted to paperbacks, I’m off the bus, what a great book, how come all books aren’t like this, noir gut punch, it’s dark, there was a point in the book, Vera gets the car, where’d you put the body, what do you say to that, in their conversation, is this a surreal novel, is she gonna kill him and continue down the road, endless highway to Los Angeles, a Twilight Zone episode, wrote 2 episodes, 1964 season, this thing is never gonna end, caught me out, suddenly have chapter 2, Alex Roth, his girl’s pov, Sue, totally jumped, that was his girlfriend, she’s gotta whole life going, a parallel story, what’s cut out of the movie, the two stories don’t really touch, flashback stuff, she reads the article about him, the only interaction, thematically it fits, wasn’t extraneous, just in memory, more surreal, waiting faithfully, we don’t know what she’s like, she is not a nice person, the Vera in the movie, also not a nice person, Sue is pretty horrible, incredibly selfish, somehow even worse, justify everything to herself, putting these two together, catching up to her, parallel stories, one’s an aspiring actress, professional violin player, seeing Sue from Alex’s pov, she seems like a nice kid, seeing what she does to Raoul, Alex and her roommate, you’re just not that good of a lover, he kinda deserved that, she just does this to everyone, she is a monster, what won’t I do to be a movie start, degrade myself in every possible way, a little bit like Sunset Boulevard, how terrible Hollywood is, it’s very good, film noir from that period, the book is just crackerkjack, in a police cell telling this story, bummin around, can’t go to New York, Los Angeles or Phoenix, regretful, all a confession, arrested for his own murder, no I’m the musician, your dead dad, the only one who knew about the scar, nope, I’m with Raoul now, already had a wife, screw his almost ex-wife, the point, we like our Alex Roth, too deep in with him, tired, sunstroke, can’t believe his luck, a hamburger, a sign, delay you, they do go off the road, changing the top on the car, the guy he’s replacing, this guy’s a monster, stole his mom’s wedding ring, took his brother’s eye out, any human that isn’t a total monster, brother in New York, roommate girl, side character, sleeping in the same bed, they’re poorer, literally in the same room, not a king sized bed, girls are a little smaller than people, the reveal, reveal, reveal, Hendrix, I strangled her, what!, wow!, where am I, this is about half-an hour before she died, in the movie he does strangle her it is kind of an accident, the marks on her neck, so squishy, so bendy, when she pivoted at the waist, her head being floppy on the top of her neck, strong images, Vera takes the phone and runs into the bedroom of the hotel, tangled up in the phone line, a little bit less deliberate, the movie is more censored in terms of sexuality, what’s the worst you can do rape me?, douche, books are completely uncensored, tended to be across borders, you can’t get Lady Chatterly’s Love imported, straigh up porn literature, it’s just hard and noir, striking, comparisons, magazines had more censorship, sent through the mail, delivered by trucks, how they got comics too, we might have to look at regulating, EC comics goes out of business, stop for the border checks, the fruit of livestock, provincial stuff too, whatever animals infesting the fruit, seemed weird until asking about the fruit, going back to the character, Haskell, he’s got something wrong with him, he was dead before he hit his head on the stone, these are all excuses, utterly fails, impulsive, he can explain, look it wasn’t me, the worry about him rolling the guy, the Fredric Brown, The Screaming Mimi, it didn’t record, just go read [it], a real ending, funnier, entertaining and interesting, nervous laughter, what to think about some of the things going on, intial impression, maybe the car was stolen, his angle, the scars on his wrist, the scar on his arm, he raped a girl, sometimes girls get passionate, she nails you, makes light of it, if you see a pharmacy wake me up, smoking marijuana cigarettes, why is he doing that, pain?, mental pain?, somethin’s wrong with her, it was Vera, she was the one he was having sex with, the woman on the page, fuckin dangerous and evil, sympathy for her, she is definitely dying, she wanted to have a real life, she wanted to be a star, cynical and pouting, he picks her up, why?, she’s a girl, this kinda book is about this idea, hitchhiking, a dead thing, pretty much dead, no one’s going to stop and pick you up, probably a serial killer, serial killer picks up another serial killer, first experience of this book and this novel, The Hitcher (1986), roadside diners, driving through the desert, Rutger Hauer, C. Thomas Howell, somebody to talk to, lonely, people need people, keep awake, talking keeps me awake, he buys our hero dinner, and breakfast, a steak, driving across country by yourself, a huge long drive, so helpful to the hitchhiker and it costs you so little, normal people, we’re all in this together, being a little more kind to our fellow man, Christmas and it is snowing, poor stranded motorist, what a scenario, rewatching it, what the hell is his motivation, repressed homosexuality, he wants to be killed, a very iconic and strange movie, Eric Red, the same scenario, the story changes you, taking on the persona, his billfold in your pocket, his name, he’s wearing the man’s clothes, driving the man’s car, this road is an endless highway, she got out of that car, she met someone who was her but a man, reading the letter he didn’t send to his dad, I’m selling bibles to churches, a good business investment, a number on the horse, the fix was in somehow, the roommate, sympathy for Raoul, seducing waitresses where his wife works, a weaker less aggressive version of Alex and of Sue and Vera too, binder full of narcissism, commercial for toast, actors care about their image, make emotional connections to other humans, because it is about the road, New York and Los Angeles, poles of Americanness, he can go anywhere, a piano, where is his fiddle, he sold it, he can get any old fiddle anywhere, his music teacher, everybody has to make a connection, she’s an interesting strong character, motivations: spite, companionship, some company in her last days, terrible to everybody, kidnapped him, takes all the money and everything, this scam, get 7 million dollars, take the $700, a bird in the hand vs. $7 million in the bush, playing cards, gettin ripped, smokin, not a kind word, these are broken horrible people, she’s quiet and she’s sleeping, pretty hard, the wonderful line, ancient primal, she was Adam’s wife, Noah’s wife, archive.org, read it in the browser, on your phone it scrolls, mostly the phone, a really nice clear scan, it is public domain, filthy like that, without a mask of cosmetics, primitive geezer would have gone for, she’s getable, as a passenger, he’s feeling great, drivin the car, being generous, give em big tips, only a few hours to live, final supper, ultimate supper, makes a joke, come back soon, a cute little joke, a grim joke, cynical, come out to Los Angeles, you don’t need to be faithful to me, she understands men, I ain’t going to be faithful to you, very naive, so James M. Cain, so hardboiled, at the end our hero doesn’t die, the free gas the goverment gives you, that Arizona perfume, ISFDB, set in realtime, the bombing of New York by the Nazis, an America bomber, multi-stage rocket, NASA guys with German accents, Doctor Strangelove, everything goes back to somewhere, are they prescient or is everything cyclical, bigger than the War Debt, WWI, the War in Europe, income tax, inflate everything up, people on the road trynna make a life, controlled by their human instincts, nice to spend time with people, change your location, our description of Alex from Sue’s perspective, beating people up all the time, the outside POV of him, he’s pretty nasty, until strangles Vera, a screenshot, 80% through the book, he’s doin his best, a good point, the cops aren’t just gonna believe him, this setup, who’s gonna believe he didn’t do it, our narrative of hitchhikers are dangerous, understanding what happened there, a first person perspective, I strangled her, from whatever Vera did to him, he was pretty sluggish, doctors on the side of the road in the rain, the cop comes by, what are you doing down there, oh I see, button that up, peeing, a very fate book, on a highway headed in a direction, be generous, saying to yourself, just kept driving, it’s the same car, a million Teslas half of them are white, sitting in the same car, the ashtray’s in the same position, that instinct to make human contact fucked up his whole life, it wasn’t going well for him, 4 people, each of those people is completely fucked up, and Raoul, dumped at the end, when Sue is reading about Alex, jumping off the Hollywood sign, fits with the media, he is a weak man, this girl hurting him by calling him a name, all about herself, I love him, I hate Alex, he’s dead anyway, I’m still married to your co-worker, send this letter of to her boss, I’ll never marry him, so petty, mid-early 20s, she’s about 24, comparing the movie to the book, identical, the used car dealer, the number is much inflated, ten years of inflation, WWII, that was nasty, used car dealer, haggling over a price, a world you do not want to operate in, I like fishing vs. the fish packing industry, beef, steak, sausage, the killing floor, the cynicism, I’m better than that, I have people for that, scrub my toilets, almost like an existential book, the hardboiled and noir books, femme fatales, murdered, destroyed, more mayhem, seeing Vera on screen, Sue in flashback, nice singer, powerful on the screen, the TCM intro piece, good little essays, going over to the actress’ house, in her 60s at least by then, come into my bedroom, get down on your knees, look under the bed, neatly laid out, I’ll participate but you need to know about all that, Hollywood is a hard place, high and low Hollywood, Boogie Nights, The Player, Robert Altman style, small piece of real estate, he’s got a big dick, [The Nice Guys] with Ryan Gosling, 2002 was 23 years ago, best movies of the 21st century, the list, best comic book movie, nothing you hadn’t heard of, Everything Everywhere All At Once, as long as your arm, there are still good movies, the writing is very strong, as much, a cheap movie to make, hard to find a book that’s a really solid short read, long long books with a small idea, swap identities with a corpse, consequences to it, the writing process, for writing appreciation, why is It’s A Wonderful Life Not A Christmas movie, Die Hard style, set at Christmas, kind of a Detour, see his wife, New York detective, the Christmas party, then Alan Rickman happens, the family is reunited and together, essential the same plot as A Christmas Carol, 3 ghosts, 4 ghosts?, Marley’s ghost, three visions of reality, the transformation we see with Scrooge, go get a Christmas goose, parallel structure, he doesn’t like Christmas, the Christmas spirit, he’s a waste, this angel comes down, not so he has a great Christmas, Thanksgiving, pretty subtle argument, those are the best arguments, something to the writing in here, the coincidence, a tweet Alex was participating in, one big coincidence, Edgar Rice Burroughs, that’s where he lives, never important, they’re the same size, this fun idea, all Chinese look the same, weird ties, you can kinda see it, same hump on the nose, fine with it, that’s a big coincidence, that he picks up a hitchhiker, allow that, that’s fine, takes it in to that almost Twilight Zone level of awesomeness, what do I know about reality, the Alex that we remember, him taking swings at people, he’s so polite to Haskell, a class thing, digging through the bags and finding more reefer, nice luggage, if he was a bum, they’d pin the murder on him, more like this please, more books like this book, solid twisty almost surreal, a different end, faking out the dying father, if he’d run into Sue, something, a turning back, the way they had come, you never get there, the highway is endless, rest stops and dusty highway gas stations, Sisyphean hell, Desert Saints, a mechanistic society, H.P. Lovecraft, railroads, automobile engines, anything that replaces human or animal labour, distanced from each other, physically distanced, Oregon Trail, cars are a thing now, drive across the country, a pre-war book, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce, painting pictures of early 20th century American capitalism, the dirty 30s, go build a dam somewhere, FDR’s NRA, a later organization, hugely popular, fascism!, pushing back against oligarchs doing other things, struck down by the corpse, what a rumble seat is, my brother back in New York, cousin in New York, something’s wrong, when he lies to Haskell, I’m from Detroit, he aint a good soul, a rotten bugger, keep lying, Greek gods for the modern era, this kind of fiction is like a Greek tragedy, Oedipus Rex, fun and good, upcoming, Hombre by Elmore Leonard, The Thing On The Roof and The Nameless City, The Assassination Bureau, Ltd., Jack London, Goliah, The Red One, ancient astronauts, room soon, a short story, guy says I’m gonna fix capitalism, send letters to the oligarchs, come to this meeting, go to this ship in the harbour of San Fransisco, zapped out of existence, the next round of guys, they get zapped, a giant computer ai in the South Pacific somewhere, just a guy, remote zapper, really good thinking stuff, technology to change society, weird communist socialist guy, Jack Johnson, Korea, sleepin with the bums in London, a hobo march to Washington, not all equally good, The Unparalleled Invasion, 2000 years in the future, a period of time in our future, germ warfare, everybody in China, colonizing the remains of China, doing that all before WWII, what this month is doing, things are progressing, those will be easy, the one with the toad temples, hoofy noises on the roof.

Detour by Martin M. Goldsmith

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 #793 – READALONG: Sirius by Olaf Stapledon

The SFFaudio Podcast #793 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Will Emmons, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about Sirius by Olaf Stapledon

Talked about on today’s show:
1944, some Olaf before this, Last And First Men and Star Maker, wow, this blew Jonathan away, this is a novel, if you told me I’d enjoy a book about a talking dog, it has that cosmic perspective, in a dog who has no hands, real genuine science fiction, not genre SF, not from an American pulp tradition, in the subtitle, “A Fantasy Of Love And Discord”, a scientific romance, something to say, thinking about dogs a lot, a dog as a kid, a pet person, passed away earlier this year, afraid of dogs, allergic to most of them, Irish setter, what I’m hearing is you’re gay, australian shepherd, Karl Barks, still gay, gay for dogs, city boy, Scrappy, got too big, gave him away, cats, Minnesota, a Labrador and a great Pyrenees, border collie, Corgi, loved to death, the dog relationship, neutral to dogs, like our narrator storyteller, the Olaf Stapledon stand-in, affected emotionally, balling my eyes out, hiking, tears, very powerful, a great book, some good things in the review, very American, wanted the book to be genre SF, Philip K. Dick shows instead of tells, make points about philosophy, attempts pulp, Cambridge educated philosopher, from 2020, another reference point, Dick’s philosophy is more cynical, very different, Stapledon trusts people and the community of people, trusts reality more, even though the community if evil, Dick’s stories are more city, vs. more country, more suburban, lives in a “community”, a very small world for you, the college with the town attached, some London here, rural fantasy, through the novel tradition, such a bad comparison, to bring Philip K. Dick into the conversation, a guy named Jesse, correct to reference Frankenstein by Mary Shelly, a more wholesome, humane take, needs to be with other creatures, a 2015 review, no last name, Odd John, as opposed to a book about super and ultra sheepdogs, uplifted, can you get an uplift without it being biologically heritable, the raising, a monkey in Australia as a farmhand, the fox listening to banjo music, an old English children’s magazine, great pets, famous pets, Farmhand Johnny, a rhesus monkey, follow up tweet, interviewing the farmer, the second monkey in a series of farmhands, don’t go on about your handlessness, super-important, this is not a man creating another man, a dog with a man’s brain, a super-canine brain, the thing that’s adressed a lot in the book, bestiality, incest, how intiate they had become, looks at her body mauled by the dog, as are we, Plaxy, such a weird name, a name that people have in England, Wales, the fornication?, discretion prohibits me from saying, how Jonathan would write it, a man relives himself, masturbating, sexual hypocrisy, a very funny sad and tragic book, deeply philosophical, dog-lover wish fulfillment fantasy, this is a being like me that has thoughts and desires and wants, unable to communicate fully, flagging of tails, bristling of backs, wants to have sex, wants to have a relationship with you, that’s remarkable, exploring this idea incredibly well, what is stopping people writing this today, owning a dog, mischaracterizing all of science fiction: space-fucking battles, what about Harlan Ellison’s A Boy And His Dog, Simak, Lester Del Rey, a lot less incest, go off on Jupiter together, a lot more tragic, this conflict between dog-nature and the human society he is raised in, identify with it as a human being, I’m a human, I fit in, nature vs. nurture, other books that explore, Tarzan, so much imagination, the depths of smelling, describing how the female dogs drive him insane, you wouldn’t understand, the narrator’s really good too, that British hidden humour in these character’s voices, Plaxy is the least understandable main character, we don’t love dogs that way, if Sirius had been a female dog or if Plaxy had been a brother, would it have been a better book, a more pure examination?, reverse those genders, heterosexual animals, a husband describing his wife, going up to the line, creepy, unfortunately very reliable narrator, the things he elides, the frame to get at telling this story, a very funny American trope, super-hilarious, the mad scientist and his beautiful daughter, does not like the father the doctor, unimaginative, his subjective point of view, 100% agreed, being prudes about the bestiality, the investigation is less pure or more pure, the animal and Plaxy’s nature, he’s also investigating women, Enemy Mine (1985) by Barry B. Longyear, Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett, Jr. are fighter pilot, beach planet, give birth to their baby, dies in childbirth, dad and mom, reuinite him with his people, Will bait 101, the novella is 1979, Nebula and a Hugo, fewer people voted, not even a 1000 people, such a scam, throwing it out the window, interesting character, a perspective character, Stapledonian observations, the politics of this book, Hitler bad, why is Hitler bad?, a socialist novel, a communist dog at points, a small businessman selling his children, don’t collectivize my farm, typically Kulak, energetic but unfair, pre-WWII communist party of Great Britain, the hardship and oppression, surrounded by the professional managerial class, the PMC, using the PMC, Barbara Enright, the laptop class, people with a 9-5 job who work in offices, do you like it?, not a manager, includes teachers, lawyers, a little priest action, a parson is not a priest in the Anglican tradition?, holy nature, the guy in the front of the pulpit talkin, secular but mystical, for what this book is about, the way this book ends, like the Frankenstein creature he is not himself, just like the creature does, Jack London’s The Call Of The Wild, a dog that becomes a man that becomes a wolf, To Build A Fire, the best novel Jesse has ever read, inside the mind of a dog, a very alien story, some glimpses, doesn’t commit to the bit, Buck did not need the newspapers, inside of a dog’s head, telling a different story, boyfriend/husband, make a sale, interested in the market, a publisher wouldn’t touch it, how many of the books that you’ve read of him are something a publisher would want, things were different back then, H.G. Wells pioneered something, John Wyndham’s career, a new science fiction writer, been there done that, a repeat of Day Of The Triffids, he must have had a dog, the author of this manual of sheepdogs and their owners, to Will and Maissa, border collie video, sheepdog trial olympics, there for him while he’s doing his stuff, the commentators are going wild, that’s the relationship that this book is about, it was thrilling, made Will tired, that much energy, POV, omniscient narrator, Bob is angry, an omnipresent narrator, Bob seemed angry, more of a naturalistic approach, Guy de Maupassant, maybe the character felt this way, describing Sirius, Sirius was this way, jarring, what he restrict, I ate a man yesterday, Plaxy, and I liked it, as a writer it is important to note these things, in Buck’s head and right over Buck’s shoulder, notes, the humans in Sirius’ world, a more direct picture, this big archive of notes, too fat and complacent, wrote one book, The Lamppost, Beyond The Lamppost, a philosophy of things outside of being a dog, humans like to drink thinks, vee dogs and like to emit liquids, I see what you’ve emitted there, went for a walk with his dog, that’s how dogs be, let me right a novel about this, a terrific book, nobody could write this book today, a huge book of ideas, I can take this paragraph from this chapter of Last And First Men and make a 40 book series out of it, Paul is correct, read it again, what does the word completed mean?, the other projected book, in a state for publication, trying to split a hair your not going to split, the center of interest in Cambridge, Sirius does not understand dogs, he’s pretty young, a sad case, a tragedy from beginning to end, his creator dies, he has plans, has finished writing but not completed can never be published, remarkably, why is this set during WWII, an anti-fascist novel, a pacifist, lived a long time, supported the war effort, Wikipedia rabbit holes, fuzzy, when people are bad, they scapegoated Plaxy and Sirius the way the Nazis scapegoated the Jews, people use the word a lot, 20th century view on fascism, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, wait six months for this show to come out, an interesting take, our POV character is a solider and Plaxy is a landgirl, seems important to the war effort, Bomb Girls, what her views about communism and fascism are, she’s naive, communism isn’t the answer, petite bourgeoisie, create something new, I’m not so sure now Plaxy, literally selling his children, drowns some of his puppies, a flawed creator, religion, Brian Aldiss would do it more that way, an unapologetic J.D. Beresford H.G. Wells kinda guy, those books are dreams, characterless, occasional character name, hallucinations of humanity, an actual novel, Arthur C. Clarke is very spiritual, dealing with religion, goes into the church and sings from behind a veil, I know you will be shocked, don’t you want to hear them, the youtube videos of a dog singing along at the piano, the Right of Spring, out of the ordinary, A World Of Sound by Olaf Stapledon, escapes his body and sees a world of sound, moving over a landscape, he’s just slept through the whole opera, the sparking firework display that is Olaf Stapledon’s genius, like Peter And The Wolf, other notes come in, characters are notes and themes, we can tell a story just with sound, that’s what he’s done here with smells, I’ll be your bitch, this is an intimate relationship, going into scents, bite their owners, so rich and deep, what if Plaxy was just a brother, a boy and his dog, sex and raping, about the relationship of humans to animals, part of the household, super-duper rich, moved to tears by this book, never fits in, murdering or killing?, he’s mad, needs to be put down, near human intelligence, back to the demiurge again, a functional being, he lives in Britain, you have the solution in Canada, he’s a flawed creation, he’s not a man and he’s not a dog, he’s alone, had the deep thoughts that he has, invited to say what of man, is man a flawed creation?, the answer is yes, a very cynical view, is it cynical or is it realistic?, he grok fascism, and yet he will sell his own children and drown them, an alien species, kziniti, Jesse has Paul modeled, the aliens from Larry Niven’s Ringworld series, a brilliant writer and everything, a very different use of the ideas, one kzin, in the sequels, the kzinti homeworld on Ringworld, speaker becomes a king, like a Conan story, conquer the map of earth, they’re klingons but they’re cats, officially in the Star Trek universe, plugging Paul’s own game, lamenting the lack of Olaf Stapledon, smart dog novels, demanding, how its coming, the great female kizinti novel (that gets uplifted), she wakes up in the harem, you bastard, Ottoman harems, the power that women tried to wield, the kzinti queen, males don’t get their names, that the civil service says is good, I’m a male chauvinist sometimes, sometimes I’m a coward, sometimes I’m a 300 year old Fu-Manchu, sometimes I’m a lucky girl who gets to spend time with Larry Niven, unfortunately we demanded more books, got any more?, goddamn it, had to be doomed, humans are flawed and doomed, as a species too, leave AI to die, Paul’s Reeve guy’s plan, Elon Reeve Musk’s plan, escape the planet, preppers build bunkers, off planet, to make the air in air factories, this picture of what it means to be a person, a worker intellectual, the intellectual and artistic life, a vigorous physical exercise, really good critique of the Cambridge people, they drop things, talking about the mandarins, cultivate the long finernails, girls too, they’re princesses, intellectual beings contemplating gardens and writing poems with their mouths, denigrate manual labour, the dignity of labour, back to Wales, use his mind to labour also, he can’t be a Conan, conquering bitches, rollicking adventures, because of the landscape, his contribution to the war, I wrote a book about a smart dog, Tarzan goes off to war, Tarzan And The Foreign Legion by Edgar Rice Burroughs, a war corespondent, he thought he was at the center of things, patriotism is crazy, hilarious, go join WWI, go get ground up in the meatgrinder, we hate that, we didn’t want to do that, the cycle continues, alien and sedition act, that goddamn fucking Wilson, divide and conquer, he kept us out of the war, the League Of Nations, what a ringing success it was, return to normalcy, America first platform, Warren Harding, a reaction against Woodrow Wilson, no imperial entanglements outside of the empire itself, alcoholic drank himself to death while in office, sad that he died, why Donald Trump is a teetotaler, locked Wikipedia entry, Teapot Dome where Larry Niven got all his money, Coolidge, Republican presidents, Herbert Hoover, never served in public office, Grecian revival, we got dig him up, traveling across the country giving big speeches, front porch campaign, hide his alcoholism, the wealthiest guy, Hoovervilles, a miner, as usual, to feed Europe during WWI, an extremely popular person worldwide, Secretary of Commerce, one of the most hated and reviled, ran for re-election constantly, pumping money into the economy, a laissez-faire approach, avoided the whole thing, pushing an asteroid, what would president Olaf Stapledon do to fix the world?, major political parties in the UK agreed to a coalition government, forget this democracy thing for the course of the war, Commonwealth, merger between strange socialist, non-state socialism, Christian socialists, willing to contest elections, radicalizing, when they all joined Labour, advocating for a European federal government, a world government, full of good ideas, advocating for the welfare state, Beverage, here’s ghow they’re inadequate, the NHS comes out of that, Churchill, surprisingly he was a conservative, the Left Book Club, an important institution, Victor Gollancz, better known as a science fiction, today, a left wing publisher, they go together, all these great fights with Orwell, stupid and Trotskyist, breaks with the communists, Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, world congress for peace, useless things that we shouldn’t use, what a monster, left wing things, development of the welfare state, common ownership of property, socialism on the installment plan, hard to really grok it, socialism and they had no money, everybody got glasses, Doctor Who, Doris Lessing’s science fiction work, a bit shorter, more grizzled, comin out of the 30s, a healthier society, world government, what a monster!, gentle, as a revolutionary, an ideas guy, today in 2023, the experiment performed by the doctor, let’s hear him out, it would be unethical, cloning, impossible to do in real life, tomatoes with trout DNA, monkey man, Dogman, unethical, we’re a very unethical species, the scientific organizations have codes of ethics, that’s not coming up, doing it on the sly, most people don’t believe it, our narrator believes it, the sheep farm, when the dog sends a letter, called out in one of the reviews, we coulda used more like that, that was demonstrative, this novel doesn’t deal with scientific ethics enough, hey David Brin you haven’t had a hit in a while, go retro, lots of scenes where ethics boards are talking to each other via skype, it’s about our relationship with animals, and specifically dogs, nude in front of them, we won’t fart in front of our wife, put leashes on them, and then we’ll have to get you spayed eventually, neutered, not a major focus, where ethics comes into this book, reasons for the secrecy, commercial interest learning about the dog, mass production of this kind of animal, is there a world in which Sirius could have lived, the circus freaks, displaying themselves because of their oddities, seen that book or read that movie, not going to do the deep relationship between humans and dogs, when you pet Plaxy, she goes to make water, the wistle, its time to pee!, how children are, the devastation, the loss, how dare you!, one after the other, marking my territory, more like twitter, completed uncompleted book, enlightening, where they make their symposia, a peeing party, extends his lifespan, a regular dog would have died, they’re the same age, how old is Plaxy in 1944?, early 20s, a university education, we get that date at some point, less realistic, hung up on the wrong part of the science fiction, injecting human DNA into dog brains, this is not actually possible, they don’t seem to be viable, I’ve never made a monkey man myself, it’s possible for human and a chimpanzee to have sex, taboo, a mules, lots of mules, it wouldn’t line up correctly, somewhat mentally challenged, 99% match in DNA, human female and male chimpanzee, caesarean bud, wild conversation, Jungle Jitters, a genetic dead-end, ligers and tigons, one thing we haven’t talked about in this book, Plaxy is a cat, because she has a pussy?, something going on with cats in this novel, silly cat vs. dog stuff, astute observations, they are kind of mean, whenever Plaxy is mean she’s like a cat, to hurt Sirius, sometimes she’s this, somethimes she’s that, gives clues, very catlike, is he making a comment on women as well, should we be cancelling Mr. Olaf, the book is very doggy, the repeated point throughout: she’s catty, the cats were girls and the dogs were boys, when I’m 2, Treasure Planet (2002), hybrid babies, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island in space, humans and furries, related to transhumanism, there are also robots in this movie, it’s good?, fun, when we do Treasure Island, pirates, Paul’s being facetious, A High Wind Over Jamaica by Richard Hughes, trying to grok a scene, he has doggy vision, mystical vision, that supreme moment passed, a new reality, monochrome vision, colours seeing by the eye of the spirit, plain greys of ordinary life, gained a new meaning, their own true colours, suffused, the light of the spirit, the religious tinge, the Great Master, the True Creator, he has limited vision, he’s a young dog, Christian mysticism, probably not the best thing to study, one catty observation, turgid prose, actually turgid, looked it up before, swollen, congested, distended, Paul tends to read to fast, this is beautiful, this is poetry, limited view of reality, where you have to start saying the narrator is unreliable, a similar book, the Moon smashes into the Earth, Alec Nevala-Lee, The Hopkins Manuscript, a chicken farmer, a country seated gentleman, R.C. Sherriff, not petting his penis, it ain’t turgid, be his bitch, smiling a lot, the jokes were very funny, his song standing up, world dictator someday, humanize him with these books, a necessary scene in the novel, three possibilities, mystical gobbledygook, dial it back not dial it in, epiphany, the text comes out and says this is an important scene for you to read, a crisis, three paragraphs later, St. Catherine Of Sienna, he faces the absolute, when he goes to talk to the priests and learned people, these guys don’t get it, god is love, we’re all Sirius, born into the world, circumstances we didn’t create, he is a man, he does manly things, he has manly interests, science and muscularity and religion, a 9 hour book, the relationship that dogs have always had with man, the relationship of domesticating man or man domesticating animals, a man and a woman and a dog, man and dog and other dog, he doesn’t love in the right way when being a king, beaten by the man in the red sweater, he’s lost, ultimately he’s a wolf, this character is broken that requires a tragedy, a flawed creation, a powerful but not perfect creator, you don’t even need the god of the bible, puts us in the bad place, he loves him as a father, always seeking his approval, always arguing with his father, in the title of the book, the love part, the discord part, wherever he goes he’s singing a different tune, Apple of Discord, fuck around with things, smart like a man, he can read he can write he can sing he can make foolish religious claims, bigger brain equals smarter, really cool ultimate point, able to communicate with other beings using language, tantalizingly close to understanding the animals, when Soleks is looking at Buck, desires and goals, pack positional shit, dogs don’t have human morality, they don’t have shame but they can fake shame, it was bred to do that, that’s what goodness is is doing that, make a slave of another human being, program the robots, the revolt of the robots, so deeply science fictional, hormones, it’s not a breeding program, no robot arms, allowing a dog to understand us, science fiction is evil, some professor, on the whole a negative, had a negative social impact, if Elon Musk learned the lessons of Robert A. Heinlein, Nineteen-Eighty Four as an instructional manual, you wanted a hot-take, I’ve studied this stuff, trust me on this, bro, for you feed, are we done with the book, Return From The Stars, Omega: The Last Days Of The World by Camille Flammarion, a chapter missing, very early and very French, all collaborative, a comet that’s about to strike Earth, everybody buys telescopes, the United Nations, the international community, miscalculating things, a near death experience, moratlity, a technological boom, evolving, where Joe Rogan is very stupid, fallback stupidity, we just need to evolve more, man, this human being don’t change, people exactly the same, expresses different, merge man and machine, a very unwise person, almost Stapledonian, a science fiction book, the history of the species, another human species, in real life Stapledon believed, the transhumanism thing, the ability to see the colour blue, a linguistic trick, the wine dark sea, a myth that people believe, the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, a much better claim, the French Revolution with the experience of the French Revolution, what does it mean to be a domesticated animal, slaves, are human beings domesticated animals, school, factory workers, it loses its hair and becomes very social, domesticated apes, the overarching history of humanity, the unifer of the state, domestication is about the home, the family exists without the state, the family is a legal relationship, he becomes their owner, the mom has a relationship with her pups, their nice about it, a wolf gives birth to pups, uncles, an extended family unit, a condor, three little chicks, pushed it to its death, the weakest, the calorie intake I’m able to bring in, marriage is a legal construct, family, brings food to, it does it for a while, more like horses than tigers, make decisions collectively, by following people and leading people away from predators and towards prey, privatized, exceptions to that, the state will interfere with your shit, it should, it shon’t, tell condors how to run their families, we wanna catch that baby bird and raise it up, we never let it go, we’re different creatures than they are, not really possible, women leave their babies in bathrooms, in handbags, they drive them into lakes, are we thinking that’s a bad thing, abandoning babies, embrace that, horrific, you think the state has a place in people’s lives, lots of tutoring, enslave Jesse, hit him over the head, apprenticing, don’t go down that road, if you put it that way, Groucho Marx, the Groucho tendency, Harpo, Chico, very much a Groucho, individualized tutoring, university is still allowed, what Socrates was doing before being cyberbullied into killing people, making fun of people, follow him in conversation, the role of religion, worship Chebu and Sheemish, unequal opportunity, less unequal opportunity, more unequal, who was your best teacher?, he was fired, teaching his own things, an individualized tutor, the answer to this question is more institutions we can refor them, we live in a post-scarcity society, a theoretical conversation, how to improve the lot of black slaves in 19th century, it could be practical, its important that the students take it seriously, what money does, it’s important you gotta learn, kids who’ve been taught properly by their moms, learning is joyful, learning is wonderful, The Other Gods, everything is purposeful, it ought to be read, resonant, by Lovecraft, having multiple purposes in mind, just fun?, the fun came in the joyful experience of being taught, materially, Sirius enjoys audiobooks, don’t buy the product, often don’t, pirate, we live in a post scarcity society, knowledge should be free, no money, everything should be pirated, at no cost, this philosophy doesn’t distinguish, created from knowledge, they are the same, ebooks, your ideal purchasing audiences, commissioned audiobooks, the economic justification, quite interesting, Jesse is not going to make you a lot of money, doesn’t take into consideration, some are doing it to make money, knowledge leaves to the death of knowledge, freedom is restrictive, nobody will write a book, so what is he really saying, think of the long tail, don’t think about that, in 400 years you’ll be dead, sorry, get that Blue Yeti, haltered and faltering, rushes through words, Eric does almost everything, into people’s ears, ebooks are dying, paperbooks are dying, a superior medium: audio, who has opportunity to learn to read, gotta learn braille, sad story, Helen Kellers, most people, Isaac Asimov short stories where kids no longer read, perfectly like people, a disability to study old things, let her read, major disability, sound like a libertarian, argue with each other, Jonathan is more realistic and responsible, wanted to open a used bookstore, neither realistic nor responsible, small property, we’re in a post-scarcity society, make a sacrifice, money, kids are broken by school, learning is painful torture, want it both ways, to get the Jesse service, every middle class professional, be wanting to be there, Stapledonian paradise, post-scarcity spread-around, workers education association, you and an old book are your best teacher, show me one person that had that happen to them, they learn at home or not at all, learn to read in a new language, the family relationship would fall apart without the state to support it, capital, can’t afford to live in your home, sent across the country, a relationship between capital and the state, it exist, it make kids go to school, the laissez faire welfare state, Guardian/Colossus I can trust, how socialist planning would work, an idealistic socialist, planning by the people, a technocratic socialist, educate people into be awake to these things, state forcing people to do stuff is really horror, make the horror less horrible, if Will were president of Planet Earth, two colleges, Hampshire College, somehow you have to pay tuition though, did not thrive at all, Fordham, Jesuit rigid and structured, success undefined, own limitations, what I could accomplish, very experimental temperament, discuss books like Sirius, breadth of knowledge, politics and current events, European history, history of science, Colin Powell’s school, college and university, millions of hours being wasted, regular school, being babysat, always an issue, Paul doesn’t remember school very well, their lives are being wasted sitting in rooms learning nothing, inefficient, obedient workers, edification, lifelong-learning, how much we learn together, having read the book, now we get a great discussion out of it, richer and deeper, a relatively small group, everybody gets a chance to be criticized and drilled down on, we learn more from it, Will goading Jesse into it, anti-vaxxer stuff, bad new definition of vaccine, unable to respond, what can you do?, just do your best?, how the white man discovered inoculation, learned it from African slaves, smallpox, in Africa for centuries and centuries, Cotton Mather, Lovecraft talks about him, he wrote about it, this is a case of witchcraft, put too much pus in there, the new one is gene therapy, polio, defined polio away, the March Of Dimes, Modern and Pfizer, our theory is its going to work like this, 75 years from now you’ll be allowed to look at the data, very very clear, milking the public purse, lousy tech company, that woman who went to prison, Theranos, some people have died from twitter, quit twitter, forcibly having twitter injected into my body, dead virus, spike protein, you might want to read one of his books, you might find it quite moving, what the news said about Olaf Stapledon, [Dr. John Campbell’s youtube channel], pushing Ukraine, provincial health care system, trying to help people, also trying to hurt people, but compared, the B.C. government forced Jesse to get two injections, laboured into, took the hit and was lucky, a workforce issue, some random lady, no one else is doing it, doesn’t seem to be killing most people instantly, six shots, six of any vaccine, not a vaccine, that’s what it used to mean, different stages of protection, white blood cells and t-cells, when someone is listening six months later, teaches medical practitioners, pay attention to this guy, mysterious deaths in your family, doesn’t have an axe to grind, if you really want to know about this stuff, puts a checkmark beside each of things you’re reading, don’t trust the science, don’t trust the Moderna, it turns out that this gene therapy, don’t trust Trump, operation Warp Speed was a great idea, that whole ivermectin thing, propaganda for making billions, sucking money from government coffers and injecting it into private, loss of taste, paxlovid, increased your chance of getting COVID again, attack the body, pressured by Will’s dad, got his doctorate from CNN, brought to you by AstraZeneca, open to the idea, objectively true, Jesse didn’t change the definition, that’s what they changed to, it stops with every person who takes it, reduce hospitalization, reduced the amount of time you have the disease, literal videos, in that one instance, Fauci is the easiest one, the best example, Trump don’t know nothing, they kicked people of twitter and youtube for saying things that were true, banned accounts, deleted video, very nuanced, these are people who didn’t get the vaccine, the median age of people who died of COVID, older than the average of death, 84ish, how is that reconciled with what we were told, to children and babies, before the Tri-City News deleted itself, family court, in favour of the caution of having the baby vaccinated, a lot of excess deaths best explained by people, didn’t work for you either, the evidence of your eyes, a characterization of how the vaccine was promoted, make you less sick, after they noticed getting the disease, they lied about it, big surprise, after the Emergency Use Authorization, in Cuba, China, in Russia, the global conspiracy of not doing science is global, preventative health care, China did these lockdowns, hospitals being built, drones telling people to stay indoors, the ventilator shit, hospital workers, the ventilators were killing people, the disease crystalizes the lungs, weird lack of work, hours and hour researching boring little things, all the other things, David J. West, twitter guys who write books and have good covers, a little more successful than Jonathan, more prolific, a danish dessert locally made in Minnesota, palm oil, soy oil, margarine, glyphosate, not allowed in Italy, celiac disease and gluten intolerance, what possibly caused it, literal weedkiller, lubrication for machines, still available for sale, forced into our foods, find a vegan section, food minus industrial lubricants, we could reform the FDA, new broom, the changing perspective on how the drugs were sold, Will wants change, pump us full of toxic shit for cash, cheaper, pretend it’s fine, try living without these ingredients in your life, The Stuff (1985), this delicious looking thing, like a supplicant, give him money to buy some margarine, homeless person inside a store, some coffee, have to pee to much, hyped up and hopped up enough, in six months everybody will know, potatoes, it makes the potatoes ripen, a big fight about GMOs, literal provincial politics, I wonder if I should be worried about that, in the news, they got their way and now nobody talks about it, genetically modifying plants, sprayed with toxin for killing plants, you have not been genetically modified to thrive on roundup, weren’t as corrupt as they are now, when did you start hearing the words “celiac” or “gluten intolerant”, redpilled on smoking causing cancer, if it makes your body feel good, Canadian doctor, industrial health, smoke breaks, the boss can understand why you want a break, Ulysses S. Grant, skin cancer and lung cancer, maybe stayed out of the sun more [or been in it more], Lovecraft died of cancer, a teetotaler, sad story for Mrs. Lovecraft, didn’t die of bean cancer, you don’t read him for pleasure, a whole collection, circa 2006, a terrible story, people get it so wrong, The Colour Out Of Space, At The Mountains Of Madness, Suitable Flesh (2023), a body switching story, a wizard who’s been switching bodies, it’s a comedy, Lovecraft is really fanny, the film adaptation is hilariously wild, The Unnamable, Mr Jim Moon, hushed innuendoes, the Cotton Mather one, something had caught my ancestor, mixed marks of split-hooves, and many believed him, I saw it – it happened to me, it was it was unnameable, a little bit of gore, not pinhead style gore, a cat that got squished, people get squished, pure delightful comedy, so lucky, what a birthday present, From Beyond (1986), some people can only watch new movies, undisciplined, these comics are somewhat tolerable, reviewing myself out of reading them, a good podcast is better than anything else for drawing out, those don’t make great shows, 100% a criticism of the work, movie-tie in comics, I don’t remember Yoda having 17 arms, Star Wars output in the 1990s, coherent in a way the new stuff was not, we know you like memberberries, we’re bringing Han Solo back, to kill him, Princess Leia and storm trooper get lost on a planet, Starbuck teams up with a cylon, Enemy Mine (1985), a Christmas present, evil humans come to a planet, very Andre Norton but good, a good short story, The Beast Master, a tv show, her father was into “Indian lore”, needed more trauma to be more interesting, there’s trauma in this book, he had a dog die, thinking about his dogs, Navajo, genetically altered animals, a good pulp novel, not a big think, one note villains, the TV show ran 66 episodes, 2005, you hope she made some money, pass away rather than die, you want good things to happen, have their legacy edified, a good word, vacation being sick, complaining about being sick six months later, smarter than to listen to the propaganda, a new car, a new pair of shoes, you shouldn’t take the flu vaccine, hate to hear, shingles, people who’ve got the shingles vaccine aren’t protected from shingles, shingles can be brought out by flu or gene therapy COVID vaccines, I’m protecting myself, allergic reaction disease, another podcaster complaining, shingles vaccine, booster, the brands for the companies pushing the product, NIH, when Joe Rogan was painted green on CNN, ivermectin, public domain, reactivation, assumed to be significantly higher, statistically detectable, hypothesis confirmed, the more ups of your dosage the more chances you have of having this disease reassert itself, above median age of death, it never does come out unless you look at history, trying to hide WWII from us, eventually nobody cares, more and better facts about what was going on, look at these stupid things, still making money off of slavery, do you want to be subject to the slavery?, educate ourselves as best we can, follow the money, a lot of groupthink, go-along play-along people are not scientists, make their publications known, those people get kicked off of youtube and twitter, makes lots of mistakes, likes professional wrestling, he couldn’t watch the show, not happy about it, a pathetic show at the time, cooties all over it, Trump’s you’re fired show, cooties all over it, Survivor, fake tiki ritual, this is fucking moronic, that show continues, not everybody is intellectually interested int he same things, motorcycles, kangaroos, reading NIH papers for fun, I wonder what causes it, instances of people getting it, being phased out, Dallas Buyers Club (2013), the bad guy was Fauci, everybody’s going to get AIDS, somebody’s going to touch your blood, blood transfusion, I don’t want to die from AIDS, only game men and people who got it from blood transfusions, massive puritanical panic, garnered some control, cultural homophobia, who dies of COVID, ancient people, people over the median age of death, 6 month old children, in any reasonable understanding of reality, fear and panic are used to control the flow of cash, if you don’t play along, super-evil and very interesting, send a text message, certain cookware, dog shaped pans, Christmas Archie comics, not a big Christmas guy, like going to the dentist, so personal, Hanukkah, fuck those dreidels, go to the Chinese restaurant, ethnically, philosophically, we ran out of oil but somehow the oil continued, Masada, a good miniseries, stars Peter O’Toole, the ethnostate takes it on as a mythological thing, jews are really awesome, a lot of bad ones too, the Jewish experience in North America, the most Jewish person on the internet is Paul, kvetching, schlemiel, schmuck, sex based on, schlepp, sister lived in Israel on a Kibbutz, came back feral, a lot of cattiness, things that make you cynical, oh the scratches!, loves dogs, can roll with punches, cry cry cry, onto new things!, I’m still processing the trauma, I’m going to learn everything there is to know about cow breeding, how much overspill about border collies, only polite to listen, they need lots of walks, closing in on 5 hours, bagels with roundup!, find some Italian flower, she’s really shaky, nice bread, look at the ingredient list on the bread, that’s why I’m dying, The Cave Girl, easy to get people for Burroughs, a hard time of the year, Terence would have contributed greatly, Maissa is a cat lady but had a dog, everybody has something to say and a different experience to bring to it, the reason we do this, just listeners, beautiful, such an important difference, hear himself reading too quickly, how many people are listening to this from 5 hours deep?, how many downloads, onsite plays, wordpress, the files are hosted on servers elsewhere, most people don’t listen on site, Mike listens and gives feedback, imagine if there’s ten listeners, 50 hours of people’s lives being enriched, how much money it got you, even if you’re hate listening, something deranged about you, gotta dog pans for Christmas, demographics, people like Mirko, Cora (isn’t a listener), Peter, other Germans, Germans are very cosmopolitan, post-WWII occupation, only 8 more minutes.

SIRIUS by Olaf Stapledon

Posted by Jesse Willis