The SFFaudio Podcast #795 – READALONG: Such Men Are Dangerous by Lawrence Block

The SFFaudio Podcast #795 – Jesse and Scott Danielson talk about Such Men Are Dangerous by Lawrence Block

Talked about on today’s show:
Reading, Short And Deep, 1969 novel, Paul Kavanaugh, only one other Lawrence Block, a blowjob under a table, a pretty late one, the finest gift was Donald Westlake, a fine fine gift, so good, in that same territory, a little uncomfortable, a psychopath?, dangerous, killed 19 innocent people, a similar quality, they’re paperback writers, tweeted about this book, Lawrence Block doing Richard Stark, a darker Westlake, Stephen King’s darker half, Richard Bachman, the main character’s name is Paul Kavanaugh, kills a bunch of people, betrays the United States, sets off nukes, in the drugstore getting your cigs and malt, this is a true story, at what point in the book, a whole lot, pre-Watergate, very Watergatey, Vietnam, in Cambodia for 10 years, little brown men chasing after him, a super-competent crazy man, he has no idea where he wants to be, encounters with women, the colonel’s wife, she’d kill herself on the way home, psychotic?, we keep learning that, things seem to be going more smoothly now, nope, this is our man, Small Town, 2003, older guy getting into a relationship with a woman, a meditation on New York, much more like a mainstream book, a weird exception, Tom Wolfe or Mario Puzo, The Man In Full, Lawrence Block short stories, Scott edits that, recurring characters, a bunch of series, he resists it for quite a while, editors were demanding series, twins in ability, they were friends, sharing keyboards, co-authored stuff, publishers would be asking, exclusivity, The Hunter, give me three of these a year, two more, a difference, the second one, The Evil That Men Do?, travelling around the USA, Not Comin’ Home To You, free and white and 22, killing spree, two dudes, Natural Born Killers, Woody Harrelson, real life dad was a serial killer, may have been involved in the murder of JFK as well, a researching rabbit hole, In Cold Blood, Truman Capote, the Clutter family, the short lived writing career of Paul Kavanaugh, Maissa Bessada, the first Burglar book, Burglars Can’t Be Choosers, 1977, it’s a cozy, a hardboiled alcoholic detective living in New York, like Agatha Christie, much more Poirot, models on the Raffles books, brother in law to Arthur Conan Doyle, explicitly modeled on Sherlock Holmes, a burglar and his gay lover, dress up in women’s clothes, country jewel thieving, identical to Holmes and Watson, the lover tells the story, the enigmatic one, homosocial, no sex on screen, a lesbian sidekick, a dog groomer, a Lawrence Block hobby book, The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart, The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown, The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams, if you can only handle the soft, Matthew Scudder novels, trying to get dry, an older man, aging with Block, The Autobiography Of Matthew Scudder, the writing on this, effortless, listening to it, not a chance on this one, very smooth, can always listen to a Westlake, velvet prose, easily page turning, kept being surprised, goes to his island, makes his rules, back and forth to get his eggs, that came out of nowhere, we’re living in the shire and Gandalf shows up and he’s got a handgrenade, he says the thing I was thinking, you are me and I am you, what’s the difference between Paul and George?, not all there either, his Minnesota exams, go any places, we’re in Paul Kavanaugh’s head, his face or his back, all the decisions he’s not going to make, Lawrence Block doesn’t have a complete skill set but he hides it so well, M-14, Thompson, the new guns in Vietnam, sketch-it lightly, it isn’t a gun book, he doesn’t know anything about the army, his brown skin, his hard muscles, he’s the master at the paperback, the length, 10 hours at least, James Lee Burke, his books are twice as long, Lee Child, the Reacher books, he’s working in the 2020s, writes for the market, you can write books that way, extra stuff, the story doesn’t get better by being longer, the lady he almost marries, he’s thinking about her, I wonder if I should go think about that, think about the rules, as insane as he is, he’s smart and he’s good at his job, went to his bed, puts the pillows under the sheet, we know it was coming, so good at distracting us by not hiding things, after the colonel’s wife, he did some weird stuff there, turning the sheet inside out, he gets his eggs, he gets his sausage, the shopkeeper, here’s your paperbacks, a whole philosophy, that grenade went in the sea, inconsistencies on my list on my island, I kill you!, you came to my island, you’re the one who started this man, a PTSD book, really good at observing, on a bus, he reads the newspaper, makes some sausages and eggs, thinks about a relationship, if he were a different kind of person, Laos, the maps on the roads, heist books, Dortmunders are soft and fun and funny, there’s something wrong with Parker, that’s not efficient, he has to go, once they lie to you, having one the guys not follow the philosophy, authors get tired of series, makes it about baseball cards, Humphrey Bogart, pretty obscure, people are just trusting Lawrence Block and buying blind, translate to movies really easy, Eight Million Ways To Die, Whoopi Goldberg, Bobcat Goldthwait plays the lesbian dog groomer, gender flipped it, A Walk Among The Tombstones, My Blueberry Nights, short films, there was a script for this, happened and happens a lot, soon to be a motion picture, Up Your Banners, another marketing thing, get the paperback before you watch the movie, goes to the movies, goes to the drugstore, he really needs a dictionary, define everything perfectly, he won’t be insane, very very well structured, a super-instinctual writer, lucky, incredibly smooth, the first Scudder novel, The Sins Of The Fathers, 2 cassette Penguin Audio, on sale, these will be good, running a bookstore by day, reading a character reading a book, a real book, I’m sold, knew each other well, the tight tight crew, Silverberg, Block didn’t write much science fiction, Block was just not a science guy, Make A Prison, doesn’t know a lot of science, careful observation of society, Block loves short stories, used to be Ellery Queen or Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Writer’s Digest, Block has couple of writing books, he’s the writer of them, a bunch of short stories, a fixup, just doing novels now, Hit Man series, then he surprises us, White Plains, New York, the mob, Des Moines, describes all the people, goes to a Pizza Hut, goes to a hardware store, we’re in the bedroom, a nice vase, then he murders the guy, so soft, it’d been six days since I had any work, then I got call, can’t hold it together, so level headed, murdering people for a living, interviews with Block, he has a vivid imagination, he gets bored, why did you write this book, short on cash, what if I became a burglar, sat down at the typewriter, stamp collecting, Lawrence Block is a stamp collects, the hobby of kings and king of hobbies, so many, riches, the cover has What Mad Universe, 2022, a Subterranean Press with a really good cover, a writer’s writer, Jim Roberts, Martians Go Home!, Arena, the Star Trek episode, two sentence story, The Last Man On Earth Sat Alone In A Room. There Was A Kock At The Door, can you be more out of fashion?, he’ll make it good, Harlan Ellison, not magical oh I must write, The Inklings, the difference is class, Oxford Dons, my next book is about Jesus but he’s a lion, a fawn with no genitals, porn stories, that would be great book, a non-fiction book, possibilities out there, Hard Case Crime, Alex Nevala-Lee style person, Rick Jackson, Wonder Audiobooks, The Fabulous Clipjoint, super-readable, a writer’s-writer, worshipped at the foot of Westlake, trauma they’re working through, insurance, different results but the smoothness is the same, go to Clarion, hubbub, get my awards, a very different writing school, the Oxford Don worked out, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, comic books, big little books, radio drama, Paul di Filippo Lost Pages, also Donald Westlake, The Outfit, a heist, an armoured car heist, The Man With The Getaway Face, designed to be ended, fundamentally change the character, a revenge story, angry that his girl stabbed him in the back, adapted to movies 3 or 4 times, good news, a movie seroes and television series, John Wick, a ripoff of Payback, John Wick movies, they killed my dog, gun-fu, a club, everyone is wearing neon, Face/Off (1997), like an opera, married now, no ability to emote with humans, he has rules, don’t bring the stuff home, this is a guy out of time, driving a Toyota Avalon, still smooth and still good, a testament, look at that Westlake, listen to them, they tell you truths, why have you said writing a novel is like going a distance to take a small shit, jumped the shark, how many novels?, zero?, all in his early career, the training school, efficiency, hotel room away from their wives and girlfriends, in a weekend, get to the point, filling pages yes, have people buy the book, they’re capable of doing something with it, when it is is not science fiction, Ringworld is a great book but it’s not much of a story, getting home, that tantalizing thing, I could do it again I guess, diminishing returns, not true with crime books, what makes this book not science fiction, nuclear mortars, Aural Noir, exploring the idea, so paired with science fiction, crime is an alternative way to view society, not right towards the CIA, won’t take orders and do them blindly, not a patriot anymore, you need something to do, you go crazy and have to live on island away from everybody, drown em a few times, why you must die in the end, there are other ways of living, what is my relationship to the bank, floating through our lives, doing chores, distracted by this, you didn’t see it coming, what if somebody robs the bank, how would I rob this bank?, different outlook on reality, being impinged upon us, yeah, what about that?, Silverberg don’t know much about science, I like Joseph Conrad, a riposte, immortality through my books, that one will make me immortal, in a different setting, crime and mystery fiction, make us think about reality differently, what did you learn?, why is this a good book?, entertaining, passed the time, just personally compelling, what did I learn?, a heightened experience, a mode of being, a psychology book but you don’t know that, experiencing somebody’s psyche, how does Block do that, the unconscious coming out as plot and action without telegraphing it, there from the beginning, their sex books, not designed for that, very very tame, how tame is the sex, no nipples, he aint shyin away from it either, the literary crew, classes for analysis, defying analysis by just being so good, super-readable, when in doubt put on one of these, good page turns, a book is a companion, a book is a friend, on Vancouver Island, you came to my island!, you wouldn’t hesitate to recommend except, highly inoffensive, a lot of moral horror, he half accepted she wouldn’t make it home, thumbs on jugulars, plays his politics close to his vest, wise?, aloof?, Stephen King is not playing close to his vest anymore (if he ever did), annoyed, Trump in his novels, triggered, Blaze by Richard Bachman, one of the bad guys saying how bad the Republicans were, Lenny and the bunny, a retelling of Of Mice And Men, the Smurfs, a good book made worse into a bad book almost, meddling triggered hands, minds broken by Trump, Harlan Ellison get TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome), politics are important, time of assassinations of JFK, RFK, MLK, dressed to the nines, take whatever you like, a product of its time, time travel back in time raid the drugstore spinner rack, good reads, a Saturday, What Mad Universe, March and April, them types, a scheme, a Burglar book or two in between, goes down so smooth, girlfriend gives you Campbells soup, hoping to book a show with Connor, The Devil’s Elixirs, Paul might want to be in on that one, used to read Fredric Brown, the church stuff, at its most active, January through Easter, Richard Stark’s The Seventh, 2000 year old books, Passage by Connie Willis, the Titanic, what it’s about is a little complicated, timey-whimey stuff, The Book Of The New Sun, talking about it as we go, one of those big jewels, Catholic guy, queen mother, coldly interesting, looking at a Rubics cube, on kindle, its a series, broke it up into four small books, so much going on in it, telling me something but I’m not sure what it is, a New York Times Cross Word puzzle, books written about this book, Charles Bronson movie, The Triumph Of Evil, from Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare:

Caesar
Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.
Mark Antony
Fear him not, Caesar, he’s not dangerous,
He is a noble Roman, and well given.
Julius Caesar
Would he were fatter!

pushups and sit-ups, not fat and happy, five key political figures, Miles Dorn, a fast paced thriller, a similar short length, book it?, good men do nothing, misattributed to Edmund Burke, alleged quote, thinking makes it so, you can tell by the backwards grammar, Hamlet, generative AI, remark known to have been made, John Stuart Mill, bad need nothing more, pretty close, thoughts on the cause of present discontents, an unpitied sacrifice, Alexis de Tocqueville, digging into Heinlein quotes, Robert A. Heinlein, from novels, something always off about it, women and cats, rooster crowing, Tanya Daviti, will do as they please, men and dogs should relax, the word that triggered Jesse is: relax, Farah Mendlesohn, alternative claim, game show host, 1896, for plain women only, beautiful woman can do as they please but a plain woman must do a great deal, The Present Profession OF Robert A. Heinlein, Expanded Universe, attributed to Lazarus Long, has never dealt with a cat, protocol, almost correct, Little girls, like butterflies, need no excuse, fake and garbled quotes, a huge thread, Glory Road, a quote inside a quote, it means, attributed to Heinlein, translated from another language inside of a fantasy book, people collect quotes and put names attached to them, a pathology, an addiction, gut punch, it hurts so bad, make some pushes, otherwise good men won’t do anything, just hang out on the island eating lots and lots of eggs, reading paperbacks, rowing, took the title and then he wrote the book, a dangerous thing to do, a great pull quote, Othello, the language man, the beast with two backs, unbelievable, amazing, what a hero, negative capability, The One Who Waits by Ray Bradbury, accept uncertainties, John Keats, 1817, am intellectual confusion, the writing style of Block and Westlake, they’re in the typewriter, make some coffee, grew up on computers, Arsenal lost some nuclear weapons, the best name for a sport team that has ever been equipment, they don’t even use their arms, in The Hitchhiker’s Guide radio show, he captured something there, a really good read, of late, a few months here off, The Good Story Is Hard To Find podcast, In Our Time on Edgar Allan Poe, SFBRP, Heinlein, hasn’t listened to Luke in ages, the fever has broken, the latest Martha Wells, this is kind of shit, why this doesn’t work, saying mean things about other people, lots of really good things to say about Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman, British humour, extinction credits, Juliane, a way to keep up on the torwave/squeecore, ok modern books, say high to the chickens and the cows, everything with four legs or less.

Such Men Are Dangerous by Lawrence Block

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #440 – The Tower by Marghanita Laski

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #440

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Tower by Marghanita Laski

Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.

The Hedge was first published in The Third Ghost Book, 1955.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #794 – READALONG: Travels by Michael Crichton

The SFFaudio Podcast #794 – Jesse and Scott Danielson talk about Travels by Michael Crichton

Talked about on today’s show:
non-fiction book, autobiography, memoir, surprised by it, expecting just being about places he’d travel, astral travel, such a spiritual guru guy, spiritualism, mysticism, astral planes, past lives, auras, meditation, hanging out with Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park, the movie, Timeline, later ones, The Andromeda Strain, around my house, Coma by Robin Cook, Drug Of Choice, eerily close in plot to Coma, very much a Michael Crichton movie, an interesting path to that, life as a medical student, this is not quite what I thought it would be, life as a medical student, advisor taled him into staying, making a living by writing, John Lange books, Hard Case Crime, late 1960s early 1970s, amazing an excellent, a garbage book, trying to do something, Binary, crime, political theory idea, a government agent, modelling something that’s happening, murder the republican candidate for president, similar impressions and intelligence, mirrors of each other, an explosive, a well executed short crime novel, set in Egypt, having climbed the Great Pyramid, when he was young, taking him all over the world, books set in France, Spain’s riviera, Mexico and Europe, The Venom Business, nasty cruel rich people, genres that work like that, dynasties, nasty and horrible, his dad was a “journalist”, wealthy enough, might have been a CIA guy, his brain is amazing, broken by his dad, psychological and spiritual journeys, ghost is haunting him, the demon he takes with him wherever he goes, an extraordinary thinker and writer, an interesting man, a great writer, a great film director, a novelist who’s also a film director, William Shatner as a director, Star Trek V, not the greatest entry in the franchise, not demonically driven to learn, expresses interest in learning, in medical school, how the other students get and how the other doctors get, surgery on a guy, a series of procedures, not thinking about other people and their experience, becoming masters of that technical thing, a fact about viruses or chemistry, becomes obsessive for him, not shelved in science fiction, almost a Philip K. Dick novel, would limit the sales, what makes him different, the feel different, a science fiction novel not written by a science fiction author, not Margaret Atwooding, disconnected except where he’s not, the person in history he’s most like is Arthur Conan Doyle, kids with paper fairies cut out of magazines and a camera, in a way that made him a fool, comes to believe in at least a lot of it, a speech he was going to give to a skeptic’s organization, university degrees, things that blind people, this passion for putting himself in positions where he’s going to be learning something (about himself), it results in sparky writing, the artifacts of his books, decades after he’s dead, intellectual curiosity is still with us, not writing for a living, compelled to write, he leveraged that into doing other things that he wanted, Larry Niven, California boy, rich, all the film directors of the 20th century, some of his movies are excellent films, The Great Train Robbery (1978), one of the best movies of the 1970s, the opposite of the Robert Jordan series, The Lost World, took the text of the film for the text of the sequel, abandons the original novel, Arthur C. Clarke did for 2010, interest in the paranormal, a really interesting phenomena, raining fish, seems to be pretty strong, why would anybody want this, a pretty excellent attitude, sit in an ashram and talk to cacti, came up with stories that helped him in his own life, worked through his childhood trauma, very healthy, wise, he didn’t waste his time smoking dope and drinking himself to death, human flourishing, this is great, Scott is a Catholic guy, where this conversation would end up, brushes up on things Scott does beleive, scientists being blind, Fauci is science, I am science, when they attack me they attack science, this book from 1988, Jesse Willis paints you all in the same spiritual box, Utah, Mormon religion is the biggest religion around, a lot of the arguments against Mormonism, like an atheist would use against Scott, a closed door, anything I can’t measure doesn’t even exist, he was gentle, the new athiests, Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins, the mediation guy who doesn’t care if Biden’s son is torturing children in his basement (Sam Harris), using religion as a weapon of control, that isn’t Michael Crichton’s hobby horse, an intellectual curiosity, auras, a lot of talk about auras, with regard to art or sex, you can’t make the creativity come without being in the right mood for it, use lube, good at poking holes in the conventional experience, right not to become a doctor, evil practices he was witnessing, evil practices in tourism, a sex tour in Thailand, child sex slaves, let’s get out of here you guys, smokes a cigarette, doesn’t convey any judgement, his school years, the practices that the doctors were doing, morally questionable, very morally questionable, judging people, these people need to be condemned, bringing that topic up in this book today, canceled again, canceled before, his “climate change book”, an honest investigator, he goes down a path Jesse doesn’t like, rich evil self-destructive people, drawing on his own life-experience, what do you do?, work through it in a novel?, State Of Fear, writing stuff for money, an homage to his hero: Conan Doyle, what he’s riffing on in the first one, playing in his own sandbox, Lawrence Block, Donald Westlake, Robert Jordan, Elantris guy: Brandon Sanderson, did their toe into it, consistently different, Congo, you can see where that came from by reading this book, time with the mountain gorillas, forgteable and bad?, he didn’t direct that movie, Sphere, Rising Sun, Disclosure, Airframe, A Case Of Need, Five Patients: The Hospital Explained, Electronic Life: A Layman’s Guide To Computers, The Terminal Man, seizures that cause killing sprees, a viscous learning cycle, 1972, very interested in computers, they use an IBM computer to plan all the scenarios that could go wrong, thing of interest, coming at it from a perspective outside of science fiction, Deep Thought, another guy who liked to travel, Douglas Adams, not as productive, produced a ton of novels, The Venom Business, these heroes, intellectual heroes, authorial heroes, Eaters Of The Dead, Ibn Fadlan And The Land Of Darkness, Arab Travellers In The Far North, a retelling of Beowulf, let’s do it, a physical copy, fiddled with the metatext, he’s just the translator, playing with the medium, the images from the serialization of The Lost World, for challenger himself, they lose the camera, photographs, sketches and paintings, plays into the end of the book, pterodactyl, participating in that in the book, fiddles with the copyright page, an old tired writer, a young invigorated guy having fun, a new posthumous publication with James Patterson, a dead man writing a book with a living man who has a ghost writer, Dragon Teeth, fossil hunting in the wild west, 2008, a pirate novel, Pirate Latitudes, Micro with Richard Preston, The Andromeda Revolution, Daniel H. Wilson, Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal, chemotherapy is poison, take the family to Disneyland one last time, what do you want your last few years to be, most people, learning the corpse, learning to memorize where all the people, cars, a house, a vacation home, this seems wrong, one of the biggest cultural influences: ER, very different from other TV shows, turned into a stat because of that show, the storytelling on that, here’s a case, we try all sorts of things where nothing works and the person dies, spawned a ton of shows, like House, another Conan Doyle influenced show, interest and approach, very different and special compared to other writers, gutter books, never came up, not even close, he doesn’t care, pursuing his own passion, a lot of diving and mountain climbing, he goes places you wouldn’t expect, diving with my sister, I’m dying I’m dying, an urge to have sex and unfortunately he’s on vacation with his sister, traumatic incident, you must reproduce, a detachment in the way he tells things, he himself is that way, his relationships, Jamaica, girlfriend or wife, a similar experience, Tucson, Belize, an object called a relationship, he seemed to know at the time, the argument he got into, severed that connection, unrecoverable, talking about women in Hollywood, the hunters, sexual hunters, this is what they want in a relationship, men being romantic, he might be right, the friend who says that to him, that’s really interesting, Arthurian romances, men and women are exactly identical, some do, a lot of weird people but generally people are pretty much the same, adventure vs. romance, Disclosure (1994), the kind of movie I would have watched, business equals, when he gets an idea between his teeth, seeing if he’s got something there, this isn’t an autobiography, doesn’t cover his childhood at all, his dad was rough on him, not a lot of details, that end speech, simplistic, John is a six foot tall man, taller than 5’11, we’re talking about today, except for that time when his football team lost the game, the tailor, the magic of fiction, this further conclusion, reading a Lord Dunsany novel, we can always go back to the text, this is in there, that sentence exists, that is more true than Jesse’s own hair, things change, but not in fiction, an extraordinary thing to think about, we can find truth easier in fiction, it’s a canid, it can breed with other canids, not really half, the more fine grained you drill down onto it, some good wisdom and insights that a lot of people are pissed off about, team science, team spiritualism, he will not submit to any one thing, these very clear scenes recalling dialogue for incidents in his life, him as the dumb guy, memorable to him because he was learning something there, a new spiritual high, six months, a house by the beach, snakes, rattlesnakes in his yard, switching attitudes, different perspectives, a journey of perception and experience, after climbing Kilimanjaro, and yet he does, he does it with lovers and family, very happy that this book got published, a nice record of a man, he has brothers and sisters, they’re not the focus, the family lineage, a little bit about Sean Connery, a little bit about specific movies and books, filming in Ireland, I’m done riding these trains, you have everything he needs, didn’t care about certain things, going way faster and him being right, cool stories, he didn’t dwell there, not showing off his celebrity friends, dating a famous film actress, Linda, aloof in his own life, looking at it from a higher perspective, making a fool of himself often, I feel stupid talking to this cactus, mad at the cactus, fringe experiences, Jesse doesn’t disbelieve him, some of these people are wise teachers, there’s no good answers, becomes a medium himself?!, not the guy Jesse thought he was, Scott’s whole reading life, known something about him, could have been written by anybody, he saw a psychic, a TV movie called Binary, he made money from it, Coma is what he showed the Anglo-Irish crew, Robert Wise, precise control, how everything is connected, Thailand, a travel website, Westworld (1973) he wrote and directed, Looker, Runaway (1984) is kind of a crappy movie, Gene Simmons is the bad guy, directs Burt Reynolds, Twister (1996), directed some reshoots for The 13th Warrior (1989), more books like this, enjoy a good memoir, the HBO Westworld, a tiny wikipedia entry for the book, VincentVacations.com, travel agencies come up quite a bit in his early books, in Binary, San Diego, spent a lot of time at travel agencies, a reprint from a website, a blog from 2005ish, how he came to write, a column related to travel published in The New York Times, a modern age explorer, began as a series of travel pieces, it wasn’t supposed to turn into anything, almost evasive, some medical stories, pretty ancient history, a kind of keeping a secret by never writing about it, the following is by Janet Berliner, 2010, 1993, where his career went after this interview, write something specifically for children, Treasure Island, So Dear To My Heart (1948), it doesn’t have any adventure, a contrast between, that mushy stuff, maybe that’s Pirate Latitudes, solutions to our problems to society, addressing questions, something that is compelling, another Travels, Travels is the favorite of my books, stainless steel high tech person lecturing on the subject of robots, so much early attention for books, popular perceptions, bad transcription, two historical novels in the mid-1970s, a great sense of relief, its implied by a lot of this material, the narrator is now behaving differently, glib answers, worth thinking about and putting down, poking around in the backs of closets, Sphere was published, 200 pages of a manuscript, revise and correct what I did from memory, a few little acronyms, odd feeling, it went along for months, the first draft took 5 months, a common experience, not entirely processed, a need to objectify, creating a persona, eliminating extraneous and complicating details, a US president biography, Decision Points by George W. Bush, the official biography, many years, it is always that way, my experience of the past now, oh my my what an interesting person must have written this book, a quarter of a century, how to discuss the “fringe phenomena”, all the words are corrupted, the press tour, the most discussed aspect, critical of that part of the book, in just those words, Electronic Life, Marvin Minsky, Society Of Mind, meditation is a kind of delusion, a physiological state, so tremendously interested, music, sports, no one can throw a little piece of letter 100 yards, it happens every Sunday, think of Travels as a bet, this book is going to look prescient, a serious bet, exotic places, going for research, always drawing from your life, a domestic argument, that’s good! remember that you can use that, James Thurber’s wife, Thurber, stop writing!, off the clock, in the end it wasn’t, the colours of policeman’s uniforms, becoming too detailed, she won’t even take photographs, an abstraction, a bold decision, also practical, very helpful to go some place some place, have this fresh experience, more informed experience, all the things he would bring onto the airplane, facecream, typewriters, I haven’t been to Israel, Egypt, the former Soviet Union, Asia, I’m so tall, left to my own devices, Italy and Greece, Disclosure, Congo, Jurassic Park, the most successful movie in history, it is going to happen, the Jaws series, protecting your own work becomes important, probably gotten a lot worse, you don’t really decide until you have to, there will come a point, I’m not there yet, my income has declined somewhat, 20% less, not as well paid, when America was richer, an intellectual prospecting that happens, when you finally get a nugget, sometimes talking about it dissipates it, Rising Sun and Disclosure were set in high-tech, novels of social commentary, the possibilities are limitless, after his success, those paperbacks in the late 60s were disposable, even so, the economy is not as good as it was, we’re feeling that now, for sure, did he win his bet, the mystical aspects of it, the medical stuff, the more you investigate what’s going on the more you realize there are a bunch of scams going on, on team scam means you get to keep your job or you’re ostracized, lose your twitter account, coronations, institutions, the FDA, drug companies, make cash, countries can reap rewards, the pressure to makes drugs mandatory, makes 100 billionaires, lie dispute and legalize, pretty amazing, he would be shitcanned again, maybe he would have been big enough to weather that, comedians that a re big enough, musicians that are big enough, can’t cancel them permanently, Michael Caine’s biographies are really great, narrated by him, The Moon Is A Balloon by David Niven, Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon, travel writing, memoir, they go together, The Old Patagonia Express by Paul Theroux, On Writing by Stephen King, made it even richer, out walking with his dog trying to finish The Stand, running home, a student coming, The Mosquito Coast (1986).

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #439 – The Hedge by Alfred I. Tooke

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #439

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Hedge by Alfred I. Tooke

Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.

The Hedge was first published in Weird Tales, December 1935.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

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.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #438 – That Low by Theodore Sturgeon

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #438

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss That Low by Theodore Sturgeon

Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.

That Low was first published in Famous Fantastic Mysteries, October 1948.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!