Reading, Short And Deep #436 – The Abandoned Of Yan by Donald F. Daley

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #436

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Abandoned Of Yan by Donald F. Daley

Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.

The Abandoned Of Yan was first published in If, March 1963.

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The SFFaudio Podcast #790 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Sword Of Welleran by Lord Dunsany

The SFFaudio Podcast #790 – The Sword Of Welleran by Lord Dunsany, read by Ed Humpal (for LibriVox). This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (34 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Scott Danielson, Maissa Bessada, and Jonathan Weichsel.

Talked about on today’s show:
1908, and other stories, great sword and sorcery books, Brian Murphy, a Penguin edition, In The Land Of Time, some fantasy role playing games, fantasy tropes, an intelligent sword, a sword with a soul inside, prose poetry, how to make writing better, at every opportunity, consonance and assonance back to back, very distinctive, so dense, so much, you need the space, take them in more slowly, 34 minutes, feels like a couple hours, a spell that he’s casting, repetition, ideas, who is I?, he’s the dreamer who is proud of his dreaming, sit before my fire asleep, draw away from the face of god, is this dreamer god?, the world that he’s spinning up, somebody bigger than time, somebody omniscient, the city, these dudes from a long time ago, everything’s dreamy, a nice and soft hard shift, thieves going to be executed, check out the city as spies, thieves, criminals as the protagonists, some sort of sense of honour, The Highwaymen, The Wonderful Window, he can almost smell the bakers and spice merchants, a hint of the smell, sat down by the fire, a nice dog at his feet, a long list of heroes, don’t forget Welleran, Young Iraine, a depth of history, Mermina, somnolence, a memory mumbley word that you remember, a Dreamlands, centered in a city, barbarians around, sing the praises of Welleran weaponless, protected by these old heroes, Roald, this thing that poets do, claim to be visionaries, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, smoking opium, a knock on the door, the vision was gone, after the fact, the game these poets are playing, are they?, part of the fiction of the story?, he’s playful, jumps out the window and runs down the street, The Hashish Man, it was not that at all, I do it with hashish, I know Bathmoora well, different brain, doing it as a poem, composed in the way, not so much about meaning as it is about feeling, The Irish Times review, baffling, strange but captivating, Seejar and Sejar-Ho, virtually identical to each other, a little dialogue, one-act plays, servants, listen to the piano, let’s put on a play, four characters, roll through the story, some resonance here, Dan Carlin’s latest, Twilight Of The Aesir, the Byzantines in 941, the Keivan Rus, Finnish, Oleg, Ayegar, was a great city, they think of themselves as Romans, 1000, years later, Constantinople, Istanbul, as if we had gone to heaven, unbelievable, full of heroes as it once was, field a thousand ships and 40,000 troops against the city, the leadership digs out mothballed wooden ships, animal heads, open mouths, unleash Greek fire, they didn’t know that was a thing, that was invented 300 years ago, they still had the tech, ended with a treaty, won the battle, the plot of this, an old city, decadent, tired sleepy citizens, wary barbarians, are they as tough as they say they are?, no reference, weird awesome fantasy, resonated deep, this change that occurred, the place that everyone fought for 100 years ago, like the heroes did in the past, lamenting how evil the sword was, they would have lost their city, people have funny ideas, interesting coming from the narrator, the interesting comment from the god, the heroes existed to defend this place, it doesn’t even occur to them to defend the place, once they have victory, this sword is evil, what was the alternative, this generational change, the change in values, resonates today for obvious reasons, floating around in our culture right now, the whole city was the product of the sword, the swords that wanted all of this, an anti-war story, the men that never would have lived, the gardens that didn’t grow, if you go back further when they built the city, the wish of the city or the wish of the sword, anti-war in the face of destruction, a very fascinating idea, very conflicted, I’m not supposed to like the people, the ending would be the surprise, Lovecraft, The Doom The Came To Sarnath, a civilization they genocide, salamander people from the moon, didn’t know much about fire, become incredibly decadent, a possible reading, if we lean on the idea that the sword has a soul, not to make friends, to kill, on page 30 of the PDF, drew round about him the huge red cloak around him, and and now, Roald’s dreams to him to the sword, in thy hand, it is a good sword to hold, take up the sword of Welleran, cajoled, we can lean on this idea, doing the defense of the city, enstatued, sword under glass, the unarmed singer, patrols the city, are they wiser than we think they are?, Maissa’s right, taken them back, defending the city, the lament at the end, another line, about paradise, like a warm fire, a great anthem, a stillness full of lights, what art thou thy shimmering thing, layers on, blending the characters, the god of the story, really interesting, how Dunsay led his life, 1918ish, the Irish Civil War, pro-British domination of the Irish, but he does it, a poet and a hunter and an appreciator of many things, the hero reborn, he’s the guy who takes up the sword when no one else will, part of the story is hilarious, a series of heroes, their souls leaving their bodies, their horses are freed, inspired by a dream, stay under glass, held off for 300 years by rumour, look they’re still there, confirm that their not dead, the robbers were wrong, they touch the statue, puts his eyes on the cloak, touches the mane of the horse, the colours of the different materials, alabaster, marble, sable, jasper, Clark Ashton Smith, the beauty of the material, a message under there, what kinda enemies, Lord Dunsany’s gonna get canceled, it’s not London, has resonance for all people, the slaughter, we blame the sword, it doesn’t wash clean of blood, even Roald is possessed, have they overcome their decadence, an outside spirit inside of themselves?, the right lesson, heroes will always rise, young Irane, double letters, two Ls two Os, a new thought came into the heart of Merimna’s people, when England needed to rise, the spirit of the people rose up in the personification of Churchill, why did Welleran wear the great red cloak, the way of Welleran, back to his mother’s house, almost a religious fervor, patriotism, a more general reading, holding of the sword, dropped the swords, the right reaction, right to be horrified by what they had done, they did what they had to do, simulation theory, NPCs running around in a simulation, way ahead of himself, the good and correct thing, defend the empire against the barbarians, lazy or dreamers, languorous, goes to the sun, it’s cute because it wants to kill, the reason it’s pawing, excited by the images, this is the leader we need right now, being pad to shill, like we’re all addicts, WWI, The Bowmen by Arthur Machen, charge into machinegun fire, we still have our fingers, this is a true story, we must believe in this story, no, it’s a true story, it has to be true, we have god on our side, angels of our ancestors, that’s crazy, they need it to be true, when signing up for the army, Audie Murphy, these classic wars, picking up the same uniform, pure fantasy, where do these heroes come from, he becomes Welleran, Roald would be added to the list, Arthurian legend, we need FDR to come back and fulfill his fourth term, mythological heroes are going to return one day, the puritan work ethic, they’re kind of lax, they’re sleeping too much, moved by this story, parallels today, what do people say?, a difficult week, Jonathan’s mom had a stroke, rehab, with stuff this old, other than Brian Murphy on us, a famous name from so long ago, only as an old writer, so fantastic, there’s no genocide, a defense of the city, he kisses the sword with his lips, battle sweat, more like possession, nervousness, something he needs, keeping it close, our hands can hold swords no more, go among dreams, take the old swords, the mouth the the ravine, make him take my sword, they were all tricked too, the city is hot, the gods made the city hot, go out now into the desert, for fear of the desert robbers, sent up a fever over it, what was the alternative, they’re going to sack the city, rising them from slumber, rise up and protect yourselves, coming from the right place, deceived or pushed into doing this, violence, under barbarian rule tomorrow, it is confusing, it all is ambiguous, kinda like gods now, the beautiful buildings, the architecture, an excellent point, defend the architecture that the heroes love, Roald and his mom, every page has gold on it, invoking the name, aka I’m Welleran, the savage lusting sword that had thirsted for a hundred years, warm blood all about it, the joy of the swimmer, living for long in a dry land, Welleran lives!, the exulting, the sword singing softly to itself, violence and lust for blood, poured into the depth of the darkness, gleaming blue, gleaming red, the whole battle, thrust through, they blame it on the weapon, really quite choice, it makes sense, in his castle, Morton Drax, ancestors, popish plot, sitting in his house, dog at his feet, drowsing, a burglar at the window, he’s got a pipe wrench, one of his ancestor’s guns, shoots the bad, rifle, what have you done?, bad gun!, sleep soundly, not that this is a true story, decadent guy, armorial trophies, a morality there, not everything ideal all the time, when it is necessary we reach for the sword, fighting for the wrong side, where does his title come from, anglo-irish lord, aristocratic, beautiful architecture, subhuman, he has to, Star Trek, the Irish reunifcation of 2024, proven wrong once and for all, Roland, rolled in, all one, he does roll out like a Transformer, transformed, The Song Of Roland, 11th century Frankish Challenge story, the Stephen King book, the poem, more innocent, more Roald than Welleran, sounds nice, the most jarring of the names, rhymes, they pair together, no sense of an ocean nearby, surrounded on four sides, this is not how great cities come to be, Paris, generally they’re coastal cities, London, Russia has no natural boundaries, what Russia does, create a buffer, back and forth, conquering the neighbouring lands, everything taken back, historical parallels, Shadow Of The Vulture by Robert E. Howard, one of the historical sieges of Vienna, Red Sonja has a real sister, the star of that story, mostly swords still, becoming mercenaries for a decadent city, for the love of battle and personal reasons, Rogatino, contemporary with Conan, Hyrkania, sometimes Russia sometimes Ukraine, sounds like a guy’s name, sounds like a British name, Wayland, Weiland, sounding eastern, playing some sort of game in dreaming up this city, how civilization is, the truth of that story, making a scapegoat of the sword, blaming, not have the equipment taken by the barbarians, the deep ravine, horses let to roam free, a wound that won’t close, on his way to the deep ravine to die, his soul leaves his body but he continues to ride, bones in the ravine, there’s something in there, Roald touches the horse and the man in the same way, seeing with your hand, dark, night, they’re all asleep in the Dreamlands, the story of the horse, pastiche of dreams with a simple story, bowed to the ground, horse’s hoof, poetry poetry poetry, quite cold, the terrible hand of Welleran, he was marble too, the figure of fear, heard the guard, you may sing of Welleran, still restless in the night, naught can save your city, the two spies went back alive, were wont to go back, hid themselves away, that only live a day, so beautiful, pure poetry, the story is solid, how come you don’t write like that Jonathan?, everyone has their own unique voice, classic satire, we can appreciate it, I would have preferred to have a different style, die and be reborn, we can fake it, who else could have written this?, lost in eddies different, Lovecraft’s agenda is always pointed, resentment built into it, often based on being poor, it’s not fair that I’m poor, cutesy and cuddly axes, he is traumatized not at all, a dark sense of humour, he turns the light away from the dark scenes, Clark Ashton Smith is sex mad, a shapely shape, incubi and succubi, like a Weichsel story, understanding who the writer was, trauma or non-trauma, debates about AI art, a this year thing, the fascination people have with the artist or the writer, born into wealth and privileged, born to illiterate parents, different experiences, ai traumas, aristocratic literature, what is the struggle that Dunsany had?, live up to ancestors, equal to almost every task, immediately becomes poor, Poe is easy, tries to woo every woman on the planet, chessmaster, fencing master, officer, lord, hunter, winner, I like art, I like funny cute stories, isn’t this cute?, The King Of Elfland’s Daughter, head wound, living a pretty great life, invented some game, a healthy dream life, extremely fertile imagination, Jorkens stories, kind of a joke, Herman Melville, supergay but not traumatized by it, George MacDonald, children’s literature, for adult amusement, people make kids read classic works, Black Beauty, a reflection of his room, trying to see each other, Alice In Wonderland, C.S. Lewis?, Lewis Carroll, it was never for children, The Hobbit is for children (8 year olds), The Lord Of The Rings is for slightly older children (10 year olds), very rich, compare Dunsany to Tolkien,

TOLKIEN: Dunsany, your stuff is not rigorous enough to really tell a story in a secondary world one needs a new language, a backstory to explain the gods and demons to haunt a world, a rich tapestried backstory for world building [runs off to Silmarill for a while]

DUNSANY: I like the sound of these words together and so I built a city, dome on dome and pile on pile.

[CLARK ASHTON SMITH: ok, but what materials are that city made from? what chalcedony? what ebon fanes? and in those fanes what arabesques whose numberless, unwonted hues..]

what day of week each Hobbit is where vs. a sketch, out and onto paper, next story, a stylistic choice, the dreamlike quality, Aragorn son of Arathorn, ephemeral, out of fashion and not as well loved, why had he picked that one, on the list, the lasting impact, the sword that has a soul, a whole Elric series, Stormbringer, Audio Realms, what a beautiful ones that was, adding background stuff to a reading, that’s where Wayne June came from, his readings of Lovecraft, very scarce, very expensive, difficult/impossible to adapt to other media, would make a great cartoon, a great comic, do a lot of his words, lots of voice over narration, not having their words, how they fucked up the latest Dune, Jessica has to cry all the time, see their eyes brighten up, you can see the hands crawling up the statue, the reaction in the eyes, not the mode we’re in right now, expressionism in film, somebody could do it, on Prime, dramatic interpretation to individual scenes, frame the story, My Talks With Dean Spanley (2008), Star Wars, based on other films, film noir, short stories or novels, the exceptions are very rare, Casablanca, based on a play, somebody saw a movie once, not looking at the original material, Harlan Ellison essay, The Words In Spock’s Mouth, create in totality, “fans” such as yourself, slave for three months, god knows who all else, politely told to screw off, a fleeting commodity, the credit he gets when the segment is show, how could you be so ignorant, we all start off that way, this one has a dragon on the cover, that one has spaceship, they’re both good covers, somebody’s name, match the name not the picture, a million axes to grind, when do most people stop reading? as children, people are still reading (their phones), reading comments, the most striking weird thing of our age, a chat window rushing up the screen, thousands of children saying lol, what about blah blah blah trigger word, dip into the river, the writing vs the reading, the quantity of the writing vs. the quality, can’t fathom it, the medium specifically of streaming, lol and emoji and trigger word, a question that gets lost, every medium is completely different, you can record a livestream and make it a podcast, a livestream and a youtube and a podcast, all the same content, why are we doing this weird thing of caring about old books, we used to be normal for hundreds of years, now we’re something else, found ourselves invaded by barbarians who are incomprehensible, this person was honest enough to oput his ghost writer on the cover, Peter Mansbridge has a new book out, on TV for 40 years as a newsreader, credibility with the boomers, the dominant medium, no real trauma, you know why he’s writing, he thinks he’s an artist, satisfaction out of his shitty life, very good question, for pleasure?, its fun, wealthy writers are very rare, the wealthiest journalist, A. Merritt, Edgar Rice Burroughs, some ghost writing for very rich people, typical of rich people, writing is a helluv a lot of work, he writes poetry, this is a story, read it as a story, not just look at the sound, images, telling a story in a very short and beautiful space, paying for music, lower class to want to make money off of your writing, he didn’t need the money, driven by pleasure it seems, a story that tells itself, he wrote some novels, Books Of Wonder, The Gods Of Pegana, chamber plays, he wrote those, what the aristocrats did, a sinister motive, be popular at parties, [The Idler] the ads for it are for very expensive cars and airplanes, one page stories, eligible women to marry and what their titles are, a diversion, the receiving of the paycheck, a pursuit of people needed money, he put his name on it, so did Robert E. Howard and Lovecraft, sex poems, he has the talent, he likes what his pen can do, compare Dunsany and Robert E. Howard, an axe to grind, barbarism vs. civilization, a decorative axe, an evil axe, Dungeons & Dragons, even sting gets a name, legends behind every sword, name one of Conan’s swords, any sword, any horse, making money, all up in the air, that aloofness doesn’t resonate, we’re there, Flame and Crimson: A History of Sword-and-Sorcery, Eric Brighteyes, The Ship Of Ishtar, The Tower Of The Elephant, Dragon Moon by Henry Kutter, Jack Vance, L. Sprague De Camp, Poul Anderson, The Tale of Hauk, Karl Edward Wagner, David Drake, Imaro, pocket protector tells you his era, glasses case, a horrible drunk, a keg of beer in his office, a mane of hair, died from alcohol, an editor at DAW, rediscover forgotten authors, have it as Howard wrote it, concluded in the early 2000s, In A Lonely Place, horror writers, the Tennessee woods, inspired by The King In Yellow, Sticks, Ramsey Campbell, $25,000 a year, $100,000 yearly, property in Jamaica and Ecuador, the handcuffs and the straitjacket and the scullery brush, Travels by Michael Crichton, 15 hours-ish, horrible thanksgiving, they’re lying, the hospital kidnapped me, little writing done, life problems, life gets in the way, back to writing short stories, where the money is, asking about Ace, so long ago, the first thanksgiving and Peter Mansbridge, the propaganda for Thanksgiving is deep in your bones, pumpkin pie and sweet potato pie, slavery, slaves were often cooks, adapted African meals, yams, to serve to their masters, this is cultural appropriation, abolitionist propaganda, toiling for pumpkins, a replacement for the sweet potato pie, well no actually, fighting over this, people don’t change, the symbolism has gone but the food remains, bulgogi, sweet savoury sauce, bought it at Costco, some soup, sweet soup, tasted like plum, Chinese and Korean students, immigrant area outside of New York City, poor Maissa, not a big rosewater fan, put it in rice, dried roses in tea, a very specific Persian, that’s not a feature, Korean bbq, they cook their own food there, moms are always cooking food, a cooking culture, kimchi fridges, cook it on the table, lot and lots of funny, skycat to Cave Girl, Fury by Henry Kuttner, Islamic Development Bank, isdb, May – July 1947, C.L. Moore’s husband, you could only renew in one year, they don’t do it anymore, it’s not libel if it’s true, to bankrupt your opponent, already bankrupt, they’re dumb, having Shambleau renewed pissed Jesse off, Tryst In Time by C.L. Moore, Fury, Carry Me Home, Heir Apparent, Sky Is Falling, Beauty And The Beast, Voice Of Lobster, prolific authors, written under pseudonyms, collected it later, every single story written by Kuttner and Moore, Robert Silverberg, novels on LibriVox, Hemple, he got every word right, a straight reading, it became transparent, limp, a more lilt, had to read it that way, a sound story, The Fairy Chessmen, they did renew a lot, 1947, Harry Harrison, Hell Bath No Fury, 1947, Street & Smith, Lawrence O’Donnell, cigarette ads, first paperback edition, the most popular writing team in science fiction, it’s public domain, other options, FadedPage, Gutenberg, two things that are happening, the library google scan system, if disproven, sue me if you think your right, allows people to share, the DMCA, a funny situation, SickMyDuck.narod.ru, etexts of almost all of Philip K. Dick, English and Russian, C.L. Moore, Judgement Night, 1943, a novella, locked away for all the eternity, until the empire collapses, January 2025, compare statement to reality and call Jonathan a prophet, money debasing scheme, that’s like the petrodollar, students were studying hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic, a James Bond novels, part of the problem, they’re good books, the original Epic Of Gilgamesh, a really thin book and half of it is the introduction, Ian Fleming, Live And Let Die, Property Of A Lady, From A View To A Kill, From Russia With Love, has to be on a Canadian server, science fiction adjacent, Fu Manchu, Doctor No, robot hands, a dragon, sexy, cool, half German half Chinese, a sovereign citizen, damaged eyes, an indomitable will, a Robert E. Howard villain character, Ray Cummings, The Girl In The Golden Atom, aliens who want to kidnap all the human women, the Tama books, the serialization, to super science, Fantastic Adventures, viking queen in shining armour, Eskimo dudes, wizard staff, amazing covers, Robert Bloch, what Sam Moskowitz did, for reintroduction later, Famous Fantastic Mysteries anthology, the best of the Munseys, a short story or something, a poem, something nice, giant lady riding a seahorse, pewter pasties and u-boat in the foreground, lady wearing a red mask, eagle on her head, riding a Pegasus, and a pistol in her belt, giant ladies of the sea and submarines, tiger by her side, guy with colt automatic facing her, she’s topless, ladies riding wooly mammoths into cover, add a little lust, draw people in, little people, fairies or leprechauns discover giant lady in waterfall, Lady Godiva at the end of the rainbow, epic fantasy about Lady Godiva, epic in scale, husband’s a lord, ride through town naked on a horse, lock yourselves inside your houses, Circe Lannister style, covers herself with her hair, all of her parts, one guy named Tom, Tom peeps out the window, the etymology of peeping Tom, struck blind, needs some filler, flesh coloured body suit, Lady Godiva of Coventry, Maureen O’Hara, James Alderdice, David J. West, Run If You Can, Owen Dudley, so love, but so bad!, meets a water sprite in a ditch, forced to confront her with a luger, communist pirate radio program, that would be neat, that picture tells a whole story, it raises a question, the story answering the question fulfills the promise of the cover, design based covers, they don’t raise a question, the AI art is getting pretty good, doesn’t generally raise a question, match the cover to something that they wrote, the first thing the reader sees is the cover, that’s a promise, this is what’s in side, quarter pounder with cheese, now it needs a cover, is that what’s in here?, the answer is yes, oh and now I need a cover, psuedoscientific ideas, images and text and fonts, based on a philosophy, illegitimate, on and island with limited electricity, the cover of The Hobbit, what’s this about, will you read it to us, damn, that was good, Tolkien books, it has to be an image, a promise of what is inside, even romance novels, a farm, a fence, a guy riding a horse, communicate what genre the book is, a fence and silo, no rocket in the book, gothic romance, Fabio on a horse, misreading the romance genre, romance readers are more loyal than anybody else, girl porn, we’re ripped off in the science fiction, a book about robots, about an autistic lady, they depict something that’s in the book, but not the tone, the best thing about it was the cover, slapdash, can you make it a novelette, reads like a summary of a story, wasted time, an argument against the illustrated cover, old fashioned books, wanting read a modern book, the ideal reader, some people bought them, wanted to be in the in group, Barack Obama’s autobiography, not secure in your identity as an adult, you think he’s contemptible, retarded or secure in their adulthood, no good comics anymore, big pot belly, curly long hair tied into a pony tail, they only collect the covers now, Red Sonja, I should be reading this, getting pissed off, the writing is not Howard, very John Buscema, Jim Zub doesn’t have the problems Robert E. Howard, Dunsany doesn’t need trauma, romantic poets, nobody reads them, having a connection to nature, hard to penetrate poems, The Sleeper by Edgar Allan Poe, either a guy sitting outside a lady’s house, sneaks into the house, looks at her dead body, the trauma of death, beautiful dead woman, very accessible, what makes something really hot is that it’s out now, these pulp revivalist, The Cromcast, his trauma is in the stories, an axe to grind, five or six things, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Pit And The Pendulum (a terrible story), suspense piled on, well done for what it is, Morella is way better, what axe they have to grind, anti-catholic prejudice, what does he linger on, the walls are closing in, covered in rats, The Raven, Annabelle Lee, The Bells, Berenice is pretty nice Chris Sempter (Poe Museum guy), a harsh grating, the fiery walls, fainting into the abyss, Toledo, we don’t know anything about his sins, saved by the protestants, he’s an atheist, always talking about angels, consecrated her body to worms and heaven, guy loves his wife, he loves her beautiful smile, smashes her teeth out, symbolic of her, monomaniac, now she’s toothless, a very Jonathan story, the four paragraphs that are left out of later publications, this story got a lot of negative attention, Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, heat brings warmth and warmth brings fire and fire is what this magazine needs, proceeded to do that, writing outrageous stories designed to provoke, put a nude lady on the cover of you book, argues for being outrageous, to sell stories, self-doubt sometimes, go along to get along, pick a genre, memorize the plot beats, followed that advice, don’t trust the experts, 20 books to 50k, that’s a thing there, bragging how much money you make in a month, aquatic animals, on Facebook, not legitimate, a specific graphic, 2 figures a month, a prawn, a lobster, a trout, their analogy is the broken thing, salmon, dolphin, whale, kelpie, kraken, whoever wrote this list is a bad writer, they’re all bad writers, chasing big dollar amounts, propaganda like this, streamers, you know this is streaming right now, thousands of people who want to be streamers and 100 that make a living at it, I’m locked in the house and I like games, free money, those donations are half for me and half for them, sharecropper, tips and tricks to self-publishing, spending more than that on Amazon ads, bragging about their net, bestsellers, The Empyrean #2 – Iron Flame by Rebecca Yaros, 119,000 ratings, campus romance, new Hunger Games book, continue on the path, any good covers on here?, you’re not supposed to stand out you’re supposed to fit in, all a scam, partially a scam, Michael Connelly, Nora Roberts, Suzanne Collins, girls like adventure stories, choosing dresses and choosing boyfriends, readers are getting tired of the series, a certain kind of reader who is autistic, dragons on the cover, what if you just become obsessed with dragons, Anne McCaffrey’s career, all of the Harry Potter series, a new character, Harry Potter rip-off books, readers who just want to read dragon books, to serve the readers, autism is on the rise?, these are the only people left?, other forms of distraction, traditional publishing has moved away from commercial fiction, being very cynical about how to pitch their books, respectable, using their real names sometimes, an executive, Roger Corman was very cynical, his Poe adaptation, Death Race 2000 (1975), invented the formula, young boys will go to the movies with their older brother, girls will go to the movie their boyfriend, a date with a spare, target to your movie to the girlfriend, the target is the older brother, PG-13 was the 80s, gaming society, all these formulas, commission an artist to make a movie poster, which movie do you want to see, Roger Corman movie list, Machete Maidens, Teenage Cave Man, The Fast And The Furious, Star Wars style ripoffs, Alien ripoffs, his Poe movies with Vincent Price, this monologue, The Masque Of The Red Death (1964), a lot of Cannes stuff, a very good artist, a lot of the pulp is the same way, people like trains, a magazine of train stories, artists, the artistry, they’re on the internet, all using pen-names, have integrity, going against the grain of what has been expected during the self-publishing era, unprofessional, oh he’s doing wrong, becoming whales, they’re the lobsters, the Elantris guy, do what he does, the Salt Lake City guy, Brandon Sanderson, not broken the way I need to be to like them, his interests, being forthright and sticking to his guns, like Stephen King: whatever the empire says, actual banned books, using copyright to prevent the spread of Rage, Spielberg re-edited E.T., I regret having made that decision, successful, 1941 (1979), the Battle Of Los Angeles, The Goonies (1985), Richard Donner, written by Stephen Spielberg, An Adventures In Babysitting (1987), asian guy says, and you can’t do generic asian, narrowing it, it never was a great idea, Tarzan takes the feminine world, needs to be rescued, he’s the Miranda, The Tempest, Rapunzel in the tower, Jane is the Prince Charming, Sheena is a gender flip of the gender flip, The Jungle Book, Green Mansions, a gender flipping website, flips Conan to Conana, Pirates Of Ersatz, girls are capable of being inseminated and having a result happen, racist!, biology is important vs. biology is whatever I say it is, she had a boyfriend who was very demure, she’s all aggressive and barbaric, staying at home, it distracted from the story that was originally being told, flipping the gender of Ghostbusters, they’re not redoing a play, they rewrite the script completely, make the characters dumb, the dumbest one was Bill Murray (he was a fake), a girl who is a babysitter, that’s what the idea was, a fuckin stupid idea (unless Jesse is missing something), they’re not going to inseminate their kids, the whole point of the job “babysitter” why maids are called maids and maidens, we need the money for the family, cooking and cleaning and moving things around, now you have to do that for your husband, the male version, these are teenagers, 12 – 13, they get out of the house, keep them out of the liquor cabinet, tape me to the seat, getting them back, what’s going to happen, one of the kids should be older than you, big and strong, it works, like Home Alone, get them back home before the cops get them, set it in Hollywood, get a celebrity to play a celebrity, Alpha Dog (2006), acknowledge the original movie to set the expectations, we know about this other movie, expectations set, things can be fixed, let’s gender flip stuff, a panacea somehow, let’s gender flip Romeo and Juliet, gay men or lesbians, a girl in her balcony, a guy wooing a girl, a gay movie, butch and femme, old couples, people married for seventy years, in real life this happens, lesbian couple sixty years on, that doesn’t work for storytelling, you have to have some differences, what if you don’t believe in differences, flippable on a dime, Will has somebody visiting, a direct message, your politics are always interesting to me, in foreign policy matters you’re basically a tankie, denying the Uyghur genocide, pro-DPRK, anti-sending arms to Ukraine, in other ways your conservative, love Heinlein, vaxx skepticism, trans skepticism, strong opinions of things being for men and women, a little trad for me, a lot more enthusiastic about abortion, it’s fuckn legal up here, it just happens, grew up in a house with women, uncles are different from aunts, people are easily liftable, they’re the same too, arms and legs and pencils, women writers put on a male character, anything is possible, I was told I could be anything I wanted, you’re wrong about that stuff, that’s not normal, weightlifting, the author’s introduction to Slaughterhouse Five, department of anthropology, any thing you study at university that has the words “studies” at the end, science fiction written by women, people have bad ideas, millions of years, get two dogs, lift up the back end and looking, both sharp teeth, people are even more different than dogs, sexual dimorphism throughout the species, the brain is a part of the body, a school shooting, the person who did the shooting was trans, a dude did it, who does school shootings?, dudes, the fucking hormones do shit to your brain, some girls like to wrestle, a female wrestling team at most high-schools?, female basketball players, female football, soccer, lacrosse is a male game as well, lawn hockey, ring hockey, sports teams and interests for girls, kinda weird, adult person, a manifesto, adults going to schools, a graduate of that school going back, something went wrong there a long time ago, dudes tend to do school shootings, poison, most girls don’t shoot, revenge fantasy, feels they were victimized, commit suicide, abandon schools, not a popular idea, doesn’t seem to come up much in the debates, make it more like prison, mandatory universal education, more people reading, be critical of stuff, there are good teachers, there are good prison guards, an English class, we’re writing essays about the books, very much alone in that, the books are boring and stupid, bullshit to write the essays, Jesse loves essays, what purpose to essays serve in our society, they’re punishment, the next six months will tell, the war goes on for twenty years, jerking off the audience, Jonathan Swift, hilarious essay, this is what you should be striving for, structured like an essay, digressions, making fun of the solution being offered, Edgeworks, why are trying to make everybody like Harlan Ellison, there were essayists, that’s 60 years ago, essays are wonderful, some people should write them, teaching them how to organize their thoughts, let’s look at a youtube comment, sometimes they’re well written and badly spelled, people want to communicate, if they spell correctly, intentional misspelling, teh, more high end, tiktok style video, clickbaity stuff, someguy’s building a mechsuit, forthright people who want to express their appreciation, thanks for this video, an answer to your query, what went wrong, they aren’t being graded, mispronounce a word you’ve never spoken, it all goes back to it’s an institution, this is where you go to die, all scary things, the hospital, preschool, a montesorri school, teachers are burdened with 10-20 kids, yellow jackets, hold hands, dealing with a herd, a herd of children needing to be herded, we’re not herd animals, horse and sheep love big groups, you need an uncle a friend and a dad to teach you something, telling 17 guys the same thing, this kid has this problem, needs certain standards to live up to, math, reading, do you think most kids learn to read in school, do most kids learn math in school, the institution is broken, girls are better at doing schools than boys, public school has always been broken, the schools don’t teach, alternative school, the kids who failed or got kicked out, kids liked it a lot more, teachers got it a lot more, we have to punish criminal wrongdoers, before the settlers came in, put you on this island, this is the way we do it, it’s good to have a place where you have the x-ray machine, school is the worst institution, prisoners learn more in prison than in school, got nothing to do, learn trades, car repair, what did people do before school, apprentices, guilds, learn a trade, go into the family business, sailor, tutors and parents, uncles and aunts, primer books, one of the first ESL teachers around, not a single word of English, very nice lady, students loved her, the normal thing, mostly not, teaching a program they disagree with, they’re always looking for teachers, making a new school, pick the team, the same teaching philosophy, struggle through this horrible system, safe babysitting, fun babysitting, 30 or 40 kids in the classroom, socializing, being down by the river washing and singing songs, also Jonathan, not everybody needs to learn to read, to plead to a politician, plead to a judge, bus driver, short order cook, stop signs, functionally literate, they didn’t learn that from school generally, parents, older brother, older sister, uncle, individual tutors, most kids don’t read with their parents, most parents don’t read, why is that, two parents are outside the home a lot, kids being raised by strangers, they’re little fucking sponges, you can see the kid learning shit, you can see massive progress happening, their brains are young and spongy, some tutor needs to be doing this, that value, they don’t have time, they’re addicted to their other things, priorities, if you work an eight hour shift, reading to your kid is not relaxing, when’s that reading happening, grandma’s retired, without an education we wouldn’t have a common culture, the anthem, the history, Shakespeare, no common frame of reference, get things done, because of the internet, micro-culture, jail them harder, didn’t want university to stop, 4 years then you’re done, learning is wonderful, didn’t remember it ten days later, for what purpose, we’re not able to do that now, concrete me, working the census, training, your name and your pronouns, she doesn’t know what a pronouns, now is the time we need to be caring about pronouns, when people were able to communicating, “leading”, that’s a lady, she’s an old lady you can tell by looking at it, the “leader”, enforcing the rules, she’s an institution, the old lady’s way, the government way, strap her in a chair and yell at her about pronouns, certain frames of reference, society to function smoothly, close to a civil war, upset and grumpy, people don’t understand each other, I’m assuming your pronouns are the worst, a humiliation ritual, land acknowledgment, we’re sitting on unceded territory, couched as honouring, leadership classes, a lack of education, we had a way of doing it, a mixed group, they made the movie, the teacher would get very angry, the kids did not take that lesson, a game being played, kids inherently, the way you learn hopscotch, a child culture, using the rules are being used to fuck with the guards, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, picking the worst leaders, failed to correct them, they’re enforcing the way they want to speak, I can’t afford a car, a house, or a kid, I can afford a tattoo and a Starbucks and my pronouns my hair colour and my piercings, an animal trapped in a cage, get rid of all the institutions, for humans health, and hence you defend them, corrupt, a little bit of power, elbow that person down, if I controlled the institutions I would like them very much, sent people to the Moons, did institutions send people to the room, a kind of story about institutions we can tell, why did NASA exist after a certain point, few guys working a console looking at old probes, Elon Musk, whoever’s his estate, companies, Google is in institution now, owns planets, preserve knowledge, grouping together is an institutions, start with a big pile of money, they devolve, The Royal Society, what has it done from us lately, when did the Royal Society get disbanded?, the people in the clouds in Gulliver’s Travels, dot org no less, science book prize, responsible for England’s military might, used to colonize the world, they need to be disbanded, overturning of these things, a Robert E. Howard, you’re the Lovecraft in this, the world needs barbarians, vaccines against COVID-19, shape publish discourse, like that the vaccine doesn’t work?, down with the institutions, nothing but oppress and hold Jonathan back, overproduction of people who think they’re elites, an axe to grind against every institution, do suggest anarchy, know a dude, wants to learn that shit, I’m gonna fix that thing, that’s how you do it, YouTube is a better institution, a tech utopian vision, more on the anarchist, works collectively, the system women lived under in James Tiptree’s Houston, Houston, Do You Read?, very old and needs to be changed, when the whole thing collapses, forcibly disbanded, go up to the doors and start chopping, gets the axe, traditional publishing, they don’t really understand what trouble they’re in, the bottom is going to fall out, New York publishing system, people like Jonathan, the authors that people look up to, books are not going to go away, paperbooks are never going to go away, too good a tech to throw away, merits that can’t be replaced, no tech ever dies, but the dominance does change, most people learn to read somehow, she loves her kids, some have to do it in prison, we gotta face facts, essay writing is not the key to success, blogposts, essays, children being taught them is a mistake, executive summaries, a stupid elected politician, make their shitty decision, a concise essay to read, Trump didn’t like reading them, his genius is being a stupid idiot and trusting his gut, they’re all up their own fucking asses, a bunch of words that mean enemy, no way to plan your society, they’re not as interesting generally, very topical, a fantasy story, very highly influential, Horatio Alger style stories, the least popular podcast you can do, if we were all literary people in coffee houses, we’re on the wrong track, learn how to read essays, we’re going to war with Ukraine, The New York Times, intellectuals in the New Jersey area, you don’t want to rock the boat, how was this useful, was once a great institution, centuries ago, The New York Times book review, obviously trash, a low class font, high fancy script font, a long time, new ones pop up, civilization vs. barbarians, the people online are digital barbarians, faceless hordes.

Welleran And The Sword Of Welleran

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #435 – A Modern Portrait by Lord Dunsany

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #435

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss A Modern Portrait by Lord Dunsany

Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.

A Modern Portrait was first published in Punch, May 15, 1946.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #789 – READALONG: Gilgamesh The King by Robert Silverberg

The SFFaudio Podcast #789 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about Gilgamesh The King by Robert Silverberg

Talked about on today’s show:
serialized, 1984, simple question, science fiction or fantasy novel?, how could it be, other than crude financial reasons, a novelization of the oldest epic that we know of in any great detail, The Road To Science Fiction volumes, an excerpt, claimed, adopted, annexed, interstitial material, fragments, and a whole lot of Silverberg, the major events are seemingly from quasi-historical sources, demystifies the fantasy, a rational explanation, the epic shares, the novel shares, the search for transcendence, brought back down to earth, losing out to imminence, immortality, Dickian, the basic formula for science fiction, come back transformed, wants and needs, wants a lot of sex, wants immortality, needs transcendence, the immortality is in the work he does, living out his life the way it can be shaped, who is the survivor of the flood?, Zeusasudra?, that guy presents, I didn’t say that, you’re inferring that, how not to die rather than how to live forever, 1984, maybe one day, that’s such an impressive statue or temple, passing from a living being into a mythical being and written about by Robert Silverberg, a bit of Ozymandias, fragments of the wall and the epic itself, we look up this book and despair at its length, writer and artist, other intellectual activities, 1.7 speed, unpleasant to listen to that fast, the first 3rd or first half, the part he invented himself, Game Of Thrones, more dynamic and less descriptive, 2x speed, he changes the story, the first third was painful, tedious?, a boring story, really dragged, this isn’t really, because we’ve done a number of Silverbergs, his beats are all out on display here, chasing after women, concerned with death, the solitude, The Book Of Skulls, a Charles Stross novel, when Schweitz showed up, Enkidu, comfortable garden, kicked out of the city, comes back, kinda like Conan as a king, bored on his throne, kickoff, the interesting bit, greater acceleration, experincing this book, a flashback to Hayy Ibn Tufail, raised by antelopes, wise with the wisdom of nature, a man coming out of nature, Tarzan, before all that, the granddaddy of them all, he resonated with the idea, this isn’t the only book into this series, Scott asked Jesse a question, the same Gilgamesh as Gilgamesh In The Outback, a road trip across the United States, not a hero as much as a drug user, Downward To The Earth, once administrator of, a lot of tourism, he sees himself as this character, pushes her breasts into his face, what, I’m six, autobiography, Gilgamesh believes but Silverberg doesn’t, a potion, he’s sprouting hairs, a placebo, rejects the teaching the of the religion, is she sincere?, the political subplot, his conjecture, makes the wrong decisions, the lens he looks at everything [with], a volcanic vent, it’s both, translating, one of the big successes, the difference between poetry, philosophy and religion, William Blake, really a volcanic vent, psychic perception taken too concretely, he’s got epilepsy, Gene Wolfe, head injury, he see the gods, Wolfe being Wolfe, meeting the same characters over and over again, the fantastic is supposed to be taken as partially real, a concrete example, the sick tree scene, three demons in it, making bricks and fuckin ladies all day, the leaves are all falling down, thing’s he’s wrong about, cuts off the sick branch, worst poison, pours it down the hole, the demon being a snake, all fun stuff, the concoction is probably manure and it fertilizes the tree, the three demon problem, what a shaman does, things in all directions, really there’s one thing in there that works, decoration, trying to impress people, his presentation is as the king, having sex with everybody, goes to far with that, loves the bricklaying too much, he abandons the city, he is Man, lessons for men, if you’re going to be a man, very Jordan Peterson, Inana, he thinks she killed the previous king, not fully fleshed out for her, why is her face fucked up in the end, a disease, venereal disease?, leprosy, of love, war and political power, Venus or Aphrodite, a bloody good time, psychologically, they’ll laugh at me, reason for rejecting her, he knows the story of going to the underworld, he’s afraid, points in the story, a showmanship part of this I’m not really a goddess, role model, a Candide naive adherent, he didn’t have a dad, the manly arts, doesn’t have a friend, wrestle and become best friends, ruled by affects, addressed in the text, we were not lovers, doth protest too much, all the women he’s having, we can’t read this on a subversive level at all, the bull of heaven, not an earthquake, the explanation is made to fit, a woman’s jealousy, mask off, what’s going to happen, obvious he was going to kill her, for the last time, he’s going to banish her, shuts her up in a hole, uh huh, yup, he’s the king, nothing complicated or delaying of satisfaction, ruled by his emotions, a foreign prince in another city, not subversive, writing from an atheistic perspective, very minimal, the closest we get is when he goes off to get immortality, the magic pearl was lost, feels like a fantasy, he goes off to Africa at one point, wooly haired, visitors, Yemen?, Qatar, China, placenames, this place used to be called that, guessed it, sort of saying, a rational explanation for everything or is there?, the science fiction aspect as well, the myth of the flood, no longer an immortal, tell the story like it is, a huge downpour, no ark, a miniversion of this book, a legendary story and so is this, “‘euhemerism’ 1. the theory that gods arose out of the deification of historical heroes. 2. any interpretation of myths that derives the gods from outstanding men and seeks the source of mythology in history.”, what if this actually happened, psychological stuff too, a modern novel, told first person, very reliable narrator, perceives in a different way, I, Claudius, you don’t need to bring the gods into it, two thirds god, it doesn’t make sense, a two father point of view, Lord something who is divine, two fathers and one mother, he’s not a demi-god, a step up, the god come into him, the ancestor of Hercules, Prometheus, Ulysses, doesn’t steal fire form the gods, a titan, he’s a builder, side note, a historical Gilgamesh, Civilization 6, don’t judge us, yes we can be friends, wrestling with him, that can save you on higher difficulties, demystifying, mostly historical alternate history straight, vampires and zombies, Zeusy, pocahontasy, Heroes In Hell, To The Land Of The Living, one of the fragments not included in the Epic Of Gilgamesh, his shade comes back, dirt farmer, preferred to be a fisherman and not a great scientist, hindsight is 2020, 0202, straight up, post-modernism, read an old text, what if this was real, Alan Moore’s Watchmen, zero irony, The Calydonian Boar Hunt, no situational humour, her boobs in his face, the sex is really enjoyable, not a normal book, too mundane, not wild enough, it doesn’t get crazy, becomes subversive and undermines the society that he lives in, needed a drug dealer, a subversive element, the premise is double, what if people really saw the gods and the world in this way, Julian Jaynes’ two hemispheres hypothesis, the right side of the brain, the irrational intuitive side, the left rational side, a dissociated way, people in 2023 talking about prayer, in a dialogue with god all day, students, what people meant by prayer, what does that even mean?, kneeling at the bedside hands in prayer mode, Gilgamesh is writing his own story, always on about, write an essay about things that are bad, self-dialogue and self-talk, I need to pay attention to mummy and daddy, it was you who was listening, I have a relationship with god, bizarre but real, more so long ago, secular mindfulness, Buddhism, very popular, journaling, accountability tweets, Carl Jung, what she says and what the wise old man says, get dialogues going, objectively, chat gpt is the god I ask to write up my journal, multiple personalities like we see in dreams, traveled around a lot, strange or exotic beliefs, believe in ghosts, seeing ghosts, ghosts are 100% real, you shouldn’t go hiking at 4 oclock in the morning, the fear of things, taking in data, the screen of reality, The City In The Middle Of The Night by Charlie Jane Anders, similar length, firs book in a series, Leonidas, Conan and Ted Nugent, learned so much from this novel, old myths of Gilgamesh, what the story was trying to tell me, baffled, mid-3 stars, the ratings 11,322 vs. 901 ratings, what’s your point?, people don’t read old books, the editor of iO9, this is an old book, people just don’t read old books, making an assumption, not sure that’s a proven assumption, audience is extremely online, Silverberg’s is older, not fully supported, just looking at one thing, this is not a famous book, the novelty of being new, what’s a good book to read?, a book I’ve heard of that’s good, go by author, a Clarke award, a Locus award, a Hugo award, thousands of good review, by helpfulness, how goodreads sorts its review, likes, probably some algorithm, everything is in 3 star range, Amazon bought goodreads with the intent of killing it, just strangle it, Luke Burrage, disable features, the science fiction book, Lord Of Light by Roger Zelazny, a higher high, the similarity there, when the god manifests in him, the power of the god in him, survivors of a space travel crash, the Hindu pantheon, wield an attribute specific to that god, a precedent, Dune, the got-it-all-wong hypothesis, the bene gesserit, manipulating everything, not exactly a messiah figure, a savior for the city, The Cosmic Puppets by Philip K. Dick, a male feminist, misunderstanding Anana, he’s paranoid, Gilgamesh is the misogynist, I don’t see it, full of the juice, had to go and break into the wedding ceremony, on my way to have sex with the wives, mentioning, sex scenes early on, five women a night, it’s not five!, lay on the psychology, really well done, plodding rather than tedious, walking along telling his story, set pieces, the tree, the demon in the forest, the meeting with Enkidu, the things that are special, getting his emotions, good inference in what’s going inside Enkidu, presume some jealousy there, sex once a year, nothing otherwise, temporal vs. spiritual power in the third millennium B.C., trying to kill him, he’s a bad king, abandons the city, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, trying to kill him out of jealousy, a smear campaign, trying to hell the city?, he was lousy, transgressing the limits, cleansed means killed, he is a bad king, his job is to fix all the city problems, the councils, I’ll think about it, who’s going to fix the walls, what the priestess wants, go out and build that wall or the temple or fix the tree, the reason he comes back, threatening to take away his kingship, A Time Of Changes, a life in business, that coming back is what he’s supposed to do, to Australia and to hell, Conan is a funny case, the problem with being a king, just like Kull, campaign against other kings, the domestic sphere, a tension built into the story of Gilgamesh, a man is domesticated, she gets more power, yes, sitting there horny, carousing with his buddy, a fundamental dynamic going on there, I’m going to have sex with you when you’re older, not a guy who believes in kings at all, he’s bad at it, he does things to much, your soldiers are exhausted, nobody has the strength you have, yeah I have a giant dick, but do be jealous I have premature ejaculation, the first time he leaves, almost identical scenes, the new king, he grew up in a cloistered environment, when he comes back to see his brother, this awkward meeting, the same emotional set, pock marks vs. worry lines, prematurely grey, busy being king, uneasy lies the crown, footloose and fancy-free, experience the depravity and luxury, the full exercise of being a man, that’s in the afterword, Leonidas, Gerard Butler in 300, an alpha male, an ursine manliness, manly manless, gave myself ten pushups, fun and entertaining, three times as many, comparable to a lot of Silverberg, still alive, there’s overlap, remarking on twitter, two Silverberg novels on LibriVox, pre-fifties, a break in there, throughout the eighties, putting em out, multiple novels per year, fairly unknown Silverberg novel, doesn’t compare well, we should focus on things that people can do anything with, learn how to pirate, put these up with the story, whoever happens to be familiar, make it as easy for as many people, rigamarole, all the affiliate links, all the links die, this website has been online, wasn’t a good idea, SFFaudio isn’t a commercial project, send people to the source if possible, a different Herculean task for another day, Passengers, really into writing, short light things, The Sword Of Welleran, if this hadn’t been assigned, not as high a high, not as sparky, very insightful, he did a great job with the worldbuilding, a lot of research, William Coon, quay, draught, he’s so slow, very early in his narrating career, speaking of friends of yours, Kevin Hearne, Iron Druid, Luke Daniels, many many great narrators in the world, the theme of death, I’m gonna die some day, the origin story of the Buddha, come back and do your job, the crazy religious stuff is killed at the end, hurt by Enkidu’s death, stumble into the underworld, Conan doesn’t have an Enkidu, the only consistent character is Conan, after Belit dies, a paragraph in the middle, the adventures, fights hawkmen, the Black River of Zarkheba, buries her with her treasure with a viking funeral, sad, ten second pause then back to it, it’s too dumb, the colour palette, a great story, slowmo, a brown filter, too much green screen, the story and the emotions are strong, in the Conan stories, more Kull, he’s more human than Conan, likes sex too much, works his men too much, get your head screwed on right, clean your room, a thematic thing going on, he plays it perfectly, he’s enjoying it, from Wikipedia, reception, Neil Gaiman, Imagine Magazine, David Langford, White Dwarf, a gaming magazine, explains the fantastic, you have to kill a friend, a celibate priest doing rituals all day, do the work, he did the work, Larry Niven, the Draco Tavern, the men who lived forever, our hero the bartender, make it worth enough, the premise is like the Lord Dunsany Jorkens stories, The Callahan series by Spider Robinson, hard SF jokes, Zaphod Beeblebrox style stories, Asimov did some too, Arthur C. Clarke, a fun mode of storytelling, scientific love stories, from The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, Ray Cummings, Cautionary Tales, Limits, good at mathematics, Convergent Series, the one with the demon, July 1978, hence the title, that’s gonna make Jesse into a pearl, the Russian movie made by two brothers, don’t usually click on what Jesse sends, the trailer is in English, subtitle auto-translation, an amazing plasticine animation movie about gladiators, two female characters voiced, 9-0 minutes claymation gladiatorial combat, super-solid, anti-Russian, a raging anti-Semite asshole, insistence, limiting in general, trolls, patently bullshirt, convenient, reach me elsewhere, the problem with Skype, pornbots, inundated, messenger, social media just twitter, but…, delete the app your done, pity twitter, Elon Musk did something bad, the controversy this week, anti-white hate, sue Media Matters, like Scott had, the fucking trolls, more hatred, until Elon Reeve Musk is gone, hurtful meme, an exercise in antisemitism and personal attacks, after five years, pinned tweet, the frustration, a lot of work, your handle remains your own, Charlie Brown, take him at his word, get a bluechek, cut out, a really sensitive arrow, reactived to deactivate with more courtesy, going to Australia, 32,000 words, weekends off, why open a used bookstore, like Harlan Ellison, nobody here, a destination right beside you, a yoga salon, nail salon?, culture isn’t an important thing here, X-Box, bowling, Black Box Theater, you need a date for that, spend money, play games, 2 or 3 days a week, when not eating or pooping, the desk people, on their phone, sit on the bench on their phone, watch a video, swipe up swipe up, filling the hours between grave and birth, weird fuckin channels, figuring out how to preserve laserdiscs, laserrot, the technical know how, weird shit, as a percentage, ripping it through the coaxial output, processing involved, special developer kit, an even better signal, straight to the analog, more fidelity than you get from your screen, the animal videos, here’s a puppy with a duck friend, very poor, not a wealthy area, New Jersey, where the servants lived, closed highschool, where they sent the black students during segregation, a third of the storefronts are closed, there’s no train anymore, just empty, a small performing art school for kids, state run, the park, a housing project, the people who are incapable of living on their own, walk around, an opportunity to build something, do signings, advertise it, build a local culture, a place to store your books, an anchor, the story of Austin, how horrible it was under covid in California, industry, a liberal democratic section of Texas, Portland Oregon, keep it weird, you need something like an anchor, 15 bookstores on the same street, live above the store, use it as your workspace, some weirdo gets lost on the way through your town, games with Yelp, the internet stuff, a hair salon, we are upen, English is not a language you’re familiar with, can you pay the rent?, the banks approve the loans, charge a higher rent, the whole scam going on in New York City proper, business vacancy rate, 17.4%, at least half empty at street level, some empty apartments as well, this artificial thing, a foothold, physical infrastructure, shifts with the sands, do they have bookstores in China, we have no serious emptiness in business, people moving in, the economy is not a total train-wreck, people don’t buy physical books except at Costco and Chapters, lifestyle shit, desperately trying not to be in the book business, in the used market, regional authors, you have to visit my store first, you have to do a signing, phone stores are popular, bookstores are not popular, how much is rent going to be?, set up an LLC, this is going to be on the podcast, a cafe, people like coffee, a latte, I wanna try this latte, brought into the 21st century, sells an addictive product, relatively inexpensive to make, a relatively high price, a couple towns over, they always are older, they got a rent deal a long time ago, move or go online, I would love to own a restaurant, all the signs point to this being a terrible idea, you cannot fix the country on your own, FDR fireside chats, he was speaking via radio to a specific group of people, Wall Street was against him, he was treated like Trump, Smedley Butler, he went on record, the wiped him from the record, totally true, that was in the past, like Caesar, his uncle was president, the deep state and the billionaires were against him, this is what you need to do, this new innovation, 40 different alphabet agencies, you can’t will your city into not being fucked up, most people’s solution is to leave, a hobby that’s going to fail, fit enough books in there, it would be good to have customers, Walmart killed that business, by 1998, ebay, we should start selling on ebay, Sears catalogue pickup, extra foot-traffic in, by 2005, that business was still alive 2 years ago, figure out a way to not have the rent be an extravagance, unless independently wealthy, the George Washington Bridge, it would be about bitcoin and supermodel asses, cat videos and making fun of celebrities, Elon Reeve Musk is a bad person, what they say about a Nazi bar, it’s called censorship, it’s not a bar, much more like a public square, annoying when people have different ideas, let me hear their story, walled garden, Threads, Bluesky, Mastadon, Truthsocial, Media Matters is an evil organization, a functionary of one of the political parties, David Brock, the people who donate to it, institutions are naturally corrupted, institutions are evil, what if you’re a tenured professor, a staunch institutionalist, Eric is an emeritus professor, The New York Times, New Jersey, the had a Ted Chiang story, still big, that goes for art, a received opinion, animated movie about a kung-fu panda, the same school as Donald Trump, Denzel Washington, Colin Powell, Rudolph Giuliani, army, they don’t want to hear dissent or questioning, literally did that, at least it’s not an Ivy League school, H.P. Lovecraft, the decorative ivory, the building is old, they like the way it looks, they trim it, old east coast university, a Jesuit school, if you think institutions are right you do evil, I’m outsourcing my decisions and actions to a thing outside of myself, pirates stabbing liches, controlling things from beyond the grave, pirates are anarchists, piracy, I don’t trust this Dick Cheney guy, but I’ve been in this thing my whole life, what will happen if I don’t shaking Richard Nixon’s hand, like Smedley Butler, the supreme leader of China, would you still call him a dictator, it’s just a slur, what makes him a dictator, not Roman position anymore, regime, just a slur, autocrat, the guy gets shit done, he forces his will upon people, 23 years, he arrests dissent, a whole January 6th thing, they forgot to bring their guns, Huey Long, a collective action, literally what happened to Caesar, guns on the assassin, Lone Star Planet by John J. McGuire and H. Beam Piper, H.L. Mencken, The Malevolent Jobholder, Woodrow Wilson, arrested his opponents, revered by the institutionalists, his 14 points, Julian Assange, nobody has repealed it, he railroaded that war [WWI], a fascinating guy, they called Trump a dictator, he modeled his speaking style after Hitler, a little folksy, Bernie Sanders with a more humorous presentation, become obsessed, maybe there’s a science fiction tie in, populist, socialist, his family, revere him as a hero, like Caesar, he gets his power from his army, the whole thing happens because of slaving and genociding, to overthrow the old order in a particular town, successor, still going to do slavery and all that but less civil war, on the right path of doing something good, Gerald Ford, the Manson Family CIA assassination group, the deep state in action, Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, somebody so dumb, speaker of the house in Canada, everybody in parliament was clapping for a literal Nazi, the Speaker resigned, his boss is the prime minister, he chose to resign, a cuck job, prestige in the states, considered equal, head of state, head of congress, add some balance, the speaker is a cuck in Canada, run things when the king or queen is not in parliament, they choose their prime minister afterwards, a little bit of reverse order but functionally identical, a machine that should work identically, if they force the vote they can choose somebody else, changed the rules, the guy who has an owl for a wife, Newt Gingrich, he quit, a brand new rule, rules they are imposing on themselves, owl shaking Trump’s hand, an isolated incident, Democrats were cucks for Democrats, what happened to the Squad, chose not to force the vote, a little bit of backbone, a rule for them, once a rule gets written, that’s a not a law, a mode of operation, a coup in Australia, refusing to do the job, a mask off moment for the United States controlling Australia, now you gotta resign in disgrace, had an unwritten constitution, make Donald Trump speaker, that would be hilarious, wrong, a sergeant at arms, to enforce the speaker’s will, an actual mace sitting on a table, when the queen’s not in town, a shooting in parliament in Canada, copied from England, kidnap one member of parliament, no torture involved, they have a hostage, formal formality shit, all cucks to the queen, how Hitler came to power, he was appointed, side with the rightwing nazis, didn’t realize it would sound bad later, Hillary Clinton on a talk show, she thinks she’s smart, a warning or a threat, fear is the best tool, if we don’t do this one thing something bad will happen, an effective tool, Ross Perot, had some good ideas, if you look at his charts, perfectly reasonable, a billionaire businessman, the conspiracy theory or the truth, left thousands of POW/MIA in Vietnam, the official line was the sonic weapon from Cuba, compensation for something that isn’t real, literal people killed in Vietnam, unrecovered bodies, eaten by a tiger, movies that would support that, Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), Missing In Action (1984), Chuck Norris, Uncommon Valor (1983), reignite the Vietnam War, weapons of mass destruction, re-invade the country, drops out of the race, still on CSPAN, all 12 hours of it, kind of a naive guy, the October Surprise, these terms, false terms, a bag you stuff an uncertain set of ideas, I feel your pain, what makes you think there’s a distinction, a heel and baby-face, I like my girls like I like my…, what makes somebody left wing or right wing, campaigning on it is a trick, RFK, Jr., take votes from somebody, these are theories I want facts, 100% in favour of war, traditionally republican, both parties believe that, siphon the money off, George H.W. Bush, except for losing the election, circular reasoning, a robot or no vote, electoral college is a separate thing, it’s all a scam, institution totally gamed, senators in Canada, all paperballots all counted in front of witnesses for any parties, recorded, this vote is ambiguous, voting machines, a stylus pen, an anonymous ballot, there’s never going to be an overage, seems like it’s way more gamed, 50 state elections, are there any paper ballot states?, vote by mail, Alaska is hand count and optical scan, a real point of weakness, ballot stuffing, the Kennedys, Edgar Allan Poe may have died from this, the Chicago political machine, still ongoing, there’s video, ballot harvesting, just the official elections, the party elections, cheating members of the party, not working very well, people are not very good at choosing candidates, in the 70s and the 80s, internal vs. formal corruption, Hillary Clinton cheated Bernie Sanders, Donna Brazile, she wrote a book, pledged to support, inside party politics, taking advantage and cheating, neutral arbiter, when leaked emails showed, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Seth Rich, the “hack” which wasn’t a hack, the company that did the audit, ex-NSA guys, this is impossible, it had to have been a flashdrive, an unsolved murder, Robert Muller, working hard to say this is 100% untrue, the Christchurch shooting in New Zealand, Hunter Biden’s laptop, The New York Post, the twitter account was removed, overt censorship of true things, if people thought Biden’s family was corrupt, very relevant, very interesting timing, given it wasn’t a hack vs. a leak, kinda boring, exciting movie style, what that whole House Of Cards, Kevin Spacey’s career went flush, just delete it man, a lot of audience on there, pornbots, women who joined twitter 2 months ago, clogging up followers, suddenly to get your message, in Hollywood, the talent, it doesn’t matter it is fake, the decision makers are so stupid, fake followers, if you enjoy twitter tweet, it has utility, the complaint from the girls was, thumbs up emoji, it’s not natural, make jokes and people get offended, a good scrap-board, becoming less and less useful, get off this hellsite, funny, a scenester, like an institutionalist for a scene, the SFWA scene, takes his queue, age gapped themed short story, makes himself a victim, a huge follower count, in the scene, its outside of the acceptable, on the downlow, prudish, beautiful naked women, paintings, Bettie Page, they tend to be beautiful, PulpCovers, a practicing Catholic, he’s very liberal, it has flipped, not libertarian, artistic representation of nudity, twitter is not the universe, politicians are on there, people who right books, Instagram, blogs were destroyed, Alex from Cirsova, what twitter is good for, sending files to people, all sorts of good things happen, where the people are, some who are leaving or have left, people are being crowded out by bots, there’s North Korean agents, people misrepresenting themselves, delete or not delete, Jack Dorsey, why twitter is good, seeing the video of the kids’ heads opened, the war in Israel, nice that it’s not being censored, there’s fake shit, just happened 10 minutes ago, also give out news, everything’s an op, more public domain books, good audiobooks, good covers, emotionally manipulative, if you want censorship, he doesn’t want to be confronted with opposing ideas, get’s really noisy, a jumble of information, a very reasonable number, an exodus, the consensus says you can’t be on here, I don’t want to give Amazon money, he’s angry, that sort of anger makes you not want to be angry, put on your Paul hat, believe in nations, personal sovereignty, large corporations, Bezos and Zuckerberg and the Virgin guy, rocket guys, having a lot of fun, Bill Gates, lives in a mansion, is that fun, lives in a little box, making bullet proof cars, MSNBC, humiliated, a pie in the face, trying to not be hated, own things, manipulate reality, fun and useful, electric cars are a scam, ethanol cars, he knows its a scam too but he’s having fun with it, he loves rockets, makes jokes about rockets, sucking off the government teat, he’s wrong in many cases, Starlink is very good shit, making internet not stuck to cable, provides it to Ukraine, providing it free, Boeing or Lockheed Martin, circumventing the US government, gives him decision making power, battlefield decisions, he’s very personally powerful, smoking Joe Biden, that genius who’s not demented, if you want to cow that military power, information power, computers, they go through the U.S. military, unilaterally decide, the enemy, it’s good that people can share shit, to guide rockets, the Russians have their own system, give Cubans the internet, more powerful than actual governments, whatever his staff tell him, quasi-state like, more powerful than many states, more powerful than Canada, the global world order, Eric did not like it, my favourite billionaire, Bill Gates is intruding into my apartment, Elon Musk forces jokes on me, he trolls me, he’s a threat, he’s dynamic enough, like Apple used to be, they need him, bring him to heel, whoever you’re saying the government is is super incompetent ignoramus and clowns who can spell, they’ll tell you your grammar is bad, institutions, amassed an enormous amount of power, states have armies, he has rockets though, amazing how well he’s been able to navigate that shit, we can be done, two hours of Jonathan and Jesse talking at the end.

Jim Burns art or Gilgamesh The King by Robert Silverberg

Gilgamesh The King by Robert Silverberg

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Reading, Short And Deep #434 – The City In The Sea by Edgar Allan Poe

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #434

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The City In The Sea by Edgar Allan Poe

Here’s a link to the poem |PDF|.

The City In The Sea was first published, under that name, in The Broadway Journal, August 30, 1845.

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The SFFaudio Podcast #788 – READALONG: The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton

Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Terence Blake talk about The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton

Talked about on today’s show:
Terry!, Playboy, March 1972, a novel in book form, where they features author, Playbill, the Jules Verne of our time, a Fellow at the Salk Institute, three pseudonyms, Dealing, a Warner Bros. release, a lot of money in 1972, re-write Frankenstein, rewriting Dracula, take my own life in 1973, 15,000 words per day, he’s going to direct, where Crichton starts ramping up, The Andromeda Strain was huge, 1971 film, directed by Robert Wise, Westworld (1973), that could have been a novel, very visual, Westworld RPG, it’s its own module that kills itself at the end, a wonderful one-shot, no one and dones, not anymore, take advantage of all of your successes, this weird phenomenon, the people who buy jigsaw puzzles, it’s like a romance novel, lacquer them, such a weird phenomenon, is this a science fiction novel?, arguing at the end, unless there is strong evidence, my Tolkien ripoff is a science fiction, not science fiction, speculation on what would happen, we have that technology, you might be scared, this stuff is being worked on, Terence wondered, a preparation for writing a science fiction story afterward, the question comes up, why?, why did he say it is his least favourite novel?, we can think of one that is worse, heavily didactic, the plagiarist?, a huge amount of effort trying to make it realist, the chapter on the operation, how good this book is, also a bad book, communicating what’s actually possible, people were doing that, the least realistic part was the plutonium, plutonium for pacemakers?, smart, plausible, squish the plutonium into the atmosphere, a spill not a dirty bomb, contaminate an area, it’s not a bomb, technically possible, fitting a cigarette sized thing inside of somebody, Penfield mood organ, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, for fun, more explicitly science fiction, robot humans, is he wrong?, sentient machines control him, showing his technophobia, his later crappy novels, he was inspired by real life cutting into people’s brains, not only that, the computers are coming against us, trends in computers, the chapel and the computer room, Crichton’s feelings about computers made manifest, Elon Reeve Musk’s neurolink, he needs to read this novel, there’s no telling Elon Reeve Musk what to do, Grok AI, against AI research, anti-technology, an ambivalence, Prey, nanotechnology, Jurassic Park, standard Frankenstein monster story, awesomely meta, never see his POV, Mr. Harry Benson, the creature, who is Doctor Frankenstein?, the medical system, and the criminal justice system, and also Harry, inferences, a lot that’s identical, shortened, the crisis of his brain, 6:04 to 3:02, the number of attack scenes, knife not microwave, girlfriend, the perseveration of the knife, stuff you have to do for film, seeing it on the screen, we only get his words, he forgets what he does, in a fit state, violent actions almost like a zombie, dance round him, he can reason with you, he’s robotic, he doesn’t look robotic, his whole program is making him violent, a very bad movie, bogged down in the wrong computers, he goes to a grave, hoping he would kill himself, the funeral procession, doing a symbolic thing, the ending of Frankenstein, after he tells the story, there’s no frame here, the woman doctor, Janet Ross, most sympathetic, Minnesota, Paul is a little biased, good writing, so many ideas, this amazing promise, Harry thinks robots are going to take over the world and maybe they already have, how he got into this situation in the first place, scheduled for surgery, under charge, volunteered or agreed to surgery, pre-research, did his violent act to get arrested so he could get into the hospital, he put himself on a path, this stoner who wants the surgery, man it would be really cool if I could self-stimulate all day, the tasp, Larry Niven’s doing science fiction, just science, self-stimulate all day, so close to it here, mundane science fiction, it’s science and it’s fiction, nonetheless, Terence is right, is The Martian science fiction?, live off of potatoes grown in Martian regolith, nothing that’s beyond, hasn’t happened, if we’re going hard SF, it could be, but just isn’t, breast surgery, radioactive enough, contained enough, the speculative element, what do you mean safely?, this is not done safely, haywire, they can shield it, what was the grainage?, off the shelf-technology, plutonium is shieldable, there’s a good reason for that, routinely put into people, pacemaker plutonium pack, never been done?, now its a science fiction novel, speculative, form q, research division, biological organs, speculation within the book, in 15 years if we follow this, MacPherson is speculating, the author speculating not the character, that’s the interesting part, The Andromeda Strain doesn’t feel like science fiction, except through ancient sources, A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, pusillanimous, a good connection, the way that book plays out, a feely idea of science fiction, something strange about the feel, technothriller, techno-science fiction, stuff on feminism, MacPherson again, the philosophical implications, when the link goes both ways, two brains communicating, Gödel’s theorem, laying in and throwing in, a rich dense book that doesn’t quite pay off, Drug Of Choice, sparking up my brain, Mr. Benson, the computer’s perspective, if he’s right, feared and hoped that he was right, the book doesn’t tip its hand, same disappointment, this book fucks up itself, missing a scientific element, in the description of the operating procedure, computer guided, psychiatrist Janet, interlinking routes creating unpredictable phenomena, aliens might, Southbound On The Freeway by May Swenson, 1963, May Swenson

A tourist came in from Orbitville,
parked in the air, and said:

The creatures of this star
are made of metal and glass.

Through the transparent parts
you can see their guts.

Their feet are round and roll
on diagrams–or long

measuring tapes–dark
with white lines.

They have four eyes.
The two in the back are red.

Sometimes you can see a 5-eyed
one, with a red eye turning

on the top of his head.
He must be special-

the others respect him,
and go slow,

when he passes, winding
among them from behind.

They all hiss as they glide,
like inches, down the marked

tapes. Those soft shapes,
shadowy inside

the hard bodies–are they
their guts or their brains?

the movie Cars (2006), complexity science, interaction between two computer programs, nasty and vice versa, bureaucracy of the policeman Anders, well chosen, not getting the information you’re supposed to get, in different media, complexity producing unpredictable results, traffic app, a computer projection, unrealistic, novelty in the first week, a six minute delay, here I’m using my new iphone cell phone, it can connect to the internet and the world wide web, the robot computer in the body in the car, how computers never make mistakes, an earlier podcast, show coming out, we think about an issue and then 7 months later we come back to it, its still there, computer programmer who wants to fix his brain, doing bad things, avoiding decision fatigue by having it all ritualized, Mr. Benson’s boss, a ping pong machine, an actual table, a sphere coming towards you you want to deviate, the Iron Dome idea, Ted Kaczynski, working on top secret military projects, his home, nothing modern, to kill her or to be saved by her, complains about her furniture being uncomfortable, the thing we’re trying to understand is the brain, not exactly Frankenstein, becomes vengeful, blackouts and doing violence, alienating his family, manipulates the situation, outwitting the cops and the doctors who think they’re smart, the bag with the wig, I did know, a gun in it, the cop doesn’t inspect the bag, necessary for the plot, what does he do with those screwdrivers?, nothing, explained as everybody has things that make them comfortable, did he anticipate, pleasure cycle that is a learning cycle, is that what the plot of this book is secretly about?, the master plan is to destroy the computer, this is illogical, he doesn’t ask, he has the plans, names the model, has the blueprints, once the surgery is complete, he doesn’t do that, did that on purpose, we can’t know that he knew that would happen, he’s of two minds, Ted Kaczynski-like, I can’t stop what’s happening, try to make a warning, the ideology of the deed, anarchy is better than monarchy, an exemplary action, can’t stop light switches, what he can do is shock the system, bring people’s attention to his ideology, already is, tries to escape, he goes to the sex bar, Doylesian and Watsonian, to pad out the plot, Crichton not Benson, not staying on task, how would destroying this one computer could help him, Logan’s Run, making him to want to do the surgery, he has mental instability, makes sense to him, it’s his game, [Binary], finally comes back to the hospital, of two minds, really good, the emergent new phenomena, new experience and new behavior, a demonstration, two brain Benson, go to the title, the new messiah, a good title, the last man, a new step has been made, two brains on an equal footing, the gateway to acting out on all his impulses that were suppressed before, the turnover point, he’s freed himself, we’re all going to be like that, cool and frustrating, other ways of reading the title, he’s the last man, he’s the first post-human, he terminates man, he terminates himself, love each other by pressing a button in your head, a short story where an old guy, Alfred Bester?, maybe not, all these prosthetics, [The Die-Hard], a podcast episode on that, a refutation of H.G. Wells’ story, a radio impulse that gives you perfect happiness, The Poison Belt by Arthur Conan Doyle, perfectly happy, pleasure center stimulated, a cunning psychopathic murderer, this book could have been one of his best, figured out a way, maybe Crichton didn’t know, it isn’t a manifesto, what the movie’s gotcha line, you didn’t stop to think if you should, basic readings of Frankenstein, not the best strands of science fiction, don’t play god, what Niven does with the tasp, just got addicted to hyper-opium, electronic opium, the Doylesian reason, what computer games, gambling games, Candy Crush?, they’ve hacked our brains from the outside, mapped the pleasure centers, training you to like things, play computer games all day long, electricity in my wife’s basement, just pleasure center, Jesse you’re a technophobe, isn’t it interesting that I’m a robot controlled by other robots, sending letter bombs to people seems wrong, that transcendence you get with a great Philip K. Dick ending, The Electric Ant by Philip K. Dick, manipulating reality, this novel promises something and almost delivers, not having the great revelation or the great insight, speculativish, doesn’t speculate hard enough, movie makes it pretty bad, but nice and clinical, like The Andromeda Strain, what he’s bringing to the table, the institution of doctoring, am I wrong?, there’s something about the feel of the book, nonetheless our feel is wrong, really pleasurable, chock-full of ideas, too much of a message, sociologically informed pictures, all very fine, one of the doctors has a leg injury, all that stuff, what Janet Ross says, no absolute difference between health and (mental) illness, spectrum, acting out of his anxiety, the family is mind control, the school is mind control, a haze of ideas around this cutting edge surgical procedure, he’s railing is about being blasé about it, intrigued and entranced with this tech, helping patients, seeing the list of things that have happened in the past, the very last one is fictional, seeing it as a progression, inflection point, the catastrophe, the cracks in the dam, the waystation point, the computing power, was that actually true, depends on how you calculate, what is the terrabyte capacity of my brain, really big, bigger than an 8tb hdd, but also pretty lossy, remember The Terminator better than The Terminal Man, the entire credit sequence, a couple of frames, doing the test on him, a ham sandwich on rye, rye can be spelled wry, quite ironic, dry humour, some wry humour, a fairly well done scene in the movie, at an awards dinner, Mr. Benson has escaped, some of the dialogue is identical, the surgery scene is just as long if not longer, the middle of the night, all the doctors are whispering, all trying to solve this problem, nothing big about blame here, get to the patient before something bad happens, what to tell the cops, if they say it the wrong way, when they categorize him eventually, a patient in need of medical assistance, how this is going to impact their careers, how to solve the problem, a meta-point, the female psychiatrist, she’s not the only one, one thing Terence thought was interesting, come back to the hospital, we want help you, take care of, the ethics of care, the human approach, the inhuman approach, treat me like a machine and repair me, in the doctor’s language, a machine approach, seeing everybody as a machine, the cognitive estrangement, we have been replaced with machines without knowing, doesn’t put a button on it, he’s almost got, too dumb to get it, in the way that he needed to, too timid, the crazy man has that perspective, all the evidence, language no longer means what we think it means, a greater book than The Andromeda Strain, we are now through the rabbit hole, this next chapter is going to be retelling, anticipate it, never reveals itself, better as an enigma, shown to be a fool in 100 years, memory tapes are erased, makes the noise, static, in the book, the movie and the audiobook, learning effect, 1.15x, 1.2x, 1.5x, after 10 minutes, up to 1.7x, the voice was so good [George Wilson], Blue Thunder, Roy Scheider, looking at his digital watch, his explanation to his new partner, the first thing to go is your sense of time, a minute can feel like an hour, Dan O’Bannon wrote all the good movies: Dark Star, his worst movie, watershed week, Star Wars, Alien, Dead And Buried (not actually written by him, despite the name being in the credits, he lent his name to a friend to get financing), Heavy Metal, Return Of The Living Dead, Lifeforce, Blue Thunder [is] underrated, did he direct it?, Mike Hodges, does horror films, The Great Train Robbery, narrated by George Guidall, Donald Sutherland and Sean Connery, a very solid film, based on true events, an action movie done as a comedy, the book is more serious, Travels, Eaters Of The Dead, Beowulf with Ibn Fadlan, he combines the two, The Thirteenth Warrior, he’s a liar, stuff on the copyright page that’s part of the metatext, very playful, he wouldn’t have changed the title, after Jurassic Park, John McTiernan, when does that turnover start, too successful to be edited, they don’t push back on anybody now, successful, maybe they pushback, they’re pulling on him, when he does the sequel, The Lost World, Disclosure, Rising Son, smell a little topical japanophobia, kind of a boring movie, haven’t done Timeline, bad torture cinema on Skiffy And Fanty [podcast], done that, A Case Of Need, where things have gone south, beyond human comprehension, he’s making money, you’re being a bad writer, a bunch of people die, suddenly oh no they didn’t die, Michael Crichton’s next book coming out in 2024, posthumous collaboration with James Patterson, a fusion of two different IPs, along with the ghost of Tom Clancy, what they can do… dump the entire IP into AI and say I would like a new Michael Crichton novel because I’m his wife, some bad books are out, we’ve had natural ai in some of the books I’ve read, pretty much done, a nap!?, decision making tree is chopped down, Gilgamesh The King, just had her dad die, terribly bad, Paul out, the emergency, it seemed impossible on Friday, very sad, a discussion, a message Thursday, see if we can move it, decision fatigue, next year when Cora would be available, her life is unpredictable, the default: don’t fuck around with things, G.K. Chesterton’s fence, a principle, the rash move, a polar by behind that enclosure, you can’t open doors sometimes, nice concept, plan my life so I don’t have to make decisions, make the fewest decisions possible, automated systems, what makes decisions harder is not having enough information, which leads to depression, I statements are statements of depression, I never win these things, I is an inhibiting factor, life is suffering, winning happens, running around chasing after happiness, forget the etymology, hap, happy, lucky, how things panned out, fell, not a very depressive sort, no contrast to it, not fined grained enough to describe anything much, a lovely dreary day, a Jungian analyst, James Hillman, virtually everything is depression, you shouldn’t identify with your depression, precise about the image, life is suffering, tell me more, won’t spoil the ending for you, a good talk, seven minute writing, Lab Partner by Jesse, closing up the back of a robot, the robot’s slender legs swung off the table and hit the floor, here in my basement laboratory we can be naked, the clear plastic raincoat from Blade Runner, his great grandfather’s secretary robot in his grandfather’s attic, pulls up the blinds and looks outside at the dreary day, naked female robot, solved this story problem, opened up a computer and put new ram in it, a garden of Eden story, put on a raincoat, writing the dreams down, seeing inside your head in retrospect, dreary, what we can program ourselves to do, Cora, dealing with all of her cleaning of her dad’s stuff, Cartsen Schmitt, dreamt i fell in with a growing band of, Tacoma to Anaheim, wild west rodeo show, ship to ship missiles, The Lost Boys aboard, some garlic in the galley, circus players, the surgery, a little bit’s there, vampires, very interesting, we got lucky, we got a good book, a thoughtful thinker, full of ideas, haze is a good one, a fuzzy novel, mindmaps, doesn’t mean anything to me, anti-story, anti-memory, anti-everything, an amazing experience, taught English in a technical school, senior high school, taking on all sorts of students that couldn’t get into or were not wanted at other high schools, first choice, alternative school, wastebasket, a basket of deplorables, strange people not meant to for the school system, cater to their presence, didn’t understand anything in English, get students working on stuff, strange people, there was a diagram, one of the tools, my friend has a problem with his girlfriend, an amazing use of mindmaps, continue the wrong direction, doesn’t give a shit about school, gets punished for trying, a guy on youtube, for finding weird shit, convinced, diagnosed with 70 iq, shitty jobs at McDonald, raising his iq, the insights you get from somebody who’s had experience, 18 dimensions, not paying attention, hours studying, early 20s, only study for five hours, not knowing what studying is, read a lot, that’s not studying, proving the theorems, not connected to studying for school, why does this movie still resonate, all the sexual spying, fly to the Hollywood hills, is she giving us a show?, that’s part of the point of the movie, cops using surveillance to spy on people, a very 80s thing, what’s striking about it, how timely it still remains, drones before drones, The Poison Belt, cameras, an essayist in your pocket, maven, in the style of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, we can say it is not the end of the world, the creative work instead of the representational work, point to a vocab word, bird, ma, all long words are made of parts, all long words are dead metaphors, let’s hang some stories on it, a circle with hooks, different ways to access the meaning of the word, tyre vs. tire, motor car vs. automobile, the history of why they’re called that, hanging meanings and feelings, a colour or a drawing, a way to learn how vocabulary works, you’ll get the feeling of what the word means, students know this already, you’ve seen “mal” before, malodorous, break it down six different ways, circumstance, a circum around and a stand, understand, a big thing hanging over you, we forget that they’re metaphors, pump a little life juice into them, horrible experiences in teacher training, no that’s wrong, didn’t apply to all cases, not a universal rule, a sign Terence was inexperienced, fail out of teaching school, Dead And Buried (1981), a girl wearing a red dress, famous photographer?, I could model for you, good vacation so far, she offers him sex, sex on the beach, flash photography, they’re all taking photos, she takes a photo of him, they beat him and light him on fire, then the sheriff investigates, some other stranger is murdered, the guy didn’t die in the hospital, camera wielding maniacs, the sheriff’s wife, a book on voodoo and a voodoo knife, teaching the kids, as he should be, the killing of strangers, the students are loving the stuff they’re learning about Haitian voodoo, a really great ending, a good movie, a horror comedy?, not really funny, art film, a Twilight Zone episode, we like not knowing what’s going on then getting an explanation, on youtube, an & where the and is, dig em up then bury them again, tweets are buried very quickly, fun and weird, a little snapshot of what you were doing that moment, Downward To Earth by Robert Silverberg, Gilgamesh The King, a chat about it, Jonathan’s going to join us, fun takes, dry sense of humour, unusual culture.

The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton

Tuesday May 9, 1972, in the NEW YORK TIMES

The Terminal Man (1974)

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