Reading, Short And Deep #450
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Unveiling by Alfred I. Tooke
Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.
The Unveiling was first published in Weird Tales, January 1940.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!
Reading, Short And Deep #450
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Unveiling by Alfred I. Tooke
Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.
The Unveiling was first published in Weird Tales, January 1940.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!
The SFFaudio Podcast #800 – The Devil’s Elixirs by E.T.A. Hoffmann, read by Connor Kaye. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (16 hours, 12 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Connor Kaye
Talked about on today’s show:
1815/16, two volumes?, translation, German, not from 1963, way older, the claim about the 1963 version, supposed to be unabridged for the first time, there’s a lot of editor’s notes, if this is an abridged version, what was cut out of earlier translations?, really effects the text, three pages are missing, conked on the head, happens offscreen, it makes the story better, long chapters, the side story about the Irishman, why leave that in, a massive plotpoint, intentionally not put in, makes the story way better, unreliable narration, what makes the story so interesting, gothic novels, Weiland, an American gothic, The Monk, long an convoluted and difficult, Frankenstein and Dracula, taught to watch movies, if teachers knew what was in the text they’re pretending to teach to students it wouldn’t be taught, Othello, the beast with two backs, Desdemona’s house, your house is being robbed, ruffians, lily white ewe is being tupped by an old black ram, race hasn’t been invented yet, the metaphor, elided, minimized, lies on the side by side, learn to read Shakespeare, Dracula is more recognizably put together, from the era of Frankenstein, doesn’t flow with action, 1935 pulp Robert E. Howard story, meandering, very convoluted, re-listen to parts, unreliable narrator, intentionally writing something incorrect, genuinely forgotten his own story, leaving out three pages, the Baron of ____, the big elephant in the room, presume the reason is because Edgar Allan Poe, a doppelganger character, William Wilson, a very short version, different ending, the definitive doppelganger story, all the different spices, counter evidence, a time travel story?, fairly well disproved, told explicitly to set down the text, excuse for publication, what has happened, wearing strange clothes, Heinlein’s By His Bootstraps, post-grad in physics, get outta here ugly, why time travel is impossible, him from the future, every character in the whole story is him, the same scene from the other guy’s point of view, Alex and Cora or Evan, a repeat chapter we skip, bad theory, an explanation given, what makes it a gothic novel, supernatural events explained by weird coincidences, there are no supernatural events in William Wilson, the devil is drink, better explained by mental illness or cognitive schism, somebody gets killed, exact same scar, a series of these sequences, manic phase, depressive phase, non-responsive, catatonic, frenzy and stabs somebody, describing it that way, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde, its the same dude, two different dudes, half brother, half sister, main character, did something really powerful, Edgar Allan Poe started writing stories, so many Poe stories are explicable by reading this, The System Of Doctor Tarr And Professor Fether, an episode of the first Star Trek, a Robert Bloch story, trust the science, a lunatic asylum, told of his behaviors, strange people acting oddly, how did I come here?, when could I get out?, haunted by a shadowy double, mental schism, not quite there, an archetype, he can feel there’s something going on there that resonates, an evil brother, periodically thwarts the good brother, what makes it gothic, lack of god in Poe’s stories, angels, his most famous, The Raven, she’s dead, there’s no heaven, the argument that he’s having with himself, as the place burns down, he never talks about god, race, they’re not the focus, completely different thing, science and ratiocination and art, The Man Of The Crowd, he’s a doppelganger for that guy, The Black Cat, a guy who drinks to much, he acts very badly, pious and good and kindly person, best read as railing against temperance, takes their complaint, making fun of the temperance movement, the devil element of this, capuchin monk, cistercians monastery, the coffee, monks, popes, when you read Hawthorne, the devil exists, going on about the Devil, a man with a bad idea, a guy in the woods, sin is a big thing in Hawthorne, class stuff, fellow nobleman, marry this princess, so far down the road, there isn’t a prince in the land, educated and learn your letters, the judge who he pays off, the control of the church is massive, a fugitive from a monastery, critical of the church, scheming dominicans, kidnapped, another devil’s elixir, from a Poe mindset, the dangers of alchohol, a lot of drinking going on, cordial, pours it down his sleeve, withers his arm, a sinster arm and a regular arm, proto-doppelganger stuff, a secret science fiction story, I found the time machine, I took a pill to forget, a book on archive.org, did Poe read or speak German?, Metzengerstein, makes sense as a gothic, The Fall Of The House Of Usher, the German ones, video essay about doppelgangers, available in America at the time, an E.T.A. Hoffmann called The Doppelganger, 200 year old German, would have been tough, let’s just look at the facts, sent to a boarding school, not given enough money, gambles, a bad reputation, all things that happen to him, how come you’re an asshole, lived in England and visited Scotland, people were reading stuff, Blackwoods Magazine was a thing, a literary kid, he would have read something like this, there might have been a review of it, critiquing, know in his period as an asshole reviewer, and an orator poet, making it about god, the demons down under the sea, the guy is insane, the angels with jealous of her and me, having sex with a corpse for 50 years, it’s not about that, contending with our daily reality, set in the 1700s, make it more authentic, any more squeeze out of Poe in here, Never Bet the Devil Your Head, the devil literally shows up, metaphorically or hyperbolically, the painter, I’m back, the devil showed up in disguise, alcohol, stuff that makes you act badly, this undercurrent, the dangers of alcohol, prevents people from getting alcohol legitimately for 10 years or so, one of the scenes, painted all these people he knows, that’s him from the future, he’s become a painter, The Oval Portrait, the chateau into which, one of those fantastic, Mrs. Radcliffe, that’s a callout to Ann Radcliffe recently abandoned, warm food on the table, installs him in a turret, armorial trophies, the frame for the story is huge, a painter who paints his girl to death, a big long clunky gothic novel in 8 minutes, dispenses with silly things, videos coming from Israel today, the devil is real, damning humanity, in a black hood, it was all a coincidence, evidence I should repent, explicable, a step towards science fiction, fantasy as a re-imagining of alternative forms of how to deal with reality, tales of ratiocination, C. Auguste Dupin, the devil did it, not it was an orangutan, Poe’s just done with it, gothics do that, the reason we’re reading this text, write it down, like confession, a series of bad things, turns out I was not the murderer, escaping, the unreliable narrator aspect, an alternative theory, may suck as well, if two drink they become connected, there had been a switcheroo, The Prestige (2006), the handwriting is compared, write in Polish, your grammar is terrible, ridiculous excuse, your spelling is incredibly atrocious, after he kills Hermogen and Euphemia, insane in the forest, maybe he is Medatus, slippage, one body with two inhabitants, a literal spirit from another him, Freaky Friday style, Big, a child wishes to become an adult, a psychical link, mysticism, not a potion made in a lab from a Professor Dumbkopf, The Angel Of The Odd, in conversation with a pile of empty bottles, alcohol is dangerous, alcohol is in every scene, small beer, wine, cordial, and the devil’s elixirs, in vino veritas, are you going to stab me in the back?, blackout drunk, covered in blood, a corpse over there, runs off into the forest, stealing somebody’s clothes and haircut, mein, very rare, chow mein, his behavior is such, his gait is that of a capuchin, Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle, zeusborn devildung, a metanovel, clothes their origin and influence, transcendentalist, the behavior of clothes upon persons, news socks change your behavior, clothes affect your behavior, long sleeve shirt, rainjacket, a labcoat, Peter Hotez, labcoat to interviews on Zoom, makes him feel like he’s a doctor, bowtie, always changing his clothes, changing who you are, the opportunity to make yourself anew, a suit made for him, somebody tries to sell his clothes, undercooked, dispenses with a lot of this stuff, 16 times the length, not even a novel, Ringworld, a novel from a period when novels looked like this, Jane Austen is the weirdo, Tom Jones, all the parts, Charles Dickens’ bread and butter, refine things out of this, Christopher Priest’s The Prestige, stuff you can do with the medium that is exquisitely cool, the audience has to be receptive, so of its time, a modern editor, run it through spellchecker and see if we can throw in some pronouns, ebook it right to Amazon Kindle, the aficionados of this, Bryan Alexander, The Mysteries Of Udolpho, what is the call to adventure, exploring other people, shoves her glove in his bosom, that’s relatable, makes a pact with the devil, I have all these feelings, that woman she looked at me, a compelling part for a lot of people, people don’t really change, trained differently, different media through which they engage, folksinging, he never mentions any of their names, they’re not important, talking up politics, and news and anecdotes, made a bunch of friends but couldn’t be bothered to name any of them, the physician’s infodump, the prince, the abbess, a mom and a goddess and beautiful, she brands him with her diamond encrusted, is this an attack on Catholicism?, it has to be right?, he indicts by showing, he’s edging around things like that, why does he get branded like that?, for later in the plot, explains a lot but then is undermined, is the time machine the drink?, many characters called Franceso, St. Francis, Fransiscus, she’s swearing by the saint?, why she became a nun, what happens to the girl, time is a flat circle, sir, distinguished, so many Francescos, the spectre who keeps reappearing in a purple cloak, ancient ancestor, god damned him to wander the earth, progeny, descendants, the Wandering Jew, Melmoth The Wanderer, he’s branded, identifiable by this distinctive scar, repeating the same mistakes over again, break the cycle, very time travel, slow time travel, time moves at a 1 to 1 rate, 1.3 x speed, with regard to religion, what is he saying?, explicitly called out, when you talk about relics, add up all the relics in the room, pieces of the true cross to build a bridge across the Rhine, the history of all the relics, this is the author telling on themselves, not true, important because it is true, this relic heals people, he tries to flee the city, he doesn’t like the fame, bullshit, we don’t trust him, way pre-temperance, this is pre-Mormons, getting rid of the idea of alcohol as part of the religion, lowers inhibitions, why Poe is an asshole when he’s drunk, get into a fight with his friend, berserker mode frenzy, Carl Jung’s shadow, a mystical apparition or a specter, disassociating from it, the ureliable narrator aspect, Hermogen’s murder, Aurelia, Euphemia, impersonating, Vittoran, somehow killed, killed in self defense, admits that he murdered, in his darker phases, is he confabulating or is he remembering?, he can’t admit it, he’s absolved for it ultimately, always getting out from under, they got him dead to rights here, deus ex machina thing, the conflict of emotions he has, golden, infatuated by her, compared with Saint Rosalia, can’t admit to lusting, angry instead of lusty, supposed to be an emotionally castrated monk, he has these feelings, idolizing, platonic love, or going the opposite way, sexual or sadistic, engaged to Aurelia in the guise of Leonard, that part was funny, that he gets away with it, such an outward liar, how this looks to other people, wilfully dishonest, fakes it until he makes it, part of the appeal of this style of book, ride with a character, without it being a sin that you’ve done, a prurient, skoptsy, men and women castrating and mastectomying themselves, weird quasi-nunneries, they don’t dominate social education the way they did, a priest or a nun or a brother, secularized that, still practicing this stuff, a teen boy who sees a beautiful girl and wants to be with her but can’t even talk about it, girls are doubly shamed, financial and parental permissions, can’t own property, Arthur Machen’s The Hill Of Dreams, angsty horny young man, spiritual horniness, intellectualized, repression, results in a lot of misogyny, madonna-whore, that’s the thing that Poe dispenses with, religions is replaced with aesthetics, the physical beauty and the emotions associated with it, tools he uses to get to ideas that are not that, unless again time travel, students solving stories with teleportation, we are teleporting to the next sentence, Medatus’ switch, from Chapter 7, she’s having a nap, seemed of unconcious of that freedom, the exquisite contours, I’ll allow it, all better inspirations, all doubts and fears, thou unhappy fated girl, the criticism, he can’t say it, the character can’t either, skirts the edges of it, Melville’s explicit, Bartleby, The Scrivener, Typee, feels like medieval Europe, princes and roadside taverns, where’s the tech?, still feathered pens and coffee being introduced, Boston Whist, drafts, faro, his own experience with the church, repressing sexuality, coming from The Monk, a monk running around making trouble, in the hierarchies and the institutions, being pulled back into the institutions, Big Rock Candy Mountain, Gold Mountain, buying working placer mines, 1928, a leftover of Cockaigne, Cloud Cuckoo Land, different LEGO themes, Prester John, monks doing chad style memes on their version of instagram (illuminated manuscripts), it rains cheese, everyone is running around nude, babies raised by cuckoos, dudes illuminating manuscripts, talented artists, literate, playing a games, making memes while bored at work, not reconciled to that yet, wants to have sex and be a man, sit at a desk all day, university is one of the options they are presented with, these are the jobs available, fun engagement with these ideas, knew that was coming, half-brothers, a non-supernatural resolution to that plot, all a placebo, the devil is real, they go mad because they have problems, the painter who showed up, the most overt supernatural element, a note by the editor monk who is compiling all this, the painter seems to be a real force in the world, supernatural in the end, or time travel, the hobo’s ideas, “cigarette trees and hens that lay soft boiled eggs”, this book is an escape, a cutout, took a sip, disconnected, an entertainment for literate people who probably were educated by religious people, but how religious are they?, the sinister truth of institutions, it doesn’t mean it is what it says it is, policemen are her to help me, put out fires, meet a quota, a kid who had autism, my child is being radicalized by online things, can you help, the police strung the kid along until they turned of age to charge him, rationalize it, justify a budget, you have to have terrorists, the DEA, teaching children to read, people who know how to read, a lot of teachers be catholic nuns or christian brothers, some of them are there, the institution, you had to be an anglican, Stephen Fry, anglican priests who don’t believe in god, a secular country with a monarch who is the head of the church, if you demand people fit into a certain conformity, you will make people say they are those things and not believing those things, religious corruption, there’s so much devil talk in this book, not a Neil Gaiman style devil, Hawthorneian style devil, Solomon Kane, obsessed with this, giving into sin, manifesting sin as the devil, cut off the things that cause me to sin, women’s breast, men’s penises, premises are flawed, on the verge, almost want to read it as a satire, it is not a satire, reading Jonathan Swift, this is deadly serious about these ideas, an unreliable narrator, not keeping his story straight, legit lies to people, lying is sinful in Jesse’s view, not as religiously obsessed as we think it is, wink wink nod nod, we all know president Biden’s brain is mush but that’s not the official line, salacious, soap operas of the 18th or 19th century, a monk in love with the woman, rape in the story, the kind of book where if parents saw it in the hands of their children, devils, casting spells from demons, lawful evil?, the wink wink, much what people want, shudder pulps, people can’t quite admit to themselves, bondage on the covers, wrap it in a detective story, a mystery cult, who stole my girlfriend?, it was probably me, Leonard is a guy in the story, why is he called that?, he had a friend called Leonard, not explicitly engaged with art all the way through, medieval art, 19th century artists focusing on Greek mythology, yellow 80s, symbolists, Mary and obscure saints, Hieronymus Bosch, it should be salacious but it is too big and old for that, the rise of illustrations, they had the printing press, an engraving on the first page, maybe, so many striking scenes, the chapters play a role in switching things up, he is Leonard for quite a while, Da Vinci, the mentor of Francesco, Leonardo artist namedropped, we’re very far from this, talking about somebody from the 20th century, around the 1850s stuff really starter to condense itself, not edited, ironically it has an editor, two points that juxtapose, hilarious, I’m not going to get into details, avoid verbose descriptions, verbose as fact, there’s a lot to say, a letter Aurelia wrote to the abbess, dictates the first part of it that is relevant, so meandering, he has a sense of humour, sometimes hard to know, excised the frame, true of Poe too, a really funny book, a novel about a book review, boring sounded, on the same level to get it, operating at their speed, the older it is, lower humour, Jonathan Swift, I’m big I used to be little, the power fantasy of being giant, pissing on the king’s house, what he thinks of kings, the plots of the books in Gulliver’s Travels, first big, then little, then goes to Japan, floating discs, extracting sunlight from cucumbers, the English, the French, scientists, humans, taking care of horses, noble and better, the humour is more base, like a soap opera, the reveal, turns out it was not, all was explicable, incredibly convoluted, a timeline of events, the wikipedia entry, its own timeline, dispute some of this, have to accept it, if somebody else had done this for me, details the first part, summarize the whole text, people need to understand things and be reminded, original research, uncited stuff, helpful but very wrong, Jesse’s time travel theory, not the best theory, Northanger Abbey, a girl reading gothics, gothic romances vs. gothic novels, girl vs. dude centered, novels for teenage girls, oh my god!, R. Murray Gilchrist’s The Stone Dragon, not discovered, or forgotten, an heir to a fortune, forced to marry one of his cousins, has to pick, reading Ann Radcliffe, is Venice like is?, not for young women, see it from the point of view of a dude, #MailGaze, Red Sonja, hashtags should exist for jokes, great for jokes, to be a smarmy shithead, a little trigger thing, a parody of itself, #Hamas, #Terrorism, ultimately dismiss it, as a comedy thing it is delightful, there’s no comeback to, immediately referencing a whole cultural milieu, “intellectual property”, “the Robert E. Howard estate”, weird monks making memes, “this is fine”, “yes”, not even trying to enforce copyright on these, Star Trek vs. the Orville, a little idea that makes me laugh, the real culture, Red Letter Media, the nerdcrew, a real movie?, issue 80 of Spider-Man [Madame Web], so obscure, tchotchkes on his desk, promoting this shitty Sony movie, that’s the new culture, under the bigger culture of youtube being able to delete channels, an exquisite job, making fun of a specific youtube channel, just shills for Star Wars, so offended, delightful, so distinct, ai art is everywhere now, a ship sailing towards a star, makes no sense, no art for that, low rez book cover, two options, public domain art, has to be colour or nobody cares, renaissance art, it looks alright, often, that’s the problem, random number generator, crafting the thing you’re looking for, a picture of a pretty woman, of a house, a door in the roof, can’t we photoshop these things?, take it and crop it, art from the originals, upcoming audiobooks, interior art from Weird Tales, don’t dismss my [Hugh] Doak [Rankin], addicted to heroin but a good artist, too cartoony, time pressure, a tool they can now use, as a tool it is great, hurt things for some original artists, nobody has any money, operating as digital wageslaves, cameras came in, cameras became cheap, easier to do it yourself, the argument against AI art from a non-aesthetic position, if you go by tiers of who’s got it worst, streaming on Onlyfans vs. Twitch, kids seem to have a lot of money, very similar, parasocial relationship, the precentages, digital beggars for Jeff Bezos, not going to become a famous streamer, kids, being an astronaut but for everybody, people spending money on it and getting rich people rich, accounts are disappeared, disruptive organizations, Uber and Lyft, buses and taxis, going offshore, whoever owns that app, chat GPT that was open source and not for profit you would see laws against it, a torrent like service, you would see legislation being proposed, visual artists, writer’s strike in Hollywood, AI refinements on scripts, if you’re in the disrupting business, paying for AI art, $10 a month, if the money gets big enough, just seeing the tip of it, started last year [2023], so colourful, the pulps, mimicking tons of digital art, fluorescent, fractals, cutesy simple art styles, biggest shills, high end art is a scam, laundering money, pay for play, from an artist’s perspective, commercially, spicy pulp covers, 100 years in the future, algorithm, the self-directed artist, commercial artist, a bit more of a shill, the final level, a complete shill, actively devaluing the art, corporatized, cloud services, if we learn anything from this massive tome of a book, just wait 20 years, Poe had his brain into this book, vibin on whatever was happening in this book, that’s awesome, a great image of a cat putting it’s paws on a miller’s son, The Cat And The Miller’s Son, a Bros. Grimm story, The Cat’s Advice by Jesse, how google works, the more you describe it, options, choosing is part of art too, The Pixie Princess Of Foss, that is our jobs, we are copying machines, there’s a trick to it, fuck that shit we’re human beings we share that, the tools being in the hands of masters, the distributed costs of the inputs, the laws are not for us they’re for them, only copyrighted when you’re in control of the levers, some of these have been removed by DMCA, what websites were removed from the search, an instagram celebrity, playboy.com, talent agency, The Lancet, a medical journal, there are supposed to be consequences to false claims, it’s all automated shit, nobody is held accountable, the personal phone number of that guy, that’s the problem with AI art, different ways to steal from all the labours everyone is doing, using a fake photoshop, powered by torrents or some browser or bitcoin, more money to spend on programmers, just learn to paint, music AI, give me something like Pearl Jam with a little Blues in it, almost exactly plagiarism, everything is remix, everything is taken from something else, always more allusions you will not spot, The Beatles are just original, a very strange upbringing, talent, aesthetic sense, he practiced, he drank a lot, The Undying Thing by Barry Pain, 100 youtubers making Lovecraft, HBO TV shows with Lovecraft in the title but no Lovecraft in the story, Suitable Flesh (2023), The Thing On The Doorstep, Barbara Crampton, looked a little sinister, some aspects, a good adaptation, very funny, the writing could have been better, Judah Lewis, oh fantastic it works, fiction on film, make sure everybody understands, nobody else has read The Thing On The Doorstep, The Call Of Cthulhu is not a good introduction to Lovecraft, The Unnamable is better, The Nameless City, The Tomb, Dagon, The Music Of Erich Zann, the Irishman in the inn, conjuring annoyance, what is this music?, the source of the horror, to slowly reveal it, the thing who would make it scary, much more about gender, the thing that everyone talks about in the book, not fully human, ancestor was half-fish, a reference back to Innsmouth, Mr Jim Moon, misogyny, you missed a reference there, Re-Animator and From Beyond, Heather Graham, more evil than sexy, a limitation of the budget, some horror movies, schlock, Point Break remake, Dennis Paoli, The Evil Clergyman, not really a story, look a new Lovecraft story, that was just a dream, changed the ending, Bride Of Re-Animator (1990), president reanimator, an Italian version is horrible, we have the syringe full of green stuff, ghost and sex, Turkish Star Wars, saw the poster for Star Wars, we need a guy in a helmet, jeeps and boats, remaking Star Wars as a car movie, an old man in the desert, more Mad Max style, convoys, the metaphor breaks down immediately, what the hell is that, the farmboy who learns to drive like a moonshiner, shooting wamprats, a few monstrosities, everything except Star Wars with the name on it, talk about bat movies, not The Batman, talking points, that’s all real, during COVID, Lovecraft Country swag, that’s just a bribe, comic book movies, just complain about them, being in the movie industry, going to see Oppenheimer, the Barbie thing happens, never going back to the movie theater again, a late showing, during the day, there’s no standards, worse in North America?, it will come for you too, the slow corruption takes its time, the products are bad, Canberra, where most of the government is, pretty good incomes, in a bubble, disposable income to spend, a particular movie theater, high class cinema, artsy films, upmarket, the problem for poor people, the problem of a bad experience, the content in the actual theater, Argyle, The
Beekeeper, Mean Girls, Wonka, Aquaman, Fighter, Poor Things, Night Swim, Zone Of Interest, ISS, Ru, The Chosen, Lisa Frankenstein, Ferrari, Troll Band Together, All Of Us Strangers, Hunger Games, no pee break, Killers Of The Flower Moon, the product you’re selling in the bookstore, old movies that are in black and white, one night a month, the big screen is better, the best movie experience, at a university film club, the Barbie movie isn’t designed for movie people, bums in seats, the filmmaker, a historical figure, opposite movies, The Lego Movie, a defense, pretty good, maybe 60%, only missing 40%, educated on the allusions, where did the name come from, if you don’t pay attention the first time, The Sandman, a really good story, science fiction elements, the most famous short story by Ray Bradbury, The Veldt, barely got any traction at all?, two theories, suppressed?, already been on youtube for years, use the original title, The World The Children Made, recommend things that fit certain criteria, bugbear, punished, more fool Connor, Matt Ruff got Connor, name recognition, if it has a good name, The Hour Of The Dragon, weird old shit, what percentage of people know who Barry Pain is, people in the year 2100 will thank you, some things that are appealing to the public, hope that they’ll stick around, getting trapped, shilling for garbage, pursue the things that make you excited, chasing things you’re not excited about, if you love Lovecraft, the passion is really important, people know his name, every fourth audiobooks, The Crimson Weaver, Tony Walker, Classic Ghost Stories, recommended it to him, The Stone Dragon, is it deep enough, autoscrolling, closed captioning, nice AI art, came out dark, little bit of romance, a bit or romance, goes into trances, humanskin gloves that turn people, an episode of Friday The 13th: The Series, cursed object of the week, a weird incest vibe, got cursed, the curiosity shop, the premise, gruesome and fun, they’re cousins, more Nancy Drew than it is lascivious longing looks, all the aristocracy marry their cousins, this one hour quick story, they listening to the whole 16 audiobook and four hours of talking about it, a little bit of insight into the audience, skip to the discussion, separate shows, people have control to make the file go ahead, when the analysis starts, April, vacation to Tasmania, bring back a tiger, a devil?, devils are still available, a TV show, how many minutes or seconds until Jesse’s out, thylacines, why Jesse doesn’t need to watch this shit, Aubrey Beardsley, 20 novels, none of them are available, nothing on archive.org?, a short story collection, niche stuff, he’s a dude, The Yellow Book Quarterly, did the art, sounds like Alan Moore, good channel, Lucian’s True History, take some pictures of some Australian islands, nobody can live there because there’s no jobs, to homestead?, government job, a TV camera man, looking for thylacines, the rural areas are hard to find work, with Starlink now, setting yourself up for problems, eke out, chickens, online consulting work, info about the climate and such, the other youtube, Connor bikes around, takes so much time to film stuff, cut so much into your day, some unediting videos.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Jesse, Evan Lampe, Will Emmons and Terence Blake talk about Modern Horror And The Origins Of American Empire by W. Scott Poole
Talked about on today’s show:
according to the empire, And The Origins Of American Empire , doesn’t sound right, empire should come first, not his thesis, third book by him, Wastelands, a big one, association of ideas, correlation is not causation, a good book, WWI and horror, the Lovecraft one, Evan’s concern, kind of appreciate it, should have read more books, into Heinlein now, it has to be done, Glory Road, what’s the thesis of this book?, escapism, American empire is reflect in American horror, a facile thesis, Mike Nowak, getting judged, its fun, silent conversations happening, South Carolina, written a book about South Carolina, horror ladies from Finland?, Vampira or Suspiria?, promote his book, three or four books came out, when Elon Musk bought twitter, conversations deleted, broken now, the way he emails Jesse, Dr. Poole do you think Trump’s election…, Dr. Poole rights back, really just history, Trump as less an aberration, a synecdoche, he/him, object right away, psychological explanations, political explanations, fits in, dark forces, historical/political motifs, quite anarchic, a giveaway, the first third of the book, that might be the thesis of this book, still working on the introduction, separate essays integrated into a structure, not a cohesive thesis book, more Zizeky, a propagandistic work, in a good sense, a better way, making people free, if he didn’t tell you whether the book was good or not, a lot of judgement, checkmark, needs to be longer, not filler, how he feels about a particular thing, Stranger In A Strange Land, a fascist?, misspeaking, forms a cult, Jesus kills people, he unpersons them, Valentine Michael Smith, The Horror At Red Hook, obviously racist, build that scaffolding, not a metaphor, remembering it wrong, a veteran who goes on another adventure, get it that wrong, Tobe Hooper, Jaws (1975), Amity Island, whitewashing American empire, Poltergeist (1982), Jaws is fun, thesis supported, Peter Benchley’s The Beast, sanding away, box office gold, Get Out (2017), Jordan Peele, not elevated horror, a business marketing thing, people don’t trust academia or reviewers, professional reviewers, massive gaps, Roger Ebert, The Medusa Touch (1978), one of the worst movies of the year, moviemakers usually want to get their movies to make money, Rod Serling vs. Jordan Peele, both hosted The Twilight Zone, ongoing dialogue with David Currie, loves America too much, my greatest neighbour, he doesn’t know he’s in airstrip 1, the DEW line, if W. Scott Poole had added some textual reference, a lot of shitting on Heinlein, vs. short stories that would fit this argument incredibly well, a media studies guy, lots of interesting movie recommendations, more balanced, looking at art, the film canon, paintings, movies and TV, very important, the majority of people don’t read books, a book about movies and TV shows, Gulf War I, little asides, how [Bashar al-Assad] is a bad man, you’re at a university, you want to be supportive, throw around an accusation, undermines everything else, could have been a lot longer of a book, a lot of people are alone, all his colleagues at the University of Charleston, not a scholarly work, riffing on, ultimately useful, morally undermine, mostly Americans, weaken it from within, turn people’s attention to facts on the ground, this book is dated already, 2022, Ukraine is not in here, Israel/Gaza are not in here, Houthis are not in here, Russian hacking in here, a media bubble, undermined him, his colleagues are going to read it, a liberal anti-imperialist book, I saw the signs, a materialist liberal, watching all these horror films, the media realm, the real horrors existing everywhere perpetrated by the American empire, as opposed to idealist liberal, a believable protagonist, protest and vote, horrible at the end, if we’re lucky, the American empire will fight another foe, Biden is not in this book, Trump is all over this book, doesn’t call Obama by his true name, he mentions Bill Clinton, unfortunate, makes the book less awesome, a favourite chapter, the best, the zombie chapter, very solid, George Romero, Night Of The Living Dead (1968), super low budget, Dawn Of The Dead, long, ponderous, Walking Dead episodes, a political speaker, Haitian voodoo movies, Red Letter Media style, watching Poole watch these movies, horror movies are good, The Devil’s Rejects (2005), more like twitter essays, attacking the libs, it was slick, the pivotal scenes, forgettable, Nope (2022), intended audience, white liberals, maybe a lot of black people thought it was terrific, a successful film, Native Son (2019), communists become the foil, white liberals, the equivalent of communists (white liberals), interested in race, the centrality of white supremacy, foundational, class, some nods in the direction, settler colonialism, it aint the white man it’s the rich man, the vast majority of people moving across the landscape, poor whites in the Confederate army, they deserve to die for that reason, false consciousness is a real thing, just gotten together, the planter class, how race worked in America, the idea of American freedom, American Slavery, American Freedom by Edmund Morgan, if you are obsessed with America, written for an american audience, the Strait of Hormuz, the powers in charge, who are they?, they have an agenda for you, it’s going to effect you, respond correctly when they come at you, addressing an American audience, that’s a thesis, other stuff in there too, January 6th, really?, not a big deal, 9/11?, the forever war, traumatized a lot of people, triggered a lot of people, one million percent, Starship Troopers, inserts itself, a science fiction guy, a seminal figure, tying it to the security state, Who Are the Heirs of Patrick Henry? Stand Up and Be Counted!, he was all in, the difference is, when people are wrong, quick to denounce, when there’s a denouncing party in the room, some scary stuff in there, ignoring a lot of what’s going on in that book, he took the book at made fun of it, liberal academics, some people are not going to see the criticism, bad because some people won’t see it as fascistic, Verhoven sucks us in, arent these shiny happy people showering together, Doogie Hauser dressed up in an SS uniform at the end, it’s dangerous, it is dangerous, literature should be dangerous, makes you think thoughts outside of the nannies trying to control our brains, Haldeman likes Heinlein, The Forever War, what he’s pointing to, doesn’t correspond to experience and memory, a tiny possible aspect, a sort of monologue, science fiction as a megatext of dialogue, in dialogue with Starship Troopers, thoughtfully funny, The Sound Of Music (1965), dismisses him, using things to make a , tips his hand, N.K. Jemisin’s now classic novel, an article by David Agranoff, why is this written down for us?, the sensation that the robot was a robot sometimes, robophobic, an exaggerated the broken up and assembled thesis, giving addresses the way a robot would give addresses, jarring, competent robotic, work for hire, experiencing it as we were, deep sense of outrage, sounded robotic, some weirdness in the pauses between paragraphs, weird page breaks?, the style, errors in the recording, relooped, left out little bits, at the end, his memory became a cubist painting, the same historical sequence, he repeats, he can’t do it in order, the kaleidoscope is good, where the writer reviews his own book, starting a new section, some factor about some person or some event, one paragraph, the historical sequence, what the relation is, what has just gone before, a quirk of style, a painting or a photo of something or someone, does it over and over again, a summary of the book from Random House, too much, why even in here, Charles Manson, connected to Heinlein, Stephen King and school shootings, the 2017 clown traumas, little historical anecdote, that IT movie, somebody reads a book, 2 years later taken as gospel, guy reads book, cousin tells main character, UFO stuff,more material, different direction, the aftermath of Roswell, what the 60s were like, an MKUltra experiment, Rage doesn’t indict Stephen King, talking to your lawyer all day, do it in doses, Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, Church Of All Worlds, didn’t kill any moviestars, just a horny guy, a bit of a hippy, gaia thesis, deep ecology, liked Lord Of The Rings too, weird mentions, The Omen franchise, got paid to handle snakes, a girl holding a snake, satanic panic films, Courtney Brown, Emory University professor, put his classes online, Science Fiction and Politics, interesting, read through a bunch of books, classics, novels, remote viewing, nutso bullshit, DARPA is spending the money on it, the Men Who Stare At Goats, astral projection, The Men Who Stare at Goats, Trump is disconnected from horror (except for he clowns), who’s the best the president?, the guy who builds houses, John Adams, that modern people would know, but freed the slaves, Americans can kill each other all they want, outside the borders, fewer people killed than Obama, central America wars, Predator (1987), Commando (1985), we’re a rescue team, you lied to us, Dillon, muscle-off, punished, a good connection and he makes it properly, he didn’t read, supposed to read this, making the phone calls, regular politicians, possibly that’s the reason, didn’t start any new wars, the Mother of All Bombs, assassinated an Iranian general, went back, distanced us from Iran, trying to make peace with North Korea, triggering people, we didn’t have the word, broken brains, ugly truth, at the heart of it the worst thing is true, we’re the bad guys, in the context of, shadowbanned, for his award, he’s the bad guy, point of view, people don’t want to accept, news for the Americans, some Americans, a book with nice examples, a good book, pretty good, good stuff in here, soft touch, trying to keep his job, kick himself off of twitter, this is allowed in history class, conservative historians, demented people, money in the demented industry, how did the 14th amendment lead to Jim Crow?, why this is racist, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”, the foundation of American civil rights, gave rights to black people, not capable, excellent answer, a common take on reconstruction, bleeding as a cure for colds, something that was left out, The Repairer Of Reputations by Robert W. Chambers, set in the future, a head injury, asylum, an unreliable narrator, observing the state of 1920 United States, imperial horsemen, the reality that he sees around him, people didn’t classify it in that way, poll numbers at the end, Americans who think the country is on the right track, the British Empire in 1945, the Empress of India is the head of an empire, not a lot about corporations in here, reflected in horror movies, I don’t think people should have guns, keep your job measures, Heinlein thought fighting the Vietnam War was a good idea, don’t get into any accidents, Friday is amazing, interesting themes, the optimism of Space Cadet, he has to focus on the popular and famous, got to attract attention, find them where they are, provide the evidence, back it up, the casual remark, saying something fascistic, peace and love and sex, grading this book, somewhat incoherent, why are you so focused on Charles Manson, Brad Pitt, Quentin Tarantino’s argument about Manson, laugh gleefully as you kill the Manson family, we shouldn’t have firearms, where’d you get that idea, c’mon man?, why attack Bashar al-Assad?, didn’t gas his own people, one third of Syria is occupied right now, one line about Libya being a mistake, denounces Saddam Hussein, got too big britches, Will’s colloquialism, tool of the CIA, being stupid, two items of information, annexing Kuwait, palpable in the hallways, the head of Iraq attacked Kuwait, why do we care about this, carved up empires recarved, why are we involved in this at all, the Red Sea, all goes back, feels a bit muddled, make that case, the invasion of Grenada, Heartbreak Ridge (1986), too young for the Korean War, going 1 for 1, almost gelling, The chainsaw, Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), looms large, the evil is never defeated, the final girl runs away, the external evil, if we can ferret out his thesis, good book ultimately, Jesse doesn’t denounce Poole, misinterpreting him, the cultural significance, Heinlein’s responsible?, juxtaposition, Wernher von Braun, I Am For The stars (but sometimes hit London), the cynical underbelly, what they’re doing all the time, Fauci’s in the government, comparable, funding Wuhan has had a huge consequence, excess deaths from mysterious other reasons (a vaccine that doesn’t fit), a plan to kill everybody on the planet, not the greatest guy even if he was good at rockets, Fauci more impactful, the sideshow, other than with satellites, space telescopes, ICBMS, V2, too hard to see for most people, under COVID, how fearful he is, conspiracy theories, he does both in this book, doesn’t go into JFK, how its relevant, the CIA did kill JFK, a horror movie example, Stephen King is underrepresented, King has a lot to say about empire, Pet Semetary (1983), American expansionism, the story of the Philippines, our gene Poole, fight for us, part of our great union, insurgents against the Japanese empire, you’re your own, whataboutism, Hawaii is a state now, Puerto Rico, Oklahoma, Guantanamo is empire, July 1st 1776?, the American Empire started before America did?, the treaty of Paris, where are the horror films for that part, Ravenous (1999), ramps up in the 70s and 80s, the less solid it is, enjoyable and interesting, Poole sold me this thesis: Lampe write a book, Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe on empire, all from 2022, goodreads?, reviews online?, The Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, Young Goodman Brown, Weiland, those stories are part of this, James Fenimore Cooper, a propagandistic work, nobody’s going to read that, sadly non one cares, responsible for the title: Ray Bradbury, he wrote the book, he owns it now, in reference, just in the air, Insane Clown Posse, Insane Clown President, facepaint and faygo, a michael Jackson tatoo, Matt Tiabbi’s important work, could have done without all of those, endorsement, get his colleagues, I got checknamed, feels like that, academia is very weird, people don’t have the kind of job security they want, his job and his privilege, being privileged, a popular professor at a fancy school, Gay lady got shitcanned, Claudine Gay, cheating on her homework, that was the excuse, they dug up her shit to shitcan her, the mostly kindly possible way, her performance, she did nothing wrong, he aint a cheater, he aint a liar, trying to be careful, a sense of paranoia amongst adjunct professors, pretty good writer, pejorative, bad speculation, Ray Bradbury, The Pedestrian, guy goes for a walk, police car arrests him, just a robot, wonderful, FBI following Ray Bradbury for ten years, Philip K. Dick informing on people, learns to drive from an FBI guy, cultural horrorshow, I would like decent government, Nixon has it in him, in the 2020s, a big Bradbury man, 55 and 60 years ago, stalked or studied by the FBI, the stark aspect of his work, influenced by [George] Finney’s The Circus of Dr. Lao, a dark circus, notable by its absence, demarcate each epoch, the Iraq War, video game simulation, weak, the Gulf War didn’t take place, Independence Day (1996), ah, yes, recognized the name, vaguely interesting, just the idea of the dark carnival, didn’t do much with it, the polarity between Jaws and Texas Chainsaw, several other polarities, a film review of Zone Of Interest (2023), presenting the horror without showing it, Shoah (1985), comestible, making a Nazi a nice guy, a way of reading it, a hate on, seems to hate Stephen Spielberg, they’re twee, a comestible catastrophe, an item of food, make it palatable, Welcome to earth!, PUNCH, Alien (1979), an alien in the horror mood, a class movie, mentioned, fragmentary, an assemblage of fragments, readable in slices, why are you putting that it there, #BrassBra, it passed the time, it was comestible, walk out of the movie theater of this book, Valentine Michael Smith is a fascist?, WTF, triggered but for what purpose, the Our Opinions Are Correct ladies, and Poe is a third rate writer?, just trying to trigger people?, received opinions, probably not the worst person on the planet, why is he mentioned at all?, Americans created a vacuum, his dad died, I’m gonna run my own country, you were supposed to do what you were told?, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, regime change, Russia, the “brutal Assad regime”, making Kurdistan its own thing, not even tied to a horror film, The War Of The Worlds, vs. vs. vs., that thread back to the original War Of The Worlds, doesn’t read texts very much, did a lot of other stuff on the side, he’s space Jesus, I don’t think that’s very nice, the second season of Reacher, a consensual, disincorporates people, not a good season, good riddance to the villains he gets rid of, judge and jury and executioner, just provide the evidence, provide the data, a wicked joy, you think he’s a libertarian, libertarians are bad too, they’re bad, sideburns and Boris Johnson’s hair, sister is first lady of Argentina, fun to see what happens, America might become fun again, barring health issues, barring assassination from the conversation, when and if Trump is assassinated, what’s our reaction supposed to be, bemusement?, he’s not a threat, he called a lady bird brain, he was president before and nothing happened, he’s gonna be wiser, he’s seen the deep state for what it was, if he’s assassinated it was because he was mean to them, you threaten everybody getting paid, I’m making deals everywhere, it’s so meta, weird, are we supposed to be rocked to our core, they sent everybody home in fucking Canada, this is a foreign guy, he was JFK, if Regean or Obama had been assassinated, a child in Australia, are they gonna commemorate the assassination of Trump?, we’re so fucked it has become comedy, the dangerous clowns, not so worried about the clowns, an addenda, better update it, wanting to Scott Poole’s tweets right now, are there any 2020s horror movies, Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann (1982), fun, Suitable Flesh (2023), the hot lady, couple hot ladies, Heather Graham, and Barbara Crampton, the bodies of women turn you off?, bought a DVD, Will and Maissa, Marc Singer from The Beastmaster, 1976 TV play for television The Taming Of The Shrew, meeting Catherine, commedia dell’arte style, Scaramouche by Raphael Sabatini, such a hot body, goddamn his body’s hot, wonderfully performed, available and complete but very low rez, awesome so heat, was he in V?, didn’t have his shirt off in V, loincloth movie, the Andre Norton book, the last Navajo?, read it in German, why don’t we do this book?, how do we convince Evan, maybe, Othello, the beast with two backs, Iago and another dude, Othello’s father in law, Shakespeare is gold, the teachers and the school boards have no clue, the ass scene, Romeo wanting suck and fuck Juliet’s ass, pomegranate things, so hilarious, they don’t focus on that scene, kids love it, read it back in their own words, he’s based, the time zone effect, Chinese New Year, starts off well, dig Hoffmann, The Tales Of Hoffmann by Jacques Offenbach, an adaptation?, wrote many tales, nobody reads books, try talking to people about Hoffmann, you have 20 English teachers, they’re the ones who read Shakespeare and don’t see how sexful it is, computer games and Xboxes exist, you don’t need to do much to be an academic anymore, punished by a lot of reading, you inhereted money, you’re going to your mom’s school, Evan as president of Harvard, delete his twitter acount, when this podcast comes out in 7 months, so many Hugo awards it’s going to be unbelievable, sympathy Hugos, tit for tat Hugos, when you just read Scalzi and don’t read anything ten years ago, David Agranoff is going to win a Hugo and you’re going to be sorry, he stopped calling Evan, set up a slack then Evan will show up, contact me on tawianese wechat, Kakaotalk, cute like everything from South Korea, purify yourself, self love, hot funny stuff, dig out my Bleiler, The Scarlet Planet by Don Mark Lemon, really funny and good, kind of a slog, Wonder Stories Quarterly, never reprinted, a spider woman story, The Mansion Of Forgetfulness, not well remembered, a proper science fiction story, Mike Ashley, free expression, spoof on male dominated society, editorial comment, realistic rather than satirical, boys will be boys, SF should seek to realistically portray the impact, the little corporal, pretended suicide, no emotional impact, planet plane, make them rich and live forever, secretly acting under orders of a fraternal reference, the Basques, master criminal, insubordinate comrades, radiocycles, feeling Ringworldy, totally down with it, keep getting into fist fights, chasing monster girls, is it funny?, same joke over and over again, back and forth for 60 pulp pages, a novel, red blooded masculine impulses, women and girls are objects to be conquered, a progressive opinion, our public opinion, but what will we say in our private slack?, it takes two to tango (and conquer), it takes two to Conga, marry once they return to Earth, acting according to their nature, the little corporal must have been a phrase, mostly repetitive, reflections on feminine youth and beauty, crystalizes their bodies, a giant tomb of crystalized girls, She, Gulliver Of Mars, a glacial region, Edwin Lester Arnold, Robert W. Chambers, petrifies items dipped in a bathtub, a sculpture that is fake, the artist model goes in the bathtub, you know this guy is a good writer: his focus is aesthetics, Lovecraft, that’s a story about art, when it isn’t, him doing the art in the writing, literally was an artist, writes about artists, same with Poe, writes a story to fit the drawing, The Philosophy Of Composition, The Philosophy Of Furniture, why are you talking about this, Poe?, is there anything there?, he’s all about aesthetics, an educational tangent, Mark Of The Beast, the entire entry, a lot of sympathy, pulps from the turn of the century, attacked as surreptitiously erotic, Hugo Gernsback flew into a panic, lots of blood drinking, destroys memory cells, ease the suffering to the bereaved, died at sea, the woman is Morella, the lovers will start afresh, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (2004), 1907, The Spider And The Fly, The Thrill Book, the way you think about women, a particular crooning noises, two hammocks, Julia is a spider woman, you have not tamed her, you’ve fallen into her web, sometimes Terence wins, you only have to hammocks twice, my spider friends, overrated, investigating Lego Minifigures, spider women stories, the snake woman, the gorgon, snake women, snake bodies but with breasts, ancient Greek Mythology, Arachne, sueey!, suddenly realized, warthogs, suidae, big lightbulb goes off, it’s about weaving, fun politics, more Don Mark Lemon, good ideas, The Sale Of Shakespeare’s Ghost, isfdb is great database, how could this not be on ISFDB?, corresponding French site, noosfere.org, Chuck Tingle?, a guy with a bag over his head, the unknown comic, free in ways we will never be, freer than Chuck Tingle, he would feel unfree, if anything was going to be censored from the Hugo, space butt invasion, unionized in the butt, unicorn tinglers, Campus Damascus, an aspiring proctologist comedian, likes having his prostate exam?, thinking about Trump being assassinated, who killed Trump?, so silly, why is this considered science fiction, kill somebody in central park and get away with it, invent quotations, funny as it is, even with Elvis, self-referential piece of writing, he deserves something, a Hugo, relativizes people’s self-importance, Sad Puppies, this is considered in the same, too long, that’s the word, some salty bits here and there, don’t put in so much rosewater, happy that he read it, in an actual bookstore, pretty short, Terence knows where to get it, multiple Bleiler books, he’s a hero, very happy to be pirating his stuff, Guide To Supernatural Fiction, Checklist Of Fantastic Literature, these are from the 1990s, if you look at the text, Science Fiction The Early Years, the most interesting part of our podcast, 1000 pages, very tightly spaced, review after review after review, he read everything, The Gorilla, you see where this is going, obsessed with blood, very mild mannered, acting like an ape, the reader may assume, 1905, gonad transfusions, conquering woman, becoming a goat, at the wrong time, Confessions Of An English Opium Eater, a real believer in illustrations, include them in your tweets, said something in French and disappeared, other sources, it shouldn’t have any repeats, LibriVox, Martin Geeson, 5 hours 21 minutes, visit not contact, slow but delectable, like opium, look at the comments, this guy is horrible, this is absolutely divine, the best narrator I’ve ever heard, positively fantastic, “performance”, spelling mistakes all over the place, another perfect pairing of narrator and narrative, weird youtubes, book reviews, Superboy comic review, Edward Rice Burroughs unboxing, he gets dressed up for it, fun to know, being bossed around and shit on, fuck right off, that CBC thing, Jesse had to go to copyright school, what are Happy Tree Friends?, a less popular Spongebob?, the right Spongebobby age, evil google, Bryan Alexander tweet from Qatar, Qatar sounds painful?, he’s doing his normal thing: consulting, consulting about consulting, universities going out of business, he’s not there to join the Houthis, getting paid to be there, Bryan is very careful, doesn’t say radical things, liking gothic horror like Weiland, for work, adjunct professor guys, the middle class’ fear of falling, there’s concerns, he doesn’t have a bank, free to make his jokes, he has to be anonymous to be free, getting off the airplane in Chengdu, especially Chinese ones, an unemployed layabout, fun work, might work for a living at some point, mental health episode, wealthy lawyer, spouse who works, cheap shipping, a comic book store yes, new Philips Brubaker book, Charlton girl comics, Teen Confessions, Where The Body Was, Eisner Awards, Ed Asner gives out the Eisner Awards, he’s like the Hugo Gernsback of comics, Jack Kirby, Will Eisner’s studio system, an early comics guy, Tara from Planet Comics, she’s public domain, mostly badly written, Tara Outlaw Of The Universe, text features, text pages in comics (are garbage), nobody is supposed to read it, just a rip off of Farmer In The Sky on one page, Farmers on Ganymede, fast writing, shooting hoops, write 5000 times, this is not a good story but it is good, the way Jesse solved a problem, The Cat’s Advice by Jesse, such a good story, a Bros. Grimm story The Cat And The Miller’s Son, written in 7 minutes, stupid and good, the mill’s mouser, Will’s all in, structured, everything is perfect, the cat is touching him, should be hitting Will in the feels, they pressed Hans into their service, the cat was right, he was put on a path, he does what his father tells him to do, the state?, some other state?, killed his dad and raped his sister, child soldier, how do you like that?, get up in those clouds and become untethered, all the apostrophes, the cat doesn’t have a name, not owned by the mill, take whatever you’re given, no thinking, on your bag is a pin with a bicycle, little schoolboy holding ramen, he won the rabbit from a wizard, takes the chopsticks, in the undergrowth, a calico cat, it only works for here, the way that story is solved, anime or manga level, next issue, never an end, that will be resolved next issue, for the idea being expressed, you gotta do something or someone will choose for you, to thy own self be true, adults will give you advice, wrong and right, go get passionate about something, three hours is probably the ideal, break them out of that, read something that’s at least 20 minutes long, she’s not engaging, the material is terrible, supervisor nearby, outsourced stuff, stack of Lovecraft poems, she lit up like a sparkler, 100% down with meter and metaphor, brain level is right but vocabulary isn’t, the rhyme and the meter, polished, almost nobody in English ever think about, saying the same word over and over again, about how long the word is, to fit a meter, dreamed vs. dreamt, saves a character, microblogging, poets are very focused on this, o’er, where text and speech are designed to go together, narrating as a job, it doesn’t flow, definitionally prosaic, prose need not be prosaic, there were points when, dialogue that almost feels like Shakespeare, this is Inception (2010) level of interesting, engaging with Poe in a science fictional mode in the first decade of the 20th century, brings his own shit to it, all a coincidence, hooded or something, zaps himself, brings a layer of Poe upon it, buncha other Poe, this is why Jesse loves being a tutor, finding the spark is amazing, lighting up with these reviews, stories from the 20s, 30s, 40s, the Campbell era of Astounding, the pre-Campbell, important but not that cool, personality quirks, difficult upbringing, the psychology of Campbell, a domineering trickster, pretend to be each other, Who Goes There?, interesting but very stilted, people getting paid for cash, banned space opera, to serve different audiences, a blurb about the author, so many fuckin lies, responding, women didn’t use their own names, why is that a persistent thing?, nice narratives persist, I don’t think I should pay any attention, not motivated to do so, strangely, uninteresting at this point, The Golden Globes, conceive of them, European journalists rewarding Hollywood, French guys who liked a movie, pretty hilarious, when Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize then went on to become the drone king, be dismissive of all this stuff, need to talk to Paul, banished from China, smoking cigars, if it makes you happy, cinnamon bun, sugar is bad for you, which guy should I be, it’s your fuckin life, look into it, doesn’t react well to text, well quoted in The Guardian, a dramatic thing is about to take place, the drama was very one note, develop further, Hugo Book Club predicted, that’s pathetic, rewarding Paul for being snubbed by China, rewarded for the meta-situation, Jon Stewart said mean things about George Bush, Cirsova was using his mind over it, Daily Show and Colbert Report, he’s a shitlib of some kind, a science fiction freak, a Tolkien freak, Elon Musk is more science fiction than anybody else that’s famous, D.D. Harriman, Requiem, the evil that is libertarianism has infected his brain, somebody is going to heckle Musk well and give that person an award, tried to make a media career, you got tweeted at by Donald Trump, Jesse’s uncle’s neighbour is a youtuber, very offended right now, as a communist you’re responsible for this, building civil society ties between the West and China, fuck around and find out, we don’t have the full picture, entirely plausible, a big deal, when the shoe is on the other foot and Israel’s doing a genocide in Gaza, these are not fake, these are all real, some guy says, look at this satellite photos, are these graves?, because words have consequence, you didn’t get your cigar, at least you got cinnamon buns, the cigar of the Hugo award, lose a family member, incomprehensible, the gum you like, twinkies are out of business, a recognition, an affirmation, it’s dangerous, more follower and more likes, more engagement, very good friends, I can’t smell you but I don’t need, Jesse might smell like curry, an excuse, good work on deleting people you’re following, Pulpcovers is a standard for one direction, technothriller heaven, this guy likes books, I like books, we can be friends, Cirsova’s account, marketing something, a shitposter is the opposite of being careful, Bryan Alexander’s youtube account, that is telling you something, YouTube is not where its at, a very good ratio, obligatory thank you tweet and lifelogging, foreign universities moving in, money in educating the ruling classes, non-client states, part of the alliance or whatever, part of the Empire, host Al Jazaaera, Kurdistan a good idea?, astride five different countries, using the Kurds as an excuse to control the area and fuck around, Deutsche Welle, propaganda cutout, a little doc, interviewed three ladies carrying AKs around the deserts of Syria, who blew up the Nordstream pipeline, Biden saying Nordstream will be ended, did one on Philip K. Dick, Roog, that’s the art Jesse did for it, a fence and a garbage can and aliens, gravitation beam, that German propaganda company stole Jesse’s art, snitching, Heinlein estate you should be paying attention to this, bizarre consciousness, very common, reject the idea The Green Odyssey is in the public domain, in their fuckin interest, get rich from their copyrights one day, Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc., hiring good artists, Joe Jusko, so locked down, can’t do shipping, Diamond, out of the loop since COVID, three distributors, three times the work for your local comic book store, the Previews phonebook, lines with numbers and a name, a hoped promised date, lies or false, incentive covers is where its at, guessing what Jesse wants, same dudes, comics books are fucked, Comics MATTER w/Ya Boi Zack, Windows Tiny 11, weird computer software people are transgender, Tiny 10, completely stripped down, tubi with no ads, youtube with no ads, the good stuff, Iraq War guy with bad lungs, kickstarter, 104k followers, twitter drama, reads comics, very interesting, explains why comics are unreadable, Hugo style drama, mainstream American comics, quality of those has been going up, it all works as long as you’re in the ecosystem, pretty pricey, new canonical ERB novels, to develop ip to pitch to movie companies, The Cave Girl, a cat in a forest riding a bicycle, can’t write it very well, doesn’t stop them, it’s a math thing, writing about math, the singularity in math, the characters disappear, symbolic logic, unreadable, you have to have a base level of connection with the material, Jesse’s best joke, break the ice, very ESL or very young, I don’t like female sheep, why, dam, ewe, dam, ewe, in retrospect it is humorous, cocks and hens, what’s a female peacock, peahens, peawfowl, foul is bad, why are ducks such bad actors?, because they perform fowl plays, brilliant!, dad jokes, father to many students, baby raising industry, cuckolded by the planet, forced to raise them, a simp?, a silly or foolish person, simp verb, urban dictionary, someone who does way to much for a person they lake, here is the entire public domain of Terror Tales, shudder pulps, a Ray Cummings, Mike Vendetti, really going fast, the art is amazing, forthcoming, Beauty And The Butcher, Bride Of The Serpents, Cat-Woman, all of these have nudity, Kiss Of The Flame Blossom, Mistress Of Satan’s Hounds, Pleasure Cruise To Hell, When The Banshee Calls, Test-Tube Frankenstein, Mistress Of The Dark Pool, Where Dwell The Living, the interior art is accurate, Test tilde Tube, a monster engulfing a woman, this man was not my old friend Chester Vermis, late 30s, Lovecraft’s shadow, horror science fiction movies, fetish stuff, fetishy, Veil Of Tanit, [Jesse is shadowbanned], the latest set, can’t argue with the length, finally got some traction, racist and very interesting, supposed to shudder when you read them, a lot of salacious, “weird menace”, generally feature heroes pitted against villains, cults, I didn’t want to do it, very base (not based), all that she wants, babies mysterious disappear, that’s what the hook says, Dime Mystery Magazine, Grand-Guignol theater, a simp for art of all kinds, Shudder streaming service, seems to have a lot of cash, Midnight Pulp, more for Meg than for Will, a horror head?, she’s a keeper, horror movies are scary, not to infect your dreams with horror, parents had a rental property, had to go clean it up, had mold in it, not threatening, Tetris dreams, playing Tetris too much, a CPAP machine, quite a production, sleep test, moderate sleep apnea, wrecks your dream, low blood oxygen, is it worth it?, die from cinnamon buns, Jenny Colvin may have died from Jesse’s joke, 2019: why do bibliophiles prefer loud deaths in libraries?, funerals, hearse, another duck joke, too many tweets, duck attack, Remarkable Story Of Chicken Little, so fuckin smart, mysterious, my new joke, where does Red Lobster get their breadsticks?, what did FDR say?, popular with nobody, what has tulips and kisses?, I don’t know much about wolves?, what does a suddenly deshelled bivalve say?, technically excellent, what kind of food do Chinese cannibal dogs eat?, pretty good, so petrified, why do robots never need haircuts?, theoretical physicist, some people are neutral about uranium, a science fiction jokes, why don’t cows wear shoes?, ex-spy didn’t like it, former spook didn’t, what is the name of the magazine for people who like simple or elegant aircraft?, which kind of nut do impoverished cobblers most prefer?, I was impressed by the British Navy’s recruiting methods, why are math students the best protestors?, if digital watches made any sense, I asked the captain to stop eating popcorn, he was so smitten with her, a domestic violence joke, running out of jokes, certain people at this table, what do you call a severe wound on a highly ranked army teen, how do horses greet you when they have food in their mouths, nice inside baseball, took so training, trying to make kids not hate school, what does the masticating train say?, why do barbers not allow their customers to trade their hair?, looking forward to it, happy to hear, Walmart catfood, meat or kibble, Walmart brand, congregating in the catfood aisle, 7 -9 cats, old ladies, I’m a tad annoyed, a shaggy dog or cat story, Jesse’s other podcast, pretty good, it’s short and deep, he thinks things are deep, funny and deep, a long joke that’s is in the end not funny, a longwinded anecdote, terminated by an anti-climax, useful term, something wrong with it or something wrong with you, flummoxed, setting you up, mad at Jesse, Roger Zelanzny’s A Night In Lonesome October, Ulalume by Edgar Allan Poe, a jokey funny book, health problem, wanted to like the book, it’s a trick, you’re being trolled, this is a long story and nothing really happened, a monster rally, meet Abbot and Costello, to feature the monsters, Norm MacDonald’s jokes, it’s a troll, a real genre that’s been around forever, being trolled over a novel, a novel length troll, you don’t read a troll book, “Aliens Invade My Butt”, maybe those Chuck Tingle books aren’t novels, why would I do that?, gets attention, Trish and Paul were not happy, Jesse got trolled too, like judo, how did that happen?, weird genres, tae kwon do, they’re all doing Brazilian ju-jitsu, another reason they don’t like Trump, fighting is base, MMA things, just bring a gun or a taser, no swords, karate’s a thing, hitting points, the victory conditions, scored on hits, putting people into a submission, wrestling, tap three times or pass out, it works because people can fight and make it happen, judge you on your form, the 85 year old kung fu master, tai chi, very base things, shudder pulps are interesting because they are very base, zombie preppers, magazine rack, becoming a mercenary, firearms magazine, prepping is a popular activity, ways of spending cash on your money, a lack of faith in the government, do you want to be caught without food or electricity, you don’t want to be subject to the new M-rays, keep your boosters up, seeing it as racist, tap dancing towards, zombies are dangerous whether they are black or white, because of the police, the next one [Dawn Of The Dead], solidarity as a human species, institutionalized racism, fear of the cities, “inner city”, Jesse’s buddy Jimmy Dore, [Stef Zamorano], Chicago is the worst place in the world, always picking on Louisville, still pushing on the race button, a thing in conservative spheres, they think laws are important, understand this instinct, incompetent and sold out buttons here and there pressing buttons, not exactly what Scott Poole’s seeing, Trump did the same thing, using the terms that they refer to, what Terence meant, when Trump gets assassinated, how are they going to stop him?, increasingly unable, their goal is to put Trump in jail, the fire sale that is the United States right now, that student debt thing he just promised, infrastructure bill, so many new construction projects, so far behind, railroad disaster in Ohio, economic disaster everywhere, see you in cyberspace.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Reading, Short And Deep #440
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Tower by Marghanita Laski
Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.
The Tower was first published in The Third Ghost Book, 1955.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!
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!
Jesse, Will Emmons, Alex (Pulpcovers), and Jonathan Weichsel talk about Sheba by Jack Higgins
Talked about on today’s show:
Seven Pillars To Hell, Sheba, 1994, 1963, all the seven pillars into the desert, we see one we hear about two, the temple had pillars, the trail into the desert, temple to Ishtar, Astarte, Venus, a play on Seven Pillars Of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence, pre-show jokes, hated this book, garbage, void, fluffy, airport lit, threads would get picked up and nothing would happen, Spanish fascists, Nazis, Hitler is busy inading Poland, part of the rewrite, a great script for a movie, Cain, get better again, cartoon Nazis trying to blow up the Suez Canal, worse and worse, judging it fairly harshly, a good novelization of Raiders Of The Lost Ark, fairly similar, events, Nazi base in the desert, blow up the plane, girl gets captured, trapped in the temple, no supernatural objects, suffered because of that, no metaphysical content, Jonathan is right about that, Casablanca (1942), stock characters, Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, all explained by airport fiction, kinda forgetable, Alastair MacLean but second tier, something lacking, discontinuities, a time jump, fast forwarded through the video, new destination, scrub forward, not Harry Potter style scene based fiction, in the rewrite, every man in the world loves an airplane, show yours, choose only one airplane?, how stupid the premise is, you could blow up a gate, block ships, fucked things up, a secret city base in the desert, I can revise my book, Raiders is kind of a trick, decieved, novelty, perfect execution, tricked us into liking it by being perfect, sequels, shows us the error of our mistake, all stories like this, they have to be like this or they’re the Quentin Tarantino let’s kill Hitler movie, paid attention to the history, biblbical historical supernatural element, blame too big of government, “top men”, Warehouse 13, back to the warehouse, in The Crystal Skull, a way to solve a problem, we can’t have the power of god in the hands of the allies, all the stuff is tricks, superhero villians, so WWII can happen, Lex Luthor has to exist, doomed to fail, stated discontinuities, WWII movies/books, this is not Eye Of The Needle, The Eagle Has Landed, the opposite of tricks, no craft, [Ken Follett], zone off, Will feels that, by the time the plane exploded, ready for the book to be over, just over 6 hours, 4 hours, 2 hour movie, heard how big Raiders was, Storm Island, Donald Sutherland, hates the British, Robert Duvall, the Valkyrie historical figure, the guy with the eyepatch, Jesse’s brain doesn’t work very well, Michael Caine plays a Nazi, kidnap Churchill, whole team is dead, nice Nazis accidently killed a little girl, this kind of genre, something that could have happened, has to fail, a much worse direction, Inglourious Basterds, made a promise of genre, we know that didn’t happen, a wrecking of genre, Overlord (2018), American paratroopers, a black NCO commanding white enlisted, executive order 9981, we changed history, the officer scene, super-compelling, see Hitler machine gunned very well, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, saving a historical film actress, the day Jesus was born somebody shot him with a crossbow, post-modernism, breaking the rules, bending genres, being free of the rules, we’re beyond rules, 1900-1960, future obsessed, fuzzy science, high culture vs. pop culture, meaning is important, meaning is relative and open ended, it will say “yes”, who else would be like this?, Cronenberg, is he postmodern?, The Fly remake, Videodrome (1983), this book is not post-modern, the rules of a promise, if you put a rocketship on the cover of you book you’re a liar, those are bad people and bad books, people will buy it, they’re just liars, man on the run, Hitchcock, pretty good, semi-historical figure, attested to in history, blocks of stone from almost the period, her name, she only exists in the bible, outside of the bible, archaeological hints, scientifically, the rocks, stones and statues, we the reader, metaphor in fiction, an incomplete metaphor, why is it called Sheba?, a McGuffin, it doesn’t tie in, who doesn’t like the way it sounds?, political activities of the Kings of Sheba, Yemen, for some reason Jesse knows a little bit about Sheba, where Sheba is, dispute, two areas claim the queendom of Sheba, Somaliland the empty quarter, Jesse’s brain is really good at background work, The Nameless City by H.P. Lovecraft, Iram of the Pillars, enjoyable, unless you’re just fighting the weather, Salim, a corrupt German (or French) archaeologist, especially girls, they have the up the stakes, human trafficking, this whole genre, Clint Eastwood in a Nazi uniform, make a book out of it too, Where Eagles Dare, comes out of literature, airport style fiction, what your grandpa or dad was reading, cowboy hat, range in the title, a horse, it won’t matter, not a classic for the ages, hanging out with Hitler, going into Hitler’s office, the prologue was fun, should add to the resonance, that old poem by Shelley, Ozymandias, Hitler built a temple to himself, white sam browne belts, we can assume the MP-40s, MP-38, not enough Catalina action, the revision was badly done, a 30 year gap, died in 2022, any other historical errors, there are prototypes man, random bedouins, a hare brained scheme, Ritter had showed up in the desert, we like him too much, WWII movies, girls probably don’t like it as much, Guns Of Navarone, Force 10 From Navarone, good actors in it, murky, the plot is terrific, a great read, more like a Jonathan story, is it worth it?, two genres, A Bridge Too Far, The Longest Day, as close as we could ever come to being in Operation Market Garden, actors playing themselves, a huge cast, capture every bridge, one big push, Robert Redford in a canoe, Anthony Hopkins totally outgunned using his umbrella, actually happened, actual airplanes flying into the sky, late 60s, The Dirty Dozen, 1981, The Big Red One, the end of this era, Mark Hamill, Lee Marvin, a series of vignettes, German and Russian, Das Boot, 100 WWII movies that you’ve seen, Ilsa She Wolf Of The SS, Jesus Franco, a Will movie, Spaghetti, exploitation characters, the prologue reflects on this temple that’s gone, makes it better, this book is broken, ahistorical, this temple plot, combining the two, I hate Hitler, let’s see some Nazis, archaeology, not-competent, the Spanish ones, bored because he’s a courier, trying to carry about a plot, a comedic sense, you want them to fail, not that bright, watching this Cain fellow, an interesting story in there, gone back and forth, meet at some point, until they show up and blow up, a weirdly wasted character, learn how to fly a plane, sea-captain, he’s the Mary Sue, a bastard of a book, it doesn’t meld together, motivation, he’s gotta save the girl, simply in it for the money, $6000, the British archaeologist lived, we just get the wife, the Casablanca element, the Humphrey Bogart character, we’ve beat up on this book, a small axe to grand, no rule against cringe, only black character cannot speak, tried to write dialogue with him, a 1970s movie decision, the loyal retainer, he’s Chewbacca, like a dog, the Somali, the Arab, the Greek, the German, endlessly interesting utube channel, drills down on the history the number of SS legions, foreign legions, there’s an American one, Arabic legions, Danish, they’re trying to setup an international system, the communists, the Romans, not just for propagandic purposes, Spanish Nazis, the Greek Nazi, part of the criticism we can all have for this book, him being a very successful market, seems interested in his subject, generally gets things right, just so happens there’s a lot of men out there, do men think about the Roman Empire everyday?, WWII everyday, wish you were here Paul, building civilizations, empire building, standard sorta male mindset, in reaction to/in spite of, Spanish Civil War was the prelude, can’t do anything that matters, Harry Turtledove, getting out of the desert alive, stuff happens, fuel tank being emptied, the plane they crashed, the MP-40s being a little early, technically well done, stories in the corners, blocking the Suez Canal, drop mines, airport lit fiction plots, out of the desert for no reason, an excuse to getting into the dessert, seeing the queen on the wall, big king with a star of David, the guy’s name is Cain, mark of God cain, a killer, smuggler, pilot, ship’s captain, what isn’t he? real, the mythological archetypal American, very El Borak, Robert E. Howard constructs better, sentence by sentence, Kirby O’Donnel, The Fire Of Asshurbanipal, tsk tsk, bad Jesse, a really good audio drama [blue hours], a lot like this story, Bedouins, a forbidden city, death trap, giant jewel, Weird Tales, beautiful cover, a demon bound to the jewel, puts in the sorcery reluctantly, ancient cursed city lost in the desert, The Curse Of The Golden Skull, King Kull, millennia go by, Lemuria, some guy with a beard, a snake came out of the skull, supernaturally in the curse was upon his bones, that story didn’t sell, more of a vignette than anything else, any sorcerer can be killed with steel, a stout blade is a hardy incantation, the best WWII movies, designed to make Jesse mad, The Notebook, The Great Escape, a WWII movie with Bronson, Come And See, Germans rolling in, very biblical movie, number of tanks fielded and trucks burned, adopted by the Nazi, The Imitation Game, all 19 years old Dunkirk, Jojo Rabbit (2019), Scarlett Johansson as a Nazi, Stalingrad, Defiance, Black Book (2006), Soldier of Orange (1977), maybe it’s amazing, Empire Of The Sun, Christian Bale as a baby, The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946), America has changed so much, looks like a comedy, straight drama, William Wyler, Arrested Development, smiling, get weepy, ironic, the hardest years, Patton, Rescuers Down Under, Hardcore, The Last Run (1971), a play, directed by George C. Scott’s sons, gambling addiction, famous son, rented a huge theater, Jesse doesn’t brag enough, Jesse loves old movies, Letters From Iwo Jima, a pendant to Flags Of Our Fathers, The Dirty Dozen, very of its time, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, much better WWII movies, the scene on the beach, Burt Lancaster having sex with a nice lady on the beach, the meme movie: Downfall, Hitler in the bunker movies, Hitler finds out about x, The Thin Red Line, Terrence Malick, an artsy WWII movie, the actor list, a good cast, a cast of white guys, Nick Nolte, directing the war from the boat, on an artsier scale, Life Is Beautiful, one they would show you in highschool, a good movie, Alex just doesn’t like really sad movies, funny bits, a funny looking guy, fun times in the holocaust, not a lot of laughs in Shindler’s List, Jerry Lewis’ lost clown in the holocaust movie, an offensive concept, [The Producers], Midway (2019), Pearl Harbor (2001), the other Bridge, Dennis Quaid, Randy Quaid, the handsome, Woody Harrelson plays an admiral, 3 hour youtube documentary, Woody Harrelson’s dad was involved in the assassination of JFK, Natural Born Killers, Das Boot, the reboot of Das Boot, in the gym, pretty good, adds in girls, an on shore element, girls working for the Nazis, Dutch them, Grave Of The Fireflies, hanging out with the anime Cirsova guys, older, born in 1978, one anime every 5 years, space western anime, Robotech, Casablanca, its basically a play, where do you think the French went?, technically set during WWII, not a battlefield movie, Quentin Tarantino’s top 11 movies of all time, Sunset Boulevard, dead in a Hollywood lady’s pool, Five Graves To Cairo (1943), five stops in the desert, a British tanker, crawls out of the desert, waitstaff in a hotel, based on a play, actual tanks on screen, Nazis come up with unecssarily complex schemes, it takes Americans to…, Robert Shaw plays a blonde SS panzer, The Battle Of The Bulge, The Bridge On The River Kwai, 1957 movie starring Obi Wan Kenobi, a biopic about the actor, a WWII vet, Pierre Boullet, Saving Private Ryan, a good beach scene, the rest of it is terrible, very solid, a lot of movies have plots, Tom Hanks is ok, non-threatening, Greyhound (2020), based on a C.S. Forester, really nice low stakes, a pattern, Jonathan noticed a pattern, WWII battles, wants to be a movie, shooting, hardware, aircraft, support the invasion of Poland, set before WWII, Raiders is not a WWII movie, one of the plans, keep these guys in prison, death march them, some criteria, fill in the holes somewhere, The Man Who Never Was (1956), homeless man, remade it recently, not a better movie, some up and coming officer with a limp and an eye-patch, same plot as Where Eagles Dare, a double bluff, the plans for D-Day, recapture or kill, spill the beans, if they make computer game levels out of it, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, give it away for free, just a multiplayer, The Guns of Navarone (1961) map, Where Eagles Dare, his son said, my dad is really depressed, best WWII movies, high on the list, a lot going on, best WWII movie not on the list, small stakes, not a D-Day movie, get some men off an island, just go around Crete, fixed gun emplacement on a beach, a really good film, tomb raiding book, Easy Go, missed every John Lange book, a lot like Anthony Quinn’s character in Guns Of Navarone, half-greek half-german?, his mother was a whore, before the shore, you never read them, how any of them is relevant to the book except as a title, to tie in as a metaphor, King James, 1 Kings 10, 29 sentences, punctuation, the name of the Lord, prove him with hard questions, the lovely Robert E. Howard language, went back in time, camels and bare spices, when she was come, communed with him, not anything hid from the king, where he told her not, the meat of his table, unto the house of the Lord, no more spirit in him, howbeit, behold the half was not told me, thy wisdom, hear thy wisdom, because the Lord loved Israel forever, an hundred and twenty talents of gold, the navy also of Ophir, almug trees, pillars for the house of the lord, psalteries for singers, all her desire, royal bounty, she and her servants, beside that, in the forest of Lebanon, another archaeological thing we can dig up, she’s just there to show how good Solomon is, inferences, a kingdom in Africa somewhere, Song Of Songs, the two disputes, the pretty part of the Bible, good reading, sexy reading, sexy reading is important, beautiful art, there was good writing in here, bastardized, a thirty year gap, something we’ve seen, King Solomon’s Mines, hokey romance, people shooting at each other, one of the malest books, true story, a very male writer, by and for dudes who watched the History Channel, the WWII channel, The World At War, here’s what’s happening, WWII by tweets, here’s what’s happening in the war, this is what happened, leaving tons of stuff out, Russia invades Poland, leaves out the context, if California invaded Oregon, boats and airplanes, borders that are always moving back and forth, in bed with Hitler, dig into this again, maybe they want to be allies, the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact, hidden pacts, we’re gonna defend France, France, we got your back, start with a sketch, forget about the pejorative part of it, drill down, really crazy details, Hitler’s Bodyguard, Churchill’s Bodyguard, protagonist from a men’s fiction novel, a WWII movie, someone on twitter reviewed it, Paperback Warrior, I’ll read that, response to Dial Of Destiny, it is a fun book, explores a part of the world not a lot of books are set in, Arabia during WWII, searching for Sheba, a Lost City with sentient gorillas, a tomb full of treasure, except for that one necklace, the femme fatale shows up looking for her husband, reinforcing the WWII stereotype, Son Of Kong (1933), giant gorilla movie, not a jewel movie, hold the girl or hold the stones, she doesn’t and she dies, Reading, Short And Deep, a Bros. Grimm story, The Woman In The Wood, tap the tree twice, cup of milk, friends with the bird, hollow tree with a door in it, witch lady in there, go into the back room, a table full of rings, pushes past the witch in the little house, the curse lifted, Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade, this is the cup of a carpenter, lifted straight out of movies, or the Bible, antikythera mechanism, another treasure hunt movie, Donald Pleasence as a Nazi, The Treasure Of The Amazon (1985), Treasure Of The Sierra Madre (1984), Cannibal Holocaust (1980), he’s a lot of fun, topless natives all over the place, exploitation feel, the bag of jewels, just sand, trick em all, gets the jewels at the end, that was kinda messed up, you can just kill somebody, that’s kinda messed up of you, a really cool dude, sounds like a boy movie, based on actual facts that occurred in 1958, Gringo, Bradford Dillman, Marathon Man (1976), Lawrence Olivier, High Risk (1981), Triple Frontier (2019), James Brolin, Lindsay Wagner, Cleavon Little, James Coburn, Ernest Borgnine and Anthony Quinn, drug lord, go to Hawaii and film this movie, good movies that are low rated, Tubi, Midnight Pulp, Shudder, Tubi is owned by Fox, Assault On Precinct 13 (1976), drop everything your doing, Siege (1983), evil presentism, understand, when talking about silent movies, silent films are more work, people don’t like work, half lazy, you’re on an airplane, Thomas Burnett Swann, saying you love farts, Safety Last (1923), The Lost World (1925), that guy’s an athlete, Antonio Banderas, how could you expect a movie from the dawn of movies, 1920, the 1990s is the problem, charismatic, Catherine Zeta Jones, Michael Douglas’ wife, a nice digression, Jesse’s thoughts on what makes a WWII movie, some books are designed to be movies, spec for a movie, the storyboard, why didn’t he just re-release it?, Stephen King, he’s a shitlib now, he had to fix it, he’s not Richard Bachman anymore, The Hunt For Red October, Jack Ryan, TOM CLANCY, dead for 10 years, still an executive producer, Eartha Kitt, Dirk Pitt, fundamentally broken, the girl plot, the promise of blowing up the canal, The Eagle Has Landed, Kelly’s Heroes (1970), 9th novel out of 75, more successful better selling pen-name, a drawer novel, a retelling of Of Mice And Men with a kidnapping, poured shitlib sauce all over it, famously right wing?, both parties are in favour of war, what do you mean when you say right wing, Steinbeck, the distribution of wealth, the ultra wealthy are against the distribution of their wealth, old money vs. new money, JFK to 9/11: Everything Is a Rich Man’s Trick (2014), George Herbert Walker Bush, the head of the CIA, 1963, his middle names, those are the people who run the state, WWI or not, let’s invest in Hitler, Henry Ford, full size painting of Henry Ford, IBM, Hitler used IBM, the Hollerith counting machines, James Tiptree, Shakespeare’s Planet, The Night Land, a lot of wading through a lot of kissing, mostly kissing, pining for kissing, 6 hours and 12 minutes, one is very very genre, one is very very experimental, a long tradition vs. pioneering, fantasy, Heavy Metal magazine, power armour, chainsaw lance, William Hope Hodgson, The House On The Borderland, James M. Cain wrote it, a super-good read, trippin balls, fishing trip in Ireland, a crevasse going into the Earth, assaulted by pigmen, sister is sleeping, his dog turns to dust, Lovecraft before Lovecraft, skulls being boiled, the whole concept of the hero, reject the idea completely, grown, the squeecore, let’s eat food and talk about snappy dialogue, the books that win Hugos, fiction inspired by Joss Whedon, perhaps a little uncharitable here and there, they all have MFAs, go to Clarion and pay the $6000 to be in the union, pal around enough, slip up and say something racist, a real phenomenon, changing your ways, buy a Hugo on ebay, how you gonna stop someone, you could get sued, products you can’t buy on ebay, you can’t buy an oscar, a rocketship, trade her some masters of the universe in the spot where one of her broken Hugos was, Your Haploid Heart, The Werewolf Principle, Project Mastodon, The World That Couldn’t Be, Our Children’s Children, thriving tribes of genderless natives, Gavin Duncan didn’t care, the berries cured mental illness, ten rows of vua, dead friend Gregg Margarite, LibriVox, Hellhounds Of The Cosmos, conflict, internal conflict, peach pie vs. apple pie, just a place and a setting and a story, stories with no conflict, that’s not a story that’s a display, no money for pizza, no problem, The Gift Of The Magi by O. Henry, the pornographic Gift Of The Magi, three wise men show up at the door with a pizza, well after the holidays, original art, who doesn’t like Clifford Simak?, everyone should, the way Douglas Adams, since I was a teenager, the right age for it, doesn’t hold up too well as an adult, get to the fucking point, getting annoyed, flying by the seat of his pants, the concepts are pretty heady, it helps to be young and thinking everything is dull, fun and hilarious, a frictionless surface, old science fiction story, No More Friction [by David H. Keller], Portals Of Tomorrow edited by August Derleth, it feels perfect, can’t stop rubbing it, do a double, Weinbaum is Mr. Sparks, an army psychiatrist, Death By Snu Snu, Weird Tales, psychologically deep, about writing, reality changes, The Hypnoglyph by John Ciardi, how short is it?, page 3 to 15, never ever have to take a show down, the Weinbaum list, had he not died of cancer he’d have been bigger than Heinlein, John Ciardi, actual 54, A Grocery Of Limericks, procastinating projects, Justified, very Elmore Leonard, Raylan, his last book, a cash grab, set in Kentucky, Graham Yost, TV Ontario, a movie family, arcturian space crystal, a cat likes to be stroked, tropism, every surface of the body, innately happy, objects for rubbing, old Chinese medicine, curio stuff, netsuke, chairs irresistible to the buttocks, sexual potency, his last child was born when he was 84, good dreams, the natural tactile organ, it is pleasant, pleasure is absolutely irresistible, I want less than you do, a curious coincidence, poisonous cheroots, do we collect so we can tell yarns, I’ll collect you, a new audience a new opportunity, the humidor, sachets, a terrific story so far, denubian brandy, a pause before the yarn that no story teller can omit, last blast into space, killed the wanderlust, being filthy rich is hardly the worst fate imaginable, an asteroid belt just popping, just an asteroid belt, pure diamond, federation prize money, a hunting implement, a snare, there are queerer things than that in space, a culture was founded on it, you’re not ready to believe, a yarn’s a yarn, that’s what space is, the constant reoccurrance of the incredible, unless you’ve got a prehensile hand and supra-orbital arch, the hand is good for picking things up, examining them, beginning to get ideas, an ungulate couldn’t use a tool in a billion years, that’s the sort of argument that gets hot in space, sidehumans, we didn’t make a report, as if running an inventory, buried in thought, coming up from a caveshaft, over the little polished dimple, the treasure room, what a lovely target I’ve made for a blackmailer, terrans can mate, I seem to be beyond surprise at this point, such lush pickings, still stroking the thing, too sound, reasonably proximate common ancestor, convergent evolution, without a common ancestor, deep space, the polished thing in his hand, to get back to DK-8, the hair and the skin structure, perpetually misty, all tropical, a fur covering, diffuse sunrays, die of suburn, nature always has a trick of trying to deal two cards at once, a tremendously developed tactile sense, their tropisms, it simply cannot stop, down into and over, a tactile science, tool culture, tactile culture, a rigid tribal matriarchy, working up a little voodoo, tactile gratification, they grow incredibly obese, a survival characteristic, such perfect control of their skin surfaces, strangely well proportioned, such hard wood, grainless, a huge seed, something like an avocado nut, extremely hard, then men set them out in the forest, these gadgets take care of all of that, they just can’t stop, the ruling clan of women, the slaughtering compound, his politeness was unfaltering, the men used to have unmanageable spells, hypnotize them, stops thrusting, breeding the life-wish out of the males, hardly enough men left to work the traps, the tribal leaders, new vigorous males, fresh blood for the lifestream, why I came back alone, the only male ever to leave DK-8, never, really, left, it, a puff of smoke, his eyes remained fixed straight ahead, only the fingers of his right hand continued to move, a door swung open, something huge and pale, a very Jonathan story, first sold story Going Native, humans and aliens mating, your cheroot is getting to you, getting over the covid cough, human in a legal sense, no matter how much they look human, anthropologist are busy learning if they can mate, a real challenge, complicated taboos, one species committing genoicide against the other, you like autism, autism in fiction, the OCD, not internal, an external force, The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell, August Derleth, the best of 53, Philip K. Dick, Robert Sheckley, Alfred Bester, Margaret St. Clair, Henry James, Anthony Boucher, James Blish, Mildred Clingerman, Clifford D. Simak, every story is a winner, such a good year, in future episodes, Anthony Boucher, a trilogy of novellas, One In Three Hundred by J.T. McIntosh, Earth is going to be destroyed, at least the first one is public domain, the government of the world, now we all gotta go to space, all going to go to Mars, one random dude, the most worthy people, elderly folk has wisdom, Orphans Of The Sky, piloting it from Earth to Mars, they give the rich people the good ships, One Too Many, abusing the comparison, reminds me of Poe, structured like a Poe story, The Cask Of Amontillado, little jokes about it, Behind The Curtain by Francis Stevens, very Poe, very sexual, getting his alien girlfriend a man, not prudish, psycho-sexual, use this piece of wood, a fidget spinner, it saw the future, very autistic, hypnosis is a very 50s thing, reading more David H. Keller, psychological depth, Binding Deluxe, The Little Husbands, a male bookbinders club, they’re all misogynists, of all the men who were mean to me, kinda sexy, Encyclopedia Britannica, one letter of the alphabet is missing, likes to see men tied up, tattoo on his back, turned into books, a subset, always got a wife going on, set in Africa, a forgotten writer, he’s on the second tier, Nictzin Dyalhis, a Weinbaum guy, A Martian Odyssey, a sequel, Worlds Of Weird, The Sapphire Goddess, Slaughter Of the Innocents, Weird Tales stock characters, not written for print, not hearing a strong preference, Sam Moskowitz, The Lotus Eaters, all of Weinbaum’s writing, The Hidden Planet, Donald A. Wollheim, Robert E. Howard, Frank Belknap Long, need short stories, enough time to discuss, The Sea-Thing, Giants In The Sky, really weird, the k is silent, The Horror Expert, The Man With A Thousand Legs, Mississippi Saucer, The Dog-Eared God, The Man From Time, The Man The Martians Made, The Ocean Leech, a sea-vampire story, The Sky Trap, The Timeless Ones, the pulp crew, the Cirsova-sphere, Asimov’s got good short stories, a boy who speaks with badgers, 1975, is this how you identify, getting into Avicenna, Canadian farm, half of Canadian children’s literature, Owls In The Family, My Side Of The Mountain by Jean Craighead George, makes friends with animals, Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, 5 hatchet sequels, very well written for a children’s book, Brian’s Winter, back to the hatchet, hatchet with a girl, live in the forest as an adult, not into pleasing people, decades, centuries into the future, he’s rubbing a clitoris, super-sexual, reflecting back on petting cats?, the surface that’s irresistible to touch, design work, look good feel good, the whole Ikea thing, as cheaply and with as few materials as possible, paper with a thin veneer of plastic, a pile of paper with a plastic coating, the opposite problem, this design school from the late 20th century, nostalgic for comfortable furnitures, 4 hours versus material, those young bladders can go all morning, Jesse will be talking in the background, solved a lot of the world’s problems, Galaxy: 30 Years Of Innovation, good magazine, a shadow of its former self, each story has an introduction by the author, the scene there, all the authors are living in New York, Alfred Bester wrote a story about that, Roman a Clef, recognized himself and was quite offended, Horace Gold is Galaxy magazine, John W. Campbell, nobody is super-mad at Horace Gold, homophobic fascist!, far right wing, too conservative, he’s a fuckin nutter, The Cold Equations, a reactionary old man, people get hung up, Frederik Pohl’s a communist, when you read C.M. Kornbluth, only 7 pages, she’s never going to be public domain, killed her husband and had no kids, murder suicide, suicide pact, probably definitely a lesbian, we’re both CIA, my husband says its okay, hangs up the phone, holding hands and a gun, Cost Of Living, the first one slid by, that boy of his, would he mature and take his place in society?, always kidding, he’d committed suicide, it would have been great to be a rocket pilot, a different ending, that pisses off author, that doesn’t piss off squeecore readers, the later one is probably Sheckley’s, bow out, the introduction, Jesse loves Sheckley, he’s my fave, this guy was an important science fiction writer, Scott Miller, narrator, Watchbird, autonomous drones that will zap people who are thinking about murder, a pre-crime thing, I’m not going to commit a crime, that’s why you’re dead, I don’t understand why we need civil liberties at all, the public domain version, not today, Philip K. Dick stories, a father a son in a house, future gadgets, some of his novels are meandering, highly influential to Douglas Adams, Mindswap, one damned thing after another, Candide by Voltaire, it came up, the etymology of Candide’s girlfriend, pussyhinge, giant aliens, Micromegas, novella, a long time, low on the battery.
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