Arthur C. Clarke – Page 2

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

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

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

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #773 – READALONG: Sailing to Byzantium by Robert Silverberg

Jesse, Paul Weimer, Will Emmons, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about Sailing to Byzantium by Robert Silverberg

Talked about on today’s show:
a very accurate copy of Terence, go by Jonathan, Asimov’s, February 1985, Silverberg has a problem, his skills, he loves literature, doesn’t know much about science, loves history, children, all of his stories are about marriage basically, not every story is a marriage story, I think my dog knows aliens, that doesn’t involve relationships, an inversion of Passengers, The Roller Coaster by Alfred Bester is more Passengers than Passengers, Jesse’s focus and primary point of interest is ideas, cuz I’m a dude, gender stereotype this, as far as Jesse is concerned, once upon a time, came to understand and appreciate, still immature, pleasure and value, idea first and foremost, when characters are pushed, the high point of the book, that he is an android, Jonathan is smarter than Jesse apparently, the known simulacra won’t obey him, did you command it?, that’s good, the other hint, I remember New York, that’s because he’s Robert Silverberg, Dark City (1998), programmed that way, rented on Laserdisc, Director’s Cut, too crazy to be released in cinemas, narration in the beginning, inferior product, Charlez Philips, Yankees, hot dog, presumed this was another in the tradition of C.M. Kornbluth’s The Marching Morons, William Morris, the revelation, internal thinking, what he’s thinking about what this guy’s saying, the opening description is repeated three times, it’s beautiful, description of the dawn in Alexandria, the writing is beautiful, the concept is solid, The City In The Stars by Arthur C. Clarke, what the plot is, guy has girlfriend, guy loses girlfriend, guy searches for girlfriend, the writing… so good, perfect length, I read a piece of literature and I have something to say about it, Downward To The Earth, Heart Of Darkness, the Yates poem, responding to the poem, his one trick, he’s a guy who loves literature and science fiction, knows a lot about ancient cities, Gilgamesh The King, Silverberg is really good, Up The Line, a tourist book, tourism, The History Of Tom Jones, A Foundling by Henry Fielding, the novel not the singer, a Tom Jones of timetravel, not trying to hide it, hey I’m doing this thing, The Secret Sharer, I read this amazing thing let me respond, very solidly, William Coon, I got an iPhone with GPS, childless, there’s no children in this world, there’s no adults in the world, our main character is the adult, go for characters, Paul try to defend her, she’s an Eloi, there’s mostly all Eloi, a little more conciousness, the robots are the Morlocks, you can’t be here, the unpaid proletariat of the society, money is meaningless, who is actually fixing these robots, other robots, this doesn’t need any addition, a very small idea, deconstruct it as well as a scientificly plausible future, a new person for the city, a guy from the 1960s who wakes up in 2023 and finds out his phone has GPS, how a post scarcity economy becomes a society of spectacle, where we had Mark Twain on, Enter a Soldier. Later: Enter Another, Innocents Abroad is about the invention of tourism, modern tourism, nice and stable, Americans going to Europe, travelogues, vacations vs. tourism, you build things for the tourists, Paris needs the Eiffel Tower, everything becomes insubstantial, you need to see the centaur grazing, tourism is a negative, taking the tour vs. living somewhere, some ad man, the Seven Wonders of the World, sex tourism, let’s go get some slaves, tourism is about the middle class, getting lots of bums in seats, tourist facilities, at the airport to take you to a hotel, the hotels haven’t been invented yet, Evan is in Thailand, a vacation destination vs. tourism, their whole lives are vacations, the only thing that dies in this world is the cities, Rome is the Eternal City, Paris, see the thing that Hitler and Hemingway looked at, a touchpoint on a checklist, the particular theme, the actual plot, we broke up a little bit, we’re back together, a very cynical take on what immortal people are like, they’re very shallow, juxtapose it, Ian Bank’s Culture novels, self-actualized, we’re in China, the emperor sitting on his throne waving his hand being fanned, impossibly drunk, wakes up having sex, conspired, he’s being raped by her, here’s my problem with the scene, emotional consequences, oh well that happened to me, they haven’t programmed him to have, pre-neanderthals, sexy cave woman sidles up to sexy cave man, people are people, people are not even people, a robot with personhood, glands and hormones and emotional reactions, he’s a primitive, coasts along, acculturation, like an Eloi, a strange lack in the programming, violent, goes with the flow, his love is real, he’s a robot that can be programmed to be drunk, cultural expectations, he’s just a very 20th century man, the hidden robots, this place is closed, it’s not a place anymore, his creator, mobile tourist attractions, his future, New Chicago era, don’t you know you’re a robot dude?, I’ve been bewitched, what you’re saying is witchcraft, imagine if Philip Jose Farmer wrote this book, more sex, Tarzan lives 10,000 years ago and lives all of time, historical character to spend time with, Elizabeth and Drake and them, what am I gonna do with my life, just a guy living in a world, his girlfriend’s run away from him, they’re indistinguishable, one is worried about getting old, he’s just riding that, the call to action is the girl leaving him, the catalyst, he doesn’t know he is, he doesn’t know he has that problem, the plot requires him to have a problem, what is his solution?, you become immortal like me and become a robot, just a way of ending the book, the plot is not important to this story, Downward To The Earth, Congo planet, say sorry to the elephants, the elephants sometimes get violent, checking in on people he used to know, meditating on a good book, the poem, 3 minutes, 4 stanzas, Sailing to Byzantium by William Butler Yates, on reading Silverberg’s novella length discussion of this poem…, making it the setting for this poem, a secular heaven, where the movie and the book got it from, the ending of the novella doesn’t go far enough, they should have gone to Byzantium to find the planners and become planners again, you need imagination and curiosity to recreate all these ancient cities, that is what would absolutely happen, a very modest tired science fiction story, Mockingbird by Walter Tevis, sad and meditative world, illiteracy is the center of the book, it should be a satire, university professorships and everybody is illiterate, if this goes on…, doing drugs all the time and experiencing a new media, a couple of people who don’t fit, live near the zoo, the journey to find the truth of their world, you need to go into the tunnels and find the planners, a big computer program, an explanation will be a letdown, the way Arthur C. Clarke gets out of it, everybody’s an artist and an art critic, very chaste, how did these people predict the future so accurately, go to other planets, only one city now, in the same universe, this could be a period of The Forever War, Forever Peace, Forever Free, struck to close to home, connected with people long enough your brain changes, it did not work for Paul, very unrealistic, a priori, connecting to and using drones, the drones thing is very solid, his solution to peace, about the peace thing, any plan to achieve world peace is going to be a nightmare, mind-control, manipulation, Mindbridge by Joe Haldeman, he didn’t write as much as Silverberg, inactive, confusing somebody, Camouflage, Buying Time, Work Done For Hire, makes them horny for each other, this sounds good, won the nebula, they like the fancy writing, reward each other for fancy writing, has a little bit of fancy writing, you’re a guy and you wake up in the future and everybody’s gay, it’s the 70s, he’s the pervert, I’m the only heterosexual man in the universe, why it’s a good book, different from Heinlein, an answer, a riposte, an echo, with a different brain doing the work, we have started on reading half of Tor Doubles, Gene Wolfe, that’s a problem, hit Jesse with the “it’s a problem” stick, that’s a problem for this podcast, there are too many books to do, best decisions Jesse’s life, a great formula, Seven American Nights by Gene Wolfe, is the writer reliable?, a 19th century story, a Norman Spinrad story, visit the fallen New York, the Brooklyn Bridge, a big stack of Tor Doubles, A Meeting With Medusa, mature Arthur C. Clarke, Nightwings, Greg Bear’s Hardfought, went off the rails, no be like H.P. Lovecraft die of cancer from eating beans, Eye For Eye by Orson Scott Card, no, Hawksbill Station, Color Of Neanderthal Eyes by James Tiptree Jr. and Michael Bishop, the ideal podcast, in some cases, he’s not likely to give permission, refuse to do a book by someone who is so anti-queer, his religion is bullshit, he can have it, Salvation Army bucket, a 19th century spinoff of the temperance movement, they really are an army, charity thing only now, rope people in with their homeless shelters, where they indoctrinate you, when Orson Scott Card dies will it be okay?, Ender’s Game and other things, a cigarette pack that says cancer kills, as a part of the canon, weird and distorted people, Nancy Kress, find traces, they way Heidegger was a Nazi, resistance from Heidegger scholars, finding ways to prune that list, Pugnacious Peacemaker by Harry Turtledove, a sequel, The Saliva Tree by Brian Aldiss, The Wheels Of If by L. Sprague De Camp, Saddam Hussein’s fantasy novels, required reading in Iraqi schools, rushing to finish his latest book, very passionate author, Bill Clinton’s espionage thrillers, two branches we can go down, somebody did this, back to Silverberg, see something, tweet it at me, very good but not super controversial book, visiting over the shoulder, Asgard, so impressed with Silverberg, you’re clearly not an ancient astronaut guy, Hindu nationalists, very weird western dudes, Born With The Dead, French language SFFaudio, a collection, soon to be a motion picture, The Silent Invaders, A Time Of Changes, that’s the thing with the pronouns, obscene I, coming to a consensus, a famous one, a first contact one, Thorns, tourism but not ancient, all around the universe, super-depressing, Kurt Vonnegut, life is meaningless, Vonnegut is funny, Thorns is not funny, a depressed version of Vonnegut, it’s Liggoti, I cried with Born With The Dead at the end, saddening or depressing, aliens disfigured him, a recluse, people look at him weird, donating 100 of her eggs, she’s got 100 babies she’ll never see, Mark Zuckerberg, emotional vampire, across known space, inability to form a real relationship, Letters From Atlantis, mind in other people sort of thing, ancient Atlantis, it has Silverberg’s strengths, A Hero Of The Empire, a Roma Eterna story, a Paul book, the consensus I’m hearing, worried about being depressed, this pronoun is forbidden, a powerful mind altering drug, a message of liberation, a cult favourite, 1971, October 22, some troll was in my schedule, Scott is listed there, maybe Scott was trolling, The Weirwoods by Thomas Burnett Swann, a fantasy book, semi-erotic fantasy novels, Tolkien’s level, cool looking ace cover, bear with an eyepatch, time of the Etruscans, Cirsova submission, sexually explicit, pornography on this podcast, imagine Piers Anthony was a serious author, how these prompts work, the female characters show the most growth, male water sprite is kidnapped, an actor who is travelling through, go to my girl in the waterworld, oh are you a virgin?, what no maybe I don’t know, have you been to an orgy, I’m horny now, you’ll be horny later, 5 hours, thank you, very enjoyable book, I like the short, more depth to it, more going on, different ideas, characters, concepts, weird aquatic animals, a safari vs. tourism, spend time with the natives, Thorns is like a space-cruise, Up The Line, from a poem?, pretty obscure, Up The Line by Robert Silverberg, Paul Boehmer, a time courier, a lusty Greek, a sex book, uber eats guy, goofballs goofing off, the Time Patrol, labour stuff, sex with my ancestor, I’m gonna go make myself, I’m gonna become rich, a weird attitude, you can’t break the rules, they’re managers, serialized in Amazing, has good art, a sex comedy, Hot Tub Time Machine (2010), very deep, as a man, a feature or a bug, definitely one or the other, straightfaced is weird, commentary on the 1980s, also our world, people create avatars for themselves, playing with real people and NPCs, Skyrim with AI companions, go kill that big bear over there, says something snarky, people are normally playing against NPC with scripted conversations, NPC companions helping you to kill other NPCs, barely real, scene fillers, one of the amazing things, follow that person, see where they’re going, where reality takes us, business and agenda, I’m going and buying the thing I was told to buy, I’m wearing my mask, make the dog poop, buy a newspaper, early 20s in New York, ticket scalper, rich people buy $1000 Broadway tickets, a concierge at a hotel, people walking by, Grand Theft Auto, The Truman Show (1998), functions there, the same people going back and forth, very educational, a weird form of nature, being inside of somebody’s spleen, catch on fire, speaking of firetrucks, is Will still covered in cats?, dog is having seizures, an intercranial disease, it was joyous, cheeseburger for my dog please, not permanent, new cats coming in all the time, covered in its own feces, it was like that, what does this have to do with making money for capitalism?, acquiring capital, conceivably, put em up on some website, record it, God Save the Mark by Donald E. Westlake, should be fun, very relationship oriented, more than year, he’s gotta educate people, nun’s business, she’s good, she’s got some meanness in her, all about the kindness, Jason Thompson was tweeting about cruelty, honesty is something you need in your life, cruel and not honest, cruel and honest, at least with words, ideas are potentially cruel, The Screwfly Solution isn’t an indictment of men, subject fleshy creatures, let’s all play nice, when Paul says “no, Jesse”, is the pope raping children by not shutting down his empire?, pedophile priests are a thing, we should be suspicious, do I look fat in this dress?, no, you look fat in every dress, cruel truths coming out of fiction, does that help answer your question, it’s important, is The Colorado Kid a western?, set in Maine, a Hard Case Crime book, illustrations, real bad man, such a shitlib, occasionally make a mistake, when the drugs went the talent went, the Trump derangement drug, much better as a cruel mean drunk, The Running Man is so good, reading for meanness, Lord Tyger, Philip Jose Farmer, Tarzan Alive, A Feast Unknown, 150 pages-ish, short Stephen King with a great cover and interior illustrations, a concept, Mr. Mercedes, Cell, he does characters really really well, really good book, on a lot of things, not substanial in the way science fiction can be, his fantasy is his own construction, peripherally crime book, crime books are good, Lawrence Block, Raymond Chandler, formula, Jim Thompson, cruel guy, The Killer Inside Me, The Grifters, Westlake wrote the script, a great movie and great book, harrowing, the paperback on the spinner wrack, gut punch on page one, waiting for your bus, getting off the bus, you finish it that night, character driven literature, crime is an interesting situation, how can I get the police involved, the police are a new invention, they’re a bad thing, why Breaking Bad is very interesting, empire building, the wife is there to say what you’re doing is wrong, that was always inherent with that show, what were the bad things he’s doing, killing people is bad, he has cancer, disrespected, no health care, accepted his buyout, wealthy billionaire, a man’s dignity, it’s not about Walter White or Heisenberg, that ain’t what Star Trek is, what Star Trek really is, fuckin terrible, crime is the philosophy of how to be, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce by James M. Cain, a little bit of outside of society, chess pieces, the criminal mind, moral dilemma, I’m going to lower myself, he knows that he’s doing wrong, he’s the weakest character, Jesse Pinkman is a much stronger character, he’s just a dumb guy, yo, he thinks of himself as very high, he’s brought low, he destroys the things that he loves he says, the show is trying to moralize at the end, he has to be brought low and feel bad about what he’s done, Better Call Saul, all the characters are strong, a better show because it doesn’t have the wife and kids aspect, to setup the fall, Jimmy McGill, at sea on his own, stupid and lucky vs. smart and unlucky, really interesting American stories, Double Indemnity, so greasy, he never did anything nice to me, I guess I’ve got to kill him, they betray each other, super-short, makes you love reading, a good movie, Fred McMurray and a lady with a wig, Edward G. Robinson, Mildred Pierce, so good, very successful, Jim Thompson, a Greek tragedy, they also cut each other up with knifes, his writing is bloody, turn the page and cut your arm, movies that went underground, This World The The Fireworks, Billy Zane and Gina Gershon are lovers and brother and sister, Flowers In The Attic, a funny stream of pro-incest propaganda, ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore aka ‘Tis Pitty Shee’s A Whoore, forbidden love, go with your heart, okay enough, daughter, suitor, dorks, if I can’t have you sister, nobody can, not as flowery as Shakespeare, has sex with his sister, pulls her heart out with a dagger, a huge monologue with a beating heart, and on that note Terence leaves, Farnham’s Freehold, Pirates Of Venus, subsequently shownoting in, Ill Met In Lankhmar, add Scott to the conversation, it’s X now, Elon pictures, Twitter building with an X on top, very Christian, a sideways cross, Brave New World, he wants twitter to be like We Chat, Space X etc., the hub of their social credit system, editing up a whole other podcast, might be too fresh, John Buchan wrote The Thirty-Nine Step, spy fiction, weird fiction, Algernon Blackwood, a very competent upperclass guy, later Governor General of Canada, his weird fiction is pretty cool, how’s Connor doing these days, since he went to Germany, pretty active for an inactive guy, lost his twitter account for a while, Moon Of Skulls, already confused, The Warriors, plus movie, the original version of the movie, re-edited, 7 hours, 19 minutes, a lot of books we want to read, how do I winnow the books I can read, read more books, consider leaving twitter, there are many options, Facebook groups to join, being controlled by evil giant corporations, how they get you trapped, same story, going to Burger King, never read Donald E. Westlake, he’s also known as Richard Stark, puttin’ you down, fancy spellings, he won an Oscar for that, he wrote a script for a James Bond movie, a fifth of Hard Case Crime in the early days were Westlakes, a real life coup, comedy and crime books, Brothers Keepers, Somebody Owes Me Money, Anarchaos, also about insurance, Lee Marvin, Mel Gibson, love his series, so good, Might Sons Of Hercules anthology, communists vs. conservatives, can we agree on that, throw each other out of helicopters, the bad takes, full of bad takes, get into tea about, the showing up for the podcast, Mirko (the German guy), @MrLovecraft, I was browsing through our messages down to 2016, mostly take pictures of random stuff, a bowlful of tools, I know what he smells like, I need to sniff it everyday, his whole cowboy hat collection, archives, complete access, archive.org, the secret, mostly all the time, look for pulps, only processed stuff on the PDF page, so much good writing in one magazine from April of 1899, Guy De Maupassant, Maurice Level, a successor to Maupassant, weird mean stories, the first translations into English, horrible syphilis, The String aka A Piece Of String, string collection, the cops come by, did you steal a wallet, somebody saw you, and yet you refuse to explain, dropped it into my other pants, too embarrassing, The Necklace aka The Diamond Necklace, Bel Ami, dissatisfied with her life, she could’ve married much higher, the governor’s ball, kinda like Cinderella, saving up money to buy a gun, trying to save money, you have that friend, you’re brilliant, the event goes swimmingly, she’s lost the necklace, they retrace their steps, what are we gonna do, mortgage and borrow and replace it, 20 years go by, just finally paid off the debt, scrub maid, looking elderly now, so proud, cost me all these years of work, walk away bleeding from the page, he’s just so mean, a social climber, corruption in the third French republic, why don’t you just become a reporter?, that’s okay it doesn’t matter, get a good wife to do the writing, love triangles, meanspirited, a really good portrait, impressionism or naturalism, what’s right in front of us right now, rejected, jotting down descriptions of people, it can be very powerful, a Fyodor Dostoevsky novel, one of the vampire guys, Uma Thurman, so good, in school, Scaramouche by Raphael Sabatini, no Westlake, no Sabatini, pirate books, Captain Blood, a contemporary of Johnston McCulley, huge in their day, lasting influence, a lot of Stephen King is loving Westlake, TV writers, to survive after you die, to champion in, Lovecraft, Kafka, C.L. Moore, her second husband, Philip K. Dick is trying to suppress, Charles Burnett Swan, why is he unknown now?, a little dirty, a little embarrassed, their are no heirs, his publishers, Space Viking, Little Fuzzy, Omnilingual, very off, posting more, pulp collection, Alan Muller, The Skull, Black Priestess Of Varda, The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer, the secret is Will’s been in hiding in South America, not knowing what to say, come up with a brilliant thesis that everybody hates, she’s secretly transgender, everybody accepts this, double novel sucker, remaindered, Tor business, I might read half of it, Ace Doubles, just in case, Ace Doubles, there’s no time, The Sioux Spaceman, And Then Town Took Off, Conquest Of The Space Sea, insane cover, reading glasses, go back far enough in Luke Burrage’s podcast, audiobooks, what are those?, only does audiobooks, almost exclusively audiobooks, washing dishes, scrubs toilet, how can you not want to do it all the time, slow reading, a DAW Yellow Spine, to be sitting and staring at a piece of paper, I’m done, Riders Of The Purple Sage, Zane Grey, gonna be sparky, a weird writer, antiquated, everybody’s having all these emotions, the phenomenally successful author, the Ohio Valley, violent opposition, turbulent, Lewis Wetzel, Girdy Bros., seems a little long, more cattle rustlers, Tales Of The Lonely Trails, Elmore Leonard, good but not deep, dialogue is so good, Out Of Sight, the other Batman who lives on Lake Como, Clooney/Lopez, a TV show, Karen Sisco, a test story, Justified, expand the idea and keep the character, colour splashing, the same recipe, Quentin Tarantino championed Elmore Leonard, nothing else is an adaptation, Robert Forster and Pam Grier, revisiting with Sam Jackson, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci is not in Heat, Rum Punch, set in Florida, Florida books, shallower and deeper, more style, Get Shorty, it’s fine, more of his own thing, Florida writers, Carl Hiaasen, cat lady books for men, character descriptions, superficial writing for rich people, their character description is their bank statements, Mario Puzo, Fool’s Die, big sprawling book about a guy and his story, I am the master of magic, a tour de force of writing, Grover Gardner, Grover’s voice is much like this, Paul hates it, don’t let self-doubt hold you back, thesis optional, see you in cyberspace, a ghost writing gig, a really big one, famous celebrity?, chat GPT, people don’t understand what a writer does, done their research for them, in 7 months, do it!, nobody listens, she died a long time ago, research for her historical screenplay, large famous Hollywood family, it’s Sunset Blvd. (1950), she was a hasbeen, Griffith Park pit bull, two writing assistants, lying bed and dictating to her, writers are very disposable, it’s a set of skills, mercenaries, there’s art, technical skill, ask questions, answer questions, fill places, plumbers, it needs to be plumb, a lot of writing is going to change, you can’t replace Westlake with chat GPT, entry level positions, assistants and help backing them up, people coming in, hide their assistants, George R.R. Martin has six assistants at at time, Elmore Leonard had one, sometimes writer dry up, Silverberg, a burning problem, Lawrence Block’s newsletter, he’d retire and come back from a vacation with another novel, they flow out of him, those people are pretty rare, a mental illness, a compulsion to write, a letter to CBS about Burt Lancaster as Moses, grad students he wants to fuck, Roger Zelazny, Ursula Le Guin, paranoid navel gazing, hypergraphia, a brain thing that’s happening, I need to understand, I need to question, Rosicrucian organization, you can’t read that all day long, people’s brains are different, Tishomingo Blues, Piers Anthony, so dirty, very entertaining, not great, A Spell For Chameleon, there will never be a movie, sad, leering, misogyny is fundamentally integrated, Paul won’t like it, she changes according to the phases of the Moon, full/beautiful/dumb, new/hideous/smart, all theses are fun, some theses are better than others, the lady who invented wifi they always say, smart beautiful woman, Hedy Lamarr, weird sex jokes, Satyr, female centaur, centauress, reaches over grabs her boobs, she gets angry and embarrassed, boob armour?, kids enjoy sex stories, girls are gross, girls are boring, you wanna play with dolls, jumps on motorbikes, weird period, why they were popular, Robert Lynn Asprin, paranoid, Christian parents, he wasn’t allowed to be the DM anymore, not allowed to watch The Simpsons anymore, people were a little looser, the end of free range kids, H.R. Pufnstuf, Jim Henson, 17 seasons, sidewalk sale, a guy singing, Uncle Floyd, an old soul, old stuff, L.A. for ten years, Marilyn Monroe, an empty movie theater?, a library?, 1 screen movie theater, new-fangled building, arcology?, they all have movie theaters, all the new buildings have movie theaters, Jesse is very out of touch, news to Jesse, a big screen TV size, home theaters, laserdisc, bigscreen TV, people make fun of Jonathan, a tiny tiny gym, gyms are standard, everybody is elderly, an amenity for elderly people, your dog’s already been pooped, Scarlett Johansson is a Russian spy, ballet and sex, Red Sparrow (2018), Joker (2019), the old people loved that.

Sailing To Byzantium by Robert Silverberg - art by Hisaki Yasuda

Sailing To Byzantium by Robert Silverberg

TOR DOUBLE - Sailing To Byzantium by Robert Silverberg

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The SFFaudio Podcast #772 – READALONG: A Meeting With Medusa by Arthur C. Clarke

Jesse, Scott Danielson, and Terence Blake talk about A Meeting With Medusa by Arthur C. Clarke

Talked about on today’s show:
under heavy pressure, Playboy, December 1971, the audiobook, superfamous, The Star and Nine Billion Names Of God, A Fall Of Moondust, Dolphin Island, a middle school library, an introduction to hard science fiction, all about characters in relationships, a mystery involved, a disaster movie, what he’s really good at, the twist at the end, sprinkled the hints, the paintings in Playboy, a hot air balloon, multiple gases, a giant medusa, aka a jellyfish, Jupiter, on Earth, the story this is most similar to by Arthur Conan Doyle, the Sherlock Holmes Professor Challenger guy, The Horror Of The Heights, pilots go up and disappear, crushed, giant jellyfish in the upper atmosphere story, Queen Elizabeth IV, an abrupt end, the sequel inside of it, awesome opening scene, imagery and everything, the shocking end of that section, really good, among the best Scott has ever read of Clarke’s, the structure hurts it, the beautiful writing, a bit of symbolism, an idea punch that hits you out of science fiction and into philosophy, he’s doing propaganda, he don’t cheat at all, is there an Arthur C. Clarke story where the knowledge of the solar system at the time of writing is ignored to tell an idea, he won’t write a story unless it’s plausible, petty concerns of being a human, deep time and cosmic depths, what does that make you, the Olaf Stapledon thing, characters, the guy in here, important to tell the story, solid, now he’s very solid, concentric circles of sense of wonder, a little bit in the future, almost cinematic action, some of the phrases are ambiguous, going on another mission, lightning reflexes, reconstructed him, after they reconstructed me, we’re just not fast enough, tai chi teacher, not explicit, his pilot’s reflexes, he doesn’t say this is the murderer, when they put me together again, the surgeons made some improvements, this is one of them, set more than 100 years in the future, treaty on first contact, the line that blew me away, the Mao Tse Tung in the American museum, what?, Americans got over their hatred of red China and think Mao is a hero as the rightly should?, the San Diego naval museum, war trophy, do you want to make friends with the Russians?, name an aircraft carrier after Stalin, or Ho Chi Mihn, named after people now, destroyers are named after cities, how do you embrace other countries?, incorporate their heroes, adopting Greek stuff, they’re ours now, we’re the inheritors of the Romans and the Greeks, it shook me to my core, what a good writer he is, it’s a good one, another ship that he named the Kon-Tiki, one man across the biggest sea, the prime directive in this, amongst six or more other phrases, Asimov, encounters with the American Indians and Africa, three laws, how to be in the world, don’t lie, what’s going to make you happy, start with that, it causes problems, fuck you is not a lie, be polite?, what would the basis of the prime directive, the categorical imperative, don’t use others as a means to an end, a negative, let them get used to you, not the Star Trek one, they break it all the time for purposes of plot, there’s something behind it, those are how you should act as a person, just replace the word robot with human, a human must consider other except where injure, my feelings are hurt, fuck your feelings, a person must protect his or her own existence, interesting application, we’re not robots, methods and plans of dealing with other people, taking stuff coming out of philosophy, parallel evolution, Asimov’s fourth law, the zeroth law, technically fourth, The Evitable Conflict, 1950, Chairman Mao, Nixon goes to China, detente, because Sri Lanka (or India) had to play a role, a tornado touched down, doesn’t cheat at all, an airship book, more of a hot air balloon than anything else, hot hydrogen of course, thinking through the scenario, the twist at the end that brings it up, this guy’s immortal?, a ship of Theseus scenario, rolls away at a calm 30 km per hour, 7 feet tall, to give him self-confidence, feeling separate from humanity, the ambassador between the ones made of carbon and the ones made of silicon, the aliens, radio dish heads, are they intelligent, I’m convinced that Medusa knew your blindspot, hunting, the intelligent species must be the predator species, a feint, a lightning bolt, why not, up for grabs, the aimed at manta fell like stone, Jupiter is a lightning bolt god, when we see him at the end, he’s turned to silicon, identified with his metallic aspect, Medusified, plummeting manta, I’ve studied a lot of jellyfish, Juliana and Luke on the Science Fiction Book Review Podcast, octopus books, a Ray Nayler book, spiders, eight-legged non-human creatures, the length of the story that’s required to do the job, an hour and half, somewhere in between, two parts, a view of humanity, superchimps/simps, clothes, slaves, brought out of mothballs, a POV of Earth from someone not interested in it, be a pioneer, no one could go, a super-pioneer, why this book exists, the opposite of the moonbus book, trying to conform, people want shitty romance cheating on your wife disaster relatable, I’m more like this guy, Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World, almost none of it is that interesting, his brain level, he’s just not interested in the normal things people are interested in, exploring the ocean, so interesting down there, Jacques Cousteau, collecting notes on hailing frogs, not the normal science fiction writer, maybe Olaf Stapledon, his personal life, not interested in slow pitch, Arthur C. Clarke goes to hell, develop a deep philosophy to deal with it, Howard Falcon, like HAL, Jesse I’m afraid that’s not possible, HAL has conflicting orders, The Sentinel, wow!, full of philosophical things, sense of wonder things, it’s all earned, if this then that, Criminolly, garbaugust, worldbuilding, there’s no distinction between science fiction and fantasy right now, cool ideas about how the world works, tried a few more, testing the theory, wanting to be engaged, turning into Jesse, why we have to be so enjoying about terms, The Kaiju Preservation Society, infodumps about made up facts, could you explore it?, honest, solid, he doesn’t cheat, he’s standing on what he knows, realities that might be interesting explored, he’s not a cheater, when Larry Niven cheats it’s so he can get to another thing, twists something, a third of the episodes, are there any Star Trek episodes that are hard SF, the closest they come is The Galileo Seven, a rip off of The Cold Equations, Spock gambles, there’s a percentage chance there’s a passing alien spaceship, why did I read this story, have their cake and eat it too, angry fights, be hard about these things, you inhuman monster, Spock’s being very logical, fan service episodes, not memorable episodes, social soft science, what should our relationships be, the good stuff, people watched a lot of television and movies with spaceships in it, wouldn’t it be cool if, aliens, almost none, Childhood’s End, even The Star, doing soft science fiction, why I don’t like science fiction and fantasy books, fantasy is a whole other thing, show me where Ted Chiang cheats, an interesting thought, The Merchant And The Alchemist’s Gate, Howard Falcon was unloveable, a novel called The Medusa Chronicles by Alastair Reynolds and Stephen Baxter, a sequel to The Time Machine, Terry Pratchett, the childhood of Howard Falcon, when Star Trek goes back and explains the early life of Kirk and Spock, a fallacy involved, for what purpose, what does it matter?, unless there’s an idea there, why it’s shit, this episode we find out Kirk has a brother, why?, a massacre on some planet, just to raise the stakes, to make the Holocaust personal, to do a technical job, a Chekov’s gun on the wall, Spock having eyelids, to press the reset button, a technical requirement of a show where it’s not serialized, Vulcan nerve pinch, the ears are not what make Mr. Spock Mr. Spock, an emotional being controlling his emotions, him being a spawning salmon Theodore Sturgeon episode (Amok Time), every time they bring up a Vulcan, there’s exceptions, response video, Michael K. Vaughn, he has good taste, a good youtuber, people say why don’t you, here’s a recommendation, seem to be following Luke Burrage’s podcast, a big thing in France, amongst the aficionados, how intelligent it is, boring, The Mountain And The Sea, quite into philosophy, coming at it from a philosophical side, setting the scene before anything noticeably strange happened, how long it is, judging books by their cover and how long they are, bad cover, does it need to be this long, poingant and mind expanding, the UK does better covers than the USA, the UK edition, RayNaler.net, translated into French, thought it was brilliant, June 2023, Cthulhu, Japanese style, maybe this book is necessary, another cover with more tentacles, almost doesn’t ever talk about tentacles, cosmic horror = tentacles, Antarctica, the melting and stuff, a giant frozen 17 tall penguin, Tekeli-li!, philosophies of writing, Robert E. Howard is writing for money, very successful as a pulp writers, 4 times as big, Lovecraft doesn’t write stories that don’t need to be written, this is what is selling right now, even when he’s doing very pulpy stuff, things that are not needed for the story (to make the cover), a born storyteller, writing story, they like stories too, they don’t have the chops, people who won’t write for the commercial market, antagonistic to commercialism, Clarke is a bit of both, very elderly collaborations, sullying his legacy, The Light Of Other Days, very disenchanted with Arthur C. Clarke, and Isaac Asimov, Silverberg, cash-ins, a reader need not be subject to the whims of the author, because your friend wrote the book, fuck you, go back to basic principles, Clarke has a purity in him at times, Bob Shaw, an expansion, Light of Other Days, the New York Times lie list, Talisman by Peter Straub and Stephen King, Black House, shouldn’t be trying or able, necessary compared to Asimov/Silverberg, Clarke/Baxter, Olaf Stapledon wrote this, he didn’t write for cash, the unique fluke, King’s psychology, King has a limiter or a governor, he doesn’t use it for evil (or for good), hurts his own work, a fantasist of childhood and American life, a fantasy writer, we just don’t think of him that way, “fantasy realm”, The Goblin Emperor book, secondary world fiction, worldbuilding is mostly bad, silly worldbuilding, 2001: A Space Odyssey, psychedelic experience, intelligent worldbuilding, to fill pages, fall apart in a mush, a speculative component, the sensory impact of the trip, highly informed, standing on what is know and speculating, if there was life it would be in this zone, that kaiju book of Scalzi’s, wonder about your purpose, none of this is helping me in my life, what happens during the game, processing a magazine, sitting too long, certain number of hours, that’s fun, but it ain’t a novel, it ain’t good science fiction, what would our guy from youtube think about Philip K. Dick, make a magic system work, things are happening because they have to, if time started going backwards, still in the Roman Empire, spins up a world in order to explore it (not to fill pages), his novels are all worse than his short stories, just better, his short stories are better than that book (The Man In The High Castle), a children’s book, Galactic Pot-Healer, work and being out of work, a frontier where people are challenged to find meaningful work, that gunfight was really cool, some people act like robots, unemotional or mean, is sex with co-workers cool?, very fun and very rich, he didn’t need a setting for some characters, if your story doesn’t have idea at its core it’s not science fiction, imagine with ideas, live with ideas, a Philip K. Dick essay, Olaf Stapledon writes big long thick books that are science fiction but not novels, that’s interesting, how do you do that, a history of the last and first men, like reading a whole bunch of Clarke stories, unique in fiction, poor guy, there’s a lot not to enjoy, How To Build A Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later, until you toss it across the room, a good theory of fantasy, fantasy is pretty big, the hardest of the hard, uploading and downloading your brain, it’s not, Ringworld, a whole bunch of gimmes, smart aliens, an aggressive species, they generate a D&D party, the Larry Niven character, just an excuse, a gravitational feeling thing, complete bullshit book, everything is fiction, it would just fall apart, 100% cheater and it works because he has an idea at the core and everything else is to get to that idea, he cheats in every possible way, Clarke has a very different philosophy, even in A Fall Of Moondust, not his best book, a bunch of boring characters, people get lead astray, super-good, a lot of Silverberg lately, Tor Doubles, read about a third of half of each of those books, a Silverberg novella, especially with his novels, he’s a contemplative dude, he’s sorta artsy and literary, he likes old books, Heart Of Darkness on another planet, elephants for the economy, sex on the brain, human relationships, the worldbuilding is to get to the transcendent point, The Book Of Skulls, being a good writer helps, Passengers, what is he famous for?, made Majipoor maybe?, Lord Valentine’s Castle, Nightwings, doesn’t have a killer book, big stature for a guy who doesn’t have a killer book, Neuromancer by William Gibson, rather than the fixup, his standalone short stories are really good, Phases Of The Moon by Isaac Asimov, a writing machine, wrote for money, still alive and not licensing his name out, 2010, now that he’s not poor, not getting his pension padded, good story, good writer, Arthur C. Clarke, he knows what to do, Farnham’s Freehold, he’s gonna rant about it, it’s not as bad as you think, Paul, oh my god, at the time, Westlake, revving back up, The Colorado Kid illustrated edition, Justified: City Primeval, there are character in it, Elmore Leonard short story, Tommy Patrick Ryan, some random guy on the internet, through Eric, 11th ever published story, readability through the fucking roof, so much characterization, got worse at the end, No Man’s Land by John Buchan, early evening, a reasonable hour of the evening, save the hunger to be angrier, approaching it satisfied, Houston, Houston, Do You Read?, Ace Double, a subpodcast of only Tor Doubles, we started with the first one, The Screwfly Solution, The Girl Who Was Plugged In, Run For The Stars by Harlan Ellison, savage, a juvenile delinquent in space, clairvoyant ability, very Harlan Ellison, A Boy And His Dog, Eye For Eye by Orson Scott Card, The Last Castle by Jack Vance, The Dragon Masters, I love the lengthy, Ill Met In Lankhmar, Vintage Season, The Sword Of Rhiannon, Ursula K. Le Guin, Kate Wilhelm, Kim Stanley Robinson short stuff, they don’t list the table of contents, The Ugly Little Boy, Edmond Hamilton, Screwtop, Enemy Mine, Hardfought by Greg Bear, an idea man, he shoulve had a badge that said “idea man”, The Blind Geometer, Fritz Leiber, Universe by Robert A. Heinlein, fantasy, Damon Knight, Icehenge, Press Enter by John Varley, Death Of Doctor Island also The Island Of Doctor Death, Karen Haber, Home Is The Hangman by Roger Zelazny, Wheels Of If, Gene Wolfe, The Book Of The Short Sun, Conjure Wife is on LibriVox, Ben Tucker is good, a five hour book, unleash hell, we got this in our back podcast, shownoting, back in the day, Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle, Naxos, the torch of science, a metabook, 1831 novels, so many good ones, Scottish essayist, Fraser’s Magazine, purports to be a commentary, Godborn Devilsdung, a book review of that book, transcendentalist, German idealism, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Immanuel Kant, there are things in themselves, things as we perceive them, the laws of our mind, ways round, suppressing different premises, this book sounds really good, in a funny way, Johnathan Swift, Tristam Shandy, Laurence Sterne, founding text and serious organizing study of clothing, fashion theory, sartorial ambitions, clearly a book we both need to read, my all time favourite book, this is one of the books that makes life worth living, only seeing through clothes can we understand life, not composted, a half-mad saint, 320 pages, in the PDF, the torch of science, not the smallest cranny or doghole can remain unilluminated, what is he famous for?, some sort of hero worship, a precursor to the superman, the great providential men who make history, Hayy Ibn Yaqdhan by Ibn Tufail, like Tarzan, most translated, 1,000 Nights, the dream one, very solid, very Borgesian, Borges never wrote a collab book to make money, Frank Herbert son, Tom Clancy ghost author to write Borges books, a funny tweet thread, Hobbits and wizards, good morning as in fuck off, Justin fucked every Canadian for 20 more fucking years, he’s bought and paid for and corrupt as fuck, persist, not a big damn hero, very bad man, make some coffee.

Playboy, December 1971 - A Meeting With Medusa by Arthur C. Clarke

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The SFFaudio Podcast #770 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Progeny by Philip K. Dick

The SFFaudio Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #770 – Progeny by Philip K. Dick, read by Mike Vendetti. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the book (45 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Evan Lampe, Mike Vendetti, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Weichsel

Talked about on today’s show:
IF Worlds Of Science Fiction, November 1954, we’re bringing it back, Worlds Of Science Fiction, IF, it’s IFfy, the tagline, a tier below, a tier above, James L. Quinn, early in IF’s run, 3rd year, Evan Lampe’s podcast, the Philip K. Dick review website, John Taylor Gatto State Controlled Consciousness, schools created to create utopian visions, close to Philip K. Dick’s perspective, the story about the autistic kid, not really autistic, a nurture story, the thesis of the story, raised by robots, kids in it is very unusual in actual science fiction, 9 at the end, Theodore Sturgeon, a good handful, Tony And The Beetles, The Father Thing, comes up every time, something that happened to Philip K. Dick, the hospital, the mental institution, typing on his keyboard, you know what we need is more science fiction stories about kids adopted by robots, Nanny, menacing, how menacing this story is, body horror, sweat and smells of the body, the aftermath of the meeting with the father, The Last Of The Masters, hairy sweaty man, girls boobs, almost connect that to AI, newspaper article through AI, a Promethean moment, Ed is left out of it, he doesn’t participate, channeling Eric Rabkin, the robot doctor, a sandwich, in fairy tales, a science fictional fairy tale, sharing food means you love that person, the squirrel accepts his food, Pete’s doctor/boss/trainer, I’ll eat at the cafeteria, pop the question: will you come and be my son, I don’t like to buy in the diner they skin you, six hundred employees, this is menacing, sentences that go unfinished, training to become a bio-chemist, a messiah for the robots, a go-between, what does the smell of his father remind him of, laboratory animals, a contemptible smell, I can’t place it, just like when he was a baby, Dr. Bish, the automatic heating system clicked on for the night, the smell as the experimental animals, the promising young boy, the boy smiled, awkward and humane, a secret private smile of complete understanding, evil emotions, you’re son’s deformed!, my god, what does it mean?, what about that first wife, a secret that he’s telling us over and over again, a secret Philip K. Dick child?, a waveshot of his head, talking about himself?, sociologically going on, there’s no manual telling you what to do, Dr. Spock, let the kid cry themself to sleep, the worst thing anybody’s ever done to Americans, ADD, needs a lobotomy, icepick lobotomy, one of the Kennedy children became a vegetable, you have to trust the doctor, towards that, that exchange, did he try and pick up the child, a circumcision or something, feel the weight of the child in his arms, sanitary, antiseptic, oedipal complex, and today, sex studies from the 50s, Kinsey studies, living back there, oh my god I’m a homosexual, I had no idea, lies and wishfulfilment, sweeps the nation as a fad, weird instiutional problems, you’ll be happier when you join the institution and follow the rules, Dick likes twists and layering of twists, a systematic distortion, growing up with the robots and imbibing their ideology, all the paperwork, the consent forms, what does see mean exactly?, the laws, math, age, why I was 19, sneaking into the rocket facilities, I was twice your age when this happens, more tired and sweating and balding than he was before, didn’t have a kid at this point, Beyond The Door, a wife cheating on her husband with a cuckoo clock and a boyfriend, whose Pete?, Mrs. Peters, this name, Ed Loyce, Ed Doyle, figures in his life, Pete might be him, the father became extremely busy, coming back, here I am I’m your dad, his dad lived in DC, a serious character flaw, when he’s 18, comes back on the delivery day, expects to have a say, he doesn’t get that, writing to his mom, boarding school, mom, send my pills, non-nervous pills, full of anxieties, nervous breakdown in high school, he takes their answers seriously, is that really true?, he writes about it, the robot is an institution, institutions replace parents, the doctor is not a human, fleshy cover over its arms, two robot taxi drivers, a strapping late model robot, they’re replacing Ed, the doctor adopts the child, talking about himself, these amazing psychological conditions, this unfeeling monster, the child didn’t need to be touched, these things are in the air, 1928, the abortion truck story, children hiding in thornbushes, The Crawlers, The Pre-Persons, the father agrees to go into the abortion truck with him, maths, 1974, the ability to master algebra was the test for having a soul, animal soul, authority says this, what happens if that’s true?, the neuroses that I have, served by robots in a cafeteria, being raised in a boarding school, mandated to join this army, a really bad consequence, keeping the baby with you at all times, Jesse is very talky, primarily about institutions, how institutions sell themselves, what was best for the kid, she trusted the institutions, being inhuman by not wanting to bring the baby to her breast and smell it, she’s not sad about it, I was chatting with the doctor, she’s smoking, people aren’t sad sending their kid off to public school, the entire ideology of the system, a sexual thing, smoking with the doctor, fantasy sex with the doctor, the post coital cigarette, a cuckolding going on, push psychoanalysis a tiny little bit, the biological becomes an institutional complex, 1986, your kid has ADD, your kid needs amphetamines, there’s a biological thing, the calf comes out of the cow, literally happening, how much culture and institutions erode, she is a monster because of it, we’re all monsters, a more primitive part, Dr. Bish what is this weird white liquid running out of my breasts?, he’s an idiot, what a moron, the internet is full of misinformation, an institute, Los Angeles Central Hospital, late for the birth, infodump, we don’t touch our son, when do we get him?, the waveform says he’s going there, another institution, once he’s fully grown up, his brain is no longer plastic, when he’s an adult, molded into what the institute wants, the mom is out of the picture, they’re divorced, Ed Doyle’s alternative, the frontier theme that Evan so rightly picked up on, no squirrels, Pete’s dad’s job is the plumbing, his only job is to supply the sperm, Star Trek, high end jobs, build and maintain those ships and those systems, in the end you still need infantry, pushed away his wife, away all the time on the frontier, a traveling salesman, as a result Janet leaves him, something really important, the gendered nature of labour saving technology, Philip Dick doesn’t get this, Evan’s Philip K. Dick readthrough, hostile to washing machines, microwave, refrigerator, who raises kids?, mostly womens work, the bullshit of raising kids, making the lunch everyday, stroll in from alpha centauri, the wife is making the rational choice, shitwork, Dick really has this problem, after a certain point in the story, son come with me, this is going to be our business, there’s a lot of things that need doing out there, out beyond Prox, nature, self-fulfillment, won’t even accept his sandwich, extrovert with the nerdy kid son, eat hamburgers, sitting at home, making plans to destroy humanity, make them less smelly and more docile, Sales Pitch, commuting through space, replacing body parts, have your colon replaced with a plastic tube, no more sweatglands, make everything antiseptic, just make sure that children are clean at all times, the runny nose, he needs to go on a boat and learn the ropes, the mom’s instinct and the dad’s instinct, when the answer is the institution they’re both wrong, giving up a lot of power to the institutions, Mildred Clingerman story, an automated kitchen, about 7 Ray Bradbury stories, Catharine Beecher, bastion of their power, use science and knowledge and education to rationalize the domestic sphere, a viewpoint, a little glowing breast, spray on glowing, she’s glowing because she just gave birth, baby needs milk, not enough baby formula, baby formula is bad for kids, you could use a breast pump, giant reliance on artificial milk, convenient, maybe its because you’re at work, factory or office or school raising other people’s children, bad marriage, the menace is unstated, maybe the Oedipus complex is worth it, not just corporations, government regulated facility at the very least, public private partnership, a legal person, not a caring person, not capable of caring, that’s what his waveform says, he’s going to be a rocket jockey, the son doesn’t even understand the question, he smiles, you think desire has anything to do with it, the robots and the man all have emotions, maybe he’s not the best boss, as close to lying he gets, designed to be sympathetic towards Ed, propaganday, why do we trust this institution, a photo of his plastic brain, bio-chemistry, they’re going to fuck around with humans, the alternative is the queen living West Texas planet, emphasizing the cleanness, unpolluted, smoking, drinks a brandy-frappe, what’s best of the child, she’s been reading all the books, Gayelord Hauser for nutrition, parenting books, how they sell of these things to parents, no shopping, no clubs, no social life, the optimistic part of the story, Earth is going to Hell, Dick was an optimist, Hello, Doc!, the event has happened, a top-level robot, it had fooled him, Dr. Bish appeared plump and well-fed, is the robot married, diamond-tie clasp, simulated manicured nails, a pinstriped shirt, white collar vs. blue collar, just the baby daddy, rushed in from the airport, have you seen a squirrel before?, leaned on one way, we can’t trust this, trusting it is the bad thing, we agreed to this, they were intimate at some point, to determine the gender of the child, he’s only gone six months, natural sex, a lady with boobs so he fell in love with her, she’s a monster because she trusts the institutions, yes I am, H.P. Lovecraft, that amazing transformation thing, regular successful businessman, not hairy, the robots becoming too human, Isaac Asimov’s Let’s Get Together, a critical mass of robots, Herbert Goldstone’s Virtuoso, learns to play the piano, music is supposed to be hard, somethings shouldn’t be automated, AI art, two robot taxi drivers are acting like robots, literally human beings who are obeying instructions, turning them into robotic people, ROTC, failed the first day, twirl your rifles, get a haircut, his robot stories are so different, fixed it, could have easily been a chapter in The Humanoids by Jack Williamson, serialized vs. novel, earth vs. an alien planet, expanded novel version is really good, an answer to any objection, a really important concept, any word you don’t know the meaning of your are subject, bleeding under your dura, doctor I know exactly how we fix this, subjecting ourselves to their ideologies, sometimes that’s a good thing, look both ways before you cross the street, a hard concept to get across, when we read these stories, wow that’s really powerful, but why?, escape valve, the place we can run off to, frontiers exist, a perceived option, go west young man, where do Americans run off to?, Taiwan, to Vietnam, not an option, Miss Columbia, propaganda, plant a flag, government giving you an outlet, free real estate, shaped politics for most of American history, pick up your stakes and go, everyone moved to Saskatchewan for free land, then everyone moved to Vancouver for jobs, the dust-bowl, the dirty 30s, 3 million people were displaced, we don’t have the language to describe it, people moving out of California to Texas or Florida, internal movement, region in this, State Controlled Consciousness, every utopian movement, Sunday school, propitiate your ideology, Dr. 2G-Y Bish, bishop, kids put into religious orders, designed to break up the family, outsourced to religion, keeping doctrine, interesting idea, not very many characters, Janet, Ed, a big jump, takes him out into the country, Los Angeles, go back to the city, a general experience, Evan’s generation, the first generation to go to college, those Thanksgivings, those times back are a little weird, at least four or five years to orient back to the working class culture, academic sorts, we gotta get this fence fixed, inspiring and interesting stuff, intellectual stimulation, trying to communicate that, it doesn’t translate very well, rebalance how you talk to people, most people don’t read books, unless youre constantly building up, Jack Williamson, Gilles Deleuze, cows, chickens, horse, chicken business, cow business, the second dimension, initiated into a more bourgeois culture, the double gap, so rich, fairly obscure Philip K. Dick story, following the 9 years, Paul sings the classics, Cat’s in the cradle and the cradle’s on fire?, kill his father and marry his mother, it doesn’t come from the Greeks, Sigmund Freud, is it true?, not exactly, recapitulate the relationships you are trained in, animals training other animals, interacting with other humans, any of the seven times I’ve tried, maybe that’s not true, a structure, he likes older women, where is the libido?, the attitude of Doctor Bish, looking at Peter the baby with a look that was greedy, in Anti-Oedipus, the bureaucrat caresses the forms, Anti-Oedipus by Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze, bottom of page 71, creasing the edges with his nail, plugged his desire into rules and regulations and forms, go to the police, see if there’s a detective on duty, it gives them something to do, he’s not like Mr. Spock, sinister and evil and aloof, like Data, Data had curiosity, satire, embodiment of authority, an evil twin (Lore), psychoanalyze Star Trek, the Lore Data stuff, gave him a twitch, Lore made Data have a twitch, there’s a twitch here, a libidinal twitch, different educational institutions, Hampshire College, Fordham University, unstructured to structured Jesuit university, post-modern to classicist language, a whole different language, small economically depressed town where half the stores are closed, an aversion, they were hit with books at school, lame TV too, a reality TV show was cool, marriage counselor reality TV show, what is it on cable?, therapy, if that was L.A., a level beneath, an aversion to reading books, the struggle, Peter Camenzind by Herman Hesse, goes back home, his rural town was better, a spiritual transformation, stained with sweat, page 74, he brought out his pipe and tobacco, a big sulfur match, murmured, this is a good pipe, 25 years ago, do the math, only about twice as old as you, a WWI veteran, WWII guy, at a certain point in life every man starts smoking a pipe, filling and lighting a pipe, old fashioned stuff, that ritual, sucking on a pipe, casting smoke out of their nose, a little bit interested, lost in his reverie, if he was a little more skillful they could’ve connected, he had the right instinct, what makes it a tragedy, when dads fuck off, there’s a problem, wife, institution, capitalism, we could work together, how long it is, almost nothing happens, a walk, a hospital scene, episodes over 9 years, backfill, infodumping, 3 scenes, permission, fill out these forms, the ride in the car and the walk, the last scene, off with Doctor Bish and Peter, the key to Peter’s reactions, emotional, that’s interesting that you think we can connect, oof, anthropological look at the father from the son’s POV, distancing, broken sentence, when you will…, quite right, the backstory talking, bumming around town, outside school rightly, sneaking into the rocket launching yards, hopped over to Mars, a hasher, Ganymede was all sewed up tight, space freighter, worked his way out to Proxima, workaway, I found what I wanted, swelling with pride, little retail and service place, everybody needs a plumber, a good job, the best blue collar job, the pay is very good, when the water starts flooding you need a plumber, building communities, he sounds very free, like a rolling stone, not an appealing life to someone who’s a part of the institution, she doesn’t leave the earth, she likes being under the system, you could go off, there’s fear involved, there’s the comfort of the institution, institutions can’t love you, fill out your forms, ivy coloured walls, drifters, cafeterias, you have money, an efficiency you don’t get at home, living in China, didn’t eat dinner, new job, cafeteria lunch, where do you wanna eat?, doesn’t the food just kind of appear?, where to eat and what to make, drops from your mind really quick, elementary schools in France?, fancy lunches?, 20 years in a highshcool, 2 hours or longer to come back home, sandwich, all sorts of good things in it, presence of the outside inside the institution, “I’m not reduced to the institution, I have my sandwich”, taco Tuesday, people get excited about the rotation, a crazy thing, homemade food, ketchup classified as a vegetable, school lunches program, the healthy food pyramid we just made up, at the top is a greedy corporation, like am institutionalized restaurant, weird hot things, hot lunch and cold lunch, 2 cafeterias in the same school, Cold Lunch Paul, bologna sandwiches, hot lunch for free, against the rules, a person who hasn’t been completely institutionalized, get you hooked on the hot lunch, back to bologna sandwiches, like the place, baloney, 70 liters of chili, more efficiency, the prices start creeping up, adulterating the materials that go into the pot, corruption, let’s have a daycare, a hired person, paying money vs. taking turns, we can lower the quality of the care here, just not loved, all in this little 46 minute story, chat GPT, it can do my homework, I can fire everybody, charge subscriptions, hire somebody to do this, you still hire dishwashers for restaurants, an open version of chat GPT, answer emails from other robots, an efficiency there, students are into chat GPT, grunt garbage work, pedagogical value of repetition, they’d much rather cheat, painting class, if they’re into it they’ll do it, most students don’t want to be essayists, kids doing their homework, punishment, if you get low grades you need more attention from the government forms, chat GPT can be really educational, dialogue with it a lot, The Three-Body Problem, Chinese TV series of 30 episodes, suggestions and prompts, analysis, no that’s not what I want, good ideas, some creativity sparks, Rossignol, better and better, The Ash Grove, makes you cry if you let it, makes children emotional, as a corrective, analyze Philip K. Dick’s story, Progeny, a search engine that’s weak, that’s not enough, you have to work for 20-30 minutes, write some John Adams Thomas Jefferson boy love romance, oh yes you’re right, you overestimate, most teachers can’t even get the assignment clear, make sure you have a period at the end of all your sentences, formatting problems, what this is perfect for, autobiography or memoir, just answer the question, a sophisticated text prediction, good grammar, less important for students, the facts don’t matter that much, formatting is really important, this is a lie, how they get good grades, cheating the system, a good solution to a bad problem, easier for the prisoners, abolish the prisons, new ways to punish students, make other kids do their homework, what chat GPT’s revolution, read this paragraph and reorder them, take out things you don’t like, living in an affluent area, I’m a governess, there’s a scary man, young Tommy is very bright, essay about thermodynamics, describing some of Jesse’s job, same advantage that rich people’s job, it doesn’t help them, how to understand great poetry, a bunch of assignments that are due, parents hire a ghostwriter to right a novel, ivy league school, Rebecca Black’s song Friday, I like sitting in the front seat sometime, super-well produced, something to make their kid feel like a superstar, chat GPT same advantage as the rich kids, we’re pretty conclusive, Pirates Of Venus, north shore of Minnesota, overseas, NSA work, top secret, Evan Lampe is gonna step up, Farnham’s Freehold, 12th – 23rd, Sailing To Byzantium by Robert Silverberg, solved, feeds and resources, podcast schedule, the music under it, crazy, a youtube thing, people don’t know, people discover that audiobooks because of youtube, excited for them, any sign of a ghost is excitement, it’s youtube vs. books, Arthur C. Clarke, past The Colorado Kid, Alex from Pulpcovers was censored, an appeal, after careful review…, sooo careful, a lady might not have any pants on, jealous losers on twitter, White Trash, HOE REPAIR, just exposure, what Jesse likes about Jonathan (he’s read a whole bunch of books Jesse hasn’t read), the guy from Switzerland who had nice handwriting, an autobiography of a character’s soul, a German genre, fake autobiography, Bohemian Europe in the 1890s, talking to farmers, dude, common for some people, fake and phony and putting on airs about intelligent they are, literary circles, don’t read anything past 10 years ago, Scalzi has replaced Heinlein, they say they believe that, keep current, you don’t have time to read both, most of everything was crap, harder to determine today, hasn’t withstood the test of time yet, debating how to pronounce Weichsel in 100 years, first hit rap group, recorded their songs here, hit song, fun catchy song, walking around the town, they saw the sign, that’s it, 50 years from now, this town has not accomplished achievement, absolutely amazing, on the ferry, CTV News, CNN for Canada, tell Americans, the shitty Justin Trudeau government, an extra bunch of money to poors, they want to get reelected, full blown Social Credit, a tax rebate, 19.8% commercial space empty, 50% is much more common in a small town, all for the sake of posterity, chat GPT teachers marking chat GPT homework, dead town, it’s just awful, hang out at the bus stop, hang out at the convenience story, kipple from Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, all the non-losers have left for the off-world, the world of the book, same world as Progeny, everybody is replaced by robots, squirrels are dying, institutional pollution, fill the ocean, thesis proven, same setting, same ideas, not literally true, working the same mine, working the same ideas, Nick And The Glimmung, Galactic Pot-Healer, a stepping stone to get to that other idea, androids, robots, three weeks from now, a really good one, Sheba by Jack Higgins, in response to people not liking Dial Of Destiny, the legendary temple of Sheba, put me down, Indiana Jones tanking is kinda bullshit, poor box office, in what period of time, one of the most expensive movies ever made, we didn’t need the first one either, we wanted it, now we don’t want them so much, two versions of The Warriors (1979), available as an audiobook, an excuse to watch it, comic book inserts, less real and gritty, Ship Of Ishtar by A. Merritt, work to do, editing this anthology, for secret operations, bunch of authors, substack, cool public domain stuff, Moon Tomb, the moon and death, Misha Burnett needs to promote better, some salty interesting points on twitter, great cover art, he’s problematic, jealous?, when you get famous enough people become jealous, Poe was a third rate writer, why did they say that?, because its true?, shit all over Lovecraft, lob a grenade and leave and close the door behind them, Edgar Allan Poe, who’s a better poet from the United States?, start making your list now, Annabelle Lee is popular and it’s good, The Song Of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Mark Twain’s parody of The Raven, Bugs Bunny, controversial, that’s Heinlein in extremis, alcoholic mother and the lawyer father, bridge party, people are not asking for an adaption, see everybody explode, skinny dipping, the young black kid, see you on twitter.

Progeny by Philip K. Dick

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The SFFaudio Podcast #768 – READALONG: Scratch One by Michael Crichton

Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Terence Blake talk about Scratch One by Michael Crichton

Talked about on today’s show:
from Nice, our agent on the Cote D’aZur, 1967, early, 2nd published novel, maybe Cora mentioned this before, Lange means long, Dick means fat, John means dick, this book is very familiar, a heist book in Spain, the Spanish equivalent, Costa Brava, generic titles, The Venom Business, Grave Descend, Odds On, knock off holiday resort, not just a fact (also part of the plot), crossing over the bridge, casino hotel resort, something under the bridge, descends the steep cliff, scrambling down and back up, a surprise: flowers, planting a bomb, this actually happened, France and or Spain, sometimes with a girl sometimes without, vividly describes the descent, Egypt, drowned, the Nile, a similar scene in that book, mucking about down near Aswan, just like Richard Upton Pickman, release the Terence, the Negresco Hotel, Promenade Anglais, Avenue Victor Hugo, Rue Biscarra, Avenue Du La Victoire, renamed, after a famous mayor, Cannes, Monaco, not while the race is happening, successfully describes both, warm semi-tropical Mediterranean, seen it in movies, To Catch A Thief (1955), North By Northwest (1959), Roger bumbles, Carr, bumbling his way, add-in the international intrigue of Charade (1963) is public domain, Never Say Never Again (1983), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988), also turns out to be a conwoman, a lot of fun, A Good Year (2006), Grace Kelly, Stirling Moss, the restaurant, name drops, by magic romantic resonance, that’s enough, we don’t need to see her haircut, accidental spy books, Michael Crichton’s inspirations are paperbacks (not movies), a searchable thing, an early Westlake, the nephew novels, a case of mistaken identity, gets the mob after him, mistaken identity, there are jokes, it would be funny, attempted murder, Jennings, the nasty murders, this is not a joke, finds everything funny, Alice In Wonderland, hideous torture, that’s the disconnect, characters who die fast, we meet some baddies, what the plot, an arms shipment, are they supplying the PLO?, a disconnect, the comedic situation, the cops, the consulate, it will be good to let him run around for a while, very North By Northwest, God Save The Mark, Somebody Owes Me Money, a tip on a horse, makes book, run around New York avoiding the cops and the actual murderer, a girl who betrays him, standard girl stuff, the narrator’s voice, Australian accent, hard to identify, strong vs. weak Australian accents, definitely Australian, Crocodile Dundee Australia, Australia is not a monolith, Maine and Texas are the same accent, most people are not going to physically violence Jesse, preferring the read, him doing a female voice, Australian female, quite good, romancing, that scene is on the cover of the Hard Case Crime, she’s working for the bad guys, a dancer’s wages, it has to be a good book, extraneous character, he writes some scenes as if he’s fleshing things out, characters we don’t want to be in the book, false main characters, we don’t know that he’s the hero, the minds of other characters, the book is mal-plotted, obliging me to have lots of willing suspension of disbelief, what’s stopping this from being a science fiction book, Ringworld, Dirk Gently, synchronicity and coincidence, everything is tied together, still working on his stuff, novels are very different scene by scene, the opening killings are a lot like a James Bond opening, Smert Shpionam, Money For Nothing by Donald E. Westlake, you have now been activated, a sleeper agent, a case of mistaken identity, it’s a comedy but not funny, horrible torture scenes, our main character is a lawyer, he’s playing the bad guy in this book, he’s way dumber than us, you should tell them exactly what happened, no I am not, the Hugo Award winning fanzine, he’s a bit of an asshole, a gripe against this book, enjoyed, three quick hours, a light read, very light, the way Paul’s mind thinks, possibly going off a cliff, what does he look like?, especially the women, he’s amazingly handsome, he looks like a spy except to know what spies look like, he’s strong, he’s the reader, a paperback designed to be a paperback, Binary, a good book a pretty good TV movie, more things of his own, not a bad book at all, the two paperback scenes, 20 kilos exactly, getting his stuff weighed, the amount was less, he could have sworn his suitcase wasn’t that heavy, airplane reader, light and amusing of no consequence, reviewing their own book, chapter 10, a key scene, she was wearing almost nothing, her body was breathtaking, a few strands of blonde hair, A.C., that’s on the cover of the book, they go by Cannes, it’s not a book about movies, it’s a book about books, Grave Descend, literary based, a James Bond stand-in, the villain has a library, romancing each other, too literal, the gravedigger the whole scene, Thomas Mann, 10 sentences a day, Balzac, furiously writing, Wolfe, dropping finished pages into a wastebasket, Poe who was underrated, (not third rate), Our Opinions Are Correct, Larry Rivers, a nothing, Charles de Gaulle’s memoirs, was he president at the time of this story?, 1959-1969, an intellectual match, a high luck score, agency, a little fake, they need him for that?, ok, maybe, malformed, how to put together a great book, light and fluffy, a floated bid for Nice, where the French live?, a city to live in, where the elderly French come to finish their days, dry and warm, a big tourist city in Spring and Summer, the events, the Cannes Film Festival, the Monaco Grand Prix, near Italy, the coast just adjacent, cigarettes and wine, still using Francs, everybody was Euroing, Donald Trump’s yacht was there, how they gonna catch this guy? too many ways out, there’s no way to catch this guy, when he’s on this journey, drawn from, all lifted, places he went line up, things that happened, poolside lifestyle, in some rich person’s house, his father was a senator, he’s there for a governor to buy a house, talks about the library, selling the house, another place selling to an American, you can’t sell the library, the library is priceless, individual books, thesis: this is really about books, books of this period were often adapted to film, a Westlake novel that was to be a script for a James Bond movie, movies don’t get made, a spy book set in Hong Kong, Westlake wrote a lot lot lot of books, Killing Time is public domain, Brothers Keepers, a monks book, something wrong with the estate, an unusual choice for a lazy day on the beach, the opposite to the paperbacks at the airport, a literary book you have to underline and meditate, she is smarter than he is but doesn’t hold it over his head, he did one deduction, the short swarthy man that came to the hotel and gave him the ring, could that have been Jennings’ mechanic, a leap that I didn’t see coming, the mechanic disappearing, the associates, Algerian, the Italian guy, a library scene, you need not praise him in my presence, the maintenance of this house which I love, money will by the respect, a Maserati or a Bentley, some of my best friends are gangsters, Carr nodded politely, smokes, drinks, many of them must be crooks, dishonesty is their profession, laughs, nods politely, the library remains with the villa, just another rivera villa, Dickens, the Cruickshank illustrations, an interesting line, a phony sales pitch, that guy’s trying to get out, time to yourself, time to kill, time to read, the governor is very busy, he will eventually settle, you feel tired, still in the lead, still at the top, any man who does not do it is a fool, a propensity for saltiness, backstory, what is his price, what is yours?, why he’s in France to begin with, The Woman In Black by Susan Hill, the setup for Dracula, Jonathan Harker, buys an abbey, accumulates a bunch of other people with him, Victorian era, a lawyer agent for a rich person, haunted ghost house, an agent for a foreign buyer, not to reveal identity to randos, the wrong kind of agent, people are trying to kill him or figure out if he needs to be killed, a James Bond scene, shark tank, affable villain, Dr. No, just send sexy lady, the knife sharpening scene, there’s your To Catch A Thief, here’s your keys, the roof being down is part of the plot, agent for a governor, make it look like an accident, not fucking up constantly, they’ve got this Citroën’s axel, gearheading stuff, she’s a double agent, he’s mute, Find Your Fate, A View To A Kill, you are James Bond Secret Agent, a kid’s role playing game book, if you choose wrongly, what more plot is happening, ways to die, other characters with interesting things to say, the protagonist is so, a male heterosexual reader, taking it to Korea, Choose Your Own Adventure, You Are A Shark, Paul read a lot of these, illustrations, people go crazy there, The Curse Of Batterslea Hall, visit your English cousin, fantasy elements, a related phenomena, an ebook author, people think they’re inventing audiobooks, people think they’re inventing audio dramas, I’ll invent this thing, after a few years, nobody actually wants these things, get an audiobook then they put music underneath it, and then they add in sound effects, he lit the lighter, combine the audio of somebody reading the story with a layer of music and layer of randomly place sound effects, people who’ve never listened to an audiobook before, how BBC did it in the 1960s, a reading of a book, audio dramas are performances, a guy reading a book like he’s angry, when parents are sold on the idea of children reading a story about themselves, your daughter in the main role, leave the name blank, gas station keychains, all the common names of people, it has my name on it, a girl who rides a dolphin, kids are able to relate to other people, everything being about me, correct Carr, Carr got in the car, Parker parked the car, Parker left the car on 15th avenue, designed to be humorous, this book doesn’t really work on a humour level, at the airport, all these sides waiting for the same guy, something special about the way he conducts himself, dry humour, he’s literally dumb, he doesn’t say things, the stuff on the roof all fails, he doesn’t die, the chase scene, goes to the farmhouse and makes that phone call, close in on being resolved, the whole Monaco scene, the promise of the ending, go back to America and be married, the trope, she’s smarter than he is, he’s sexy, a good job he’s really not worthy of, ne’er do well does well, Kevin J. Anderson and L. Ron Hubbard’s Ai! Pedrito! When Intelligence Goes Wrong, body double, based on real life, when he was in the Navy, supposedly mistaken for this guy who looks like him, not a great novel, for eternity, he’s fine, about 20 times the word scalpel turns up, medical stuff even from Carr, he can’t help it, medical facts, Le Scalpel estate, the whole building was constructed by glass and metal, occasional use of bricks, tile roofs, in the fight with the guy with the scalpel, you don’t throw scalpels, stick your guts into your mouth to test your own intestines, tonally confused, the villain is much harsher than our bumbling dumb viewpoint character is capable of handling, in a regular role playing game, in this we have no options, things happening to him, playing arcade games on the ferry, a sidescrolling game like Defender, you’re a spaceship, a demo showing what the game was like, the control would respond to your inputs, I don’t have any quarters, the phenomenon of an amazing book, this matches exactly where it was going to go, the demo takes over, this illusion of control, what we think of as engagement, there is no difference, a fascinating phenomenon, disconnects, blithering idiot, a doofus, unable to communicate, a VR pornography, POV, has a camera on his face, the camera goes in every direction, look at the tv or something, looking at the furniture, what piece of furniture that is, a really great novel engages you in such a way, the experience of reading and the experience of experiencing it, slightly different moves, King’s Quest style story, watching someone play King’s Quest, engaging, getting read for sleep, streaming excitement, let other people have a turn playing, Hardcore Henry (2015), a first person action movie, a camera with two arms, the Doom (2005) movie, with the Rock (Dwayne Johnson), fan service, Strange Days (1995), somewhere near the bottom of John Langes, the one set in Egypt is the best Easy Go, Binary, Grave Descend, , where the title comes from, its called out in the book, from WWII, doodled furiously, scratch one nice confused American, the work of the Scalpel, well written, Battle Of The Coral Sea, American propaganda propaganding the domestics, during the Battle Of The Bulge, my general askes you to surrender, “Nuts!”, famous scene, Heroes In Hell, propaganda phrases, the Japanese navy, scratch one flat top, the phrase gets stuck, we have both fired machineguns, went to Harvard to escape the draft, Harvard law school, scratch it out, double meaning, scratch an American doofus and underneath you’ll find a hero, saves the day, lets the air out of his tires, not a man of action exactly, Cary Grant?, alcohol for breakfast, wine at lunch, sociologically accurate, easy girls fantasy, French girls are easier, less inhibited than north Americans, if you can’t find a girl on the Riviera, found a wife in Paris, the part about his dad, the distinguished senator, a business expense, for as long as it takes, four months, they’re just trying to get him out from underfoot, don’t just do work, getting to the other things, got along famously, struck it off instantly, fast friends, slightly debauched with a cherubic face, satyr-like, The Famous Teddy Z, becoming the agent for a big movie star, know all the ropes, John Cryer, satyric, the governor appreciated that, weirdly bonding, like to drink, chapter 2, a childish pudgy face, chapter 11, you know you look like a satyr, looks like Pan, Buck Rogers, a penis with goatlegs, the devil with a penis, a lot of truth of what writing was happening, he knew rich people, for your quote, a suitable replacement, people on vacation are looking for that, going into the Casino, gambling, wanting to lose money, short term thinking, a pleasure out of that, elderly people loving bingo or slot machine, pass the time between sleeps, choppin wood all day, dotting or pulling an arm or pressing a button, dopamine hit, how could somebody act that way, the alcoholism after WWII, drinking problems away, a large phase that people go through, not offered alcohol everytime, keep yourself avoiding, characters who are older than he is, observing his elders, grows up with the phrase, a generational thing, propaganda phrase, collateral damage, the first gulf war with Schwarzkopf, public domain, Schwarzenegger movie, laterally how things were produced, get a phrase, you know that disney movie that was a cartoon from 10 years ago?, it’s live action now, went to Egypt, Zero Cool, finish the set, the John Lange list:

Binary
Scratch One
Zero Cool
Easy Go
Grave Descend
Drug Of Choice
Odds On
The Venom Business

a bodyguard to a friend, Harvard rich kid, nightmare family, evil people, The Last Tomb, eight?, American radiologist, Angela Locke, a Spanish beach, Alhambra, darkest catacombs, a secret lost for centuries, a dark haired beauty with a huge problem, a desperate fight for survival, the audio drama, if you look closely, the Hard Case Crime, she’s reading Grave Descend, a pleasure to podcast, meta, mise en abyme, Mad magazine, the lady in the boat, very exciting, how Jesse gets his jollies, what’s the heat like?, warmer than usual, going for a walk, public garden, doing tai chi, practicing tai chi everyday, better than bingo, a different idea of chance, kills the hours between sleeps, jiu jitsu, Musk challenged Zuckerberg to a fight, colour commentary, an age difference, more like chess, find a way to backdown, he likes fun, very disciplined about it, the Pompey and Sulla, private armies, it doesn’t fit, a coup in russia?, the Wagner group, private mercenary groups, personal combat, very Weird, fight this out in meatspace, good dad, horrible evil, Bill Gates, a generational thing, Steve Jobs, Indian mysticism, ashram, Beatles generation, peripherally amused, what was tai chi’s high point?, big in Asia, seemed distant, Paul does yoga, you want to do something, wants to have cows, gets into cattle, martial applications, picking up steam, Emily In Paris, kids like it, a revisiting of the culture (a little bit), fun French stereotype characters, ideas and scenes, helps alot, filmed in Los Angeles, House, M.D., Bryan Singer is in trouble for sex things, sexual harassments, not politically correct, he’s a weird annoying character, Sherlock Holmes with medical stuff, we have to break into the people’s houses to look for toxins, if they needed to really badly, a fantasy of medical diagnostics, American murder shows, fantasies of how murders are investigated, everybody gets an MRI, that’s only for riche people, the vigilante fantasy, stupid bureaucratic things get in the way, full body irradiation, lupus, prednisone, ivermectin, Wilson’s disease, when reading Sherlock Holmes, doesn’t play fair, Agatha Christie is more fair, stares off in to space, remove somebody’s pituitary gland, you’re an idiot, formulaic and fun, special set, they don’t go outside much, the geography and climate of New Jersey, filming in the actual place flavours the writing, daughter, son, moved to Melbourne, something silly you can watch, a soap opera style type show, You, a serial killer who runs a bookstore, a romantic comedy where he stalks girls, based on a book, no although yes, you’re not upset when he murders people, Schwarzenegger’s Fubar, Citadel, very immoral TV shows now, justifying torture and violence, cartoons, a strange phenomenon, a sequel to the James Cameron movie True Lies, cheating on him with a used car salesman, generic Arab terrorists with a nuke, super competent, Jamie Lee Curtis, the same character kind, his daughter is in the CIA and he didn’t know, not well written, True Lies is also a television show, on network television, the guy from Game Of Thrones, sorta Philip K. Dick premise, memory wiped, Silo, Wool by Hugh Howey, when everybody was excited about Wool, didn’t care much anymore, a duty to read the book, Graham Yost, Terence is not one who necessarily executes his duty, conversations with elderly people, a retirement place, not something really intellecutal, Tulsa King, retired superhero, oui, yes, Jeff Bezos some money (Canadian servers), ratings on prime, IMDB is not reliable (except for older things), it deserves it, a forumal, it goes on from 8 years, 8.7 for House, M.D., Star Trek TNG went 7 seasons, the follow up to Justified, City Primeval, the 3rd season of Star Trek Picard, Terence didn’t see the good part, those movies were not good, not interesting, because Worf came back, fan service good is never good, that’s the best stuff, 30 years ago, time machine, cryogenic chamber, 1987, a holiday residence, we’d done everything that we could, doing all these other things, France at that time just wasn’t into science fiction, talking to students about science fiction series, car racing is very dangerous, the James Bond stand-in figure, flipping cars, a hard-top, pre-WWI pilots, after her first crash she never flew again, just fuckin dangerous, small planes, if you’re trying to race them, the water police, that guy’s dead, that was common, tinkering in the garage working on your motorcar, dirt bike racing, the special hospital for broken necks, that’s how you become a quad: drive quads, mountain biking, the opposite of bjj, out in nature, extreme canoeing, kayaking, at least as good an experience, the Sunshine Coast, a ferry ride away, fjords, inlets, the skookumchuk narrows, fast good ocean, a tide in or a tide out, a giant peninsula, to ride the currents, surfing for kayakers, you wear a helmet, smashed up real good, surfing but more dangerous, skiing, injuries are slower to heal, the risk of injury goes up and up, fun/fast, dangerous, expensive, things were cheaper, lift ticket, cross country-skiing, a way to kill time between sleeps: a retired person’s thing, the side projects of people’s activities, Sunday morning for Jesse, church time, why you going to church, really into politics, civically engaged, highest percentage of atheist, a powerful lobby, list of countries by irreligion, Afghanistan, Czec Republic, North Korea, New Zealand, France 28%, Canada, Australia, 28.6 percent, 16.4 USA, synagogue goers, heavy activity, 3.1% Israel, the problem with Jews, they don’t have to practice, belief in god, a cultural practice, the theory of god, he’s in the book, how to read the book, forming the question will help determined what answers you get, China, by population data, 91% for China, Australia 69%, China is full of atheists, saying India is full of atheist, total atheists, Chinese new year, scaring away ghosts, Japan, Shinto temples, government sponsorship for maintenance, same is true for France, Ireland, U.K., theoretically catholic, theoretically protests, Stephen Fry, atheist pastors, a masking mandate, Daniel Dennett, smartguy, a priest with his fingers crossed behind his back, unbelief among the clergy, begin starry eyed, Santa Claus, way smarter than Sam Harris, like a cartoon of a smart guy, he thinks he is a smart guy, a beef over something, emotional shit, he’s not good at logic, he uses a lot of words, cultivate ignorance in writing, think about what these words mean, that’s the exact explanation, consciousness is the center of narrative gravity, when you get into the brain, doing Phineas Gage stuff with big rods, a continuous sort of experience with reality we think, where is the center of gravity on a teapot, nothing inside the teapot has changed, shot in the head, part of your personality changes, if you remove too much, parts can be removed, Descartes theory, the reason I don’t cut off my finger, it’ll hurt, all those cells don’t want to die, battlefield triage, a person with a missing language, self is the center of narrative gravity, its fiction, another analogy, a fictional character in literature, did Sherlock Holmes have a mole on his left shoulder blade?, there was a truth to the matter, neither true nor false, you have failed to understand, neutrinos, why other people’s theories are wrong, a theory that works, the part of us that gives us I did this for this reason, what our dilemma is, when a book is rubbing us wrong, right to bring this up, what does this guy look like, he has no appearance, describing the main character is usually bad, what does Odysseus look like, Starship Troopers tricks you, a person of colour, exactly exactly exactly, why do stories work or why stories don’t work, Luke Burrage [The Science Fiction Book Review Podcast], gone down the drain, a lot of modern books, something has changed, they’re not science fiction, a weird subset of science fiction, anti-intellectual, not interested in the intellectual part of science fiction, the structure of books, outguess the author, guesses and inferences, not a key theme, Agatha Christie, letting it flow, Jesse writes a ton, 6 sentence stories, amazing, fascinated by his own dreams, almost all fiction is unsalable (including some that is sold), book series, the things that people are obsessed with reading and writing about, will they or won’t they, the romance that happens in this book, no investment in it, isn’t it interesting he’s made the girl an intellectual, sexy, a dancer, car shocks, can quote Shakespeare, opinions on Thomas Mann, and be a girl, too much, you can get all that with money, if she really was like that, like the Amish, make it more plausible, silly, how sexist Paul would think Jesse just was, Buckaroo Banzai, neurosurgeon, physicist, test-pilot, rock star, some actors like to play music, Doc Savage is Buckaroo Banzai without the comedy, supposed to be profound, no matter where you go, there you are, shallowly profound, what is the sound of one hand clapping?, take it as a deep thing, a comedy of a deep thing, a comedy, dream response, analysis of The Road Warrior (Mad Max II), Tina Turner, it’s the best one in a way, Mad Max I is an art film action film, Jungian psychology, dream response, black and white, characters being mirrors and shadows of each other, dressed like animals, claws and spikes, the fight sequences, an oil monopoly is the good guy, white football pads vs. black football pads, Max has one football pad, the outsider, he has no identity, the camera swoops in, we enter the vehicle with Max, Max is left behind, very solid analysis, everybody has violence within them, a symbol, when we enter civil society, a lot of people like to pretend, making a mistake, James Tiptree’s Houston, Houston, Do You Read?, extract, Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, the way people read it, downloaded, a hundred page book, One Light Hour, pretty good, Rossignol, Nightingale, The Screwfly Solution, everyone has aggression in them, take stuff away, its not the essence of men, the essence of a can of sardines, Jesse is afraid of male and female bears, afraid of tigers, tigers eat meat and I am made of meat, men can prey on women, using violence for moral purposes, just download it again, from the mouse, 20 files, Love Is The Plan And The Plan Is Death, a lady who wrote like a smart person, is she the best?, this is very difficult, she’s a good antidote, Ursula K. Le Guin, politically correct, The Dispossessed, The Word For World Is Forest, humans come out as the badguys, it’s Avatar (2009), Poul Anderson’s The Queen OF Air And Darkness, we’ve got prejudices and they have prejudices too, The Left Hand Of Darkness and The Lathe Of Heaven, its fun, she’s playing what if, the 2 film versions, real science fiction, another duty Terence has: Always Coming Home, the strongest strike against Le Guin, hoighty toights think she’s the shit, Octavia Butler, Margaret Atwood is feted by idiots, really good, Silverberg is very solid, better science fiction writers than Silverberg, interested in the hard or soft things, native ability, always in phase with the 1960s and the 1970s, her beauty is fading, people are mad Tiptree killed her husband, not a strike against her, a strike in her favour, too traumatizing to talk about or consider, you’re babies, grow up, put on your big girl pants, these are traumatized people they need to be sheltered, let the injury heal then work to make the injured injury stronger, they’ve never actually had trauma, verbally mean to them, making fun of rape survivors, heard about a rape survivor, their theory, trauma in society, what the government is saying we should be worried about are fictional creations, the narrative is not written from their experience, social influencers, the Yellow Peril is something that was manufactured, ginned up, reflected in popular media, Skull Face, The Insidious Doctor Fu Manchu, Fu Manchu is the hero, putting down this evil genius, the side I would be on, the War On Terror, sound and fury, a war that had been happening that people had been ignorant of, 24, always some threat, COVID, turns out that wasn’t really a thing, another duty, the Russians identify with the orcs, the Elves are Harvard educated, The Last Ring Bearer by Kirill Eskov, we should do a pirate audiobook of that, a symbolic Euro, maybe Archive.org, an amazing number of bootleg audiobooks on YouTube, the official Alien movie adaptation by Alan Dean Foster, published in paperback and never thought of again, The Terminator (novelization), a perfect film, sction science fiction oriented, it’s like a theorem, the perfection of a beautiful theorem, so well thought through, the Champs Elysee, lucky Terence, the budget, what is this?, seems a little short, the NAFO, NATO trolls, troll dog in fatigues, anybody who questions the Ukraine War, a tendency, pro-Ukraine people calling Russians orcs, the dumber side of science fiction fandom (pretty much all of science fiction fandom), orcs are black people, doing the Eloi properly, dumb and pretty, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, September is okay, Australia in December, Tip-tree, do you read me?, poly-valent, NASA stuff, do you read?, parody of SF fandom (amongst other things), save it for the podcast, already intrigued, Heads Of Cerberus by Francis Stevens, strict with the definition, amongst Jesse’s favourite SFF writers, sloppy and crunchy, amazing concept, a phial, pretty and stupid, but do they have boobs?, pre-pubescent, they’re supposed to be children, Dante?, set in Philadelphia, two burglars, the opener disappears, I’ve killed them, Ulythia, a spider woman there, a weaver of webs, mystical shit, a sphinx over a temple entrance, we’re out of time, a staging area to another reality, Philadelphia 2118, a 1984 style dystopia, their name is either a number or a job title, Prettiest, Wittiest, Strongest, governance of the city, contests, if you fail the contest or challenge you’re thrown into a spiked pit, this future place, cut-off from the rest of the United States, what to do with them?, the game and the story, challenge for prettiest, a fourth guy, Mr. Justice is the cop, not a comedy but very comedic, like a Philip K. Dick novel but better put together, super-innovative, two Mondays from now, LibriVox, cleaned up sound, a super brain in her head, you can tell if you read enough if a book was written by a man or a woman, I saw she had a boob, her hands are not big and veiny, check the hand sizes, secondary sexual characteristics, fingernails, how much attention has been paid to the fingernails, Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub, influenced by Zelazny’s Amber series, a sequel, parallel realities, Evan likes Stephen King, we exhausted Bachman, 20 hours, Straub died recently, 26 fucking hours, duty books, Progeny by Philip K. Dick, Pirates Of Venus by Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1st books, A Meeting With Medusa by Arthur C. Clarke, another Tor Double, in Playboy, a hot air balloon in orbit of Saturn?, everybody’s favourite: Farnham’s Freehold, he’s fun to argue with, No Man’s Land by John Buchan, planning three months ahead, duty!, Paul: you could take a break, Jesse, your center of narrative gravity says, pumping iron, too focused on image of the body, works for the brain, if you’re living in Ancient Athens, Socrates: you’re looking fat, people doesn’t like Socrates, Plato was a wrestler, footsoldiers, cowboys in the distance, learning to throw spears and steal rifles, they’re not discus throwers, what makes them famous?, what makes them good?, stories on the grape vine, stories that require attention, God Save The Mark is more fun, time travel, amazing theme, the secret hobby horse of Westlake is insurance, talking about insurance, hedging your bets all the time, is the insurance company fucking with you?, what makes things continue to function, David Foster Wallace, taxation, not interesting, a central thing we’re trained not to think about, if I don’t buy anything I can’t be taxed, tax rebate, in British Columbia and Canada, HST, GST, PST, harmonize it!, compared to the states, Justin is horrible, fucking terrible things, generally incompetent, not completely corrupt, negotiating these sales taxes, same as VAT, an 80s thing, we know its going to hurt everybody, luxury tax, the theoretical amount of tax they paid, fuel and food, a relatively good life, without working many many hours, inherited money, mortgage payments for 25 years, under COVID, Biden promised a $2000 cheque, never given it, student loans and all the other things, a standard flat amount for everybody, a statistical anomaly, $2000 a month for not working, condo crisis as usual, you don’t have that business anymore, a net negative for most, lose their jobs, doing podcasts, the difference between the two, something in France, up to a level being able to pay 80%, unemployment benefits, normally more stringent, that formula is interesting, most people were getting less, that flat number, cop still has to go to work, if you lost any work, the universalness of it, the province did other things, crown corporations, BC Hydro, automotive insurance, an actual attempt to lessen the damage, keeping track of it, amazing, right?, fairly well when somewhat interested, the fact that they can do good things is amazing, 1pm, Terence’s wife has gone to Paris for a week, this is good for me, I won’t eat, can’t stop it, might as well allow it, Jesse got that from Will, a post-Jungian, James Hillman, we’re made of stories, we’re made of images, Carl Jung, Jimmy Dore, the reason Jesse hates Michio Kaku, somebody’s got your shadow, there’s nothing shadowy about them, people who don’t call him on his shit, Evan or Paul get upset at people, there’s nothing upseting there, team based, not liking Jordan Peterson, said to be anti-trans vs. anti-trans pronouns, he’s dumb, he does say interesting things, psychological stuff, biblical stuff, basic, whatever he says the opposite is true, he’s a dad for a lot of men with not deads, not that many smart people in the media, John Vervaeke, the Meaning Crisis, charge money for their courses, religious people who nod in that direction, when Jordan Peterson talks about Marxism, probably just ignorant, Slavoj Žižek / Jordan Peterson debate, Peterson didn’t chicken out, talked around everything, a judo thing, he didn’t know what to say, The Communist Manifesto, intellectual flourishing, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Cirsova, Marx starved his own children, he was fucking poor, Victorian workhouses, he’s seeing it all around him, he was preaching about what was being practiced upon him, What!?, most people let it slide, this guy is my brain, end up like Sam Harris, Sam Harris didn’t care how many dead children are in Hunter Biden’s basement, a unique threat, mass emiseration, truth can be gamed, narrative control, largely true for most people, Letter To A Christian Nation, sparky and spitty, Žižek’s thesis, old hat, superseded by Gilles Deleuze, he became good, the roots of what he later elaborated, lots of stuff is useable, trans and woke ideologies, he can get away with it, current events, Benjamin Studebaker, the last American election, Cambridge Oxford same fucking place, annoying in two ways: smart and young, how’d you get so smart and so young, The Lack podcast, Political Science 101, pirate Jesse the side2s, its good to do, there are good ideas, listen to them a lot, Political Science 101 podcast, Nina Power, the three of them write little essays, French cinema, independent movies, a more intellectual Science Fiction Book Review Podcast (but for movies), the price of the book, thinking about his audience, paperback is probably good for most people, a very good sign, the opposite is Robert J. Sawyer, competing with my new book, he was a science fiction writer, turned his hand to trying to make a living by writing trilogies, on twitter in full length, the fundamental problem of what’s going on in the United States, right about everything, TV adblocker version, Lord Enoch, rando talking heads, that guy is a real intellectual on TV, just teeth and dresses and smiles and vague acquaintance with some of the issues, good public intellectuals online, philosopher repairman: Louis Rossmann, completely untrained in philosophy, repairing laptops, recently got hired by a billionaire, projects that are useful to humans, right to repair, farmers should have access to their tractors code, the least amount of interest in vanity of production, the opposite of that, a very solid philosophy, used to live in New York, Bill de Blasio, Paul was not happy about it, snitch out your customers to the cops, Texas, annoying young people who’s smart and good at thinking, no production value at all, people trying to learn to fix their laptops, people who don’t like bullshits, the price of real estate, dead city neighbourhood walkthough, he’s doing very practical present day philosophy, DRM is not something most people care about (even though they should), book management, take in different plugins, stripping drm protection from ebooks, minimizing time in front of screens, printing things up, the searchability, if you find yourself with 26.5 hours, not possible to tai-chi while audiobooks, doing bjj and listening to audiobooks, very strange.

Hard Case Crime - Scratch One by John Lange

Scratch One by John Lange

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The SFFaudio Podcast #767 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Charwoman’s Shadow by Lord Dunsany

The SFFaudio Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #767 – The Charwoman’s Shadow by Lord Dunsany, read by Michelle Fry for LibriVox. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the book (7 hours, 40 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Trish E. Matson, and Scott Danielson

Talked about on today’s show:
rhymes with rainy, mainly falls on the plainy in Spainy, the main character’s name, a question, was he Catholic?, set in Spain, a man of all seasons, both sides of the Irish civil war, his heart is Irish, seated in Ireland, historically wealthy and famous, kinsmen of a Catholic saint, a crosier head, a staff with a hook at the top, buck you to hard, quite a bit of Dunsany, Reading, Short And Deep, mind would wander away, caught up in his curly-cues of ideas, a super simple plot, The Book Of Wonder Stories, Wizard demands somebody’s shadow for services rendered, Jorge Luis Borges story, writing at length later, 1926, January 2023, more as the years go by, other public domain already, better at length?, the exact same content, soak in with a short, beautiful writing, Jesse doesn’t care about plot, it’s a good book, Trish and Scott loved it, The King Of Elfland’s Daughter, Penguin Book edited by S.T. Joshi, he is quite good, excellent themes, where the plot went, Jesse had no clue, oblivious, she’s too old him, she’s of the wrong class for him, once he gets a look at her silhouette, Ramone Alonzo Matthew Mark Luke John, trying to help other people, being a knightly hero, spending time with the ladies, a very strong will, moved by pity, he doesn’t understand at first, misery, swears to help her, quixotic, the Spain setting, a Don Quixote character, young and doofusy, romances of other heroes, not a bad thing, choose your heroic quests carefully, Persuasion by Jane Austen, being part of this society, doing his duties, the Jane Austen structure, beyond this wood we set much by gold, beyond this wood lies error, evil magician, stories about genies giving us three wishes, focused on the wrong thing, the evil wizard that’s not so evil, A Good Story Is Hard To Find, Northanger Abbey, a fun writer, her own genre, true with Dunsany as well, so many gems of Dunsany in this, the opening, meta openings, the image of the man crossing the landscape, talking to his dad, not playing ball anymore, son, you gotta earn some money, the priests have told you that money is filthy, for good crops to grow they have to have something filthy in their roots, the guy who takes care of our horses, they get paid once a year, we live on rocky ground, the father is wise, the sister seems to be wise, everybody is wise except for our doofusy young man, he’s just young, it’s great to spend time at the knee of Lord Dunsany, the master before Ramon Alonzo shows up, elixir vitae, resounding stairs, whatever the rats might dare, golden key, a lock he turned only once every thirty years, little curtains the spiders had drawn across it, alone with the Moon, age worn steps of oak, free from its foibles, unyoked by its causes, fresh and keen, the nimble alertness of youth, a well wrought rapier coming to its first war, feeling the new generation, the newer ones, refreshing, rattling to the older generations, cast off the generation he’s in and become part of the new one, interesting concepts, love the language, so many pleasant digressions to follow along with, sending out the shadows, far beyond the outer planets, the Lovecraft element, the torment that that causes, her name was Anemone, the narrator, she’s the main character, her backstory drives a lot of what’s going on, we would have recognized you, the house with the lit window, the money is long gone, regretting letting her go, such a great backstory, he’s lifting a curse, he tricked her into giving up her shadow, her youth and beauty, Duckweed, revealing of the wizard, above, he’s not in it for her body, he’s in it for her shade, certain demons have no shape, Ariel and Caliban, servants or slave, to commune with Yuggoth, what the gossip is on Pluto, the genre of this, clearly a fantasy, magic for science, boring thing: transmutations of metals, Chapter 12, had you anonymized this book, it’s clearly obvious who wrote this,

Ramon Alonzo pondered bitterly: he had sold his shadow for gold, and now gold was not needed.

He had not yet learned the whole art of transmutation. Would the magician give back his shadow?

And Mirandola must have her love-potion, and the charwoman have her shadow out of the box. He had much to do if his plans were to come to fruition.

Back he went to the gloomy room that was sacred to magic. “I have no need of gold,” he said.

“It is a worthless metal,” replied the magician. “The philosophers sought it for the interest they took in re-arranging the element. But the stuff itself was nought to them. They buried it where I have said, and have often warned man of its worthlessness; in testimony whereof their writings remain to this day.”

“I would learn no more of it,” said Ramon Alonzo.

“No?” said the magician.

“I pray you therefore give back my shadow,” he said.

“But it is my fee,” said the magician.

“I would learn other things,” said the young man, “for other fees. But this fee I pray you return.”

“Alas,” said the magician, “you have learned much already.”

“Of this matter nothing,” said Ramon Alonzo.

“Alas, yes,” replied the magician. “For you have learned the oneness of matter, and that there is but one element. And this is a great secret to the vulgar, who believe there are four. And doubtless they will, in their error, discover even more than these four before ever they come to learn that there is but one, which you have learnt already, and this is my fee for it.” And he stooped and rapped the shadow-box somewhat sharply.

“You gave me a shadow to wear in its place,” said the young man.

“I will make you a longer one,” replied the magician.

Ramon Alonzo saw that words would not do it, and that whatever he said would be verbally parried with skill.

“Then give me a love-potion,” he said.

“I do not dispense these things,” said the magician haughtily.

“Then teach me how they are made, and not the making of gold.”

The magician pondered a moment. It was all one to him. He had his fee safe in the shadow-box. He despised equally gold and love, and cared not which he taught. Some etiquette he had learned from some older magician seemed to prompt him to give something for his fee.

“Gladly,” he answered briefly.

Then Ramon Alonzo sat down without a word, thinking of Mirandola.

He had never enquired the reason of anything that she asked for. It was Mirandola, with eyes like a stormy evening. Thoughts passed behind those eyes such as never visited him. Mirandola knew. It is hard to say how the flash of those eyes swayed him. He never sought to know, and never questioned Mirandola’s demands.

“By the admixture of crocodile’s tears with the slime of snails,” came the voice of the Master, “the basis of all love-potions is constructed. Unto this is to be added a powder, obtained by pounding the burned plumage of nightingales. Flavour with attar of roses. Add a pinch of the dust of a man that has been a king, and of a woman that has been fair two pinches, and mix with common dew. Do this by light only of glow-worms and saying suitable spells.”

Ramon Alonzo, following the gestures that the Master made as he spoke, saw on the shelves the ingredients that he mentioned. He saw a jar holding attar of roses beside one named “Dust of Helen.” He saw two jars side by side called “Dust of Pharaoh” and “Dust of Ozymandias,” one of them probably Rameses. He saw a vial labelled “Crocodile’s Tears.” All that he needed seemed there; outside in the wood the glow-worms burned, and there were plenty of snails.

The lesson went on drearily, the magician intoning various spells that the young man learned by heart or believed he learned, and naming alternative ingredients that had of old been used in more torrid lands. Of the ingredients Ramon Alonzo was so sure that no mistake was possible; if ever he erred at all it was with the spells.

guided by the plot, really good movie or an episode of a show, Sorcerer’s Apprentice, The Rejected Sorcerer (aka El Brujo Postergado Borges) story, a trail of flowered footsteps, finally a reason for CGI (removing a shadow), the uncanny, Michelle Fry from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, hints of irony,

Delightfully imaginative, somewhat similar to Dunsany’s blockbuster fantasy novel, The King Of Elfland’s Daughter (and published just two years after it), this equally entertaining, verbally voluptuous tale brings us in touch with the heraldry, artistry, and superstitions of the bygone Golden Age of Spain; with the magical arts of ancient times– alchemy, wizardry, potions, forest creatures that go bump in the night, quests for esoteric knowledge, use of the Philosopher’s Stone, and the Catholic church’s war against the ‘Black Art”. Above all, Dunsany explores the many mysterious properties of shadows, and warns what havoc might befall you if you lose yours. Published in 1926.

ruminating on the word “shadow”, an exotic location, the rolling out of the panisci and the change of age, he went therein and the golden age was over, the best age ever?, silver age comics, a place he can set his stories, the wizard is doing philosophy, Raistlin from the Dragonlance books, much more playful, a curious music, the scurry of little things, all manner of magical things, all the children of Pan, landscape talk, the sale of pasturelands, the rocky terrain, why people go through forests, a fictional spain, Averoigne of Clark Ashton Smith, they lost their minds as should we, the girls ran screaming from him, in myth and stuff, Dracula, in myth, a spirit or a ghost, that doesn’t cast a shadow, demons didn’t cast shadows, shadow means soul, a shade, fits him with a shadow, a very sharp knife, our shadows grow and contract, the science element, the regular people are smart, a close reading of Lovecraft stories, the regular people are always right, communing with devils, all the rumors are true, what magic is, communicate with things on other planets, like a lich I live forever, because she’s had her shadow removed she’s not aging, Tithonus, The Picture Of Dorian Gray, a happy romantic ending, the shadow cast the body, flips what reality is, the shadow would take the shape of the body, very Catholic, working these idea minds, everybody in this book is clever, working information, Scott would love this book, so used to hearing confessions, set in Spain, we don’t have wizards in Ireland, wizards in Wales, the tone would have been different, exotic Spain, Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley, 1922, 1926, no excuses not to do it now, LibriVox, Ballantine Adult Fantasy, The Blue Star by Fletcher Pratt, the Lin Carter introductions, not the world’s greatest writer, has good taste, an enthusiast, bringing attention, we can trust everything he suggests, publication order, The Wood Beyond The World by William Morris, 1894, an artist writing a book, the wallpaper guy, Scott is 55, hard science fiction, matured into fantasy, hard science fiction is simple and fun, here’s a big dumb object, what do you think about that?, Spin, they’re hard to make and hard to make good, Childhood’s End, go onto Netflix and type in science fiction, set in the future, heist in a science fiction background, the real what if kinda stuff, Westerns, watched all the submarine movies, these are old books that have stood the test of time, Shakespeare’s Planet, Invitation To The Game, how short it was, it says VR on the tin, there are still good books to be found, looking up a famous author that writes something you’re interested in, Dunsany wrote a ton, lesser works, In A Dim Room, nailed this concept, tricked me, what a gifted writer, knowing how to not overstay your welcome in sentences, the digressions are handled, speaking true things in those asides, there’s no lies in here, this is the way the world is, this is the way people are, descriptions of things, descriptions of rooms, the spiderwebs, she doesn’t clean the spiderwebs on the curtains, going back to his spidery bedroom, dust, dust as a theme, shadow is all over this book, a constant word, implying age, a magical component, dust can obscure, the one element, the essence of beautiful woman, simple dew, both water, master of many other things, the master of language, sit there spellbound,

“Never again,” she said, “never again. It lay over the fields once; it used to make the grass such a tender green. It never dimmed the buttercups. It did no harm to anything. Butterflies may have been scared of it, and once a dragon-fly, but it did them never a harm. I’ve known it protect anemones awhile from the heat of the noonday sun, which had otherwise withered them sooner. In the early morning it would stretch away beyond our garden right out to the wild; poor innocent shadow that loved the grey dew. And in the evening it would grow bold and strong and run right down the slopes of hills, where I walked singing, and would come to the edges of bosky tangled places, till a little more and its head would have been out of sight: I’ve known the fairies then dance out from their sheltered arbours in the deeps of briar and thorn and play with its curls. And, for all its rovings and lurkings and love of mystery, it never left me, of its own accord never. It was I that forsook it, poor shadow, poor shadow that followed me home.

fakes, I need a gimmick, how do I make this simpler, what are some basic things people can relate to, look at your shadow, kids goes to sleep, literally doing magic, her curls are being played with fairies, congratulated themselves and felt the need to never write again, thoughtful digression, so readable, as simple a story you can get, that twist, why isn’t he worried about his own shadow, doesn’t even have a name, it fits, the question, leaving the scene and coming back, we grow into understanding what this book was about, her shadow was right in the title, rummaging in the shadow box, I know who that is, we’re slightly smarter than Ramon Alonzo, the love potion, her suitor, the brother doesn’t doesn’t need the money, the potion goes awry, tolerance engendered, nurses him back to health, the switcheroo, expecting the reader to be wiser than Ramon Alonzo, not a children’s book, Farmer In The Sky or Charwoman’s Shadow, mature enough, a love potion for his sister and some gold for his dad, too mature in a large sense, the subjects, to sophisticated in its simplicity, what makes The Hobbit or The Lord Of The Rings fun, dragons, gold!, all the sodas, all the comic books, have you noticed how rocky our fields are, your sister isn’t going to dowry herself, stories of childhood, we were all once children, that incredible playfulness, so reminding of childhood, adults enjoy reading books written for the YA market, T. Kingfisher, Ursula Vernon’s A Wizard’s Guide To Defensive Baking, Loadstar Award, reading it to children, a book written for children that adults can appreciate, a Jane Austen knockoff, Jane Austen with Cinderella, hitting all those fun beats, an unconsciousness, the author is unwilling to confront this?, yes, keep your class, modern colloquial attitudes, that’s kinda weird, the answer is no, aiming for the feeling of those things that I like, comedic elements, horrific elements, declaring war against wizards, a class that gets blamed in the siege in this city, using discrimination against others, the presumed ideal audience has the characters slightly older than you, children’s YA, too good a writer, the disposable forgettable, material that we burn through early on, pick any year that you were alive as a person, movies that would be important later on, its iconicness, name it and the associations come up, I’m smarter than I was, noticing the author, John Carpenter’s whatever it is, adults in touch with their youthfulness, boring for kids, too digressive, indulgent, a suitable student, a stage he goes through, technically an evil wizard, rocket fuel is needed, when you take your dog to the vet, how he acts, just doin what wizards do, TV Tropes, affable evil, so focused on tropes, totally fun, every scene is full of tropes, it was all a dream, Shakespeare, 17 book titles, from other character’s POV, the priest’s POV, the dog’s POV, A Night In The Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny, Smoke And Shadows by Tanya Huff, a shadow lord, possess people and do other things, The Silmarillion, how Sauron is a character, the ringwraiths are only shadows, without their clothes and horses they don’t exist, back to be reclothed, written for children, overlays a shadow, the shadow of an actual dragon passing over the water, some dwarfs want their money vs. make things right, the gold that glitters on the ring, the same idea mines, working real pure material, I want heists!, gay pirates on a heist!, Ronin (1998), international criminals chasing a suitcase, a McGuffin, these are great action sequences, these car chases are terrific, an opening sequence, a series of tropes, real attention, power corrupts people, we do need some money, son, fun stuff, why I think we like him, wizards don’t exist!, dealing with real themes, he does so much with a tiny idea, holding on to with stories like this, storytelling, since the beginning, something mythic and deep that really appeals, foundational, David Mamet, French action movies, Sean Bean, spies betraying each other, running around not knowing what you’re running around for, an action movie saying fundamentally we don’t know what we’re doing on this planet, being lied to by ourselves and by our governments, con-men movies, people lying to themselves movies, Homicide (1991), who killed somebody, a mistake early on, pulls the rug out from under, go back to basics, in a way that Shakespeare does, the big prop in Othello is a handkerchief, it all hangs on a handkerchief, swordfights, good storytelling, Wikipedia stuff, Arthur C. Clarke & Lord Dunsany: A Correspondence, Olaf Stapledon, at their best at short stories, $165, 83 pages, Anamnesis press, so many cool books, Persuasion by Jane Austen, Julie Davis, 6 books, Mary Shelley has other books, a legacy that big, 6 books that were all great, modern Stephen King, Westlake wrote 60-70 books, a writer’s writer vs. a regular writer, low output, Ted Chiang, long may he live, he needs a good 75 years or so, whatever pace he wants, how can I help make sure he stays alive, would that help, send some vitamins, here’s a helmet, Extrapolation, inter-library loan, fanzine packaging, two dude contemporaneous for a period, both in issues of F&SF, a really long life, 1878-1957, Lovecraft was very short, a farther distant past, all of WWII, the Boer War, Dunsany was in the 2nd Boer War, Robert E. Howard died at 30, 4 or 5 feet, Robert E. Howard is at least double that, started later and had a way bigger output, commercial purposes, much rather be writing letters, I have a demon inside me and that demon must be served, you gotta kill yourself, an astounding number of Robert E. Howard stories, keep turning up new Robert E. Howard stories, his output was such, places he sold, trunks full of unsold stories, unfinished, finished by other people, Austen died at 41, unfinished novel, Emily Dickinson, Tor.com, Tales From The White Heart, Draco Tavern, The Black Widowers, Jorkens (Lord Dunsany), club stories, and Jorkens said, In A Dim Room, thrilling tales, I cannot be held responsible, a thrilling story of India, running away from a tiger, that would change the game, he can smell the tiger, the floor of the cave is very smooth, many paws for many years, you are talking to a ghost, he had me, he tricked me, he’s a good tricker, fables from the Fountain, homage, an anthology of British writers, The 9 Billion And First Name Of God, everybody loves those guys, Foundations Friends, The Originist by Orson Scott Card, loved and enjoyed, Farnham’s Freehold, Heinlein rhymes with grime, father’s day Brunch, playing D&D lately, the whole family plays, the starter pack, Dragon of Icespire Peak, more adventures in book form, that’s cool, in Hades right now, an Edgar Allan Poe module, pretty swordless, there’s a troll, The Call Of Cthulhu starter set, online group, I died once, how hard it was to shoot somebody, it went horribly wrong for me, how immersive it is, how into it you can get, during college, nothing, conventions, GenCon every year, a zombie apocalypse, a female scientist, military people, Delta Green?, I cooked the food and had long ago run out of meat and was using zombies, so immersive, a notch better than even reading a story, grow up, get old, kids grow up, get old, now you have to enough people to form a party, sit back and relax, good job, thank you sir, have a great day.

The Charwoman's Shadow by Lord Dunsany

The Charwoman's Shadow - HERRING

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