Arthur Conan Doyle

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 #788 – READALONG: The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton

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

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

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

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

Through the transparent parts
you can see their guts.

Their feet are round and roll
on diagrams–or long

measuring tapes–dark
with white lines.

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

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

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

the others respect him,
and go slow,

when he passes, winding
among them from behind.

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

tapes. Those soft shapes,
shadowy inside

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

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

The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton

Tuesday May 9, 1972, in the NEW YORK TIMES

The Terminal Man (1974)

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #775 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: No-Man’s Land by John Buchan

The SFFaudio Podcast #775 – No-Man’s Land by John Buchan, read by Connor Kaye of The Eldritch Archives. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the book (2 hours, 13 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Will Emmons, Connor Kaye, and Jonathan Weichsel

Talked about on today’s show:
a much delayed show, war torn Europe, elves living in a cave, came back traumatized, your eulogy, trolls, he went to Poland, Germany, slipped in to Ukraine did some fighting, Connor’s life is getting very meta, plaid, Scotsman wear plaid, the Scottish weave, granite, in geology class, amazed Australian, accents, two years ago, listen back, damn it I missed that, Munaroar, why in Scotland they’re all speaking Gaelic, spoke Scot, national version, Welsh, part of France, basques, Celts in Turkey, dialects, talking to the caveman, starts makin sense, a Robert E. Howard version of this story, The Little People, a theory of where this story came from, a sphere of influence, trace back to Arthur Machen, Coven 13, the official Del Rey text, essentially this story without the outer narrator, a brother and a sister, the sister gets kidnapped, she’s a flapper, she can tell her sorority sisters, the brother goes nuts, told in 15 minutes, a Pict, a connection there, similar themes, an ancient forgotten race living in the British isles, The Shining Pyramid, hidden in the hills, they abduct people for their own purposes, degenerated, cro magnon man, rolling around in that gravy, flint arrowheads and cudgels, the most influential, you would know [if you’d read Machen], kinda like Lovecraft but Welsh, detective stories, an archaeologist on the trail, prehistoric people, some guys who find some prehistoric relics, 1895, five years before, abduct a woman, The Novel Of The Black Seal, The Red Hand, 1899, knowledge of those stories?, inspiration there, Howard read Machen, Out Of The Earth, a 21 minute story, Mr Jim Moon, WWI, Machen’s reputation today, The Bowmen, Robert W. Chambers, a romance novelist, his weird fiction, before he became a smash sensation with The Thirty-Nine Steps, still in university, the Governor General of Canada, ceremonial headdress, if mentioned at all, very fun, badly written, weird fiction, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Weird Tales, the comparison to the Robert E. Howard, dwelling and a great swoon, this was lifechanging, changeling, one of the shepherds, I’m nuts, what ya readin’, sis?, tearin his shirt off, boxes a pict, the ghost of an ancient druid shows up, great power, The Grove Of Ashtaroth, The Wind Through The Portico, folk horror-ish, weird came later, interesting precursors, The Black Cat, no it isn’t, The Thrill Book, H.P. Lovecraft, “survival”, The Call Of Cthulhu, [Algernon Blackwood], the Munsey Magazines, “different stories”, “off-trail”, skinsuit, buy the license, generic stories of today, “The Unique Magazine”, a collection of stories that were weird, a jumble of junk, the good writers, Robert E. Howard, Lovecraft, the magazine that Edgar Allan Poe would publish in, adventure stories, a feature, not a regular western, somehow different, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Black Mask, crime stories rather than mysteries, to mean off the normal trail for that particular magazine, The Mystery Of Sylmare, filler material, the idea is so good, a weird fiction story, vampire fiction, the reproduction of trees using humans as fertilizer, not a normal werewolf story, there’s a vampire story in Sherlock Holmes, The Hound Of The Baskervilles, at least very strongly hinted, opposite of the original Scooby-Doo gothic, what is the author going for, very meditative, sells all his pict books, he goes back, he has to overcome that, a usual horror story, body horror, infected with a parasite, The Troop [by Craig Davidson], how do we really know, a sciency thing, carrying some ivermectin around, stuck on an island, based in history somewhat, the Picts, Julius Caesar, i’m calling a pro-vince, Engullund, there’s some druid’s yo, fucks off for 2,000 years, then the Germans say: we’re Germans!, Picti, the picture people, tattoos, woad, Braveheart (1994), going all pict, painting themselves blue, no longer distinct, likely what really happened, hid underground for 2,000, Bone Tomahawk (2015), beggar, first class ticket, low and stinky fellow, the furnaces going, an interesting image, an oriental stories story but set in Britain, Machen does this for Wales, turning foreign lands, exotic places, souks and hareems, you go underground, you find a lost world, industry, hidden in the mountains under thousands of pounds of rubble, a completely different interpretation, late romantic period, the romantic authors, going back to nature, something terrifying, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, kissed by an elf, Lamia by John Keats, disconnected from nature, walking, hiking, fishing, the natural world, modern encroaching on a natural space, learning pulls him both directions, learned university types, go out for a walk, a cave, a civilization, these degenerate, swoon, wight (vs. knight), wench, and no birds sing, so haggard and so woe begone, a faery’s child, pacing steed, fragrant zone, sweet moan, relish sweet, honey wild, manna dew, her elfin grot, so kissed to sleep, the latest dream I ever dreamed, death pale, horrid warning gaped wide, this is why I sojourn here, picked up a lot, reverses it, a grubby male, she’s an elf/nymph, connecting it to brownies, an elf sort of creature that does household tasks, boggles and boggarts, integrate folklore into science, by discovering the truth about what the folklore was connected to, moral horror, abducting women every twenty years, human sacrifice, recounting their history for him, the fabled ale, gold this and gold that, this was a rich land, these people are the dispossessed, the lack of physical description, the lore, 10,000 words of rich lore, a received document, he’s burned a lot of his papers, reconstructed for us by the editor, Blackwood’s Magazine, read backwards to find more stuff like you like, some of the differences in the ending, later versions, the original 1899, a huge insert, polite scorn, refused by the editor, primitive peoples of the north, unanimously rejected, another little insert at the end, his obituary, you can go and dig up and find this story is actually true, it is not for me to decide, an untrodden desert, The Shadow Out Of Time, Yithian civilization, the moors, at the time of Caesar Scotland was covered in trees, deforested the entire island, giving up on then hillbillies of Scotland, you want me to go to the police?, an insane asylum, a criticism of the way Scotland is treated, if you take London out of Britain England is very poor, the GDP has been fucked, interestingly political, lorded and put in charge of Canada, very smart, diplomatic, the call to action, the names of chapters were bizarrely changed, The Darkness Under The Earth, jumbled up, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, The Troubles Of A Conscience, The Watcher By The Threshold, go back to the earliest source, the abridged version, the most accurate, the good news about FFM, art for this story, where Heart Of Darkness was first serialized, from the period of Poe forwards, a story or essay, quasi-ghost stories, a story of colonialism with an overlay, journey into the underworld, ghost stories, in Victorian times, an examination of reality with a suspicious chip on its shoulder, the footnote in FFM is the same, written by the editor of the last chapter, editing stories for space, reprinted, fixed columns, A Princess Of Mars, reinserted, the first book publication, ended very suddenly, I jumped in my horse and rode off, in retrospect, most of it’s in there, looking at the first book publication, creative control, the author’s revision, Poe recycles, fill two pages, this illustration we have licensed, fiddling, improve, wight to knight, people like the idea of knights on horseback vs. guy, it wasn’t supposed to be set in the middle ages, walks, ride, the romantics are out romanticizing nature as it is, A Predicament, lifting from the European tradition, the magazine has an editor, Galaxy magazine, Horace Gold, the author’s version, which version to do, the expanded version, the art, the magazine that attracts you, Margaret St. Clair, Ray Bradbury, reprints from Munsey’s magazines, Virgil Finlay art, the covers for Skull-Face, Fantastic Novels, artists almost never renewed, lucky for us, a shame for his estate, fuck his estate, keep changing their company name, Heroic Signatures, hello, Elon, people ask for them, by his auntie or his cousin, mostly locked down by legal threats, Sword Woman, Black Agnes stories, trademark, legal bullying, fucked by Justin [Trudeau], Mistress Of Death, Blades Against France, international treaties, if you are interested, Wikisource, Oriental Stories, Magic Carpet, Weird Tales, crusader story, Clark Ashton Smith, let’s talk about No-Man’s Land, exoticising the familiar, the rednecks, the hicks, a heartland hinterland thing, North·West Romances, RCMP guys arresting minors and indians, prospectors, Jack London exploitation, a western genre, could’ve been a bear, if it was a bear it wouldn’t be weird fiction, the indians are effected by the white people showing up, the white man is the burden, indoctrinated into the white man’s beliefs, a weird inversion, most people don’t live in the north, Scotland isn’t that big, British Columbia is way bigger than England, the inability to talk to regular people, back from Iraq, shell-shocked, exoticising the heather, a fisherman, social gossip with the ladies, who his target audience is, Scottish dialect, phonetically, strong brogue, started off lighter, the ostler, hostel, The Inn by Guy De Maupassant, The Shining by Stephen King, hostler, the local who takes care of your horse, as all Australians and every New Zealander has, cheap flophouse, a source for local lore, the locals can’t understand me, slow down, boy, guy joins the police, [Far Below by Robert Barbour Johnson] a CHUD story, we have to keep their numbers down, a slow genocide over decades, you can’t talk about it with the regular people because they won’t understand, to expand the frontier, Antarctica, underground, Mars, defamiliarize yourself, The Matrix (1999), literally underground, the world behind the world, the shepherd and his sister, the devil, only in the darkness, they poke holes in my sheet, they leave arrowheads on a stone nearby, not a very scary story, the creeps, pricking the hole in the neck of sheep, they smoke their meat, gaining sustenance the strange way, living on the moors, if you don’t have a fire, on the train back, a Hawthorne story, smelters, 700 episodes, while academia is arguing, it’s your doctor, stage five cancer, reevaluate, will prep, romance pulp, the predicament that Graves has, the editor steps in, insert character, the other scene, the pricking of the throats, weird straw, a reed, what instrument is used, they’re chupacabras, swimming across the lake, when you seee the art in FFM, a scary interpretation, and he can hear the arrows, in true darkness, disorienting and upsetting, an almost alien landscape, the scarts, nick of the threshes, primordial beings, studying up on his whole life, oh shit, I’m in real danger, when he gets into the lake, they can’t swim, if he can just get ahead of them, three very delicious cups of coffee, hunting him through the night, read it the second time, long strong arms that can grab you, a terrifying thought to have, completely different style of horror, some gothic, The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis, a long labourius book, Jesse will find out in 7 months, a very Victorian idea, a 20th century idea, searching for the truth, shut their ears, shut their eyes, this is ridiculous, slightly outside the box, politics is in the academic world, all the shitty scientists, people on the periphery, bunch of rich dudes, Marie Curie and her husband, shit that’s really bad for them, it’s amazing finding these things out, a new element inside a puddle of black liquid, regularized, taught in schools, academics of science, [Ben] Franklin is doing science, who gets the credit, crazy time travel idea, the idea of time travel, la la la la la, so dangerous, you’ve got to be careful talking about that, the whole academic thing (they’re very close-minded), a quack, his career thus broken short, the recondite and the quack, the end of the obituary, terrified to be considered quacks, right now they’re talking about UFOs in congress, the 1940s, saying the same thing openly, rejecting his ideas, very dogmatic, the guy who has the facts and experiences vs. the regular ordinary people, a transformative experience of revelation, the framing device for The House On The Borderlands by William Hope Hodgson, Ireland, a house hanging over a cliff, a found document, pig-men, fever dream, parts of the manuscript are burned, the textual experimentation of the found manuscript, The Little People, putting that as part of the story, life imitating art, next thing you know we’re in the middle of a sentence, the man of bronze, he’s got his fists going, pig-men coming out if a portal, see you on twitter, Dermod’s Bane, don’t got visit ireland, don’t go fight that ghost, goes out and punches the ghost, modern American whose ancestors are from the old land, had Lovecraft written it the ending would have gone a different way, mentioned in Supernatural Horror In Literature, The Lurking Fear, some similarities, Worms Of The Earth, a pict warrior, Bran Mac Morn, the last Pictish king, trying to fight the Romans, the art from Famous Fantastic Mysteries, a quote, Algernon Blackwood, found among the papers of the late…, Of such great powers or beings there may conceivably be a survival, folklore is our connective tissue to history and a people, they just start telling their story to him, they don’t write things down, oral culture, quite beautifully connected, the way Lovecraft would have done it, degenerate, our projection rather than his intentions, native peoples of the area who have been driven underground, folk horror style, a lady to sacrifice and a dude to do the sacrificing, awesome, squamous, rugose, pretty horrific, almost reptilian, the sens of the underground, a woman in danger a man there to help, Lovecraft takes the romantic man saving a woman out of it, the lady led him down the garden path, digs into a grave and comes into a tunnel, he is one of them, Innsmouth, The Thing On The Doorstep, the body snatcher, a car trip, they go underground, freaky, a gold pillar and a scary lady who wants to have sex with him, certainly interesting, as always, connecting all these dots, a fun phenomena, when you know the great book of Eibon, creating the bookshelf, the literary connection, seeing The Shining Pyramid mentioned, being a literary detective is fun, Billy Buchan?, how is he connected to this story, archaeology, a similar idea around the same time, parallel thinking, six other stories, Pan is everywhere in the 1890s, Adrian Ross, poetry, a motif and an image, like lightsabers today, Starship Troopers, what do the kids like?, lady with a giant sword, cosplay and videogames, a sword so big you wouldn’t be able to lift it, go out the woods and get scared, wendigo, hanging out with the natives, they don’t necessarily explain, this is sacred, you can’t videotape this, someone a long time ago bunched with another someones realized that was a solution to a proble, there’s a hollow log and in that log was history, you can’t see what’s going on isnide there, there’s a smell, what weird fiction does with that kind of phenomenon, I can’t go passed my death, stick a little straw in there and see what comes out, From Beyond, what happens when you invent the microscope or the telescope, that’s really cool, teasing out someone we believed in, Will was a baby in the 1980s, Gremlins (1984), they’re cute but they’re evil (kinda like kids), don’t let them stay up after midnight, a chinese shop, this exotic pet, do this and don’t do that, Mogwai, all the things go wrong, the history of gremlins comes out of airplanes, Captain Kirk, kill the gremlin, Roald Dahl, airplane difficulties, what caused it?, saying to your armourer: you fucked up, scapegoat, a way of solving problems, who’s stealing the things, who made the milk go sour, the miscarriages, the evolution from a house spirit, a way of solving problems, a diplomatic way, be on the lookout for this thing, an actual creature that stalks the muskeg, pine forests of Ontario, people going nuts is bad, The Good People by Hannah Kent, changeling, swapped with a ferry, bad baby, swapped baby, justified infanticide, Mr Jim Moon [of the Hypnogoria podcast], a birth defect, to help on the farm, in this desperate situation, the same thing, boggles, introduction, a friend who is a bit kooky, the precursor of our main character, enthusiastic about it, a former professor on the street, there was a reality behind these things, a historical basis provided, making these connections, an explanation for it all, causing problems with the sheep, stuff they can eat that poisons them and is contagious, a legitimate explanation, fits well into the horror framework: we’re going to expand your worldview, where everybody is, angels six, bandit means enemy plane, bogie means unknown plane possibly enemy, presumably hostile, bugge, frightening spectre, bogeyman, boggart, a tool to control children, the boggart’s going to get you, genus loci, spirit, a household spirit, household animals to go lame, brownies, perform various, pre-girl, swearing loyalty to a queen I’ve never met, the brownies, badges for obedience, household elf, connecting it to the things in the past, introducing a new idea, learn about nature, channel it in a good way, in both contexts, the girl scouts, the cubs, little bears, to domesticate them, helping grandmas cross the street, light fires, totally disconnected in our childhood minds, references to folklore, it’s what you’re used to, we’re the brownies, they recognized that term, the sweet dessert, cute, decades go by and it becomes lost, let everything go, let it wash over you, an experiencing on it on one level, engaging on another level, key to enjoying the experience, The Player (1992), the medium of movies vs. the medium of a book, gone through before, if you’re going to extract all the juice, audiobooks are not great for a lot of that experience, it depends on the book too, depending on the author’s writing style, this is very dense, making an audiobook, listening five or six times, by modern standards, The Count Of Monte Cristo, it’s hard to get through, not for a casual listen, when you’re ready for a deep dive into late 19th century fiction, barely, a good introduction to this, if you’ve got through this podcast so far, listen to the audiobook again, he’s really fun, a faced paced and fun book, a short novel, John McNab, bored aristocrats decide to go poaching, oppressed by ennui, that’s his audience, that’s him as well, a Lord Dunsany figure with more scrappy Scottishness, he started off as an upper class twit, landed gentry, Lord Tweedsmuir, Adrienne Clarkson, a media figure, journalist, a lot of politicians would have come into peripheral politics, he isn’t going to offend you, cater to his audience, Lt. Governors, ex-politicians who didn’t offend anybody or ex-media figures, for propaganda, service to the empire, the tail end of the empire, died in office, 1935-1940, born in 1875, professoring, readers, actual pay, adjuncts get fucked, ex-academia, academia is as lame as shit, plains indian headdress, we care about you, you are now part of the tribe so don’t fuck us, they all sign that, power struggle stuff, when the United States wants to coup them, kicking out the queen, dismiss the prime minster, socialist policies, the chief scout, he’s your boss’ boss, do they have all the patches?, extracted all the juice, the differences, Out Of the Earth, they’re evil children because they’re small, the corruption, The Bowmen, taking it as a true story, a cool idea: children are becoming corrupting, a criticism of war measures, if you wrote that story today, a trucker metaphor, Nazis, Trumpists, hard to imagine, we turned Nazi into a bugbear, sonnenrad, totenkopf, saluting like Julius Caesar, how do you tell the difference?, pop culture media vs. folklore, superheroes, Batmans, Elon Musk is supposed to be Iron Man, he’s like Tony Stark, licensenced things, owned by Disney, your own folklore metaphor, harder to tell stories that are cool, the enclosure of the commons that happened to stories, what makes these stories cool, the place where, criminalizing poor people, tenant farmers to wool industry, as you cut up reality and turn it into capital you reduce the ability to tell stories, you have to go to the periphery, or to the moors, or to Mars, Mars is the innovation, Planet Stories, stories on Venus, A Voyage To Arcturus, create a secondary world like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, the secondary world of Hyboria, the sorcery part, a short story set in ancient Mesopotamia, The Voice Of El-Lil, a prince rides out to a hermit, lay a curse, tell information, do a favour for me, you have to kill someone for me, one stroke, completely circumvented, Oriental Stories, October-November 1930, his King Kull is Atlantis, just in service of the plot, someone’s betrayed him, talk to a guy who just tells him with magic, disposable, magic is almost unnecessary, vampires or winged men, out of body experience, the fantastical landscape of Africa, authentic Buchan experience, is that what I’m going to do with my life, a fun psychological story, that trainride back, the swim away, into the psychology, transformed over the course of the story, new aspect of reality, messes you up, Jesse’s thesis, the heartland hinterland thing, people are on their own and fucked in the country, make your argument stronger, really cool, page 18 of the original blackwoods, some form of mutton, ewes, a little smoking, the tasteless morsels, dry with thirst, the vessel was of gold, a miracle of flavour, I had known that flavour all my life, the sweet things of the moorland, that lost delicacy of the North, the heather ale, hidden mine of the precious metals, Cairnsmor, Gledwater, glen, home of gold, that secret of their heather ale, corries, freely without a scruple, not enclosures, then like a clap, this too spelled death, no fear of betrayal, the first time he’s there, making him a part of the ceremony in the perfect victim kind of way, The Wicker Man (1973), the food is not cooked properly, that’s lost, tasted before he was born, tolerable kindness, I had spoken their language, a wooden box in the corner, their orgy around the fire, why is everything gold, subject to England, ran the empire, talking to the poorest guy, the fires of industry burning, using it as a metaphor, the leftovers of colonization, it’s there, hmmm, a racial element to it, the biblical god (not capital g god), the fate of one is tied to the other, a capitalist colonialist thing, built an estate in this wilderness, The Lurker At the Threshold, syphilis, slowly going mad, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Ethan Brand, pretty close to done, the amazing novel I found, it’s Australian, an anonymous novel from the late 1890s, Gay Life In Melbourne, girl gets turned into a prostitute, controversial, am very excited to share, a spicy novel, 32 racy chapters, you should want to read this to me, Help! Help!, unmistakably feminine, the distressful sounds, a masculine form, confused mass of dainty draperies, an expression of agony and terror, “blazing eyes, it’s all right, miss”, the light from the lamp fell softly on her countenance, her fresh young beauty, he came out from behind a tree guard, what do you suppose, mustered up a blush, smiled, no-no, he did not effect his purpose, she takes it pretty cooly, smoking hot, a peculiar smile, a ladyfriend, missed the tram, so you live with an auntie, do you?, equally of course, put in a little hug where he thought it would do the most good, what his precise thoughts were cold print refuses to express, a party tonight, that peculiar smile on deck again, queer, this time of the morning, why it got canceled, racy, and Victorian, what year the tram started in Melbourne, probably 1890s, Trove, Police Gazette, would you like to be lectured about cultural sensitivity?, there’s racist stuff in here, we called them something bad in the past, one photo, about 9 hours, three months to do, maybe that time would go fast, you’d have a gay time doing it, she’s holding his neck, tiny little feet, minuscule, a big head, smoky eyes, she’s smoking hot impudence, unadulterated, what we’re about to witness, it’s wonderful, adultery, Auntie is the madam, they’re not friends they’re customers, interesting slice of Australian literature, modern cases, Little Sisters bookshop, constant lawsuit from the BC Civil Liberties Association, trynna make prude, way earlier in upside down books, how to do jiu-jitsu, buy the VHS, by a pamphlet, Hodgson’s story, Frederick Bailey Deeming, a candidate for Jack the Ripper, a good mustache, convicted and executed, six victims, more time free, The Harder They Fall (2021), too stylized, power fantasy, we’re supposed to think she’s powerful?, brinksmanship, Heinlein says okay, Mr. Heinlein I hate you so much sir, threatening to press the nuke button, the dialogue, all the shooting and the style, the focus was on the wrong things, the Bass Reeves story, Hell On The Border (2019), a historical novel trilogy, pretty good, Boss Level (2020), one of the Purge movies, a science fiction idea, what happens when you turn of the law, seems like a Heinlein thing, Niger is trying to get out from under France, French government pornography, pornography reduces sexual activity that produces babies, people can have babies if they want to, Onlyfans, you know our whole businessmodel?, regular streaming, fake communists pretend to yell at each other, Twitch, a way to record clips, kids staying at home, going outside, people playing games, non-important things, understand the appeal, social media platforms, influencers through traditional media, YouTube is very deep, doesn’t Evan do YouTube, supermodel asses and bitcoin, two things that appeal to a lot of people, finding hot things, giving money away, lady fixes up old cars, it’s her job, the giving away is to attract attention, Bryan Alexander’s youtube, a recorded meeting, reference material, stamina, having a manic spell, talking about the wrong things, the people interested in old books are all psychopaths, digging up and collecting things, a male thing, lesbians acting like men, for cars or music, deep dive on music, collecting, construction ones, books: nobody likes those, how many hours to find a bookstore?, how far to find a slurpee?, how many doors to find an x-box?, owns a pulp magazine, you aint gonna get popular, a popular podcast, compared to what?, almost none of the followers, Penthouse Comics, a good ratio, a key indicator, following way to many people, spillover, Pulpcover’s is crazy, 35,000, follows 62, he knows you, asking you to scan those, can you scan these please?, his website’s very useful and comes up a lot, all the evil corporations trade him around like a hockey star, Lenovo, Raytheons or something, spill all his known guts, Mr. Pulpcovers, fun interaction, old pulp stories, a pretty good facebook group, old guys who’ve read a lot of pulp stories, not easy to find, incredibly easy, real life access, when there was a bookstore, magazines for sale, pulpfest places have actual stock, acutely aware, enthusiastic, an extra scanner, cheap it works well, still supported by modern windows, $50 bucks, shitty printer eats your ink, its good to have a printer so you can print up stuff you want to read, you also have the file, do the whole issue, be a contributor to the renaissance, between the Greeks and the middle ages, this Arabic renaissance, a cultural renaissance, shit gets sent back to Europe before copyright, because of all those copyists, it’s immoral if you don’t copy, it’s good for them, they need to do it, a Cirsova tweet, he’s gonna be on the podcast, The Weirwoods by Thomas Burnett Swann, Christina Rossetti, she’s so good, so incestuous, and lesbian, fully illustrated, Goblin Market, some sexual excitement, since pornography has been banned in Niger…, look at the beautiful illustrations, trimming her hair, her sister, the goblins are gathering round, drug or sex-withdraw, come buy!, all ripe together, taste them and try, figs to fill your mouth, that’s what the goblins are saying, 21 pages, Lizzie veiled her blushes, fingertips, pricking up her golden head, hobbling down the glen, her glossy head, one bears a plate, no, no, no, their evil gifts would harm us, one crawled like a snail, in the pleasant weather, like a rush embedded swan, forced rhymes are hard, leering at each other, brother with queer brother, rough nuts brown, was still their cry, in tones as smooth as honey, your turn, good folk I have no coin, all my gold is on the furze, gorse, buy from us with a gold curl, sucked their fruit globes, man-rejoicing wine, that juice, that juice, cloy, too sweet, she sucked and sucked and sucked the more, she sucked until her lips were store, an orgy, a food party, 1859, wise upbraidings, the backstory, wore their flowers, sought them by night and day, then fell with the first snow, kissed her, on their mother twigs, my teeth have met in, pellucid grapes, pure the wave the drink, it’s fun right, like two pigeons in one nest, like two blossoms on one step, gold for awful kings, not a bat flapped, cheek to cheek and breast to breast, cows, house, cakes for dainty mouths to each, as modest maidens shou[l]d, most like a leaping flame, plucked purple, the sunset flushes, the bank was steep, the most sexual poem about fruit, the customary cry, sugar baited words, brisk fruit merchantmen, I dare not look, you should not loiter, each glowworm winks her spark, what should we do[e]?, come buy our fruits, her tree of life drooped from the root, her pitcher dripping all the way, gnashed her teeth, day after day night after night, exceeding pain, hawking their fruits, burn her fire away, her kernel stone, watched for a waxing shoot, the sandful breeze, and would not eat, cankerous care, she heard the tramp of goblin men, sex with a whole bunch of men, Lizzie’s the non bad-girl, the goblin had their way with Laura, she lost her virginity to too many goblin men, where the plot comes in, feared to pay too dear, fell sick and died, first glazing rime, frost, The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, knocking at death’s door, gorse again, running, leaping, crowing, pulling wry faces, wombat-like, snail-paced in a hurry, hugged her and kissed her, panniers and plates, French for bag, a bread bag, pluck and them suck them, pomegranates, figs, eat with us, our feast is but beginning, be welcome guests with us, give me back my silver penny, proud, cross-grained, uncivil, turned from seduction into a rape, held her hands and squeezed their fruits about her mouth, flood, obstreperously like a beacon left alone, a fruit crowned orange tree, like a royal virgin town, mad to tug her standard down, she’s a city under siege, grind their fruits into her mouth, shocking, 20 cannot make her drink, mauled and mocked her, lip from lip, juice that syrruped all her face, some scudded on the gale, knew not was it night or day, copse and dingle, her penny jingle, she ran and ran, dogged her, jibe or curse or something worse, windy paced, out of breath, Laura up the garden, suck my juices, goblin dew, eat me, drink me, flung her arms up in the air, the fruit forbidden, kissed and kissed and kissed her, mouth, drought, angry mouth?, her lips began to scorch, wormwood, rent all her robe and wrung, beat her breast, like an eagle, female eagle, a flying flag when armies run, overbore her lesser flame, which an earthquake shatters down, headlong in the sea, pleasure past, is it death or is it life?, getting close to the end, dinner, cooled her face, golden sheaves, new buds with new day, Laura awoke as from a dream, more modest now, not one thread of gray, when both were wives, her early prime, the haunted glen, blood?, how her sister stood, wow, bid them cling together, there is no friend like a sister, to lift one, to strengthen as one stands, super-sexual, the good sister, covered in jizz, sticky, citrusy and delicious, apparently, your sister’s your best friend, don’t have sex outside of marriage, sex is wonderful and exciting, you gotta hold back, none of the men will wanna date you, unlike Jeannie, get dignity back somehow, her refusal to have sex with these goblin men, somehow allows her sister to get her dignity back, licking the juices off of her, about the images, I like fruit, the moral is the point of the story, sex is a reality how do you deal with it, having orgies with men, male female dynamic, more subject to the consequences of sexual drives, babies you have to give away, striking, thank you for sharing that with me, Korean takeout?, divorced from her Korean heritage, Meg And Will’s?, generic North American, pizza is a popular choice, Mexican places, while we still have choices, people in seven months will be excited to know what Will had for dinner.

No-Man's Land (The Watcher By The Threshold)

No-Man's Land

Posted by Jesse Willis Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #763 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The City Of The Singing Flame by Clark Ashton Smith

The SFFaudio Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #763 – The City Of The Singing Flame by Clark Ashton Smith, read by Tommy Patrick Ryan. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the book (1 hours, 30 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Trish E. Matson, Connor Kaye, and Tommy Patrick Ryan

Talked about on today’s today’s show:
two these, Beyond The Singing Flame, it’s an onion, should Jesse have asked Tommy to record that too?, no novels, pretty famous guy for a guy with basically no novels, he’s 14 years old, bursting with ideas, reads like a D&D campaign set in the Arabian Nights, a flame like in She, the copyright status, Hippocampus Press, The Black Diamonds, he’s really hard too, his writing is very simple in this one, his vocabulary, give himself some feedback, supernal, an archaic word for supernatural, Eric S. Rabkin, a 3 sentence prose pastel, splenetic, iridescent, arabesque, nympholepsy, mien, rutilant, ill-tempered, the least difficult CAS story, sentence by sentence story, that might make a novel, becoming from high heaven, ethereal, rife with words, he’s masterful with the language, construction is good too, the shape of the plot is really excellent, a very interesting story, The Emperor Of Dreams documentary, accessible, why lots of writers like it, sidereal, lead astray, considering his vocabulary, lepidoperous, did you think of Logan’s Run?, swirling around, transcend and get reborn (or die), moth to a flame, exactly, multi dimensional higher dimensional transcendence, really into the body, really into material, obsessed with death and beauty, Lovecraft likes stars, immortality, architecture and burying the past, sexuality, reproduction through death, the beauty of those things, the siren call of the city, where’s it all going, he’s obsessed with thinking about it and telling about it, his structure is really good, sentence by sentence, he didn’t really do anything with it, the structure makes more appreciable, missing the last chapter, asking for the sequel, the narrator gets inserted into the story, no wrap up frame, disconcerting, he didn’t have an ending, kill the main characters, kind of Clark Ashton Smith but not really, this document is now found in a cylinder falling from the sky, I found this cylinder when taking a hike, Angarth more Smith, he’s the illustrator and the artist, his friend who’s also a weird fiction, never met in real life, the real life connections, EldritchDark, the best etext versions, Arkham House along with the sequel, published during his lifetime, July 1931, Wonder Stories, We had been friends for a decade or more, the journal, July 1st, 1938, July 31st, 1930, I’ve been gone for two years, set in the future, originally, Philip Hastane, there’s always a war in Europe, the reprint in Startling Stories, The Scientifiction Hall Of Fame, Harry Warner, Jr., of all the living writers of fantasy, A. Merritt, an alien planet, read around, the word that kept coming up, Carcosa, a bunch of layering on Carcosa, True Detective‘s first season, anything Yellow King related, Robert W. Chambers, Gene Wolfe’s vocab, The Wizard Knight, even deeper, circle back, cycle of stories, alien city on another world, not as sinister, more sirens, more sexy than horrific and compelling, this city is relatively safe place, Giles Angarth, he still brings his gun though, inner and outer narrator, sandwiches, coffee, and a gun, The Demoiselle DY’s, The Elf Trap, Ambrose Beirce, a friend of George Sterling, a continental famous kid, often on the front page, wunderkind child poet from California, newspapers were hungry, syndicated, The Vancouver Sun, every city paper had that story, a little bit like, A Wine Of Wizardry, Jack London, never met Ambrose Bierce, titans of American and international literature, An Inhabitant Of Carcosa, An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge, a death story, I don’t recognize this landscape, I have the illness, recognizing the landscape, it’s California, the animals, no birds, no insect, a lynx, transforming the landscape into a another world, literally a hike, the Lake Of Hali, Tathagoua, the Book of Eibon, Tsathoggua, are their lynx in Colorado, they go on the hike that inspires this story, central to that, a ski resort, a deep mountain tarn that’s never been sounded, seeing the landscape from the documentary, otherworldly, rock formations, been out on a hike, what if this was an alien world, walking makes your brain start going, Sedona, like an alien formation, episodes of Star Trek, where am I, substances Smith abused, the strongest drug, coffee, dream like drug trips, The Hashish Eater, Lord Dunsany, Confessions Of An English Opium Eater, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an excuse to let imagination run wild, psychedelic ideas, your brain is manufacturing drugs for itself, H.P. Lovecraft is the opposite, Bobby Derie took cocaine for a prescription, HPL: coke head, it’s not for you, warned Clark Ashton Smith not to take it, wine, Atlantean wine, the wine state, schizophrenia, first and second guy bring the third guy, the structure, a brief summary of the book, British enough, does a really good Irish, third or fourth time, we keep going back, changed somehow, brings the cotton balls, suicide, gonna be great, after that event, the siren song has wooed him completely, he’s an artist not a wordsmith, what’s on the other side, a total utopia, only humans come back, the flame dimension, everything is in ruins, a temperance story, a big popular thin in the city, gin, Marvel movies, whatever drug, we gotta lock this down, depopulate us, kill yourself with a friend, a horrible destructive lure, what’s beyond this flame, death is beyond this flame, a transformation, an ascension, Downward To The Earth by Robert Silverberg, rebirth, everybody dies, choose to rebirth yourself, if your hand isn’t flashing red, on your birthday, you’re young and strong, swiping left, or right, nu you, is this a fantasy or is it a science fiction?, weird fiction, psychedelic fiction, very spiritual, technological or magical, a teleporter, an ancient doorway, more Coruscant, the thermos of coffee and set a little bit in the future, wormholes in place, a science fiction writer as a character, in a science fiction magazine, moer super-science than regular science, transdimensional, Algol, sangfroid, struck with awe, a spiritual transformation, we’re all one now, this feeling of singularity, moth people, purified or made unified, very-Lovecraft, Ex Oblivione, love being non-existent, H. Rider Haggard, these science fiction writers and illustrators are better people, earthly pleasures, Ebbonly, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, matching haircuts, stepping through the pillars and falling, falls a different way, using the scientific methods, pilgrimage, the earplugs, numbing agent, can you numb your ears?, super-meta, words couldn’t possibly describe it, here’s how sweet I am, here’s some really excellent prose about it, all the names, things to work into a story, Angarth, a small town in Scotland, is that his real name?, Clark Smith seems like a pretty boring name, working the vocab mine, Hastur, the tamarack, mid-California, the Sierras, Kim Stanley Robinson, Zenna Henderson’s The People, on the shore of some foreign planet, alienation, vertiginous, determine our personalities, shut-in, his dad traveled the whole world, back to the library, reads The Arabian Nights, this landscape, Crater Ridge, stones of monolithic size and shape, an unknown vegetation, luminescent amber, Anakim, spire on giant spire, stepped through the looking glass into a fantasy world, this alien city with a yellow mist, best be done animated, much more illustrated than live action, Anakim are giant humanoids, basically giants, gargantuan, that’s a normal world, Darth Vader, where they steal all their names from, he just read the Bible, the people of the city, giant stone people, they do not have ears, a Las Vegas, popsicles and silver suits and haircuts, many roads to this city, alien creatures, their corridors, other Earths, other planets, a plane of portals, The Black Company by Glen Cook, Las Vegas for suicide/transcendence, the sinning has got to be stopped, why it’s so interesting and demands a sequel, humans center themselves in their stories, we’re a sideline, spectators and not really important, the gun never gets used, siege weaponry, a tower with legs, like our good friend Sauron, suicide cult, why are they so certain there’s something bad through the flame, obviously you’re going to die, immolated, smoke, instantly consumed, near the end, mesmeric lure, succumbed to the desire, immolate himself, a giant lepidoptery being, so good, smart moths, compassionate moths, fellow travelers, rather sweet, deadly enslavement, he ran forward in a series of leaps both solemn and frenzied, sacerdotal, headlong into the flame, more dazzling greenness, benumbed brain centers, annul the perilous mesmerism, fled from the shrine, envying my companion’s fate, fiery dissolution, more people going in from coming out, this is very attractive, enjoying wine, not for me, ice cream, fomo, a hilarious short story [And All The Earth A Grave] by C.C. MaCapp, a computer slips a cog, two coffin garage, this face tattoo is very fashionable, emigration, people living the country, a moral upset, even maybe mention, telepathy, the incoming army, the foundation of the flame, Reno trying to steal Las Vegas’ business, the last pilgrims, the rulers of the outer lands, obeyed the lure of the singing fountain and vanished into the higher sphere, the story leans that way, you don’t know, one moth to the other moth, I used to be a caterpillar, many legends in the outer lands, guessed by only a few, the inner dimension is hated, a lethal and pernicious chimera, an opium paradise, a mecca for this?, suicide boothing, the build up the city, built up around it?, larger or more impressive than other buildings, like a beautiful waterfall for Paul, it’s too dangerous, we can’t have too many people being happy here, into a higher state of consciousness, a VR fountain, live in your basement a VR all day, hippies, spiritual higher stare of consciousness, the great resignation, there’s more to life, the religion vs. a cog in the machine, our viewpoint characters, lashed to the mast of the ship like Odysseus was, timeless concept, war on a peaceful nation, can they destroy it?, like a laser beam, a geyser, a geological force, the scoriac stuff, gotta read the sequel, when you read Conan, those were the days, jump onto a new ideal, Conan never revisits the same place, Poseidonis stories, 2 or other stories like that, that Averoigne series, why is this happening, the letters pages, is this really possible, we should ask, more by the same author, the nature of this world and the purpose of the flame, if Tommy wants to record it, professional grade, keep using that, The Black Abbot Of Puthuum, on my phone in a farm in Ecuador, a checklist, an excuse to read a story, read it at a level, getting to share that, accents, Irish to Scottish to British, theatre, Saturday Night Live, Alec Guinness and Obi Wan Kenobi with Yorkshire, all the British characters from Star Wars, a City Of The Singing Flame tattoo, explaining Clark Ashton Smith, Lovecraft is in the Marvel Universe, Clark Ashton Smith movies, a TV adaptation, he’s difficult, he’s high level, incredible vocab, the imagery the colours, chalcedony, they love their art, they’re art men, rectilinear architecture, the nod to Lovecraft, cyclopedia, a Lovecraft vocab database, why Jesse does the podcast, an appointment, J. Manfred Weichsel, William Jeffrey Rankin, it is up to individuals, denying the attraction of the flame, just another drug problem like heroin, gin, or marvel movies, your AI friends, my AI girlfriend likes the same AI movies I like, you learn stuff, what people think they want, just read Clark Ashton Smith, customized stuff, opt out, everybody’s an AI, too new of a book, the best science fiction books, AI generated, 23 books on the list, 1 book from 2016, some listicle website, integrated and got rid of duplicates, Arthur C. Clarke, Blake Crouch’s 2016 book, The Martian, best?, you’d do pretty well, full circle, The Sunken Land Rises Again by M. John Harrison, Viriconium, weird fiction, pretty damn weird, an assistant to a mad scientist, super dense and very prosey, light on plot, he’s on the long list, Light novels, an unsettling atmosphere, feels very very modern, Nova Swing, 19 hour collection of stories, Neil Gaiman, Jack Vance’s Green Magic, get magic, bitter and tragic, recursive worlds, not quite getting what you want, poignant and good, dying earth wizards, the Zothique series stories, William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land, sad story, Subterranean Press, premium paper, Logan’s Run, Shakespeare’s Planet, Invitation To The Game, The Charwoman’s Shadow, Scratch One, Progeny by Philip K. Dick, getting back to Philip K. Dick, 53-57 stories, always exciting, these incredible authors, Le Guin once, Arthur C. Clarke, Elmore Leonard, nobody knows they’re public domain yet, all the weight of the world is on your shoulders, it’s exciting, or gals, its nice to be appreciated, there for somebody, its not just for the moment, its for the ages, share it with somebody 30 years from now, put it on a bookshelf, big box computer games, selling it for $86, an arc of nostalgia, 286sx, Future Shop, couldn’t afford a 28.8, $0.99, nostalgic for their youth, an old broken 286, feel the floppy going in, become valueless and then come back, the Harlan Ellison version, an L.A. based radio show, not for the ages, an enthusiastic and emotive, very very elderly, the narrator of the film, Harlan Ellison claimed to have read it 200 times, that’s how he learned to read aloud, narrated some Ben Bova, Run For The Stars, passionate, going to Hollywood and getting cynical, born into a world weary wisdom about reality, he went his own way, a passion project, a Hippocampus Press DVD, shill for publishers, passionate people, sharing the materials, solid contents, effort into their covers, the complete poems of Lovecraft, a really handy reference, S.T. Joshi finds some scrap of poem, The Hashish Eater poem, delectable, makes reading delicious, so rich, the lightest and most accessible, 101 Clark Ashton Smith, high level, for bibliophiles, all this prose, a lot of sugar, a slice of cake, small desserts, you have to like that, niche, if you don’t like honey you’re not going to like it, the richest Tommy has ever read, Ambrose Bierce, challenging the reader, why are you trying to make your prose…, making jokes, carving magnificent sculptures out of mountainsides, he really does have something, why Lovecraft was his biggest fan, Robert E. Howard was a great poet, translations of Charles Baudelaire, Poe and Dunsany, Baudelaire and Poe, taproot, undeniable, the first Sherlock Holmes short story, A Scandal In Bohemia, The Purloined Letter, Conan Doyle is the accessible and dumb version of Poe, this hidden photograph, I will have her show me, we love Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson and London and Irene Adler, we don’t love Dupin, the contents of the letter are sick evil and twisted, the photograph is of the king of Bohemia, I’m doing a tribute to Poe and nobody knows, Harry Potter vs. Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, super entertaining, no Harry Potter tattoos, Harry Potter is breezy, Tolkien is fun but not breezy, an afternoon’s entertainment, Clark Ashton Smith: guaranteed enjoyment, intellectually interesting, attentive, tickles a different part of the brain, high art, good art, most art is good, one of his best plots, well that happened, Lovecraft’s plots are much better, not much of a plotter, 700 pages to explore this concept is cool but nothing happened, Pacific Edge, guy tries to get girlfriend at baseball game, not playing the same game, just a weird guy, how popular he was, talked this one to death, Pirates Of Venus, A Meeting With Medusa, Sailing To Byzantium, Farnham’s Freehold, northern Minnesota, almost Canada, just about out May, The Thing On The Roof, No Man’s Land, pick in August, 2 years is fine but 5 years is too long, lost tribe of cave people, troggies, chuddies, surprise chuds, Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers, lick and nip, Paul Sings The Classics, a singing voice for silent musicals, Nerds Of A Feather get together, Gather Yourselves Together by Philip K. Dick, from 1994, posting photos, Jesse misses Connor on twitter, usually eastern, an awful awful dream, discombobulated, very fun, that sentence sounds like he put a space in it, disjointed, a snip in the file, mouth noises, get closer to your mic, get a better mic, not all for the audience, caring a lot about art, Cat Killer by Donald E. Westlake, brutal an interesting sounding, Clive Barker, Jonathan is not a murder as far as I know, collecting human heads, Tales To Make You Vomit, not all horrific, that weird, you guys should be DMing each other, some sort of money arrangement, throwing around numbers, probably not even 4 hours, an hour and a half recording, relatively cold, ACX pays per finished hour, the going rate, $200 or $300 per finished hour, wordcounter.net, sell them not on audible.com, revenue sharing, Planet Of The Wage Slaves, diverse ideas and lots of nudity, amazing covers, their text over my art, Warrior Soul looks great, the lady’s hair in front of the title of the book, art direction vs. being an artist, coming up with interesting ideas, Five Maidens On A Pentagram, gothic horror sex-farce, Hasatan, sex-crazed demon, just sounds fun and pulpy, our reality, cycling through Smith/Howard/Dick, millions of great things, how to get this stuff out there, enough bundled together, anthologies based on themes, teaching the occasional yoga class.

Why The City Of The Singing Flame Is My Favorite by Harry Warner, Jr.

The City Of The Singing Flame by Clark Ashton Smith

The City Of The Singing Flame - editorial introduction

The City Of The Singing Flame art by Frank R. Paul

The City Of The Singing Flame by Clark Ashton Smith

Rowena Morrill - The City Of The Singing Flame

Posted by Jesse Willis Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #760 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Poison Belt by Arthur Conan Doyle

The SFFaudio Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #760 – The Poison Belt by Arthur Conan Doyle, read by Mike F. Smith (for LibriVox.org). This is a complete and unabridged reading of the book (3 hours, 17 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Bryan Alexander, Trish E. Matson, and Terence Blake

Talked about on today’s show:
1913, The Strand, republished, 199 pages, 3 hours and 15 minutes, what we might call a series, The Lost World, never even mention dinosaurs, does this book stand on its own, from a plot perspective, fall into the byplay, as characters, building on those characters, what character we needed, such a step down in terms of length, the mind blowing idea, discovered dinosaurs 3 years earlier, everybody dies, what challenger was doing, reverses all the damage he does, less potent thus less famous, the reception, invasion novels, village, how the rest of the world responds, golfers and babies, the end of the world, straight up, a giant stride being taken, the big setup, skull island, the plateau of Leng, Edgar Rice Burroughs, in Challenger’s wife’s boudoir, no action, the story as an idea, a request from publishers, more of that Challenger stuff, the adventures of these guys again, this story gets super-existential, I can’t report the news now, that old lady worrying about her stocks, in despair, we still have science!, all the roles that Conan Doyle is himself playing, aspects of his own personality, Sumerlee is the worst parts, Challenger is the guy who wants to be, Roxton is the manly man, the reversal, Aristotle’s unities, war imagery, corpses lying every which way on the ground, pseudocorpses, a gas attack, even more striking, propaganda operations, that’s where he got his, keeping up with the fairies, keeping up with everything topical, Danger!, England being attacked by an enemy using uboats, the spectre of death, War Of The Worlds, newspaper reports, telegrams, he wanted an [email protected] email address, clericals and anarchists, Paris has riots in the streets, racialism, the nigger at the beginning and the end, less complex societies, Sumatra, odious ideas of race, the pinnacle is all these people, after he bites his housemaid, a superman, making fun of challenger, short legs, the ride in on the traincar, doing a cockatoo, some rando, perfect for England in 1913, no colonies east of Sumatra, we peel around the world moving west, continues past England, eerily prescient, really poignant, layers of mediation, a snapshot of attitudes in this peak of colonialism, the Slovenians falling, the Teutons were slower to be affected, Doyle’s everybody here, could he have written this 20 years later, kinda stupid premise, ether is not a thing, ether has come back, Einstein, we don’t need this shit, you don’t need ether for the plot, a map of local interstellar space, a bubble of low density interstellar medium, pre-Einsteinian ether theory, cosmic particles, panspermia, what we’re looking at is not a gas, like the Force, allowing light to do its thing, it doesn’t make any sense, change the overall mixture, it can’t actually be a gas, the earth orbiting through this gas, diluting it, they wax papered the windows, A Pail Of Air by Fritz Leiber, a bucket of oxygen, a frozen gas vs. an etheral gas, echoes from this book, Brain Wave by Poul Anderson, supressed conductivity, a Vernor Vinge lift later as well, A Fire Upon The Deep, zones of thought, a sleeping field, the vocab word: catalepsy, I’m feeling cataleptic, can’t come into work today, The First Men In The Moon by H.G. Wells, a social novel, clearly sentimental, the imagery is powerful, the comedy aspect, makes it gentle, John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos, that scale is so different, every woman on earth is now pregnant, The Day Of The Triffids, knocking up a whole world, hyper-personal, played by Brian Blessed, if fictional people can be reincarnated into real people, A Thousand Plateaus by Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze, chapter tracks, a screaming thing, The Land Of The Mists, spiritually insane, 5% insane, luminiferous either, a spiritualist concept, observe as much as we can, if it exists, really?, takes it a priori, Lovecraft, water and salt, who he is and how, essential salts, materialism, too great a thing, three bucketfuls of water, ugly bags of mostly water, uses matter but is not of it, When The World Screamed, a Quatermass serial, a Doctor Who episode, Inferno, a Mirror, Mirror, evil UNIT, Brigadier has an eye-patch, like Spock, some other inventor, the Earth is a living organism, the crust of the Earth with the grapes, a wash to get of some virus or bacteria on the grapes, a line of 8 reapers, bloody golfers, machine metaphors, longing for simplification, early Christian apocalypse, Ragnarok, atomic bomb stories, after the bomb, Mad Max, 27 hours, makes a good play, its scope is much smaller, a total cop-out, just believe Challenger, all hold hands and become a better world, massive anarchist conspiracy, find people to blame it on, a prime target, lost a day, very controversial, personal reasons, hurts the stature, post-apocalyptic, not a plague, the policman standing up wakes up, traffic’s gone to shit, hard not to bring up Lovecraft, a science fiction story, field glasses, spot his housekeeper, a microscope, this microscope, this is wonderful, you can see for your self, and yet it moves sort of line, scientific method, emotionally interesting, existential, does my life have meaning, humour, Doyle’s such a good writer, everything flows so smoothly, our worthy Summerlee, mopping his heated brow, more easily condone, when my balance has been disturbed, one Sarah, so much classism, she is a woman of a sever and forbidding aspect, the royal we, alone at my breakfast, entertaining and instructive, imperturbability, upset a small vase, withdrawn the the study, I sank my teeth in the calf of her leg, ore herself free, some thoughts of an explanation, traveling very rapidly, is it illuminative?, pour this orange juice on his head, explaining the behavior, as you drink less alcohol, as you get older, restrain yourself, as your faculties go, laughter and impulsivity, rationalizing, this experiment is a good idea, so good, he’s become a monster, he bit her on the leg, use my rational mind, problems and issues, classism, rather horrified, loyal chauffeur, wryly sticks with the professor, such a domestic tyrant, they couldn’t appreciate it, we’re all going to die soon, while working on the engine, a common attitude, many rich people now, utter callousness, a natural progression, Sherpas are always missing when climbing Everest, Nepal, the last real town before Everest, a statue of Tenzing Norgay, without him Hillary wouldn’t have gotten anywhere, run 26 miles down hill, badass, Victorian, 18th century fiction, invisible servants, especially a British thing, French social novels of the 19th century, Russian novels, snapshot of the world in 1913, a maniac and a monster, we see this today, Kardashians, gigantic celebrity, talent on stage, staff was masked up, the science in here, the ether explanation, the ideas of what science is, pro-science stuff, what is this book about, what is a theme?, the hardest questions, you’re telling me I have to live, they don’t want to live in a world without…, you can’t published, you can find stuff out, the most stable idea, it isn’t the publication its the finding out, new things about reality, there’s still always going to be science, for science alone vs. life with him, some class stuff with the local guides, and racism, science is in many ways useless, too late to do anything about it, a Cassandra function, there’s delight, the future Earth will be repopulated, evolution is 100% true, a series of observations, predictions, errors, new observations, new predictions, very optimistic, horrific things happened and people were shocked for a while, Malone, feeble folk, like all the oft repeated truths, a lesson an actual experience was need to bring it home, still stunned by the suddenness of the blows, fires everywhere, one of the greatest tragedies, grim reading, her stocks! her stocks!, elide over millions are going to die, for the survivors, personally unaffected, wake up, a rictus grin, nobody died of dehydration, those people, COVID-19, awfully familiar, almost Lovecraftian, the abyss, how convenient, the engineers, this story is meaningless in a certain sense, what will not be forgotten, this revelation, ignorant self-complacency, what abysses may lie on the other side, all our emotions to-day, pushing the religion, explicit religious stuff, singing the hymn, that chastened effect, humility, a narcissistic element, we survived, a contradiction in the narrative stance, the only survivors, Huck Finn at his own funeral, headlines, DEAD LONDON!, The Star by H.G. Wells, almost exactly the same story, A Pail Of Air, a rogue planet, the new brotherhood, books and machines, a hint of this, cold last paragraph, Martian astronomers, Wells and Conan Doyle were really different people, you know why he didn’t get a sir, almost all his characters are monsters, imposing these things on people, often they get a comeuppance, The War Of The Worlds guy, their philosophies, The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter, a really ambitious book, a bunch of child murders, aloof, The First Men In The Moon, Cavor is wonderful, suicidal, a cool romp?, sentimental, moved by it, convinced the whole world had died, where that leaves us, humanity being humbled, the amoeba doesn’t save anybody in this, the human future, out of space, this invasion from Mars, the most fruitful source of decadence, the conception of the commonweal of mankind, very Wellsian, Eric S. Rabkin, that’ll never be the case, damn that gets me, such a magnificent book, a Challenger adventure, he’s a great character, why is he so enthusiastic, reading old stuff does more than one thing, a picture of the society I live in, Fraunhofer lines, we can’t imagine this today, our tame scientist at the office, they have a scientist on staff, at the New York Times, maybe today, he don’t write a lot of articles, 5 people wrote them, daily newspapers, a list of experts they call up, just there to consult, be a Wikipedia and keep up with all that stuff, the golfers and the cricketers, pre-WWI Britain, a “tame scientist”, this had to have been true, these were going concerns, going through old newspapers, the topics covered, university level writing, mistakes, Lovecraft had a syndicated astronomy column across the USA, the local newspaper, the Vancouver Sun, the Province, 5 days a week, not doing Mondays anymore, the fonts are big, the end times for newspapers, Bryan’s new book, Universities On Fire by Bryan Alexander, the bleakest thing Bryan’s ever written, possible extinction, Scientific American used to be amazing, magazines are dead, retired teacher magazines are better than national general topic magazines, encouraging people to get vaccinated, insisted they didn’t need vaccination, the wackiness of Q Anon, silver colloidal treatments, oceans of scientific stuff, the evolution of Wikipedia on SARS, we have a stupider media, access to scientific material, mis and dis information, reading wrong stuff, getting indoctrinated by it, we lived through COVID in real time, the vaccine(s), distributed quickly, excited about the science aspect, prediction supposition, action, correction, new prediction, combined with the emotion, ring the bell, all four of the men, a very religious image, smart, how do you communicate with a whole lot of people, Doyle also makes a point, the churches had never been so packed, the end of Soylent Green, not slept in weeks, it’s people, a very similar kind of image, a utopia, golfing at the world’s end, keep golfing, a dystopian vision, a continuity, the bucolic English countryside, Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement, Jane Austen, J.G. Ballard, pastoral, industrial, tamed nature, a lawn, feedstock for our machines, Kim Stanley Robinson’s The High Sierra: A Love Story, Switzerland, all about the hiking, under Mercury’s surface, Ministry Of The Future, catastrophes into eucatastrophes, he loves this environment, this landscape, lightly pissing on Yosemite, I hate Yosemite, The Comet by W.E.B. Du Bois, searching for other survivors, about to kiss, we have to procreate, only New Yorkers were killed, almost lynched, a cash reward, Pseudopod, another British writer, M.P. Shiel, the movie is pretty good, Harry Belafonte, The Purple Cloud, he just steals other people’s stuff, this is nothing like British Columbia, same story different location, different title, The Place Of Pain, a lens that allows you to see the Moon’s surface like no other telescope can, super-duper-liar, lifting and using ideas, The World, the Flesh And The Devil (1959), heavy-handed, Star Trek, bring back Jim Crow, the cyanogen scare of 1906, Cosmos, Carl Sagan, never explicated to any great degree, a lake in central Afica that had a burp and killed everybody around it, a Fortean style gas, a heavy gas, Lake Nyos in Cameroon, impeding in Salt Lake, invisible, the entire text, Z For Zachariah by Robert C. O’Brien, we don’t know what happened to cause Jenny’s death, her funeral over zoom, they had just adopted a kid, Redonda, this guy’s really kill, this guy’s horrible, fun, a liar, it might be worse than that, Colin Wilson, Michael Moorcock, The Yellow Invasion, child molestation, everything about him is monstrous, his grift goes on and on, a kind of stature, a couple of handfuls of books from that period, palate cleanser, a lot of fun, very moving, done more with it, end of the world/British invasion stories, good writing, just as valuable for the context, if you’re interested in genre history, Francis Ford Coppola, an ongoing joke, roots in a lie, his dad ennobled him, his way of inveigling his way into the good graces of publishers, not occupiable, ESP and reincarnation, would you like to be a lord, a way of having a conversation with Vincent Price, Hollywood creepy, giant cosplay, Arthur Machen, Umberto Eco, another creepy guy, pedophiles out in the world, Sailing Alone Around The World by Joshua Slocum, not acting on best behavior, Jesse’s politics: pirates stabbing liches, Anne McCaffrey, Jesse can beat her ghost, live afraid, The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey, Gutenberg.org, a great story, 30 pages, about 45 minutes to read aloud, Black Priestess Of Varda by Erik Fennel, he is that guy, lost an eye and lost an arm, a portal fantasy, the story is very illustrative, intermural television, can it be done?, 1930, only 100 years off, Science & Invention, Dick Tracy’s two way radio, Metropolis by Thea von Harbou and her husband, contemporaneous with the making of the film, Alan Dean Foster, an amazing BBC radio drama adaptation, novelizations of movies based on novels, Philip K. Dick and Blade Runner, audiobooks of the damned, pirate audiobook narrations of novelizations, The Terminator, get inside Sarah Connor’s head, based on the script, Alan Dean Foster’s novelization of Alien, fantastic, a stage adaptation of Aliens, a high school production, Sigourney Weaver in the audience, it stages really well, with film we don’t have to restage, refer people back to the original film, take care of that flood, rising tide, good book, Logan’s Run, Downward To Earth, Sixth Column, photography stuff, bud and stuff, hang out with Terence and see his beautiful southern France, abandoned lunatic asylum, changed it back, flash photography, photography takes practice, ghost hunters, flicker every so often, invite any spirit to play with it, arrange a card game with a couple of spirits, wild fun, the later end of Conan Doyle’s stuff, historical tours, hand hewn stone, 2nd biggest structure on Earth, built just before the Civil War, the rump state of Virginia, a Union unit seized all the money, ghost stories, the idea situation, a trash fire algorithm, the host with the most, do some Silverberg, life is really good, spoiled, choosing not to believe.

The Poison Belt by Arthur Conan Doyle

Posted by Jesse Willis Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #754 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Four-Day Planet by H. Beam Piper

The SFFaudio Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #754 – Four-Day Planet by H. Beam Piper – read by Mark Nelson. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the novel (6 hours, 14 minutes minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Cora Buhlert.

Talked about on today’s show:
Henry Beam Piper, 1961, paired with another Piper, probably serialized?, no, doesn’t need a serial feel, Putnam and Sons, standard Piper spaceship: ball, the hunting of the seamonster, Lone Star Planet, chased by giant steer, more action hunting in this, makes you want to read it, influences, a Jack London novel, Moby Dick, kind of a juvenile, a YA protagonist, not 18 yet, felt younger, felt older, “Tin Tin And The Space Whalers”, Tin Tin at the typewriter, drill down into this book, Tin Tin on Instagram, streamer tech, video and audio recording everything, flashing it to his dad, their planet doesn’t have satellites, only 20,000 people on the planet, stubborn SOBs, occasional miscreant, divide satellites by the number of people on earth, Jesse’s not a math guy, GPS, navigating from the stars and inertial systems, cute surprising moves, on the docks, pulls out a gun, sea-snail, gets poisoned, showcases Piper’s hobby horses, excuses for guns, excuses to smoke, loves his guns, low opinion of police, respect, government forces lumped in with the racketeers, as a group they get no respect, libertarianism is in the mix, propaganda for libertarianism, undercutting that, multiple volunteer fire departments in the same city?, one alarm system, seven small villages, look at the geography of this planet, near antarctica, very rural, ports, no farming, vat meat, vegan meat, under-egged that, limited to the ocean journey, the lifeboat, a Battlestar Galactica episode, Dogget will survive until the air turned to liquid, taught us interesting things, Fritz Leiber’s A Pail Of Air, To Build A Fire by Jack London, The Sea Wolf, Eden among the sealions, not a romantic vacation, thick bark trees, using machine guns to cut down trees, more guns in this scene?, everybody brought their own personal weapons, the meta, a former slaver hiding his identity, a dead woman’s fingers, driving down the price of a natural resource in order to enrich himself, the hazards of monopolism, they wanna lynch, government’s on the case, that’s be nice, not very likely, Israel hunting Nazis, a Federation government, agents, at the general level or admiral level, James Bond, ordinary murderer, bank robber or conartists, enslave a planet, he’s a war criminal, more along the Hitler lines, characters from the Jack Vance Demon Prince novels, a personal mission not a government mission, the Manuel Noriega story, maybe I should run this country, they went after him, they knew he was corrupt, ask Saddam Hussein, why am I the one defending libertarianism to H. Beam Piper?, lynch law is bad, correct moral message, you must go to court, reading books, schools in Florida, supporting public education, the value of a good education, old fashioned, out in 7 months, useless information from chat GPT, good curation of knowledge, critical race theory in math books, banning hijabs, a women only safe space room, wasn’t even allowed to do her internship, a math class, a technique to divide the poors, telling H. Beam Piper his business, going against his own instincts, Kim by Rudyard Kipling, grows up wild, ends up working for the British empire, his Irish father and his good instincts, turn him into a spy, British empire good, Heinlein takes that and says I can do one better, Citizen Of The Galaxy, he has legs at home, gathering information for the Empire, goes a little cynical with them, a revolution is about to start, we’re storming the Bastille today, whoof the rug is pulled out from under him, cooler heads have already been on the case, he’s not as good as Heinlein for this, YA elements, where’s the romance?, the girl who’s going to work for him, doing romance in the 40s and the 50s, not in the cards for our hero Mr. H. Beam Piper, the sister, she’s a girl!, that’s a rough place, these rough people, the dad is busy smoking, doing the job of three people, way below, he’s not doing it as good, we need way more about the ecology of a planet with four days in the year, they can’t eat any of the food, and the food can’t eat them, Larry Niven, catsnake?, for this planet Niven [would be] better, Space Viking, breezier and easier, very simple, space battles, why is this science fiction?, the strongest science fiction idea in here, its the instagram recorder, youtuber streamer, and the hunting of the wax, shielding, a commodity, intense sunlight, analogizes with Moby Dick, whaling was huge, tallow wax and whale oil, how they breed, not to hunt them to extinction, traditional societies, north German Bremen dish made with whale meat, the meat was not the moneymaker, it was the sperm, petroleum, he doesn’t do enough with that, a reporter, friend doesn’t quite do enough, disappears like Ishmael, not a classic for the ages, Little Fuzzy, interesting, not a terrible books, but not special, Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, the definitive Piper book, Omnilingual, a richer piece, passes the Jesse test, the 20 chapter titles, a cute little nod, obscure author from Scotland: Arthur Conan Doyle, the Javelin, the Pequod, gunpron, monster killing, treason, masks off, a simple story, 180 hour away from sunset, H. Beam Piper with Larry Niven, had he not killed himself, they could’ve been friendly, Robert E. Howard, tapering off, Clark Ashton Smith, ailing parents, kept changing, c’mon you can do this, doesn’t have the fire in the belly anymore, coming into his oats, Jerry Pournelle, sometimes it don’t work, sometimes it do, Oath Of Fealty, Dream Park ain’t a good book, a little silly, pretty good book, the whole Bish thing, a kind of western, quickdraw, Firefly and Serenity (2005), special agent, an H. Beam Piper tv show, our heroes and their dialogue, the empire they were fighting against were flat, the Alliance, insurance company, the Dortmunder, a Donald Westlake character, the reavers, better in prediction than in execution, it had potential, fashionable to criticize, Cora always had her issues, the best episode of Firefly: Objects In Space, a bottle episode, the casting was good, The Witcher tv series, Elric, they both have swords and white hair, hiatus, forgetting to cancel shows, the pilot for the Logan’s Run TV show, the movie in fast forward, the new Logan, an elder council is running things!, they have to make it a series, there’s old people?, old and weird looking, there’s no renewal, Logan and this other chick, they find a car in D.C., an android robot that will help them every episode, a Paul thing, the Planet Of The Apes TV series, about 6 Star Trek episodes, you can’t tell anybody what you saw there, an old circus poster of an ape behind bars, Sky has never been so good again, music videos and cartoons, Dutch people, best TV channel ever, D.C. Fontana was story editor, Harlan Ellison wrote an episode, David Gerrold, George Clayton Johnson, William F. Nolan, Logan’s Run, all on for Odds On, not abridged, a Jesse book, Breakthroughs In Science by Isaac Asimov, in a rabbit, Sixth Column, Tommy Patrick Ryan, Shakespeare’s Planet by Clifford D. Simak, Charwoman’s Shadow a novel by Lord Dunsany, in Spain, dowry, substitute shadow doesn’t grow and shrink, praises by Theodore Sturgeon, I love the book, humour and beauty, E.F. Bleiler found it excellent, tradition of George MacDonald, first science fiction novel, Keeper Of The Isis Light by Monica Hughes, Crisis on Conshelf Ten, political crisis or something, set on the Moon, her stuff is really short, thin volumes, mostly girly and boarding school stuff, kiddie gossip for teens, a series, Invitation To The Game, a horrible situation, it’s odd, fewer women science fiction writers, she put out a lot of YA, solid science fiction book, not having the greatest prose ever, on the pirate website, a real shame, Invitation The Game by Monica Hughes, Lisse and her friends are unemployable after graduation, embrace The Game, narrated by June Carter, abebooks, Scholastic Books, way before Harry Potter, the YA cover look, an affordable edition, the shipping, import them, twice the value of the book for shipping, Ballantine Adult Fantasy, the Internet Archive, a hard science fiction dystopian novel, children go to government schools, social welfare systems, agitating for political reform, many are involved in organized crime, just write science fiction like you mean it, and not too long, 192 pages, from 1990, died in 2003, she was British, Canadian by emigration, 11 novels?, Earthdark, the Arthur C. Clarke moonbus book, Devil On My Back, used headset, hairgel, the price was right, bargain hunter, Jesse’s gonna hug Cora, Angélique books by Anne Golo, proto-bodice rippery, smoky shag rug, nicotine stained wooden rosary, one bloody Mary two bloody Marys, might as well convert, half-equipped, stinky old books, best wishes to the father-in-law, taking parents to hospitals, four hospitals in six weeks, nursing home, and blah, Paul met Cora’s mom, already in pain, not very communicative, karaoke evenings, what went wrong, heart surgery, hip surgery, not a lot going on with her anymore, Worldcon, collapsed at the airport, farm animals, recognizing farm animal, have you ever touched a bird, have you ever touched a cow, where was Paul born?, have your touched a cow, have you touched a bird, a lot of people haven’t, three days old, Jesse’s mom’s photography is awful, very significant hand disability, well done Jesse, you get 9 points, the one who blocked Jesse, cows or goats, not a farm kid, obviously a cow, cow, bull, and calf, a little bull, the relevant pieces, an active farm across the road, the cows next door, one of the cows would run away, Uncle Heine and Aunt Marianna, three sets of grandparents, kids need to do that, in New York city, a farm visit, city kids, look at all the animals, sit on a horse, had to have his balls banded, that makes him a steer so he can be eaten, ox and oxen, most of the meat, you need one bull just like you need one rooster, prairie oysters, rocky mountain oysters, I’d like a weird meat cut please, boy penises are dog chewies, rawhide chewies are penises, product descriptions, pure meat, oxen are commonly castrated, don’t steer us wrong, working animals, riding an ox, horses or camels or bicycles, a monkey riding a dog, riding an elephant, bull-riding doesn’t last very long, pull carts, ploughs, Paul has to game, Over The Edge, work for an embassy, misadventures, get into troubles and have adventures, bye, breakfast is what Jesse is hearing, Odd’s On by Michael Crichton, reuse of Easy Go notes.

HARDCOVER - Four Day Planet by H. Beam Piper

Four Day Planet by H. Beam Piper

Posted by Jesse Willis Become a Patron!