Tag: audiobook

The SFFaudio Podcast #721 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe


The SFFaudio Podcast #721 – Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe – read by Mark F. Smith for LibriVox. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the novel (11 hours 14 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse and Connor Kaye

Talked about on today’s show:
The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver’d by Pyrates. Written by Himself., April 1719, the first English novel?, this particular style, it’s its own thread for reality, comic book adaptations, the 1997 Pierce Brosnan adaptation, kids versions, why its so popular, popular with adults and kids, it’s fantasy, a certain cozy and comfortable feeling, vicariously satisfying, This Old House, a whole television genre, buy houses and fix them up, cooking shows, making fun of some things or earnest?, some combination of both?, things they tend to leave out is how fucking evil and racist everything is, shocking, he’s a slave, then he is freed, then he enslaves other people, profits he’s making and gifting are slave profits, you got all your money in McDonnell Douglas, how christian you are, part of the appeal of this book, he builds a fort, the ultra-competent man in the Heinlein novels, largely paranoid and insane, gunports, a stockade wall, then another stockade, then another then another, the cannibals, the cave, the bottleneck, a legitimate fear, not really a legitimate fear, cannibalism in the Americas, of the catholic variety, I’m hungry for man-meat, people went a little chewy, cannibalism is a metaphor for slavery, 90 minutes, changed to a Scotsman, Pierce Brosnan wants to play the bagpipes?, not needed for the story, the actor playing Friday, that nice point in the late 1990s, sets, no CGI, lower budget, a comfy film to watch, a forever published book, still not a draw, a curiosity, so old, 100% sure it was public domain, most people don’t know how public domain works, if you’re in any doubt… Robinson Crusoe, it always sells, Maissa Bessada and Alex from Pulpcovers, The Martian by Andy Weir is essentially this book, shipwrecked on a planet all by himself, eventually rescued by space pirates, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, a character dressed in goatskins talking about providence, an Easter egg, nautical adventure books, islands named after Robinson Crusoe, the fame of the book, Alexander Selkirk’s island, a pretty great story as well, this fantasy novel vs. the reality of Selkirk, a picture of Crusoe at Alexander Selkirk’s birthplace, conflated into the same guy, Chile, double bang for the buck, fiction and history, remote weird islands, craters named after science fiction writers, the Moon, Mars, the same is true, French South Antarctic Islands, Jules Verne names, a Jules Verne island, the pen sure is mighty, transforming geography in the mental space, Tarzana, California, Edgar Rice Burroughs, mixing of fiction with reality, shipwrecked, sea-sick, marooned, cut out a piece of the world, make a name and a man of himself, a dog and 17 cats he’s murdering, horrible farming practices, the woman is a man, god gave him providence, a tiny version of that, puts his master’s foot on his head, a story going woke, getting his just rewards, Robinson Crusoe is such a horrible human being, he’s the hero, the mindset of the time, there were servants and there were masters, how it is, some people are superior, Frodo and Sam in The Lord Of The Rings, Sam likes being a servant, he’s dedicated to his master, the Gaffer, teaching him how to read, just a kind action, Upstairs, Downstairs, the same kinds of problems, disciplined by the head butler, make people know their place, she’s LARPing what she wants to have her life be, being half French, trying to be better than you are, an honorable servant to a good master, pregnant and out of work, sex out of wedlock, don’t talk about the baby I left there, you eat this lie and put it inside you, learn their Christianity, my master is a good master he only beats the lazy slaves, Australian society, working class people, don’t go to university, turning your back on us, a bizarre mindset, isn’t he a good guy?, he lies to Friday, a good movie and a bad movie, an unfaithful adaptation, we as adult human beings in 2022, friends and co-equals, master and slave, the master is kind to the slave, my name is Master, I lied to you, can’t we live on this island together, what the book gives us, a fantasy of the New World, escaping middle class life, July 29th, 2022, John Scalzi did a tweet: behold my fearful power, culture war nonsense, not even kidding, the white males are the lowest difficulty setting, a very John Scalzi-ism, lowest difficulty setting is about capitalism, the colour of the bandaid, crayons, if you have enough starting capital, what does he have in terms of capital, two fowling rifles, a brace of pistols, a cutlass, so much powder, a lot of tools, a dog, cats, bag of seed for fowl, providence and God, rice and corn and wheat, investment capital, this is a story about capitalism, using your, it’s attacking Jesse personally, a fantasy element to the capitalism, keep growing it and growing it, the ship’s captain, advice, tradeable goods, two gold shillings, silver, hides it in his cave, like a moral lesson about capitalism, like Monopoly, how to do great in capitalism, pro-firearms, Walter Matthau and Robin Williams, survivalism is now preppers, your go back, acronyms, bug-out bags, all fantasy, zombie shows, unironically making weapons to kill zombies, the instinct to like this book, a secret base, cups, a knife, some magazines, traps!, for when the zombies happen, nuclear war, make work, incredibly satisfying, prep harder, prevailing winds, its endless, a fantasy of their real life, accumulating capital, I did the work, Jack, handing out dispensations, he’s the hidden governor of the island, he’s playing god, he was born to it, a crazyman covered in goatskins, organizing fighting forces, legitimate lies, no pants, bristling with weapons, a paranoid madman, killing sprees, what makes them evil?, they exist, right in front of us they’re eating men, Captain Cook, put your head under my foot, they showed him for a while, lessons in the book, how you should act, written when he was 60, conduct literature, pamphlets on how to act, a crazy life, the cherry on top, Crusoe and his father, going against his father’s wishes, if he had just listened to his father, the happiest place in the world is where you are, struggle like the working class, dissatisfaction of the upper class, bad stuff’s going to happen, listening to your parents, religious conversion themes, raving religion, his only book, so thankful to his lord, investment properties, two surrogate sons, the British lord, the other he sends to sea, tops up the younger son, his conclusion is both, the sequel, the further adventures, and a second sequel, back to the island, India, in the Brazil, whose side I’m on, they’re going to do some slaving, the pirates are the badguys, in real life the pirates are anti-slavery, pirates are literally the good guys, they probably fart on you, team human, team liberty, everybody gets a share and their shares are equal, dispense justice, insight from this special book, obedient to god, obedient to me, tongue in cheek, done unconsciously, there’s no evidence, Voltaire, terrible adventures and learns nothing, life can be hilarious, made to suffer by God, a garden of Eden story, he brings capital, the cosmic joke aspect, when Eve shows up she’s a dude, you’re my slave and I can’t make babies with you, Swiss Family Robinson, a Canadian TV show filmed in Ontario and Jamaica, dangerous animals, cheetah stock footage, they build a treehouse, every episode they have adventures, more family friendly, Christians, action adventure for the whole family, a creepazoid story about a madman, whole sequence with a bear, Friday fights a bear, tempting the wolves, a true narrative, a conduct book, how to build up your capital, being born an Englishman, if you picture it in your mind it’s superfuckedup, fortress, his parrot, killing the cats, obsessively counting his stock of sultanas, so unrealistic, after 28 years he comes across some Spaniards, if he could even talk, sign language, speaking Latin, a complete freakazoid, its like he’s mentally ill, raving capitalism, what kind of art does he create?, his journal, no poetry, in line with Crusoe’s nature, everything is practical, constantly building, he builds a canoe, then another, invaders!, how much time he spent building this thing, for what purpose, for didactic purpose, this is how you attract employees, a manual for how to not waste your capital, the culture war is lets focus on the race, these people are inferior because they’re cannibals because they’re not Christians, bears in Brazil?, Columbia or Venezuela, take this horrible story of a guy who couldn’t get along with anybody, William Dampier, scientist/explorer, piratical daring do, avocado barbecue and chopsticks, breadfruit, first to eat flamingo and manatee, less of an insane monster Selkirk, a privateer, the ship is about to sink, a stubborn bullheaded guy, did Dafoe meet Selkirk?, the cats, tropical islands covered in rats, invasive species, a plague of rats, keep the rats down, goats, his clothes rotted away, 4 years vs. 28 years, he could barely speak, trouble forming sentences, what it does to your, solitary confinement, devastating, regained his speech, fairly okay mentally, never as happy as when he was solitary, a minor celebrity, recreate his lifestyle, institutionalized (without an institution), he’s a Heinleinian character, indomitable, Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, the horse people, Planet Of The Apes, so elegant and refined, the very noble horses, they Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos, taking care of horses all day, an attack on general humanity, a response to Selkirk’s situation, books in dialogue with each other, shipwrecked many times, increasingly improbably places (including Japan), 1726, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, what’s actually happening in this book, a story that everybody knows, a family that’s shipwrecked, the resultant product of that environment, a famous pulp hero, Tarzan!, shipwrecked off the coast of africa, ape mom, ape family, king of the jungle, talk with the animals, The Jungle Book inspired Tarzan, a guy from Europe who becomes the master of the forest and jungle and is super-racist, a competency family, an accumulation of personal capital vs. actual capital, investment in the new world vs. how to be a fantasy man’s man, animal friends, Tantor the elephant, instead of having a physical capital, a knife is all he needs, just a loincloth, a beautiful Eden like place, super-literate, just from reading his ABC primer books, in the minds of people in the times when Tarzan was being written?, Swiss Family Robinson with a kid, superman, more fantastical, bound to capitalism, Christian values, family values in a Christian context, Tarzan is religion free, being a superior being, wrestling with apes, super-muscles, the term that people hate, the phrase “noble savage”, this evil phrase, the noble part, they live like nobility, they don’t have horrible work hours, they have lots of free time, post-scarcity, doing art, totem poles, artistic endeavors, dance is not held in record as well, post scarcity in terms of food, building up capital, trading parties, very post scarcity, the leadership is these guys are old, they want to give us advice, not a top down system, move the lodge, how to deal with other people over there, slaving was done to do exogamy, not to accumulate human capital, build up stuff to give it away, a famous case of a European at Nootka on Vancouver Island, on the other end of South America, he gets the seasons right, a narrative you can imagine being a didactic popular book, they bookend the 1997 movie, you’ve got to write up Dafoe’s story, I must write this up, what does that opening do?, A Princess Of Mars, the movie adaptation, Edgar Rice Burroughs is the nephew, the effect of that frame, modern filmmaking theory, unnecessary, the fight for the sweetheart is not in the book, some reason to want to go back, Castaway is Tom Hanks as Robinson Crusoe, his Friday is a volleyball, product placement, Wilson basketball, FedEx, he makes art (puts a face on the ball), that framing device, the front of the book, pirates with a y, an advertisement at the end, not a true story, a true tale, when we’re watching the movie, a film camera looking at a guy reading a book, the conflation, to remind us this is a not a real story, maybe that’s the point, Daniel Dafoe is just a photocopier, slightly bizarre, a good editor would have chopped it out, a fan of Dafoe, essential to the film, kill their darlings, there’s no logic to it, good and stupid, an overturning of expectations, it kind of fixes the book, why are you doing that book, to make money?, play, who wouldn’t want to be Robinson Crusoe, be scared of cannibals, less racist and less Christian, random passages from the Bible, a religious ecstasy, changing names, Crusoe’s name and Dafoe’s name, a German Brit, Eurotrash headed to South America, dispense justice, very redeeming, the Prodigal Son, hat in hand [but hat full of jewels], the ending of The Odyssey, killing people, he sees his dog, he sees his slave, treated well by his wife, a bad slave, killing spree, about colonialism, a very interesting artifact, a product of the mindset, [manifest destiny], all of this stuff was made for us, we are the stewards and also the owners, a slave rebellion in South America, the right to do whatever the fuck you want, a president who ran on war with Britain, “54-40 or fight”, the Columbia River, the Oregon Territory, the Hudson’s Bay Company, Columbia (a Goddess walking to the west with settlers behind her), we will take this last, we will make it manifest, from Ontario to British Columbia, most Canadians live near the border, wrapped up in these phrases, what made Canada look as it does, Canada is defined by the existence of the United States, eastern states are natural borders, British colonists, nominal British control, no treaties, a slave rebellion in Guyana, sugar or rubber plantations, the seigniorial system, overseas timeshares, group buy a piece of land, managers, the enforcement of their will, people are highly encouraged to invest income in the stock market, causing externalities without knowing about it, a slaveholder who doesn’t know it, AOC’s phone, “nice slave phone”, superannuation funds, fossil fuel, giving money to secure their future, you don’t want to know, you just want the money, a slippage between what people want and what actually happens, I like chocolate, employing slaves, make the prices lower, the slave beaters, bad business practices, this is justified, working as a prison guard, most of them didn’t have a trial, rich people don’t have this problem, slave labour, they were jerks because they were criminals, a slave becomes a slaver, the reports I’m getting…, charity money, educate the natives, god says charity is good, did he hate being a slave?, Pocket Classics, Meanwhile I began to think deeply, who am I?, who made the world?, 1823 slave revolt, “Bachelor’s Adventure”, “Success”, get rich quick schemes, absentee European owners profiting from slavery, the Demerara rebellion of 1823, 2 days, poor treatment, a widespread mistaken belief, Jack Gladstone, their church group, John Smith, the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, every property holder has equal access to the water (for shipping), we’re all working together, imported from another continent, it is all about human capital, people who’ve had it hard or easy, without the crayons, equipment and tools, not your skin colour, the natives are ugly, a prejudice that little kids have, actors who are objectively acting, there is no fact of the matter, when we get to know people, more handsome or more pretty, a face generated by a brain, getting hung up on the skin colour, the justification for how you became a slave, his job at the beginning of the book, these people were legitimately enslaved, this is not a stolen good, I did work to get it, a rationalization to the self, the enslaving processed happened but it wasn’t done by me, he’s not even thinking about it, a natural thing that happens, I am master, you are slave, a way to divide the working class (the poors), Apple and Raytheon, a technique to divide the working class: talk about race, they’re lacking capital, I could just take the bus, cheaper to take your own car, the time investment, a lot more time, time is money, times is capital, there are people who are racists, what keeps you from becoming a bookwriter, no time to do any art, hone your craft, a lot of leisure time, that noble savage thing again, extracting value in a different way, farming the sea, good returns on their fisheries, the externalities like we’ve done, shipping across the planet, kiwi fruit from Australia, nitrogen from Europe, a product of the unthinking capitalism, Scalzi’s point, American-centric, based on how things are in America, completely relative, different ethnic groups, exploiting one another, we’re feeling our way into this, May 15th, 2012, how life works for them, privileged, a very Scalzi sentence, your average straight white men, all the times slavery has happened in the world, one group of people marketing another group of people, North Africa, race is a modern thing, in the old days people didn’t think skin colour caused slavery, the temperature of the place that were raised, Egypt is warmer than Macedonia, growing to be lazy Egyptians, Varingian guard: lazy like these Byzantines, take prizes, to bring prizes home to sell at market to get rich, this one can teach my children, acquiring and bringing capital in, music and theater, get decadent, the obsession today is a technique to divide those without capital, their third yachts, uninsightful to itself but explains how we got here, reading something from 300 year hundred years ago, spending so much time in it, strange to us, squeecore is about reinforcing the elites, its okay to be the goblin emperor because goblins, gender neutral emperor or empress, transgenders for emperors, how about pirate ships?, why not that?, reading this book is a valuable experience, how did we get to the point we are, society now, hereditary nobility, wealth is hereditary, more hereditary in the past?, works his way up, at least equal to his father, a brothers, a landlubber, romanticism, go out and make my fortune, the story of the British Empire, go off to Canada or Australia or India, white privileged there, the taking of one’s own fortune from the empire, the silver had gone, he had to rub it to make it silver again, capital not being used, from middle class to upper middle class, not being profligate, don’t be the Prodigal Son, choose your marriage wisely, measure your money, insurance, providence providence providence, the luck of God, how come I’m the only one to survive?, almost nothing happens, because deus ex machina, Crusoe never reflects too much on slavery, talking about God on the island, charity, he delivered himself, the opportunities came, more than competent to meet the situation, the fortification aspect, his stockade is a prison for some mutineers, the book works better in the beginning than in the end, setting up the sequel, not the core of the fantasy, Space Family Robinson, competency porn, we can science the shit out of this, listening to disco, disco becomes his god, part of the capital he keeps on his shipwreck, comes to see the beauty of disco, really tapping into the core idea of what we like, the difficulty of being castaway, living outside of and within society, the fortitude, Dafoe: a human triumph story, Swift: a human foibles story, horses are the only thing of value, the nobility of the horse, people claiming to do science, putting energy from the sun into cucumbers and extracting sunlight from the cucumber, ridiculous experiments, floating above and dropping their shit on people beneath them, a hilarious guy, women: don’t fart in front of your man, don’t romanticize marriage so much, a very thoughtful reasonable thing, you both have work to do, marriage is work, how to make Irish babies for dinner: A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift, a reputable friend in America, its going to make everybody rich, are you serious?, yes, I’m serious, trying to convince you of its rightness, Lone Star Planet, everybody from Texas, Texas sized planet, supercattle and superbourbon, inspired by an H.L. Mencken essay from the 1920s, Prussia’s special court for government officials, the punishments were worse the higher up the chain you are, murdering politicians is legal, a law of taxes, a slap on the wrist, a very Texas book, so American, The Malevolent Job Holder, pull his nose, cut off his ears, how vastly more attentive he would be, how polite and suave, vain fellows, brilliantly remembered, a dozen such episodes, the jails bulged with his critics, a cauliflower ear, a black eye, a scar over his bald head, political appointees, specifically for politicians, this will keep government small, the libertarian Prometheus award, a magazine column, growing corruption in government, how primitive societies made fun of people who wanted to lead, armed society is a polite society, the Uvalde case [the Robb Elementary School shooting], arresting the parents, an instinct to not cede the authority of violence to incompetent job-holders, they might get fired and get a job in a neighbouring town, who is going to arrest them?, power imbalanced, the sequels, a hefty book, to capitalize on his success (ironic), one of the secrets, reading very old books, capital from Jesse’s grandparents, comics, leftover capital, all really good books, an infinite number of public domain books (not really), sits on a shelf for thirty years, the capital is available, sitting around in a house that Jesse had access to, people listening, I’d like to read Treasure Island, usually older than Tarzan, Moby Dick, Poe, decades of accumulated wisdom, whatever book that came out this week that somebody got a Hugo award for, maybe it’s going to be a classic for the ages, thousands of fiction books every year, not too many, read old books you’re more likely to get a profit from it, accumulated a lot of brain capital, human development, edifying, make yourself greater, instruct or improve someone, moral or religious knowledge, uplift, to improve someone’s mind, we are edified by great books, a rip-roaring book, they start copying and making fun of him, 300 years later people still doing it, 300 years later, 4,000 years from now, direct brain stream, 2 robots arguing on other planets, still be able to make fun of ourselves and Robinson Crusoe, he’s such and asshole, I’m glad we met him, why is he the hero of this story?, more books that are lifts from Robinson Crusoe, nautical themed, lists of books, Jesse feels proud of himself.

Robinson Crusoe - illustrated by Walter Paget (1891)

Robinson Crusoe - illustrated by Walter Paget (1891)

Robinson Crusoe - illustrated by N.C. Wyeth (1920)

CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED - Robinson Crusoe

Pocket Classics - Robinson Crusoe

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The SFFaudio Podcast #720 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Sky Is Falling by Lester del Rey


The SFFaudio Podcast #720 – The Sky Is Falling by Lester del Rey – read by Karen Savage. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the novel (3 hours 13 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Tony de Simone.

Talked about on today’s show:
LibriVox, Karen Savage, she’s good, she’s got good taste, how to pronounce phlogiston, doer vs. dour, any book with phlogiston in it is going to be a good book, a good reading, a good narrator, a pretty good book, this weird book, resonanted, get your feels out and examine how you feels about this book, better in the vein, good is what I’m hearing, world beating vs. world saving, if you want to spoil, sky saving, entertaining, relatively short, van Vogt, old fashioned, universe shattering, the planet was about to come apart, pretty weird, Philip Jose Farmer, more sexually driven, normal for him, time had passed on Earth, animal tribes, the early to mid-60s, 1963, Beyond Fantasy, Galaxy Magazine, MAGABOOK double from Galaxy Press, 1973 publication, No More Stars, Beyond Fantasy, July 1954, 18,327 words vs. 34,493 words, an interesting fact, not all Lester del Rey, Charles Satterfield was Frederik Pohl and Lester del Rey, Pohl diluted, comparing the texts, re-ordering if not new scenes, a frequent collaborator, it doesn’t scream Frederik Pohl, cats and gardens and tomatoes, the opening of No More Stars, northern Saskatchewan, all he knew was that he was, the man with the knife, the masked man, Death to Dave Hansen!, avenging Moses, strangled them where they stood, the when of his reawakening, astrological mumbo jumbo, by the power of the True Name, sucking at him, aware of being alive, one of the dead, there should be no quickening of breath within him, noxious odor of sulfur, a good sign!, only a true being can sneeze, the salamander worked, high frequency radiation, the pre-psyche, a tamed succubus, who killed Foxy Loxy?, boomp in the night, delirious, bull-pusher, bull-dosser, the language wasn’t englais, Canadian French, no word for bull-dozer, the same setup but longer, different people in the room, an expansion, the format, there’s no audiobook of No More Stars, Jesse has to do everybody’s homework, re-read Life Of Pi again, they teach it wrong, character arcs, rising action, getting you excited about orreries, what is phlogiston?, that which what we would call oxygen if we didn’t know what oxygen was, you know of elements in your world?, we have all four here, when trying to expand your elements, metals, how do we get from phlogiston to oxygen, bell jars, air is full of this liquid called phlogiston, dephlogisticated air, from the alchemical days, vocabulary based history, a hard fantasy book, not a portal fantasy, taken from another world, not through a door, a portal fantasy without the portal, his body doesn’t go through a door, materials are drawn from another universe, a mandrake root man vs. made out of human stuff, a certified wife, some many rich things, caring about virginity, they don’t have birth control, our world in the future?, Jack Vance’s Dying Earth, Michael Moorcock, The Magic Goes Away (The Magic Will Come), Matthew Hughes, Gene Wolfe, The Book Of the New Sun, hoqw to get rid of him afterward, The Marching Morons, the C.M. Kornbluth on Frederik Pohl, Idiocracy (2006), you need to fix reality, this is not a complaint, it’s not a comedy, unintentionally imply eugenics, we are in that situation, it’s not genetics, laziness and background, I don’t know any of my friends phone numbers, we won’t even know where we live, take us home, take us to work, reciting all of Homer, all of Beowulf, carrying around the paperback, they had more time, we’ve never had more time, playing computer game, people playing computer games all day long, a peasant or a slave, modern slaves do not have a lot of extra spare time, a lot of holy days, the magic society in this book, they became so dependent on their magic, a very thought provoking book, postulating, Rumplestiltskin, etc., the folk tales that were magical to us when we were young, hinting at science fiction, no ultimate scientific explanation for what was going on, the last couple lines, overexplaining can be a problem, very different axioms, I can do magic here, sympathetic magic, a rigorous sort of world?, how rigorous is our understanding of our reality?, the subatomic and the macrocosmic, there was a big bang, the origin of their universe, how their universe works, we have this nice theory of gravity, what makes the sky literally fall, why do they have to have the orrery model, they don’t need gravity, why?, falling through the holes, falling in all directions?, flat earthers views, if you have a flat earth, the movement of the heavenly bodies, some weird explanation for it, the dome, examining a world in a hard SF way, assumptions we have in background, subsquently influenced, Giants Of Eternity by Manly Bannister, a planetary disaster requiring unique services, what the Martians from The War Of The Worlds do, Marie Curie, Sir Isaac Newton, using some means, you’re our task force, Einstein, Philip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld, Louis Pasteur, Charles Darwin, Thomas Alva Edison, like the Avengers of Science, bring back to life and put them to work, competence fantasy, brilliant geniuses from history, he can speak Canadian French, they got the wrong guy, touched on a couple of times, his uncle with the same name, your average science fiction reader, destined to do it, the prophecy works out, he has control of the universe in his pocket, he’s literally god, stop the movement of the sun in the sky, dawn in reverse, you can trust him, Solution Unsatisfactory, trust Colossus, under Colossus’ benign dictatorship, a scary sequel, your original Rumplestiltskin, get somebody else from earth, a specialist in folk tales, what type of being?, a wizard drags him into another dimension, I’d rather stay here, L. Sprague de Camp-ish, Joe Johnson, normal sounding names, fun pulpy style, a very short story, Remarkable Story Of Chicken Little, Hen Pen, a gentleman’s garden, how do you know it, Duck Luck, Goose Loose, Turkey Lurkey, how can I help knowing it?, Fox Lox, make haste, bit off her head, cut of her head, same by her, eat her all up, all this from the foolish fright of chicken little, 1840, the more graphic version, the santized version, the repeated lines: how do you know it?, why we have to know about phlogiston theory, authority says so, Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter, still eating, all the imagery is GOD, it’s God’s garden, Farmer McGregor looks like god, when constructing your world, base assumptions, we’re like that, characters in the universe, I can do no wrong, we make mistakes, very unsatisfying for most people, you can’t bring your old assumptions with you, real ideas, a fun interesting read, The Enchanted Bunny by David Drake, The Velveteen Rabbit, a Lovecraftian werewolf novel, 5500 kelvin, photography is one of Paul’s hobbies, the science of Dianetics, general semantics, about conjuration, the borderlands of philohophy and natural philosophy, understand reality better, mnake true statements, natural deductive logic, you idiots, you think that’s going to work?, Gulf by Robert A. Heinlein, conflating the actors with the character, Burt Reynolds punches the guy and gets in the car and drive off, Burt Reynolds, sometimes it works the other way, a Batman movie, Burt Reynolds as Batman, he does have a car thing, Smokey And The Bandit (1977), The Good Place, a slightly less good, I’m watching a Ryan Reynolds movie, does it ruin the movie experience?, no, true names tell us something more, and we have more control, it works for cops, exposed as the Gribsnobler, my podcast powers have depleted, Satoshi Nakamura is an AI from the future, legal heat, pronoun shaming AIs from the future, two different AIs from the future?, only under a legal authority, Thunderbolt And Lightfoot (1974), a pair of highwaymen, Clint Eastwood and the Dude from the Dude movie, he likes Jeff Daniels vs. Jeff Bridges, Lloyd and Harry, one of the bad prequel/sequels, there’s lot of good prequels, The Thing is a prequel to The Thing, Rogue One is fine, padded and flabby, don’t bother, The Temple Of Doom, neurodivergence, heavy on the action, hold my focus, the end of any Marvel movie, punchy, use the jewel, Ant-Man, I’m melting, why we don’t need a sequel, how diverting it was, everything is connected, we need more, you don’t need more ice cream, characters, Dave Hansen, the avatar for the reader, Beyond Fantasy Fiction, H.L. Gold, a fantasy fiction magazine, the science fiction market was hot, Galaxy was a massive hit, the literary, a pure fantasy magazine, it kinda flopped, Science Fiction Age, a glossy slick, Realms Of Fantasy, an ebb and flow in interests in interests, a fantasy story with a hard SF premise, hard fantasy, most fantasy stories, the scale is smaller, Upon The Dull Earth by Philip K. Dick, a horror story, Heat (1986), genre, character, length, something they had to read in school, TV series, the average person doesn’t read books, look at the books available, other podcasters, short stories are very unpopular, we don’t know, things do change, technology, YouTube, streamers, technology explaining, how VCRs vs. Laserdiscs, renting movies, flow of technology, why radio was popular, the decline of radio, the decline of television, into their homes, forces of technology changing human behaviors, nothing ever completely dies (it becomes unpopular), Time Out Of Joint by Philip K. Dick, haircutting salons, cars still come with [FM] radios, revealing of our true character, our true interest, our true nature, to literally destroy the world, we don’t need the sequel because we have the implication, really good on ideas, bad on polish, he’s framer, To Serve Man by Damon Knight, as famous as short stories can be Helen O’Loy, robots and people, Weird Science (1985), fixated on Robert Downey, Jr., overcoming social awkwardness, the older brother Chet (Bill Paxton), Bill And Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989), playing Battleship with Death, The Seventh Seal, good jokes, even though it has literary precurors, Frankenstein movies, references to movies, Kelly LeBrock, Go Ahead Make Your Day?, the movie audience is unaware, the famous novel by Mary Shelley?, because his head has a crack in it?, how way leads on to way, Shakespeare, understanding humanity, the rising action, the train fight, Black Panther, Shang Chi has a train fight, a certain type of fight, Speed (1994), an elevator fight, a bus fight, a train fight, this character represents sadness, Badge Of Infamy, Slums of Mars, powerful union lobbies, the medical lobby, a pandemic, Daniel Feldman, pariah, more topical, topical vs. epistemological, trust the machinery, the flare bloomed, unbuckling herself, emergency bottles of oxygen, book it now, Midsommar (2019), Stefan Rudnicki, the man who discovered your greatest science: Dianetics, tongue in cheek, set in a fantasy world where all that stuff works, Dianetics only works in a fantasy world, plausible deniability, people didn’t have their feelings hurt that easily back then, more of an immediacy, people are very breakable now, they were much tougher, feed back for the original Star Trek and The Next Generation, same kind of complaints, the new Star Trek sucks, we can’t be friends anymore now, a crossover episode, ridiculous, juvenile, a thing to do, Mariner, the main character, BoJack Horseman, Mr. Peanutbutter, Judy Lynne del Rey was a dwarf, editor for Ballantine, Del Rey Books, her wikipedia entry, best editor nomination, paperback book collection, the biggest publisher in Jesse’s collection, Best Of books, Book Of books, DAW books, the 1970s and 1980s, the popularity of science fiction and fantasy, ACE books is the 1960s 1970s, keeping books in print, New English Library, the British version of Del Rey Books, gatekeepers vs. promoters, reprints, bringing back older fantasy titles, the way publishers influence writers, Otto Penzler, Mysterious Books, Donald E. Westlake, Comfort Station, the disaster movie, a parody, Viking Press, fuck these guys, Otto Penzler gets me, he had to publish with everybody, Seanan McGuire, the big two?, bad for authors, an effect on readers, the Audible Exclusives, sell straight to Audible, self-produced audiobooks, important to recognize, because of the format, ten years goes buy, a bulk up, ’54 – ’63 – ’73, the market isn’t healthy, LibriVox published it, coming out in ’23, seven months from now.

No More Stars - BEYOND, July 1954

No More Stars - BEYOND, July 1954

No More Stars - BEYOND, July 1954

No More Stars - BEYOND, July 1954

MAGABOOK - The Sky Is Falling AND Badge Of Infamy by Lester del Rey

The Sky Is Falling by Lester del Rey - 1973 Ace Double cover art

2 Complete Novels By Lester Del Rey In One Book

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The SFFaudio Podcast #718 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Sea Wolf by Jack London

The SFFaudio Podcast #718 – The Sea Wolf by Jack London – read by Nick Bulka. This is a complete and unabridged reading of story (11 hours 39 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Maissa Bessada, Evan Lampe, Will Emmons, and Trish E. Matson.

Talked about on today’s show:
a psychological adventure novel, 3 episodes of Evan’s podcast, first time, a Jack London read-through, so many books, so little time, three famous famous famous novels, The Call With The Wild, White Fang, The Sea Wolf, such a great writer, a very interesting book, similar to Moby Dick, Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling, fry-cook to sea-captain, Humphrey is like a boy, immature in very specific ways, cabin boy, made manifest, the main character is Wolf Larsen, Brewster, the destroyer, social Darwinian cul-de-sac, kill seals and die, a critic, disliked critics, the only creative force, she has a grow-up, changing characters, from a passive person to an active person, the person with the character arc is the protagonist, impressionable, sucked in by Maude, a strong magnetic charge, old voicemails, in the arguments, speaking of what Jack London really believes, a social Darwinian, an atheist, this life is all that there is, the meaning we get out of life, socialism is the only out, Evolution And Ethics by Thomas Huxley, Darwinism is right, a reality of nature, the metaphor is a garden, you’re going to end up with weeds, a gardener to weed the garden, evolutionary ethics, the weaker good things, London is somewhere there, this is the world, gilded age capitalism, The Iron Heel, he’s both characters, as a success as a writer, an article in the Atlantic about Poe, criticism can be art, who’s the most successful artist on this boat?, the hardscrabble guy, no leg up in the world, in a struggle with death, only his manly body and his manly mind, what he happened to have been given, London has read Nietzsche, a guy giving lectures all the time, gentlemen and gentlewomen, real world practical experience, he’s almost like a Conan like force, Robert E. Howard, pull-up your pants mentality, dealing with reality as a man, vital nature, romantic love, not as awesome as Jesse was expecting, falling in love with the lady on the boat, a romantic novel, a philosophical struggle with death, ultimately he goes down, the end of his life, the Charles Bronson / Christopher Reeve adaptation, music tells you how to feel, Humphrey is telling us how to feel, many conversations, presented with a very hard philosophy, wouldn’t it be nice if everybody was nice, tweeting quotes:

“You have eternal life before you. You are a millionaire in immortality, and a millionaire whose fortune cannot be lost, whose fortune is less perishable than the stars and as lasting as space or time. It is impossible for you to diminish your principal. Immortality is a thing without beginning or end. Eternity is eternity, and though you die here and now you will go on living somewhere else and hereafter. And it is all very beautiful, this shaking off of the flesh and soaring of the imprisoned spirit. Cooky cannot hurt you. He can only give you a boost on the path you eternally must tread.

“Or, if you do not wish to be boosted just yet, why not boost Cooky? According to your ideas, he, too, must be an immortal millionaire. You cannot bankrupt him. His paper will always circulate at par. You cannot diminish the length of his living by killing him, for he is without beginning or end. He’s bound to go on living, somewhere, somehow. Then boost him. Stick a knife in him and let his spirit free. As it is, it’s in a nasty prison, and you’ll do him only a kindness by breaking down the door. And who knows?—it may be a very beautiful spirit that will go soaring up into the blue from that ugly carcass. Boost him along, and I’ll promote you to his place, and he’s getting forty-five dollars a month.”

very powerful, amazing, airy fairy, following through on the conclusion, we do not like it, some alternative explanation, some outside philosophy, very hard truths, at somebody’s house, not really paying attention, so propagandized, so in their class, what can you do there?, tacit or active support for horror, where is Jack London here?, we’re in a difficult situation, steel manning the enemy argument, he cheats his way out of this book, Goliah, it isn’t an angry book, we did our best for that terrible man, he’s trying to kill them, a hard choice to return good for evil, off together married, a happy ending, convenient death, who kills Wolf Larsen?, Death kills him, Melville’s Moby Dick, a secret crew, a secret hold, a plan to fight death, amazing, I’m going to kill, the Ghost, they escape from the Ghost, seals everywhere in Heaven, sealed their fate, headaches and strokes, status quo ante, admitting to himself he loves this woman, so one sided, worshipping her, all told from one point of view, 1904, he made a good argument, this isn’t a good time for romancing, at his mercy, hey lady, he’s a really decent fellow, dissed in a review, can I choose the weapons, I choose grammar, you lose, an essential good insight into this character, Wolf Larsen’s grammar, wrestling with the works that surround him in his cabin, perfectly human, Wolf Larsen’s enemy is Wolf Larsen, there is no god, his hate is curdling inside him, making himself sick, his circumstances of his life, born to Humphrey’s station, born poor, no education, low on the totem pole, starting half-way up as a half-ass, achieving, the latest failson out of Hunter Biden’s laptop and phone, drive from beneath to succeed, there are these Humphrey Van Wydens, somehow got rich, made him a gentleman standing on deadman’s legs, a morality hidden in Wolf Larsen, for your soul’s sake, he makes a project of him, he likes the conversations, winning the arguments, he wins all of the arguments, the Robert E. Howard – Jack London connection, Conan has two fathers, the psychology behind this stuff, the answer to the riddle of steel, William Smith: not men not women not beasts can you trust in this world, steel you can trust, James Earl Jones, kills his mother, a mission to kill that guy, nailed to a tree, boy you don’t know what you’re talking, come to me my child, a scene right out of Black Seers of Yimsha (The People Of The Black Circle), these two fathers raised the boy Conan, ‘I am your father, boy’, it was steroids, you need to be challenged as a person to flourish, some pruning, you behave yourself, benign pain, become kind of a man, marriage, blow up Washington, DC and bring in a new order, White Fang, Call Of The Wild is the Conan story, a dog that’s soft that becomes hard, a free dog becoming a slave, become a wolf, a transcendence life experience, brought low, muscle, sitting around and being weak again, an island of seals, ship out on any ship in the world, stronger people, instill good values, she’s 27 she better hurry, one of the wealthiest people based on his own ability to write, makes her living based on her writing, marauding around as well as writing, drinking his way across the planet, Charmian London, we did a show on a biography of London, six movie adaptations, the 1941 movie starring Edward G. Robinson, an observing writer, for the better?, interesting, choosing to make her not a lady, some kind of convict or criminal, film is not literary, literary conversations, leaning on Milton, reign in Hell rather than serve in Heaven, less visual things, more timeless, William Shakespeare, Omar Khayiam, Ecclesiastes, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, a rich literary experience, Edgar Allan Poe, deny the connection, individualism against society, capitalist individualism, becoming socialized, interacting with indigenous people, the member of a pack, between Howard and London, Wolf Larsen is an intellectual dead end, the law of the jungle, where Van Wyden and Brewster are going, Hobbes, pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps, a thing that you cannot do, somehow blessed with a good brain and a strong body, the triumph of the Will (Emmons), the very materialistic, our opponent has nothing, an airy fairy liberal feeling, why it feels so one sided, intellectual rigor, I learned a lot from this hard man that is wrong and I take that into the fight against the horrors of this world, taught himself to read, his brain betrayed him, a refutation of the idea that there is or isn’t a soul, so amazing, his brother is Death, Wolf is not his name it’s his nature, what Jack London wanted people to call him, Wolf House, triumvirate of three famous books (are all about wolves), inside Jack London there were two wolves, timely and of its time, somewhat that will date this podcast, that’s what they were thinking back then, this monster of a book, Will loves this book, this romance thing is a sideshow to what the point of what the book ought to be, who is the audience for this book, the Maud and Van Wyden people, to help them digest this difficult philosophical heavy stuff going on, a lot of fiscourse, long monologues, comparing life to yeast:

“I believe that life is a mess,” he answered promptly. “It is like yeast, a ferment, a thing that moves and may move for a minute, an hour, a year, or a hundred years, but that in the end will cease to move. The big eat the little that they may continue to move, the strong eat the weak that they may retain their strength. The lucky eat the most and move the longest, that is all. What do you make of those things?”

but they have dreams, radiant flashing dreams, dreams of grub, read more Jack London, the volume on the original, oh my god it’s the character from Strong Bad: Strong Sad, dim sounding, why is this voice so familiar?, South Park, a better long running series, so of itself, so silly, Cookie, Melville?, the captain character going after God, he wears his philosophy on his sleeve, the thing Will likes, all in drawing rooms, Stranger In A Strange Land, it just becomes Ahab’s story, a mission to kill god, struggling more, avast my brother death I’m coming for your, incentivize the crew, nailing the gold coin to the mast, we’re all going to get rich, what everybody wants: more grub, very Shakespearean and experimental, literature and the meaning of life, whales! let’s talk about them, its very companionable to squeeze your friends while churning sperm, a very different love story, Queequeg would be Maud, no Starbuck here, Jack London doesn’t care about the crew, Melville cares a lot about the crew, he wrote Moby Dick as Jack London, social Darwinian theory is well developed, much more actory, bring more of yourself to Moby Dick, Maissa’s judgement, how civilization softens and ruins you, brought back to the wild to become a worthwhile person, a prison ship, a prisoner of himself, the ship being the Earth, they try to escape the ship to find their own Eden, Adam biting the apple, strange Eden, what makes me courageous is wanting to look courageous in front of my girl, clubbing seals, ready to club Larsen, violence and strength are the more important thing, my spirit will get rewarded in heaven, remaking the world, who intrudes into the garden is the holy Ghost, Lucifer, wolf a symbol for Satan?, goats, a predator danger, baddies control wolves, why wolves are bad guys, To Build A Fire, a good and different, Alaska, sea voyage, rebuilding a boat, almost science fiction space opera detail, very practical, whale geekery in Moby Dick, Trish read it in highschool, he was your Wolf Larsen, far fewer beatings, focus on moral behavior, a classic every week, for moral instruction, adopt this as your life, utterly horrific, would Humphrey survive the book?, breezed through it, coarsened and brutalized by life, from the ropes you’ve been pulling, grew the appropriate fungus on your fingernails, how dare you!, do more Jack London, a good book, one of the best novels, they make students read a lot of bad books, Charlotte’s Web, Animal Farm, Lord Of The Flies, a difficult book for humans, Hobbesian to the core, identifying with poor Piggy, look at the symbolism, his philosophy is all over the page, very implausible, earning up to that point, Buck’s story is Wolf Larsen’s story except they have primitive communism among wolves already, the idea of the lone wolf, in community, studying the differences between dogs and wolves, dogs are human oriented, wolves are pack oriented, they inform on each other, they’re on team human, “Buck did not read the newspapers”, Martin Eden, John Barleycorn, People Of The Abyss, The Road, a memoir of his hobo days, A Thousand Deaths, 1899, science fiction, The Black Cat, a guy in the water off San Fransisco Bay, an invention, revivifying people, an island in the South Pacific, like Tesla or Edison, a force field, he disintegrates the captain, it was his father, the father doesn’t recognize that it’s his son, his daddy issues, “I can kill you, dad”, the man he adopted as his Thulsa Doom father, Edgar Allan Poe’s story, an adopted name, his father Allan, I can be good, and drinks himself to death, potent writers who wrote good books, a little bit commercial, Before Adam, a prehistorical romance, those are science fiction too, racial memories of being an upright ape, almost domesticating a dog, a little bit Flintsonesy, a trace of that, the dog sees himself as a troglodyte, racial memories, on a big Bronson kick (again as usual), he always plays himself, Christopher Reeve playing a weak man, he plays dandies well, Ichabod Crane, an eastern dandy looking fellow, Lee Marvin, Ernst Borgnine, Keith Carradine, The Emperor Of The North Pole (1973), 1907, The Trail Of The Tramp, Coast To Coast, Lee Marvin playing Jack London, Emperor Norton, the hobo experience, 70s hobo movies, A Number One, Lance Henrickson plays an uncredited railroad worker, Humphrey Bogart has a cameo, that pick-pocketing this is just in the movie, a party scene, film steals from film, the writers are doing that, strange new worlds that are just Alien, they did that in Voyager, a Die Hard episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, deriving film from film, things adapted tend to be better, Arena by Fredric Brown, a Lee Marvin / Toshiro Mifune movie Hell In The Pacific (1968), Enemy Mine by Barry Longyear, The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell, Predator (1987), read Jesse’s essay, an episode of 30 Rock, film adaptations, 1913, an unnamed sailor, 1920, 1926, which ship starred as the Ghost, going to luff and jib and jibe, the focsle, The Cruise Of The Snark, a star on his shirt, Tales Of The Fish Police, 40 when he died, 1876-1916, he lived every year, very Wolf, kinda mean when drinking too much, BBC Radio 4 adaptation, The Cruise Of The Dazzler, The Assassination Bureau, Ltd., the movie with Oliver Reed, Evan should record the audiobook of John Barleycorn, Evan is good enough, Evan’s recording of Nudist Camp, all those Orrie Hitt, most of Orrie Hitt is public domain, Brother And Sister is coming out soon, it’s a (wrong) kissing book, cheating together, Sin Doll, sin books, Burlesque Girl, Never Cheat Alone, a writing machine that deserves more love, the white logic, why drunks in the body vs. drunk in the mind, you are just meat, Just Meat, happy going to church (they don’t need to drink, they’re drink on the lord, a Jamesian argument, a lived experience you can no longer enjoy, the noseless face, the skull behind your flesh, a different kind of good.

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The SFFaudio Podcast #710 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Black Amazon Of Mars by Leigh Brackett

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #710 – Black Amazon Of Mars by Leigh Brackett; read by Fred Heimbach (for PROTECTING PROJECT PULP)

This unabridged reading of the story (3 hours 4 minutes) is followed by a discussion of it.

Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Trish E. Matson, Alex (Pulpcovers.com), and Cora Buhlert

Talked about on today’s show:
Planet Stories, March 1951, Protecting Project Pulp, Fred Heimbach, inchoate, martian names, very enthusiastic, is Jesse going to like this narration?, this excellent work, enthusiastic during high tension, calm and collected, the way its told, the cover on Planet Stories, Allen Anderson, a signature under the Van Vogt, spoils the story, black and white again, Eric John Stark, her costume, there’s no helmet, she’d lost her helmet, boob armour, shakes the hair out in slow motion, use the trope, Jirel Of Joiry’s gender, gorgeous red-head woman, the interior artist, spoil it twice, it doesn’t actual mean, this is advertising, anticipation, enjoyment, you will get a cool woman with an axe, give us the quarter please, Future Science Fiction, before and after WWII, a meta-analysis, chained or unchained, brass brassiere, covers sometimes illustrate stories within, Amazing, Frank R. Paul covers, best story for this cover gets $500 bucks, The Zap Gun by Philip K. Dick, background, the gates, gate of death?,a floodlight, a spaceship, the magic sword, widening the aperture, a guy in red, a guy in blue, chained to her wrist, it sells, the interior art makes more sense, dead guy’s hands, the frozen lands beyond the gates of death, the language, a writing technique, focus on particular words, background fundamentals, “burden”, the relationship between Stark and his dying buddy, fulfilling a death quest, The Road Warrior, the ending’s different, the magic quest, inspired by Black God’s Kiss, C.L. Moore and Leigh Brackett knew each other, Edmond Hamilton, Henry Kuttner, sidequest, The Sowers Of The Thunder by Robert E. Howard, Red Sonya, out of nowhere, suddenly the lord is a lady, a stand-in for sexual assault, a convenient portal to the underworld, a cursed kiss, a bit extreme, decking Eric John Stark, “oh, a woman”, a spin-on it, a happy ending, structurally, strong warrior woman, get together, regrets in the very next story, a different genre, more Conan inspired, the Burroughs for the setting, a Tarzan, semi-sentient Mercurian apes, El Borak, planetary romance, some magic item, a lost city in the mountains, a Cossack raid, the gender politics are C.L. Moore, very Planet Stories, Eric John Stark and a beautiful lady, always two women, a young innocent child like woman, a femme fatale, a dangerous woman, noir films, axe-weilding martian warlord, Leigh as a female name, why they are so different, some of the details, the viewpoint character, the female characters have a very interesting relationship, claiming citizenship, the Thanis, Tanis, thanatos, the names are pretty good, Conan-ish, proto-gaelic, defiant, late into the story, our focus is on Stark, more female, black Humphrey Bogart, The Big Sleep (1946), crackles with good dialogue, hardboiled crime, the social justice warrior of Mars, oppressed indigenous people, evil imperial colonialist, the Terran Exploitation Company, anti-capitalist, anti-colonialist, solar rays made him black, George R.R. Martin, Queen Of The Martian Catacombs, a holy-war on Mars, a failed uprising, dying-buddy, frees some slaves, Enchantress Of Venus, never enslave the hero of a pulp adventure story, darkens his skin in a photoshop?, is she just trying to distinguish from John Carter, is she trying to make a point she’s not allowed to make?, insulting words on Mars, the terrible offending word, couldn’t be printed today, character of colour, trying to make a point, Citadel Of Lost Ships, evil colonizers, illegal immigrant (aliens), Rediscovery: Science Fiction By Women Volume 2, the whipping, skins, a palate of skins, our skins too, bed of skins, wearing skins, trappers, I’ll save your skin, she flung aside the cover and rose, white skinned, narrow loins, small virginal breasts, a wildman, play, Brackett has an agenda, almost all action, escape and rest and conversation by noble and different groups, pacy action, Howardian style, Edgar Rice Burroughsy, third in the series, little connecting tissue, Simon Ashton, one of the good Earth police officers, the Skaith trilogy, The Ginger Star, Reavers Of Skaith, The Hounds Of Skaith, interstellar space, planetary romance adventures, Planet Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, John W. Campbell, Galaxy, Venture Science Fiction, a paperback industry, Ace Doubles, The Dickhead’s Podcast, The Big Jump, Rich Horton on Twitter, 1964 Ace Double, blonde hair, a double Brackett bracket, Queen Of The Martian Catacombs, the name, nude, strong in German, not a muscleman, Eric is leader or ruler, conquer the rest of Mars, the end of Red Nails, re written from Kiara’s point of view, seeing Eric through her eyes, he’s not a prince, he’s not a royal blood, I have my father’s blood, the authority of her ancestry, a bastard, she’s pretty grumpy, retelling it from her point of view, top down rather than bottom up, Eric John Stark is a friend, steals a mount, thieves, steal the sword, he’s a thief, he’s not a royal guy getting back his crown, the same story told the other way, that story retold from an outsider’s point of view, a rival knight, he’s not a lowborn, S.M. Stirling’s The Sky People and In The Courts Of The Crimson Kings, A Princess Of Mars story flipped, the setting, playing in an existing sandbox, playing to the tropes, why we’re focusing on Eric, a pulp science fiction shared solar system, unjustly persecuted, strong female characters, #LegCling, a lot of good stuff in Planet Stories, Ray Bradbury, Frederik Pohl, Manly Wade Wellman, good stuff, Philip K. Dick was in there too, iconic for Planet Stories, well written vs. learned anything, lost civilization, ancient planet, ice monsters, Fantastic Adventures, the coolest covers, terrible badly written, the premise is minor, at the heart of it, the duty to his dead friend, his debt, incompetent or semi-competent high-born nobles, 100% pulp, I can tell stories, it doesn’t feel like science fiction at all, it practically is a straight fantasy, girdle, the belt buckle with the hidden talisman, the polar cap girdles the norlands, dressing and undressing, a writing exercise, extract meanings and ideas from individual words, very basic, there aren’t that many players, the brother and sister in the city and some frozen guy, an episode of He-Man from the 1980s, Skeletor Beyond The Gates Of Death, Conan with a recolour, laser guns, pulp science fiction put through the blender, Clark Kent or Shazam, People Of The Talisman, looks a little bit like he-man, that belt boss, possessed, psychic psionic powers, a true magic item, science you don’t understand, a thing that was lost, a thing to rally the troops around, a way of unlocking things, someone from the past possesses him, an Excalibur vibe, this object can rally people, how it is important to the city or to England, the legend of frozen ice-guy, Harlan Ellison, Charlemagne, El Cid, Barbarossa, come back in Germany’s hour of need, a Welsh character, he did not prevent brexit, Little, Big by John Crowley, Olaf Scholz, The Last Defender Of Camelot by Roger Zelazny, both episodes of The Twilight Zone, George R.R. Martin’s adaptation, you got your money’s worth, one of the most consistent, Astounding has a lot of terrible stories, the most consistently good were Weird Tales and Planet Stories, pass a few minutes very pleasantly, some silly heist movie, what makes you go back to the movie theater, complaints about the quality of their stories in the letters, old-fashioned even then, 30 years after the 1920s, a throwback, 1912, Akira Kurosawa movie, WWII bomber run movies, Dam Busters, 633 Squadron (1964), Mosquito Squadron (1969) movies, blow up some movie with a big ball bearing, Star Wars, propaganda movies made in other countries, just watch Star Wars, look there’s a y-wing going down, people writing this sort of stuff today, the second one’s the best, fun, lost cities at the pole, divinity being a scam, conforming to the scientific knowledge of the time, vaguely based on the astronomical knowledge of the time, Weird Tales mostly pays on time now, hard science fiction, outright technobabble, telepathy, writing something that is accurate vs. being fun, a fantasy story set in a world happened to be called Mars, Eternia, 1944 stories, accurate prediction, Clifford D. Simak, robotic lawnmower, Legoization of planet stories, bubble helmets, most of them were science nerds, retro-illustration, the bug-eyed monster, an 80s night, spandex and Miami Vice, Stranger Things doesn’t look like the actual 80s, frumpy clothes, very brown, fake wood paneling, legwarmers and big hair, big bubble helmets and metal bras, EMSH will do the cover, all of these things are symbols, #LegCling is a symbol, a spreadsheet, very Frazetta, covers are meant to sell magazines, scantily clad women, monsters, Margaret Brundage, maybe there’s sex inside, guides to what you’re going to get inside, swinging axes and male-female dynamics, when Frazetta gets his oils, a very Frazetta move, buttcheeks, Cosmos Science Fiction, classifying spaceships, Futurama, The World Of The Future, The World’s Fair, a talking robot, men are tied up and whipped, bathing suits, evening gown gloves, high boots, locking things up, clones of each other, this is bad, but is it that bad?, maybe they want sex-slaves, death by snu-snu, Doctor David H. Keller, modesty because of head covering, grandma’s bathing suit, women in peril vs. women in charge, amazon planet, tied up, maybe that’s why we’re here?, this is the 1950s, everything makes sense, Algis Budrys, Philip K. Dick, telling you about the people of the period and what is attractive to them, covers today, Frank R. Paul covers for Amazing, technology and grand engineering, those planets give us possibilities on how we can live in another way, a Baen cover for Virgin Planet, very Baen, the same effect of the pulps, Joust, Teucan, Jerome Bixby, Star Trek, copyright length, life plus 70s is way too long, patents are very short, Cora doesn’t have a congresspersons, even Paul and Alex don’t have congresspersons, copyright law is super-national right now, use a VPN, Thomas Mann, reason to punish an entire country, Of Withered Apples by Philip K. Dick, boots and gloves, set on Earth, a fantasy, these are really good fashions, asymmetrical brass bras with belts, don’t gender shame me, uncomfortable to wear, Flash Gordon, Margaret Bras, Return Of The Jedi, brass cups, what it’s supposed to be, this is interesting, sandskiffs, Mars, it has this history, cosplays, modern cartoons, recreating in LEGO an entire Planet Stories cover, you can put some silk under there, Queen Of The Black Coast, only wearing a belt, terrible sunburn, pale pale skin, incredibly strong sunblock, yet another, Leia is pretty passé, an episode of Chuck, Our Flag Means Death, am I crazy or is he wearing The Road Warrior (1981) costume, he’s not wearing a crescent wrench, crazy throwback callback, a wanderer, cowboy, its cosplay, how many things am I missing?, A Princess Of Mars, inspired Star Wars, The Hidden Fortress (1958), Enchantress Of Venus, E.E. Doc Smith cos-playing C.L. Moore’s North West Smith, Han Solo, Mal Reynolds, badly whipped, a loving description of every single scars, scars make you manly, a loving sexy description, obviously sex in the air, all the right ingredients, stories recreating the adventures, the actual story, as cool as it is today, sometime this year I hope, Planet Stories Podcast, bubble helmets and brass bras, a sled with some lady getting kidnapped, dying, Guardians Of The Galaxy, Yondu, scantily clad woman, rocketpack, Nelson S. Bond, Ray Cummings, women having eyes closed, woemn can see to you know, Marilyn Moroe’s lost science fiction movie, saran wrap, an ongoing thing, tanks for holding the oxygen, space accident spacesuit, form over function, in a red bathing suit, the design, these artists are amazing, a metal belt with snaps and such, brass armour, this is beautiful, the colours of these pulp covers, put this on my wall, falling from behind her, her helmet is broken, Elisabeth of Austria, Allen Anderson, so much detail, pink eyes, hatching out of, the pistol, a six-shooter, a western in space, Wagon Train in space, somewhere in Vienna, Archive.org, a scene in the magazine, not quite as pretty inside, evening gowns vs. practical pants, shocking pants, Genevieve Cogman, marvelous museums, hair decoration, Captives Of The Thieve-Star by James H. Schmitz, A Tale Of Two Clocks, target audience, Demon Breed, a real shame, sad story, the entire Protecting Project Pulp archive, Riders Of The Spaceways by Henry Kuttner, The Game Of Rat And Dragon by Cordwainer Smith, The Tree Of Life by C.L. Moore, The Waters Of Bowlegs Creek by J. E. Grinstead, Sex Slaves Of The Dragon Tong by F. Paul Wilson, The Hand of the Mandarin Quong by Sax Rohmer, Prominent Author by Philip K. Dick, a joke story, Child Of Atlantis by Edmond Hamilton, Captain Future, along with Star Trek reruns, Space: 1999, and Time Tunnel, Virgil Finlay throughout, shipwrecked on their honeymoon, The Shunned House, Power In The Era Of Post Human Capitalism, economics, Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher, Red Plenty, Strawberry Spring by Stephen King, Ghostland: In Search Of A Savage Country, The Thing In The Woods by Harper Williams, Bobby Derie wont don’t podcasts, he needs to be forced to do it, a prototype for The Dunwich Horror, Goodreads, the few racist remarks, the werewolf is never clearly seen, the W word, in our story saturated world, The Great God Pan, smiley face, good for a rainy day, a good endorsement for a book, a quoka, a wallaby, marsupial, The Dark Man by Robert E. Howard, a statue of Bran Mak Morn, the weird Robert E. Howard stuff, I want Skull-Face, in The Garden Of Fear, Almuric, The Curse Of The Golden Skull, Kull of Atlantis, very short, read a book, mow a lawn, Nanny by Philip K. Dick, planned destruction, literally trying to murder your children, a robot uprising, evil robot nannies, programmed by evil corporations.

Black Amazon Of Mars by Leigh Brackett - art by Allen Anderson

PLANET STORIES - Black Amazon Of Mars interior art

Black Amazon Of Mars by Leigh Brackett - art by Reno Maniquis (circa 2012/3)

Cirsova Edition - Black Amazon Of Mars - illustrated by StarTwo

Black Amazon Of Mars by Leigh Brackett - art by Jesse

Planet Stories - Legoization by Jesse

Cosmos Science Fiction And Fantasy, July 1954

Virgin Planet - cover by Clyde Caldwell

E.E. Doc Smith cosplaying as C.L. Moore' NORTHWEST SMITH at Worldcon 1963

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #709 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Souvenir by Philip K. Dick

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #709 – Souvenir by Philip K. Dick; read by Mike Vendetti

This unabridged reading of the story (31 minutes) is followed by a discussion of it.

Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Evan Lampe, and Mike Vendetti

talked about on today’s show:
Fantastic Universe, October 1954, editorial introductions, the teaser, Williamson’s World, logically motivated self-interest, admired and widely read, blind self seeking, the editor, Leo Margulies, robes and university campuses, Upon The Dull Earth, cedars and walking around, attention span, a typical Philip K. Dick story, questioning the logic and assumptions of empire, Dick is criticizing the galactic polity, they literally nuke the planet, they genocide them, without irony, the Empire Of Man by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, by any means necessary, destroy the village in order to save it, homogeneity, Time Out Of Joint, one happy world, alignment, technology, a repressive troweling to a bland sameness, really ideological, eight things, gunboat diplomacy for cultural hegemony, if you don’t share those values, should information be shared, inventions being public domain, share all inventions across cultures, choosing technology, the Amish engagement with technology, an unexamined choice, globalization, one big world, the end of history, should cultures keep pace, AP Human Geography, who’s making these metrics?, the goal of all societies, the UN Human Development Index, is Williamson’s World post scarcity, they seem to LARP, the Klingons are an advanced post-scarcity society that got bored and started to LARP, a lot of time on their hands, the frontier, Mr. Spaceship, the way out of cultural decadence, the silk road, interesting fusions and developments, the Ming dynasty, crafts, back to Galactic Pot-Healer, make that jewelry, The Man In The High Castle, infantryman, page 48, ten minutes later, Corporal Pete Matson, blast rifle, instructions will follow from his relay web, the hill disintegrated into dust, his supple body alert, airborne, perfectly good spacecraft, ROTC class, dropped his wooden gun and never came back, Starship Troopers before Starship Troopers, the dream of all those generals during the atomic years, people living on Mars, what we see going on in Ukraine, Sun Tzu: you don’t destroy the fortress you want to own or inhabit, what Putin has done in Ukraine, The Art Of War by Sun Tzu, 3,000 year old wisdom, like there’s nothing of value there, hey honey what are you doing back, two souvenirs, planting his nuke mines, bought them from people on the planet, the wooden cup, nothing remains, surprise!, Pete!, special leave, 48 hours, suitcase, souvenir gathering, a Japanese head in their dufflebag, I’ll take what you want, did he buy the bolt of cloth?, spoils of war, dufflebag, a travelling salesman, more explicit, more like a business, strictly business, how’s school, another cold, military secret, a handmade wooden drinking cup, something that reminds you of a different place, he writes whole stories based on a tiny little incident, a snowglobe story, The Crystal Crypt, the writing shack, there’s no different place, where would he have picked that up?, an archaic word, how plausible this story’s premise is, Paycheck, these little tangible objects are really significant and substantial, no other authors are interested in, the everyday object on the mantle that has profound implications, obsessive interest in art, the creation and repairing of ceramics, the fake guns, the authentic and the inauthentic, the jewelry, yin yang symbols, you contemplate this thing and it can shift your reality, a fascinating philosophical topic, that’s to drink out of, plastic cups, a great folded cloth, “picked this up cheap”, contraband, you’re not supposed to have a Japanese soldier’s head in your dufflebag, everybody’s doing, a whole different world, a whole different concept, Pete Matson beamed, foreign lands, Paul banned from an Italian McDonalds, the shame, not our world, what the internet relay, Roger’s Lecture, Dark Eyed Girl, electric cars, relay coordinates, you hooked on to the web, the internet in 1954, a regulated internet, this is the technology, no need to replicate an experiment, no time to do that, all cultures have to keep up, the Amish, they’re always saying here’s a new technology, cell phone? what is this English technology, we’ve seen the internet and we’re not that into it, discord, get off discord this is class, the greatest thing ever, why aren’t you on tic tock?, snapchat, growing up in a culture, I’m accustomed to the uniform galactic culture, relay = internet, a radically different social stage, a brief story, an infodump (page 44), a hundred people can’t manage, weaving and dyeing, communication and sewage and medical agencies, terra of the 21st century, an archaic culture, co-ordinated, we prefer it, keep pace with the general trend, a uniformity of development, integrates the valued factors, the machine is the development of the tool, power ratio, tools into machines, if you reject machinery you reject man’s essential key, accepting all technology, rejecting your essential nature, genocide a planet for being Amish, a sentimental interest in the novel, the unique, the handmade, cheap food, a schism, reconcile do our two things, automate my entire home, local folk dances are inferior, country granola cruncher, let Alexa run your house, handicrafts in the basement, driven by a robot pilot, ladies dried up and old and hot and young, local food, here are our demands, ham fisted story, novel length ideas in a super short story, new car every four years, planned obsolescence, tube era vs. transistor era, repairshop, illegal to fix your own stuff, a plastic cover under the hood to make it look neat, a German automaker, hoods are only to be opened at the dealer, a sealed iPhone, don’t fix it throw it away, credit for a new phone, stuck in the eco-system, we’ll fucking nuke you, larping around, duels, clan, a medieval Westworld, Williamson Jr., self-aware much, Gene Williamson, land and women, prestige, like the medieval jousts, separate deity?, a vague animism, we retire, some kind of dancing, we devote a lot of time producing drama, murals, rough wood, we have a big pigment industry, materials for doing their art, really self-aware, Worf: “I’m going to have to have my head ridges pumped up by Doctor Pulaski after this shift. Captain, you may be interested in how my head ridges are a tradition going back several generations”, fatalistic, nobody who is an animist says I’m a vague animist, primitive rockets, the head of the family, we all go get ourselves kid for no reason, Dr. Futurity, zapped to the future, Captain Cook, Sir Francis Drake, indians going back in time, everyone’s young, as soon as they get sick or injured they just die, best gametes, static and stagnant culturally, live to fight clan battles, samurais from middle ages Japan, the reality their born into, Tokugawa samurais are larping, bureaucratic jobs, dandies going to opera, what turns them into the Japanese of WWII, banzai charges, a very dangerous larp, married to a kamikaze (he didn’t come back), come back with your shield or on it (Spartan culture), where’s my rumspringa, so superior a place?, we’re hyper-competent, move to Cuba, people actually do move to Cuba, Korean war-era crime novels, some people didn’t just come back, they just stayed in Korea as defectors, defectors effect you, emigrating out of your country, what is so awesome over there that I need to go?, you can’t move into Japan, what is it?, is their culture superior, you’re not even allowed to question, where did you get that material, this will spark something, a party conversation, the seed, U.S. government doesn’t care about the amish, still lots of things to bulldoze, the Amish engage (vs. embrace) capitalism, Amish trucks, choosing to not engage with capitalism, immune to gas prices, they make their own fertilizer, a sketch, very good story by Mr. P.K. Dick, so different, such weird characters, steal him away and have sex with him, we’re a patriarchy, we’re in a patriarchy and I’m the head of the household, Roger and Matson, take issue, a homogeneous culture, ancient Rome, different cultures to deal with, what’s Dick’s impression of the Roman Empire, the black iron prison, the Roman Empire never ended, universal homogeneous culture, who’s a Roman, everyone who is not a slave is made a citizen, too harsh on Dick, Arnold J. Toynbee, problems with Toynbee, a Prester John story, if we found Prester John’s story today, Wakanda except its Prester John, a capitalist realism, aren’t these people quaint, they are the fifth block, Traveller (RPG), seeded throughout the galaxy, a giant galactic empire, as man does, culture shock, colonizing the galaxy, here’s the pioneer, Roanoke colony suddenly reappeared, the premise of the story, we’d destroy anything to avoid war, bickering provinces, we lack the vary concept of variation, the idea itself must remain unknown, semantic correlates, hints and verbal leads, the logic of the nation state, language politics, you must learn the national language, a bit preposterous at times, at work in many nation states, war is a result of cultural difference, absolutely not true, child brides, keeping everything the same, what do they have these patrol ships for?, its not war when we are nuking our own people, pax Britannica, police action in Asia, Mike you wanna come?, MacArthur, nation states make this case all the time, we must supress cultural difference, body bags, in terms of bloodshed, melting pot vs. mosaic (multiculturalism), festival du bois, traditional costumes, rustic music, french immersion schools, official, cultural homogenization, a less bulldozery method, cultural funds through the government, application for government funding for your culture is a big thing in Canada, gamefied, doing it on your own, nuances that don’t fit into Philip K. Dick’s story, the hammer of overseas gunboat diplomacy, cultural holiday, earth day (April 22), suppressing Lenin’s hundredth birthday?, the population bomb, you poor have to have fewer children, arbor day, making earth day for the whole plane, plant trees, may day, investigate it, way to conspiracy theory, Lenin was a big deal in the Soviet Union, celebrations for their heroes, 4/20, apply for money to get your giant marijuana cigarette, conspiracies actually do happen, Hunter Biden’s laptop, its a private company, posting something that was true, it was conspiracy fact, who are you going to believe me or your lying eyes, a quagmire, we were always doing it, fewer people are drinking the kool-aid, Jonestown as a larp, a dead action role playing game, 20th century Bushido code, after WWII Bushido, revive this Bushido spirit, seppuku, yakuza, government checks, an alternative way to go, Hells Angels spelled their name wrong, we know we don’t care, they like it, they have to egage with capitalist realism, we know we are drinking ourselves to death but we like it, going through with things, commitment we can appreciate,

Yakuza guy: “Yes I know I don’t have to cut off my finger because my boss told me I did a bad job on whatever assignment I was given, but I already have…a full body sleeve of tattoos so I might as well snip it off. Because what is the other way to go? I don’t want to play League of Legends all day and Wordle’s just not doing it for me.”

, Masons, Elks, Shriners, fraternal organizations have gone belly up, the motorcycle clubs keep going, special forces motorcycle clubs, subversive people, since they did away with the draft, a military of mercenaries, you can’t afford to get out, you make too much money, become a consultant, another word for a mercenary, fantastic!

Souvenir by Philip K. Dick

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The SFFaudio Podcast #708 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #708 – The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood; read by Amy Gramour

This unabridged reading of the story (1 hour 59 minutes) is followed by a discussion of it.

Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Marissa VU, and Bryan Alexander

Talked about on today’s show:
The Lost Valley and Other Stories, isfdb.org, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, June 1944, great Matt Fox illustrations, canoes, portage, chasin the wendigo, northern minnesota, portedge vs. port-ahhj, defago, a french canadian accent, when you get your canoe out of the lake and walk overland carrying it, Lewis In Clark, they’re northwest passage moment, how non-wendigo-like this wendigo is, The Weird And The Eerie by Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, the answer is no, is this story weird or is it eerie?, eerier than it is weird?, that fascination, the pull into the horror, a weird feature, easy to conflate the two, an eerie scene, a weird movie, unusual and strange, eerie is on its own orbit, absence vs. presence, seeing it from near Defago’s pov, witnessing with their nose and ears, super-cool, page 61, a failure of absence or a failure of presence, somebody’s talking but your can’t hear them, the absence of the voice, nested story, five guys, off by himself or with a wendigo, the mystery is what is actually happening to him, Easter sunday, the wendigo is Jesus with his feet of fire, tracks becoming like each other, the transformation stuff, so curious, The Willows, a lot more racist, the characters or the author, onto the author, casually thrown in there, the real mythological wendigo, ideas about how the land is empty, places where no one has ever been, natives all up in these areas, untouched by man, pre-Columbus, controlled burns, managed, untrammeled wilderness, this part of Austria that is completely untouched (since the Roman era), building it up vs. ignorance, hyper-maximialized, wendigo psychosis (phenomena), explanations for what happens when one goes wendigos, the Weird Studies podcast, out of Ontario, an incident in 2008, Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, Edmonton, in the right area, a carnival barker, “Vince” Weiguang Li, creepy pastas, decapitated and displayed a severed head, consuming some flesh, he plead non compos mentis, an article writer was worried that he may have caused it by speaking the word wendigo, magical thinking, people react, yellow blue flag in bio vs. going to Ukraine to join the fight, Stephen King banned one of his own books (because it was tied to school shootings), this is what I’ve been thinking about, the guy was crazy, technical difficulties, the people who lived in this area, an explanation for strange behavior, he went bersark, in times of abundance, the skinwalker, Ravenous (1999), plenitude vs. starvation, the climate change community, a sick society, suddenly your head’s being cut-off, triggered by real information, fight for the good guys, if you had just written that story, have your book in their locker (or at home), guilt and fear, mythological vs. rational, what stars did I change to change reality, an interesting take what the difference is, a lot more like a visit to fairyland, taken away by the fairies, transformed into a changeling, Connor MacLoud was my kinsman, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, the hill is made of the corpses of many many, relish sweet and bitter dew, an essentially cool idea, uninterested, the feet of fire is not in the canon (of the mythology), frostbitten and worn away feet, Algernon Blackwood came to Canada, engaging with the landscape, a ghost story, A Haunted Island, a ghost in the bed, that which has happened or will happen, Accessory Before The Fact, native spirituality or native legend, equally evocative descriptions, listening forest, walking around in the forest, spooky fallen trees, a boat on the lake, being in the woods, is it authentic to any native experience?, a colonialist work, the height of Britain’s imperial power, away from the populace near the U.S. border, Blackwood was fascinated with nature, Arthur Machen, the dramatic power, successive isolation, more and more depopulated, more and more alienated, gorgeous terms, a little more unsettling, the Johnny Cash song, Bryan knows it’s connected, great sentences, the party round the blazing fire, recent moose discovering itself, word turns, musin up the fac, a sulky silence, Punk was washing up the dishes, the stars were brilliant in a sky quite wintry, the silence of the vast listening forest stole forward and enveloped them, no-one troubled to stir it, stealthy ice, a wonderful set of sentences, why Lovecraft likes this, about mood, complex moods vs. complex ideas, companionable silences, structural relationship, being offended, little nothing for the outer story, who’s this narrator, the least communicative character, smart character, the wind comes and stirs up that fire, Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s dark and stormy night, the weather is affecting the people, the landscape turns these people into the things they become, caught up in a spell, an inversion of fake realism, Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, the climax, please come down, stage setting, stage directions, irrational laugh of horror, distinctly audible, circle of light, stumbling motion, motionless and dumb, withered, violent action, hewn of stone, stricken children, The Blair Witch Project, crunching the frozen snow, measured and pitiless approach, cursed, bends reality, appearances and postcards, distortion of Defago’s body, at length the darkness, terribly conceived, a figure, zone of uncertain light, spasmodic motion of a thing moved by wires, it was a man, a skein of horror, three pairs of eyes shone through it, robots and things, do you think it’s the wendigo?, his feet, something horrible with his feet, something dark and oddly massed where moccasined feet, covered it with a blanket, yanked away, not a normal french name, a bundle of sticks, fire, they replace your baby with something that isn’t your baby, corn dollies, True Detective, stick dollies, Downs syndrome, magical requirements of the spell, a mockery of the man who was taken away, visiting via him, back to the real guy, telepresence, its a puppet, stop motion animation, slightly more jaggy, Simpson watching close behind him, the impression of a mask, black and diabloical, revealed in utter nakedness, biologically inhabited, totally erased, possession, becoming wendigo, trying to start a fire, eaten away from the inside, a matchstick lit from the bottom, gravity, as a phenomenon, literal fire or frostbite, what is the wendigo doing across the landscape, people love to draw the wendigo, an outline, a vague figure, Roof Bear, picking up Coffee Cat, the opposite of warmth, dropping frost, what does the wendigo eat, it eats moss, moose, the moose is hunting them, the spirit of winter, the spirit of the land, uninhabited because of how harsh it is, the moose finds them, why it has horns, human scale, antlers, Cernunnos, the deer/elk god of Celtic mythology, the hunt, a hunting expedition

When Did I Go? by Jesse:
My hike through the subarctic foothills that summer suddenly turned sinister when the bridge I had meant to cross was suddenly washed out by a late spring flood.

I’d begun my trek west through northern Alberta and into its border in the North-West Territories in late May, back when my skin was sallow, and my hair short.

Now, in late June, my hair was in my eyes as I thought I should return to that last homely shack I’d seen, the one with the collapsed verandah, just thirteen kilometers back.

My feet felt hot as I turned on the trail where the three lonely larches had turned a lovely and sickly green, that shack held nothing, nothing but a history, a history of this lonely landscape, as it was perfectly placed to shelter me and my needs.

And as I approached the sagging shanty I noticed again that broken sign on the trail’s bed, flipped it over, saw a new growth of lichen had obscured a few of the obscene words scrawled upon its pitted surface.

As I read the words aloud to myself and the wind under those familiar twilight stars I began my hysterical laughter: “Yukon run, butt chew can’t hide from the THING inside” it read.

And as I threw the sign to my feet and crawled under that broken and redolent verandah into what was once my home, I smiled, cracked open my preserves, and began feasting on the salted man-meat I’d made on my last trip through.

THE END

stealing a little, the unconscious, explaining why people do things is hard, explicit, we have a theory, this is the wendigo, how do we know?, feeling hysterical, went out for a pee, the outer narration is very unsympathetic, he’s cheating, the landscape, somebody’s mouse, a companion sentence, the personification of inanimate things, the landscape is doing something for our experience, scent and smell, what he smells like, the wendigo smells acrid, like lion, musky, lions don’t eat moss, like a living animal, off by 7, food and fire, inwardness, “something he called a wendigo”, mental excitement, that extraordinary odour, pungent, 50 Island Water, a foolish avowal, the preposterous language, an exact miniature likeness, a wholly incredible distance, the fiery tinge in the snow, hesitant on the one and sure on the other, I’m in my right mind now, steam?, char?, burnt off, stumps, do we even see?, lying and concealing, the effect upon the reader, H.P. Lovecraft, its surrogate, you see it by its scent, its effect in the ground, tracks leading through a field, up into the sky, on the treetops, Johnny Cash’s Ring Of Fire, a religious and sexual vision, covers, down down down I went, mythic ring, not quite as awesome as The Willows, Mr Jim Moon, “the ghost man”, the British love their ghost stories, a Christmas tradition, M.R. James, Henry James, a nested narrative, people going away from civilization into the wild, into a Canadian canoe, birch bark canoe, so light, so lovely, make one?, a skin of birch, chopping, marking the trees, so I can find my way back, Hansel and Gretel, blazing the trees, a nice pun, it’s going to hear me, structured, 5 to 2 to 1, 1 to 2 to 5, like the Apollo missions, that style of a story, Operation Black Buck, the Falkland Island War, the fuel planes refueling each other, such a massive distance, this expedition into the wilderness, an telescoping antenna, what was in contact, as it collapses back down, that story structure, how did he manage to do it just this well, an extraordinarily good story, an oblique angle, public domain stories, what responsibility in republishing a public domain story, the PDF Page, Wayne June read a story by Lovecraft, Mr. Niggerman vs. Mr. Blackman, The Rats In The Walls, Jesse’s responsibility, directly offended, present reality as it is as it was, fix history by taking out the icky bits, a terrific story, people’s fixations change, some words are taboo, those words have been replaced, earliest publications whenever possible, taking out illustrations, see the original context, William Wilson by Edgar Allan Poe, there’s a joke in the first line that tells you, The Gift, “In the present volume”, taking out information or lying, the racist character or the racist author, replacing Nigger Jim with Robot Jim, not everybody starts in a position of complete knowledge, this particular story, the n-word popping up, the turd in the punchbowl, thrown in here randomly (seemingly),

He watched the men a moment longer before diving into the stuffy tent where Simpson already slept soundly. Hank, he saw, was swearing like a mad African in a New York nigger saloon; but it was the swearing of “affection.” The ridiculous oaths flew freely now that the cause of their obstruction was asleep. Presently he put his arm almost tenderly upon his comrade’s shoulder, and they moved off together into the shadows where their tent stood faintly glimmering.

the progressive era was the most racist point in American history, meet up in Burlington, struck by the senses, key plot points, the conclusion ends on sense, “He knew what it all meant. Défago had ‘seen the Wendigo.'”, is sound the only trustworthy sense in the story, this is a cube, put in my hand, a scent can be mysterious, pulp mill towns, Thunder Bay, if you live there you don’t notice it, smell is literally invisible, desensitized to it, no need to present this to the brain, hearing a sentence, sight is something we question, smell is less reliable than hearing, sight is more reliable than hearing and scent, putting it in your hand is the most reliable, manuscript found in a bottle, we’re physically holding it, what we’re left with, reversing the human experience, sight and sound, because we don’t have the embedded, me our your lying eyes, we might have a verbal agreement, might hold up in court, send me a fax with your signature on it, makes it real, hearsay, I had a whiff that he was a serial killer, undergrad English majors to lawyers, Nunavut territory hunt, Paul comes back with an armful of fish, the senses are crucial, the unreality of this story, by eating the liver of a polar bear, ecological literary criticism, vegan diet, killing and living on animals, death by starvation, that dependence, “He realized his own utter helplessness. Only Défago, as a symbol of a distant civilization where man was master, stood between him and a pitiless death by exhaustion and starvation.”, the wood, there to eat, an emblem of community’s starvation or too much food, getting the right amount of food to live on, insatiable greed hungry excess, gluttony greed and excess, Blackwood out hunting and canoeing, a leftover from the coureur de bois era, Punk is a crazy name, Tonto, Vivian, a UK name, a boy named Sue, back to Johnny Cash, turnabout is fairplay, poor Marissa, Jesse, Paul, and Bryan, how bad Vermont internet was, what is our duty?, in podcasting terms, in fifty years what are people going to want to have from this podcast?, to understand us better, the latest Dan Carlin podcast interview, Hardcore History Addendum, when a war is happening today, Ukraine, how will people fifty years from now understand us better, Edgar Allan Poe, in the year 18__, be as faithful and understanding as you can, the long tail of the audience, the tail is much longer than that first week, 70 years late would be fine, a perishable age, all your DMs are going to be destroyed, all the ephemeral messages, text chats, podcast resilient, what happened to all the blogs?, the revised manuscript for his new book, possible extinction of the human race, a great conversation, cell phone as a hotspot, a good trick, why does Vermont internet suck so much, for profit telcos, repeated screwups, terrain, lots and lots of woods, small mountains, the wendigo interfering with our podcasts, a bad internet weather day, Elon Musk satellite internet, moving into the forest, pre-Starlink satellite internet, Starlink sent to Ukraine, 2g speed with Russian forces, Crimea, re-annexation, support for Assad in Syria, implausible, Strawberry Spring, Everything’s Eventual, a Spingheeled Jack story, an eerie phenomenon, peak up, the basketball game experiment, if you could only have one author on a desert island, Lawrence Block, re-read and find new things, Gene Wolfe, Cavalier, you can buy Hugo awards on ebay, No-Man’s Land, Uluru, it belongs in a museum!, heist story in which plucky band of wokesters steals all the stuff from the British museum and give them back, cynical Cirsova guy, ladies need eyebrows, the Elgin marbles, Greece is in such, privileging nation states, totem poles in England, trophies, the obelisk, the duly elected government, Aswan Dam, future us’ problem, claims lose power over time, shipping stuff back, without context, “here are the Elgin marbles, ha!”, a thorny problem, when Greece takes Big Ben, the Mexicans who now run England (with Russian accents), Jesse’s mom is moving, Vancouver Island is for retired people, YouTube photographers, videos, Amanda and Gavin, YouTubers tubing together, Nova Scotia is cheaper, seeing icebergs, an Israeli 7.62, Shaun Duke.

Lynd Ward art for The Wendigo

Lynd Ward art for The Wendigo

The Wendigo art by Matt Fox from FAMOUS FANTASTIC MYSTERIES

The Wendigo art by Matt Fox from FAMOUS FANTASTIC MYSTERIES

Wendigo - frequency: Unique - from Dragon Magazine, issue 38

Roof Bear, Coffee Cat, Wendigo

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