Boris Strugatsky – SFFaudio

The SFFaudio Podcast #699 – READALONG: The Doomed City by Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #699 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Marissa VU, and Bryan Alexander talk about The Doomed City by Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky.

Talked about on today’s show:
Strugatsky, 1989 kind of, 1972, late 1960s, how to classify this book’s publication story, who had read this before, Roadside Picnic, weird late publication, Stalker (1979), 2017 audiobook, the afterword, the introduction, Soviet science fiction, literature in the Soviet Union, Red Plenty, if a book doesn’t have a manuscript, if it doesn’t get read by readers it doesn’t exist, the carbon copy, a book that can frustrate people, not really a science fiction novel as much as it is an existential novel, a role playing game made out of this setting, a worker in a big office building, possessed vending machines, Control, freak your shit out, single player video game, garbage worker, baboons show up, wander off into the North, jump off the precipice, Disco Elysium, strange philosophical conversations, skill tree, intrusive thoughts, weird psychology, hilarious, playing it straight, completely deranged, develop different relationships with people, a meta, did this book remind you of any books?, Dark City (1998), an undefined place and time, 1950s Leningrad, Driftwood by Marie Brennan, fantasy kingdom, squeezed towards the center, City At the End Of Time by Greg Bear, dream-like reality, the Red Building, Cinnabar [by Edward Bryant], M. John Harrison’s Viriconium series, resonance, Plato’s The Republic, The Just City by Jo Walton, The Investigation by Stanisław Lem, the Riverworld series by Philip Jose Farmer, To Our Scattered Bodies Go, chess board, internal stuff, John Brunner’s The Squares Of The City, moving people around, Charles Stross’ Missile Gap, an Alderson disc, ICBMs no longer work, the Siege Of Leniningrad, Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard, The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman, Last Exit by Max Gladstone, the pyramid, A Maze Of Death, Solar Lottery by Philip K. Dick, Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer, The City And The Stars by Arthur C. Clarke, amalgamated and reconstituted, a book about art, The Wall Of Darkness by Arthur C. Clarke, Super Science Stories, July 1949, Hannes Bok, Virgil Finlay, distinctive styles, contemplating a stairway and holding a Möbius strip, an Elon Musk style character funds a stairway to see over a wall, awesome story, an Omni story, The Infinite Plane by Paul J. Nahin, Travel By Wire by Arthur C. Clarke, the food becomes poison, the clock of the Long Now [Foundation], left handed food, no comparative thoughts, The Truman Show (1998), artificial worlds, the Soviet context, the heroic stage, friendly with a Nazi, the end, art and culture being the greatest good, the Temple, powerful writing, the Siege of Leningrad, I was in Cambodia, I was in Waco with Koresh, the most lethal, a rival source of power, the Soviet center, the great strategist, playing chess with human bodies, another Omni story, imaginary numbers, math fiction, a Soviet peasant makes a set of chessmen, capitalists vs. workers, enchantment, how chess can be played, it doesn’t matter if your king is taken, Nineteen Eighty-Four, the truth is whatever I tell you it is, angel/alien, a deeply flawed main character, he wants to leave the library, an emblem, not answering that stuff, this is us on Earth here, randomocracy, it’s just happening, the ethnography, Swedes, Germans, Koreans, an American with a cowboy hat, that open time, so global, the existential element, everybody is here, we’re told it is voluntary, you died there, bud, a camouflaged criticism, everybody will become communist, continue the program, lacking geographic specificity, NATO, good branding, if you have faith, there are no kids in this city, a garbage collector to a policeman to the mayor to the president to the leader of an expedition, doctors too?, a lawyer, bricklayer, somewhat failing experiment, it can only be failed, out of control, German efficiency, a classic utopian thing, The Lottery In Babylon by Jorge Luis Borges, a gardener, a response to a reality, you can not fall any further, a stoic philosophy, choosing not to be upset, willing to suffer the swamps, pleasant swamps, 1950s gulag, city/country divide, the farmers, the Truckers this week, coming into the city in a convoy, one of these farmers has a machine gun, we need that machinegun to get rid of the baboons, policies made in extremis, German POWs lodged with farmers, trapped on the continent, we called that slavery, 3rd amendment to the U.S. constitution, the baboon invasion, a metaphor for something, Dan Simmons’ The Terror, leaded meat, going insane, the crystal palace, endless plain, monsters, a premonition, the giant statue, an obvious super-metaphor, Stalin and Lenin statues, William Hope Hodgson, the heat death of the Solar System, The Night Land, geothermal energy, an anti-city, wireless transmission, a horseless knight with a circular saw, a geological force, a 17th century gentleman, existential and talky, a classical romance in an insane setting, there is meaning in images and events, we are not privy, the stuff that is not there, the guy who issues the toilet paper, important notes, committee meeting minutes, a curious puppy, playing the game in his way, giggling at everything, anti-semitism, he gets the last word, he’s the brains of the operation, physically jewish, an engagement with judaism, what the temple is about, producing culture, respecting the intellect, the people of the book, Jerusalem and Moscow, crazy reviews, misogyny, skank (not slattern), a Soviet style phrase, whiny sluts, wankrags for the guys, udders, in the police station, I don’t have that file, we don’t know everybody’s backstory, how could you?, no woman’s perspective, the basic pass on this is they are in Hell, Earth is Hell, capable of receiving pain, if you want to stay alive you have to kill, what are we to do, the experiment is the experiment, the devil god, hunger isn’t the problem we just don’t have enough food, our swedish friend, the military skank, they pickup somehow, everything that’s elided, previous iterations of the city, left incomplete, going downstairs to sleep with her, corrupted, WWII into the 1970s, a story of disillusionment, very Colonel Kurtz, Aguirre, The Wrath Of God (1972), the book begins with shit, the book ends with shit, reflected things, her beautiful white pristine legs, scabs bruises and abscesses, physically degenerating, their will is breaking, a blank landscape allows for deep reflection, Lena on Goodreads:

Depressing surreal social criticism that pretends to be a sci-fi. The parody on communism and soviet propaganda is quite obvious, but the story also takes deeper study of human society and nature. One star for misogyny, disgusting realism and unnecessary cruelty. Moreover authors didn’t give any explanation to the world-building nor uncover any plot’s mysteries.

where the reader has gone wrong, a funhouse mirror, through a mirror darkly, satire makes it sound like its fun, showing us truths, a misogynistic, its already in the world, when the revolution happens, sees the results, the emphasis on diarrhea and dysentery, things start in the gutter, a shit job, simple, available for you to see, the opening was terrific, The tanks were rusty, dented, and their lids were lose, potato husks, the mouth of an unkempt indiscriminate food pelican, a competent cop, it’s going to be gone when they get there, Andre is pretty incompetent, he doesn’t want to understand, haunted by the end, the temple speech, humanities, an astronomer, a sky that has one star and doesn’t move, Theodore Sturgeon’s Microcosmic God, the neoterrics, Sandkings by George R.R. Martin, just neglect, the humanities vs. the sciences, the mute mentor, circles, the emphasis on fecal matter, the afterlife, blast away at somebody, there’s no art in this city, all these shitty pulp magazines, no great writers, no great poets, a complaint, they’re not here, in the outer world, always in development, a very meta-book, its hard to write good art, are we writing good art?, a book review inside of a book, showing television in Robocop (1987), a condemnation of society, abundance riots, Nazi art, I don’t understand anything, reveal the truth about their world, the truth of the Red building, all will be revealed, nope, the authors know what they’re doing, Roadside Picnic [Stalker (1979)], Swiftian misanthropy, American conservative literature, apes and monkeys as a critique of Darwin, that realistic, that bestial, casually fucking in the streets, monkeys, an incredibly dark view, aren’t we?, a fishtank, to quote Marlowe, a decisive ending, raising our science fiction and fantasy hope, a meta-science fiction book, not a fantasy, following the rules, fantastic, Exhalation by Ted Chiang, Plato’s The Republic, H.G. Wells’ The War Of The Worlds, crappy adventure stories, later you became obsessed with it, the strivings of a story like The War Of The Worlds are to put us in our place, this is what you really are, have yourself humbled, we are humbled, a mimetic sense, what would we do if we were placed in this very strange RPG, more shit is around the next corner, worship at the temple in the crystal palace, William G. Shepherd, Omni, Discovery, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, is that the best we can hope for?, a minority adds to and maintains the temple, the temple persists, participate in keeping the temple going is a great way of life, six months of a magazine, nobody’s going to look at them, a friend in Australia, the little builder, somebody else’s job, its not Jesse’s job to put Jesse’s statue up in the temple, his job is to polish the temple steps, and point people in the right direction to find the right book inside the temple if they come by, maybe call them in from the street, no donation needed, they walk by and spit on Jesse, coral reef, all of our art, if you’re not creating, hiding hoping the squid doesn’t eat him, Jesse the clownfish, Hemingway, drunk, pedophile, Dostoevsky was an extreme right-winger, the temple creators are flawed, the canon contains shit but it has beauty within the shit, horrible creators, whatever politics is now, cancel culture, the pederast Tchaikovsky, thief and gallows-bird, O. Henry was an embezzler, Ezra Pound, open fascist, defender of the Soviet Union, defending human rights abuses, the temple that endures, whatever flag people are waving, holding up the flag, wearing a flag is an act that is very different, planting a flag on your house, when the flags come out, in division, this doomed city, it’s important, nationalities are incidental, all united as doomed, yesterday’s enemy, when you strip them of the flag, this kind of work is important, a suggestive sketch, points it’s making, high poetry, as an aesthetic way to be, endings are disappointing (usually), where it takes you to emotionally, did he shoot himself?, he met himself and he shot himself, it’s left open, capable of killing the best person we know, capable of self destruction, capable of destroying other human beings, he pulled a pistol out of the holster, tall tattered exhausted with a dirty beard, a return shot, he doesn’t check his cap, not being able to recognize this other, a mirror, he’s shooting himself, sitting in his tent, all the possible things he can do to avoid what needs doing, how you maintain discipline, these are animals, the traditional way of doing it, The One Black Stain by Robert E. Howard, Solomon Kane, Sir Francis Drake, Magellan, returns to England, you can now murder people because you are a chief of an expedition, the maritime tradition, they are the law, they can marry people, the dominant navy on the planet, unless you’re a pirate and have signed the articles, a precedent, you’re a bad person, you’re a coward, the Golden Hind, head in hands, wracked with doubt, the misery of having killed a friend for a wrong reason, we put ourselves in these Hells, regretting or doubling down, I didn’t choose to be here, nobody explains how the , no authorial infodump for us, the anti-Neal Stephenson, the thermodynamics of the big wall, deal with it, what does it mean that the sun is off, is it a coincidence?, is it a sign?, about to become a dictator, the Russian kitchen drinking scene, here it is, they’re all completely disagreeing with each other but not actually coming to blows over anything, it’s just talk, pretty deep, not something we see in American literature that often, written about drinking, F. Scott Fitzgerald, a manly thing to do, a classy thing to do, very realistic, all the russian drinking, before the blackout, the snacks, all the stages of inebriation, a positive, a bright spot, the party, Raymond Chandler, a rich guy drinking himself to death, set in Los Angeles, blendy, Dashiell Hammett, hiding the truth of reality by drinking, Mike Hammer, American detective stories are about uncovering reality, that guy was beating his wife, somebody died, his daughter killed herself, hiding the truth through alcohol vs. a communal defiance against the reality they already acknowledge, the vomiting, more thoughts, Herodotus on the persian court, Peter the Great, the drunken synod of fools, Stalin plying with vodka, in vino veritas is legit, WWII, Churchill couldn’t go 2 weeks without his prescription alcohol, Nixon drunk, Yeltsin, russians thought he drank too much, Voltaire’s conclusion Candide, a dark russian take on Candide, zoom out a bit, one last russian thing, awkward conversations, the extreme opposite of Frank Herbert’s conversations, it’s painful to read, I don’t understand what you’re saying, the dialogue is very fun, pulling out 10,000 quotes, a commonplace book, self-journal, write down your dreams, a diary is very narcissistic, what twitter is for Jesse (a commonplace book), Paul’s Miscellany, whoever exercises power, man has to have a goal, hence the expedition, hence the experiment, we’ve got to do something, general outrage, goals and enemies, very easy to be uncharitable, words on a page, you don’t need to be outraged about everything, a set of beliefs is dangerous, a blob of ideas I’m currently carrying around, squish some of them, taking a model of what someone else is saying, how other people’s mannerisms work, ongoing public conversation, these vast swaths of people who comment, a massive list of comments, they’re talking to themselves, this is what you do because , when you see Jesse on twitter it’s because he has to wait 15 seconds, in the before times (pre-covid), monitoring mentions, believing in the conversation, great for connecting with people, a really interesting bookshelf, detecting outrage, plugins, moderate your anger, road rage is like twitter isolation, indistinct, a look of concentration and fear (or don’t), this person is the worst human being in the entire world, essentially bad drivers, perfectly nice people, an excuse for it, it’s hard not to be a hypocrite, how good is that narration?, he had a voice for everybody, good show, good take, by special request of Chowbacca, a random twitter guy, exactly, a fan of the show, looking forward to everyone’s thoughts, thank you so much @chowbacca415. make the temple as pretty and nice as possible, the temple is a library, trucks being impounded, ready when you are, Mentor, Mentor is actually Athena (in The Odyssey), how to deal with Circe, some of the characters are on hands experimenters, Touched By An Angel, like Quantum Leap but for christians, make things right, a science fiction explanation, mentoring, pedagogy, the last words of the book in russian, stacks of firewood, there’s a lot of burning to come, a demon or a devil, Athena’s hobby horse for Odysseus, he’s the wise and wily one, Heracles gets a special interest from Zeus, as a psychological story, Nietzsche, no psychological depth, Get Smart, cone of silence room, a black room, an anti-room somewhere in the house, there’s a metaphor there for you.

The Doomed City

Posted by Jesse Willis Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #698 – READALONG: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #698 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Evan Lampe, Will Emmons, and Trish E. Matson talk about The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

Talked about on today’s show:
1974, a subtitle, knowing a ton about this book, you know all about the , its finally time to read The Dispossessed, book review journals, Moby-Dick, Oliver Twist, Jane Austen, media-property, because science fiction is more academicy, pretensions, taking that to heart, my credentials!, the gatekeeping of credentials, later printings, an ambiguous utopia, an ambiguous heterotopia, two societies, two worlds, idealized in certain ways and the we see its flaws, an inverted travel narrative, the square society, to learn about ourselves, Neils Klim’s Adventure Under Ground, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, John Savage, interleaving of the past with the present, a very novel thing, a hard start, protesting, a terrific book, a perfect book?, the audio drama, it is the book, the propertiless society, propertarian, go to the non-hotel, we don’t have wallets here, we have so many plot points we have to hit, a companion piece to the novel, too difficult, Classics Illustrated comics, bare boobs, a four colour version of the book, deplorable listeners, Will loves this book, read it at age 3!, something metaphysical about Ursula K. Le Guin’s politics, get right with the world to understand the physics, the insurrection, simultaneity theory, bleeding to death, poignant, the ambassador from Earth, we’ve ruined everything on Earth, this terrible moon, this terrible planet, one fucking tree, Will had read the book before, reading this novel the first time, all the bare breasted ladies, the pet otter, taken by the title, there’s some people and they had their land taken away from them, the phrases “being possessed” and “being dispossessed”, everybody has hair, her braids, propertarian, rope, everybody would cut their hair, for the common good, jewelry, no hair, everything is owned and defended, how can you have your labour stolen if you don’t have labour, the near rape scene, a terrible scene, an awful scene, a great scene, alluring naked women, a Monica Lewinsky situation, a fuge state, his metaphysical shakras were not aligned right, drunk, the demon rum, drunk me, a growing up book, a shirt that they were, that is not my hand, that is the hand that I use, Le Guin was right, nobody had written a utopia set in an anarchist society, gangster society, it gets destroyed, it would be invaded, a communist authoritarian state, how the Soviet military worked, ranks, license and requirements, team people, chain of authority going up, MPs, political officer, commissars, The Hunt For Red October, the Defense of Moscow, how pirate systems work, signing the articles, making your mark, operating under laws, customs, violating customs, Robert A. Heinlein, the academic stuff, academic politics, sucking up, conceding power to the powerful, the most authoritarian figure, I’m among equals, deceived by that feeling of equality, making a contribution, volunteering for more field labour, Fidel and Che, out in the fields reaping, wuffie, respect, currency of a certain kind, refusing all work, not full participants, lazy bums, back to the land movement in the 70s, communes, work pretty hard to make food show up, subsistence farming, The Whole Earth Catalog, a chicken that lays an egg, other benefits, giving you something to do, heat and light and food, were they living on Urras, water and potash, making clothes happen, Pacific Edge, The Wild Shore by Kim Stanley Robinson, bombed back, on the edge, Soylent Green and Silent Running, drought, all used up, going authoritarian, nearly involuntary, grand gesture, simultaneity, the only wall, sitting on the wall, a boundary, a symbolic wall, openness, the deserty environment, rooms, basements, gaudy crap, prosperity, no lies detected in that drunken rant, what we have to do, becoming accepted, the science committee, not one bad actor, a drift towards authoritarianism, celebrating Christmas, the Tyranny of Structurelessness, Jo Freeman, anarcho-feminist, the loudest most passionate voices, inevitable acknowledged, the equalest person, running this podcast, if you don’t like it, you can go make your own podcasts, it doesn’t hurt the original organization, you all have to listen to me, Trish would need to shape up or ship out, consider the listener, you need a better microphone, the loudest voice in the room, its in the language, prophylactics, what’s the alternative?, back to structure?, she’s really good, a critique of anarchism by people not in the movement, Mikhail Bakunin, the dentist authority, the smoothest words, rhetorical skill is not necessarily being right, the playwright in the book, committed to an insane asylum, separated from his loved ones, separating families, dormitories, school is prison and torture, are they on Annares?, public enemy number one, more egalitarian, all to Le Guin’s benefit, she reeealy thought it through, this is what SF is, this is really Science Fiction, it ain’t about physics, what other criticism, they don’t have cell phones and the web, we live in a post-scarcity economy if not for the rent-seeking fucks, back to education, you’re to smart for this class, you’re egoizing, hurtful, the teacher is in authority, this should be two different classes with two different levels, the teacher’s fault, go find somewhere else to be, school would be much less of a prison if teachers could do this, you can’t do that, engaging with the material, totally shut down, sympathy for the prison guards, nobody was getting the joke, thought experiment/joke, Xeno’s paradox, challenging the teacher’s authority, a top-down mechanism, the older people run things, a gerontocracy, ossified, The Doomed City by Bros. Strugatsky, forced to change jobs, 150 years, evolution or change, anarchy is hard to sustain, we evolved from hierarchical animals, drifting towards social structures of power, Murray Bookchin, The Ecology Of Freedom, a lion eating a gazelle, the “king of the beasts”, a “communist collective”, the “queen bee”, the first to become vulnerable and useless, the council of elders, authority outside of nature, we are the most wise, the first witch doctors, you’re just a young little idiot, there’s truth there, to learn skills, starting a fire, knowing how to skin an animal, the bigger the class the harder it gets, firing students, being fired by students, your knowledge gives you authority, the heirarchy is not imposed, participating in the hierarchy, destructive of the hierarchy, institutions, the survival is the proof that they know better, not the everyday, attack ships on fire of the shoulder of Orion?, he’s only four years old, seasons, time to move the camp, it happened in my childhood, the playwright [again], struggling to make a critique of his own society, when people walk out of the theatre, he can’t get another idea, it drives him insane, there is no escape, the miners who lived on Annares before, give up the hair, we need to take one of your kidneys, utilitarianism to the extreme, but…, they give him vaccines, I don’t want that, accedes, its almost like the rape scene, its my body don’t put things in it I don’t want to get in, vaccines for college?, medical records, living on top of people, community college, get these three, small pox, I died of smallpox shortly thereafter Paul, the devastation I wrought, always goes back to that title, they stickem, roommate, not allowed to live there, your space, you want women, blondes, brunettes, light skinned, dark skinned, we gottem all, women as possessions, burning his clothes, clothes for him, people gonna move, get rid of stuff everyday, bookshelves full of books, that one dollar scan place, the books own you Paul, they give you pleasure, a physical tactile pleasure, having them ways upon your soul, sad and relief, so threatening, you will be dispossessed of those things that possess you, people had stuff taken away from them, not embrace possession, rejecting the concept of property, dispossessed the miners, all the stories that could be told, that she put those people in there, a powerful concept that is far to little explored in SF, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, pre-sex cuddling at the party, the one thing that will get you a separate room, alone time (with somebody else), eating a banquet in front of hungry people, fairness not prudishness, as you dig down you got back in time, Evan has too many books, homes of different sizes, longhouses, skulls of your ancestors are the title deed to that property, small dwellings, big structures, fuck rooms, you didn’t have family, public houses, the anthropological record and the creation of family, abolishing marriage and the family, the reason for marriage is property, paternity certainty, an institution that insures that, the bloody sheet, marriage is a creepy thing, women are possessed when they have babies inside them, wow!, really powerful stuff, she gets men pretty good, Lathe Of Heaven is pretty good, The Left Hand Of Darkness, stuff happening that’s important on every page, the prison stuff, such a resonant image, they’re doing it to themselves, the Stanford [Prison] Experiment, maybe it works, engage with these terms, when gin came into English society, the temperance movement, got a hold of people’s brains, we’re not fully in control of our decision making, “problematic” means very little, a jiu jitsu counter move, I have no defense to ‘you’re egoizing’, the only guy on the planet who knows the manly art of boxing [Almuric], we need this for ideas, ideas invade your brain and control your thinking, advertising, what songs are, memes that control us, Kirk’s nodding to McCoy, one or twice a day, why this book is so good, what societies are, you can’t live by your own, in a relationship to a society, an attractive hellscape, trying to engage with the poors, relationships we have to deal with, a generalized social contract with everybody, what determines what we do, social pressures, and social ideologies, when that sign comes down, most people shouldn’t be that worried, too much work, we have to be fully engaged with the things happening all around us, a traffic radio station, truckers blocking local access to the United States, this is a sign, something’s going to change, obey and be obedient, a whipped dog, not a fan of being owned, they don’t have enough stuff, the dust is too strong, is it the privation or the no borders, their planet is their country, Red Plenty, The People’s Republic Of Walmart, post-scarcity anarchism, Trekonomics, Four Futures, scarcity and equality axes, visions of anarchy, one from Hain, is he gonna get stoned when he gets there?, a good way to end the book, people who want to fight those people, a two sided riot, another internal critique, killed, the committee of public safety, a seed crystal, the only location is a the wall, the only border on the planet, a leading and abusive question, what influence did this book get from The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, prisoners, lapping over rules, what is going to be done, what happens when someone rapes someone else, they just space the guy, pirates are terrific, a constitution for every voyage, we are forced to signed articles in the state in which we are born, driver’s license, worshiping the queen, not singing the national anthem, the Pledge of Allegiance, how great their lower classes are, the heart and soul, I don’t give a fuck about them, WWI, WWII, the truckers, plebes, plebs, a libertarian novel, a society of custom, There’s No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, getting past the idea of earning their lunch, Ursula Le Guin is very different than Heinlein, ideologically open vs. ideologically closed, an axe to grind, he’s going to teach us, exploring vs. lecturing, philosophy, open discussion, the ranting guy in the public square vs. let me tell you about this weird journey I took, commune time, rewriting this story, people dissatisfied with their neoliberal hellscape, why the indians are always dispossessed, keep enacting copyright laws, you say you want global vaccination but you keep your patents, intellectual property is central to this book, he wants to make it public domain, my vaunted position, where power can be wielded, wielded for the betterment of the few, also I want to give away this thing, the good anarchist leaves the anarchist society for anarchist reasons, stolen credit, in actual post-scarcity copyright, A Scandal In Bohemia by Me, attribution, Bros. Grimm, the guys who get the credit, by some person or persons in society, Soviet copyrights, the guy who invented Tetris, Mr. Kalashnikov, Einstein gets credit millennia later, the names done by computer, I named you, you’re “the Zygote” now Will, words have consequences, a good show on it right now, big books can work out, padding, 382 pages vs. 341 pages, should we do it, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, Heinlein’s very pushy, he’s got theories coming out of ying yang, an analogue for the American Revolution, Artemis by Andy Weir, Paul’s an old, The Door Into Summer, air your grievances, the politics of reality, protecting wealth, I thought better of you, monarchy, social Darwinism has its opposer in mutual aid, I fuck you and everybody’s better off, says the tongue, engaging with conservatives of the small c kind, cutting off blood supply to your left arm, a lazy arm, we ignore him we take his truck away, costing our whole society, listening to the pain, an idea in opposition to social Darwinism, force, power and its tool violence, the averted eye, a serious problem, the ally, the ambassador from Earth, the old cities, the bones and bricks, once the plates are subducted, the Sargasso Sea, lost ship, a 19th century maritime junkyard, the problem of plastic, a beautiful passage, along with the great ideas, a night blooming flower, only one darkness, Anarchaos by Donald E. Westlake, a guy visiting an anarchist world and looking for trouble, a culture that is propagandistic, a founder a founding document, the country with 5 military bases Djibouti, its hell, when the food starts to go, violent accidents, a lot of danger, the food train, half-rations, a really beautiful passage at the end of chapter 6, lying in bed just talking, ideas and affection, their kid is great, Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Odo, justice, the collective is the Borg, consensus, a small elite, the female changeling, they all have genders, us for us stupid TV watchers, a bunch of amoebas, they got Jesse, they understood Jesse’s biases, O D O, sample, Bajoran is a made up language, when they need to have a need for a new episode, super-jealous, hurrmp, René Auberjonois, populate instead of fuck, we copulate together, sex isn’t dirty and blasphemy doesn’t exist, beauty, green and verdant, Downpour.com, support your local library, how am I gonna share my files if they have DRM?, a worldbuilding thing, the invention of the Ansible, The Word For World Is Forest, she gave it away, she gave it to Orson Scott Card to use, she’s not propertarian about it, pirate the book, the Hanish cycle is not a cycle, its set in a universe, marketing department, no planet in the sky, a photo of Death Valley or something, the cover of the first edition, Rembrandt, in his fancy clothes, he has hair, rolled out of the show, spicy takes, how shitty Urass feels, go to the plays, get hot dogs, AP Human Geography, ranking of democracies, triggering Evan, they don’t have a media environment, Thu, they don’t believe in democracy, defining democracy as people having control of their lives, free garbage media, “seed papers”, media censorship, its our society, Annares is a commune in the desert, a kid’s book, Schooled by Gordon Korman, hippie kid goes to the city, weird resonances, those granola cruncher people, what they wanted to do, parallel books, a very slight book for little kids, a good sci-fi that focuses on education.

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

SF Masterworks - The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

Anarres and Urras

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The SFFaudio Podcast #425 – READALONG: Story Of Your Life by Ted Chiang

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #425 -Jesse, Paul Weimer, Marissa, and Maissa talk about Story Of Your Life by Ted Chiang

Talked about on today’s show:
1998, Arrival (2016), Ted Chiang has lost it!, you’ve pulled it off again, the vast sweep of history, the space of my life, Jesse doesn’t hold with modern writers (very much), savouring his stories, a technical writer, smart, wise, and young!, let’s sell out write away, he’s all ages at once, wisdom, his themes, Stories Of Your Life by Ted Chiang (the collection), too much chocolate, Tower Of Babylon, Liking What You See: A Documentary, style and tone, it’s right there in every sentence, when I talk about this on the podcast…, falling into place, in giant swaths, blocks, blocks of ash backwards and forwards, how memory works, changing memories by looking at them, heptapods, could they have done the movie any better?, a thoughtful science fiction story, more graspable, the rogue Chinese general, weirdly flowing hair, they’re doing it!, “oh gawd, Hollywood, what are you doing?”, which order is better?, movie first?, the future not the past, the clay figure, a breakdown, pieces building up, flashbacks, the house was so empty, past and future tense at the same time, movies do that all the time, less literary and more show, the movie-ish elements are not in the story, scale and stakes, Understand is a power, Flowers For Algernon, a meta-human super-mind, Hell Is The Absence Of God, a hilarious ending, too much dark chocolate is overwhelming, Seventy-Two Letters, The Merchant And The Alchemist’s Gate, The Life-Cycle Of Software Objects, he’s too wise, stories like bonsai trees, her first dream about her daughter’s death, where he puts everything, just the right spot, very Hollywood, so much more tragic, more mysterious, the writers sitting around…, the lady has to be younger because…, we’re going to give a 45 woman a movie?, how would they film that?, and how’s she gonna die?, incurable disease, nothing the mom could say or do could save the daughter, thinking about what the audience is thinking, outrage!, she seems to have more choice in the movie, an action sequence, she saves the world, the floating hair sequence, it doesn’t work as a memory, timey-wimey, a propagating wave of memory, it doesn’t work within the logic of the book, in trying to make it easy to the audience they’ve broken the logic of the story…, too dumb to understand, more rewarding and more hollow, is this a Science Fiction classic?, not at all, total brilliance, the whole movie in that sentence, my favourite second, our bar for science fiction movies is quite low, it’s legitimately science fiction, playing it up, fiddled with the aliens, a visual treat, a blockbuster, against the grain of the short story, the kangaroo, everything in my life points toward the fiction we’re going to discuss, Cognitive scientist explains why perceiving a false reality is beneficial, the duck that’s also a rabbit, the duck-rabbit’s direction, a complex reality we don’t need to know, whatever reality might be, the tiger would eat you, why do people have babies, “wanna make a baby?!, my kid’s gonna die, absolutely!”, all babies die, fearful of death, always looking at that end point, thinking about death is comforting, everybody does know the future, Robert J. Sawyer, any time now!, death is absolutely inevitable, outliving your friends and family, fragile and tiny, why daddy looks at me strangely now, Jean Paul Sartre, everybody lives forever, your forever has happened, that was your forever, giving it the forever life, the death of a child vs. the death of a 99 year old person, her “accident”, why the name change from Flapper and Raspberry to Abbot and Costello, the audience wouldn’t buy it, it’s very movie, Sam and Diane, definitely its, a thematic pair, classic comedy, highly neat, a weird theory, in the context of the movie logic, memories with the daughter, pointing at the problem of the movie, there’s no deciding!, it’s everywhere, talking for the sake of ritual, actors performing the lines, you have to read it on the page to grasp it in the theatre, seeing Shakespeare performed, to see an actualization of your experience, a positive story (a horror), not testing them limits, delivering their lines well, he’s improvising, I need a bowl like this (in order to hit my daughter in the head with it), choosing not to learn it <-this doesn't make sense - does it?, it's the written language, most people don't read, language ability, would you?, going to psychics, no one would go because they know it's bullshit (deep down), those who've read the book of ages never admit to it, conversations about certain topics because they're not read for it, good old days of forums, yelling against the wind, work it out themselves, a lesson from getting things right, you don't want to waste time, Fermat's most efficient system, you wanna be that way soon, computer games, no unlimited quarters, taking the ferry, the Sunshine Coast (British Columbia), riding the Queen Of Nanaimo, my Tron story, a clone of Defender, a side-scroller, demo mode, “insert coin”, a weird phenomena, at what point did I lose control?, computer games, Battlefield 4, the same kind of frustration, when you’re in the “zone” where time flows differently, your brain chemicals are elevated, it’s like I’m on drugs, where frustration comes from, why the ancient Greeks are all about fate, errors are going to creep in, in a certain sense it’s all scripted, dealing with this theme more explicitly, the one with the button, what to make of all of this?, a creepier sense of this poor woman, what a horrible existence, I cherish every moment, it’s only when things don’t going according to my script, even better!, only a lack of knowledge is upsetting, however we’re supposed to perceive it, it doesn’t make her upset, euphoric in the flow state, a logic defeated by the film, there’s no drama like that in the story, our realization of what Ted Chiange has done with that two hours of text, very Borgesian, a science fiction writer’s version of Borges, the text fixed, all the contents are immutable and yet we continue reading it, Big Trouble In Little China, Galaxy Quest, knowing the end doesn’t distract from the movie, is there a word for a fear of predictability?, do things unexpectedly all the time please, such a horror, he’s also Lovecraft, barrel shaped, At The Mountains Of Madness, The Shadow Out Of Time, an experience that the narrator can’t do anything time, if Lovecraft could ever write about a mom…, a professor who has a strange experience with an otherworldly creature, unavailability and a horror, a slow build up of tension, the whole bomb sequence, the alt-right talk show Alex Jones character, the latest series of Homeland, is in the death process, they knew it was coming, the spray (of shit?) all over the screen, their writing reflects their perception of reality, their speech doesn’t reflect their perception, from the end of the Mist, that’s just how we perceive it,they don’t really look like that, big pieces of silica, 12 vs. 112, why only 12?, this is a math problem, only one pair of aliens in all of those looking glasses, time fracture, all-time/no-time, there might only be one alien, when you’re perceiving things differently, why did the aliens come to visit?, we need reasons when we walk out of the movie theater, the 3,000 years thing, at the moment I was satisfied, Fermat and the light, for teleological reasons, knowing where it’s going and where it’s been all at the same time, we think of cause and effect, the universe is a book that can be read a couple of different ways, in a story vs. in a movie, we’re so conditioned, getting mad at the movie, are they just scientists?, the Strugatsky brothers, Roadside Picnic, animals, we are come and creepy like that, animals are almost never interested in having conversations,

The universe was a language with a perfectly ambiguous grammar. Every physical event was an utterance that could be parsed in two entirely different ways, one causal and the other teleological.

the rabbit is ready to eat, the rabbit is ready? hungry rabbits vs. hungry people, time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana, fruit doesn’t fly, fruit stays still – like bananas, free as in software not as like free as in beer, FREE BEER!, free software is infinitely copyable, grammar allows for multiple meanings too, parallels with Contact (1997), a little bit like an homage, complete with the religious nuts, a cult, Heaven’s Gate, a nice metaphor for our current times, what the State Department is going to think, a clown show, nothing they do matters, clearly filmed before the Trump presidency, could you film it now?, somehow Trump makes it more realistic, who would do that?, a big tantrum, stop talking to them bigly, the score and cinematography, the same director and composer, I’ve seen the future don’t be so excited, moderate your expectations, dreaming about hectopod unlocking future memories, seeing snatches of the future, it rewired Paul’s brain, really affecting stories, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, TED Talks, a TED Talk talking point, linguistic relativity, stories are what come out of language, stories that resonate, when she’s reading Goldilocks to her daughter, you’re not telling it right, threefold magic, that’s all you need to know, always the same reaction and always a different reaction, the three chairs, the bowls, the three beds, somebody’s been sitting in my chair, somebody’s been eating my porridge, somebody’s been sleeping in my bed and there she is!, being able to retell, this is how Homer’s stories are designed, rosy fingered dawn, memory cues, hhmms and hawws, the epithets, tools and tricks evolved naturally out of us, Maissa enjoying Galaxy Quest again and again, Seth McFarlane’s The Orville, a whole series?, In The Mountains Of Madness by W. Scott Poole, I Am Providence by Nick Mamatass, the subgenre, Murder At The ABA by Isaac Asimov, mysteries set at mystery or science fiction conventions, authors writing what they know, Winter’s Tide, Lovecraft Country, Goodreads.com is good for satisfying hate-ons, here’s my position: I’m better than you, you with your Lovecraftian tentacle shirt…, the opposite of Ted Chiang, some sort of ethos or ethical system, there’s not just going with it and seeing how it goes, he has something to say, crafted not rushed, awards are wrong on the grand scheme, Parsec and Nebula awards, if you’re aiming in that direction…, moving through the universe and collecting awards by accident, Hidden Figures (2016), why are they stopped there?, whatever…, should I call a tow truck?, “no, I’ll just bypass the starter?!!?!?”, what the fuck are you talking about?!!?!?, smart women engineers, you can’t bypass starters, IBM, come on!, now you’ve ruined it Jesse, the only reason that exists, they ruined it, they need the sequence, a movie supposedly about science and engineering and then they focus on what makes it actually interesting, an establishing character moment, their so smart they can do magic, for trailer moments, Kevin Costner smashing the bathroom sign, I want to be manipulated, Da Vinci’s Demons, an amazonian parrot in the time of Da Vinci?, we could use african greys, perfectionists and people who don’t care, every word is perfectly placed, he’s clear, every word is carefully place, actually it’s him doing Borges, a much finer point, brains and minds, Exhalation, you can’t use your mind to look at your own mind, doing experimental surgery on his own head using a mirror, The Electric Ant by Philip K. Dick, this is a master at work, everybody in there, he’s a wonder.

TANTOR MEDIA - Stories Of Your Life by Ted Chiang

Arrival by Ted Chiang

Posted by Jesse Willis

Review of Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

SFFaudio Review

Roadside Picnic
By Arkady and Boris Strugatsky; Translated by Olena Bormashenko; Read by Robert Forster
7 hours 8 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Random House Audio
Release Date: October 2, 2012

Eastern European Science Fiction has not been on my RADAR for decades. Of course, it would be easy to blame the Anglo-American dominance in the genre for this, but another reason might have been the ill-timing of my first touchpoints with SF from what was then still (even though barely) the Soviet Union. As a kid, I got a box of books from the German Democratic Republic with Soviet and other Eastern Bloc Science Fiction stories (Utopian Novels they were called to avoid the Anglicism). I read one of them and browsed a few others. Suffice to say, that I was not impressed. Blame my immature literary taste buds, but to me, they seemed overly intellectual, a bit cumbersome, boring. After that I hardly touched any book that came from beyond the Iron Curtain, with few exceptions. What an idiot I had been! A recent trip to Moscow sparked my interest in Russian culture, so I thought, what the heck. Gimme some of those Strugatsky brothers that everyone is going on about. Luckily, there has been a fairly recent re-release of the brothers’ Arkady and Boris Strugatsky most famous work Roadside Picnic. Published in 2012, it not only has been newly translated but it is also based on a restored version of the text prepared by Boris Strugatsky (Arkady having passed away in 1991) to repair the damage that was done to the book by Soviet censorship, including all of the filthy language. It is a testament to the brilliance of the novel that even in its crippled version it was nominated for a John W. Campbell Award in 1978 and came second, a rare occurrence for a foreign-language book.

What’s it about then? It’s a First Contact story, with a clever twist. It’s about alien contact alright, but without the aliens. At some point in time, Earth was visited by alien beings, who settled at six different locations around the globe. The result was disastrous with weird phenomena wreaking havoc among the human settlements that were affected. However, this was no attack, no attempt at invading Earth. In fact, no one ever got to see the aliens. There was no attempt at communication and no intention to stay by the visitors. After a while they just left, leaving behind so-called “zones”, in which marvelous artefacts could be found; some completely baffling, others very useful and thus quickly becoming coveted contraband. The problem is that getting these artefacts is highly dangerous. The laws of physics as we know them do not seem to apply in the zones and there is a plethora of hidden traps for unwary explorers. Because of the dangers and study the valuable artefacts (which stubbornly defy any attempt to fully comprehend them), an international research institute has been created which cordons off the zones and occasionally sends in expeditions to collect specimens for examination. Apart from the sanctioned officials there are illegal treasure hunters, called Stalkers, who risk their lives for the high profits the items from the zone yield on the black market.
The story is based around one of the visitation zones, near a small town in Canada and is mainly told from the point of view of Redrick “Red” Schuhart. Red is a stalker, who at the beginning of the novel is employed by the Institute where is experience in the zone is needed when he accompanies a researcher into the zone. The expedition ends badly, Kirill, the Russian scientist has an accident and dies shortly after his return from the zone. This doesn’t stop Red from being a Stalker, and the further the novel progresses it becomes clear that although he doesn’t mind the money it is not his only reason to risk his live. The zone has become an obsession for Schuhard and nothing can keep him out. The novel follows Schuhart for eight years, in episodic chapters with a few changes in points of view but always coming back to him. He has good times and not-so-good, going in and out of jail, sometimes living the good life from the profits and sometimes worrying what will happen to his wife and kid when he’s in prison. In the meantime, life around the zone is changing, security is getting tighter, the government wants to re-settle all of the remaining population. No wonder considering that the dead are returning from their graves and reclaim their lives among their families and the children of frequent visitors to the zone are showing strange mutations. Life is getting harder for Stalkers, as not only does it get more and more difficult to get into the zone, but the amount of artefacts dwindles until only one big prize seems to be left. A golden orb that can grant its owner any wish – unless it really does come from the heart. This is what Redrick Schuhart is going for in the final chapter of the novel. But – what to wish for?

Schuhart reminds one of the tough, foul-mouthed, hard-drinking and chain-smoking protagonists of a Hard Boiled detective novel and to no small degree is it exactly that language and approach to the narrative that makes it so accessible. Yes, this book touches on some pretty philosophical topics – this is Literature with a capital L – but in the best tradition of the Science Fiction genre, it does so in wrapped in a damn good story. What can human being ultimately know? Could we really ever hope to communicate with an alien species or are we just like some frightened small animals coming out of hiding only after the picnic party has left and all that remains to do is to fight for the scraps they left behind? The narrator, Robert Forster, does a fine job indeed, breathing life to Redrick Schuhart, both when he’s being a cynical bastard and when he’s ridden by doubt and despair. One could not have wished for a better narrator for the audio book.

The recording concludes with a very interesting afterword by Boris Strugatsky about the long and complicated history of getting the book through the Kafkaesque maze of censorship and bureaucracy that was the Soviet publishing industry. The foreword by Ursula K. LeGuin that is included in print version is missing from the audio but that’s about the only desideratum of an otherwise brilliant production. Highly recommended!

Posted by Carsten Schmitt