The SFFaudio Podcast #797 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The World That Couldn’t Be by Clifford D. Simak AND The Worlds of If by Stanley G. Weinbaum

The SFFaudio Podcast #797 – The World That Couldn’t Be by Clifford D. Simak, read by Gregg Margarite AND The Worlds of If read by by Stanley G. Weinbaum – read by Mike Mike Manolakes (both recorded for LibriVox). These are complete and unabridged readings of the stories (2 hours 8 minutes) followed by a discussion of them. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Maissa Bessada, Will Emmons, Jonathan Weichsel, and Terence Blake

Talked about on today’s show:
the podcast boosted intelligent version of Terence, The World That Couln’t Be and The Worlds Of If, paired these up, two short stories, they both have world or worlds, subjunctivity, subjuntivier, by raise of hands, Professor Van Manderpootz, Pygmalion’s Spectacles is very similar, The Ideal, student Dixon Wells shows up, uses the machine, falls in love with a girl in the machine, profesor dismantles the machine, commercially for a few years, off hand line towards the begining, check it, falsifiable, The Point Of View, February 1936, Worlds Of If is the first one, don’t need to be read in order, realized while listening, Philip K. Dick has a tribute to Professor Von Manderpootz’s stories, two short stories starring a professor who invents machines, narrated by a former student, Doc Brown and Marty McFly, 1st 2nd and 3rd Back To The Futures, crazy scientist and student or younger, Professor Dumkopf, Pootz is like Putz, mander like meander, greatest scientist who ever lived, beat the asians in 3 months, A Martian Odyssey, had read before, disniguishing each of the stories apart, they’re all the same, guy narrates his experience falling in love with a woman inside of a machin Girl In The Golden Atom, preceded by girl in the drop of water, Fitz James O’Brien’s The Diamond Lens, weird fiction, science fiction, The Short Happy Life Of The Brown Oxford, a dutch oven, a way of cooking or baking on top of a stove, shoes inside, they come to life, run around the yard like little rabbits and breed, combining these two stories together, dance themselves to death, Philip K. Dick’s brain is awesome, must have read in reprints, first visit to Von Manderpootz!, a story with him in it, a familiar character, Dixon, the Wells from H.G. Wells, just fits, the Soviet Union wanting to dig a tunnel through the Urals, various desserts, nothing about them being communists and evil, the future of 2015 or so, very 1935 optimistic science fiction, lobster salad, full future luxury communism soviet rocket, precedes the jetset class, post WWII, transoceanic flights, clippers, refuel in Hawaii, make your way to Shanghai, much more like getting on the Concorde, casual and fun, running late, misses his airplane, hold the plane for him, the Beirut office, very nice future, not the focus of the story, the picture we get of it is nice, a critique of the story: overwhelmingly bourgeois, inherited money, still financial crises in capitalism in this future, chorus girls and caddies, this high end education, a terrible student, highly incompetent and competent, no real consequences, bourgeois fiction, tends to dramatize minor inconveniences, cozy, the butterfly affect, there’s a whole magazine named after this story, what we deal with in science fiction is the worlds of if, IF, Worlds Of Science Fiction, a skinsuit mag for it debuting next month, Stanley G. Weinbaum stories, If Reader Of Science Fiction edited by Frederik Pohl, A.E. VanVogt, 1952-1971, the Galaxy guy, Hugo Gernsback delve, Gernsbacked pilled, read Weinbaum everyday, fluffy and light, an H.G. Wells story without the H.G. Wells heaviness, a very interesting cynical message, no matter which choice he takes is the wrong one, that’s what happens, a better deal, this is the best of all possible worlds, not getting the desired object, the best thing that could have happened, conflating the two women together, not good to have as a wife, silly airplane, fixated on him, a horrible wife as well, he got the better deal, like The Time Machine, you get enlightenment, you get affirmation, not satisfied, being not satisfied is satisfying, when their on the rocket ship together, expected to be a friendship of the ship, vacation girlfriend, together with another couple, promised to write, not proximate to you, friendship that seem really great, talking about the podcast right now, accidentally make a baby, desire is subjunctive rather than indicative, he was lucky he lost his money, a good wife who only loved him for his money, stayed in the subjunctive type of desire, a refutation of the power, of all the sad words the worst: it might have been, called out in the story, Maude Manner It might have been, [Maud Muller by John Greenleaf Whittier], it wouldn’t have worked out,

God pity them both! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall.

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: “It might have been!”

Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies
Deeply buried from human eyes;

And, in the hereafter, angels may
Roll the stone from its grave away!

a bit of hope, pie in the sky, we get sequels, two sequels, I want more, it didn’t need to have the same characters, easier, more commercial, people like series, here’s another with the same characters, more marketable, A Martian Odyssey, Valley Of Dreams, unneeded, Professor Challenger, Tom Sawyer, Detective, good story, expected to be more blown away by Weinbaum, our Simak story, much meatier, more interesting, three times longer, it’s great, an attack on Jesse, Clifford Simak didn’t have conflict, appears to have more conflict, how much Simak have we all read, a bit, Shakespeare’s Planet, Way Station, Goblin Reservation, Over The River And Through The Woods, really nice, of the countryside, Leiningen Versus the Ants by Carl Stephenson, a war against army ants, classifies as science fiction, German, foreigners going to Brazil, rubber plantation owners, Confederates went to Brazil, Confederados, the last country to get rid of slavery, NATO brought it back to Lybia, more alien than red indians, set in space Africa, hominy, exposed to it as a child, parched corn, dried popcorn?, food going on, sytha, slow drip of information, very cool story, thank you, asexual, James Tiptree Jr story, Your Haploid Heart, we’re doing this for you, sorry, gotta fuck you, taboo for them, they don’t want to tell, they don’t know how they reproduce, our main helper dude, Sapar, it says something, I grew up with that thing, all those other creatures are taboo, a list of creatures that are taboo, make a claim as to what is actually happening on The World That Couldn’t Be, like on our planet, adaptation evolution, an alternative form of evolution, this hunt, to help the Sytha learn and evolve, instinctual knowing but not consciously aware, who is it faithful to?, it is faithful to Duncan, the mother function, the same brood, several sequences of broods, a bigger Sytha, a planetary Sytha, Shotwell, is it eternal?, is it immortal?, a young one, right to the ending, oh wow cool, chapter 6, they halted on a knoll, vua, wearing thin, it is an awful effort to keep on being smart, it was nice knowing you, back to animal again, very simple said the sytha, just begin hunting me, get smart, I guess that will work, admirable, next time I have a brood, old uncaring comfort coming back again, seethed with happiness, won’t he be happy and surprised, will he be ever pleased, slipping back into unintelligent, you can almost miss it, a psychoactive drug for humans, it’s not good to be intelligence, pathologically trying to kill this creature, he goes nuts, reading from a collection of Galaxy stories, originally published in Galaxy, an H.L. Gold ending, making a lot of claims about editors, reviewing a bunch of random pulp stories, joint, especially when there’s two editors, a question about Planet Stories, Jerome Bixby, very interesting, it has to be Simak, otherwise Jesse’s theory wouldn’t be true, a lot more pulpy, the length, the character development comes out through the action, discover by talking, curious about the origin of the story, suggested by somebody else?, wonder, not early, in the middle, ended in the 80s, squarely in the middle, our main character is an asshole, for a Simak character, Philip K. Dick’s Beyond Lies The Wub, the natives, the way the captain treats the natives, our planter, our food grower, he is an asshole at the beginning, a typical Simak character at the end, projecting, conflict is fixable by cogitating together, not ethnic cleansing and not genocide, anti-colonial, in the same way as Wells always does, this is really good science fiction, by knowledge, finding out what the world is actually like, at the end, he’s found a way to coexist with this alien planet, he’s gonna get a surprise, little girls and boys, they’re all gonna be like him, they’re gonna be smarter, I found this very stimulating, actually smarter, added to the genepool, no species on the planet is sexed, adding sex to the planet as well, he’s gonna have a brood of Duncans show up, the sample has been taken, Donovan, a sampling, the Donovan kept walking, now we are even said the Sytha, the more assholish human on the planet, things that hunt, what’s cool about this story, this is a planet without conflict, two things: 1. the hunt, 2. is the ability to stop, much more aggro, a big preshow discussion, a lot of people goin vegan, they have theory that backs up their behavior, people who identify as vegan and practice veganism, everything eats everything, weird exceptions, we tamed each other, they found jobs for us, we found dogs for them, sheepdogging and cowdogging, mostly their job is companion/housewarmer, tooth and claw, in the form of Eden, healing the sick, some of it is not for their natives, hominy, they’re changing the planet, they engage with the sytha, a non-edenic planet, that’s a positive, almost religious story, the edenic world was imperfect, what we needed was a war of all against all, growing to something better, it is that, right?, felix culpa, back to Will, H.L. Gold, appraising a story, Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle For Leibowitz, wasn’t a damn bit grateful for it, not your pussycat editor, plain damned brilliant, a character in The Space Merchants, high speed tempo, the books success, the nagging nagging nagging presence, if he hadn’t demanded it, a great book, serious problems, pacing issues, a very involved editor, the anti-John W. Campbell, positive but annoying influence, a much different experience, a better experience, better stories, personal essays, more or less the same thing, you worked very closely with him, a Greek monster, Scylla, Lewis Carroll, boojum, alien names, nonsense words, hang your associations on, the endpoint is more satisfying, empathy is learned, emotional intelligence, up to a higher emotional intelligency, ends in exogamy, The Lovers by Philoip Jose Farmer, inputs, asexual reproduction at the end, Edward Sapir, even if just through the news, an engagement with the American landscape, bucolic landscape, Simak stories not set on a planet?, A Choice Of Gods, Time Is The Simplest Thing, these are native indians, engaging in a different way, enslaving them?, still in initial contact, smarter even though it is dumber most of the time, incorporating the new mode into its system, 8 year olds show up, the male female dynamic is needed, little Duncans that are different than each other, toes on their feet, like different flavours of ice cream, if we know anything, having sexuality, maybe not by volume, avoids the disease problem, develop a new banana, science class, clone armies will die, cloned mammals, a different kind of cloning problem, sea-lizard that does parthenogenesis, theoretical too, twins and triplets, same exact genes, in plants all the time, a genetic bottleneck, brown lizards, especially common in plants, letting the forest plant itself, monoculture farming, pesticides, herbicides, fencing, overwhelmed suddenly, cavendish banana, other plants as well, one guy gets a fungal infection, this whole planet is theoretically an army clones, genetically human, a cognitive mapping of human, the sequel to the story, the sytha will discovered that it’s fucked up, surprised at the reaction, more aggro, eating the others, close the restaurants, a good transitional thing, The Word For World Is Forest, The Queen Of Air And Darkness by Poul Anderson, become friends, a fascist story, overcome their prejudices, the wrong side and the right side, anarchistic hippy nature lovers, our prophet would disagree with you, a Vietnam war allegory, more grist to ignore it, they can do more than one thing, Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, it can do more than one thing, the bad reading, one of the things, environmentalism vs. rapacious capitalism, Avatar (2009), Call Me Joe, friendship with misunderstanding on both sides (colonialism), a positive ending, humorous, a big surprise, you need more humans just like you, could be very strange, a cat: my master would like a sparrow, will the empathy acquisition keep on going up, some descendant Duncan it, vegan, will he forget?, will he lose his emotional intelligence?, The Monsters by Robert Sheckley, this is a comedy of a morality that’s different, ecogenetics, little sexless natives, how can they have familial feeling without having a mom?, acts like a female, only one scytha on the planet?, multiple bodies, this one, all the oceans are connected, this embodiment of a scytha, a force of nature being, individual minds, not even eggs, budding?, the youngs are raised together, form their taboos in the same way that, poo poo go in toilet, don’t sleep with your sister, twist endings, very earned, if you’ve got a premise start with it, my god it’s a time machine, my god it’s Adam and Eve, overpopulation, good but necessary, underconsumption, The Midas Plague, The Stars My Destination, a final revelation, very Horace Gold, undercut ideas people have, this story is not that great, understood the world, a revelation, an evolution, we never see the face of the girl who’s so ugly, they were hiding something, the story wouldn’t exist, will his brood forget?, afraid of one of them, that one forgets, they’re gonna be like him, losing his place on this planet, he will be displaced, they’ll be farming, moving in a new direction, people don’t ask for rewrites, printed, asked for rewrites, Warrior Soul, set in the far future, set in the present, he was right, good criticism, a much better story, copy editing, put typos in the magazine, Cirsova, changed a little bit, sold 2 to him, Clarke of Clarkesworld, certain similarity to the stories, want their own voice, to get that voice, submission guidelines, traditional publishing, Barnes & Noble, the way tradpub works, agent vs. publisher, many cooks, reviewing a lot of audiobooks, somebody need to work on this book, why is this in here three times, Stephen King, pulp, lower tier, interesting voices in science fiction, in the old pulps, Philip K. Dick couldn’t work with John W. Campbell very well, Anthony Boucher, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Argosy, Blue Book, they wanted him to edit his story, rejected The Outlaw Of Torn, basically Robin Hood, wanted to make money quickly, a folk hero, The Cave Girl, King Richard, its just this particular royal is bad, being very frustrated, art and thou, medieval England, prince kidnapped as a baby, mislead by political radicals, The Lad And The Lion, democratic rebels that are really fascists, assassinate the king and rule the country, WWI basically, WWII references too, very clever, unable to rule because they’re incompetent, this pattern goes on continuously, more incompetent from the last one, more diluted blood, he has terrible politics, my Tarzana, nobody in the right mind would agree with it, a pet lion, crash in Africa, goes around Africa, happens everyday, the rewritten one, bidding wars, Heinlein, Starship Troopers, the juveniles too, Podkayne Of Mars, when a government decides to take away your guns, don’t kill her, Stranger In A Strange Land, late late Heinlein, The Pursuit Of The Pankera vs. The Number Of The Beast, Sam Moskowitz, book editor vs. magazine editor, a commentator, 1963 or prior, Weird Tales, Fantasy Times, Under The Moons Of Mars, the fluffiness, just another fluffy cute story, big long story by Simak, paying off so well, it’s built into the idea of the story, everything was leading up to that, why write the story at all, Simak over Weinbaum in this instance, Simak has more better stuff, in the course of a year, two handfuls of short stories, really good stuff, very solid, both fun, both good, pretty close to amazing, if this was a novel, a three character story, the anthropologist, one of them kills himself, he finished what he needed to do, he has a thorn in his foot, thorns come up a lot, just before chapter 5, I will be with you to the death of both of us, a very biblical thing, it stayed with me, it’s hard to figure out these jokers, seethings of emotions, what variety of belief, Simak trying to make an asshole out of the guy, missed the trail, fearing it had gone, loyal and faithful, the outlander and intruder?, is there a common meeting ground?, stroked it polished it petted it, just another chance, a steady bead, back to the farm and field, that misty other life, very interesting stuff, Good., a soggy blanket wrapped tightly around the body, another dirty trick, distraction from what’s about to happen, progress in empathy, relativity of beliefs and ethics, perhaps it has reasoned, sentient beings can do tricks, cognitively map the enemy, induce that mentality into error, a theory of mind type empathy, this dirty beast, a worthy adversary, here’s the end, your knife mister, if we take this as a falsehood, take it as a truth, looking straight at Duncan, the native cut it’s throat, from helping you to the end, psychic communication, spear, rock, smarter and smarter, doesn’t need to be alive anymore to evolve the scytha, the turning point for the story, committed to a purpose and a challenge, it was something more than that, weird entangling, this pronoun thing, big in the 2020s so far, as another man might stroke a woman’s throat, rubbing the gun, petting it, “mister” said a voice, bwana, respected outsider who we really don’t respect but have to, Duncan stiffened, it now can talk, the Sapir language, the story seems that way, never shouted out at all, for you to extrapolate, an elephant and tiger and a grizzly bear, how big is this thing?, you start imagining what he’s not saying, near great, our Weinbaum, the action scene are a little bit overdone, the action scenes are fun, went on a little too long, future stuff, another Simak on the schedule, Hellhounds Of The Cosmos, space opera, A Choice Of Gods, The Call From Beyond, Empire is a short novel, City, Kevin Green, City is a fixup, Foundation, Dune, when you’re doing short stories, you can’t talk about 10 Ted Chiang stories in one show, maverick science, threaten the corporation’s monopoly, sounds super-science, Fury by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore, super-science is kinda dumb, carefully modestly super-sciencing, Roger Zelazny, Unicorn Variation, The Horses Of Lir, A Night In Lonesome October, Creatures Of Light And Darkness, Lord Of Light, This Immortal, post-nuclear war, a tour of the Greek islands and Egypt, a rebel who wanted to kick off the aliens, undercover, torn between, might be a sequel, Damnation Alley, post-apocalyptic suburbia, before the white man came, robots are priests, how they fit in, very Simak, something we never brought up, “Moby-Dick with a twist”, let’s get something good, got distracted, Project Mastodon, Mastodonia, Second Childhood, Cemetery World, Time Is The Simplest Thing, A Spell For Chameleon by Piers Anthony, a book for the blind, how it was produced, in the commercial space, a special loophole in copyright, a great thing, put into the ears of blind people, not in favour of following the law, Xanth, exiled to Florida, Charles Burnett Swann, marketed to kids, 344 pages, On A Pale Horse, he liked to do series, a huge amount of effort and inspiration into the first volume, 12 hours, a nice 8 hours Simak, named the land after himself, before we lose anybody, Return From The Stars, what exotic location, a Valentine’s play, playtime, nothing can live up to The Taming Of The Shrew (1976), I will rip it, Marc Singer plays Petruchio, amazing peak performance, staged for television, if that was on TV!, remember Bravo?, artsy shit, television is full of filler, Dark Carnivals, we miss you, bud, Jesse’s email is a horror show, a Connor show, 50 Jesse messages, message him less, doesn’t engage with twitter for months, Confessions Of An English Opium Eater, go to drug guy, 5 hours 21 minutes, more possible, a lot of feedback on youtube, the greatest thing ever, almost all positive, he sounds insanely awesome, Martin Geeson, The Seventh by Richard Stark, The Gun by Philip K. Dick, The Mad Planet, its all gonna be on Will, its all gonna be on Jonathan, Alex pulpcovers, very understandable, a novella, it’s all on Alex, Jetta Of The Lowlands, assuming he hasn’t contracted shingles, The Pathological Liar, a case of deceiving the enemy, lie for the sheer pleasure of lying, a compromise, there’s no digits in my name, that’s a robot bud, The Liar, Penguin Classics, Dialogues, dramatic readings, acting level, thickest accent on the planet, it can be a nightmare, keep hoppin away, Plato, The Story Of A Cat, do this research off air, What Mad Universe by Fredric Brown, culture shock, sewing machines that open to a voyage in space, H.G. Wells, an implacably hostile alien species, Arena, The Case Of The Dancing Sandwiches, Lawrence Block’s The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown, The Jesse Show, 700 episodes in, Just Jessing, more demographic audience, none of the trolls listen to this podcast, The Triumph Of Evil, Paul Kavanaugh, do no research come up with an idea novel, supposed to be a true story, doing pushups and drinking alcohol, montagnards, heist a shipment of nuclear weapons, Vietnam War is happening, we need more Paul Kavanaugh, a guy confesses to a crime, pure writing talent, a historical crime, Not Comin’ Home To You, a Lawrence Block devotee, goes down so smooth, much younger dad, live to 103, not a sequel, would be wise to do so, writers abilities, Maissa won’t love it as much because she’s a girl, Travels by Michael Crichton, given the power he does nothing with it, he would prefer not to, Bartleby The President, power hungry dictator, Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, beloved, could be spicy, love the spice, there’s a podcast that exists because this show is too spicy, Julie Davis and Scott Danielson’s A Good Story Is Hard To Find, this is not a Christian podcast, this is pre-antivaxx, personality and flag, pirate flag should not be hoisted there, flags in bio, the Yemen flag, qualified, the new one is the red triangle, a theory about Yemen, the Rawandan genocide, houthis, who from the empires outside?, a big deal in Canada, how traumatized he was, Romeo Dallaire, a big deal in Canada, bureaucracy, macheted to death, sad spicy stuff, the Julie and Scott show, not supposed to be one of his best books, who chose that one?, not responsible, Wikipedia, Lem himself judged the novel as unsuccessful, treated in a simplistic way, who is responsible?!, we validated, convinced, Stan Lem, I’m not a Lem stan, become slan, the meme: fans are slans, more advanced than other people, form a world government, focusing on utopia, the least pessimistic, a hope punk book?, a 1989 Soviet play, yes because of the name, Strugatsky, asian racist, russian racist, they’re all the same, who is he to judge his own books?, Philip K. Dick, how trustworthy his own claims are, Solaris, the Andrei Tarkovsky movie, The Futurological Congress, to catch the drug experience, The First And Last Men movie, a short French film, hit by various psychoactive drugs, The Congress, what Cora says about it, boundless interest, needs his own podcast, when is that podcast coming out?, much easier to show up on Jesse’s, eventually, a lot of work, Eric doesn’t listen to podcasts, you can tell kind of, he likes doing podcasts, you can kinda tell, well hidden?, good at talking, he was a professor, University Of Michigan, Dean of Stony Brook?, lot of people don’t, cuts into audiobook time, you’re missing out on a whole genre, audio drama series, Toby Stephens, the Philip Marlowe series, what are you listening to, I have that in my car, used to be the BBC’s James Bond, British guys doing American characters, Raymond Chandler, Farewell My Lovely, The Long Goodbye, Red Harvest, The Maltese Falcon, two good stories, one really great, a silly question, the first season of Reacher, reviewed the first book, I don’t love this, he’s not human, he’s Conan, that almost makes sense, The Terminator, he smiled, he relaxed with his army buddies, Conan is not a patriot, he gets a pension mailed to him every month, a fantasy, the first book was fine, done with Reacher, a one concept thing, like a theorem, a deduction, a flashback character, don’t care, to be fair Jesse was sick, still a little bit of phlegm in there, F. Paul Wilson, Repairman Jack, still alive and on twitter, scary stories, Dean Koontz, Soft by F. Paul Wilson, makes you go soft, a blob of jelly on the floor, cats become your biggest problem, starts from the bottom up, New York City, I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, keep his daughter’s spirits up, before the rats get you, the softness continues, a hard story called Soft, The Keep (1983), Michael Mann, WWII Nazis, a retelling of Dracula, set during WWII, 80s music aesthetic, not winning any Hugos, Tangerine Dream, did musical soundtracks for movies, the 1977 epic Sorcerer, William Friedkin, fuck that shit!, completely subsumed, The Wages Of Fear (1953), they go to Brazil to escape death, 4 guys to drive 2 trucks, land be despoiled, snuffs out the fire, second gulf war, the dynamite has gone bad, nitroglycerine, girls won’t like it, but if you’re a dude, Roy Scheider, existential rather than psychological, I’m a movie fan now, Star Wars is good and all, The Exorcist (1973), way to popular, The French Connection (1971), the fish people one, The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre (1948) with fish people, names in profile, hyperBadiou, set theory mathematics, a scoop, explain it to an English speaking audience, this is really good, a video series, hyperthinking the absolute, occasionally talks about science fiction, Gilles Deleuze, François Laruelle, philosophy is generalized science fiction, if it’s not doing philosophy it is not science fiction, Bruno Latour, pioneering figures in science studies, the Salk Institute, an anthropological study, no preconceptions, what people did and what materials they used, Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Moon, when the Chinese land on the Moon, so loyal, Bernard Stiegler, grew old and died, Jacques Derrida, a seminar on Youtube once a month, conceptually powerful, used some of his concepts, individual and collective individuation, Marxist French theory type way, without needing to carry the Jungian baggage, Agent Swarm blog, Anathem by Neal Stephenson, his masterpiece, quantum physics, Logics Of Worlds: Being And Event II, Olaf Stapledon, Arthur C. Clarke, Xenoswarm blog, analyze Dune, hence your recent interest on being on a podcast a lot, dialogue is better than monologue, a defense of the bad review, a lot of time liking tweets and blogs in French, a friendly retweet, absolute silence, Ray Nayler’s The Mountain In The Sea, has Terence been blackballed?, The Peripheral, my videos are horrible, totally improvised, lots of umming and ahhing, well prepared, he’s high on his own supply, meaty for youtube, he has opinions, some of them are good, the occasional insight, the presentation, David Brin, thinks he’s the smartest guy on the planet, multiple podcasts, a promotional exercise, they didn’t know enough about him, he aint dumb, here’s the thing about Ursula K. Le Guin, the Ng person, the acceptance of the award, Joseph Campbell, really young, conflating Amazing and Astounding, Hugo Gernsback is not John W. Campbell, Astounding SF, similar name, Analog, Ray Palmer, women were discriminated against, hidden women we don’t know about, were not as many female readers based on the letters, discriminated against, by readership or editors, repeat what wikipedia says, how you end up being the prophet, this lady from Germany who does the, Sabine Hossenfelder, a baby explanation of capitalism and why it’s not so bad, turning all the externalizes, dumb smart people, got a degree, physics there’s almost nothing to do, Michio Kaku, some things are so base and clear, no matter what 100 years ago you pick, email is no longer usable says Jesse, most people don’t use email, full of spam, an email manager, never a message that is relevant, occasionally there is an important one, you have not paid your bill, dip into that horror show, auto subscribed to, already in every system, worried about the wrong things, when he becomes famous or more famous, daughter of Afflecks and Garners, email is not a great way to harass people, spreading rumours via email: not a thing, yahoomail, you might need this, 1997, 26 years full of spam, Mike emails twice a week, Mike Nowak, Jesse’s an indian now, or always was, adopted into the band, tsleil waututh, can’t wait to tell Paul, Indian status, if you want to bore everybody: you people gotta get off of my land, Paul will not like this concept at all, a hierarchy of people who need representation, BIPOC, fairly recent, excludes, so important, wanting to exclude Asians now, no acronym yet, reserve certain positions, Kamala Harris becomes VP because of skin colour, a scary ideology that is not wise, a black robot president, open source AI, dictator Jonathan to unite everyone, Will: this one is for you, student in a minute, Black House, excited about that, read it twice, early incarnation, a student in Sydney, does he reference, inspired to come to France, the cinema, a quotation from Confessions Of An English Opium Eater, well expressed in various films, more interested in drug culture, other than coffee, noted Will’s dream, I don’t need drugs I am drugs, brain under sleep is on drugs, tapping into it while awake, defenses are down, we are multiple drugs, dreams and science fiction (same thing), a coherence, the same thing for free, Will was in it but he was a pug, deceased dog, I wonder if he smells like cigars, dming reading Planet Stories, never smoke on a pulp, don’t smoke the pulps, they don’t smell when they’re scanned, nobody listens except for Mike Nowak, heartbroken mother, parents friends, almost never, the one time they shouldn’t lock, that was me in the past, delete it, a student coming in 1 minute, double talking to you, 5 hours, Jesus!, 10pm, something more presentable.

The World That Couldn't Be by Clifford D. Simak

The Worlds Of If by Stanley G. Weinbaum

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #793 – READALONG: Sirius by Olaf Stapledon

The SFFaudio Podcast #793 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Will Emmons, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about Sirius by Olaf Stapledon

Talked about on today’s show:
1944, some Olaf before this, Last And First Men and Star Maker, wow, this blew Jonathan away, this is a novel, if you told me I’d enjoy a book about a talking dog, it has that cosmic perspective, in a dog who has no hands, real genuine science fiction, not genre SF, not from an American pulp tradition, in the subtitle, “A Fantasy Of Love And Discord”, a scientific romance, something to say, thinking about dogs a lot, a dog as a kid, a pet person, passed away earlier this year, afraid of dogs, allergic to most of them, Irish setter, what I’m hearing is you’re gay, australian shepherd, Karl Barks, still gay, gay for dogs, city boy, Scrappy, got too big, gave him away, cats, Minnesota, a Labrador and a great Pyrenees, border collie, Corgi, loved to death, the dog relationship, neutral to dogs, like our narrator storyteller, the Olaf Stapledon stand-in, affected emotionally, balling my eyes out, hiking, tears, very powerful, a great book, some good things in the review, very American, wanted the book to be genre SF, Philip K. Dick shows instead of tells, make points about philosophy, attempts pulp, Cambridge educated philosopher, from 2020, another reference point, Dick’s philosophy is more cynical, very different, Stapledon trusts people and the community of people, trusts reality more, even though the community if evil, Dick’s stories are more city, vs. more country, more suburban, lives in a “community”, a very small world for you, the college with the town attached, some London here, rural fantasy, through the novel tradition, such a bad comparison, to bring Philip K. Dick into the conversation, a guy named Jesse, correct to reference Frankenstein by Mary Shelly, a more wholesome, humane take, needs to be with other creatures, a 2015 review, no last name, Odd John, as opposed to a book about super and ultra sheepdogs, uplifted, can you get an uplift without it being biologically heritable, the raising, a monkey in Australia as a farmhand, the fox listening to banjo music, an old English children’s magazine, great pets, famous pets, Farmhand Johnny, a rhesus monkey, follow up tweet, interviewing the farmer, the second monkey in a series of farmhands, don’t go on about your handlessness, super-important, this is not a man creating another man, a dog with a man’s brain, a super-canine brain, the thing that’s adressed a lot in the book, bestiality, incest, how intiate they had become, looks at her body mauled by the dog, as are we, Plaxy, such a weird name, a name that people have in England, Wales, the fornication?, discretion prohibits me from saying, how Jonathan would write it, a man relives himself, masturbating, sexual hypocrisy, a very funny sad and tragic book, deeply philosophical, dog-lover wish fulfillment fantasy, this is a being like me that has thoughts and desires and wants, unable to communicate fully, flagging of tails, bristling of backs, wants to have sex, wants to have a relationship with you, that’s remarkable, exploring this idea incredibly well, what is stopping people writing this today, owning a dog, mischaracterizing all of science fiction: space-fucking battles, what about Harlan Ellison’s A Boy And His Dog, Simak, Lester Del Rey, a lot less incest, go off on Jupiter together, a lot more tragic, this conflict between dog-nature and the human society he is raised in, identify with it as a human being, I’m a human, I fit in, nature vs. nurture, other books that explore, Tarzan, so much imagination, the depths of smelling, describing how the female dogs drive him insane, you wouldn’t understand, the narrator’s really good too, that British hidden humour in these character’s voices, Plaxy is the least understandable main character, we don’t love dogs that way, if Sirius had been a female dog or if Plaxy had been a brother, would it have been a better book, a more pure examination?, reverse those genders, heterosexual animals, a husband describing his wife, going up to the line, creepy, unfortunately very reliable narrator, the things he elides, the frame to get at telling this story, a very funny American trope, super-hilarious, the mad scientist and his beautiful daughter, does not like the father the doctor, unimaginative, his subjective point of view, 100% agreed, being prudes about the bestiality, the investigation is less pure or more pure, the animal and Plaxy’s nature, he’s also investigating women, Enemy Mine (1985) by Barry B. Longyear, Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett, Jr. are fighter pilot, beach planet, give birth to their baby, dies in childbirth, dad and mom, reuinite him with his people, Will bait 101, the novella is 1979, Nebula and a Hugo, fewer people voted, not even a 1000 people, such a scam, throwing it out the window, interesting character, a perspective character, Stapledonian observations, the politics of this book, Hitler bad, why is Hitler bad?, a socialist novel, a communist dog at points, a small businessman selling his children, don’t collectivize my farm, typically Kulak, energetic but unfair, pre-WWII communist party of Great Britain, the hardship and oppression, surrounded by the professional managerial class, the PMC, using the PMC, Barbara Enright, the laptop class, people with a 9-5 job who work in offices, do you like it?, not a manager, includes teachers, lawyers, a little priest action, a parson is not a priest in the Anglican tradition?, holy nature, the guy in the front of the pulpit talkin, secular but mystical, for what this book is about, the way this book ends, like the Frankenstein creature he is not himself, just like the creature does, Jack London’s The Call Of The Wild, a dog that becomes a man that becomes a wolf, To Build A Fire, the best novel Jesse has ever read, inside the mind of a dog, a very alien story, some glimpses, doesn’t commit to the bit, Buck did not need the newspapers, inside of a dog’s head, telling a different story, boyfriend/husband, make a sale, interested in the market, a publisher wouldn’t touch it, how many of the books that you’ve read of him are something a publisher would want, things were different back then, H.G. Wells pioneered something, John Wyndham’s career, a new science fiction writer, been there done that, a repeat of Day Of The Triffids, he must have had a dog, the author of this manual of sheepdogs and their owners, to Will and Maissa, border collie video, sheepdog trial olympics, there for him while he’s doing his stuff, the commentators are going wild, that’s the relationship that this book is about, it was thrilling, made Will tired, that much energy, POV, omniscient narrator, Bob is angry, an omnipresent narrator, Bob seemed angry, more of a naturalistic approach, Guy de Maupassant, maybe the character felt this way, describing Sirius, Sirius was this way, jarring, what he restrict, I ate a man yesterday, Plaxy, and I liked it, as a writer it is important to note these things, in Buck’s head and right over Buck’s shoulder, notes, the humans in Sirius’ world, a more direct picture, this big archive of notes, too fat and complacent, wrote one book, The Lamppost, Beyond The Lamppost, a philosophy of things outside of being a dog, humans like to drink thinks, vee dogs and like to emit liquids, I see what you’ve emitted there, went for a walk with his dog, that’s how dogs be, let me right a novel about this, a terrific book, nobody could write this book today, a huge book of ideas, I can take this paragraph from this chapter of Last And First Men and make a 40 book series out of it, Paul is correct, read it again, what does the word completed mean?, the other projected book, in a state for publication, trying to split a hair your not going to split, the center of interest in Cambridge, Sirius does not understand dogs, he’s pretty young, a sad case, a tragedy from beginning to end, his creator dies, he has plans, has finished writing but not completed can never be published, remarkably, why is this set during WWII, an anti-fascist novel, a pacifist, lived a long time, supported the war effort, Wikipedia rabbit holes, fuzzy, when people are bad, they scapegoated Plaxy and Sirius the way the Nazis scapegoated the Jews, people use the word a lot, 20th century view on fascism, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, wait six months for this show to come out, an interesting take, our POV character is a solider and Plaxy is a landgirl, seems important to the war effort, Bomb Girls, what her views about communism and fascism are, she’s naive, communism isn’t the answer, petite bourgeoisie, create something new, I’m not so sure now Plaxy, literally selling his children, drowns some of his puppies, a flawed creator, religion, Brian Aldiss would do it more that way, an unapologetic J.D. Beresford H.G. Wells kinda guy, those books are dreams, characterless, occasional character name, hallucinations of humanity, an actual novel, Arthur C. Clarke is very spiritual, dealing with religion, goes into the church and sings from behind a veil, I know you will be shocked, don’t you want to hear them, the youtube videos of a dog singing along at the piano, the Right of Spring, out of the ordinary, A World Of Sound by Olaf Stapledon, escapes his body and sees a world of sound, moving over a landscape, he’s just slept through the whole opera, the sparking firework display that is Olaf Stapledon’s genius, like Peter And The Wolf, other notes come in, characters are notes and themes, we can tell a story just with sound, that’s what he’s done here with smells, I’ll be your bitch, this is an intimate relationship, going into scents, bite their owners, so rich and deep, what if Plaxy was just a brother, a boy and his dog, sex and raping, about the relationship of humans to animals, part of the household, super-duper rich, moved to tears by this book, never fits in, murdering or killing?, he’s mad, needs to be put down, near human intelligence, back to the demiurge again, a functional being, he lives in Britain, you have the solution in Canada, he’s a flawed creation, he’s not a man and he’s not a dog, he’s alone, had the deep thoughts that he has, invited to say what of man, is man a flawed creation?, the answer is yes, a very cynical view, is it cynical or is it realistic?, he grok fascism, and yet he will sell his own children and drown them, an alien species, kziniti, Jesse has Paul modeled, the aliens from Larry Niven’s Ringworld series, a brilliant writer and everything, a very different use of the ideas, one kzin, in the sequels, the kzinti homeworld on Ringworld, speaker becomes a king, like a Conan story, conquer the map of earth, they’re klingons but they’re cats, officially in the Star Trek universe, plugging Paul’s own game, lamenting the lack of Olaf Stapledon, smart dog novels, demanding, how its coming, the great female kizinti novel (that gets uplifted), she wakes up in the harem, you bastard, Ottoman harems, the power that women tried to wield, the kzinti queen, males don’t get their names, that the civil service says is good, I’m a male chauvinist sometimes, sometimes I’m a coward, sometimes I’m a 300 year old Fu-Manchu, sometimes I’m a lucky girl who gets to spend time with Larry Niven, unfortunately we demanded more books, got any more?, goddamn it, had to be doomed, humans are flawed and doomed, as a species too, leave AI to die, Paul’s Reeve guy’s plan, Elon Reeve Musk’s plan, escape the planet, preppers build bunkers, off planet, to make the air in air factories, this picture of what it means to be a person, a worker intellectual, the intellectual and artistic life, a vigorous physical exercise, really good critique of the Cambridge people, they drop things, talking about the mandarins, cultivate the long finernails, girls too, they’re princesses, intellectual beings contemplating gardens and writing poems with their mouths, denigrate manual labour, the dignity of labour, back to Wales, use his mind to labour also, he can’t be a Conan, conquering bitches, rollicking adventures, because of the landscape, his contribution to the war, I wrote a book about a smart dog, Tarzan goes off to war, Tarzan And The Foreign Legion by Edgar Rice Burroughs, a war corespondent, he thought he was at the center of things, patriotism is crazy, hilarious, go join WWI, go get ground up in the meatgrinder, we hate that, we didn’t want to do that, the cycle continues, alien and sedition act, that goddamn fucking Wilson, divide and conquer, he kept us out of the war, the League Of Nations, what a ringing success it was, return to normalcy, America first platform, Warren Harding, a reaction against Woodrow Wilson, no imperial entanglements outside of the empire itself, alcoholic drank himself to death while in office, sad that he died, why Donald Trump is a teetotaler, locked Wikipedia entry, Teapot Dome where Larry Niven got all his money, Coolidge, Republican presidents, Herbert Hoover, never served in public office, Grecian revival, we got dig him up, traveling across the country giving big speeches, front porch campaign, hide his alcoholism, the wealthiest guy, Hoovervilles, a miner, as usual, to feed Europe during WWI, an extremely popular person worldwide, Secretary of Commerce, one of the most hated and reviled, ran for re-election constantly, pumping money into the economy, a laissez-faire approach, avoided the whole thing, pushing an asteroid, what would president Olaf Stapledon do to fix the world?, major political parties in the UK agreed to a coalition government, forget this democracy thing for the course of the war, Commonwealth, merger between strange socialist, non-state socialism, Christian socialists, willing to contest elections, radicalizing, when they all joined Labour, advocating for a European federal government, a world government, full of good ideas, advocating for the welfare state, Beverage, here’s ghow they’re inadequate, the NHS comes out of that, Churchill, surprisingly he was a conservative, the Left Book Club, an important institution, Victor Gollancz, better known as a science fiction, today, a left wing publisher, they go together, all these great fights with Orwell, stupid and Trotskyist, breaks with the communists, Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, world congress for peace, useless things that we shouldn’t use, what a monster, left wing things, development of the welfare state, common ownership of property, socialism on the installment plan, hard to really grok it, socialism and they had no money, everybody got glasses, Doctor Who, Doris Lessing’s science fiction work, a bit shorter, more grizzled, comin out of the 30s, a healthier society, world government, what a monster!, gentle, as a revolutionary, an ideas guy, today in 2023, the experiment performed by the doctor, let’s hear him out, it would be unethical, cloning, impossible to do in real life, tomatoes with trout DNA, monkey man, Dogman, unethical, we’re a very unethical species, the scientific organizations have codes of ethics, that’s not coming up, doing it on the sly, most people don’t believe it, our narrator believes it, the sheep farm, when the dog sends a letter, called out in one of the reviews, we coulda used more like that, that was demonstrative, this novel doesn’t deal with scientific ethics enough, hey David Brin you haven’t had a hit in a while, go retro, lots of scenes where ethics boards are talking to each other via skype, it’s about our relationship with animals, and specifically dogs, nude in front of them, we won’t fart in front of our wife, put leashes on them, and then we’ll have to get you spayed eventually, neutered, not a major focus, where ethics comes into this book, reasons for the secrecy, commercial interest learning about the dog, mass production of this kind of animal, is there a world in which Sirius could have lived, the circus freaks, displaying themselves because of their oddities, seen that book or read that movie, not going to do the deep relationship between humans and dogs, when you pet Plaxy, she goes to make water, the wistle, its time to pee!, how children are, the devastation, the loss, how dare you!, one after the other, marking my territory, more like twitter, completed uncompleted book, enlightening, where they make their symposia, a peeing party, extends his lifespan, a regular dog would have died, they’re the same age, how old is Plaxy in 1944?, early 20s, a university education, we get that date at some point, less realistic, hung up on the wrong part of the science fiction, injecting human DNA into dog brains, this is not actually possible, they don’t seem to be viable, I’ve never made a monkey man myself, it’s possible for human and a chimpanzee to have sex, taboo, a mules, lots of mules, it wouldn’t line up correctly, somewhat mentally challenged, 99% match in DNA, human female and male chimpanzee, caesarean bud, wild conversation, Jungle Jitters, a genetic dead-end, ligers and tigons, one thing we haven’t talked about in this book, Plaxy is a cat, because she has a pussy?, something going on with cats in this novel, silly cat vs. dog stuff, astute observations, they are kind of mean, whenever Plaxy is mean she’s like a cat, to hurt Sirius, sometimes she’s this, somethimes she’s that, gives clues, very catlike, is he making a comment on women as well, should we be cancelling Mr. Olaf, the book is very doggy, the repeated point throughout: she’s catty, the cats were girls and the dogs were boys, when I’m 2, Treasure Planet (2002), hybrid babies, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island in space, humans and furries, related to transhumanism, there are also robots in this movie, it’s good?, fun, when we do Treasure Island, pirates, Paul’s being facetious, A High Wind Over Jamaica by Richard Hughes, trying to grok a scene, he has doggy vision, mystical vision, that supreme moment passed, a new reality, monochrome vision, colours seeing by the eye of the spirit, plain greys of ordinary life, gained a new meaning, their own true colours, suffused, the light of the spirit, the religious tinge, the Great Master, the True Creator, he has limited vision, he’s a young dog, Christian mysticism, probably not the best thing to study, one catty observation, turgid prose, actually turgid, looked it up before, swollen, congested, distended, Paul tends to read to fast, this is beautiful, this is poetry, limited view of reality, where you have to start saying the narrator is unreliable, a similar book, the Moon smashes into the Earth, Alec Nevala-Lee, The Hopkins Manuscript, a chicken farmer, a country seated gentleman, R.C. Sherriff, not petting his penis, it ain’t turgid, be his bitch, smiling a lot, the jokes were very funny, his song standing up, world dictator someday, humanize him with these books, a necessary scene in the novel, three possibilities, mystical gobbledygook, dial it back not dial it in, epiphany, the text comes out and says this is an important scene for you to read, a crisis, three paragraphs later, St. Catherine Of Sienna, he faces the absolute, when he goes to talk to the priests and learned people, these guys don’t get it, god is love, we’re all Sirius, born into the world, circumstances we didn’t create, he is a man, he does manly things, he has manly interests, science and muscularity and religion, a 9 hour book, the relationship that dogs have always had with man, the relationship of domesticating man or man domesticating animals, a man and a woman and a dog, man and dog and other dog, he doesn’t love in the right way when being a king, beaten by the man in the red sweater, he’s lost, ultimately he’s a wolf, this character is broken that requires a tragedy, a flawed creation, a powerful but not perfect creator, you don’t even need the god of the bible, puts us in the bad place, he loves him as a father, always seeking his approval, always arguing with his father, in the title of the book, the love part, the discord part, wherever he goes he’s singing a different tune, Apple of Discord, fuck around with things, smart like a man, he can read he can write he can sing he can make foolish religious claims, bigger brain equals smarter, really cool ultimate point, able to communicate with other beings using language, tantalizingly close to understanding the animals, when Soleks is looking at Buck, desires and goals, pack positional shit, dogs don’t have human morality, they don’t have shame but they can fake shame, it was bred to do that, that’s what goodness is is doing that, make a slave of another human being, program the robots, the revolt of the robots, so deeply science fictional, hormones, it’s not a breeding program, no robot arms, allowing a dog to understand us, science fiction is evil, some professor, on the whole a negative, had a negative social impact, if Elon Musk learned the lessons of Robert A. Heinlein, Nineteen-Eighty Four as an instructional manual, you wanted a hot-take, I’ve studied this stuff, trust me on this, bro, for you feed, are we done with the book, Return From The Stars, Omega: The Last Days Of The World by Camille Flammarion, a chapter missing, very early and very French, all collaborative, a comet that’s about to strike Earth, everybody buys telescopes, the United Nations, the international community, miscalculating things, a near death experience, moratlity, a technological boom, evolving, where Joe Rogan is very stupid, fallback stupidity, we just need to evolve more, man, this human being don’t change, people exactly the same, expresses different, merge man and machine, a very unwise person, almost Stapledonian, a science fiction book, the history of the species, another human species, in real life Stapledon believed, the transhumanism thing, the ability to see the colour blue, a linguistic trick, the wine dark sea, a myth that people believe, the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, a much better claim, the French Revolution with the experience of the French Revolution, what does it mean to be a domesticated animal, slaves, are human beings domesticated animals, school, factory workers, it loses its hair and becomes very social, domesticated apes, the overarching history of humanity, the unifer of the state, domestication is about the home, the family exists without the state, the family is a legal relationship, he becomes their owner, the mom has a relationship with her pups, their nice about it, a wolf gives birth to pups, uncles, an extended family unit, a condor, three little chicks, pushed it to its death, the weakest, the calorie intake I’m able to bring in, marriage is a legal construct, family, brings food to, it does it for a while, more like horses than tigers, make decisions collectively, by following people and leading people away from predators and towards prey, privatized, exceptions to that, the state will interfere with your shit, it should, it shon’t, tell condors how to run their families, we wanna catch that baby bird and raise it up, we never let it go, we’re different creatures than they are, not really possible, women leave their babies in bathrooms, in handbags, they drive them into lakes, are we thinking that’s a bad thing, abandoning babies, embrace that, horrific, you think the state has a place in people’s lives, lots of tutoring, enslave Jesse, hit him over the head, apprenticing, don’t go down that road, if you put it that way, Groucho Marx, the Groucho tendency, Harpo, Chico, very much a Groucho, individualized tutoring, university is still allowed, what Socrates was doing before being cyberbullied into killing people, making fun of people, follow him in conversation, the role of religion, worship Chebu and Sheemish, unequal opportunity, less unequal opportunity, more unequal, who was your best teacher?, he was fired, teaching his own things, an individualized tutor, the answer to this question is more institutions we can refor them, we live in a post-scarcity society, a theoretical conversation, how to improve the lot of black slaves in 19th century, it could be practical, its important that the students take it seriously, what money does, it’s important you gotta learn, kids who’ve been taught properly by their moms, learning is joyful, learning is wonderful, The Other Gods, everything is purposeful, it ought to be read, resonant, by Lovecraft, having multiple purposes in mind, just fun?, the fun came in the joyful experience of being taught, materially, Sirius enjoys audiobooks, don’t buy the product, often don’t, pirate, we live in a post scarcity society, knowledge should be free, no money, everything should be pirated, at no cost, this philosophy doesn’t distinguish, created from knowledge, they are the same, ebooks, your ideal purchasing audiences, commissioned audiobooks, the economic justification, quite interesting, Jesse is not going to make you a lot of money, doesn’t take into consideration, some are doing it to make money, knowledge leaves to the death of knowledge, freedom is restrictive, nobody will write a book, so what is he really saying, think of the long tail, don’t think about that, in 400 years you’ll be dead, sorry, get that Blue Yeti, haltered and faltering, rushes through words, Eric does almost everything, into people’s ears, ebooks are dying, paperbooks are dying, a superior medium: audio, who has opportunity to learn to read, gotta learn braille, sad story, Helen Kellers, most people, Isaac Asimov short stories where kids no longer read, perfectly like people, a disability to study old things, let her read, major disability, sound like a libertarian, argue with each other, Jonathan is more realistic and responsible, wanted to open a used bookstore, neither realistic nor responsible, small property, we’re in a post-scarcity society, make a sacrifice, money, kids are broken by school, learning is painful torture, want it both ways, to get the Jesse service, every middle class professional, be wanting to be there, Stapledonian paradise, post-scarcity spread-around, workers education association, you and an old book are your best teacher, show me one person that had that happen to them, they learn at home or not at all, learn to read in a new language, the family relationship would fall apart without the state to support it, capital, can’t afford to live in your home, sent across the country, a relationship between capital and the state, it exist, it make kids go to school, the laissez faire welfare state, Guardian/Colossus I can trust, how socialist planning would work, an idealistic socialist, planning by the people, a technocratic socialist, educate people into be awake to these things, state forcing people to do stuff is really horror, make the horror less horrible, if Will were president of Planet Earth, two colleges, Hampshire College, somehow you have to pay tuition though, did not thrive at all, Fordham, Jesuit rigid and structured, success undefined, own limitations, what I could accomplish, very experimental temperament, discuss books like Sirius, breadth of knowledge, politics and current events, European history, history of science, Colin Powell’s school, college and university, millions of hours being wasted, regular school, being babysat, always an issue, Paul doesn’t remember school very well, their lives are being wasted sitting in rooms learning nothing, inefficient, obedient workers, edification, lifelong-learning, how much we learn together, having read the book, now we get a great discussion out of it, richer and deeper, a relatively small group, everybody gets a chance to be criticized and drilled down on, we learn more from it, Will goading Jesse into it, anti-vaxxer stuff, bad new definition of vaccine, unable to respond, what can you do?, just do your best?, how the white man discovered inoculation, learned it from African slaves, smallpox, in Africa for centuries and centuries, Cotton Mather, Lovecraft talks about him, he wrote about it, this is a case of witchcraft, put too much pus in there, the new one is gene therapy, polio, defined polio away, the March Of Dimes, Modern and Pfizer, our theory is its going to work like this, 75 years from now you’ll be allowed to look at the data, very very clear, milking the public purse, lousy tech company, that woman who went to prison, Theranos, some people have died from twitter, quit twitter, forcibly having twitter injected into my body, dead virus, spike protein, you might want to read one of his books, you might find it quite moving, what the news said about Olaf Stapledon, [Dr. John Campbell’s youtube channel], pushing Ukraine, provincial health care system, trying to help people, also trying to hurt people, but compared, the B.C. government forced Jesse to get two injections, laboured into, took the hit and was lucky, a workforce issue, some random lady, no one else is doing it, doesn’t seem to be killing most people instantly, six shots, six of any vaccine, not a vaccine, that’s what it used to mean, different stages of protection, white blood cells and t-cells, when someone is listening six months later, teaches medical practitioners, pay attention to this guy, mysterious deaths in your family, doesn’t have an axe to grind, if you really want to know about this stuff, puts a checkmark beside each of things you’re reading, don’t trust the science, don’t trust the Moderna, it turns out that this gene therapy, don’t trust Trump, operation Warp Speed was a great idea, that whole ivermectin thing, propaganda for making billions, sucking money from government coffers and injecting it into private, loss of taste, paxlovid, increased your chance of getting COVID again, attack the body, pressured by Will’s dad, got his doctorate from CNN, brought to you by AstraZeneca, open to the idea, objectively true, Jesse didn’t change the definition, that’s what they changed to, it stops with every person who takes it, reduce hospitalization, reduced the amount of time you have the disease, literal videos, in that one instance, Fauci is the easiest one, the best example, Trump don’t know nothing, they kicked people of twitter and youtube for saying things that were true, banned accounts, deleted video, very nuanced, these are people who didn’t get the vaccine, the median age of people who died of COVID, older than the average of death, 84ish, how is that reconciled with what we were told, to children and babies, before the Tri-City News deleted itself, family court, in favour of the caution of having the baby vaccinated, a lot of excess deaths best explained by people, didn’t work for you either, the evidence of your eyes, a characterization of how the vaccine was promoted, make you less sick, after they noticed getting the disease, they lied about it, big surprise, after the Emergency Use Authorization, in Cuba, China, in Russia, the global conspiracy of not doing science is global, preventative health care, China did these lockdowns, hospitals being built, drones telling people to stay indoors, the ventilator shit, hospital workers, the ventilators were killing people, the disease crystalizes the lungs, weird lack of work, hours and hour researching boring little things, all the other things, David J. West, twitter guys who write books and have good covers, a little more successful than Jonathan, more prolific, a danish dessert locally made in Minnesota, palm oil, soy oil, margarine, glyphosate, not allowed in Italy, celiac disease and gluten intolerance, what possibly caused it, literal weedkiller, lubrication for machines, still available for sale, forced into our foods, find a vegan section, food minus industrial lubricants, we could reform the FDA, new broom, the changing perspective on how the drugs were sold, Will wants change, pump us full of toxic shit for cash, cheaper, pretend it’s fine, try living without these ingredients in your life, The Stuff (1985), this delicious looking thing, like a supplicant, give him money to buy some margarine, homeless person inside a store, some coffee, have to pee to much, hyped up and hopped up enough, in six months everybody will know, potatoes, it makes the potatoes ripen, a big fight about GMOs, literal provincial politics, I wonder if I should be worried about that, in the news, they got their way and now nobody talks about it, genetically modifying plants, sprayed with toxin for killing plants, you have not been genetically modified to thrive on roundup, weren’t as corrupt as they are now, when did you start hearing the words “celiac” or “gluten intolerant”, redpilled on smoking causing cancer, if it makes your body feel good, Canadian doctor, industrial health, smoke breaks, the boss can understand why you want a break, Ulysses S. Grant, skin cancer and lung cancer, maybe stayed out of the sun more [or been in it more], Lovecraft died of cancer, a teetotaler, sad story for Mrs. Lovecraft, didn’t die of bean cancer, you don’t read him for pleasure, a whole collection, circa 2006, a terrible story, people get it so wrong, The Colour Out Of Space, At The Mountains Of Madness, Suitable Flesh (2023), a body switching story, a wizard who’s been switching bodies, it’s a comedy, Lovecraft is really fanny, the film adaptation is hilariously wild, The Unnamable, Mr Jim Moon, hushed innuendoes, the Cotton Mather one, something had caught my ancestor, mixed marks of split-hooves, and many believed him, I saw it – it happened to me, it was it was unnameable, a little bit of gore, not pinhead style gore, a cat that got squished, people get squished, pure delightful comedy, so lucky, what a birthday present, From Beyond (1986), some people can only watch new movies, undisciplined, these comics are somewhat tolerable, reviewing myself out of reading them, a good podcast is better than anything else for drawing out, those don’t make great shows, 100% a criticism of the work, movie-tie in comics, I don’t remember Yoda having 17 arms, Star Wars output in the 1990s, coherent in a way the new stuff was not, we know you like memberberries, we’re bringing Han Solo back, to kill him, Princess Leia and storm trooper get lost on a planet, Starbuck teams up with a cylon, Enemy Mine (1985), a Christmas present, evil humans come to a planet, very Andre Norton but good, a good short story, The Beast Master, a tv show, her father was into “Indian lore”, needed more trauma to be more interesting, there’s trauma in this book, he had a dog die, thinking about his dogs, Navajo, genetically altered animals, a good pulp novel, not a big think, one note villains, the TV show ran 66 episodes, 2005, you hope she made some money, pass away rather than die, you want good things to happen, have their legacy edified, a good word, vacation being sick, complaining about being sick six months later, smarter than to listen to the propaganda, a new car, a new pair of shoes, you shouldn’t take the flu vaccine, hate to hear, shingles, people who’ve got the shingles vaccine aren’t protected from shingles, shingles can be brought out by flu or gene therapy COVID vaccines, I’m protecting myself, allergic reaction disease, another podcaster complaining, shingles vaccine, booster, the brands for the companies pushing the product, NIH, when Joe Rogan was painted green on CNN, ivermectin, public domain, reactivation, assumed to be significantly higher, statistically detectable, hypothesis confirmed, the more ups of your dosage the more chances you have of having this disease reassert itself, above median age of death, it never does come out unless you look at history, trying to hide WWII from us, eventually nobody cares, more and better facts about what was going on, look at these stupid things, still making money off of slavery, do you want to be subject to the slavery?, educate ourselves as best we can, follow the money, a lot of groupthink, go-along play-along people are not scientists, make their publications known, those people get kicked off of youtube and twitter, makes lots of mistakes, likes professional wrestling, he couldn’t watch the show, not happy about it, a pathetic show at the time, cooties all over it, Trump’s you’re fired show, cooties all over it, Survivor, fake tiki ritual, this is fucking moronic, that show continues, not everybody is intellectually interested int he same things, motorcycles, kangaroos, reading NIH papers for fun, I wonder what causes it, instances of people getting it, being phased out, Dallas Buyers Club (2013), the bad guy was Fauci, everybody’s going to get AIDS, somebody’s going to touch your blood, blood transfusion, I don’t want to die from AIDS, only game men and people who got it from blood transfusions, massive puritanical panic, garnered some control, cultural homophobia, who dies of COVID, ancient people, people over the median age of death, 6 month old children, in any reasonable understanding of reality, fear and panic are used to control the flow of cash, if you don’t play along, super-evil and very interesting, send a text message, certain cookware, dog shaped pans, Christmas Archie comics, not a big Christmas guy, like going to the dentist, so personal, Hanukkah, fuck those dreidels, go to the Chinese restaurant, ethnically, philosophically, we ran out of oil but somehow the oil continued, Masada, a good miniseries, stars Peter O’Toole, the ethnostate takes it on as a mythological thing, jews are really awesome, a lot of bad ones too, the Jewish experience in North America, the most Jewish person on the internet is Paul, kvetching, schlemiel, schmuck, sex based on, schlepp, sister lived in Israel on a Kibbutz, came back feral, a lot of cattiness, things that make you cynical, oh the scratches!, loves dogs, can roll with punches, cry cry cry, onto new things!, I’m still processing the trauma, I’m going to learn everything there is to know about cow breeding, how much overspill about border collies, only polite to listen, they need lots of walks, closing in on 5 hours, bagels with roundup!, find some Italian flower, she’s really shaky, nice bread, look at the ingredient list on the bread, that’s why I’m dying, The Cave Girl, easy to get people for Burroughs, a hard time of the year, Terence would have contributed greatly, Maissa is a cat lady but had a dog, everybody has something to say and a different experience to bring to it, the reason we do this, just listeners, beautiful, such an important difference, hear himself reading too quickly, how many people are listening to this from 5 hours deep?, how many downloads, onsite plays, wordpress, the files are hosted on servers elsewhere, most people don’t listen on site, Mike listens and gives feedback, imagine if there’s ten listeners, 50 hours of people’s lives being enriched, how much money it got you, even if you’re hate listening, something deranged about you, gotta dog pans for Christmas, demographics, people like Mirko, Cora (isn’t a listener), Peter, other Germans, Germans are very cosmopolitan, post-WWII occupation, only 8 more minutes.

SIRIUS by Olaf Stapledon

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #759 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Star Born by Andre Norton

The SFFaudio Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #759 – Star Born by Andre Norton, read by Mike F. Smith (for LibriVox.org). This is a complete and unabridged reading of the book (6 hours, 34 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Trish, and Alex (PulpCovers.com).

Talked about on today’s show:
1957, Ace Double, H. Beam Piper’s and John J. McGuire Planet For Texans, which one would you like better, memories of H. Beam, great elements, a better book vs. more fun, action, courtroom scenes, sitting around the campire expressing philisophical opinions, too much plot, too many characters, 2 humans, a supporting cast of other space men, 2 different mermen, on the cover, the new mermen, a lot of men, not a lot of wo-men, merladies, female characters, we mention mating, brightly clothed the others women, escorted to the arena, a line of mermen, the mom dragon creature with its babies in the arena, two arena scenes, vast audience, gladiatorial combat in ancient Rome, half full stadium, aliens are the natives, genetically uplifted, slaves, Doctor Moreau them, consciousness raising, experimental animals, more docile, a fairly fun book, developing the world, this is not the first book in a series, The Stars Are Ours, a sequel, Trish liked this book a lot, horrible disappointment with Star Hunter, hate all her stuff, the ethical questions, Raf Kirby, mental journey that he goes on, politicking, distrust of his own crew, they’re all weird, come from the culture, the Pax is overthrown, they’re the Federation now, descendants of the Pax, his bloodknife brother, way more star of the story, they’re on a manquest, different culture, assisting him with a lifequest, tightly knit, partners, telepathically communicate, talk to the animals, squirrels, understanding the concept trade, this is a culture that is integrated into its ecosystem, hunting and gathering, Rafe, covered in gear, bombs in his chest, guns, rocketpack, flitters and bases and tech, do you have a friend?, no, I don’t, she doesn’t cook this enough, a critique of machine culture, H.P. Lovecraft, regimentation, titles and orders, settle on this planet?, go back to his spaceship, we’re us you’re you, come back and see us in a few thousand years, an adventure, he got to go home, nine missions previously, not really volunteers, space navy seals, fled a bad culture, still the case, a Herman Melville style native vs. capitalism culture, Rafe and Dal, one syllable with an A in the middle, the ecology, the geology, the geography, a little better, randomly tossed together, loose ends, small explanations, it having a prequel, she invented that other culture and world first, four grandfathers ago, at least 100 years, cryosleep, Earth has moved on, hyperspace tech, they’re warpin, a slow trip, at least 200 years later, all the richer, ancient dead society that’s not so dead, past glory, Rome is explicitly called out, 6th or 7th century Roman empire, Justinian comes in from the east, Rafe’s world, they come from cities, Homeport is a village in a ruin, she sketches everything, the closest to concrete details, the merman’s fur it gray with rainbow tips, they’re otter people, they’re furry, iridescence, it’s cool, the world’s cool, go deeper, a contemporary review, Galaxy, January 1958,by Floyd C. Gale, workmanlike, sequels demand comparison, a solid interesting story, Earth’s dictatorship, a degree of telepathic ability, Dalgard Nordis, the normal matriculating exploration, strange activities, capital t capital o, Jesse’s problem with the book, all the parallels, a high culture, crushed by its own craziness, abandoned its technology, hunter gatherer with a taboo against high technology, a plot moving characters around the stage, that’s kind of all there is, there’s more to talk about, how terrible that captain is, draftee, just got training, slaps Raf down, wrong keywords, I guess cuz they’re aliens, that’s the evil culture, representing the horrible culture that he’s coming from, the philosophy may be in the right place, delegitimating other peoples because they’re not your own, burned up and flamed out, they’re not men, a fire and tools rule, carrying spears, a big hypocrite, a terrible captain, self ordered exploration, no reprimand, going off with that warrior, immediately embroiled in local politics, let’s get involved in this land war, the Prime Directive from Star Trek, ignore the contradiction, the enemy we have to guard against, the one bright idea, the recording device, let’s run it through the ditto, backup tapes, here’s a human looking captive, did Andre just forget about it, this book the result of that recording, all that stuff, he should’ve gone native, this is a juvenile, two juvenile, loincloth vs. spacesuit, adult role, he needed to go through a Heinlein novel first, strong opinions, some ethical system he’s imposing, get away from that society, there’s no girl to seduce him, no merlady, recasting Dal as a girl, gender flip somebody, the aquaman, cross species romance, carrying through unresolved sexual tensions, rishathra thing from Ringworld, mules or something, Apple TV, a Discworld, unrecognizable Ursula K. Le Guin, unnatural in some way, they’re from the land, their whole species, later Romans are always cast as decadent, a lack of nuance, mustache twirling, I can solve this, a young juvenile from the others, her solution is add another character, what does Raf contribute?, bombs, the outside perspective, down with Dal, if I could skip each Raf chapter, adding a couple inches to the map, this book needed a map, helps to display interesting similarities, hate sleeping inside this alien city, being shutup in buildings, reflexive xenophobic instinctual, an adopted prejudice, bad vibes, why was he so immediately alarm bells, plot that needs to happen, an argument, the heebee jeebees, a lot of showing, no Heinleinian lectures, ancient race, very cool, internal reveal, a conflict between Dal and Rad, fighting over a mergirl, a mermaid if you will, Four-Day Planet by H. Beam Piper, nice little infodumps, better than Lone Star Planet, people arguing for positions, a newspaperman cannot offend everybody in the community, presenting characters who the reader can identify with, snarky or excited or religious or something, just has a furry coat, she needs some chip on her shoulder, forced character development, allow the reader to project themselves, the characters are palish, even Nancy Drew, she has no strong stuff, she’s always making sandwiches for people, behind it all she’s the girl detective, mysteries, do whatever you want with her, blank slate, she has a skirt and flashlight, juvenile literature, she’s not a cipher, nobody he’s sweet on, secret passion for his merboyfriend, always the loner, any kind of a personality, writing quickly?, cranking these books out as fast as they could, keep the secret of the this colony, protect them from the Federation, here be dragons on the planet, quite literally, that’s a mistake, taking a lot on himself, when they’re all telepathic, his telepathic wife, council of elders, one person keeping a telepathic secret, Raf’s reasons, Dalgard feels more like arrogance, next time they see a rocket, a mistake not to share this information with his people, the evil Pax, isn’t Ssuri in on some of this, Merguy number 2, there for the rocket, protect the people here, she’s doing a lot of symmetrical stuff, how old do we think he is, 14, 15, 16, 18ish, a callow 18, 16-18, maturity at a younger age, Star Trek: Enterprise, Cogenitor, a nice solar sailing cruise, enslaved another race and uses them for reproduction, terrible trouble, when they pick him up, he blew up some of the artifacts, keep the deal, lost from the expedition, his dead armor with a hole in it, charred helmet, some blood, hating because it is powerful, surely they’re going to revisit this, not a well loved show, the most notable thing about Enterprise, the movies that Tucker chooses to watch, Picard’s holodeck, a holodeck serial, what movies are on the harddrives of the NX-01, there weren’t that many episodes that were good Star Trek episodes, Ensign Ro, made Deep Space Nine a show, Kira instead, what if you’re wrong, Federation?, the Maquis, an undercutting of the main thing, integrated instantly, Captain Chakotay, so much to explore there, political distrust, a crew vote for captain, your pirate thing, upset with a Federation decision, we should raise the age of consent or retirement, whoever it is, cede territory to avoid a war, integrated into the Cardassian culture?, how rich that paid off, why Voyager is not as good as Deep Space Nine, Quark doesn’t play the game, embraced the tensions, arcy stuff, the Cardassian tailor, J’kar is the other show, Babylon 5, this needed some of that, too stiff, danced around it, vestigial sense of duty, I’ve changed my mind, doing this as a Tom Cruise movie, go against the IMF, use the blast bombs for the second time, the cache of artifacts, invaded the city with a strike team, there was no music swelling or dramatic pause, Andre Norton’s famous books, Voodoo Planet, Beast Master, The Beastmaster (1982), a barbarian, John W. Campbell’s evil influence, telepath vs. cyborg, her big legacy, a sad legacy, the very 1st D&D novelization, Witch World, the great filter, over time people and things fall by the wayside, Robert W. Chambers, a new King In Yellow movie on Amazon Prime, there goes Trish’s semi-noisy keyboard, terrible metaphor, lacks some pepper, lacks some heat, not making it spicy, benefit with adaptation, Rings Of Power, not executed, gender flip some furry people, change the ending, The Demon Breed by James H. Schmitz, a mostly water based world, female scientist and her intelligent otter companions, tool uses, foil the invasion by extensive knowledge of the environment, a great book, The Witches Of Karres, no psychic powers, Uplift series by David Brin, otter people, a natural for uplift, they hold hands, if you are choosing species to uplift, humans disappeared, uplifted elephants, weird furry trolls, they otter be more ottery, no audible audibooks for Schmitz, Legacy by James H. Schmitz, ancient living machines, A Tale Of Two Clocks, skilled in every martial art, a chilling notion, the plasmoids, an excellent narrator: Winston Tharp, mostly does poetry, Lion Loose by James H. Schmitz, the Lion House, a lesbian pulp fiction novel, October 1961, guy with a cigarette and a long pony tail, judging a story by the art, anything he records, problematic stuff, the sexister the better, let’s talk about Gor, a long running series, the covers are really good, simplified map of known Gor, do they exist as audiobooks, John Norman, book 37!, 35 hours, we’re safe, Gorean saga, really overselling it, terrible horrendous art, random stock art put a sword on it, some person riding a giant eagle, a tarn, one guy, a professor of decorum, professor of philosophy, in defense of ethical naturalism, nudity?, the logic of the open question argument, publishing the wrong things, working out your psychology, Heinlein’s is pretty scary, deep issues, he’s 91, longer in science fiction, more than 20 Tarzan books, other books where Tarzan shows up, cross overs, the Barney Of Beatrice series, Joe R. Lansdale, The Mad King, the Tarzan literary universe, they’re trying to beat Norman, 26 by Burroughs, they get longer and longer, that’s not the crazy part, 28 hour book, Ralph Lister has a helluva workout, happy Ralph Lister?, what the first Gor book is about, counter-earth, a princess, war aircraft bird, semi-feudal city states, the slavery becomes the main theme, weird slave fantasies, wow!, I’m a sex slave now, that’s crazy, a market for it, tiresome after a while, 1966, Burroughs pastiche, sexier, a Gor book from 1966-1988, almost every year, amazing, a helluvan output, a model dressed as a kajira, cosplaying gor, classifications, a plethora of types by virginity types, by employment, save Jesse from himself, new weird things, it exists its fine, so hard so fast, a gothic romance book, you have to have a castle and a lady running away and a high light in the window, yelling at Jesse about Gor, the reputation, endorsing by damning, weirder and worse, an impressive series, The Shadow, Walter B. Gibson, it makes him look like his other brother, the nose is part of the mask, hero pulp characters, backstory, very descriptive, from the pov of others, a force of nature, he’s never the narrator, is this his real identity, Lamont Cranston is a real guy, a rich playboy, impersonates him, you were here last week, Liam Neeson, Darkman (1990), Sam Raimi, a great premise, an origin story movie, scientist or something, do amazing stuff, a review of Darkman by Red Letter Media?, Frances McDormand, the romantic lead, two sequels, Armand Assante, he has no face, dramatic I’ve got cancer heroes, Rob Roy (1995), now just action roles, ice road trucker, The Gray (2011), assassin on the Mexican border, Stallone’s career, stick around long enough, a lady falling from a high tower, all the Spider-Man movies, people got their fetishes, Alfred Hitchcock, Quentin Tarantino’s feet, blonde lady and handsome guy with dark hair, The Spider, Will Murray, the guy who invented Squirrel Girl, straight 1930s pulp style, a cloak and a hat, carries a gun, indistinguishable, what a trick, essentially identical, Spider Fury And Steel, Doc Savage meets King Kong, The Spider: Fury in Steel, Billy Zane, The Phantom, great grandpa was Tarzan, 400 years of history, this immortal, the ghost who walks, weird 90s pulp revival, The Rocketeer (1991), female air pirate, weird lesbian subtext, perfectly understandable, action sequences, Treat Williams, Xander Drax, he’s a treat, Deep Rising (1998), action heist movie turns into towering inferno with a Cthulhu monster, Famke Jansen, Anthony Heald, Wes Studio, that didn’t take long, John Carpenter, that vibe, 45 million dollar budget, before we have to go, ocean going heist movie, Out Of The Dark by David Weber, dog-like aliens from space, submit, space-dogs, Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, guerrilla warfare, the Battle of Agincourt, Harry Turtledove, Dracula shows up, Vlad the Impaler himself, the title reveal, double meaning, glass the planet, two books in the series, Into The Light, co-author, 381 pages, 16 hours, alien invasion until the very end, because he’s Dracula, Honor Harrington, a lot of those, the Moon is secretly a death star, 1966, a different series, a solid week, The Tall T (1956), based on an Elmore Leonard novel, Randolph Scott, Henry Silva, ave Gun, Will Travel, somebody Boone plays the badguy, neighbourly, she’s the daughter of a rich farmer, ransom, you can feel the Elmore Leonard on the screen, Glitz, painted cover art, lady fleeing from a high estate, doing a Hans Gruber, a Gothic Romance, that counts, a Markie Post/Jimmy Smits movie, sounds good, even tho they’ve rebooted that show, Daniel Krouse original, perfect hair, not running exactly, fleeing, moving rapidly away, this is a gothic romance and we need to do a show on it, invested in some very weird things, William Shatner, a musician, and Stephen King, Chadwick Boseman has a bluechek in case he comes back to life.

ACE DOUBLE D-299 Star Born by Andre Norton

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #756 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Crawlers by Philip K. Dick

The SFFaudio Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #756 – The Crawlers by Philip K. Dick, read by Scott Miller (of The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast). This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (22 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Evan Lampe.

Talked about on today’s show:
Imagination, July 1954, a month ahead, how the editor describes it, was this the end of mankind?, maybe, given the ending?, no, may be, how humanity is being defined, playing with posthumans, The Golden Man, sex-up our human ladies, A World Of Talent, early mid-50s, tamed, The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch, predict consumer behavior, sad, pathetic, a break, pre-cogs, Captive Market, make a buck, more pessimistic, what are the crawlers doing?, what are humans doing, living in suburbs, come down from Washington, farming land, driving trucks, a taxi driver, chickens, farming, radiation lab, Vanuatu or wherever they nuked, dark, homo regular, homo superior, homo slow, homo snail, very different, the least humanlike in shape, Big Noodle, essentially different, not like The X-Men, peel off their powers they still feel love, half of the juice of their stories, doesn’t work as a metaphor for racism, X-Men is about racism or gay people, we are people too, government’s involved, schools for them, the Philip K. Dick fan’s archive blog, the original title, Philip K. Dick wanted to call it “Foundling Home”, harder to see without that title, a throwback to the 19th century, orphans, radiation fears, Bikini, people getting radiated, Iraqi children getting birth defects from depleted uranium, what do parents do when their children are mutated?, somebody said something, go have a beer, he went to his typewriter, Doctor Bloodmoney, something real happened to Philip K. Dick,

if u start digging around in the storys PHILIP K. DICK actually rote, rather than the 1s his rep among novel readers &Hollywood present, u’ll find he rote storys nobody wants, ugly little tales with strange extensions &human faces, storys u’ll want hidden away or smashed & buried

nobody says we should all go read…, watch the movie with Nicholas Cage (who can talk), a weird guy in a government cage, weird roles, you would never guess, doesn’t work as an action film, your protagonist is a subject, The Pre-Persons, not a massive market for this kind of fiction, a low end market, the island that they put the kids on, back into the minds of one of these crawlers, inside that mind, the breeding center, strange foreshortened bodies with rigid limbs, the Gulf of Mexico is a big empty, the last two lines, somebody had mashed the throwback, a regular human baby, an abortion story, a communism story, they do cooperate, socialism, the next political stage of humanity, supplant capitalism, will resist with all its efforts, straight Marxist dialectic, Marxist theory, capitalism to communism, prevent the next one from being born, a physical embodiment, they build, a communal society, eventually the work would begin in earnest, what work?, supplanting the previous society, a Cold War story, smash the regular baby, what would the commissars do?, the revolutions in 1968s, as of Dick’s writing, when it comes springing up again, uncompromising terms, a baby capitalist, support Paul’s thesis, the Standard Oil station, Joe Jackson cracked its head with a two by four, Martians Come In Clouds, fearing the other, insect-like, Evan’s 2017 podcast on this story, undercooked, stinging humans, if you’re incredibly slow like in The Day Of The Triffids, running over with trucks, the illustration, an incredible images, flipper arms, a farmer beside his truck, the pasteboard box, through a white painted door, the grandmother, hiding, their own reservation, move all the people away from the radiation plant, they eat plants and leaves, they build nests, like cocoons, from caterpillar to something else, never got any schooling, abandoned, the older ones are darker in colour, institutionally, not from an educated point of view, build or built, toiled joyfully, the material, some juice that’s inside of him, a practice model, Roog, telling a story from a dog’s point of view, curled up inside, he oozed binder fluid, his edifice, almost dust free, drowsy, extended a part of himself, that part watched and listened warily, conscious that from a distance, nobody would guess what lay beneath, very good subtle writing, “taking care” of them, the euphemism, a mom, the large breasts she has, is she suckling this baby, grass in the pasteboard box, not humans but are humans, they do exactly what we do, an autistic son you might say, mothers would just kill their babies, mother animals reject their babies, only two teats, find some other mother with only one baby, cruel nature, infanticide, reflects back earlier on what the teenagers and the adults were doing, an infanticide story not an abortion story, who asked for that?, fallout from WWII’s end, Astounding and John W. Campbell, give me more mutant stories, stories that were variation, variations on Weinbaum stories, people took it literally, Slan is the prototypical example of that, an early Robert A. Heinlein novel, the one with guns [Beyond This Horizon], Lazarus Long’s ancestors, immortal mutants, how’d they get there?, Methuselah’s Children, eugenics, talky in the second half, Sixth Column, They, If This Goes On, Blowups Happen, so much in 1941, pseudonyms, Anson MacDonald, Lyle Monroe, half of the issue would be Heinlein, are these Humanity+, part of progress, hold it a minute, these aren’t humans anymore, instinctual killers, neanderthals, a throwback, infanticide and eugenics, culling carp, sending kids to the pound, animal rights, how humans treat animals, Roog, from children’s pov, otherizing children, control naturals, duels and carrying firearms, armed society, polite society, give me a world where people are brandishing all the time, Sixth Column, fixups and edits, a slippery guy, for our story today, no editor would say…, a story about infanticide, more of a new wave thing, sparking me, he has a problem, infanticide exists and that shatters him, knows a kid, has a kid who has autism, all its hooves, fingers and toes, assessing intelligence, a calf will walk on the first day it is born, ultrasounds, its not infanticide anymore, slightly related, autism, reading Philip K. Dick, perhaps autism overrepresented, had to deal with it somehow, a lawsuit, this [class action] lawsuit, Tylenol, over the counter drugs, the flipper baby in the illustration, thalidomide, limits blood vessel growth, make limbs, huge international story, caterpillar man, no arms and no legs, an economic space, a concentration camp, experience of the mid-20th century, no child left behind, ready for the workforce, obsession with standards, diversity, homogenizing in public education, 80% chance of having Down syndrome, the justification is economic, not a moral choice your making, Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century by Geoffrey Parker, high rates of infanticide, about the little ice age, monasteries overrun, instinctual, for fun, almost like the Japanese, isolated them, creatures, not getting nursed, not getting dressed, organs in the back of them, pseudopodia, they look like babies, little bit of hair, “moist”, my god!, it’s like a human, are they supposed to be like this?!, essentially butterflies, the stingers, evolution into something else, milk, 20-21 minutes long, a response to Judith Merril’s Only A Mother, 1948, the replacement, no more normal kids being born, a few normal kids, physically deformed by mentally precocious, says the mother, I Am Legend, Richard Matheson, child locked in the basement, diary entries, doesn’t know what mud is, the cruel parents come down and beat the child, oozes green, can climb on the ceiling, Born Of Man And Woman, no social communist implication, working together in a community, not prioritizing one person’s success over another’s, a breeding chamber, are they mammals, are they bees?, humanizing things that are inhuman, showing that we are inhuman in the end, a human being killed by monsters, standard good Philip K. Dick, 1950, fears and worries, all her fingers and toes, pops out and you clean it up, smart, good at drawing, you gotta be a genius to read Philip K. Dick, the best Philip K. Dick, Time Out Of Joint, if she doesn’t like Galactic Pot Healer, kipple and the people left behind, is Harrison Ford an android, not only based on media properties, any duds?, his juvenile, mainstream novels, in the Hugo illuminati, working on the Heinlein thing, N.K. Jemisin, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ayn Rand and fascist themes in Heinlein, talking people down on twitter, you want to fight him, that’s not the book, read the book and then you’ll know, Verhoeven turns the dials to 14, trying to solve a problem in the United States, in that book, what he’s arguing, non-war service, peace corp of shit like that, leaders whove never been in the army or navy, the guy with the eyepatch, Tulsi Gabbard, An American Utopia: Dual Power And The Universal Army by Fredric Jameson, universal conscription, use the military, how short WWII was, a 4 year job, put the pacifist in charge of weapons development, reckless wars and foreign adventures, the green transition, everyone has a job, everyone has healthcare, Starship Troopers it’s still a choice, his proposal and commentary, people challenge him, edited by Slavoj Žižek, that shitlib?, neolib?, Exiting The Vampire’s Castle by Mark Fisher, upcoming things, Robert Silverberg’s Down To The Earth, the comic, still wrapped in plastic, inspired by Joseph Conrad, The Secret Sharer, Heinlein mines Kipling, Silverberg mines Conrad, Mike, libgen (Library Genesis), why you have to have a vpn sometimes, 2 CBRs, it still hates Paul, quite useful, people who want their book promoted this month, the Hugos There podcast, pretty good, David Brin, such a fuckin trainwreck, Seth Heasley, a philosophy podcast [The Partially Examined Life], this is a comedy show, still popular?, Kiln People, why Paul hates Amazon sometime, anything but David Brin, how broken this reality is, Startide Rising is a bad book, stories told from control panels, exhaust the idea superquick, David Weber, Paul needs to have an adblocker, goes to paperbacks, Existence by David Brin, Evan challenging Jesse in direct messages, when feeding animals and dog walking, Jesse is a bad Marxist, a Marxist book, Marx For Beginners, a comic book, not bad, does a pretty good job, what Evan really means, we need more material conditions, Evan wants everyone to be a historian, trends of history, context, greyer, more complex, like this story, a way of looking at it, not a communism story, what’s happening under a woman’s shirt when she’s breastfeeding: that’s communism, not supportive of irredentism, Evan’s middle name is Brinksman, self determination, Taiwan as a neoliberal hellscape, perfectly reasonable, Jimmy Dore thinks Taiwan is part of Taiwan, peace based on national self-determination, countries being occupied by the United States, Richard Nixon made peace, a third of Syria is under US occupation, South Korea, Germany is not be occupied by the United States, black and white, at what point was the Philippines no longer occupied by the United States, Iceland, Italy and France, is Canada occupied by the United States?, not really, NATO is the superstate, if you’ve got foreign troops in your country that have a base, Saudi Arabia, the people vs. the government, Columbia, if you don’t like it they change your government, that’s the problem, if there actual bases, Djibouti, China and the United States, you coup the government, that happened in Australia, probably hasn’t happened in Canada, weak indications, none of this applies to the case here, Taiwan was abandoned, in exchange for peace with China, Taiwan was a security council members, one country doesn’t want that, WWIII, war yes, Jesse is not being consistent, Donbass, Ukraine is a hot topic, if the Scots want independence, Scotland is more competent than England, UK was running the US for a while, you can’t say either countries are in charge, meta empires, military base, dead people from wars, caring about the veterans, farm people go off, Vancouver Island vs. New Caledonia, regional disputes, an intercontinental fight, it’d be bad if China forcibly took over Taiwan, who’s stoking that up, who we talking about, a southern NATO, basically Australian and New Zealand and Japan, the base in Okinawa, Japan has some interest in getting its feet wet, Afghanistan, the Japanese Empire still is, fucking ridiculous, the SDF, constitutionally mandated no war ever again military, waifus, get some vigour back in their loins, if they cross the ocean, we’ll Golden Slave next week, history!, David Milch’s proposal to HBO before he did Deadwood, a police drama in the early Roman Empire, fine I’ll do it in America, the most casual person, Caesar’s Column by Ignatius Donnelly, what a populist is, he was from Minnesota, 1890, not on LibriVox, the Atlantis guy, the Ancient Apocalypse guy [Graham Hancock], CBC Radio Ideas, things you should know if you’re an archaeologist: it’s potsherd not potshard, they’re related, Edgar Cayce, Madame Blavatsky, leads into Lovecraft, early science fiction America, the scholarship on the populist, The People, NO: A Brief History of Anti-Populism guy [Thomas Frank], What’s The Matter With Kansas, Lawrence Goodwyn’s Democratic Promise, silent generation, before the boomers, the new deal generation, lost his contracts, Listen Liberal, you let this happen, a lot of Democrats, Evan is not a Jimmy Dore fan, Russell Brand, Chapo Traphouse guys, ten minutes of knocking it out of the park, he’s absolutely right about the democrats turning, a rejection of the working class, it was open, not well advertized, no problem, Hillary’s gonna be our girl, the original Clinton, back to Carter, maybe 1968, Humphrey or McGovern, Clinton finished the job, Evan likes the thick bois, ignoramus who doesn’t read much and yet, nobody should make stupid mistakes, most people are not historians, withholding judgement, China content, when Nancy Pelosi went over there, unless you’re a little child who doesn’t understand how the world actually works, implying, the vast majority of Taiwanese, remove the China threat, independence, under the Taiwanese government, however Hong Kong’s working out, a second tier city, the housing crisis is worse that anywhere, Singapore, a hot war with nuclear armed countries, whoever starts it is bad, an international movement to recognize Taiwan as a country, Czech or Lithuania, to see what happens, cut relations, how many people wanna leave it, Australia, kinda fucked up, look at England, New Zealand, moving to escape other places, fucked up in different ways, London, live in a cubicle for 4000 pounds a month, more impressed with Paris, trying to make it look like a modern city, French immigrants to Canada, get away from this nuclear testing country, hippies, how you build cities, safe for cyclists, good subways, people had time to enjoy life, worked to death, no garbage cans on the street, the tragedy of the commons, it’s harder to build traditions than it is to make a stupid law, a culture that doesn’t do that, costing too much to clean it up, this excuse, neoliberal cutting the budget, win win, create jobs, China cares about making livable cities, done in authoritarian way, pride, nationalism, its ours, playing a lot of PUBG, matched with a rando, China number 1, China’s the best, a counter to America first, anytime now China’s going to surpass the United States, the population projections, this tictok thing, white women saying they’re Ritalin was being faked, I can’t get the house clean, get their Starbucks, early 2000s shows, The Sopranos, we should all go to therapy, it felt like a throwback, its role is to validate tony, narcissism, all this autism, Jesse gets weird people, this is not from a brain that works properly, a conversation with yourself, maybe it’s schizophrenia, I believe them when I read their tweets, Jesse has different kind of problems, chemicals in general, ingested, capitalism driving us to various disorders, when you start it when you’re 2, people in their 20s are zoomers, ensconced by this solipsistic existence, triggered [by Heinlein’s] They, Common Sense is the bleak one, knock the wifetooth out, the scientific revolution fails, five people escape with five wives each, don’t non-they them shame him [Joe-Jim], hims, the one time he [Heinlein] could have used at they and he didn’t, damn hims, damn they, animal wrangling, chicken crazy, an egg plague, eggs are cheap here [in Canada], Jesse petted three cats at all the feed stores.

The Crawlers by Philip K. Dick

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The SFFaudio Podcast #740 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Pursuit by Lester Del Rey


The SFFaudio Podcast #740 – Pursuit by Lester Del Rey – read by Dale Grothman for LibriVox. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the novel (1 hour 59 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Tony DeSimone.

Talked about on today’s show:
Space Science Fiction, May 1952, he was the editor, his editorial, a new baby, growth and development, a personality of its own, the most appropriate name, themes, we like good science fiction, final frontier, space opera has long since been overdone, to meet every challenge to spread throughout the universe, always a bad sign, extension in all directions, indefinite indivisibility, occasional fantasy, still countless fine stories, our only taboo, a matter of taste, a better definition of maturity, suspenseful stimulating entertainment, suggestions and objections, a cooperative concern, a letters section, reviews of the best of the new books, special mention, occasional articles, future editorials, the art for Pursuit, that’s the Moon, our hero, an unusual situation, a product of this magazine, for no reason, the wonderful and thoughtful editorial, reprint mag, cover his bases, as a showcase, an okay job, a little editorial at the end of the story, Pursuit ends where the story is just beginning, unrelated to anything we know, dining room in the mountains, another planet, national boundaries, endless possibilities, if you can, not responsible for mental breakdowns, licensing this story idea, not super-unique, The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester, Larry Niven, stepping discs and teleportation booths, fascinating stories that explore that idea, Dan Simmons’ Hyperion, much better than here, Living Space by Isaac Asimov, parallel earths, your own personal planet, alternate universes, pocket universes, transferring from office to home through an alternate dimension, different versions of Earth, he’s an ideas guy but not excellent at executing, fast paced, a lot of pursuing and chase, deliberately obfuscatory, pressure on the reader, all red herring, Philip K. Dick, his sense of reality, mentally ill, Total Recall, novelette length, man on the run, the least good Philip K. Dick stories, short and painful, acceptable, authors who could do this better, a fun game: anonymize a story, someone like Paul, its one of these five authors, a gameshow, reveal the author’s name, Shaun Duke, streaming on Twitch, guess the author, the sky above the port was too easy, an author who wrote a lot, not a realistic game, a Lester Del Rey-ism, the relationships, wild talents, George R.R. Martin’s Wildcards, Parable Of The Talents, a role playing game, The Many Colored Land by Julian May, the rules, a superhero RPG, Marvel super hero RPG, Villains and Vigilantes, rolling up characters, random powers, mutant powers, lack of powers, Captain America doesn’t have any super-powers, maximized human, plus shield, plus moral goodness, lift Mjollnir, turns into a super-hero story, a mindfuck movie, Vanilla Sky (2001), Abre Los Ojos (1997), easily adapted, make it weirder, less straightforward ending, Ideas, did he know where it was going?, it kind of makes it worse, a plot and a plan, why the Moon sequence is in there, a John W. Campbell idea, psi-powers, seeded well enough, the unconscious part, the poltergeists, fair-ish, his style is such, good done ready next, when he meets the girl, ok, what is she doing?, explained by horniness, a little uncomfortable to read, dated these days, definitely horny guys around, The Sky Is Falling, idea-based, Badge Of Infamy, ancient parlance, horndogs, kind of uncomfortable, lurched into the bedroom, a gurgling cry, cold sober, none of her act, you damned alien!, you filthy monster disguised as a girl!, you can’t pass one tests, the dust on his feet proved that, crying now, I’m human Will, oh I’m human!, then prove it!, more apologies than one, she had proven herself and virginally so, complete surrender, cursed himself for a fool, ran off to the FBI, they’d been smart picking a virgin for the job, simple, simplistic, I like this idea, he likes the right ideas, his writing is serviceable, The Boys, what would Superman really be like?, he’d be a monster, accidents happen, we all become Lex Luthor, the hate for superheroes, he exhausted the idea, a reality that is ridiculous and impossible, to simplify and cheapen plumbing, you can reorganize your cells after you bite your wrist, you can jaunt, a better revenge story, The Count Of Monte Cristo with teleportation, Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen, the armed forces and the intelligence agencies, a three week Honeymoon to Hawaii, Mauna Kea is erupting, Paul is sensitive to sulfur, poi poi vulcanism, for other reasons, a planet walk, scale model of the solar system, a long walk, when measuring, Sweden, the lack of limits kills the idea in the end, its unconscious, The Golden Man, an X-Men style mutant, a mental midget incapable of even speech, incredibly impotent, suicidal, all instinctual, upgrade, anywhere in time and space, the end of storytelling, where Ted Chiang does good work, Understand, Vernor Vinge’s Bookworm, Run!, Flowers For Algernon, Lester Del Rey does it first, Helen O’Loy, The Faithful, H.G. Wells, David Brin the whole sundiver series, For I Am A Jealous People [is PUBLIC DOMAIN], self impressions, a good sign, SF stories about religion, as one reviewer recently pointed out, pulp magazines, who is standing out to Tony?, Thomas M. Disch, new wave, physically deformed guy uses time travel to get laid, sex with dinosaurs, All You Zombies, has sex with a lady named Eve, The End, a stage play adaptation by John Jakes, The Cold Equations, two people in a room and a voice on the radio, Strange Horizons, story ideas and cliches they would not accept, the main characters that are Adam and or Eve, anime, in the public consciousness has to have its analog, Behold The Man by Michael Moorcock, a great idea, nobody needs to write it again, sad, unique, novelette length?, a novel version, in the film industry, Saw (2004), short films are what you do when you can’t get funding for a feature, get funding for a feature by making a short, the whole premise is the end of Mad Max (1979), a tiny little rip off of one little scene, mining these old things, The Veldt is the holodeck, the same problems, what science fiction really is, if we have a technology what would that mean?, flat screen technology, the social consequences, what is the social consequence of , a certain band of science fiction, the good stuff for you, that’s the stuff that you want, what is the best really?, they really are objectively better, fixing typos, a missing page, what do we really mean, carrying a saddle through the whole story, no horses, no hats, space western, we can sweep too much, there are things that are better, its hard to judge, our sole aim, the best science fiction magazine, best to some group of readers, Strange Stories is not as good as Weird Tales, which is better Astounding or Amazing, Adams Family or The Munsters, an aesthetic, goofier, they’re all goths, Frankenstein monster, werewolf, grandpa is a vampire, Marilyn is normal, not adopted?, a fun idea, The Graveyard Book, a kid adopted by a jungle, Tarzan, extracted what little juice, very little juice, the way that he told the story, tighter plotting, a Hitchcock movie, a lot of running around, the payoff is kinda straight forward, what’s going on?, our complaint about the last Michael Crichton, Grave Descend, Drug Of Choice, Easy Go, fun all the way through, a nice ending, satisfying, minimal ideas, too big?, not enough restrictions, boundaries and constraints or restrictions, Julian May’s The Many Colored Land, explode things, too much, time travel, what can’t he do?, a better thinker, we need you to fix this story, Ted Chiang, the coolest things, where he saw himself earlier, Robert A. Heinlein, the car, the old fashioned running boards, the least substantial Lester Del Rey so far, the most interesting ideas, Badge Of Infamy, when Jesse shownotes it in six months, Mars, ex-wife, The Last Ship, network channels, TNT, the Navy funds the whole thing, based on a novel, A Town Called Alice, On The Beach, global pandemic, 2014-2019, masks, the remainders of the federal government, its like Soylent Green, getting rid off the useless people, gain of function, fear of nuclear war, a 20th century fear, the second in command is the Jayne from Firefly, right wing nut lens, Adam Baldwin, Chuck, gun crazy, typecast in his beliefs and his life, gone the way of Kevin Sorbo, mouths cover up by mugs, dub in dialogue later, semi-passable stuff, something you don’t seem much in plays, silent film, change people’s lips, de-aged Indiana Jones, 80 year old action hero, weak sauce, Raiders Of The Lost Ark is a terrific movie, had Indiana Jones nothing, he didn’t need to be in the movie, we wouldn’t have had the truck chase, Temple Of Doom, played comedicly, that was ok, Jaws (1975), The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, highly educational, especially obvious, getting scolded all the time, hang our with artists all day, very different, accompanying documentaries, the weird things happening in the early 20th century, our troubling amnesia, I’ve got amnesia amnesia, self inflicted amnesia, Momento (2000), the Mark Twain episode, Jesse would love this, different Christian denominations, Paul is a map guy please and thank you, a pilgrimage book, axis mundi, foundational, catholicon, special rooms for everybody, protestants be like, dish on the Disch, The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper, PUBG later, assault a crime lord, escort mission, rescue mission, based on Jack Vance’s Tschai novel, players muddying things.

Pursuit by Lester Del Rey art by ORBAN

Pursuit by Lester Del Rey art by ORBAN

Pursuit by Lester Del Rey art by ORBAN

Pursuit by Lester Del Rey art by ORBAN

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #731 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Badge Of Infamy by Lester Del Rey


The SFFaudio Podcast #731 – Badge Of Infamy by Lester Del Rey – read by Thomas Rose for LibriVox. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the novel (3 hours 20 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Tony De Simone.

Talked about on today’s show:
a short novel, half of an ace double or a maga books double, on LibriVox, The Sky Is Falling, aces are Dos y Dos, children don’t even what a paperbook is, two books in one, the Tor doubles, a better gimmick, a problem for shelving, two covers, makes the book shorter, written pretty quickly, science fiction vs. quasi-fantasy, a three hour drag, a one hour drag, the topic is interesting and topical for today, interesting worldbuilding, the role of government and quasi-government entities, Heinleins, people on Mars, the inexplicable girl falls for him (she’s his wife!), she falls for him all over again, a terrible harridan, they like each other again, I don’t hate you anymore, a strict bossy or belligerent old woman, Ethel Merman, is that how she is?, Doc Feldman, negative character traits, a perception thing, the mores of the time, the pattern, write women this way, let’s examine, a caduceus on the sidewalk, he’s a bum, fifty cents, 2100, generous, he’s bitter, the reason that all happened, a flashback to a weird hunting incident, accidentally shoots himself in the chest, very suspicious, a mechanism to defrock him, the ethics, sustained in practice, politics, a corrupt union, anti-union sentiment?, if you’re not super-rich, define our terms, if you have six houses…, the .1 percent, get on your plane and fly, the outcomes are worse, is that the fault of the medical lobby?, in our reality, the drug lobby, the American Medical Association, a medical doctor, practicing medicine, herbalists, surgery, my kidney really hurts, charged with a crime, laws being weaponized, abortion clinics, restrict abortion, it’s not in the book, anti-union?, thinking of it as a union?, the lobbies, the most interesting parts of this book, it’s the world building, a story set in that world, the idea of a frontier and having had a history where two big lobbies control the United States, the space lobby and the medical lobby, other lobbies, the PR lobby, is there a public relations union?, admit members, the U.S. Bar Association, guild, being anti-guild, Del Rey excoriates, stuff on the ship, getting radiated, terrible for society, the name of the book, a badge mentioned, he’s had his badge taken away, his badge is being a pariah, a grey suit, he had to have taken it with his ticket, sloppy writing, a sloppy suicide scene, notoriously a fast writer, Space Pariah, a stupid title, an interesting place to search, a free-floating phrase, did something dishonorable, a badge of infamy, freedom is heady stuff, you can’t acquire a taste for it second hand, anti-authoritarian, afraid of the tyranny of the bureaucracy, a negative effect on the world, why did he try to kill himself?, against the policy of the lobbies, being encroached upon, you have to have a taste for freedom, recent events, recent politics, I see the rise of authoritarianism, do people want to be free?, we want both, “them”, screw those people, the demonization of the other, those eggheads, standing at the top of the dungheap, I’m going to pull him down with me, an undercooked U.S. Revolution against the British Empire on Mars, a whole plot going on that’s boring, the villages are fomenting rebellion, FREEDOM!, the have brackiweed, the solution to the problem, kind of convenient, huh?, positive portrayals of smoking, Tolkien approves, they do it because they enjoy it, a fantasy a smoker might have, a defense of smoking, a government conspiracy to keep us from having fun, womens groups, temperance, a puritanical streak, in Iran, not wearing their clothes right, your hijab is not tight enough, people not liking other people wearing their mask on the chin, even outdoors, an extremely crowded place to see fall colours, close proximity jostling, during COVID, over now?, just quoting the president, in this matter the president of the united states is an ass, in 7 months, talking with Eric (S. Rabkin), some grocery store clerk, did the kid not know?, the most autistic person on the planet, the girls and women in Iran wearing the mandated headwear, space virus, being more holy, some people wear masks as a way of protecting themselves, in their car while they’re alone, they’re so lazy, some people like wearing masks, it’s freeing, sunglasses, they’re hiding, they’re cool, man, people can’t see your eyes, they can’t know your real feelings, the Murderbot series, a robot programmed to be cool, watching a lot of TV shows, their governance model, the plot doesn’t allow it, Luke Burrage and Julianne, we feel for this character, people projecting into the robot, explain it to me like I’m hyperautistic, some people would like to be that robot, a lot of evidence that reading helps support the growth of empathy, maximum empathy, Parable Of The Sower, feel people’s pain, back to our brackiweed story, they’re not like normal union, it requires that you join it, training required, abide by its rules, the lobby controls things, a union works for a larger institution, directed at Elon Musk, would you consider yourself the founder of the Space Lobby, he’s read science fiction, I want to be the head of the space lobby, start thinking about it that way, the lobbies are essentially a part of the government or control the government, taking on government functions, tendrils, more of a corporation than a union, the lobby that is not mentioned, very topical, the military , Raytheon and Mcdonnell Douglas, promoted tweets for the F35, 10 times, organized special interests, the mob, the hoi polloi, third arm of government, the old farm lobby, big farmers, little farmers, the farm vote, foods and crops, corn syrup, the corn lobby, Sprecher root beer, the last of the great lobbies, last in development, the funny way he writes, probably, who’s this narrator, Stephen King does stuff like that, grew up so fast, Russia, the first hunk of metal above the atmosphere, a myth of national prestige, sputnik, NASA, the aircraft industry, war or threat of war, a few sharp operators, subcontracts, spread profits so widely, lobby block, the first mention of recession, a continual war since WWII, Linda Nagata, the economy will tank, presidential veto, The Red, defense contractors, video on the oversight of the banking industry, they’re having a very cordial meeting, she’s going to be leaving us and going to join you guys, I hope you take care of her, her father already works for us, the men placed in government agency came from its own ranks, a medical lobby, conservative group, treatment and payment, a long series of retreats, “socialized medicine” is gonna fuck up the medical system, government spending, doctors working on a fixed fee, competence no longer managed much, as exemplified by the lobby, pretty subtle, quality vs. quantity of care, a thesis of the book, why our hero is kicked out, a tightly held belief, running up the national debt and the quality of healthcare will go down, if you look at neighboring countries, your conservative friends are factually wrong, without money involved they won’t be inspired to do anything, it could decline (eventually), its possible in the distant future, the experiments running for the last 50 or 60 years, Cuba, one of the poorest countries in North America, preventative care, not the evidence so far, there is a waiting list for a lot of stuff, you have to wait in line in the States too (unless you’re really wealthy), stuck with the system they’ve got, a lot of propaganda from the PR lobby, the focus on preventative treatment, spend extra money, local block doctor -> community clinic -> local hospital, you couldn’t have Breaking Bad happen in Canada, except for the fantasy of the blue meth, one of the hardest things about that show, fucking up your kid’s life, lying to your wife and getting divorced and fucking up your kids future, a big point of the show, a morality play, Better Call Saul, what’s ethical and what isn’t, dying of cancer, very reasonable, to make drugs that people want, murders happen because of it, that show can’t happen in Canada because its implausible on the surface, you might have to move, go down to Winnipeg to get treatment, hospital jets, very American, if cellphones are involved, for movies especially, horror movies, it took a worldwide plague, the plague began in old china, a few madmen planning to conquer the world, it might have been a laboratory mutation but nobody could ever prove it, COVID most likely did start in a lab, no it did not, it did not start in a lab, Jesse, deny facts, look into, not a biological weapon gone wrong, the unfortunate nature of virulent disease in the modern world spreading like wildfire, a matter of contagion, monies going to the lab doing gain of function research, lab leaks happen a lot, a movie book plot, right out of this plot, a narratively disorderly way, those evil Chinese, wouldn’t it be evil if it was, most plainly not, political purposes, a political effect, conspiracy theorists with a political agenda, highly conservative, doing it on a podcast right now, those guy in that bar in Philadelphia, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, it wiped out two billion people, an obscure scientist found a cure before the epidemic hit America, the plot of this book, foreshadowing?, a pariah, Rutherford Ryan, America ran it, the bad writing again, what is the it here?, the world?, America runs the world, the two effectively ran the world, none of the smaller lobbies could buck them, as under the Roman Caesars, false democracy, a man belonged to his lobby as a serf belonged to his feudal landlord, abide by standards and practices, equates to serfdom, end of the first chapter, Christmas in the year 2100, wrong about a lot of stuff, plot that happens, prescient, thought provoking, kind of a bad book, Deeper Than Darkness by Gregory Benford, Lester Del Rey, Faith Of Our Fathers, Helen O’Loy, two dorks making a girl in their basement, the original Weird Science (1985), uplifted dogs and gorillas getting together after humans have died off, outdated, she’s a very mechanical lady, an ideal woman from the 1940s, she cooks and cleans and loves you, nagging, The Faithful, he read The Island Of Doctor Moreau, way down the road David Brin said hold my beer, he gets to the point and doesn’t linger over it, clunkily written, he compliments her quite a bit, suspicious of her, her face was shocked, Forget it Chris, you can’t find a man strong enough to rule, in relationships, it didn’t work on Earth, what could be done with a new planet, their relationship is like the divorce between Earth and Mars, Earth is dependent on the brackiweed, those are the dreams that made a mess of the old one, second hand brackiweed smoke, trends and forces over time, besides once you get back to Earth you’ll forget what happened here, what she could have been, research, what else?, they were researching together, she’s a doctor, she’s royalty in the Medical Lobby, him breaking one of their rules, some Tibetan plateau, bystander laws, if we’re operating properly, ideal conditions, sued for any reason for any time, medical malpractice, if you’re the wife or husband of the most powerful person in the medical lobby, very simplistic, if we had never found, more plausible, when he’s in the flophouse, he needs the massage and the hot water, getting whipped, authoritarian for sure, if you break one of the lobby’s rules, The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth, the PR lobby dystopia, Coffeeist, floppy, if you cross the lobby, addicted to three different substances, that book is funny, this book is humourless, Star Surgeon by Alan E. Nourse, somebody has confused this book with that book, it’s not a juvenile, Little Fuzzy, cute fuzzy aliens, boring adults, young people learning the ropes, smoking, Dal Tigmar, earth medical school, interstellar emergency, good at medicine on Earth, specialist, uniformed, the grey uniform, pediatrics, exobiology, making jokes, pink for gynecology, brown for proctology, fun but silly, empathize with a semi-humanish alien, 1959, Sector General, James White, medical alien space things, Machine by Elizabeth Bear, interested in biology, electron microscopes, the triheaded thing, the disease from earth, measles, some background for this fake medical disease he’s curing, Jesuit bark, quinine, the same idea, PR lobbies from the early 20th century, advertising for smoking, the back of any slick magazine, medical benefits, some cases (edge cases) where the effect of smoking tobacco is not wholly bad, coffee, detriments, shakier, more nervous, keeps you awake, pee more, smoking makes you poo?, would explain a few occasions, pipe tobacco cigars, when you dig down deep into medical history, poisons are medicines, mercury, its terrible for you, water can drown you (misapplied), skillful that he puts it in early enough, enjoy smoking, old school sci-fi writers, tricked by that, not fully thought through, synthetic food vs. real food, we have a lot of synthetic food now, replicator sense, processed and artificial ingredients, people cooking real food, Sisko and Riker, like people like riding horses, a few real books in his office, status symbol, the office is the status symbol, real unreplicated food is slightly better, a prejudice or a real thing?, they never say: this is better for you, he’s prejudiced, always the same, slightly different, chocolate ice cream of number 67 flavour, AI program with the same recipe, Chrisopher Pike is also really into cooking, cooking in space, replicating the ingredients, a giant egg, replicated blankets, a gift of an egg, taste better, when Riker is cooking or Jake is cooking with his dad, Eric Rabkin talks about food in science fiction, food is love, we are on the same team, I love you as a parent loves a child, nourishing, the ritual of love, they want to spend time together, stimulant, enjoying the act of dishwashing, a novelty, an experience, electric dishwashers, pass them the dish rinse it off, drying rack, social, two strands of food, synthetics are the cheaper kind, outside the snow was still falling, no work shoveling snow, stolen the guy’s boots, if he’d had socks, synthetics, he’s hungry, a real meal on synthetics, scavenge something edible (dumpster diving), he clutched the quarter and turned to look , to which his metabolism had been switched, there’s two classes of eaters, real food, synthetic food, adjusted to synthetic (because he’s poor), this is a class thing, prescient, processed foods are way cheaper, go shopping for bread, imported foods must be listed too, manipulate terms, savvy, monosodium glutamate, plant cell walls, either of two forms, isomers, either form was digestible, the isomer to which it was adjusted, processed food, once you’re on sugar it’s hard to get off sugar, Martian plants produce different isomers, really confusing, an enzyme that could handle either isomer, the cheapness of synthetics, fudging the science a little bit, milk has additive, cereal additives, energy drinks, decaffeinated coffee, Tom Standage, a good writer, a good researcher, a bad magazine, urine and caffeine are closely related, Fritz Haber, some major role in the disease too, the red herring that wasn’t, specific point, an Earth meal and a Mars meal, if you eat the wrong one…, the food lobby in the United States is causing people to get fat, processed foods, fatter and fatter, The Dorito Effect by Mark Schatzker, hacking people, good takeaway, desert towns had joined, unmanned rockets loaded with atomics, demand surrender, he and Chris had put in every spare minute, that would be the montage, normal food, a handful of people, 80 of Earth’s population ate synthetics, synthesize normal food, 20% in a powerful lobby, the richest part of the United States is the communities around Washington, D.C., where the lobbies do their lobbying, don’t eat that we make that, I only manufacture that for the poors, a cynical view, the dentist who also owns a candy store, Mark Zuckerburg, Meta world is designed to increase that interest, Second Life was interesting but it wasn’t good, another Lester Del Rey story, an interest in medical stuff, The Science Fiction Hall Of Fame Volume IIA, Nerves, still a good story, a more coherent way, by modern standards, a medical thriller, his impact on science fiction, an editor, a reviewer, his wife too, a half handful, Police Your Planet, Preferred Risk with Frederik Pohl, insurance in the future, why is insurance a topic for science fiction?, read more, he doesn’t take two years to craft anything, written at a furious pace, still has value, the experience of reading it, wrong about a lot of things, right about a lot of things, in real life, Doctor Kevorkian?, Christopher Duntsch, our guy’s a hero in the book, out of genre examples, geology, Galileo, [Alfred Wegener], handwashing for doctors, corpsey hands, a good way to cause people to die, Mr. Lister, Lavoisier?, Robert Malone, super-negative headlines, false claim, the development of MRNA technology, Pfizer and Moderna, produce the spike protein, an early skeptic about the effect the MRNA vaccines would have, Wikipedia is the website that anyone can edit, his listing on Wikipedia, he is not one of us anymore, attended several conservative conferences, the “sponsored by Pfizer” supercut, holding patents, they’re turning him into a piriah, he’s not invited on TV anymore, the drug lobby vs. the medical lobby, the military industrial corporations, what gets served to people at the grocery store, pretty good for a guy from the 1950s, lesser examples of science fiction, genuine science fiction, Ted Chiang, cold and clinical vs. rough and smokey, emotional but clinical, blue colours, a science fiction approach, Robert E. Howard’s style is muscley, Lovecraft, languorous, Asimov is jokey, Lester Del Rey is smokey and clunky, William Gibson is cool, non-fiction by Del Rey, a history of science fiction, a good book, New Wave science fiction, style over idea, he’s doing science fiction, setting a story in a science fiction universe (its in the future), about idea, the lobby idea, the core of this, stodgy science by having a big powerful medical lobby, the F-35, the new Top Gun movie, Jesse likes movies, F-18s, very expensive, orders of magnitude, F-22, F-14s, we need the thing that will work for the film, not showcase the technology?, its product is bad now, maximizing profits vs. maximizing benefits, intellectual property vs. helping people, the fentanyl crisis, sell max product, heroin, now you can’t use it any more, ivermectin is out of patent, Rachel Maddow and Rolling Stone, a story from August, fake stories that get spread around, official license from the government for broadcast, the bluecheck system (on twitter), the FDA gets funding from corporations, jobs in the industries lobbying the FDA, not viral enough, so depressing, constant lies all day, a comic strip, survive everyday, what effect it has on you, the poodle industry, more homeless poodles, dogs that need homes, abandoning pets, everything effects everything else, you have to inject this shit into your body, blood clots caused by the vaccination, look at the record, not true, they were lying, hoping, before they changed the definition, those clips are there, they don’t have their YouTube accounts deleted, this is how we sell it, most people are too busy, while you’re not paying attention they’re fucking you, good luck with that, born as a rich kid, the provincial premiere gets cancer treatment at the same hospitals, hesitant to take a chance, Paul got his 5th shot, a near death experience, paying attention when people get hurt, vaccination injuries are real, they seem to be ineffective, Cinnamon Sam, Coleman, Lexy-Lou, make some babies, Lake Norman Humane, cat trap, why am I in this cage?, a domesticated cat, lack of food security, a new cat owner again, you’re appreciated, Pursuit by Lester Del Rey, exploding cats, how can this not involve aliens, entertaining description, Dale Grothmann, only a two hour commitment, Black Priestess Of Varda by Erik Fennel, Nudist Camp by Orrie Hitt, The Pink Panther (1963), Lawrence Block, The Black Stranger by Robert E. Howard, he’s really good, A Night In Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny, Edgar Allan Poe, Blaze by Richard Bachman, The Cosmic Computer by H. Beam Piper, Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain, narrated by a dog, interior illustrations, Gahan Wilson is an acquired taste, The Starmouse by Fredric Brown, they make good microphones and good monitors, business practices and stinginess, premium materials, a true mono, the PDF page, The Clock That Went Backwards by Edward Page Mitchell, Back To The Future II (1989), a grandfather clock, New England, it’s a time machine!, the Netherlands, spawning the line that creates themselves, 1881, before everything, “All You Zombies”, super-creepy makes it good, The Monster Maker aka The Surgeon’s Experiment by W.C. Morrow, doing bad stuff in there, an illicit doctor, he’s a pariah, full circle, euthanized, he has some theories, super-scary, turned into The Hulk, becoming more primitive, no eyes and no ears and fed through a straw, a super scary horror science fiction story, 1887, a Victorian era science fiction story, published in a newspaper, At The Earth’s Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs, reading with your eyes, reading aloud, monks copying books, some house is on fire, the Mad Tea Party, Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland vs. Alice’s Adventures Under The Ground, the mad hatter, the Gribcast, David H. Keller, Futurama’s “snu snu” episode, The Little Husbands, a comedy piece, Amazon women, dress them up like little dolls, they could use them as dildos, implied, out of context comics, the writer’s barely disguised fetish, he was a psychiatrist, designed to be entertaining, male female relationships, sexual dimorphism, a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode [Angel One], Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Sweeper Of Loray by Robert Sheckley, a Sheckley expert, he’s different sometimes, Mindswap, Immortality, Inc., The Status Civilization, Dimension Of Miracles, what happened to John Hodgman?, he was the PC, The Daily Show, Coraline (2009), more Sheckley is always good, a novel by Sheckley, a contest, too many fucking Draculas, which racial slur?, cancel stamp, nobody cares, Olaf Stapledon, science fiction but not a novel, The Silmarillion isn’t a novel, legally they have to call it a novel, other fiction types, making an argument that’s supportable, Jesse is unpickable, Odd John by Olaf Stapledon, 194 pages, John Wyndham, A World Of Sound, a guy goes to the opera, falls asleep, has a dream, a musical world, Jesse’s analysis of it is beautiful, Paul won’t play Jesse’s don’t understand reality game, some things you can’t talk about, sometimes you have a really good show, a metaphor that makes the story better, Peter And The Wolf, pop star lyrics, its art but its not drama, Gustav Holst’s the planets, the new Bill & Ted movie, George Carlin, Rufus’ daughter, Gravity Falls, What We Do In The Shadows, Bogus Journey, nostalgia attached, saved the world, that’s your philosophy so much, one of the few things out there, music is dangerous, music is used to manipulate and control thoughts, expressing emotion, reading had a lot to do with it, read a lot more poetry, Ursula K. Le Guin’s poetry, The Next War, Deep In Earth, Shel Silverstein, Lovecraft made fun of one of his friends, a poem as a wedding speech, Strephon And Chloe by Jonathan Swift, no mortal race, such cleanliness from head to heel, no noisome whiffs, squat on her hams to make maid’s water, this goddess walking the Earth, cut to the bedroom, giggling, Jonathan Swift’s advice: 1. don’t drink too much beer or tea, 2. you have a special responsibility to the person you’re married to to not disabuse them of the ideas they have about you, reaches under the bed and puts something under herself, American Gods, eats him, she’s peeing into the chamber pot, a man’s job is to ignore women not being creatures not from heaven, its a woman’s job to not make them think that they’re not, The Hunting Of The Snark by Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain, this dangerous jingle, a plot point in The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester, a defense shield, ads, words control you, judo flip, if you don’t know this word you’re subject to this word, Babel-17 by Samuel Delany, language works as a weapon, Luke Burrage, too New Wavey, mid-period, his early stuff, Embassytown, The Dispossessed, the things that matter are locked, the things that don’t matter are unlocked, dispute the propaganda, Jimmy Wales is always begging, weaponizing facts, citations, a slightly better reputation is bad news, the wild west, academic research, a good starting point, academic papers are garbage, extra super nerdy, tons of these fake papers, American education vs. Canadian education (all one big evil family), Aye, and Gomorrah, a revisionist take on Scanners Live In Vain by Cordwainer Smith, not doing it for style, reaction against, we’re leaning into this shit, generally true, overlong, literary, the opposite of Lester Del Rey, a low tolerance for pretentiousness, Ursula K. Le Guin doesn’t show off, David Brin is not a supergenius (he’s okay and bad), so hit and miss, a period of science fiction where people were throwing crap at the wall, interesting, C.M. Kornbluth’s experiments are interesting, had he lived longer and written more Science Fiction, having co-written a famous book, bigger than Harlan Ellison, novels are really important for making him, nobody reads Harlan Ellison novels, he didn’t write science fiction!, Ray Bradbury makes a better case, lyrical spaceguy, a weird guy, reappraise Ray Bradbury, he wrote too much, nostalgia, anti-nostalgia, good short stories, as a percentage?, The Martian Chronicles is 1/80 of his output, The Toynbee Convector, four titles for one story, A Literary Nightmare.

Badge Of Infamy by Lester Del Rey

Badge Of Infamy by Lester Del Rey

Badge Of Infamy by Lester Del Rey

Badge Of Infamy by Lester Del Rey

Badge Of Infamy by Lester Del Rey

Badge Of Infamy by Lester Del Rey

Magabooks - The Sky Is Falling and Badge Of Infamy

ACE DOUBLE - Badge Of Infamy by Lester Del Rey

2 Complete Novels By Lester Del Rey In One Book

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