Tag: E.T.A. Hoffmann

The SFFaudio Podcast #786 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Radium Pool by Ed Earl Repp

The SFFaudio Podcast #786 – The Radium Pool by Ed Earl Repp, read by Thomas Copeland (for LibriVox). This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (2 hours 43 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Maissa Bessada, Will Emmons, and Terence Blake

Talked about on today’s show:
in Earth language, sorry everybody, Sophie Wenzell Ellis, another radium filled story, avoid radium, taking a long time to get started, WHAT!, so many explicitly catery characters, outer narrator, professor who explains things, meet a guy who who is looking for another professor, another professor, infodumper, chapter 9 tells us despite the counter evidence, that makes sense, me too I agree this story makes a lot of sense, if H. Rider Haggard were boring, Inception, oh yeah, that was a thing, awkward framing, August and September 1929, The Moon Pool by A. Merritt, an early popular science fiction story, sequels, sorry, cool cover with a lady in yellow, old science fiction, some shitty science fiction out there, completely unfuckin scientific, despite the gestures, Jovians from Jove, lovesick guy with a gun, getting the better, cheated by using telepathy, tentacles, a scientific fact, other than it’s a planet, a gesture at the distance, whatever, this story is so fuckin bad, Mars has already been done, there are good stories set on jupiter, Call Me Joe by Poul Anderson, The Radium Poul, Lester Del Rey, good ideas, not being so long-winded about it, Maissa speaks for Will, the same as Avatar, grow a Jovian, as in the original Avatar, a telepathic link, guy just lives in the new body, a centaur with a big axe, Poul Anderson likes vikings, downloading yourself into an avatar in reality, what Justin Trudeau is trying to do, become a leader of the people, the first 2 Avatar movies, waiting til we are ready for it, why they’re all the same, he’s good at what he does, Titanic (1997) is his worst movie, a long and a prequel for Avatar 3, do your own serialization, might as well just talk about Avatar, Jake Sully is fundamentally untransformed by becoming an indigenous leader, a football coach from Cincinnati, for the Navii that’s exotic, why he’s not so boring to them, what’s really happening in Avatar: the American audience inserts themselves into Jake Sully and downloads themselves into the movie during the running time of the movie, six years old and think its cool, he’s not a character you aspire to be, he is you, no qualities, the most frequent expression, the bad guy in the first one, too bad they brought him back, there’s a reason we don’t do a movie podcast, most movies aren’t very deep, playing with the water theme, The Abyss, a cool Cold Equations scene, you need to drown in order for us to live, with a solution, the aliens thing at the end, crazy guy with a nuke is enough, better than Terminator 2, radioactivity coming into its own, radium was touted by doctors and scientists, rejuvenation, it kills cancer, it killed all those women, Marie Curie, watches are time and immortal, some sort of high before you die, unobtanium, when radium is in abundance it has other qualities, scaling, a big pool full, also power your spaceships, homeopathic doses of radium, the opposite, it can eat off your fingers, burn the end of the barrel of your gun, garbage story, something very bad, we’ve all done bad, a humiliation ritual to cleanse, something special about it, from the period it is, a taste of 1929 is very refreshing, the way we think, Jules Verne, hollow earth fantasy, four levels of characters to explain one muscular action, too space-opera in fashion, E.E. Doc Smith, Triplanetary, 1934, the swing of the pendulum, Creatures Of The Light by Sophie Wenzel Ellis, Antarctica, Death Valley, you can’t stand being their too long, lack of research, infodumps, guys feelings, partners for a long time, alien shows up, I turned your girlfriend into my throne lady, a Sleeping Beauty moment, I can throw words at pages, diverges, the peridocity?, Astounding, Science Wonder Stories, more science, throw everything into this pot, king of the university, robot sentry and a wagon and a gun, editor at the journalist desk, we’re not reading the newspaper report, chapter 9, somehow I found it incredibly plausible, pad his expense account, this is not the newspaper report, another step out, censored at the end, plausible we can go to Jupiter, first they’re going to have to find some more radium that wasn’t drained away, a lot of Doctor Who, a serial, Enlightenment, the fifth Doctor, Peter Davison, companion pets, materializes on a ship at sea, Edwardian era sailing vessel, all the officers have telepathy, Turlough and Teegan and the Doctor are thinking, they’re racing in space, solar sail race, crewed by humans, the grog doesn’t work, the aliens who look like humans, so bored, there’s stuff here, cheating, treating the humans like pets, learned a word: ephemerals, word in back pocket, being bored and nothing to do, you can’t waste your time because you have to live forever, three score years and ten, in June Terence will be 70, somebody becoming immortal, mine shit, lord it over, big long speech at him, quite taken with that girl, best possible tautological name: Alley Lane, Jimmy Olsen, just plain ordinary folks with superhuman friends, Spider-Man, earnest reporter who’s on the beat, the twist is he’s reporting on himself, here’s a market for stories about pools, suckered in, pretty girl, not as green as expected, 40 years in the desert, hoping to meet her, got a bad rep, something super-redeeming, this doesn’t have that much, not as tedious as it should be given how it doesn’t pay off, it’s naive, not meta-level at all, several layers of explanatory sauce, a magic formula, I have to put the ingredient of scientific realism in, that way nobody can say, radium parfait, Mimic by Donald A. Wollheim, film’s not great, the problem with the film is just jump scares and has to fill two hours,

“the original MIMIC, the 1942 story by Donald A. Wollheim, is abt as close to perfect a science fiction story as you can find

1. HEAVY EARLY INFODUMP✔️
2. PAYOFF WITH A TWIST BASED ON INFODUMP✔️
3. 4PGS LONG✔️

MIMIC is highly suggestive. leaves u in awe. leaves u with ideas.

the movie takes 1 hour and 45 minutes – the story takes less than 9 minutes to read with your eyes, 13 minutes 34 seconds to read with your mouth

the movie takes 1 hour and 45 minutes – the story takes less than 9 minutes to read with your eyes, 13 minutes 34 seconds to read with your mouth”

stars some lady, Mira Sorvino, Charles S. Dutton, young Josh Brolin, Thanos, Cable, a fun actor, Jeremy Northam, Charles S. Dutton is a cop, buy food from local street vendor, now in the present, killed in his apartment, a metal box, the window is open, not actually a human, literally an insect that looks like a human, his trenchcoat is a carapace, some other animal mimicking another animal, swarm of its babies, chimney suddenly transforms into a predator, there are creatures out there that mimic humans, the awesome infodump, paid off, takes it one step farther, what if…, backstory about cockroaches spreading a COVID-like disease, Guillermo Del Toro, tweeting about Microcosmic God being in the public domain, neoterics, capitalism trying to happen, steal his ingeniousness, Theodore Sturgeon’s great classic, classic mad scientist buys and island and does Edison work all day, make a race of creatures do the work for me, tiny people, meth and probably radium or whatever, an evil god, materials and compounds and alloys, he steals their patents, that guy’s got too much power, same techniques, a nested idea of the story of Edison as a mad scientist creator, it’s also us, we need to build cave walls and sunscreen and french fries in order to survive, Blood Music by Greg Bear, usually he’s a horrible writer, a collection, Wind From A Burning Woman, who’s talking, what’s going on?, children born with mutated organs, wasteage, incredibly intelligent, takes most of the novel, slow with lots of information dumps, Vitals, you’re not good, had he died tragically it would have been must better for him, dead to Jesse, Darwin’s Radio, so slow, even the novel is good, the grey goo problem, make a machine that can make stuff automatically on an atomic level, the paperclip problem, the Grogu problem, cute animals from twitter, should I be sending this?, some sort of deermouse with peglegs eating lettuce, quite relevant, somehow enhanced, here’s a baby muskox eating some lettuce, incredibly racist, two racisms in a row, grappling with the king of the Jovians, a white beast, mental leap to Octavia Butler’s Dawn, tentacles, creepy crawly little tendrils, seem ugly to the explorers, arrogant and condescending, making shit up and throwing it on the page, having characters tell each other its very plausible, the radium powered plausibility machine, drink the pool, how dare you do this to a white man, something about a ‘spic, completely unnerves, Sands, you look like a ghost, you don’t look like a white man yourself, by jingle, second childhood, not the opening character, outback hicks who are racist, I’m second in charge of everything, I could destroy you with a wiggle of my tentacle, then I give a big long speech about how I like your girlfriend, and I keep her on this throne for reasons, and I’m going to take her back to my planet, for reasons, with her dad!, and you notice your gun doesn’t doing anything to me, well that won’t stop you from shooting me later six times in the head and that will stop me, I’m telepathic but I thought you were dead, I hit my wordcount, accepting a lot of shit, as an artifact it is a valuable lesson, understand the progress and changes, there’s some shitty stories too, the S effect, Nerves by Lester Del Rey, revealing atomic secrets, this story doesn’t reveal anything about anything, if this story came out today, would not be popular, the attack vector, it’s dangerous for children because they’re going to eat radium, manipulate the watch, a darkroom to show you that it worked, radium in its pure state, tritium glows green?, is there a dye?, radioactive isotope of hydrogen, luminous because of the alpha particles, phosphorous, most volatile, little bit of green maybe, copper, if you had it in a pool, you experienced the radium pool, no research done, fake fainted a lot, Freud started treating hysterical patients, hysteria was more common, one explanation, so oppressed, rebellious of deviant feelings through their bodies, listened to women, more narcissism, no real feelings, a social change, the evolution of the symptoms, how tight their corset was, special radium ribbed corset, keep your shape, as much as she wanted, marriage ceremony right now, have you forgot I’m a pastor?, the opposite of Chekhov’s gun, Munchausen’s threads, ends suddenly when Alexander the great comes in and chops it off, why should she faint?, telepathically knocked out, they don’t eat anymore, whatever, if you’re immortal, they ate all the radium on Jupiter, the story is stupid, in V they want our water, Michael Ironside, a Dutch historical story about occupation by Nazis, we call the the Visitors, V for Victory, V for Vendetta, the aliens that look just like us, they have to wear sunglasses, sex with the lizard man, lizard baby, the resistance against them, the Nazi party, Nazi occupation of Europe with aliens that were lizardmen, Alien Nation, the show was amazing, oppressed migrants, a movie with James Cann, hardboiled cop buddy movie with an alien partner, the human is racist against the aliens, mild mannered, strange culture, alien lady with no head, they solve murders involving the alien, manufactured by other aliens, the masters are not their, a shipwreck with 100,000 aliens, Fox show in the early 1990s, contemporary with Star Trek The Next Generation, is it weird to have a guy sleep with your wife, dating one of them, 1 full season and then 6 movies, a film first, parallel with, archive.org or youtube, it helps to be able to see things, the 80s is a weird time, women in the work place sort of stuff, Murphy Brown, ten seasons, presidential debate, there’s nothing going here, a different time, weird period of time, of this terrible story, not everything in the past is good, the Olemas sequel, why would I hurt them like this?, The Ones Who Stay And Fight by N.K. Jemisin, condescending and fascistic, goes off into an alley, quote mine it, an alternative universe, send information between alternate universes, observing our universe, our TV shows, a very American world, one of Jesse’s big objections, horrific videos of people being bombed to death, you condescending lady, the Heinlein solution, if you’ve been infected by observing our earth, I know what mis-mal-disinformation, you’re not equipped, its my burden, Ursula K. Le Guin, maybe she’s wonderful, mummy knows best condescension, mommy knows the right people to drop the bombs on, it just takes a few good surgical strikes on what people know, everybody Eloi, one Morlock, the worst treated proletarian, magically, more politically correct, our horrible racist evil world’s ideas, the CIA and the FBI, the secret judges and jury, killing people with the wrong ideas, apologize and sit still, it won the Hugo?, wow powerful story, am I offering good solutions for humanity, patting myself on the back, given what’s happening in Palestine right now, double down, the holy shit people are protesting, 500,000 people in London walking together can’t stop it, the price of being on the wrong team, let’s make a long list, always an excuse to drop bombs and kill people, object to the trolley problem I have to make a choice where the trolley goes, some people are not going to accept it, the response, a response to a false Omelas, a straw-man of Omelas, very much a Bartleby, The Scrivener, grit in the system, taking the metaphor literally, I’m better than Le Guin, sanctioning Biden sending arms and ammunition, I’m going to give you a condescending lecture, a movie that’s an antidote to all of this, Dream-Speaker (1977) TV movie, Cam Hubert, Angry 11 year old orphan Ian Tracey burns down his school, meets an Indian shaman and his mute companion, the authorities find out, blonde white boy, reform school, he’s hung himself, cut back to the Indian and his mute companion, please place me in a tree as was traditionally was done, school is a horror, institutions, it just is a horror, asking kids why they set things on fire, what am I supposed to do with this, residential schools, doing pretty well with their broken family out in the forest, an instinct in people to try to solve problems, cogs to be solved in problems, no alcohol should be imbibed, you think you’re fighting for something good, is there a possibility that you’re wrong, arrogance, interesting, more artistic trolley problem story, another objection, 3829, 1200 and something for Omelas, a lot to prove?, flourishing details, random paragraph, wear wings too, some are invisible, forbid the emulation of beasts, all honored, all sounds very nice, the triggering word is honoured, honouring her feelings, don’t honour feelings, not something to be venerated, kids don’t have the experience you have, couch it in another way, not the right way to frame it, stupid feelings, that was a silly thing to feel, you can wear as many wings as you want, we can still be friends, you need to be destroyed, targeted at race, 2018 and still talking about race all the time, racism exists, ingrained in a racist society, the nadir is the lowest, pinnacle, the worst kinda racism period, look at this huge problem and what caused it?, the kenosis, self emptying, on an ordinary level, maybe one day I will, grope around in the dark, starting with the idea that I don’t know, a big part of the solution, anti-kenosis, infodumping, solution dumping, moral dumping, best done through parable, that’s not a parable, oh my little sweetie, it’s okay that mommy runs drone programs, you’ve got something wrong with your car, sledgehammer, gets rid of the problem by getting rid of the people saying the problem, just delete youtube and twitter channels, mute it, give a warning, violence by having a video, goodreads, Omelas is pornography?, this is about abortion!, offended her kid was told to read, in her school English class, what ever happened, spirit and refreshment, she may not like it, millions of murdered babies, billions of dollars the abortion industry…, pornographic literature, demonic desensitization of our young people, the punishment of a child, about capitalism, if she was standing in line at the grocery store, Peel District School Board, emptied everything pre-2008, unfathomable, somebody talking about the red scare, number of professors fired for being communists, anti-woke (not censoring), a kind of hysteria that’s going on now, writers telling other writers you don’t need to read anything past 10 years ago, because other better writers, and token John Scalzi, you don’t need to read a Lovecraft story, lies you’re telling yourself, trust me the homework’s not worth doing, school library is a place to hide in the school, even in prison they have books, prison book programs, escape the horrors they’re locked in, a bulldozing non-thinking tactic, super-retarded, those people shouldn’t have those jobs, in favour of humans doing ok, because they’re ignorant fucks, mommy or daddy knows best, mommy vs. daddy, daddy’s meaner than mommy in the stereotype, oh sweetie, condescending like I got a boo-boo, old fashioned radium pool drinking black pilled anarchist with tendril face, giving lectures to professors, trolling me, a very bad story, it had a nice cover, produced, not much meat on these bones of the story, what did I do to my friends, not very deep, Thomas Copeland’s narration, university professor in English, his recordings of Paradise Lost, his productions, long stuff, Orlando, Furioso, Jerusalem Delivered, a classical education, unjustly forgotten science fiction, worthwhile, rock bottom, we’ve fasted and we’ve prayed, skeletons hanging on the wall, Lowdown Road by Scott Von Doviak, The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton, watch his movies, an ancestor to cyberpunk, science fiction-ish, watch The Andromeda Strain, good science fiction, race-against-the-clock, he knows his shit, Gilgamesh the King by Robert Silverberg, The Sword Of Welleran by Lord Dunsany, on the other side of the state, find the length, his novels are a little longer, he’s fun, fun and short, Hobbits!, Marimna, a dream story, the kings of all the countries, a cute story with beautiful description that he subverts somehow, Lord Dunsany’s in a restaurant, crazy man runs into the restaurant, The Hashish Eater, a doesn’t think about race at all Lovecraft, whimsy, entertainment for toffs, cozy, even when dishing out, quite cozy, In A Dim Room, a ghost story, a tiger in India, all the subsequent fracas is on Jorkens, very palate cleansing sort of reading, half-sold, Through The Gates Of The Silver Key by H.P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffman Price, The Weirwoods by Thomas Burnett Swann, reactive and doesn’t pull his punches, a sparky conversation, Arkansas, Kentucky, another Kentucky, mountains and hillpeople, reputation for being backwards, very foreward thinking, Sirius by Olaf Stapledon, smart dog book, they all want to get kisses instead of doing podcasts, The Cave Girl, no bad books, just less good books, a good way to start the year, The World That Couldn’t Be by Clifford D. Simak AND The Worlds Of If by Stanley G. Weinbaum, a double good show, the titles, inspired a magazine, kinda like an ACE DOUBLE, chocolate and peanut butter, that will be the homework for the podcast, draw a straight line from, modalized titles, Return From The Stars by Stanislaw Lem, Dark Carnivals: Modern Horror And The Origins Of American Empire by W. Scott Poole, strongly suggested, nuke Nice, take hostages, political experts, political views, The Devil’s Elixirs by E.T.A. Hoffmann, Matthew Gregory Lewis’ The Monk, minor capuchin, said by scholars, sort of a pioneer of a lot of interesting stuff, Poe ripped him off, 200 year old novel, Confessions Of An English Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincey, Drug Of Choice, At Time Of Changes, with beautiful art, mentioned in a Lovecraft story, interleaved the art, of things that are hot, 41,000 views over 11 years, 5 hours, comments on this video, transformed my life!, all addicts?, this is really interesting, learned more about drugs by not taking them, read it 50 years ago, well written, hallucinatory style, not modernist prose, from the era of the Romantics, 1821, here’s what I found, no image remains, the pains of opium, a BBC In Our Time, still a good show, podcast, did we miss anything?, parodied in Elder Scrolls, Morrowind, Scottish opium eater’s POV, Mount Analogue by René Daumal, the surrealists really loved it, symbolically authentic non-euclidean adventures in mountain climbing, treated in a science fiction way, famously finished on a comma, an audio comma, producing a short film festival, have lunch, commune, participation, fear to recommend, that would be homework, trick-or-treaters, not a light to turn on to summon them, never big in france, society is going to hell, can’t wear masks and demand candy?, protestors, invite them in, makes Jesse cynical, she’s popular, take it at face value, a good reply to Le Guin, way worse ideas, a big answer rather than posing a question, very American and not very universal, take it to Australia, right to be distressed, James Wallace Harris’ review, fairly bland takes, very clear writer, not a radical, doesn’t have strong opinions, angry ripostes, that’s sad, Lester Del Rey is a bad writer and great writer, Greg Bear is a great writer and a terrible writer, banger after banger, filling my brain with interesting stuff, is this the same character as the one on the previous page?, so good at sparky ideas, full of anger, go on to write Halo novels, so horrible despite the good ideas, despite the fact that Blood Music is great, he didn’t ruin it, Asimov ruined his stuff with Silverberg, married Poul Anderson’s daughter, fairly litigious about estate shit, nude pics of her cosplaying of Dejah Thoris or Red Sonja, Karen Anderson, 85 now!, temporary and long term, just recent stuff, Hardfought, great!, an old telephone operator switchboard, 10 hours on youtube, from Recorded Books, fake audiobooks, that’s not a human, Bears Discover Fire by Terry Bisson, the idea yes, cozy American, marshmallows around the fire, they don’t need fire, look manually, read with your mouth, creates an image, read with fingers, counting on your fingers, precise title, Frederik Pohl, Luke Burrage has mentioned it, an essay, Consumership by Margret St. Clair, Meem, kind of light, a lot of good worldbuilding for no reason, Three Worlds Of Futurity, A History Of Science Fiction Without Holes, The Man Who Sold Rope To The Gnoles, the title, take an ordinary expression and interpret it literally, one of the big secrets of science fiction, he knows diddly squat about science, there’s a Bevatron, even if he’s not New Wave, that forces you to be in a scientific background, go one step further, the whole and your life that way, that’s Philip K. Dick, a pure case of science fiction, being able to solve things, somebody tried, wanna use this for the cover of your book?, seven minute stories, need to be inspired by something, this is a really good story, Jesse, sent it to Eric, an excellent little story, pioneer uplift stories, build a robot and marry her in your basement stories, why everything is working, weird, and arrogant, The Basket by Jesse, this is a very good story, why shouldn’t you do a show on it?, lead the dance, maybe it is a great idea, not having other authors on to talk about their own work, what’s there to discuss, brings stuff out, not Dickian enough, The Exegesis, but what if, where’s that goddamn novel?, put on a different hats, story about hats and baskets, this picture is a story, how writing techniques work, The Man In The High Castle with the I, Ching, what’s the penalty if they don’t, get their grammar fixed, students play the game, boys love competition, they think it’s treat, Isaac Asimov’s Super Quiz, Bruce Jenner will be in there, pick a card, get to keep the card, aka the smartest person in the room, defeated their brother or this other kid in the room, that’s how kid brains are actually, busywork, makework, indoctrinated into school horror, sometimes it’s super-hilarious, who got up?, Bobina, young kids who need, could do anything, the program was more and more edulcorated, putting sugar in, the final exam, we’ve removed 1 result from this page, the only result has been censored by a copyright claim, medieval latin, India Love, the pornstar’s onlyfans, Instagram, allegedly infringing boobzone, a sex move, very rapidly, exam copies, straight-away, count as correct even when it wasn’t, very hard to get bad marks in English on the exam, special methods, minimum knowledge, some very short stories, half page stories, three minute videos, a minute and half, I’m against school, I’ve failed my life, I’m a school teacher!, that’s why we don’t like it, egodeath, killing your conformist self, the whole literal, Edward D. Hoch, the most delicious sin, the ancient sin, what is this sin?, mummifying himself, the story is profound because I don’t know what it means, suicide, this Karl Jung quotes, the one is the shadow of the other, seems interesting, psychological types, the four functions, the rival psychologists, Alfred Adler, Friedrich Nietzsche, like that Luther show, beyond Jung, Elmer Gantry audio, I could grow to love me, she’s a lot like the characters in The Fountainhead, a dominatrix, real love has all sorts of elements, I like reading his stuff, sharing his works, deeply flawed novels, dreading his phonecalls, shitty love, purified form of love, I don’t want to have power over you, hence the job of parent, more to make you think, a schema, will to power is not power over others except in its lower forms, to will it over and over again, because it has the name attached and picture, too guru, an all or nothing sort of thing, very ultimatumy, not even true for Jung, his alchemical phase, tortures and crucifixions, weird hermaphroditic result at the end, it has the shadow in there, a sentence, is that true?, this sounds interesting, makes sparks start flying, Omelas makes sparks go, you’re a monster, am I supposed to think you’re a monster?, a feel good libertalia, she’s tough love, I kill you if you think the wrong thing, maybe they read it and say you are so evil in this story, Beggars In Spain, yes, I’m a slan, the Hillary Clinton mentality, the most qualified person in history, whip me harder, mom, hence Trump, he has the right enemies, the joker card, a card working under cover for another card, he only works for him, all about him, the existence of billionaires, not a deep man, not my first choice, capitalism creates egomaniacs, one is an honest egomaniac, why this Jung stuff is so interesting today, all shadow projection, this Cirsova guy (Alex P.), we go back and forth, his critiques are pretty good, Paul has a problem with him, integrated into the microcosm, he’s on a team, reacting what’s going on in Israel and Palestine right now, same story as Ukraine but more heated, The Jimmy Shore Show covered Ryan Long’s skit, it would be really convenient to be a coma right now, at the end they’re dead, the reason the left hates Nazis so much, because they killed 27 million communists, pretty sure she’s not, see something they don’t like inside themselves, just trying to hate that person, poor vocabulary, Justin Trudeau, literally calling people to Nazis and then giving a standing ovation to a guy who worked for Adolph Hitler, there’s Nazis in Russia, what Putin is saying: we’ve got to root out the Nazis, they are definitely on the Nazi team given the Nazi imagery, totenkopf is one thing, dumped the imagery but kept the guys, kept the unity and the symbols and dumped the Jew hatred, nothing political on twitter at all, good for jokes, for links, get to meet people that way, either hyper-religious and autistic or mentally ill, I never see that, might be a listener to the podcast too, Roof Bears, weird people to get new insight into the world from, most of the time no feedback, one of them will bring good reaction, for maybe 10 years Jesse’s been poking Wayne June, what ancient wisdom was ruthlessly torn from the sacred archives?, are they fit?, what twitter is good for, poked Jonathan, a great sense of humour, ok robot, he’s very very dry, too dry, piss off?, hard to do tone, his communication system is too different, The Wall (1982), big long music video, Roger Waters words, politics, he gets stuff wrong, a great attitude, love Dawn Of The Dead (1978), it needs to be seen by political people, responds by becoming a fascist, The Quiet Earth (1985), Jesse is not a music guy, must be missing something, Wagner’s good, philosophy, science fiction, nothing, Tangerine Dream, music over the end credits, a beat in a scene where you get a montage, that’s something you like, we don’t need no education, political speeches, active politically, 1979, 1982 in the cinema, wife to be, Blade Runner (1982), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), El Topo (1970), acid western, Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013), this new Dune movie, dumbing it down, what they did to Jessica, can’t stop weeping openly, we’re not allowed to have narration or voice overs, one-dimensional, like a Cliff’s Notes, multidimensional, the TV adaption, why Lynch’s Dune is reviled, a book medium, people decoding each other, even Heinlein, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress has some action and some visuals, the martian one, Stranger In A Strange Land, of his adult novels, Dune is better than Stranger In A Strange Land, you need the ideas, you need the doubt, you need the multidimensional, different grids, good science fiction in writing, you need a demanding film, how much Blade Runner is able to extract from the novel, Mercerism, the owl, that’s enough, the dove, he’s a video guy doing a video medium, a little bit of this book, no fake police station, I want more life, fucker, the elevator scene, the eye scene, Gaff, a real idea movie, little stick man, a robot and robot love story, why the sequel is a failure, here’s the bad guy for the next movie, pretty good for being what it is, Ridley Scott has dumbed himself down, we didn’t need Harrison Ford, children and garbage, the political woman, we all whole through that, very N.K. Jemisiny, film editing, The Matrix (1999), took everything out about Zion out as irrelevant, take away the battery scene, The Thirteenth Floor (1999), eXistenZ (1999), David Cronenberg, he can’t help his fetish, bodies, opening them up and getting weird, Barry Convex, tripping over his own fetishes, kinda gross, long live the new flesh, even The Fly (1986), Crash (1996), vagina surgeon twins, Dead Ringers (1988), lingering over body trauma, reaching into his belly and inserting videotape, Lovecraftian, Videodrome (1983), with some judicious editing, The Electric Ant, he likes boobs, mainstream fetish, fit them in regularly, they don’t rot or explode or melt, very William Burroughs, with RoboCop guy, Peter Weller, Naked Lunch (1991), like a Cohen brothers movie with Cronenberg added, non-intellectual class, this is basically a film about cockroaches, Brazil (1985) a similar movie with political resonance, comedic riposte to Nineteen Eighty Four, the state we’re in right now, kids don’t get to mine back movies, old movies, almost impossible to find anything old on streaming services, the Orson Wells movie with the sled, people who enjoy making movies, Citizen Kane (1941), William Randolph Hearst, stuck with the dross, unwatchable, Oppenheimer (2023), Barbie (2023) by other means, a big ad for that, very meta, socially critical, unless Red Letter Media covers it, seeing this as a science fiction film, Tenet (2020), paradoxes, does the universe re-arrange itself, you’ve seen it played through hundreds of times, nonetheless, really clear, Goddard movies, traffic going by, Robert Goddard made movies?, Breakthroughs In Science by Isaac Asimov, lots of stuff in common between his fiction and popularizing history and science, the Roman Empire and the Roman Republic, see Foundation in a new light, figuring out the worth of things like that, don’t read anything since 2008, throw dice for the Hugo finalists, unfortunate, not in the microcosm, when some of the Hugos made sense, read science fiction all alone, starved for good books, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka, fan clubs, media people, like dressing up, they found their people, a little like university, you’re going to have a lot more interaction with people who like books, just enough true, Greg Bear was there, Harlan Ellison, Connie Willis, Robert Silverberg, Larry Niven falling asleep, the panels were like very weak shit podcasts, so many names mentioned, going through the list of all the names mentioned, here’s a long list of reasons why SFFaudio Podcast hasn’t won a Hugo, that’s exactly what it is, read a trilogy, three years too late, very time based cheerleading, we can still talk about an old book and be happy about it, a cheerleading squad for people in our niche, mostly not good, mostly very fluff, that show is so fucking long, goes hours and hours, Luke Burrage did an exercise, focuses on new books, some fantasy stuff, Alzabo Soup podcast, the Gene Wolfe Literary Podcast, The Fifth Head Of Cerberus, made it real enough to plunge into the stories, Marooned On Mars podcast, novel by novel, Kim Stanley Robinson, the other podcasts who follow new writers, some of them are good, somebody else’s job to read it for Jesse, that 1812 book, kicked around for 200 years, probably something to it, Hayy Ibn Yaqdhan by Ibn Tufail, two ibns, more intelligent than us, how dare it!, a good phrase, a Sufi scholar, re-written in the first person, Robinson Ibn Tufoe, in A Time Of Changes, without language you can’t get access to reality, it was good, reading all Silverberg is a life, Scott Miller’s Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, The Thing Behind Hell’s Door by Robert Silverberg, inside out world, a really good source, his enthusiasm, famous authors and some obscure thing, some obscure science fiction author we’ve, Watchbird by Robert Sheckely, going Sheckley crazy, shitty Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett humour, Sheckley was there first and better, a more diverse range, a lot like Philip K. Dick a little more sane maybe, R.A. Lafferty and John Sladek, Harry Harrison, The Stainless Steel Rat, just having fun, Bill The Galactic Hero, the narrator who did the whole series for Brilliance, what’s going on on facebook, heterosexual man got nude pictures from a teen girl, he was a good narrator, maybe he broke a law, Phil Gigante, Commentary, Rusty Rockets, Russell Brand, they took his monetization away, they should promote cancelling people, so very public, keeping him on there is pure profit that week, almost 5 hours.

The Radium Pool by Ed Earl Repp

The Radium Pool by Ed Earl Repp

The Radium Pool by Ed Earl Repp

The Radium Pool by Ed Earl Repp

The Radium Pool by Ed Earl Repp

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #784 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Skull-Face by Robert E. Howard

The SFFaudio Podcast #784 – Skull-Face by Robert E. Howard, read by Connor Kaye. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the book (4 hours, 5 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Connor Kaye, Alex, Trish E. Matson, and Jonathan Weichsel

Talked about on today’s show:
Weird Tales, October and December [1929], The Return Of Skull-Face, by Robert E. Howard AND Richard A. Lupoff, open for a sequel, paid by the word, hoping for a sequel, a bold statement, incredibly clear, the Mary Sue character is Steve Costigan, semi-modern world, super punch powers, a different same guy, WWI shell-shocked veteran, more, Conan in a cave, not the same as Sailor Steve, a wanderer with no ties, expecting Zuleika to die, a shell-shocked Stephen, The Insidious Doctor Fu Manchu, very similar, Seven Footprints To Satan by A. Merritt, he’s Satan, New York, missions, wear the ape suit, kill the guy, the ape suit, Murders In The Rue Morgue, The Curse Of The Golden Skull, a Lemurian sorcerer, [The Howard Collector (#9), Spring 1967], he’s already got the idea, Elmore Leonard, Karen Makes Out -> Out Of Sight, facesucking happens, kisses George Clooney, Double Entendre, a little pause, story proper, a huge mistake, a Poe poem fragment, Thule rhymes with newly, a misnumbered chapter, such a relish and enthusiasm to your voices, growl y work, soliloquy, throws himself at the bars, all poems?, Talbot Mundy, one Swinburne, a lot of Chesterton, Rubaiyat Of Omar Khayyam, magic shadow shapes that come and go, directly quoted, oh there it is!, the epigraph of the very first chapter, right up front, internal comparison, look at the two, more than 10 years, Fu Manchu continues for about 40 years, movies get a hold of Fu Manchu, Nicholas Cage as Fu Manchu, Thanksgiving, still hope for Fu Manchu, The Mandarin from Marvel, the Johnny Quest TV show, Doctor Zen, League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Ming The Merciless, the Klingons, the yellow peril stereotype, Kaiser Wilhelm II, excuses to conquer things, justification for what Fu Manchu is doing, the supposed heroes are archaeological graverobbers, pillaging of archaeological, the James Bond books, the opium wars, European exploitation in Asia, go Fu go!, the unmitigated better, a problem in this book, Skull-Face is racist, turn my blacks and my browns and my yellow, pan-Asian co-prosperity sphere, we’ll chop your heads up, empire no matter where it goes and what it does, playing these oppressed people against each other, seize power for himself, you white people, Howard was smarter, Robert E. Howard and Lovecraft think about their racism a lot, Steve work for this guy, he just saved you from hashish addiction, you don’t have PTSD anymore, the Irishmen who is the American who is Robert E. Howard, allies himself with the British Empire, conflicted here, to flourish, not that detailed, you could have been a king, the sequel book, curious, slash Skull dash Face, the flawed hero, legitimate grievances, Skull Face is Atlantean, as only Robert E. Howard can do, a living mummy, The Hour Of The Dragon, mummified, Acheron, LV-426, Richard Shaver, the prophet, Lemuria, Mu, Thule, amazing poem, Dream-Land by Edgar Allan Poe, the farther last l, out of of space and out of time for the rest of the poem, read more Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday, a John Buchan adventure that turns, who is the boss of the network I’m working for, a secret police officer, a smart and funny man, exotic Asian adventures, completely forgotten, having a lot of fun putting this together, playing in someone else’s sandbox, The Black Stone, what if it was Call Of Cthulhu, I read this story by my body, Tuesday class, D&D, wrote up a module, a rip off of the opening of this book, three boys, a recent realms war, hashashiri, an opium like propdict, marks their hands with a trilobite, steal some royal jelly, the unguent, to enhance his mumminess, train tracks walking from home Taito Bandito, directly inspired by, wrote down a dream,

dreamt the alien invasion of the earth began through vapes. dissatisfied humans got addicted to cheap alien vapes smuggled in from “outside”. incompetent earth govts couldn’t stop the smuggling. eventually the poors of earth preferred the alien health care plan that came with… …cheap vapes. the earth govts and their media lapdogs were playing up lies about health care concerns about the alien vapes, but were so corrupt and the lies so obvious that only a puritanical few bought into it. and when any of these got sick they took the alien health care. […] through human fronted proxies the aliens plowed profits from their vapes into real estate and started selling cheap housing to poors. 2 year mortgages. this really got earth’s human overlords mad. after 7 years, the aliens had successfully taken over the earth and most humans… …were absolutely fine with it.

didn’t think anything of it, smoking hashish, basically opium, is it possible to get addicted to hashish, concentrated marijuana tar?, withdrawal symptoms, brain fog vs. physically debilitating, martini withdrawal, cigarette withdrawal is intense, a headache, why hashish?, assassin, the same story almost as the old man in the mountain, People Of The Black Circle, Marco Polo, the old man in the mountain, a fantasy land, I have the power to send you to heaven, recruited to be an assassin, completely correct, why this story feels its substantial, Omar Khayyam (1957), the world trade center attacks, 77 houris, mixing them together, his first choice, chasing the dragon, Lord Dunsany talking about Lord Dunsany, I just came from the world you created, told like a straight story, the response to stories in The Book Of Wonder, the inspiration for Lord Dunsany style stories, eastern exotic sounding places, aiming for with the girl, Zuleika, white enough, a much more detailed racist, it’s a science, I’m a scientist, not just a wizard, recruiting business, one time dose reducer, get you addicted to another drugs, makes your arms strong, lacking something a little bit, the main character is telling his own story, our drug addicted PTSD hero is telling his story, the descriptions of things are more serviceable, he’s not a poet, published during his lifetime, not even the height of his popularity, Almuric, kinda sad, awesome beautiful description, kicks along, this Gordon character, the stand-in for Petrie and Naismith, amateur detectives/spies, secret police work in reality, go to Oxford, meet your friends, cut up the middle east, as a Robert E. Howard representative story, can’t fully root for the good guys team, chooses the wrong side, he likes his girl, being in the arms of a beautiful girl who he loves and trusts, a strong character, brave, initiatve, saves his butt a couple of time, animal magnetism, he got beefy arms, beefy guns, how quickly he blows through the layers of conspiracy and worldbuilding, secret catacombs under London, the Cult Of The Scorpion, pre-Adamite, any other author, we’re just going, The Shadow Kingdom, They Live (1988), also Plato, the myth of the cave, William Shakespeare, Philip K. Dick, a conspiracy against a footsoldier, a flawed character, too awesome, Solomon Kane’s flaw is he’s insane, he’s a religious whackjob, God’s vengeance on earth, a vessel, that just makes it better, a poem with Solomon Kane, a historical incident, The Hills Of The Dead, flying vampires, holding the Staff of Solomon, Dennis Dorgan or the Mountain Man stories, he’s fixed of that, who’s going to cut up Africa, the tattoo on his hand, a mission to impersonate somebody, ape suit, catacombs are fine, coulda gone so hard, could gone the extra way, cut my own path with my girl, living as a hermit in a cave, living in Celephais, a dead bum in the ocean, gone mad, the end, kinda pulpy at the end, from the very top tier, colourful muscular description, so morally degenerate, my morals had been so beaten, go through some struggle, survive drug withdrawl, willing to die to keep the girl alive, moving on, a ticket to solve his addiction problem, willing to go against Skull-Face, he should have been more conflicted about it, serpent men are not so bad, a lot shorter, saved Skull-Face’s life, we’re square now, you’ll be my slave forever, A Witch Shall Be Born, favourite Conan, he’s not Conan, Kull would be pondering, am I a shadow?, this is all weird, kind of is, supposed to be a realistic story, not this pure force of will, not even Sailor Steve, they search the mummy case, poking at it, hey you just let him go, mesmerism, a great scene, we as the audience know this is Skull-Face, let me look at this sarcophagus, just a dead body, can’t possibly be him, a little down on the art, page 33 of the 46 page one in Famous Fantastic Mysteries, in the foreground, looking very Aryan, over the shoulder of horror, supposed to be a horror story, how to make Skull-Face in the canny valley, skeleton with a bit of skin, an acquired taste, Hugh Rankin is not great, appreciate them, Conan By Tweet, muddy looking, they’re stylized, a sketch, not the same kind of line work as you see in Finlay, a legitimate master, quickly and cheaply, the opening art, scraggly nails, the Fu Manchu vibe, Egyptian for a while, the man who came from the sea will be their god, so good, the dry run for this, literally yellow, parchment like bones, the eyes are very sunken, you can’t understate how awesome, hot under the collar, presumed to be Zuleika, black people, an arab looking dude, and the web, this is the threat, all these races are against the Anglo-American global empire, more cartoony, I don’t like Skull-Face anymore, WWI, Big Trouble In Little China (1986), his best movie, the funnest, wry and clever, playing with tropes, this plot in a large sense, David Lo Pan, Fu Manchewy, marry a girl with green eyes, get his body back, so charismatic, fish out of water, friends with some Chinese guy, not my culture, fumbling and tumbling, he thinks he’s the white savior, he’s the sidekick viewpoint character, starts like a Lovecraft story, why did a whole block of Chinatown explode, Zugartha?, the adventure isn’t over, underground tunnels, black blood of the earth, drink this potion, skepticism of any authority, tied with humour, Howard would have liked Carpenter’s stuff, into conspiracies, conspiracy minded, do the blood test, put on these glasses, drink the potion as you’re going down in the elevator, Eight O’Clock In The Morning by Ray Nelson, The Ten O’Clock People by Stephen King, action sequences, They Live works as the premise, putting on a monkey suit, he’s smart because he looked at his shoes, why isn’t this a better known story?, the 15th thing you would mention, so much other stuff, for other authors, the standard is so high, prejudice against it because it is a pastiche, angling for a certain market, the most successful author of the time, Seabury Quinn, The Vampire Master, Agatha Christie meets this trope, Cora, a reference to Edgar Wallace, Boby Derie, the ideas that carry you not the prose, like a rollercoaster, the smear of not completed by Robert E. Howard maybe, no comic book, no movie, no TV show, a race war with the brown people, a very controversial movie, the new Fall Of The House Of Usher on Netflix, Evan Lampe, Mike Flanagan, Edgar Allan Poe checklist, The Haunting Of Hill House, Shirley Jackson, cheapens his own work, a hill haunted house, no modern writer can write in someone else’s shoes, modern to its bones, can’t adapt someone else’s work, post-modern, not such a problem, so pervasive, everybody is doing it, William Gibson, same with Sword & Sorcery, Fritz Leiber was good, an exception, two Conans!, one is small one is big and they like girls!, there is a dangerous threat to white supremacy, a threat to democracy, a threat to the west, a threat to the rules based older, not international law, aka we say what goes, thinking white supremacy is bad, George W. Bush, make democracy happen, Professor Moriarty starting WWI, something similar here, start a war for reasons, I’m leading the brown races into victory, hah! suckers I’m not actually Egyptian, deciding where to put the twist, good things and the bad things, anticipating what the students like, there’s a beautiful woman: the master needs you, the 9 year old thinks girls are yuck, all identical beautiful daughter, a blue stripe a yellow stripe, everybody gets a love interest, champion you to her father, having so much fun with this story, you want to have an introduction to Robert E. Howard, a lot of understanding, take it at face value, a college student, do you think this is his most racist story?, Black Canaan, The Hyena, where this story fumbles a little, Limehouse, only 48 houses, not at his strongest when not describing Texas, New Orleans, the book research showing, beautifully told, the East of Africa, the racism, super-racist, a werewolf story, a were-hyena, tricking his acolytes, Hasim, a brute, so is the Afghani henchman, disposable characters, a rich field, the assumption that it would work, all those people, undead Atlantean necromancer, such a bad enemy, the situation in Djibouti, in 1977 the French said…, France is like yup, just looking at the history, a home invasion, almost a century goes by, divesting of colonies, gun pointed at the floor right now, this guy isn’t leaving, mutual security, a treaty between two equal countries, hey Italians, Italy sits on the couch with a big gun, Russia would you like a military base next to France?, within walking distance from each other, at what point did that independence come filling the house with potential foes, right near the Suez canal, Panama Canal, Noriega stopped talking orders, they don’t call it that anymore, revolt against the guy who won’t leave your country, not the ideal leader, so vague, grow a lot of bananas?, more sarcophaguses out there, the first one to awaken, if this was a movie, the last shot would be a bunch of sarcophagus floating, the sequel comes out and it, this time a lesbian Skull-Face, licked together, on youtube, commenting and liking, released as one audiobook, as fast as possible, an American accent, getting tired, the accent slipping off, are they called thick accents?, strong accents, not a very sweaty Australian accent?, Crocodile Dundee was ocker Australian?, British texan accent, when you think of horror books, Razorback, so many great Australian horror movie, The Cars That Ate Paris (1974), art film Paris, a car movie, an Australian biker movie, specializing in car chases, terrorizing gangs of bikers, Soylent Green (1973), a Volkswagen beetle with spikes coming out of it, gang takes over town movie, Christine, Trucks, Dead End Drive-In (1986), aka regular Australia right now, juvenile delinquents, Brave New World but with movies, dystopian drive-in, escape the drive-in, so many good films, so lucky, whatever video stores, a lot of video stores, previously not rewound, a big thick thousand page book of every movie on VHS, so much treasure, do a rental, nightmare, late fees, when you buy a movie, come back never, a great pleasure we still kind of have, so hard to search through now, JustWatch service, Plex, pirate any movie you want, Tubi has the best set of movies, Prime’s pretty good, Netflix, Shudder, Razorback (1984), Stone (1974), Bubba Zanetti’s my hero, Cinefamily, victims of the me too movement, are you an attractive woman, still can’t get work, secret job, all the shareholders (board?) got an anonymous email about an anonymous woman, a non-profit, Alamo Draft House, things to pirate, if you could choose only one country per decade, Americans made a lot of good movies at one point, Britain made some good movies, an exciting time for world cinema, each country wanted to be that new dominant, Italian movies, French producers, American actors, Dreamspeaker, (CBC tv Movie 1976), they adopt him, runaway kid who burns things down, sympathetic judge, that was unexpected, mute companion slash husband, put in a tree and let their corpse be eaten by birds, a Vancouver Island bases sort of story, Thunderbird blanket, a pretty brutal ending, a TV movie that came out on TV in the 1970s, child suicide, kid strangling himself, dies of broken heart, this is impossible, Jesse loved it, Chief Dan George, George Clutesi, Kelly (1981), realistic vs. Hollywood ending, about the horrible institution that school is, her blind friend, sets fires to things, go live with your dad, robs a bank, these two movies so like each other, kids being institutionalized, people like a happy ending, times for certain mediums of art, that was Jonathan, Dead Calm (1989), boat sabbatical and Billy Zane shows up, music in the 1970s, The Beatles, the next big thing, unique and original music, one guy would become the next big thing, a bit too calculated, new service bringing in tons of cash, throwing money at weird things, get a hit with any of these things, a short period of experiment, the president show, House Of Cards, Robin Wright Penn turns to the camera, a condemnation of the actor, a meta-thing, grievance on screen, all the 1980s movies, Stranger Things, Extraction (2020), a low budget action horror movie, Prey (2022)?, Slash/Back (2022), one of three Canadian territories, Nunavut, Yukon, North-West Territories, so much heart, some social issues, tremendous fun to watch, Reservation Dogs, APTN, The Beachcombers, a fun discussion, Wolfen (1981), Poltergeist (1982) with skyrises, irony, Whitley Strieber, 80s UFOlogy, considering doing a podcast, write my book, the picture that Alex is going to delete, a Yeti Nano, Elgato low profile mic arm, iphone 11, upgraded, android guy, more thinkpads, working for Lenovo, a T510, Skylark Dequesni, start wt, pocketknifes, arm a youth gang, brand new keyboard, lowprofile mechanical, cherry ultralow profile, $99, swing over, Blue now owned by Logitech, it’s Swiss!, $20, XP was running, downgraded, 7 was good, law firm as the head of IT, bought out, three month notice, wind everything down, a ton of laptops with no legal owner, shrug, cases and cases, they go in waves, what laptop should I get?, LGR (Lazy Game Reviews), old computer hardware, 45 hours researching laptops, modular, no glue, fixup and give to homeless person, engage that much with the local homeless, Connor must run a laptop, a little bit of noise, from the fan, too intense, good specs for processing videos, limit the processor, 10% of its power, put it across the room, connecting it to a monitor, quickly edit things, a luxury, if you travel, a suitcase style computer, everythings embeded like a tick, millions of files, half-processed, these torrents are on this harddrive, Gulliver Of Mars, The Languages Of Pao, a Don Pendleton, Thunderball, From Russia With Love, came from Trish, Eaters Of The Dead, a fun book, look how thin it is, Sands Of Mars, The Song Of The Whip, cylindrical black thing, the one with the martini, deleted by now, wireless hockeypuck, lightbar, brand and product number, scrutinizing the photo, two middle names, investment companies, hey we’ve been hacked, very popular, it doesn’t take up any deskspace, electric standing desk, cable managment, Uplift desk, an old Ikea Jerker, you should make a website for this there’s money top be made, servicing these desks, facebook page and reddit threads, these desks dont die, super-customizable, modular like Lego, standing desks didn’t exist, they were not an idea yet, sit-stand desks at work, back problems, you shouldnt be sitting for 8 hours a fuckin day, sat with a rigid back, you know actually it’s good to slouch a bit, lied to their whole life, running around with sticks in the forest, thrown into a canoe taken to a farm, left in the library for 18 hours, students that can’t recognize animals, schools so fucked up, scare them straight, its like prison, homeschooling, grow up without huge neurosis and giant deficits, Poland farm work, the culture in this small village is so fucked up, next generation of toxic bullshit, a lot of bullying, the Aryan Nations gang, prison mentality, a daypass to go home, traumatized, empire building, told one thing as a kid, margarine is for lubricating metal at a cheaper price, I Can’t Believe We Were Lied To, the irony of life, plastic bag tablet to dye it, the butter lobby, mush it together, whenever the topic came up, hasn’t grown any mold on it, something you can eat and not die from, a rock will pass through you, not something that’s supposed to be in a human body, food pyramid, students back to back, early Russian Revolution history, the three precursors to the NKVD, Kadets, three political parties vying for power in 1919, designed to show how the Russians were bad, the old curriculum, the regular history of India, massacre in Amritsar, policy of being evil, decided to breakup the country, this is the British doing that, divide and conquer, we don’t learn that much, a hateon for the Russians, 2014, the Holodomor entering Canadian curriculum, have them read The Gulag Archipelago (is 75 hours), there’s a prison system, not a complete picture, the focus is on the things you want to make them think, The Trail Of Tears, why school is evil, testing you on the adherence to these lies, what next?, There Werewolf Of Ponkert by H. Warner Munn, The Devil’s Elixir by E.T.A. Hoffmann, unabridged, wacky stuff, may need more time, books to do, Februrary next year, that coffee bud, vodka, loosens you up, maybe the show wouldn’t be so good.

Skull-Face illustration by Hugh Doak Rankin

Skull-Face - illustration by Hugh Doak Rankin

Skull-Face - illustration by Hugh Doak Rankin

Ken Kelly - Skull-Face

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #746 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Shadows In Zamboula by Robert E. Howard


The SFFaudio Podcast #746 – Shadows In Zamboula by Robert E. Howard – read by Mark Nelson for LibriVox. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (1 hour, 26 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Connor Kaye, Alex, and Cora Buhlert

Talked about on today’s show:
Weird Tales, November 1935, The Man-Eaters Of Zamboula, a better title?, conforms to the Weird Tales title aesthetic, the problem, a second meaning, shadows is nebulous, cannibals, all in one night, just before dusk, the evening, a little sleep, a naked lady, a little adventure, buys a horse, leaves town, the magic ring, a roomful of gold, it makes a person irresistible to the opposite sex, lesbians are acknowledged, a gay subtext in one scene, the strangulation, Baal-Ptor, any temple wench, devil dick, the Hannuman temple, a penis, a strangle-off, his boss calls him that, that’s pretty gay, a great scene, I started with babies, and he dies, pro-cannibal, who is put in what position and why, Mark Nelson, Aram Baksh, Ralph Bakshi?, a lot of mistakes in various people’s analysis, he’s not bearded in Savage Sword, the Ablaze, he’s a bum, they’re companions, Bedouin, a middle eastern , they’re on a team, stole a horse from the satrap, don’t stay there, hookah bar, gambling den, the sword maker’s bazaar, yelp reviews, unchronicled adventures, random desert tribes, the kind of thing he tends to do, Doctor Who, for plot purposes, what city it was supposed to be, Constantinople, the western edge of Turan, Mosul, Palmyra, the comic version, Conan recognized her from the start, assumptions, 2nd to last Conan stories, he knows what’s up, full of things that should trigger people and alleviate those things, supple warriors, hawk-faces, the lords of Zamboula, ancient glories, over reading much, glowering about ancient glories, flaunting their myriad colours, loving, towers and minarets, an infodump we need to be surprised lady, judging, smote is a negative, they’ll think he’s a wizard and eat Paul, delighted as all heck, but it might stink, open sewers, third world places, Kathmandu and Nepal, loud, the Ottoman Empire, multiculturalism, hybrids and mongrels, Cross Plains, Texas, modern day Lebanon, influenced the crusader stories, cities are described negatively, civilization is corrupt, what’s cool about this story, everybody’s got their angle, subsidize sales by selling the stuff of his guests, Robert Bloch, an H.H. Holmes story, Solomon Kane, A Rattle Of Bones, The Inn In The Spessart aka The Spessart Inn by Wilhelm Hauff, join our gang or we’ll kill you, film adaptation, how they got put into that position, meat as part of their religion, let out at night like cats, steal from their masters, as they should, our heroine, they’re too valuable, they’re our property, Zamboula is dependent on their slaves, let them eat travelers and street people, Nefertari, secure her position, what happened and her story, she makes it up on the spot, the Ablaze adaptation, literally naked, her hair is covering stuff, a standard trope, the R-rated, a loin cloth, we never see a nipple, important to understand, of course we want titillation, her clothes would giver her away, silken robe, a slave who’s mute, she’s just lied to that guy, you can trust him he’s not a man-eater, Aram Baksh gets his tongue cut off, don’t eat me!, the moral, the better put together this story is, a murder mystery, set piece scenes, a conan pastiche person, The Curse Of The Monolith just rips off that hole idea, magnetic table, the Virgin Conan The Barbarian computer game, a worldwide phone company, a DOS game, a bridal sword, live out the fantasy, Virgin Bride, a bug, what we see in the Conan movie, what’s in the comics, somebody did some research, you’d lose your sword, slip that ring off the finger, he doesn’t tell us until the end, very well put together, looking for something, Conan has already stolen it, worldbuilding and setting, oh yeah that’s right, back to Paul in a flash, an article, Charles R. Saunders, quibbles, all of Sword And Sorcery, as a black person, fascinated by Africa, boxing fans, a bad website, Howard vs. Lovecraft and Clark Asthon Smith, Black Gate, Bob Byrne, Steven H. Silver, why Man Eaters Of Zamboula is the best of all time, the most quintessential, is that defensible?, the most Conan of the Conan stories, best ever written, best story of all time, compelling points here and there, part of a contest they’re having, when you’re arguing for something like that, worse stories by Robert E. Howard, worried about getting this one, a terrific story, Vale Of Lost Women, with some issues, a higher high within it, this isn’t even close, Red Nails, Queen Of The Black Coast, what happens, become more refined, word choices, a mighty theme, the theme in here is strong, what you need to do in life is be the smartest man in the room and have strong hands, offering sex, this story undercuts our expectations and goes away with a bag of cash, getting tired of writing Conan, an amazing finish, really interesting thesis in the center, laser beams, magnets, electrical magnets, the magic in here, science, superscience, radium gems, the priest is all gadgets, toned down, science or magic, cannibal slaves, the colours are more muted than other Conan stories, the setting, he gambled it away, he knew what he was doing, brawn, smarts and skill, a complete Conan, a stupid brute, play dumb, subvert your expectations, fresh to civilization, a Conan who’s seen some things, wily Conan, miles under his belt, confident enough in himself, professional strangler, an intense scene, Conan the conartist, The Jewels Of Gwahlur, Pelishtim, the mercenaries that guard the city, Nefertari, Nefartinti, Stygian, worships Set, the monkey god, on the cover of Savage Sword, clothes on and blonde, the scary monkey god, his representative, his boss,lusting after our girl, Yog, the Darfari slave god, Crom, Erlik, competing ideologies, some to swear with, strong demands, promote human happiness, sacrifices, go to the casino and lose all your cash, every man the strengths of his hands, a god for atheists, cosmicism without reference to the cosmic, prayer doesn’t make any sense, what would Evan say?, what the slaves are thinking, it fuckin sucks to be a slave but we get to have a religion, foreign bastards who are enslaving us, I’m the guy who sells you bodies to eat, they want to revolt, leave the citizens away, their shields on their back, the most powerful woman in the city, Hanuman’s temple, the heart of the story, marble walls, there’s no gate, each building has its own wall, horns, an Agatha Christie sort of scene, barbarian senses, a high perception tense, the reason he has such good hand sensing is because he’s a meat-eater, not a human meat eater, to get revenge, a man-eater too, a secret door, a giant hand, little maze, our guy sitting on a divan, back and forth allusions, The Odyssey, the guest host relationship, a really big theme, a bad relationship with the guest or the host, when they get broken bad things happen, the host comes home, Circe’s island, turn my men not into pigs, a reinforcement of this value system, how to be in a person’s space, that’s what we have here, taken by many different owners, a rival, this door is barred from the inside, climb over the wall, that pit, the slaves can leave the city, they can’t leave, they’ll die, imagine this: and we do, sexual stuff, dragon fight, stuck in somebody else’s feud, more adventures, a central core, he’s really saying something here, who else can do that with this material?, role playing things, Stygian origins, Turan, nightstalking Darfari cannibals, covetously eyes, intrigue and adventure, compared to Shadizar the Wicked, a spider god at the center of it, John Milius stole from every story, he stole from the best, Set’s temple, springing up in all the cities nearby, a power struggle, I salute you, I got a job for you, go get my daughter, snake vs. elephant, sneak into the temple, the satrap is going to be happy, rage induced coma, captain of the guard, its a job, she dosed him, she’s bad, everybody here is bad, a woman naked in the city, slightly deceiving, I’m sorry I lied to you, Conan doesn’t react, Conan doesn’t ever lie, not being chivalrous, nobody has any honour, he saves her from the cannibals, they were stealing her, if they ate the mistress, supplant the satrap, ruled by his mistress, went wild and tore her clothes off, street bum prophesying doom, his hand on Conan’s arm, speaking to him as a brother, a mini-version of the whole piece, his instinct for story is better than almost anybody, writing for a particular market, the chapters and the headings and the nude scene, the scenes that he has to have, the girl threatened by a magician, a similar scene, this ancient mummy, People Of The Black Circle, pretending to be a statue, clothes swap, a whipping scene or something, if he doesn’t get the cover he doesn’t get the bonus, magic, not in The Hour Of The Dragon, all the cities have wizards, John Dee scrying on his mirror, they fucked up, resurrection is a bad plan, that’s how Christianity started, self-ressurection, Jewel Of Seven Stars by Bram Stoker, a pretty damn good story, the Ablaze adaptation, naked the whole story, the art, black god, wonderfully portrayed, undialogued pages, Æon Flux, she looked off the whole book, to actually depict it, naked as the day she was born, a person naked in an unwalled city, at the end, she drops her lover off, is it because every piece of clothing would give away who she is?, giving Margaret Brundage a chance, the cover with the cobras, not unusual for her, how she normally dresses, that very pale skin, on a pirate ship topless, pale is beauty, the guy grew up in Texas, not a wise idea, shock the other guys by flashing them, she’s acting as a goddess, the colour distinction, the palest of pale skins with black hair, Cora is trying to make it make sense, a magic toe ring, breast bobbing, at night, hide from the Pelishtim, when we see the guy’s eyes, contrast with Conan, gets a feel, resisting eating her, playing off each other, lascivious men, the priest wants her to be his, a friend who says look bud, a man who drinks to much is crazy, tearing her clothes off, minutes ago, dragged away from his own bed, not the first time it happens to him, Black Colossus too, a nice theme, as is the reader, puts off his vengeance, a side story, get your priorities straight, save the boyfriend, kill this priest, her motivation is no one can no, I need an outsider, Vera Cruz (1954), Burt Lancaster at his hottest, don’t do that movie with Burt Lancaster, Gary Cooper, he’ll blow you off the screen, old cracked faced men in westerns, way more charismatic, the main attraction, the plot is kinda similar, mercenaries from the American Civil War, working for Emperor of Mexico, an Austrian guy, see each other at this dance, a beef with a high mucky-muck, the glove, you’re not even important, give each other the chin nod, the Kirk and Bones gif, Denise Darcel, Sara Montiel, cowboys not European royalty, why westerns are really cool, stole a horse, shooting each other in the streets, the Winnetou stories, River Of No Return (1954), Duel In The Sun (1946), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), meta-westerns, a baby across the desert, when is Connor gonna do Howard’s western stories?, how many westerns there were, Steve Costigans, Breckenridge Elkins, his bread and butter, better and more promptly, Action Stories, Fight Stories, a bigger market, niche, how many western TV shows, a legacy, leftovers, westerns now, spaghetti westerns, silent westerns, Western Von Gestern, what Alex Baldwin tried to do, the way TV was supposed to look, westerns or war movies, all the men were old, pulp westerns, Zane Grey novels, short stories from the pulps, something you have to come to appreciate, a set of tropes, its a genre, values that are different, follow the law, follow orders, soccer match on Christmas, what happened to the guys who did it?, war movies serve a purpose, westerns are bottom up, American mythology, do they study SF at university now?, do they study westerns?, Astounding is the training for our engineers, leave town, go to the west, a national mythology, looking backwards, Clint Eastwood, looking at the future, a generation after the west was closed out, the kids or the grandkids of the generation being portrayed, they don’t study romances at university, specialized academics, finding a science fiction class was pretty hard, the Women’s Studies, looking down because it is bottom up, and some women, Range Romances, one of the longest running pulps, Railroad Stories, railroad fiction, you want a union? fuck you, good pay, high tech, like being a truck driver, dangerous, long hours, no time off, bad healthcare, Germany vs. Australia, considered a good job, a secure job, capitalism hasn’t taken over Germany completely, Space Viking by H. Beam Piper, four weeks in a row, people have weird desires, women, man, The Venom Business by Michael Crichton, Rocket Ship Galileo by Robert A. Heinlein, Unseen-Unfeared by Francis Stevens, The Hopkins Manuscript, Alec Nevala-Lee, The Crawlers by Philip K. Dick, The Golden Slave by Poul Anderson, off to farmville, Skull Face, a Steve Harrison story Names In The Black Book, Coming Attraction by Fritz Leiber, never been done before, don’t waste Connor, on Conan duty or Robert E. Howard duty, The Thing On The Roof, a cool description, hear the nipples on the roof, Robert E. Howard doing H.P. Lovecraft, “Hooves In The Night”, Unaussprechlichen Kulten, German speakers, a Justin Joffrey poem, August Derleth, wonky, Canadian public domain, M.S. Corley art, comic book adaptation, a Marvel Chillers version, weird tales sort of material, you get hooked, Howard via Conan, gonna make you a Nazi, Lancer paperbacks, really good, pastiche, boxers who go sailing, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, based on publication date and renewal, nothing to do with death, Robert Silverberg, Harlan Ellison, Condé Nast, work for hire, hero pulps, written under house names, Howard horror, Pigeons From Hell, Old Garfield’s Heart, Steve Costigan, Francis X. Gordon, a useful resource, Mark Finn, the far future, The Devil’s Elixir by E.T.A. Hoffmann, an early robot story, The Sandman, ignore the interesting good for the dull, unsuitable for teenagers, 12 hours 24 minutes, four months, E.T.A. Hoffmann and Edgar Allan Poe, doppelgangers, this story is that story minus all the long parts, The Oval Portrait, a lot of overlap, Poe inspired The Student Of Prague (1913), retreat on the shore of Lake Geneva, Bohemian ghost stories, German romanticism and gothic literature, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Influence Of E.T.A Hoffmann On Edgar Allan Poe, Connor is sick, regular sick, Hard Case Crime, epub or mobi or PDF, Google Books, look at screens all day long, screens less, had you not known a pirate…, 3kb, a remainder bookstore, ebook device technology, eink colour is not rich, snow?, vasculitis, autobahn, bahn means train.

Shadows In Zamboula - ad from WEIRD TALES

Shadows In Zamboula - Margaret Brundage cover for WEIRD TALES

Shadows In Zamboula - Vincent Napoli illustration from WEIRD TALES

Shadows In Zamboula - art by Margaret Brundage

Shadow-God Of Zamboula

SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN - Shadows In Zamboula

Neal Adams and Tony DeZuniga - SAVAGE SWORD

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CIMMERIAN: The Man Eaters Of Zamboula - art by Mike Krome

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The SFFaudio Podcast #619 – READALONG: Lies, Inc. by Philip K. Dick

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #619 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Marissa Vu, Evan Lampe and Will Emmons talk about Lies, Inc. by Philip K. Dick

Talked about on today’s show:
also known as The Unteleported Man, a movie title, confusing the audience, this whole book is basically terrible, very dream like, Trails Of Hoffmann, Philip K. Dick gets grit in his brain and like Lord Runningclam starts forming a pearl around it, E.T.A. Hoffmann, an opera, kinda Poe and Philip K. Dick combined with fairy tales, The Sandman, one of the vignettes,the seed for this name, the seed, a 1975 Philip K. Dick interview, shooting the shit, Richard A. Lupoff, getting out the the field, you cant trust anything writers say, that’s bullshit, I was chatting up his wife at the bar…, the Lupoff’s that in here, lots of gems, reconstructed and constructed, its got everything, leadies, why are leadies in here?, another Plato’s cave analogy, recycling, Faith Of Our Fathers, the para-universe, written around the same time, flapples (one for the rhetorizier), the labour forces, The Crack In Space, human kipple, Malthusian logic, a good novel inside of this mess, a 1950s Dick novel, that frontier stuff, in the 60s he turned on the frontier, the moral core of the novel, a pastiche, dip into everything, I’m going to do Philip K. Dick for you, the rat, so familiar, Doctor Bloodmoney, Doctor Blood, so Philip K. Dick universe, conapts, if you were writing a rhetorizer, better works, more coherent, not put together, The UnUnTeleported Book?, he’s dealing with Nazis again, looking it as a coherent whole (even though it isn’t one), its Stalinism, Treblinka, Zyklon B, distinct experiences, here’s a twist…, spending 11 minutes describing every Philip K. Dick book, this is a really weird book, The Man In The High Castle, its not really our reality, not our world, its the ovens, there is no teleportation device, Mindwarp (Doctor Who), a microwave, Ben Applebaum’s job, there to prove the ovens are real, rumours of the Death Camps, the Germans have taken over the U.N., deNazified and running the space program, The Man In The High Castle, The Simulacrum, Doctor Bloodmoney, “I’m worried the United States is becoming a Nazi nation”, Now Wait For Last Year, African space war, the first Dick novel Will ever read, the giant LSD sequence, so weird, the out of place, the THL soldier, the chapter in Doctor Bloodmoney that’s out of place, super crazy heat without airconditioning, A Scanner Darkly, Faith Of Our Fathers, The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch, enjoy your mind expansion, another opera connection, The Flying Dutchman, The Wandering Jew, Richard Wagner’s anti-semitism, let’s celebrate Flying Dutchman day, eighteen years later, Dick knew Wagner better than any of us, gotta find love, Roger Zelazny, Marie Celeste, sening messages to people long dead, Brigadoon, Marissa’s opa, his opaness, he’s talking about himself, Oomphalos, Dick going in to get his car impounded, a sexy meter-maid, articulated breasts, the new fropntier isn’t a death camp, The Expanse, Frozen Journey by Philip K. Dick, blacks and browns being frozen, The Crack In Space, extended dreamtime, busy shaving, cheeseburger crumbs, Fred’s gonna take my string, this is how dreams are, dreams and writing lies (fiction) are related, sending messages that the police are your friends (propaganda), accessing Dick’s dreams, when he starts getting these images into characters minds, the women a little less so, a terrible car collage of good Philip K. Dick stuff, looking it as dream notes makes it more valuable, the end, such a cool story, it unraveled, read more novellas, less than half the size, 29,000 and 31,000 of new material, put three stories together, the ped runnels, Our Friends From Frolix 8, We Can Remember It For Your Wholesale, flapples (deflapple), if you kinda squint, a consistency despite it being so messy, autofacs all over this book, from a different phase in his career, Dick is very bothered by the solipsistic experience of dreams, why is CAN-D better than CHEW-Z, a gestalt experience vs., what’s so great about Galactic Pot-Healer, a church community, Faith Of Our Fathers, a diversity of experiences, a shared experience, a shared reality, para-worlds, something that joins us together, Eye In The Sky, Evan should write a book on Philip K. Dick, Evan has unlocked the key, a foundation for solidarity, striving for a shared perspective, we’re afraid of cohering, the true reality behind everything (is horrific), quantum stuff, his other works, a jarring thing, it becomes real, getting into politics, American politics, a very American ideology (to not want to talk about something is wrong), a similar cultural background, murky things, the hypothetical natives, from Chapter 13,

Hoarsely, its voice thickened by the mouthful which it still continued to chew, the creature said, “Good morning. I have your book for you. Sign here.” One of its pseudopodia convulsed and its tip lathered in a spasm which, after an interval, fumbled forth a bulky old-style bound-in-boards volume which it placed on a small plastic table before Rachmael.

“What-book is this?” he demanded, presently. His mind, numbed, refused to interfere as his fingers poked haphazardly at the handsome gold-stamped book which the creature had presented him.

“The fundamental reference source in this survey instruction,” the cephalopodic organism answered as it laboriously filled out a long printed form; it made use of two pseudopodia and two writing instruments simultaneously, enormously speeding up the intricate task. “Dr. Bloode’s great primary work, in the seventeenth edition.” It swiveled the book, to show him the ornate spine. “The True and Complete Economic and Political History of Newcolonizedland,” it informed him, in a severe, dignified tone of voice, as if reproving him for his unfamiliarity with the volume. Or rather, he realized suddenly, as if it assumed that the title would have overpowering influence alone, without additional aid.

“Hmm,” he said, then, still nonplussed-to say the least. And he thought, It can’t be, but it is. Paraworld-which? Not precisely as it had manifested itself before; this was not Blue, because his glimpse of that, ratified by the other weevils, had contained a cyclopsic organism. And this, for all its similarity to the Aquatic Horror-shape, had by reason of its compound multi-eye system a fundamentally different aspect.

Could this actually be the authentic underlying reality? he wondered. This macro-abomination that resembled nothing ever witnessed by him before? A grotesque monstrosity which seemed, as he watched it devour and consume-to its evident satisfaction-the remainder of its eyes, almost a parody of the Aquatic Horror-shape?

“This book,” the creature intoned, “demonstrates beyond any doubt whatsoever that the plan to colonize the ninth planet of the Fomalhaut system is foolish. No such colony as the projected Newcolonizedland can possibly be established. We owe a great debt to Dr. Bloode for his complete elucidation of this complex topic.” It giggled, then. A wet, slurred, wobbly giggle of delighted mirth.

his eyes swim, this is The Book Of The Calends from Galactic Pot-Healer, Evan doing a meta-interpretation of Dick, shifting realities, what is humanity?, Dick thinks there is a truth, in what Dick novel is there not a truth?, there’s always a truth, in the end there is a reality, although there are all false fronts and shifting realities there’s always a truth arrived at through some sort of solidarity, unpack the natives, what might be the objective truth, why Galactic Pot-Healer is the best Dick novel, it has Nick And The Glimmung as its Silmarillion, a deeper history, you know…this book was wrong, what is this book really about?, its not about teleportation, why did the Jews get killed in ovens, for immense amounts of human history people have been colonizing new lands, going back to the Flying Dutchman, the people that stayed behind, how does it make you feel to see people leaving the country, the Jews, here comes the officials, a new place where you will colonize the east, a BIG lie, that turn is a very Philip K. Dick thing, kinda like Glimmung in shape but not in power, the way the Book Of The Kalends works in Galactic Pot-Healer, he is subject to the author’s need to find community and meaning, raise Haldscalla, they form a union, they fight their demons together, disconnected and an LSD sequence, it doesn’t resolve in the way we want it to, the 1966 verison:

Thinking that, he paused before entering the area of light; in the darkness of the side street, unnoticed by passers-by, he scrutinized Freya Holm a long, long period.

“Hmm,” he said, half aloud. Contemplatively.

“What are you thinking about?” Freya asked shyly, her dark, full lashes trembling as she returned his stare. “The years of deep sleep ahead of you?”

“Not quite that,” Rachmael answered. “Something a little more this side of sleep. But connected with it.” He put his arm around her.

“Gee,” Freya said after a time.

In his pocket the container of components hummed happily.

almost like a sex metaphor version, The Unteleported Man (1966), the version we’re hearing in audio, when Evan did his episodes on Lies, Inc. and The Unteleported Man, we need some rogue cuts, Dick is doing something here, what is the objective truth in this novel, there’s an authoritarian state in Newcolonizedland, where does the delusion come from?, the LSD dart?, the teleportation itself?, the cultural image is Stalinism, the natives are not there, terra nullis, the eye-eater super-spy, Ben Applebaum is the Jew after the Germans, Arab-Israeli, undercooked, its because its a dream, he can bring it all together, bringing it into a beautiful bow, all the boob looking, all the fake coffee, here we don’t have that, its front heavy, 5 or 6 revisions, from Fantastic, a 1965 version, a 1979 version, Paul Williams’ found 3 segments, the 2003, Philip K. Dick is actually a really good writer, a mashup of notes, an August Derleth(like) collaboration, his 18 year journey, a really good story there, it has all the makings for one of his classics, his business is crumbling, such a Philip K. Dick setup, analogizing his own life, Matson, it puts an idea in your heads, they’re a private investigator firm, his motivation is the Truth, the company maintaining the lie is not Lies, Inc., Listening Instructional Educational Services, that game at the start of Galactic Pot-Healer, two visions of the internet, when you’re bored at work you engage at various games, puns and book titles, the other vision of the internet is The Book Of The Kalends, books are not popular, a lot of Moby-Dick, he’s doing a Jonah, the heart of the darkness, strike strike what’s beyond the mask?, a new study in Nature about the relationship between elevated rates of autism (and related) in transgender and gender diverse – is untalkableabout – underneath the mask of identity is more onion, I am nothing, there’s nothing there underneath, Ishmael disappears, the universe fucked me by giving me birth, he aims his hate at a particular whale, it is challenging me by its very existence, get on board with this creative project, all the Project: Plowshare stuff, are you willing to use the reality distortion weapons?, there might not be any natives, it breaks Jesse’s ability to understand a book, Max Brand’s The Untamed, anti-romantic, the incoherence of the natives is the incoherence of the novel, Dick deals with indigenous people in several novels, The Crack In Space, Dr. Futurity, Time Pawn is beautiful to read, we could do another show on Time Pawn, the editing is worse than the weird chapter in Doctor Bloodmoney, less like a novel than fixup by someone else, why not just read the originals, they’re not available, it doesn’t exist, you can’t access it, NESFA press, the public domain part of it, an editor said: I will buy this, squeeze another novel out, he was a slim volume writer anyway, Herman Melville from chapter 58:

“Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.

Consider all this; and then turn to the green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half-known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!”

his ship is gonna be impounded, the amount of delay, that menace that conspiracy, when you live in a police state, the police are our friends, the FBI is out to get you (just not you specifically), the NSA’s official line: collect everything, the wellness check, Nancy’s not answering the door, what the hell Nancy?, the nosy neighbour, this is a reality, a nightmare, the govt of Quebec was trying to convince people to vote for them using a wedge issue, religious headcoverings, didn’t the Saudis have it right all along?, they had good reason for it, someone not wearing a mask?! how dare you!, reflecting, there was a reason for abstaining, that kind of positive conservatism, there might have been a reason for that fence, Philip K. Dick is exploring some really cool stuff, Philip K. Dick’s greatest book: LIES, Inc., more connections, the nexus book for all of the Philip K. Dick stuff, it is the oomphalos!, not a pessimistic writer, his authoritarian states, Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty Four, The World Jones Made, The Man Who Japed, that settler family, a symbol at the end of that tyrrany, A Scanner Darkly has some hope, Radio Free Albemuth, a chickenhead, the West coast, travelled across the continent, they’re not farther West, the sympathy that dick has for those that stay behind and those that want to flee is a really interesting theme, the colonial fiction of the British Empire, the world is their planet, going home is not a big deal, maybe a class issue, who are the people who move to the States?, the poors, the second sons fleeing murder convictions, free land, fleeing persecution, those who are left behind, isn’t our country being brain drained?, a chance to begin again, sex robots and farm robots (slaves), suspicious of it and attracted to it, he’s talking about something very important to human beings, the US never got over the frontier, Turner’s thesis, build a log cabin, remaking democracy with the frontier experience, culturally you have the Western and Science Fiction, and the Pacific (the Philippines), how the Philippines was colonized, Clark Ashton Smith had a story published in a Philippines publication, appreciating life in the Philippines, the same kind of occupation, Rudyard Kipling had his first stories published in a railroad publication in India, Afghanistan, they don’t live there, you send your sons off to fight those wars, the fear of what’s on the otherside of that train journey east, reading the newspapers, oh my god!, we didn’t have the complete story!, the official lies that are being told, he is the product of his environment, loving these German operas, having a German name and being fearful of Germans, Black Earth: The Holocaust As History And Warning by Timothy Snyder, Hitler was trying to make his own frontier in Eastern Europe, how much Hitler was influenced by the colonization of the American West, Kentucky is not naturally part of the United States, Dick’s intention, a lot of the fascism conversation in science fiction, John W. Campbell vs. Joseph Campbell (being Nazis), Hitler was a romantic, romantics are dangerous, practicalists are dangerous in a different kind of a way, Karl May, they have adventures together, turning the non-threatening into a Crusade, theoretically motivated by a real book (a fictional story), the romantic idea, he is engaging to get out of the house and conquer, get out from under, the send off point, the Germans were the first ones to fight the Nazis, there are good Americans, another anniversary of Hiroshima, two planes that dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they didn’t have aircraft that could hold the two nukes, it almost was the case the British dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Nagasaki wasn’t the original target for that day, I’m glad its overcast because now I’m not dead, the luck of Kokura, the Japanese were not going to give up, Dan Carlin’s Supernova In The East, the military was 100% in charge but from the bottom up, Pearl Harbour was a naval effort, can you make any analogies to the United States today, healthcare and a living wage, more aircraft carriers and war with Venezuela, Russia, and China, Russia’s got a vaccine and nobody believes it (scientists and others), two Jesse rap battle, all the American liberals refusing to take a Corona virus vaccine, its very easy to forget where stuff come from when you benefit from forgetting from where it comes from.

The Unteleported Man illustration by Lloyd Birmingham

Fantastic Stories Of Imagination The Unteleported Man by Philip K. Dick

Fantastic Stories Of Imagination The Unteleported Man by Philip K. Dick

Fantastic Stories Of Imagination The Unteleported Man by Philip K. Dick

Fantastic Stories Of Imagination The Unteleported Man by Philip K. Dick

The Unteleported Man illustration by Harry Borgman

Lies, Inc. by Philip K. Dick

ACE - The Unteleported Man by Philip K. Dick

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Reading, Short And Deep #221 – The Coronation Of Mr. Thomas Shap by Lord Dunsany

Podcast

Reading, Short And DeepReading, Short And Deep #221

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Coronation Of Mr. Thomas Shap by Lord Dunsany.

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.

The Pet Shop was first published in The Sketch, March 1, 1911.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson

The SFFaudio Podcast #492 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Morella by Edgar Allan Poe

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #492 – Morella by Edgar Allan Poe – read by the great and powerful Wayne June. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the short story (17 Minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Mr Jim Moon, and Wayne June!

Talked about on today’s show:
A Tale, The Southern Literary Messenger, April 1835, Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, November 1839, you will not believe how Lovecraftian it is, very Edgar Allan Poe, The Thing On The Doorstep, Hypnos, turns of phrase, Cool Air, shall I say it was gelatinous?, The Statement Of Randolph Carter, the moment of Morella’s decease, its tenement of clay, an interest in a woman, there’s nothing more romantic than the death of a beautiful woman, The Philosophy Of Composition, Berenice, The Fall Of The House Of Usher, Elenora, Morella, berry-nice, Ligeia, a ghost, I’m gonna burn the house down, The Raven, crack the house open, the movie adaptations, Roger Corman’s Tales Of Terror (1962), Vincent Price, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Haunted Palace is an H.P. Lovecraft story, redeeming value, interesting, shedding what doesn’t happen in the story, what is the name of the main character, the unnamed narrator, get shocked, the narrator is passive participant in the events around him, active in his twisted perspective, an unreliable narrator, statements based on assumptions, The Black Cat narrator is 100% a liar, a victim, he’s nuts, a weird lifestyle, a weird lifestyle, reading German philosophy, this text is hard to read, a comic book version, an adaptation of the 1962 movie, Amicus anthology film, Elenora, Leonora, “hey you, child!”, “my beloved”, Gideon Locke, more like the The Fall Of The House Of Usher without the friend, The Haunting Of Morella (1990), Countess Elizabeth Báthory, bathing in maiden’s blood, lots of nudity, lots of lesbianism, scared topless, Busty Coeds vs. Lusty Cheerleaders, Gothic romanticism, Richard Corben’s adaptation, 19th century education, familiarity with Plato’s Symposium, personal identity, a nodding acquaintance with Fichte’s accused pantheism, Pythagoreans, Wayne did so much research on this story, it’s no wonder that people don’t get it, this is amazing, its beautiful, high level vocab words and giant sentences, it is creepy too, the epigraph, in vino veritas, in praise of Eros, he didn’t find her sexy, erotic love, a phenomenon capable of vanquishing man’s natural fear of death, conquering death itself, preserving her consciousness in reincarnation, forbidden books, those Pressberg chicks, the mere dross of early German literature, Locke, John Locke, Poe says: “Wow, this is some heavy shit!”, a witch, a lich, a way to renew life, the motifs that are in here, none of this is translatable to film in a non-commercial style, plant growth, the flowers and the vine, the hemlock and the cypress, persistent, frequently planted in graveyards, funeral decoration foliage, The Tree by H.P. Lovecraft, an olive tree of oddly repellent shape, autumn, a metaphor of renewal, there’s a lot to it, life after death, her disappearance from the tomb, as Morella lost life her daughter takes her first breath, a sense that Morella is not evil but rather she is mistaken, not addressed, the all importance of personal identity and survival of the consciousness, replace or become, the self-same person as her daughter?, displacing her daughter’s identity?, theological ideas, Catholic dogma, morally gray, light grey, dark evil, Poe was a reviser, laid vs. placed, tinged with tainted, subtle polishing, these vs. those, this and that, a way of pushing things away, a whole omitted section to do with Catholicism, a rainbow from the firmament, Sancta Maria, it totally changes the story, that makes her a monster, pushed into the evil camp, comparison to Mary, Hail Mary (1985), your daughter, her daughter, parthenogenesis, Jesus is a girl dressed as a guy, she looks identical to her mother, making a clone, your own genetics, a fantasy story, a science fiction story, the Catholic stuff distracts, a failed experiment, it really changes the tenor of the story, The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward, health problems with the clones, the naming, the true name, speaking the name breaks the spell and kills the child, Wilbur Whateley style, a tale of possession, Doctor John Dee, philosophy, alchemy, why is he doing that?, a symbolic story, how hard grief is, seeing a dead relative in the next generation, a symbolist story rather than a Gothic one, mysticism vs. science, Lovecraft as a science fiction writer, instead of characterizing her as a witch he characterizes her as advanced arcane philosophy and science, lower as in closer to the ground, what is identity?, how he talks about his daughter, two lustrums (ten years), my child and my love, now he’s the father, a mother figure, guiding his hand in his reading, enkindling and disquisitions, he become that for her, like Alia the brother of Muadib from Frank Herbert’s Dune, imbued with the mind of a reverend mother, someone much wiser than she, Annabelle Lee, there’s no visualization of their home, they have their own family tomb, the black slabs of our ancestral vault, baptism/christening, a cemetery connected to a church, fate, like flitting shadows, the wind in the firmament, a very Poe-ism, a semi-manorial estate, a big library, an isolated or cloistered life, Miranda, The Tempest, sexy times, it has to be symbolic, a witch or a litch, hot vs. beautiful, curly black hair, a broad white forehead, to encompass all those brains, her erudition made her happy, the art in Wayne June’s YouTube video, a wild interpretation, what if this is a gender flipped story?, what if Morella is Poe, he was a wooer, wooing with poems, devotion, vocab, she represents his respect for erudition, deep thought and philosophy, immortality, 178 years later, a powerful set of images, oblique quick references, losing his fascination with Morella, being fearful of Morella’s studies, the promised land, Hinnon became Ge-Henna, sacrifices to Baal and Moloch, a huge oven, not milk and honey but burning babies, Heaven and Hell, son of Dagon, God’s not the only god around, as to the nature of our studies, terrible studies, reluctant fascination, Warren always dominated me and sometimes I feared him, firm and fat in their tombs for a thousand years, some heavy shit, where is this text from?, when is he telling the story in relation to the events?, is he telling his doctor, I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, The Hound, an unequal partnership, the whole Poe as Morella thing, strange meaning, like Poe and Lovecraft’s intertextuality, full of references, a deep dive to uncork meaning, the pinnacle of the educational stuff, this is an audiobook story!, then then, when pouring over the forbidden pages, a Roof Bear Morella drawing, inhabiting him, a forbidden spirit, her cold hand, rake up from the ashes of a dead philosophy, hour after hour I would linger at the music of her voice, those two unearthly tones, reading like a woman and slowly the voice changes to that of Wayne June, two unearthly tones, too unearthly, so far from the Earth, hypnotizing him, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Parasite, voodoo town, Jamaica, it’s a whole thing, Metzengerstein, Facts In The Case Of M. Valdemar, how to get girls by hypnosis, 3D glasses, hernia supports, that’s how Poe gets girls, the girl does that to him, he’s gender flipped it, the object of mourning rather of action, disabuse Jesse of this, Jim’s up, Jesse convinces Mr Jim Moon of his crazy theory, hard to get, The Cask Of Amontillado, The Masque Of The Red Death, so straightforward and so beautiful, adding poems, The Conqueror Worm, Poe was canny with getting sales, booze doesn’t buy itself, paper to write to girls, The Island Of The Fay, The Science Of Kissing!! by Charles Peterson, super metoo movement, it’s great to be Turkish because they really know how to kiss, as practical as that, foreseen to foretold, what demon urged me, ebb and flow, the repeat, horrible horrible death, knell to fell, a tiny little polish, an iterative process of refining, the definite version, all in Greek, pronouncing the Greek phonetically, a maniac on style and form, The Philosophy Of Composition, that certain sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain thrilled me, except for Hawthorne, Poe’s nickname was Tomahawk Poe, hated by his peers (those who didn’t admire him), collected a lot of scalps, “Itself, by itself solely, one everlastingly, and single.”, the ability to establish personal… identity, what the French call an orgasm, la petite mort, Aristophanes, hermaphrodite, lesbians belong to this category, the different kinds of attraction, nothing is off limits for the Greeks, wanting to grow together, Plato’s theory, being a hermaphrodite sphere was cool, love and eros, the beast with two backs, why we seek a soul mate, my better half, what is the it in “itself”?, if you achieve perfection of appreciation of beauty you will be unifying your existence with that which is the beautiful, she has a beautiful mind (but not face or body), she lives only in the regard of the narrator, Poe is immortal but only as long as there are people to read his stuff, denuded, existence is not continued, sad and sad about the lost of a loved one, the ghost comes back and says “it’s okay”, a suicide note, this is why I did it, Poe loves to play with the formatting, The Oval Portrait, how the narrator came to be wounded, it doesn’t add to the symbolism, its a beautiful message, the events are less important than the creation of that beautiful images, undiscussed details, up to the reader to decide, what demon urged me to breathe that sound?, literal?, daemon, a personal spirit, his muse, a program running in the background, the Greeks knew it all,

What fiend spoke from the recesses of my soul, when, amid those dim aisles, and in the silence of the night, I whispered within the ears of the holy man the syllables—Morella? What more than fiend convulsed the features of my child, and overspread them with hues of death, as starting at that scarcely audible sound, she turned her glassy eyes from the earth to heaven, and, falling prostrate on the black slabs of our ancestral vault, responded—”I am here!”

what a shocker!, she had her eyes on the Earth, falling backwards, ending in the last seconds, what happened to the body?, a stupid ghost story, the vegetation, planted from a seed, growing up, the roots going deep into the cellar, who knows what horrible juices they suck, as the second Morella has grown, the end of the cycle, she’s a lich who failed, the new body lives until the point that she’s named, women jr., Ivanka, a secondary world society, the right name for her, a terrible dad, she lives longer but she doesn’t have a full life, oops she died, foiled again, given her another name, Dude, you have to name me something else, a lich story, a fabulous story, how concise it is, this much work, very few, very dense, so effective, exactly as long as it has to be, Gothic romance,

German gothic fiction is usually described by the term Schauerroman (“shudder novel”). However, genres of Gespensterroman/Geisterroman (“ghost novel”), Räuberroman (“robber novel”), and Ritterroman (“chivalry novel”) also frequently share plot and motifs with the British “gothic novel”

a nun in New York who wrote about haunted castles on the Rhine river, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Undine, Lorelei, mere dross, worthless, rubber, dregs, those mystical writings, her favourite and constant study, the philosophy of the day, Shelling, the dross of philosophy, presuppositions, authority, it goes against the Ship of Theseus, every cell and molocule and atom is replaced, eating and breathing and pooping changes, carbon dating, when the ship returns home no part of it is the same piece but all the pieces resemble the same thing, attains or regains, like Plato would have us do in the Realm of the Forms (The Republic), suddenly she gets that last little piece of the puzzle, overload, you get the impression she died right then and there at her baptism, the exact wording, they’re just rich, murmured ever more, the opposite of the adaptations, a different sort of feel, her from the moment of birth or earlier, the breath thing is so important, spirit, undfeatable, a thesis for the ages!

Morella - illustrated by by Frederick Simpson Coburn, 1902

Edgar Allan Poe's Morella - illustrated by J. Duran

Edgar Allan Poe's Morella - adapted by Eugenio Colonnese

Roof Bear Morella

Morella illustrated by Thurburn from The Sketch, June 17, 1914

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