The SFFaudio Podcast #834 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Gods Of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

The SFFaudio Podcast #830 – The Gods Of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, read by Mark Nelson for (LibriVox). This is a complete and unabridged audiobook (8 hours 33 minutes), followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Will Emmons, and Alex (Pulpcovers)

Talked about on today’s show:
serialized in All-Story, January-May 1913, the first book, 1912, ten years have gone by, A Princess Of Mars, the atmosphere processor, Cohagen, kicked back to earth, told to his nephew Edgar Rice Burroughs, strange mausoleum, dead on the bluff, coffin, strict instructions, shrug, I was back on Mars!, ends on a cliffhanger, two manuscripts with him, no more gettin stuck places, know how much you love my writin, couldn’t bare to leave my wife, kidnapped again, ignore the fact there are 8 more backs after this?, what happened to Woola, Woola stayed home, alive enough to make it to the air factory, goes with Dejah to the white apes, first book guy, a dog of mars, The Dogs Of Mars, Jack London’s becoming a wild white ape dog, lizard dog thing, tusks, don’t read series, some interesting stuff in here, the black man pirate, gives the mythology or biology of the creation of the peoples of mars, very Edgar Rice Burroughs, crazy crazy stuff, as a mythology, world tree, Babylonian, very cool, favourite John Carter story, shaved a couple of the rough corners off, coincidence level, utterly shameless, and there he was on a whole planet, any direction will take you north, drift for two days, random direction, a smaller planet than earth, the Little Prince, if he runs really quick and jumps he can see the top of his own head, the nested fake religion conspiracy thing, real heaven over there, Gulliver Of Mars, mental hospital, Edwin Lester Arnold, [The Wonderful Adventures Of] Phra The Phoenician, it’s funny, sillier, not as heroic, more ridiculous, library action, weird gender stuff, polar area, glaciers, deposit their stuff in glacial lakes, collecting all their jewelry, heaven is fake, very similar to what we have here, eaten by plant men, limited ecosystem, very few vegetables, drink plant milk eat vegan cheese, one of the lower races, totally soy, Thark nutrition, saved in the desert by finding this milkweed, dead world, dying world, been dying for a million years, an old world, ecology is all used up, seas dried up, it’s fun, very silly, go with it, ten years?, I’m back!, meets his best bud, here’s my son, how martian years are different, is his son 5 years old?, hatches, a white egg, monotrim?, monotreme wife, hatch ready to fight, egg grows over time, nutrient packed, advanced martian biology, must take a lot out of a woman, Carthoris, jumped the shark, a few other things, gets pirates wrong again, fake pirates, the black pirates that live on the moon, super-advanced, extinct volcano, c they don’t eat themselves, yellow people, cross breed, black, white and yellow martians, Borderlands, movie that nobody likes, too long, didn’t need going back to Helium, chopping down 50 plant men, put in prison for a year, tunnels of Mars, just enough time to build a whole bunch of battleships, 1000 ships, little boats, Tars Tarkas says: I got my dudes, not just airships, also submarines, retrofitted, never seen water, they had a guy, the radium revolvers, the bullets are all handmade by Thark maidens, Afghanistan/Pakistan, ancient weapons, but radium?, the new hotness, not explosive, poisoned to death, radium explained, martian hieroglyphic means radium, explosive on mars, no helium involved, all transliterated, by our co-author, all mistakes, astrocharts, not going to bore you with that, late huge footnote, don’t want to throw the story off, the number of days, the Martian day, the Martian year, pulled it up in the encyclopedia, that footnote, this was the popular media at the time, people were a lot smarter back then, weird ideas, racism, eugenics, getting dumber, getting less literate, other media, without having to pre-learn, computer or video games, most consumable media, rizz skibidi toilet happening, long hand with a quill, the good stuff, more work, average text, at the time of the American revolution, high gothic English, written by people trained on high classics, more accessible, produce easier text, not complete rot, but pretty rotten, becomes verbal, Joss Whedon dialogue, books written in the last 10 years, raised on Buffy The Vampire Slayer, to make somebody cool, raised on sitcoms, I heard this about this book, The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi, that just happened, Godzilla Minus One (2023), John Scalzi writing a teenage girl, probably got a couple of teenage daughters, swore off of David Brin, guy looking at a computer screen describing a battle in another solar system, uplift stuff, read Lester Del Rey’s story [The Faithful], treading water, Will’s essay about the other book, weird American morality, something going on, summarize, hot take, Thark green man culture, breeds haphazardly, like snakes having sex, the chieftan directs who mates with whom, the greatest warrior ever accidently falls in love, queer in context, quote tweeting, being heteronormative is queer, raise your own kids in an atomic family (very queer), on purpose?, horrible place, break with tradition, adaptations, Del Comics adaptation of this book, completely dressed from head to toe, frogman with gloves on, wearing pants, it doesn’t make sense to dress them unless, it was the fifties, nudity, Dynamite Deja Thoris, naked Deja Thoris on every cover, mostly naked, not very memorable, the art’s nice, Edgar Rice Burroughs tic, preHeinlein Heinlein Tarzan and Barsoom, nudism, bodily transported to mars with his clothes on, the excuse, astral projection, real body on the other end, ghost planet, a transporter, his old body is also left behind, prudism, issues with that movie, not completely nude, not a settler colonialist, gone native, bringing his own, you and I can be friends, Woola can be my dog like an earth dog, normalizing certain aspects of American and earth culture, don’t believe in this bad religion, a reformer, he doesn’t bring his Christianity with him, the gods eating, reverse communion, blasphemous, Abraham and Isaac, give me you son I’m hungry, blog post, that’s against your culture, change the culture in a positive way, is Burroughs doing that on purpose?, bring them back to the good way, cave castle, raises his own baby, they’re almost communists, they’re the kind of communism, anything I don’t like is communism, you won’t raise your own child, a hobby horse against communism, The Moon Maid, Tarzan The Invincible, I’m here for you, swearing your lives, I’ll be your slave, the slaves were thrilled, I get stand behind your missing wife’s seat, Thuvia Maid Of Mars, that’s not weird, I’m in love with your dad, childhood fascination?, 600 year old, time works strangely on Mars, always looking thirty, never explained, put a lot of stuff into this first book, telepathy, that one time, immortal, it did the opposite, the most boring part of the book to read, interesting, so deep into the book, five miles away, a full mile, as close packed, very orderly, neither scoffs nor plaudits, tried by an impartial body of nobles, footnote 1, 840am earth time, whenever Captain Carter…, many martian tables, this vast fund, it will add nothing of interest, adhere to the original manuscript, the martian day is a trifle over, ten equal parts, revolutionary French, Jacobins, commencing the day at 6am Earth time, 200 brief periods of time, seconds?, yep, fifty zats one zoad, fifty zats in a zoad, 200 tals in a zat, a key to understanding how he wrote this, suddenly realized, the only footnote in the whole book, this is not Tolkien, writing as fast as he can, oh hang on, what did I do, he’s on a typewriter!, when you can just do it this way, that’s a lot of work, Will’s Foundation readthrough essay, Paul Krugman, something about being evil, portrays a profound disrespect for people, wanted to be a psychohistorian, when Asimov was writing that story, one day a New York Times columnists is going to be inspired by my writing, in the context of Will’s essay, it’s liches, liches are evil because they try to control the living even they’re dead, 10 jews per semester and no blacks of you want my money, find a workaround, the stupid codicils in the will, strange and ridiculous, I can write better rot than that, more coherent, would we have been way better off?, we wouldn’t get a lot of the text, how many books did Tolkien published, two novels, not meant for publication, a lot less stuff, meant to be ephemeral, wipe your butt with the pages, goes in the digested, before writing, Under The Moons Of Mars, letterhead for a failed business, Heinlein’s story too, so many of these old authors, spent 2 years in the merchant marines, invented a new kind of helicopter, wrote these 12 crime novels, don’t tell the truth, somebody’s, dress it up in frilly clothes, plant men at their email jobs, laptop class plant men, unconsciously, how he would like to interact with reality, wants to have a good friend, a son (but wouldn’t like to raise them), come on to him, oblivious to it, I will have all your eggs, I’m married to a literal princess, weird food for the black pirates, Sola and his relationship, these creatures from Mars, in various forms of dress and undress, thought it was hot, 4 boobs, thark muscle mommy, orc muscle mommy, let them be, she was teaching him, low position, all coincidences, special, coincidentally special, killing plant men for the first ten minutes and white apes, white ape action, too long, too much, the manipulation of the stuff, surgery in the next book?, growin guys in vats, yellow martians, trying to find Dejah Thoris, had an egg somewhere, why she named him, I didn’t know you were pregnant, stand and watch the egg together, watch it grow, probably done with this series, a lot of filler, have to be in the dungeon for a year, another year, very manipulative, on a sentence and scene level, the airship battle at the end, that got Will, visualizing it, in the 1970s for playing rpgs, matter replicator, play with miniatures, big airship battle, actual tactics, maneuver like this, an anchor, Sola fell off, a nice soft mountain, because coincidence, very hardy 12 feet tall, boobs and ass, the Burroughs bibliophiles, an important science fiction writer, space opera after him, planetary romance, in the atmosphere, five hard science fiction books you have to read, The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal, rockets, handwavium, a rocket program, Rocket Ship Galileo, if this goes on jum jum jum […], here’s a set of ideas, let’s play, Howard writing a Kull story, just is happening, the part of the brain that’s stimulated, sense of wonder, so many stars, the end of the Clarke story, The Nine Billion Names Of God, if these monks are right, an Isaac Asimov story, the same idea, if you could calculate, good writing, character stuff, way too long, worldbuilding, people disagree, fantasy story with science fiction tropes, telepathy was a science fiction trope, discovering things, turns out no, very popular bad idea, Alfred Bester, this is not doing that, kill people with my sword, let’s go, fun vibe, keeps you reading, changing Mars to be more compatible with Edgar Rice Burroughs morality, likes his titles, The Cave Girl, duchess, what if we flip this around, a martian comes to Earth, a thark or redman or white ape comes to earth, meets a waitress, side of a highway in Iowa, insists that she’s a princess, maybe she has a kid, you de-princessize her, a low woman who needs to pay the bills, lives in a trailer, the morality of mars to earth, traditional thark thoughts, one of many woman, go plant your egg in that field over there, falling apart instantly, what if we switch genders, switch classes, what we see in relief, Heinlein’s novel, Stranger In A Strange Land, Superman, the best culture: Kansas culture, weirdness magnet, hidden hand controlling his destiny, blue kryptonite, a kabbalistic connection to the letters LL, not a comedy, cute, cosy, action packed, noble, this story, the culture is even more alien, playful, more Mary Suey, making it so the reader can, I’m not John Carter, reuniting with my family, being locked in dungeons for years, supersane, chained to the wall, his muscles are fine, isometric exercises, no food, have to eat each other, Issus, so fluffy and frothy, barely in the book, in more scenes than many, clearly his story, the protagonist, unneeded, the mythology was really good, does he go on to impose or prop up, the books get weirder and weirder, Thurn high priest, the temple of the Sun, not a finished book, ridiculous cliffhanger, son has adventures, Thuvia Maid Of Mars, their daughter has a book, mad scientists, a fighting man of mars, weird adventuer, spider heads, he’s fun, create a new America, I’m a great guy, emancipating the slaves, an old Virginian, Burroughs or John Carter, he wants to be a noble of some kind, read the hold canon, the impression, not unusually racist, he’s nice to his slaves, no black men in the first book, the next book, they’re all bald, wear the wig with the crown, used to be blonde, they dress up for each other, oh my god, so cool, with regard to the slaves, gladiatorial stuff, people who speak for them, so bored she didn’t even open her eyes, didn’t have to bother looking, half way through the book?, slave uprising in the arena, this is actual science fiction right here, teaching students how to use chat gpt properly, given assignments that are ridiculous, whatever it writes, this is too much, reform it and refine it, can you do my homework for me, the blacks don’t produce anything, really interesting, she wasn’t even watching the combat, there are some even who have slaves who talk to them, transpiring within the arena, the firstborn do no work, the men fight, the women do nothing, absolutely nothing, with closed eyes, not tech, replace the word slave with robot, magically science fiction, robots wash them, robots feed them, with closed eyes, we see this with kings, learn to read, there are slaves for that, you have to read the actual message from your kid, to see that signature, trust with your own eyes, think about this a lot, a little dose of mainstream media, pre-digest your thoughts, she’s the biggest person on substack, Barry Weiss on Joe Rogan, he is an “Assad toady”, she didn’t know what the word meant, what predigested news does for you, wash your own laundry, when I want your opinion I’ll give it to you, fix my car, takes a lot of training, if you haven’t done it, all these topics, some jobs require some skills to be learned, essay writing, good jobs, fucked if I know, work in tech, written a lot, wrote a ton of essays, a real skill that helps you in a lot of places, put your thought coherently together, the tricks to get the results that they want, do you want this to be interesting and good for you, or good for your teacher, more flourishing, the short term, you need five paragraphs and this number of words, students don’t even know what the word essay means, A Modest Proposal, pushing away the joke, doubles down and doubles down, I propose we start eating the babies, coherent sentences, hitting word counts, way more to say or way less to say, how to say five different ways to say “in addition”, checkpoints they have to go through, how Will ended up writing essays, learned to like it, writing is fun, writing ideas, worked with Will a lot, how to communicate clearly, you’re lucky, a coherent person, columnist for the New York Times, any kinda good, communicate clearly in writing, building fences and fixing cars, more shop class, languages, a lot of that is weird liability stuff, bandsaw, can’t let them do it, fear is hugely driving things in society, more bad writing as chat gpt takes over, unfeasible to fund it, complete in five years, those jobs to make that shit, what a robot thinks about something, what’s the capital of Katmandu?, some of the questions make no sense, are those popular questions that were asked, they do nothing, no moral agenda behind it, so strange, how rich and decadent they are, if Robert E. Howard were writing this, The Slithering Shadow, decadent city state, ivs of opium all day, wtf you guys doin?, I’m busy fighting this slither shadow, that’s just how it is, I got my opium, much more of the science fiction writer, set on another planet, strong ideas he’s trying to work through, almost essay style arguments, when we eventually get to Rogues In The House, Murders In The Rue Morgue?, C. August Dupin, The God In The Bowl, Burroughs is deep too, levels to it, he hasn’t teased them out, he’s just shooting them, this is Robert E. Howard doing a gothic and having Conan hating every minute of it, a hobby horse against gothic fiction, frustrated the whole time, even Frost Giant’s Daughter, the siren, the tease, steaming on a platter, fuck that, I’m Conan, you can’t escape me, almost a rape story, why can’t we read this in school, a long list of things they want to put in your brain and this is not it, Burroughs taught in school, maybe shop class, fence making class, chicken breeding, anti-classical education, an elective on posting, a classical education in high school, doing it on our this podcast, The Symposium, three years of classical philosophy, very powerful, participate in a lot of weird conversations, make cocktails, vintage art guy, extracted what little juice was in this dry planet, at some point, all the insane coincidence, there’s the exact thing I needed, half-way across the solar system, exact same prison cell as my son, so brazen about it you can’t get man, the most deus thing that ever got machinaed, one big coincidence, two people survived, this is bad writing, my god how amazing is this, every piece fits together, The Terminator, more fun, not as good as a film, the more you elaborate on it, every piece fits, why is this happening, that word was created by him hearing it from himself, that’s just how it is, no clothes, no clothes, handwavium, I don’t understand tech stuff, every part of that story fits, an embellisment, the exact same beats, how the pacing is identical scene for scene, one is here to protect, I’ll be back, not a horror movie and not a b-movie, a car chase, a truck chase, crushed in the crushing factor, melted in a melting factory, 2200 word story, something not set in our conventional world, he’s not crafting a story, trying to tell you a fun story, going on adventures, so many other modes, mystery series, the mystery, Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, sandwich making and a lot of clues, The Hound Of The Baskervilles is a terrific terrific novel, a Nancy Drew style story, yard sales, 10 cents a book, art inside, cool covers, boys solving mysteries, one boy, the Encyclopedia Brown books, a knock off for even younger kids, who stole the bike, I’ve solved the mystery, got some trivia wrong, civil war saber, General Robert E. Lee, first Battle of Bull Run, The Battle Of First Manassas, Futurama, Wikipedia Brown, mode of mystery, H. Beam Piper novel Murder In The Gunroom, an Encyclopedia Brown story, the key to the mystery, weird menace show, Robert Silverberg and Test-Tube Frankenstein by Wayne Robbins, gonna be on it, so fuckin good, a Philip K. Dick horror story with Lovecraftian monsters, I have a story to tell you, rogue scientist, grinding up earthworms and making them into something, the guy he’s talking to is the earthworm, no mermaids in this story, Mistress Of The Dark Pool, find of the last five years, get the word out, very fast, listen to most of the story, so compelling, not the perfect way of doing it, slightly improved by framing device, tack on on he ending, the best excuse ever for taking a lady’s shirt off, can’t see anything they don’t get to see, replicate the outside, W. Wayne Robbins, goodness ahead, pretty much done, classic bookshelf, The Tower Treasure, later development, whole bunch of Tom Swifts for sale, The Asteroid Pirates, Victor Appleton, Victor Appleton II, The Shore Road Mystery, The Missing Chums, The House On The Cliff, LibriVox, why aren’t we bookin that guys?, four hours five minutes, one of the boys is thumbing his thumb, check out that thing, get a load of this guy, lady running down the hill away from the tower, criminals to justice, emdash, aiding their parent very materially, his loot had been secreted, The Three Investigators, Alfred Hitchcock as a character, estate locked down, 1964-1987, rewritten, complain about them, this minefield, shelf of Nancy Drews, 50s rewrite, edited them to death, a big account, people see it, the impossible to find first editions, the original, couldn’t be re-copyrighted, Franklin W. Dixon, rewritten, two Nancy Drews, every page was different, every sentence was changed, read it to your kid, people complain because it is different, changing the dates in Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, not an author, Carolyn Keene, ghost written, improvements that way, we’ll find out, November 24th, December 1?, that predictable, make some coffee, do some editing, 1:20, too late in the day, went to bed at 9pm, just go with it, up til like 3am, sleep-in, a good little podcast, pick your brain, current SF stories, this is nice violence, making fun of AOC, HMU, hit me up, there’s that too, science fiction is short stories not novels (generally), Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer, a series, funny silly agendas, an excuse, Planet Of The Apes, neanderthal comes forward in time, falls in love, gay cavemen need to reproduce, he doesn’t know how to write humans, a lot of representation, my friend the security guard is an Indian from India, he wears a turban, they’re not like the way you project them to be, standalone books, blew me socks off, Golden Fleece, a starship, murder mystery, narrated by the computer, last few years, kinda dumb in the way many pretty smart people are, gonna live forever, Ray Kurzweil: not a smart man, not even on a cope, it’s a hope, I’m gonna live forever is not a cope it is denial, secular version of heaven, a paperback, Quintaglio Ascension trilogy, tiny dinosaurs on a moon of another planet, an analog for a scientist, Far-Seer, he’s Galileo, no humans in this book, really into dinosaurs, child-like, neanderthal fetish, when did the neanderthal touch you in a loving way?, sharing the earth with other minds, literary fiction novel, Claire Cameron, The Last Neanderthal, woman archaeologist, make the book longer garbage, just like fire, [incest], her neanderthal beliefs, big words, make your vocal chords tired, The Ugly Little Boy by Isaac Asimov, probably like Hominids, planned as a trilogy, Shaman by Kim Stanley Robinson, Iceman (1984), Encino Man (1992), put him in a dome, cave-man Truman Show, unfrozen cave man movie, a nice length, John Lone, 10,000 BC (2008), Alpha the first dog, cave boy separated from his people, read an actual book, how you gonna find it, hear it from somebody you don’t have contempt for, need to know more, paleoanthropologists are hard to meet, get no work?, set on earth, Clan Of The Cave Bear (1986), wistful longing, Shogun, hand can’t span the spine, very doable, the original Pierre Boulle Planet Of The Apes, an inversion of what you see in the movie, and short, 1963, more recent reboots, current series, 246 pages in English, an abbreviated version, Science Fiction Encyclopedia, laptop, probably burdened down by the horrible operating system, Tiny 11, MacOS, the garbage never installed, people are fixing things, we can fix it, finding out about that, how many years, you would never find it, searching for weird shit, you’ve heard of Linux, who runs Linux?, whaevah, The Aeneid, The Odyssey is one of the best books anybody can read, programmatic and propagandistic, the end with the genocide, everyone should read old books, what’s the oldest book you’ve ever read?, the early parts of the bible, contemporaneous, 8th century BC, Gilgamesh, always finding new parts, James Gunn’s From Gilgamesh To Wells, Bryan Alexander is in Mexico City doing his Mexican futurism, trying Out Of The Silent Planet again, riffing hard on Voyage Top Arcturus, he calls out wells several times, Stapledon looms over it, 1938, The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe, age of Book of Genesis, 1400 bc, Moses, a redacted literary work, 400 bc, has great parts, boring parts, read The Odyssey in high school, a tv program of it, a great character, fun adventures, every island, go to university for 20 years, stop taking history, literature and science classes, math, a weird physics class, know about physics, the physics texts written by the physics dudes, readable, post-Einsteinian physics, what does physics need to know about me?, material science, how can we solve this problem, some it is just cost, hard to dig up and process, aluminum used to be the most expensive metal, more valuable than gold, now as cheap as dirt made from dirt, titanium, the price of titanium, mixing metals together, lots of great physics stuff to learn, doesn’t really matter what class it is as long as the teacher is good, the quality of the physics teachers in Michio Kaku, the science popularizes, worse than dumb rocks, not caring about facts, string theory is bullshit, nobody would say that for 30 fucking years, buzzword, there are things we don’t know why things happen, come up with a theory, come up with a hypothesis, if that’s true then…, is gravity a particle, gravitons, if we can detect a graviton, a particle and not a wave, we don’t know the answers, everything else is happening in other dimensions, the don’t fuckin test it, a collider the size of the solar system, nobody calls em on it, subscribing to Scientific American and Popular Science, some of this is scams, flying cars are here, they’re not in your backyard, this other kind of flying car, four engines where the wheels would be, re-on the cover of Popular Science, never ever fuckin happened, you need electric engines like drones and lithium batteries to make a flying car a viable thing, these are fly by wire, sensors, limiters, in the fifties they had flying jeeps, Neil Armstrong, helicopter blades beneath him, put soldiers on those to fly into battle, bird strike, blade of grass anything will kill you, a cool looking mockup, most of the people in physics, mock up of flying cars, keep paying me, that’s something else, a religious scam, the guy at the front: you’re all going to heaven you don’t need to read the paperwork, string theory, it’s coming along, a scam, in production right now, they’re basically drones, but you sit in the drone, there’s no market for them, fly in the sky over your suburb, operating drones, traffic rules for the sky, how crotchety and elderly the system of laws is, probably be Africa, where they’re interested in getting shit done and not feathering their own nests, more like golf carts, more like RVs or ATVs, used in the countrysides for farmers, check fence-lines, flying car guy knew what the problem was, using conventional engines, light enough batteries, gasoline is super energy dense, diesel, bunker fuel, kerosene is less, you can put them all over the spars, filled with batteries, just a few more years, not noticing they’ve run the same fucking article for 25 years, find a way to test this, the quantum theory is the result of Einstein’s stuff, the many worlds hypothesis, at the fundamental nature of reality, vibrating fibers, outer space as being the absence of something, coming into creation, bubbles of particles, brief existences, Wikipedia string theory, a theoretical framework, 1 dimension objects, when we scroll down, looking for the where’s your tests, brane theory, m-theory, supergravity, matrix theory, Stephen Hawking, another failed guy, entropy formula, counting microstates, an important test of any theory of quantum gravity, doing math not physics, phenomenology, no experimental evidence, pretty damning sentence, some in the community, question the value, what heaven will be like, in my father’s house there are many mansions, how many bathrooms are in those mansions, does it come with bidets?, just give em some more money, extremely high energies need, they proliferate, mansions have more than one bathroom, that’s what they’re doing, looking at the facts then doing bullshit, not science at that point, thought experiments, the table has a glass on it, the glass has water in it, the water is wobbling, everybody is playing this game of what’s making the water move, that’s a story, where’s the evidence for it?, Mr Bad, formula on a t-shirt, e=mcsquared has damaged a lot of brains, their castles in the air are bullshit, you can do all of this, you can see how it was constructed, hidden stories behind the construction of the stories, what it was, there are facts of the matter, way easier game to play, get some cool ideas out of it sometimes, cuz they don’t have any other ideas and it is funded, somebody enjoys funding theoretical physics, interested in science, the excuse for why they can get a caveman to modern times, a hollow chamber full of heavy water, neutrino detector, the neanderthal in question is also a physicist, Illegal Alien, Royal Ontario Museum, can we prove that god exists, a paleontologist, first human to alien contact, a spiderlike alien arrives, large collection of fossils, gather evidence for the existence of god, the same five cataclysmic events, an atheist, not what you want to read right now, so what do you think?, it’s a mystery, keep it a mystery, spoil is thoughts, smart but not smart like me, not wise, smart = wisest, how do you measure wisdom, Jesse particles, emitting them, to measure personal wisdom, concerning difficult behaviors, what is the San Diego wisdom scale, high validity, make predictions very easily, renowned and acclaimed, they think it makes them sound better, a passover word, my critically acclaimed debut novel, the New York Times says, an ok person, an accident, how they used to have Theodore Sturgeon, evil NIH website, healthy aging, abstract, not complete?, the answer to this is no, mechanical turk, as we grow older, do not rush, 28 questions, I’m good at perceiving how others are feeling, I have trouble making decisions, make snap decisions, a harder one for Jesse, others look to me, go out more, don’t talk to the raccoons talk to the neighbours, a wise quality, a neutral response, always wants help, 2-seater car, can’t help her move, bad boundaries, conflict, I have trouble thinking clearly when I am upset, don’t be upset, when was the last time you were upset?, is angry upset?, a couple of years ago, there is no existence of the soul after death, why would their be?, nebulous, soul is a synonym for spirit, still exists rather than lives on, all word games, others say I give good advice, wearing the uniform, therapists shouldn’t give advice, life coach, windows or apple, probably windows unfortunately, unable to do either, try not to make decisions, I remain calm under pressure, I have trouble thinking when I am upset, don’t be under pressure, when lifting weights, I enjoy learning things about other cultures, when they have this many questions, getting at it, asking the same thing different ways, I’m closed minded, I can’t learn, I tend to postpone making major decisions as long as I can, a wisdom in not making decisions, not making decisions about things you can’t control, I’m painting the walls blue, worry is a much bigger thing than it should be, I take time to reflect on my thoughts, you write, a little notebook, a few sentences, I would stop a stranger, morality or wisdom, an American dollar at the current inflation rate, my spiritual belief gives me inner strength, duty and how people should act, a spiritual thing, neutral on it, just havin fun here, I’m ok with people having morals and values other than my own, you’re a mammal, like your young, take more information on non-mammalian morality, lost it for about six weeks, spent more money, can’t even make the joke, I avoid self-reflection, about mirrors?, I would rather someone else make the decision, for me I am uncertain, a mistaken trait, waitress, what do you like, what was popular, people are different, such a strange question to ask a waitress, interesting experience, deferring to someone else on your decision making, is this a steak restaurant, I treat others the way I would like to be treated, not as an asshole, not as a piece of shit, please pass the podcasting juice, neutral, uncertain, it is important that I understand the reasons for my actions, finding out why you’re doing things, realize you’re making mistakes, the reason I’m doing this, I’ve always done it this way, a better or more efficient way, all connected on a higher level, a lower level, sniffing, they probably do, perfume, axe body sprays, horrible perfumes, can’t grok them, I generally learn something from every person I meet, drive through at the restaurant, an interaction vs. a meeting, generally learn something, the circumstances under which they’ve been pushed, condo doesn’t let them in, exposed to diverse viewpoints, meaning drift, diversity, equity, inclusion, exclusion, hierarchy, monoculture, the quality of being fair and impartial, the meme, boxes, a shortage of boxes, not a box rich society, they’re pirating the game, someone should knock down that fence, eyes to look at this game, their kid is playing in it, they’re cheating, mr umpire knock down that wall, why doesn’t the tall guy put the little guy on his shoulders, somebody had to lift, don’t handle me any more than you have to, bad back, fairness, these words are all tricks now, liberation, he’s in a hole, he could be a Morlock, post box society, I don’t analyze my own behavior, I often don’t know what to tell people, if you do your best you’re probably be all right, I can only emit so many, I cannot filter my negative emotions, not as stoic, this is an are you depressed or not, there is no overall purpose to life, a sign of depression, people of different ages, you’re in a nursing home, what pills to put you on, how depressed are you at being old, do yourself in, grandchildren not visiting you, hold the ereader up, cognitive abilities declined, let audiobooks wash over me, the last question, this test is not good, what do you do, Kentucky in your car, get a flat, cellphone is on low battery and no signal, no carjack, need to learn to change a flat, be prepared, triple A equivalent, an uncle who knew how to fix fences and change tires, spry, one or two of his brothers, the hoping that somebody comes along, hope is not a plan, foreseeing, that’s what wisdom is, a carton of water, some oil, alternator died, superclever, very proud of myself, using the tools at hand, it’s when you are great, knowing your great, not needing renowned or acclaimed, no RE no AC, how proud were you?, learning how to ride a bicycle, just gave up, can swim very well, came so naturally, proud to be walking around, do something you’ve never been able to do before, writing your first essay that doesn’t suck, doing some of your own research, good times, something you have to learn, but for what purpose, what the problem is and how we should fix the problem, reading some Foundation, getting at what’s wrong with it, putting it out there, for your own benefit, shared interests, nobody is interested in Foundation (even those watching the tv show), Paul Krugman, he should have read Alfred Bester, Dune, go to the park, out there to look at things sometimes, getting the sun, vitamin d bro, sniff some pheromones, a raccoon came up to me, let it sniff me, bitten, what did it do, being bitten, startled, animals don’t bite just to taste, special kinda crazy, fear response, trying to be considered by it, be more leery, the whole rabies process, animals with rabies, the episode of Doctor Quinn, she’s a medicine woman, the best of western medicine, it’s all danger of the week, fear/danger, reality more twisted and weird than it is dangerous and fear, actual fucking vs. theoretical fucking, your pension, defund your housing, you need to know about it, Netflix and streaming services, cost money and doesn’t give me anything, that consumer culture horror, digitial subscriptions to three magazines, Seize The Press, anti-capitalist, they don’t have a press, a red triangle around it, you love tech, old tech and good tech that works, not a fetishist, a smartwatch, wearing shit, what do you need that for?, being productive, bad heart, low oxygen, commanded to get your steps in, conspicuous consumption, apple watches, bombs to bomb people, screen protector and case, two finicky about finding the right one, one of those questions, making decisions is really bad, when their is so many options, act by not acting, alpha haven’t happened, make up a set of principles, change your principles later, don’t turn down money, wasn’t a decision, just a policy, makes your life way better to cut things out, what criteria to abide by, made in Israel, I’m not going to buy that, who’s better, Android or Apple, an LG phone, good features, all the things that make a modern phone, stuck into the ecosystem, expandable memory, the way you don’t get screwed by the phone company, their cloud, forget about the privacy implications, keeps you in the ecosystem, it’s free just press this button, you have to fight against them, it is slightly better, Apple is very very closed, texting somebody in blue (vs. green), a way to suck you in and keep you broken, who you gonna believe me or your own research, he can’t get his banking app to work on his phone, look into sideloading, theoretically can be done, how robust is it?, the official app store, they don’t want you to see Alex Jones, find a way, Android is very capable of being sideloaded, windows traditionally that was the only way, if you get trained properly, play a game on a website, don’t let them trap you, fuck with your food, fuck with your phone, fuck with your life, frozen with fear and regret, very afraid of regret, did something really mean, legal career, doing your best at the time, can’t justify it, let it roll through me, paralyzed by regret, inform our future actions, massive decline at some point, still producing Jesse particles, back among the children, 4 days a week, doesn’t suck, there’s lots of patterns to it, never even think about writing it down, scheduling apps, too chaotic for voicemail, spam calls, text message is better, some more particles next time.

The Gods Of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #833 – READALONG: Waterspider by Philip K. Dick

Jesse, Will Emmons, and Terence Blake, talk about Waterspider by Philip K. Dick

Talked about on today’s show:
Worlds Of IF, January 1964, estate, renewed, Poul Anderson, there’s a Poul Anderson serial, not related, the public domain contents, archive.org, delete the half of the serial that’s in this, from 1963, poor Astrid, Karen, Jesse fucking them over out of their money, light and playful and not interesting, a lot of the humour is fan insider humour, doesn’t interest, some deeper stuff, funny, beyond the who’s who of fan people, Howard Browne always having to catch a bus, or a plane, Ray Bradbury has to lie down, a time travel story, A Sound Of Thunder, the butterfly effect, subtly, Trump’s been elected, a ripple effect, the origin of the phrase, seagulls, wingbeats, more poetic, hurricane or cyclone, the Jesse Willis policy on spoilers, a huge Ray Bradbury head, cloying and annoying and too soft and not science fictiony enough, pre-occupied by death, The Small Assassin, my baby is trying to kill me, stupid, a terrible title for a story, the big jump, crack the words and the proper names, the stories are parallel, the Deucher thing, the evil Trump-like character, Gutman in this book, Gutman was dangerous because he had non-conformist ideas, the liberal society is totalitarian, very 2024, their future is our president, he’s a precog, Minority Report, it’s stupid, a weak story, an interesting idea, far too long, those precogs are very autistic dudes and a lady in a bathtub, all science fiction writers are precogs, a Hugo Gernsback idea, ridiculing and validating, interested in science fiction, Damien G. Walter, sorry Damien G. Walter, the prophet, tries to show that Jordan Peterson listened to his podcast, mythos, junior high school, this isn’t a word, how wrong he is makes me smarter, evils? fallacies? errors, no wrong about everything, one of the more honest liberals, pretty open about that, in a not wholly hateful way, starting to get into science fiction, [Bill Christensen’s] Technovelgy, thinking about ideas in the present, If This Goes On…, novelette, people who think science fiction, suffer from ideology, where subjectivity is proscribed, these people from the past were writing attempts at literal prediction, making fun of that idea, he’s doing both, three or four layers to this, as soon as you go away from the convention, in the consequence, shown to be wrong, stories mentioned in what issues of IF, The Defenders, the January 1953 Galaxy, faking the report, the people…, very good Poul Anderson agreed, those exact conditions came to pass, we were able to penetrate the article, do you know him?, very nervous fellow, probably a true story, Poul Anderson met Philip K. Dick for the first, the Sir Francis Drake hotel, Dr. Futurity, a Duck call Sir Francis, on the surface here, this story we’re reading, the August 1955 issue of IF, Nightflight, it’s not there, from a different timeline, a 1959 story by Margaret St. Clair, identification, Evelyn Page, the renowned, The Scarlet Hexapod, one of the finest, flushing nervous, a man from the future?, that was so cool, a non-interesting story if that’s all this story was, total fan service, looks like a self-cancelling loop, goes own to write that story and publish it, you reverse mandela effect yourself, has changed the future, the word waterspider survives as a pretty good sounding name for their project, nightflight sounds better, this word, waterspiders, they walk across the water, is Poul Anderson a water spider in this story, walk across the waters, Paulous (small) ander means man, son of man, the result of a small change, the butterfly effect, the word that survives into the future, a second loop, from a meta point of view, a different writer in the past, just as in the Fermi paradox, aliens everywhere, so brilliant they can pass undetected, the Fermetti paradox, visited by time travelers all the time, they memory wipe us, the loops are not totally effacive, they’re like dreams, minds switched, their names switched, back to front, reading from my mind, totally there, almost unacknowledged in the story itself,

Puzzled, Tozzo shook his head and said in bewilderment, “I have some peculiar words in my mind. Night Flight. Do either of you happen to know what it refers to?”

“Night Flight” Fermeti echoed. “No, it means nothing to me. I wonder, though – it certainly would be an effective name for our Project.”

“Yes,” Gilly agreed. “That must be what it refers to.”

“But our Project is called Waterspider, isn’t it?” Tozzo said. At least he thought it was. He blinked, trying to focus his faculties.

“The truth of the matter, ” Fermeti said, “is that we’ve never titled it.” Brusquely, he added, “But I agree with you; that’s an even better name for it. Waterspider. Yes, I like that.”

The door of the office opened and there stood a uniformed, bonded messenger. “From the Smithsonian,” he informed them. “You requested this.” He produced a parcel, which he laid on Fermeti’s desk.

“I don’t remember ordering anything from the Smithsonian,” Fermeti said. Opening it cautiously he found a can of roasted, ground coffee beans, still vacuum packed, over a century old.

The three men looked at one another blankly.

“Strange,” Torelli murmured. “There must be some mistake.”

“Well,” Fletcher said, “in any case, back to Project Waterspider.” Nodding, Torelli and Oilman turned in the direction of their own office on the first floor of Outward, Incorporated, the commercial firm at which they has worked and the project on which they had labored, with so many heartaches and setbacks, for so long.

hard cut back to the science fiction convention, the real ending, fan servicey ending, back to project waterspider, sounds like a Philip K. Dick title, alternate names for Philip K. Dick novel titles, The Man Who Japed, The Simulacrum, a terrible title for a story, Jabberwocky, a butterfly, insects, little arthropods, tweet too much, dick title, top hit, Souvenir and Paycheck, Ben Affleck, okay, the story is a lot better, another level of reality, the story has three levels, the third one undermines the conclusion of the film, a family of insects, eight legs vs., great insight there, pleased to no end, singing praises, Jesse can’t steal Terence’s insight, too light, too nothing, jocular fan service, jocular and funny, there must be something, bother digging, it was Philip K. Dick who wrote it, he doesn’t write bad stories, a whole world building behind him, Beyond The Door, that’s it, that’s the whole story, a hidden story within it, he’s made it deeper on another level, this is a guy who’s really into it, I’m going to get famous, a science fiction sensibility, his psychological, A.E. Van Vogt, a piece of shit but also interesting, why it is like that, come up with an idea, come up with another idea, giving the secret of one type of science fiction creativity, mentor, his inspiration, his guy, blew his mind in the 40s, Slan’s pretty hot, nobody else’s great master of science fiction, Harlan Ellison felt that way, dialectically educated, the Logic Of Science Fiction, takes Hegel’s logic applied to science fiction, embodies each of those concepts, the logic ultimately behind science fiction is Hegel’s logic, The World Of Null-A, pulpish shit, everybody takes a hit, Null-Null, ISFDB.org, the A is Aristotle, they’re responding, part of his concept, it applies to itself, in French, Jean-Clet Martin, this is a roman-a-clef, acute accent, Jesse’s proud of himself again, a post show question, Paycheck, the story is better, movie is okay, John Woo, a thriller, very similar to a show called Severance, mind wiped when not at work, his memory of those months is gone, a bag of souvenirs, a ticket stub, he’s trying to send himself a message, a moral qualm with it, they have a time dredge, a time scoop, the objects from his time while working for the company, The Man In The High Castle, Frank Frink, the real and the authentic and art, sees reality as it isn’t, zen meditation with regard to objects, Williamson’s World, totalitarian Earth society, a handmade cup, loved object, the butterfly or waterspider, the coffee to remind us, David Currie, dreams, very proud, seed father to your, the A.E. Van Vogt, null-aing you, extract things that are not meant to be remembered, if dreams were indistinguishable from regular memories, teasing out souvenir dream objects, visions of the future humans doing future things, Gutman is Trump is the rookie mistakes, Jim Briskin is the black president of the United States, the dates wrong, reading science fiction does give you insight into human nature and our relationship with technology, but not all of it gives it equally, wallpaper science fiction, Ranch Romance on Mars, a very good science fiction story, talked Will into it, the bed, the baldness, base Malthusianism, the weirdness about children, the moral explanation is just beneath the knowledge that Poul Anderson’s trying to dig up, reproducing too much, the liberal guy who won, Children are proscribed, the political stuff, introv, childish or childlike, the Murray Leinster reference,

The clerk said, “Haven’t you been nuzzled lately, sir?”

“What’s that?” Anderson said. Nuzzled?

“The new spring nuzzlers have arrived, you know,” the clerk said, moving toward the gleaming spherical machine nearest him. “Yes,” he said to Poul, “you do strike me as very, very faintly introve — no offense meant, sir, I mean, it’s legal to be introved.” The clerk chuckled. “For instance, your rather odd clothing. . . made it yourself, I take it? I must say, sir, to make your own clothing is highly introve. Did you weave it?” The clerk grimaced as if tasting something bad.

“No,” Poul said, “as a matter of fact it’s my best suit.”

“Heh, heh,” the clerk said. “I share the joke, sir; quite witty. But what about your head? You haven’t shaved your head in weeks.”

“Nope,” Anderson admitted. “Well, maybe I do need a nuzzler.” Evidently everyone in this century had one; like a TV set in his own time, it was a necessity, in order for one to be part of the culture.

“How many in your family?” the clerk said. Bringing out a measuring tape, he measured the length of Poul’s sleeve.

“Three,” Poul answered, baffled.

“How old is the youngest?”

“Just born,” Poul said.

The clerk’s face lost all its color. “Get out of here,” he said quietly. “Before I call for the polpol.”

“Um, what’s that? Pardon?” Poul said, cupping his ear and trying to hear, not certain he had understood.

“You’re a criminal,” the clerk mumbled. “You ought to be in Nachbaren Slager.”

“Well, thanks anyhow,” Poul said, and backed out of the store, onto the sidewalk; his last glimpse was of the clerk still staring at him.

the Lord Runningclam style character, the slime mold, an information dump alien, told him everything he needed to know, backstory, different images of the science fiction writer, the precog, the introve, the alien, all as being different possible images of the science fiction writer, deeply or thoroughly, The Eyes Have It by Philip K. Dick, finds a novel, his eyes wandered all over the room, he took her hand, metaphoric expressions, deduces there are aliens who are invading us, its five minutes, he’s describing the key technique for him, take an expression that should be metaphorical and science fiction gives it a literal rendering of it, Samuel Delany, his world exploded when she dumped him, turn it literal, in this story, the same technique, science fiction writers predict the future, look back and see science fiction writers were precogs, Damien G. Walter, a stage you go through, the first time you read the story of Jesus, some pretty interesting ideas, his shortest story, [READS FULL STORY], a lot of garages in Philip K. Dick stories, he’s one of them too, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, fiction, two ways of being literal, a literary technique, not mainstream stories, taking things literally, manifesto on the same theme, the same trick, this meta-science fictional aspect of reality and of fiction, sounds and squiggles and ones and zeroes representing, not realy like gravity, contragravity, not teasing Damien G. Walter, pointing to that teasing, exploring the future through thought, story is the driving force of all science fiction, a story that looks like our nature, changes in fashion, that future is the most interesting part of the story, what Philip K. Dick thinks Poul Anderson would act like Back To The Future, almanac, knowing the future of baseball games, let’s exploit, Built Up Logically [aka The Universal Panacea by Howard Schoenfeld], grokked it so deeply, pulling the rug out from under his own story, that story exists because of this, when writing about the past, really random Margaret St. Clair story, timelines screwed up, The Mold Of Yancy by Philip K. Dick, hitting the neighbours, an ironic name for a prison, sending prisoners into space, they’re small, they’re tiny, small things can make a difference, Donald Nils, no one can jeer at him even though he’s only an inch high, nihilism, a nothing, I’m small time, insist on respect, tiny tiny robots invading the earth, Prominent Author, a portal in your back yard, testing it out, tiny tiny people, the prominent author of the title is god, he wrote the Bible, love the blasphemy, the big and the small, the Monopoly, he’s so good, he wrote a novel that has Monopoly, invasion of the earth through Monopoly, watching the films backwards, I know that film backwards, taking an expression, inflicted, kids hate school, one of the joys, the AV room, a video projector, some film, at the end of the lesson (watching a documentary about log drivers or whatever), they have to rewind it, can you play it backwards, makes fun of the government film, whatever propaganda they’re trying to teach you, it wastes time, thinking about the 3 o’clock bell, he’s so insightful, how all other authors aren’t this good, in their own way, Sheckley’s a little less deep, he can go on too long and fill pages, about like this length, ideas and density, why that lady is on a bed that’s a car, it has a tiller, don’t you touch me!, some interesting something going on there, the mattress car, the future, sexualized, there’s no reproductive sex, commenting on everybody’s miniskirts in the 50s, just above the knee, not totally liberated people, bare breasts, short skirts, the knees are virtual exposed, a health reason, “Maid of Venus”, gleaming breast cups, himself wore no disguise, being quite a stable person, most of the 20th century precogs, minus their wives, playing poker, becoming stoned, smoking dope, reefering, 1954, must be drunk, Dick was hip or whatever, Murray Leinster and Van Vogt into marijuana, PhilipKDick.com, 12,100 words, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, releases from some of Dick’s fellow writers, as to Kris Neville, Phil is stoned again, Philip Jose Farmer, regarding stoned, only by first name, stoned on pot vs. getting drunk, other than amphetamines, and LSD, marijuana culture, Sunday Morning Coming Down, Johnny Cash, long, word counter, 13,900, novelette length, he’s so good, the second hand replacement for Jonathan, an anchor in reality in these conversations, he’s in the clouds, the real reality, he’s looking down, an inverted anchor, a sky anchor, a sea anchor, a big boat guy, during a storm, slows your movement, an earth anchor, as a metaphor, a fire anchor, the argument for Paul, a thing that slows down the movement over the ocean, we’re not only the one metaphor, a James Gunn story, the telepathic aliens were really disturbed, rely on symbols that can be misinterpreted, a psychiatrist in a space war, helps him get a girlfriend, pairing things, in relief, The Empty House by Algernon Blackwood, William Jeffrey Rankin, right coded?, he’s gopt a book out, a few fantastic opening paragraphs, certain houses like certain persons, secret and wicked thoughts, as from a thing diseased, the aroma of evil deeds, the gooseflesh come, creeping skin, terror stricken without apparent cause, ghost stories, a big problem, treat it as a metaphor, A Christmas Carol, Oscar Wilde ghosts, time travelers, what ghosts are, ghost exist they’re in your head, you’re haunted by things that you’ve done and people you’ve known, The Stone Tapes, science fiction, the vibes of people are in the object, extreme emotions embedded in the stone of the castle, H.G. Wells’ The Red Room, the final nail in the coffin of ghost stories, less ghosty, maybe Ray Bradbury, children used as a vector to invade the Earth, Zero Hour?, so jolly, the children catapulted this way and that, very Dickian, very Bradburian, a weird Van Vogt story, The Weapon Shop stories, 55 years ago, The Weapon Shops Of Isher, a fixup, a short story from 1942, Robert Headrock, explicitly the right to keep and bear arms, aliens setup a weapons shop overnight, very interesting, an hour and a half, sounds good, Paycheck and The Weapon Shop, he’s anti-gun, a little needle, about Jesse understanding things, end up like Damien G. Walter, ends up like Evan [Lampe], hear ideas, that’s wrong, thinking about why that thing is wrong, here’s an idea, that can’t be right, Terence made Waterspider way better, that little clef, reaction or response to that Bradbury story, The Seesaw, he’s from the prairies, bro, don’t identify, fuck patriotism, is there any ism Jesse is a partaker of, stoicism, skepticism, a mistake, on cassette, iterations of your life, joy, the opening going to the library of Congress and getting out the scans, we don’t think of those two time travelers as monsters, horrible human beings, tease out some of that Gutman stuff, frame it in this horrible way, far right vs. woke, which government is in charge?, if those are the two dialectical poles, the woke government, children are disgusting, Kamala Harris doesn’t have any children, stepkids, not important, step this and step that, a totalitarian future where people don’t have sex but also the conformity for haircuts, everybody has to be bald, the Shogun tv series, the ending, the original appeal of Shogun in the 1980s, the appeal of science fiction, why Sir Francis Drake is important, away mission, evil imperial empire work, trending, won awards, any credit, what makes it good, guy with agenda washes up on the shores of feudal japan, gets caught up in their shit, without that outsider there to teach us, a lesson in Japanese culture from a long time ago, knights and courtly behavior, that stuff is weird, experience like an alien does, the John Blackthorne character, everything that happens in the novel is based on a reality, it has a ring of truth, a Game of Thrones tv series that doesn’t turn to shit, no magic, just aliens, they are us with a different culture, almost science fiction, good historical stuff, a fictional glaze, a little romance, is the remake better?, a different world, remember it fondly, really good, more CGI, better, can’t prove it, the guy playing Toranaga, he’s not Toshiro Mifune, Blackthorne guy, very tight, 10 episodes, an ellipse, I might need to burn his ships again, that was good, the opposite of Game Of Thrones and Rings Of Power and Foundation, converge on the payoff, real episodes, he never becomes Shogun in the Shogun show, deep level of chess play, he’s at home in England in bed, holding a cross in his hand, he drops that into the sea with the surrogate wife, he’s never going to leave Japan, make it more clear that they are dreams, slightly imperfect, not clear enough, slight misstep, a minor imperfection, how to pirate, a Hulu original show, the non-anchoring anchor, fx on hulu, how many bad shows their are, a difficult thing to wade through, pretty sure that it’s shit writing, acting and set designs, complaint with comics, the style of art they want portrayed is bad, specific to superhero comics, quasi-realistic style, more diversity in our styles, got the gist at some point, Superman is still interesting, the X-Men 97, read and watched, swept away by it, can’t pull yourself away from the screen, a chill down after intense scanning, play some games, the first of the new Planet Of the Apes movies, this epic quality, pin you for the chair for 2 hours, monkeys, seeing ourselves reflected in monkeys, aliens and robots, and dogs, afraid of robots, chided, rise and robots in the same sentence, afraid of the robots rising, bring em on, Nat Turner probably killed a lot of white people, was right to do it, making the same mistake, do you think it will be just like regular human slaves, they don’t have babies, they don’t eat, it’s fun, Philip K. Dick’s relationship to robots, angered this robot has come into his house, change the lightbulbs, she likes the robot, sexually jealous of it, robots are great, chained to the kitchen floor, you’re going to go to the scrapheap, a smily eye, amazon device, a a frowny scared face, addicted to saying nice things, tamagotchis, electronic pets, fidget spinners that are more interesting, digital pets, the free enterprise system, that story by Ted Chiang: The Lifecycle Of Software Objects, clinical and cold, full of pathos, no better science fiction, Arrival, simple and clear and direct, his subjects are so science fictiony, Exhalation, pneumatic robots, if they ever ran out of pressure, be born again, they can’t die, mechanically destroyed, intellectually die, his reality in a journal, how their world came into existence, at this moment you’d be thinking, pneumatic tubes all the way down, an alternative reality, more Borges than it is regular science fiction, taking apart his own head, the mirrors and the tools, an unusual scientist figure, what an amazing achievement, one of many stories that he has written, dip into Mr. Ted Chiang, extraordinary, amazing, still producing, science fiction writer of the classic kind, just old fashioned science fiction that blows your fuckin mind, this little idea in philosophy, what is the consequence of that, helmets on people, see inside their mind, some very basic stuff, mindread, be 100% accurate, the decision has been made, to the hand, to the eyes, extrapolated all the time, whoa!, right, get to him, another friend of Will’s, fantasy and horror and weird fiction, science fiction is on to something, Arrival (2016), sad and awesome, more Hollywood, a former zookeeper, digients, the nature of consent, a sex toy company, what adulthood means, the relationship we have with pets, raise, care for, abandon, what if that thing doesn’t even have a fuckin body, still in the drawer their, even if you did, nostalgia, the NPCs in the game, you’re a really good guy, sword tokens, his longest piece, novella length, slowin down, nothing since 2020, a productive period, he’s got nothin, scary, in the New Yorker writing about AI, explaining to idiots, also insightful, excerpt, rehash, The Merchant And The Alchemist’s Gate, a little Borges in him, who else has a little Borges in him, Borges wrote some Lovecraft stories, the labyrinth, the alternate image of reality, obsessed with the labyrinth, Mr Jim Moon has sort of quit twitter, The Library Of Babel, a 1.5 page story, The Rejected Sorcerer by Jorge Luis Borges [reads whole story], TNG [“The Inner Light”], O’Brien goes to jail [“Hard Time”], Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Picard whistle, ressican flute, The Star by Arthur C. Clarke, the holiday season, a christmas story, a vault, no warp drive, they like their space dogs, they like doing art, they like going to the beach, the reason Picard’s getting zapped, so somebody remembers them, as the cold war is heating up, the end is kinda gonna come, so disturbing, implanted memories, alone in prison, a cellmate, also like a video game, Megaton, lady journalist, chat dialogue trees, we all getting programmed with the same experiences, Ichar teaches him how to survive, habitual behaviors, hording food, rewatch, a really disturbing ending, DS9 is a better show TNG has better episodes, vacillating back and forth, all 7 seasons, that arc, arcs became very hot, Babylon 5, the shadow war, season 5 is weak, so much lower stakes, wrap it up, largely a disappointment, J. Michael Straczynski, just cooking for three seasons, phenomenal science fiction, great character work, good acting, the sub ambassadors, everybody has fun things happening, G’Kar and the other guy, zeebo and rooty, the serbian lady and her husband from Scarecrow And Mrs. King, Strawman and Mrs. Smith, Scarecrow And Mrs. King, Charlie’s Angels, divorced housewife, cia guy and housewife, like True Lies (1994), Jamie Lee Curtis, the wife of Schwarzenegger, a husband and wife romance, topical in the 80s, 50s science fiction, we have this distance, you didn’t know that wasn’t normal, don’t even get married, don’t want to break up the family, housewife? what’s that?, we live in a weird time, egregiously weird, get into Twitch, don’t give Jeff Bezos money, super-censory, firm conviction, enjoy it as a hobby, reddit, useful and a sinkhole of evil, what happened to the internet in a microcosm, super-censorious, not all top down, reddit kings and queens, useful, super evil and dangerous, went back to reading it, Jesse propagandizing for getting chickens, after drilling, best friend from high school, Northern Kentucky, The Beckoning Fair One by Oliver Onions, a vampire story, long, in four parts, Classic Ghost Stories podcast, Tony Walker, recording and recording, ai art, pretty much all, Jason Thompson, takes on ai art, asking hard questions without fear, acts of friendship, the name of its opposite, a one word opposite of the Socratic method, could be good, not hearing enthusiasm, read more Plato, nice art, art by Neural Horror ai, instagram account, ethics and ai art, all wrong but very interesting, tldr: it’s art but we aren’t artists, murky, kneejerk ai haters, not a real artist, terrifying for my career, Godzilla on the horizon, proartists, prompt lord, wasted money on a real artist, a tool to create art, like a pencil, anyone with midjourney is an artists, gatekeeping, convincing work, an awed emotion, looking up at the stars is art, aesthetics, some of us, come on man, like ordering food and calling himself a chef, a beautiful poem, almost right, ignorant and truly disrespectful, all deceased, he died in 1893, profit from the use of these images, affect their income, we should maybe stopped being entitled dicks, with mere words, unconscionable, aping what handmade art looks like, so many problems, so useful, don’t use living artists, understanding the impulse, just read the story, three years in law school, the Socratic method, the application, pat responses to legal questions, figure your way into them, really into the question of copying and copyrighted art, how do human artists train themselves, weasel worded, not on purpose, he got tricked by his own word, taught as a negative, anti-ape bias, we can make moose and duck calls, using our tricks, some eldritch shit, when coyotes are able to do that, when humans do it, Duck Dynasty, not a very Jesse show, too reality, 62 matches on LibriVox, some of them are in Greek, not helping, The Symposium, drinking party, wine party, genealogy of love, knowledge, a tragedian, a story within a story, the highest purpose of love is to become a philosopher, The Republic, the most science fictiony one, The Apology, The Trial And Death Of Socrates, Phil Chenevert our old friend, he’s a hero, for our times, Conan and Socrates, a speech given by Socrates, narrow but interesting, corrupting the young, an apology is the opposite of satire, crusin for a bruisin, cancel him, drink this poison and he did, short and interesting, named after the people, The Gorgias, sophists, a trap, intellectual tricks, weasel worded, trynna help Baen, I’m not attacking you, Socrates vs. the sophists, a takedown, 7 hours, spiritual ideas of Plato, reserves damnation for the tyrants of the world, the pretty boy, Protagoras, inquiry into virtue, Bob Neufeld, 12 hours, Statesman, two different kinds of chariots, the etext, the dialogue, flows real easy, Aristophanes, The Clouds, Alcibiades, Athenean general, supposed to be sexy, a troupe of revelers, the day before yesterday, a play on words, did as I was bid, speeches in praise of love, who if not you, were you present at this meeting, easy reading, so important, like philosophy, almost no philosophy is written in dialogue, an essay here or there, What Is Like To Be A Bat?, a science fiction idea, Nagel, qualia, very helpful, instances of subjective, conscious experience, the redness of red, red = hot, we need this word but it doesn’t help us, inverted qualia, strawberry in black and white, in his head the strawberry is red, who’s right?, really hitting on something now, they’re all judo flips, MMA style attack vectors, fun, use it on Jesse, went to law school, wrestling move with regard to the Poul Anderson estate, taken off of archive.org, they had no idea, definitely 64, neither was 1964, go nuts, fuck you for deleting shit, another method, the Streisand effect, photograph of her home was in circulation, increases public awareness, suppress the publication of a photograph, clifftop residence, reverse psychology, seek out and propagate, anytime something bad happens in the world, 7000 things on there, kids getting their heads torn off in Gaza, instead of wallowing in meanness and horror, make treasure, a benefit to tearing things down, be a constructive person too, that line about Edgar Rice Burroughs, I can write better rot than this, A Princess Of Mars, caught up, Gods Of Mars is next week, the calendar, get Terence involved, nice and short, 2 hours 15, Plato’s Dream, My Platonic Sweetheart by Mark Twain, the Twain train, it was in a dream, the Missouri village, Cannibalism In The Cars by Mark Twain, various public men, Harris!, I’ll never forget you my boy, let me tell you a story, a secret chapter of my life, promise you will not interrupt me, strange adventure, the stranger’s narrative, presentiment, prairie solitude, vagrant rocks, in the midst of great drifts, too long to read for you, the summary, they get stuck in the snow, a sample, five days, a savage hunger looked out of every eye, in every heart, in the shadow of death, leap from every lip at last, tall cadaverous and pale, gentlemen, dragging this out, the time is at hand, furnish food for the rest, if there being no objection, you can image what happens, the button of the story, so stamped with the earnestness of truth, he is a member of congress and a good one, sick and out of his head for two months afterward, normal congressional officer behavior, super fuckin sharp, some American writers who were good, Philip K. Dick, sharpies, a slur word too, a grifter synonym, card sharp/shark, normal activity, make coffee, edit a podcast, a presentiment, Dark City: The Cleaner, a story set in New Zealand, they have eels there, Middle Earth, Lord Of The Rings was shot there, Christchurch, for the domestic market, What We Do In The Shadows, Flight Of The Concords, musical duo, big when Will was in college, L. Sprague de Camp, more of a Paul question, Parodies Tossed, Randall Garrett, making fun of, reviews in verse, Starship Troopers, Lest Darkness Fall, handwriting, a good review, well written, not available as an audiobook, an article, Fletcher Pratt, a novelization of the Conan movie, A Gun For Dinosaur, time travelers go back to shoot dinosaurs, a mini-trope series, so famous, There Will Come Soft Rains, too nuclear war-y, automated house, the poem, Fahrenheit 451, dad friend Jenny [Colvin], Z Is For Zachariah (2015), more girly, she loved reading books, reading plans, a reading machine, a fiction devourer, six books she read that week, dig with short stories, Craig Zobel, Robert C. O’Brien, after Hunger Games, unreproducable, all the Hunger Games movies, blur together, interested in reading, what everybody else was excited about, this is fine, it’s fine, Harry Potter, definitely better, something to say, almost science fictiony too, the fashion contests, not for you, not a gay man or a woman interested in fashion contests, the baking boy, the love interest, wimpy, he bakes!, interestingly less girly, written by a lady, a dude doing dude things, pre-pubescent, middle school, a way of teaching about tenses, when he graduates from Hogwarts, I had had dinner by that time, past perfect, make your sentences comprehensible, before he was a wizard, before the sorting hat, out of the culture, how old is skibidi toilet, culture jamming, adbusters, what students have now achieved, corporate advertising, domination of mass society, the systems they’re soaking in, no graphic content, the establishment is not okay, talk to the chat, like he’s livestreaming his life, that’s his reality, isn’t that amazing, the danger Meg is in, online footprint, participating in the observations, more than 10 years, another place to watch video, people self-destructing, facebook is evidence of their self-destruction, messy hair, offline for two years, used car, stickers on the tires, infer the crash, then the offline, had to have been participating at some point, chat gpt grosser than regular art, when you make a nice image, time it takes upon the reader, an ai art novel for nanorimo, so fucked up, a bad idea from the beginning, way too much bad writing already, more discerning, we need to be looking for the tells, your name is not a real name, the text doesn’t have anything to say, writer = novelist is superfucked up, coming out of the fifties, changes in the technology and realestate, the Cirsova circle, comic book racks damaging comics, comics at the gas station, the price of Thrilling Wonder Stories, $1.06, no magazines are that price, try to find a $5 magazine, comic books, 12 minutes, what the fuck went wrong, nothing to do with the material technology, the distribution of those magazines, almost no newsstands, phones, reading habits, not on a screen, ereaders, paper material that’s colour and reproduced like comic books, with a printed piece of paper, insanely different, just go along with whatever’s hot, new Deadpool Wolverine movie, what we’re doing on this podcast, old shit vs. new shit, booktubing, some lady, second half of her introductions, comments about her body, bbw, big beautiful woman, approaching this the wrong way, short videos, a dude, Liminal Spaces, The Retro Reader, an hour, every DAW book on the planet, some ACE doubles, checkin on your chickens, Connor’s channel, with thumbs, negative thumbs, where is he?, messaged him, newsletter, disengages from twitter, that’s fine, support him living his life, the ETA Hoffmann book he recorded, 16 hours 12 minutes, quite a book, chonky cat, feral to indoor, an irresponsible owner, fat cats are truly wonderful to look at, help these cats be less fat, quote tweeting, toxoplasmosis, boneless furry things that treat you like a supermodel wood, I’m beautiful, love me, bye, screams for food, monkeyish, nobody needs to make a toxoplasmosis argument for dogs, too far gone, too much pain, steroid shot every six weeks, chase around, the best thing you can do for your health, get a certain number, gamify it, vanlife guy, huckleberry bread, tub of margarine, sugar in the bread, what can you do, what we’re soaking in, do they sell margarine in Italy?, no salt, consistency of a brick, not in an earthmother way, regarding seed oils, rapeseed/canola, plant has a big red glob, you eat it, come out your pooper, we find plants that don’t want us to eat their seeds, full of toxins designed to kill that animals, olive oil if a fruit oil, apple seeds have arsenic [cyanide] in them, a chart showing toxicity levels, not how it is being taught to us in schools, the food pyramid, 12-16 servings of bread a day, put in schools, cottonseed, grape, sunflower, we eat sunflower seeds, cottonseed is not food, if you were a bird, apparently we do, uses side-effects, possible benefits, yellow color, sometimes used as a pesticide, salad dressing, its gonna make you die now, the same old thing you’ve been buying (now it will kill you), you shouldn’t be eating margarine, new life, kids getting their million vaccines, evidence, fucktons of it, Alzheimer’s, when will that happen, ivermectin, same disease, diabetes third stage, the results, type 3, similarities between the two, the Fauci website, highest paid government employee, isn’t that fun, a set of symptoms, not a genetic disease, calling it phlogiston, all the oxygen was turned into carbon dioxide, and a lot of water, carbon monoxide, cancer is superold, new cancer, autism, allergies, exposed to more things less allergic to them, okay not to be exposed to certain things, peanuts, these will kill me, not the most popular legume, the allergy is new, since peanuts, nobody’s allergic to raw meat, this is not of the body, triggered, wasps, huge mistake, climbing a stump, the shit they put in those vaccines, largely the preservatives and stabilizers, injecting mercury into very young people, so counter to the narrative, if Paul was here he’d be long gone, Will won’t block Jesse yet, blocked by strangers, Jesse is annoying, cultivate that, important to be annoying, not shy away from the truth, come at people with it, the opposite of shying away, a different way of putting it, not afraid of making yourself obnoxious, just a shit-disturber don’t worry about him, I see you’re christian … did you know that Jesus never walked on water, philosophy of religion, have believed that at some points, taking orders from the pope, just right, there’s nothing you can do about it, only when he’s sitting on Saint Peter’s chair, encyclicals and doctrines, the lesser of two evils (but I don’t know when that is), you have to vote, Jill Stein is not perfect, do you think the Russian army have committed no war crimes?, that’s what armies do, like an op now, from Jimmy Dore, take it to far, a good person trying to do good can also do bad by not doing things, rhetorical trap, people can be bad and also good, Ryan Grim, the automatic pilot from Airplane! (1980), inflatable ideas, Am I Racist?, Matt Walsh, flag of Puerto Rico, basic history of Haiti, Kenyan mercenaries, well actually, you don’t have to write a note, he senses the temperature in the room, so outside, team Democrat, everybody agrees to invade on Haiti, more naive, won’t you call Putin and Assad war criminals, do you condemn Hamas?, is that what we need right now, she was just tricked, a nice smart lady, too wimpy, what’s really happening here?, war crimes happened, ISIS is the big bad guy, asked for help, why the states still hasn’t left, funded by different parts of the U.S. government, Al Qaeda, the whole point is to not have him in charge, milk the government out of the money, forces overseas in combat, does she just not know?, nobody’s going to call her on it, no troops in active duty, they won’t be getting medals, ops, contractors, evidence of people being killed overseas, offensive operations, successful deaths, revenge was taken for those deaths, that’s fun, presume he likes Haiti, tropical countries controlled by the United States, no representation, migrate into the states legally, cryptobros, at least there’s something, kinda fucked up, Beyond The Door, Philip K. Dick can do no wrong except in novels, craft rather than ideas, structured well, talking about it, an amusing read, funny, a note, a cryptic letter the month after, the next issue, what it says about your magazine by having that story in there, tweet way too much, a reader reacts cryptically, If, March 1964, Chattanooga, Tennessee, a less than longtime imaginative fiction fan, now I know for sure what you’re doing with IF, a less than longtime imaginative fiction fan, so much research, Murray Leinster, Margaret St. Clair, wasn’t able to google her, an editor, a fan or somebody, bafflement?, over their head, a funny story here, very inside baseball sort of story, the Easter eggs, read with a student, recursive science fiction, shout out the Alfred Bester story this is fairly similar to, Scott Miller, Unseen Blushers by Alfred Bester, similar to this, proper names, more accessible, fake named, Fitz-James O’Brien is mentioned, Tony Boucher, rhyme with voucher, bouche is mouth, Tony mouther, a little rougher, they’re not precogs, getting to meet the Shakespeare of the pulps, 42?, in Astonishing Stories, before his two big novels, take off until the 50s, almost nobody who talks about Philip K. Dick talks about his short stories, absolutely insane, bias towards novels, how amazing VALIS is man, mindblowing, trippy stuff, every short story is a hit even if it is a little hit, not a strike, not a foul, at least a double, dying on this metaphor, need to be short stopped, baseball, a very Evan thing to do, the Library Of America is all novels, fucked up, not a good book, a solid novel, The Man In The High Castle, the Italian dictator, Mussolini, Roger Zelazny, Lord Of Light, Solar Lottery, manuscript lost, mainstream, he just needed to say the word, robot, Time Out Of Joint, everybody lives backwards, public pooping, private eating, We Can Build You, A. Lincoln, Simulacrum, Martian Time-Slip, very new, your cross examiner voice, keep us all honest, Doctor Bloodmoney, First Lady Of Earth, The Crack In Space, Now Wait For Last Year, an audiobook at a truck stop, the novelization of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Clans Of The Alphane Moon, Shell Game, Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch, H.P. Lovecraft, The Strain, bad vampire lich, vampire juice, Red Hook, tied together, The Zap Gun, Project Plowshare, propaganda industry, makes comics, develop technologies, cold war, allies, elite governmental level, crippling nuclear arms race, novel but baroque consumer products, trances, a motion comic book, mad Italian artist, plot happens, a further subplot, conspiracy theorist, toys and comic books, The Penultimate Truth, The Defenders, Deus Irae, with Roger Zelazny, The Unteleported Man, Nick And The Glimmung, Galactic Pot-Healer, if not the best, a boy and his cat, fully illustrated, Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, unfinished, UBIK is okay, What The Dead Men Say, Blade Runner, some cuts of the film, janitor robot, frozen hospital state, not dead, not alive, hypnogogic state, Frozen Journey, cut out of the movie, cyber hospital, why is that there?, some of that, a good idea, a spray, deipplizies, a really good ending, a really good beginning, when you’re not looking garbage reproduces, light your cigar, three used matches in the ashtray, the tendency of reality to turn to garbage, everything deteriorates, a spray, decrepitude, steeping into things, machines that can make anything, Pay For The Printer, a living creature, makes a copy, the copy comes out yucky, refugee relief, the point of that story, people need to learn to make stuff again, hew your own table, a guy full of ideas, back into making things, the horrible world, normcoring?, introve, yoou’re autistic, not participating in the culture all around you, Red Dead Redeption, Black Myth: Wukong, perfectly reasonable, educational, rpg, what is myth and what isn’t, the Monkey King, the destined one, Journey To The West, a staff, a PS5, Windows or xbox, point and click adventures, King’s Quest, Police Quest, you’re a prince or whatever, making fun of your computer, a good one, King’s Quest VIII, walk your character, you find a key, interact with characters, Myst, a Mac popular game, a rookie cop, Leisure Suit Larry, a pussy quest, go around town wearing your disco duds, almost hooking up with people, Land Of The Lounge Lizards, very racy, punny, silly, sex would be censored, very very silly, Dreams In The Witch-House, change to Brave browser, pixel art, known kits, why wouldn’t you use the tools available to you to make your game great, worried about dying, not eating enough, rat bites you, matches, a girl who needs some help, cultists, deep, go to the library, a Lovecraft simulator, that’ll run on anything, bad takes on Ukraine, he’s in Finland, a new game coming, Atom Brain Games, taking classes, manage your money, dig through the garbage, how the game is put together, a one man operation, Disco Elysium, smartness, produced enough content for the good of the world, 2 hours is enough for a game, you guys have been talking for five hours, almost six hours, embarrassing, sometimes 4 hours, Gods Of Mars.

Virgil Finlay - Waterspider

Virgil Finlay - Waterspider

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #830 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: A Witch Shall Be Born by Robert E. Howard

The SFFaudio Podcast #830 – A Witch Shall Be Born by Robert E. Howard, read by Phil Chenevert for (LibriVox). This is a complete and unabridged audiobook (2 hours 4 minutes), followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Will Emmons, Cora Buhlert, Jonathan Weichsel, and Alex (Pulpcovers)

Talked about on today’s show:
Weird Tales, December 1934, not dead at this point, 1.5 years, the comic adaptation, a few surprises, interesting stuff going on, Jonathan sent Salome, the narrator is wrong, the sandwich meat, a historical character, Biblical character, famous for doing a striptease, the head of John the Baptist, a silver plate, the severed head, stories based on other stories, the real world, made up out of whole cloth, an orc who opens a cafe, in Howard’s time, opera, Oscar Wilde’s play, two Salomes, Herod’s daughter, women weeping at the crucification, going to visit the grave of Jesus, Mary, Mary’s mother, Mary Magdalane, religious education teacher in school, an amazing conversion story, no idea, years later, two different women, there were only 4 names for anybody, Salome III, the daughter of Herod’s wife, the feminine version, step daughter, for a lot of the middle ages, religious education teachers, bible questions, that’s my Salome story, so fleshed out, not a lot of detail, an excuse for a sexy dance scene, slowly slowly over time, the internet exists, almost all of these conan stories are set in analogues to places, our city, Khouran, equivalent of a crusader state, on the border between two civilizations, the ruling class, a mercenary army, Antioch, roving bands, Cossacks, Shemites, Conan comics, Belit is a famous character, a Shemite, the people of this place, hawk nosed and curly black beared, semite, one of the sons of Noah, legends about these people, third Conan, The Phoenix On The Sword, first and late, order of publication, The Frost Giant’s Daughter, the king limits you, Robert E. Howard annoys me, get to the Conan, Conan is a supporting character, more important, how everyone relates to him, Beyond The Black River, captain of the guard, feels like a sequel to Black Colossus, scenes not in the story, when Conan is up against the henchman, Man Eaters Of Zamboula, the chick is being tied up, Xuthal Of The Dusk, brutally whipped, great torment, a little piece of satin, the barbarian and the civilized person, nailed to your spine, they’re still in here, arm instead of neck, Ukrainian, Cossack, Turan is Iran, the Vilayet Sea, the Caspian Sea, one big mega continent, a regional name in Northern Turkey, the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, the descriptions of the people, crusader states, near Cyprus, Turkey, Lebanon, we have to, the sister appearing out of the window, lights out, lights on, when is Conan coming?, Velarius, killed so many dudes, 5 deep in dudes, Conan on the cross, the highlight of the story, him in the tent, casually takes command of the army, a side of Conan that doesn’t get touched enough, over the course of 7 months, fake siege weaponry, hidden knight regiment, smart and strategic, charismatic, army or pirate ship, the crucifixion scene, how audacious the writing is, everything that Conan does, the exact opposite of whatever Jesus does, spits in the eye of his nailers, instead of dying, if I could cut myself down, pulls his own nails out of his feet, read it very slowly, exactly right, an inversion of Christian ideas, four riders in from the east, the birth scene for Jesus, three kings from the East, an extra horse, on twitter, the cucifix is an X shape, the Tree of Woe, a literal tree, later done as an X men, Wolverine is a northern barbarian, very tough to kill, wild hair, crucifix cut down, trying to distinguish it from the original crucifixion, Y shaped crucifix, not have their cake and eat it too, the parents might notice, Robert E. Howard wants to make this a thing, wrestling with God, a Nemedian scholar epistle by pigeon, plot is happening in the background, engaging with this religion thing, Robert E. Howard vs. Christianity, Jesus is doing it wrong, his father, an amateur bible scholar, biblical history, discuss the bible, get down from that bloody cross, makes Conan the anti-Christ?, a fake Christ, King Clovis of the Franks, my battle axe, Cimmeria, (simmeria or kimmeria), Ireland, the Celts, (seltics or keltics), her I go, the official Del-Rey audiobooks, he’s running with this idea, this ultimate hero, the toughest guy, the smartest guy, shadow versions of Conan, monster Trog, Constatious is the anti-conan, he’s got a mustache, what evil Robert E. Howard would do, nationalistic, the twisted version of Conan, Olgred, if he dies he dies, should we give him some water?, that barbarian philosophy, Conan is the moderate best version of all of these guys, Taramis and Salome, identical except for the birthmark, sister raped, I like good things, she’s not wise enough, Conan takes one look at her, he’s seen between her boobs, he didn’t just like intuit it, normally covered up, over her heart, in the Comics version, secret lover, captain again, People Of The Black Circle, sidepiece, I need to be in another story, great sex probably, you know it is great sex, given a girlfriend, the poor queen is going to have look somewhere else, what makes our evil Salome so evil, good with it, orgies at the palace, virgins and young married women are being debauched, too many parties, too much raping, ill-management of the kingdom, selling people off into slavery, high taxes, the monster in the basement, embarrassment, pops up for two seconds, a screw you to Lovecraft, barely clad women, Margaret Brundage, Farnsworth Wright, sex sells, Seabury Quinn stories, a cash bonus for the cover, the most famous scene, Salome whipping Taramis, wears one of the only brass-bras described in text, technically gold, good honest brass, furry loincloth, Teela?, an alternate Teela, blonde, in the comic book adaptation, on the original Savage Sword of Conan, a Marvel Treasury edition, No. 23, first time in color, Savage Sword No. 5, almost 2 and half comics, rotate em north, why is she blonde?, Hyborians, aryans who are not blonde, such as Mr Hitler, a change because it makes a startling contrast, real Conan stories, The Black Stranger, silk breeches, never furry, regular loincloth, tropes needed for the visualization, for the first time, no idea except for the story, she’s a jew, too greedy, that’s why they die, set in the biblical, old testament, part of this is the new testament, they even changed the religion, not worshipping Ishtar, Mitra, Herodotus, where she learned her evil, in Kitai, China, too petty, stupid witch, Oriental Stories, Magic Carpet, not dead at the end, left out in the desert to die, don’t leave someone in the desert to die, Oedipus was left out in the desert to die, exposure, Greeks and Romans, a curse, take this baby out, compassionate guard, an old couple in the woods, very Snow White, at the state fair, gypsy fortuneteller, doesn’t even go home, haughty guy on the road, she’s very attractive, that’s this story with parts shaved off, the most important parts have been shaved off, good and evil twin think, woman twin thing, Maria Montez, Cobra Woman (1944), a volcano god, could be a Conan story, set in France, The Acolyte, Howard didn’t invent this trope, slow down and read the crucifixion scene, shows up late, a certain effect, Weird Tales, is this a Conan story?, this reaction, a Sherlock Holmes series hosted by Vincent Price, Jeremy Brett, in the opening, starts with Watson, I was getting married, then the client walked in, the two Watsons, the best Sherlock Holmes, showing the mystery, that is a storytelling convention, a teaser, how television is structured, James Bond movies, not the Bond novels, specifically a mystery, trying to solve the mystery, The A-Team, Matlock, the hand with the glove on it, Columbo, mess around, collapse, extended the monster fight, because it is a comic, looks cool, what makes Roy Thomas doesn’t change anything, copy and paste, slightly less nudity, nipples, contact with Conan, Hour Of The Dragon, vintage Lancer edition, bad and violent, being blonde, changing it is a mistake, rewriting this story, better at it, the seven months, the fun Conan stuff, how to be in the world, the heart of what’s going on here, great writing, you can see what he’s doing, agree with it, let is pass over you, a heavy cross had been planted, iron spikes, naked but for a loincloth, limbs and body, burned brown, the perspiration of agony, tangled black mane, an unquenched fire, I’m sorry captain, your delicious queen, incessantly back and forth high above, finally in the story, were it not for them, live on the cross for days, I am leaving you unguarded, flayed alive, so firmly established, so long as anyone is near, these desert vultures, he needs to setup, he’s not going to be saved by his followers, he’s fucked, and so brave captain, farewell, when Taramis lays in my arms, mallet like fists, spat savagely, wiped the saliva from his gorget, living flesh, eyeless, brutal, horrible, everyone’s fear, what makes Christians so excited about Jesus, in the garden earlier, a supple erect figure, burnished armour, a faint rising of dust, the one touch of sentient life, less than a mile away, existing in another age, Conan stared blankly, the fertile meadowlands, miniature in the distance, a silvery gleam, sandy desert, away and away, the old joke about Jesus, Peter, I can see your house from here, a horrible joke, he can see, fixed in place, giving us the experience, shaking the sweat out of his eyes, to stretch away, empty wasteland, as a trapped hawk stares at the open sky, the city had betrayed him, a hare nailed to a tree, a red lust for vengeance, curses, all of his universe contracted, his great muscles quivered, his graying skin, driven deep, the knifing abysmal agony, a surge of helplessness, shutting his eyes against the aching glare of the sun, drawing Conan, undefeatable in battle, there’s no leverage, and yet, a keen beak stabbing at his eyes, he shouted, wary circling, spat at the salty taste, no water had touched his lips, as a man in hell glares, white water he had breasted, jacks of sparkling wine, bellowing, the sun sank, a lurid ball in a fiery sea of blood, unreal as a dream, he licked his blackened lips, the shadows crawling up from the East, attacked by the vulture, kills it with his mouth, the three kings from the east (and a 4th guy from the north), the reverse at the end, this is the opposite of turn the other cheek, reading it, howling with laughter, make fun of religion, Letters From The Earth by Mark Twain, audacious writing, The Roads by Seabury Quinn, a Christmas story, so reverential, so irreverent, not mocking, defiance, in opposition, something that you just don’t do, not then, maybe today, radical stuff, more pious, Ben-Hur, biblical novels, supplementary, a Civil War general, maybe Cora should read it, a story of the Christ, willing to do that book, great story, great movie, subversive, oppositional, he’s not trying to undermine the story of Jesus, he’s rejecting the story of Jesus, an ironclad rule, horror movie, old Hong Kong movie, a butcher, grinds them all up, delicious dumplings, howling with laughter, considered taboo, subverting expectations, Howard did, Doctor Who, the Doctor goes to see the crucifixion, 61 years, the BBC always says no, taboo, that’s also England, a Christian country, it has a king, Jesse is confused, Canada is more Christian?, more religious, significantly less, playing weird games, an official organ of the United Kingdom, programming which no one watches, The Myth Makers, the Trojan War, the ancient world, not interested in ancient history, alternating, another planet, Robert E. Howard is obsessed with history, engaging, shocking, yeah, I see what you’re saying, attacking H.P. Lovecraft and his argument, and his fiction, barbarism vs. civilization, ancient evil, stab at it or shoot it with arrows, he might make a nod, let me write a story and show you why you’re wrong, this guy I know, pretty silly, twitter is for shitpoasting, banned from twitter a bunch of times, poasted an egg, Hitler, Churchill was the villain of WWII, David Currie, ladies imagined you went back in time to meet Hitler, the great man of history aura and rizz, hatred and respect, one ball energy, pure ick, nobody knows who Hitler, do an Anschluss, none of this is funny, shitpoasting should be good, literally wrestling, the United States, rural Texas, how do you fight against this, most people don’t read, people all go to church, reverent to the point of obedience, you have to fight for yourself, oppressive, a button ending, a series character and needs to continue, Red Nails, the adventures will always continue, why we’ve got this power, what any of that meant, what Jesse likes about Conan, Conan’s worldview, not even a revenge, captured in the original Conan the Barbarian movie, not the strength of your body, the strength of your will, very Nietzschean, once you’ve been maimed, Thulsa Doom, literally a snake man, the reason he’s evil, a cultish personality, uses it for evil, girl kills herself, Jonestown, early 80s stuff about murderous cults, too young, religious education textbook, Moonies, mass weddings, Jonestown dead, black, discoloured by the poison, the difference between a cult and a religion, many times before Jonestown, Mormons, free the Holy Land, the second coming, locked in a cage, every woman in the city has to have sex with me, as a person how do you escape that?, you can be trapped by circumstances, embittered, ecce homo, behold the man, you can buy into this, you’re a physical mortal being that has limits, that refusal to make a noise, refusal to give satisfaction to your torturers, the Nemedian section, interwar period, Theosophists, L. Frank Baum, Swedenborg, Swedish Christian, talked to Martians, Mount Shasta bigfoots, questioning all of that, permeated into rural Texas, a broad horizon, conservative Christians, writing, reading and correspondences, rejecting submission, Taramis has it happen to her, rejects tears, what would you say, she’s a girl, she’s allowed to cry more, you’re not going to get any relief, hah!, bye, the hard nut of this story, other stories to be told here, comes back at the end, maybe it would have attracted too much attention, sell more magazines, #StrategicPlacement to cover it up, a pure example, The Vale Of Lost Women, literally fights a god, comes away unbowed, the illustrations for Sword And Scandal, concepts, an action scene, static, put Conan on the cross on the cover of the magazine, a crucifiction, the anglo idea of the scrawny Jesus, buff muscular dude on the cross, a Roman catholic thing, treasury edition, green fur diaper, a famous painting by Corben?, Frazetta?, different enough, it’s not the T, legs apart, Boris Vallejo, comics, engagement with and a defiance of the Christian central image, the symbol of their punishment of their savior, a little skull on your desk, a reminder of death, a symbol of triumph, a Mexican church, Jesus don’t look so happy, in Bavaria, a crucifix in every public building, other flavour of Christianity, a Catholic university, crucifixes all over the place, choosing to wear them, students, told about it, stuff they should know, church is a book club for people who don’t read, a social gathering, babysitting, community, somebody telling you, God is watching you, people who read the book, that’s scary and hard, rural Texas, responding in a way most people didn’t read the Bible, the name Solomon Kane, his poetry is full of biblical stuff, not for money, Song of Solomon, not in a way of belief, Lovecraft’s not a Christian, an atheist, why is this crap in the bible, why didn’t the editor throw it out, Edgar Rice Burroughs was very hostile to the idea of religion, Will’s take, why is it the way it is?, something going on here, Howard philsophy, this unbowed thing, the invictus philosophy, I am the captain of my soul, I’m the master of my soul, a sports movie, life is rough for the barbarian, city people vs. rural people, what is a barbarian, someone who lives on the frontier in Texas, Jon Voight is walking, Urban Cowboy (1980)?, Midnight Cowboy (1969), Acadians, not the city, the keffiyeh, these are village people, the river Jordan is there, the place that betrayed him, doesn’t sack the city, I don’t know what Conan will do buy I think he’s honourable, he’s a barbarian, always not raping women, a little handsy, the evil Conan stuff, not cruel to be cruel, a negotiation scene, always in the cards, cut him down I like his spirit, two different ways of being, hijacking, distilled the essence of Conan’s barbarian philosophy, a foreign land, we never see Cimmeria, we never see another Cimmerian, only the bad writers do that, chased The Frost Giant’s Daughter, the Vanir, the Aesir, Norse mythology, Hyborian Age Scandinavia, Aquilonia, 15 year old Conan, civilization isn’t his thing, Herman who kicked the Romans beyond the Rhine, Battle Of The Teutoburg Forest, Beyond The Black River, my ancestors were the picts, Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

a bit simple, notice he’s a captain, very similar philosophy, he loved poetry, he must have read it, it has all the things, death is the end, we even have a scroll, not being under the sway of another, not being submitted to another, better to rule in Hell?, Milton, better to live on Earth, what is Conan’s alignment in dungeons and dragons, Chaotic Good? [Chaotic Neutral?], I got a horse, Hour Of The Dragon, a king has certain responsibilities, he makes the laws, Lawful Good, not a Paladin, a successful, to drink life to the lees, Ulysses by Alfred Tennyson, a rewrite of a Kull story, Exile Of Atlantis, a quieter character, more cerebral, what’s real, who am I, more a Philip K. Dick character, gazes into mirrors, talking cats, a different mode, Conan like superman, the wrong Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, more celestial or cosmic, combines both, all the good Weird Tales authors, flavour and depth, ineffable, from a Nietzschean perspective, in the poems, Weird Tales poems, lots of other writers too, get at stuff in poetry, more monster, the monster was the weak part, deleted the monster?, talked up, just came out and got killed, that was his role, scary for half a second, a bunch of arrows in him, the Kozak camp for seven months, join some band, a lot of savage sword is filling in that detail, takes over somebody else’s gang, the one with the pirates, we all know who you are Conan, filling in the corners, this story is set six months, when Queen Of The Black Coast is adapted issue 59 to issue 100, The Lost Valley Of Iskander, The Man Who Would Be King, Conan The Destroyer takes the names, Taramis and her sister, that monster is more Roy Thomas, Taramis is the bad one, oh no she’s evil, Grace Jones, Wilt Chamberlain, the protector of the princess’ virginity, the Red Sonja, Sandahl Bergman, plays the evil queen, a Red Sonja movie, the assistant is The Beast Raban from the original Dune movie, not a good movie, Conan is not called Conan, all fucking public domain, tricked Arnold into doing it, owed Dino De Laurentiis, full of philosophy, one of the best movies ever, he’s taciturn, Pumping Iron (1977), it’s not Conan, blended together, the riddle of steel, everything about it is awesome, Max von Sydow, a huge Howard fan, Ming The Merciless, in the Solomon Kane movie, in Star Wars, he was in Dune, the judge of the change, geeky movies, Ingmar Bergman movie, theater kids stuff, Three Days Of The Condor (1975), Judge Dredd (1995), Niki Lauda, good career going on in Sweden, asked again and again, not forced to do these films, no you really don’t, Seventh Seal (1957), ripping off foreign art films, how can I transfer this look to my movie?, no one has time to watch more than one Swedish movie, if you’re going to see one Swedish movie, only an hour and a half long, Scenes From A Marriage (1973), tv miniseries, Flash Gordon (1980), Sinews Of A Toe, cheesy, great actors directed to death, Timothy Dalton, looked like a football player, Edgar Wright movie, Hot Fuzz (2007), cast for his looks, cartoons, the one who faints all the time, Brian Blessed, Topol, the original serial, a james bond movie girl, Belinda Topoff, Christopher Lambert has one good movie, Highlander (1986), Subway (1985), The Highlander The Series, let’s go to Paris every six months, I chop off heads in Vancouver, the lead singer of Fine Young Cannibals, Roger Daltrey needs his head chopped off, this Buffy thing, pre-Buffy, even Cora’s mom loved it, the sequel series, Highlander: The Raven, raped by Bill Clinton, Elizabeth Gracen, Evil-Lyn, Eva Lynd and Steve Holland, in a cowboy hat, The Man Of Bronze, the 70s Doc Savage, James Bama artwork, bulked him up a lot, posing in the ripped shirt, Walter Baumhofer, the widows peak helmet hair, explain it, inexplicable, weird 90s humour, the stupid actor, you can do it, Rob Schneider, also in Demolition Man (1993), Dredd (2012), laserdisc, Judge Dredd, 2000 A.D., the Judge Dredd audio dramas, they’re great, Strontium Dog, an alternate Marvel Universe, all the actors are British, excuses to got to Britain all the time, deleted in two minutes, this work links now, the Big Finish ones, BBC doesn’t do audio drama anymore, never started up again, recommending to Maissa, meta, Sam Spade style character, the whole world of 2000 A.D., American superhero fiction, Judge Death, reptile dinosaur judge, making fun of the United States, Americans don’t get it, already a parody, makes it a little more serious, play it straight up, simple, Circe Lannister, very good, a good role for her, a gangster drug lady, scars, Beetlejuice movie, Tim Burton, mixed up, Willem Dafoe, Danny Devito, how to find content, books to review, Black Gate, way leads onto way, the poem by Robert Frost, seven months later, Survey Team, public domain for years, everybody like Philip K. Dick, Legends & Lattes, obviously not public domain, artwork, fooling around, The Demon Breed by James H. Schmitz, author photo, dog, a savage guy in a tree with a giant ferret, oh wow, didn’t like animals, you are an animal, trawling, what’s new on LibriVox, best of James Schmitz, The Witches Of Karres, another classic to match, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, wait six months, But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes by Anita Loos, so good, Confessions of An English Opium Eater, drugs, latest releases, 80 pounds is still a lot, talk therapy?, cognitive behavior therapy, Grave Danger by Frank Kane, Ben Tucker, a crusading newspaper, a maritime insurance company, stranglehold, literature, you understand books a lot, a renewal of copyright, a translation, Peter Weller, read by RoboCop, William Gibson books, Hermann Hesse, psychedelic drugs, drugs are you in your head, external drugs, meditation, Planet Of Transients, Steppenwolf it is your culture, translate it back to German, collaborating with Ray Bradbury, Henry Hasse, weird stuff, a dirty link, November, probably the only one who could read it in the original, high level German speaker, three novels in a row, The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown, What Mad Universe, overload yourself, so late in the year, take some time off, deleted a line, pre-Christmas periods, Christmas market, ctrl-z, harder to commit, David J. West, twitter friends, Sword & Scandal, a little bit bitter about his divorce, good dad, similar taste in jokes, of all the twitter authors who submitted stories he’s the only one, these twitter authors, wipe your forehead, a classic comedy setup, a thief is hired by this guy, my girlfriend is in this harem, a half moon, pointing in the wrong direction, A Choice Of Gods, spread the Simaks out, next year, The Jameson Satellite, suddenly, so mysterious, a background actor in movies, standing around not listening to audiobooks, socializing, has to do with evolution, vocal gestures, autist, about status, becomes the alpha, The Status Civilization, The Journey of Joenes, novelist, all very interesting, no end in sight, Sirius, Odd John, regional election, evil right wing guys, far right, conservative guy, a rather plump social democrat, organic farmer, right wing dude, Cora is fine with these results, the mayor of the county, we call them judges, county councellor, a human mutation, awesome and frightening to behold, a new super-normal species, like Slan but not written badly, anti-Slan, Slan and Counter Slan, a special one for Will’s birthday, December is always iffy, stuff going on in the real world, neighbourhood garden parties, Russian rice dish, a stack of audiobooks from Mike [Vendetti], Beatnik Wife, So Long Sister by Hugh B. Cave, who is Hugh B. Cave, pulp guy, Abe, booktuber, lived to 2004, a less known Hugh, sources differ, I name thee Cave, Island Ordeal, Strange Tales, Weird Tales, wrote for the Spicys, Lawrence Jannifer and Donald Westlake, The Man Who Conquered Age, The Quick And The Dead, 30 Seconds by Roger Leslie Bellem, Spicy Adventure Stories, Corpseless Coffin, weird menace story, Corpse Girl’s Return, Dead Drunk by Frank Kane, Dark Vengeance by Fritz Leiber, between the early period and the mid period, the wilderness years, a good one, Suspense was short lived, based on the radio drama series, Claws From The Night, quite a few Fritz Leiber stories, The Black Ewe, read by Scott Miller, Bob Silverberg’s take on beatniks, Robert Silverberg is looking for unrepublished stories, that’s hilarious, author lost track of his stories, pair things more, Waterspider, providing too many choices, The Pause by Isaac Asimov, sent him an email once, takes vacations with his wife, live in your podcast booth, 74 items, The Futurological Congress, like Lem, popular con, toy collector con, bread and butter, toysplosion, 2 and a half hours by car, drinking habits, Coca Cola, Zevia, stevia, type 2 diabetes, in Hurleys, American pop is really horrible, Mexican pop, high fructose corn syrup, way less shit in it, read the list, carbonated water, caramel color, phosphoric acid, natural flavours, beyonade, Bionade, speciality retailers, citric acid, stevia, natural flavours, the artificial colours, bio neutral or bad for you, metabolically different, acts on your craving in a different way, no bottom, cutting out one thing that is bad for your, all the colours is clear, as a drink, diet Coke, probably on Amazon, exploded into the mainstream, organic, preservative, offbeat flavours, elderberry, upstart company, Spirit of Georgia, weird flavours, a good root beer, cream soda, Dr. Zevia, more exotic flavours, 60 cents a can, carbonated is very nice, I used to not be as gross, the cigar is probably better for you, life corrections, mouthwash, destroying the oral biome, big leaps, heart problems, what products are advertized vs. what products are not advertized, when they were selling it to people, for different purposes, to kill, deodorant and antiperspirant, picked your brand, cigarette companies went into food, Frito Lay, products that don’t exist in nature, stab and put on your plate, marketing, Cheetos, flavoured styrofoam, eating your own death, it is not food, what is a Cheeto?, peanut flavouring, they’re made of corn, everything is made of corn, plowed into food products, niblets, potato, shelf stable, where the branding comes from, buy potatoes, there’s no potato brand, Doritos, anything with a brand, different kinds of apple cultivars, you don’t want to read Robert E. Howard fiction written not by Robert E. Howard, same with food, nobody has the patent on steaks or beans, what forum would they be in, tv spots for mouthwash, you’ve already formed the habit, Listerine was pushed really hard, a hair product, for making things surgical, making you pure, genetic purity, physical culture magazines, work out, Listerine is a brand everybody knows, your dentist pushes it on you, Odol, consolidated, three hundred years ago no such products existed, marketing and fads, masking protects you from death, Worldcon in Glasgow, mostly Americans, no one in Germany at cons wears masks, 7000 people, self reported, long meandering way, what killed all those people, heart disease comes from tooth issues, antibiotic mouthwash, you shouldn’t be antiseptic where you don’t have a wound, microbiome is good for you, alcohol, more expensive, what are they putting in there?, nothing good, one of those things you really don’t need, just like shampoo, deodorant is totally unneeded, change your shirt, have a shower, teenage years, spray cans, roll on stuff, eczema, allergy, allergies are new, the 1919 Spanish Flu killed everybody, the people who died were often killed by their doctors prescribing aspirin, fills your lungs with fluid, every British historical drama, died at 16, traumatized, people died of diseases, we’re sold on a bill of goods, is there a causal link, we are sold on these lies, maybe mouthwash is bad, chlorhexidine, making up chemicals from natural products, on our in our bodies, water is not the problem, natural flavour is a catchall, grape pop, good bacteria, bad bacteria, nitrates to nitrites, evolved to help you, don’t trust anything with an ingredients list you don’t understand, the selling is the problem, probably okay off a tree, where are you on toothpaste, fewest number of things in it, the same toothpaste for 40 years, no longer produced, you could be a toothpick guy, use ashes from a fire, fluoride, fluoride pills, it is not food so you shouldn’t eat it, whitening toothpaste, probably a bad idea, the amount of research you have to do, sodium laurel sulfate, don’t swallow anything is a poison, don’t put poison on your body repeatedly, animals don’t have allergies in nature, the food is adulterated, called for burned bread, dragonsblood, a resin, from something you stab, arsenic, lead, radium toothpaste, that healthy mouth glow, minimize input, give an animal a potato chip, you know it is bad, it tastes something, licking fabric, cleaning the tongue off, the toothless cat, clawless?, auto-immune disorder, normal cat food, cost, a whole bunch of pets, cheap food, can’t afford this caviar, better medical care than others, more shots?, some cats you can’t catch even if they have a limp, them knowing better than you do, bit by ticks, ivermectin is good for a lot of stuff, parasites, treatment for COVID, how did they not understand it?, for horses, designed for humans used on horses, mammals are pretty similar, doses, horses are pretty big, scabies, spread by insect like things, scratching, spreads in nursing home settings, pesticide, a bad name, a useful medication, they did it at the time, low doses and dosed late, has massive effects, hydroxychloroquine, skeptical, weird infectious disease fear, paxlovid, still patented, taking that stuff like candy, patented vs. public domain, Meg bought a Peacock to watch the , They Live (1988), seems true, longer than it needed to be, after he beats up his friend, always wonder, the aliens come and kill all the revolutionaries, ask me in six months, we should watch, the short story is good, the movie is better at doing it, the story does it through hypnosis, the physical sunglasses, though a glass darkly, more directly to Plato’s Cave, 7 minutes, goes on and on, an extravaganza, the opening is great, the homeless people, the ending is no good, The Thing (1982), Escape From New York, Big Trouble In Little China (1986), a western, Yojimbo, what is it for, the rebellion is crushed, destroys the transmitter but he dies, he’s crushed, you are Rowdy Roddy Piper, lizard people fits better, they’re not like us, hating on reptiles is wrong too, skinless and ugly, it looks like they’ve been flayed, blue, post-radioactive, the ghouls from Fallout, they’re the masters, and cops, watching it with commercials, Dirty Work (1998), Norm MacDonald, Artie Lang, so many guest stars, Don Rickles, Chevy Chase, a great movie that nobody loves, open a revenge business, stupid as hell, $50,000 to get a heart transplant, medical testing for food, hallucinating and itchy, Gary Coleman driving the car, Chris Farley, it is not about the plot, just to get to the jokes, rape jokes, hilarious, some guys come over and want to rape him, shame on you, devolves to, old people talk about old movies, eventually they’ll enjoy it, movies from before I’m born, Luke Burrage, nobody should listen to podcast past 10 years ago, how did that come into your head?, that’s what people say?, don’t trust anyone over 30, the most charitable, CIA or FBI op, an authority figure, anti-cultish, pro-cultish, don’t read anything past 10 years ago, wait 10 years then read about it, left undone, a big translation, find a movie that is worth watching, the new Kyle Gallner movie, Strange Darling (2023), cell phones and cars and insurance, Dinner In America (2020), Alien: Romulus (2024), done with Alien since Alien 3, Reagan (2024), big discrepancy, fan base of some kind, conservative Americans, low budget, independent, stars nobody, viscous murder spree, mystery/horror/thriller, The Sixth Sense (1999), it has a twist, a punk band, the cops are after him, semi-retarded girl or something, a pet shop, abused by her boss, regular home family, they fall in love, we don’t use the term, autistic, an acceptable term, everything is CRTs, the movie is amazing, it all fits together like a beautiful puzzle piece, really talented, tight movie, no major budget needed, killed by COVID, torrent or buy it, if you watch the trailer, he’s on twitter, Red Letter Media, Emily Skeggs, her highest rated thing, a theater thing, a lot of work, not a movie star of the Hollywood kind, Veronica Mars, Bones, independent movie star, things that are older than me, Metropolis in the theater, channel surfing, find a lot of good stuff, pet food, just chicken, making the switch, eggs, yogurt, cheese, dogs like cheese, omnivores, cooking for animals, easy bake oven life, such an easy animal, when a cat is affectionate, they’ll let you know when they don’t want to be touched, it is nice to be liked by cats, like to be liked by cats, liked or licked, Tommy says hoping to find some time this week, edit podcasts, coffee, how to steal movies, exporting bodies, elderly Germans, a weird menace story, never see the bodies, most to the middle east, buy foreign bodies, Qatar, a secret trade in German bodies, I consent to be cut up in the Middle East, the dead body is given a covid test, death certificate, tiny print, useless information, every German state has a different format, data protection, so you can’t sue people.

Marvel Treasury Edition 23 Back Cover

SSOC A Witch Shall Be Born

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #820 – READALONG: The Not-World by Thomas Burnett Swann

The SFFaudio Podcast #819 – Jesse, Will Emmons, Alex (Pulpcovers), and Jonathan Weichsel talk about The Not-World by Thomas Burnett Swann

Talked about on today’s show:
1977?, 1975, died in 1976, serialized, The Weir Woods, Cirsova Alex is hard to get, Winged Victory by Thomas Burnette Swann, who stood model, graceful sweep, Tennessee poet and writer, problem with the narrator, him recording over himself, Arachne spirit ghost, echo, same narrator, a producer choice, during the singalong, audio italics, stepped away from the microphone and kept recording, inconsistent, two mispronunciations, obscure words, enthusiastic about his production, commendable, straight narrations, transparent, the door creaked open, taking italicized text, is this in his head?, back and forth, makes a comment, some sort of barrier between dialogue, missing context, while hiking, listened at home, listened to in sleep, dreamy, dream interpreted, like them about the same, the plot is not really the focus, the character and being recognized as a sexual being, too fat, repetition, the flabbiness of novels, the book itself is probably very good, didn’t have a plot, characters, stuff they were doing, stuff happens, plodding along, the aunt, very rich her sacrifice of having sex with all the little people, a scholar of a bunch of people, women starts of a particular movie company, a Christina Rosetti scholar, what happens in Goblin Market, pixie men, on the level of metaphor, lost a lot of weight, burned a lot of calories, sexual awakening, lost in the woods, sitting around in baskets, teleported between set pieces, how did they get to the mill?, rushin to get stuff done, everybody is happy, the real forest is the friends we made along the way, the bad lady, woman burned at the stake, off to London, destroy lives there, if it wasn’t so enjoyable, the story needs to do something, go into the forest, sick in bed, new excuse to go back to that forest, by balloon, hadn’t gone back to Bristol, straight dreamworld, weird hybrid, we’re missing the point, cosy relationships, class difference relationships, all about the body, raising children, the water horse, the horses of Llyr, not really well described, the back cover, the dedication, To Helen, is this a Lord Dunsany?, gently o’er, on desperate seas, the glory that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome, Poe to his adopted mom, Mrs. Allan, Poe is the original Dreamlands guy, technically bad, a Robin Hood scene, doing this creation, the apologies, the missing guy, a real poet, imagining he didn’t commit suicide, ghost, The Coffin Merchant by Richard Middleton, Arthur Machen, King George III, pre-American Revolution, many anachronisms, slavery is mentioned many times, capitalism, different ways of doing it, how did he construct this book, Thomas Chatterton, sailors hookin up with Jane Austen stand-in, 1770, 1771, extinct, or do they?, #SpiderWoman, few and far between, 19th century, movies in the 80s, all do go back to Arachne, LEGO Minifigures monster figures, fringe ones, women who tie you up in webs, Don Mark Lemon story, a fox’s tail, foxkin, the witch burning scene, I was totally a murderer, she’s selfish, off to London and do murders with her vampires, not a misunderstood wisewoman, ending Lord Of The Ring, I really wanted that ring, when you’re writing like this the subconcious is doing all the work, the sailor guy, the musician, pure of heart, sexual experience once that traumatized them, settle, the girl has her brothers, her father, he relationship with her horses, the waterhorse and its babies and its eggs, a cozy D&D, Barrels Out Of Bond, shot it sold it?, had she just talked to her horse, I was tied up by Indians and I learned to make a wigwam, house made out of sticks, portable house, sea voyages, into Robert Herrick, Thomas had read her books, a poet, stuff memorized, sailor or highwayman, didn’t like sailors except during war, upper-class lower-class, a character arc, she has motivations and backstory enough, things come up and over again, the bull to her cow, she was paying for it, she’s too fat, he wanted that character in the woods, her chaperone, you should do more hanky panky, any, hammocks, no hammocks, they’re out in yard, a water sprite’s house, sex in a hammock, you can’t lie separately, enforcing the cozy, a cheap bed, gas balloon, that guy Squirrel, it was fine, a circulation pattern, the lady can’t walk, its FANTASY with flashing lights, maybe read The Wizard Of Oz, very Ozy, pulchritude!, children’s fiction, a very sexless world, all of them don’t have genitals, hen named Ballina, the gnome at the end, is our goal to get them to read it?, nothing like anybody has ever written, A.A. Milne, horny Winnie the Pooh, all of the characters are different kinds of mental illnesses, the donkey, shyness, Pooh is a honey, Christopher Robin is the ID, Tigger is intellectually disabled, Kanga, funny to say, two horror movies out of it, what’s odd about Swann, history and myth, cozy setting, get horny, horny dwarves with small dicks, show worthy, People Of The Black Coast, a guy from contemporary USA flying across the pacific, find Gaum, strange island, cliffs and beaches, crabs, leaves her on a rock, he puts his hand to her heart, giant telepathic crabs, gets one his arms snipped off, they my GF I swear revenge, A Spell For Chameleon by Piers Anthony, set in Florida, in Xanth, a fantasy world that borders Florida, exiled to Florida, puns and jokes, better plotted?, the popular version of this book, Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, Dunsany’s wonderful, not writing carefully, an instinctually good writer, how could this book be great?, it could be better, guilt free sexual stuff, Puritans, being initiated, do they add up to a coherent whole?, an incoherent whole, modern, how much of a change is there, sexually repressed, I can’t have sex because I have a trauma!, they think they’re not good enough for each other, restraining not repressing, why you have no last name on this podcast, colonial themes, Edgar Rice Burroughs, the land is eternal, a Swann thing, A Midsummer’s Nights Dream, newsflash Shakespeare good, The Tempest, Trish listened to five different audio plays, hot take The Tempest mid, Much Ado About Nothing, The Taming Of The Shrew, Shakespeare wins, Schwarzenegger running meme, tiger blood guy, plot, dialogue, emotional manipulation, doesn’t lose, Othello, Iago is gay for Othello, motivated by spite, props, whatever they have at hand, fucking over a whole war, Titus Andronicus, The Induction, the inception of the play is we are the drunkard audience, there’s a play within the play, to catch the conscience of the king, reasonable thing to do, not as polished, the school prisons, hundreds of years, men dressed as women, library in the basement, let’s read more Shakespeare, the playwright, Christopher Marlowe, ‘Tis A Pity She’s A Whore by John Ford, two ees in pity, All The Flowers In The Attic by V.C. Andrews, it was huge, incest, reading it with one hand, just so good, I make students read it, A Modest Proposal, started laughing, solve it, expanded homelessness, that’s your goal, Jonathan Swift is savage, we have it for Gaza, one to one parallel, a pamphlet, harder to dismiss, feels like fiction even though it isn’t, what to do about the Irish, a very knowing American of my acquaintance, people can not get it, he goes to Japan, light material, heatwave, how do you listen to audiobook, work from home is a problem, chores, smoke cigars, when driving, in the 90s all week, shower speaker, you can get a lot listened in a week, five and half hours, reading text, eyes are busy, hands and eyes busy, nice park, at the gym, not enough hours in my day, fun side story, electromagnetic door locks, you can just buy those, a tweet about this, Matt Lauer, have used doorlocks in the past, three car garage, $80 to $100k, raising chickens, a house in a shipping container, jobsite sort of thing, shed conversion stuff, vehicles to store, the Cirsova story influenced by Swann, maybe next week, Journey Of Joenes by Robert Sheckely, The Loved Dead, Algis Budrys’ WHO?, Rogue Moon, Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke, The Aeneid by Virgil, the losers of the Trojan War, their own legend, that’s our people, quite the way to go, the founding of Rome, distrust the propaganda, Romulus and Remus are Cain and Abel raised by a wolfish god, it deserved to be canceled, 8 episodes and cancelled, just setting the stage, can you give us the next Game Of Thrones, sad story, Shakespeare never had that problem, Richard The Third, low T Shakespeare, historical plays, Henry V, WWI Nazi, Ian McKellen, Magneto, not enough crossdressing, Merry Wives Of Windsor, Molière, The Country Wife, wants to have sex with all the other guys wives, lost his dick, Cyrano De Bergerac (1990), stuck on the rocket shoots him to the moon, character in the Riverworld novel, cuckhold’s Mark Twain, The Golden Ass, the French comic book adaptation, an odd choice, keep waiting for the golden ass to pay off, ass waiting, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos, Billy Wilder, done as a diary, gets everything she wants, always going on dates with rich men, a trip to Europe, this is awesome, beautifully illustrated, 1925 book, Howard Hawks, Rio Bravo, El Dorado, The Big Sleep, the one with the leopards, the intercostal clavicle, His Girl Friday, really good, Only Angels Have Wings, so cozy, a remake of a silent, Tales Of The Gold Monkey, Cary Grant, lady singer shows up on a boat, Casablanca, nature is the bad guy, really terrific, Jean Arthur, see you next week.

The Not-World by Thomas Burnett Swann

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #816 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Cat-Woman by Ray Cummings and In The Orbit of Saturn by R.F. Starzl

The SFFaudio Podcast #816 – Cat-Woman by Ray Cummings (read by Mike Vendetti, 55 minutes) AND In The Orbit of Saturn by R.F. Starzl (read by Edmund Bloxam, 52 minutes). These are complete and unabridged readings of the stories (1 hour 48 minutes) followed by a discussion of them. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Will Emmons, and Jonathan Weichsel

Talked about on today’s show:
[Cat-Woman by Ray Cummings – from Terror Tales, May 1938 and In The Orbit Of Saturn by R.F. Starzl from Astounding, October 1931] that narrator, LibriVox, like to not listen, performing, distracting, a noble effort, everbodys got an accent, Trois-Rivières, a cultural, 30 years watching news reports, CBC generally gets its pronunciation right, the main character is an American, the half-breed Indian, Beaumont, a New York lawyer, take it too far, way too far, two miles from Manhattan, US states, the geography is so bad, giant book showing different continents, they don’t even know where they are on the map, maybe geography is a useless thing, from one tube enclosure to another tube enclosure, maybe it doesn’t matter, you need to understand geography in order to understand anything, a geology a little bit, from the Libertarian convention, use its military to defend itself, from what?, giant moat on either side, defending Hawaii, you don’t need a sixth fleet in the Indian Ocean, Nevada, Oregon, accents?, more than accent, Iraq, Iran, hearing about it on the news, the correct pronunciation, say it in Spanish, all these tourists, east coast politicians, it doesn’t need to be set in the orbit of Saturn, not as good as the other Starzl, E.E. Doc Smith, more compact, starts deep into the action, we’re in the middle of a battle, holding cells, dialogue happens, we’re done, fairly good for being fairly bad, published in the October 1931 issue of Astounding, the Clayton era of Astounding, having trouble following the action, put on a really big smile for your videos, the muscles of your face, practicing to be the joker, he’s really selling this, in seven months we’ll know if it was all worth it, Sword & Scandal, with that great art, very solid, character names, Quarl Finner?, Coerl?, Black Destroyer, Braniac Five from the Legion Of Superheroes, Lenore, character from Poe, Moby Gore, Lt. Burroughs, Captain Strom, he’s not shy, Mark Twain, a newspaperman, family newspaper in some midwestern town, its good, real things that happens, engaging with real stuff a little bit, her brother dies, dies from pneumonia, daughter of a capitalist, a capitalism in space story, the eugenics pirate, a good noble man, a man without a planet, engaging with the materials of the times, the Burroughs thing, make it about Romance, he doesn’t solve it, the IFP, the interplanetary flying police?, pirates infiltrated by east Indian company agent, sexy redhead pirate queen, a depth to it, for how short it is, a lot of time hating, too simple, a super good example of pulp that doesn’t suck completely, not enough beams, a cloaking device, I’ll parole you, new laser beam, ray of some kind, a little ethical back and forth, working for the fuckin cops, tremendous amounts of concentrated energy, the energy becomes sentient, weird juice, for the amount of plot and backstory, something in a series, ISFDB, seven of these stories, The Earthman’s Burden, very depthy, another Starzl story, Madness Of The Dust, he’s on mars, he has martian slaves, martian dust makes him go crazy, Against All Flags (1952), Errol Flynn, Anthony Quinn, off the coast of Madagascar, a political dissident, party now because there is no afterlife, mythological pirates, historical pirates, crook, of the golden age of piracy, still pirates today, the Horn of Africa, not British naval slaves, their backstory is different, a really good movie, the Mad Max novelization, Stone (1974), Satan worshipers, very beautiful, very artistic, by looking at pirates, land pirates, living life free from societal law, Hell’s Angels by Hunter S. Thompson, patch him in and patch him out, harassing ransom people, Pirates Of Venus pirates are not really pirates, Gully Foyle, Alfred Bester, a positive spin, write the pants off, very early in the history of magazines, by the early 30s Weird Tales is getting good, Science Fiction isn’t as mature, willing to pay relatively good rates, the writing of both of this, Ray Cumming fuckin sucks, The Girl In The Golden Atom, this is a fun story, Cat-Woman, flies by the seat of his pants, bad stuff in here, as a relatively short weird menace, shudder story, so similar much better idea, serums that transform you, a lot hornier, more idea filled, Sam Moskowitz on Ray Cummings, went downhill, never evolved to keep up with the times, formulaic, 1938, Ambrose Bierce, this genre didn’t exist, a story about glands, the science of glands, 1910s and 20s, the gland doctor in France, put this in a novel, mad scientist in France, a cutting from testicle from a young monkey, Bobby Derie’s blog, wealthiest men in Paris, complete nonsense, great scientist, have they retracted the story yet, the little touches, there was a magazine, that magazine had the formula, I never found that magazine, maybe she is a cat-woman, very meta, lurid covers, ladies being tortured, fed into machines, when they get nude, delivers on all fronts, exotic northern Quebec setting, palpitating breasts, her heart is beating so hard it makes her breasts beat, palpitations, am I fighting a drug or am I really sleepy?, can see out, writhe around on the animal skin rugs, jumps out the window, bad planning, four characters in this story, made no sense, masturbating in the corner while she dances around on the rugs, terrible plotting, terrible, horrible, a grindhouse 42nd street horror movie, very entertaining and over the top, entertained, trouble visualizing, so very visual, a floorplan of the cabin in the woods, needed to be in the same room as her, wakes up, girl dancing around, a big mirror thing, now that she’s my wife, she looks in the mirror, saw him as a cat, then a literal cat shows up, why does it have a baby in its mouth?, unburied baby?, the cat after all, badly put together, was fixing this story worth Ray Cummings’ time, pulp fiction factoids, Frederik Pohl, bulldoze Pohl, wearing a cravat, almost unusable stories, your standard pulp author didn’t write a second draft, after editorial notes or revisions, how Weird Tales worked, make some changes, I like money, I will not accept payment, my words are perfect, something in common, Lovecraft needed money, scrip harder, he wouldn’t work, he couldn’t work, rich as a child, grandfather was wealthy, wife taking care of him, sending cheques, artists need to be supported, inheritance money, residual stuff, lived with his aunts, rent and food was cheap, three suits, not buying a lot of stuff, editorial revision business, Edison’s laboratory assistant, Edison’s philosophy, Thomas Edison, mix these chemicals together, shrink ourselves down, looking through a microscope at a piece of gold, become very small, just a matter of looking in your cupboards until you find the right chemical, great men before corporate, Elon Musk, emerald mine, get a bunch of guys working for you, a patent troll, Musk isn’t as a bad, E.E. Doc Smith, invented powdered sugar, manufactured it industrially, revised it, space opera, doesn’t need to be set near Titan, a tour of the solar system, protect the whole solar system, as an ideas man, Fitz James O’Brien’s The Diamond Lens, covered in mirages, fun, stupid, fun, from the text, forays to the faraway undisciplined Pluto, colonial thing, tropical Venus, Aryl, stupendous and neverending mirages, Jesse’s Paul hat, his anti-Paul hat, mining anything near Saturn, too fuckn cold, nuclear power all the time, radiation, make it into heat, energon cubes make no fuckn sense, purple, pinky purple, I eat energon cubes, to sell cars that transform into robots, disguises, you think I’m just a boring, my uncle was in the Navy, a mcguffin to chase after, if Jack London had written this story it would be way better, lab assistant, Wells was the lab assistant to Huxley, learning shit, science teacher, The Star by H.G. Wells, Goliah, a device that zap people out of existence, blackmail the capitalists into obeying him, you don’t need it to be set around Titan, wanting to change reality using his tech, more science fictional, when E.E. Doc Smith solves problems, we can’t restart the warp engines cold, the mechanism of the plot, somehow do the thing that is impossible, during the battle they invent technology, Borg shit is fake science fiction, nothing real and tangible, to engage in a new relationship with reality, bad science fiction vs. fake science fiction, pretty different, what makes something a western?, Outland (1981), sean connery in space, High Noon (1952) in space, a western in space, is this story science fiction?, just cuz the guy wants to do eugenics, the invisibility shield, small details, invented from not used, prevents them from having an incident, we have nuclear weapons in our cargo hold, had them, didn’t use them, the combination, trying to change the world, bad at his job, a plan to do so, a new race of humans, rich, capitalist, large mine holdings on Titan, visiting dilettante, hostages for money?, science fiction but not good science fiction, the gland formula, moving the goal posts, weird fiction possibly by science fiction, werewoman, also possibly, the narrator turns into a cat, it could be it was a science fiction, I lost the documents, undercutting it on purpose, read the end, secret formula in a published magazine, Frozen Canyon, Jeanne and I, glorious vibrant young body that nature gave her, she is normal, a scheming criminal half mad with lust, had never seen the French magazine she mentioned, there was no such magazine, the product of a deranged mind, she disrobes, gazing at her beauty in her bedroom mirror, the grinding maw, for you see sometimes a strange lethargy, cat naps, gleaming green and yellow, my mind is tottering, the watchful eyes upon, like a cat watches a mouse, the ambiguity, doesn’t impact the rest of the book, is there any supernatural activity in this story, half-breed French Canadian in the north, Franklin’s motivation, wait until she gets her money, gotta see her naked, you can’t wait five minutes to see her dance nakedly, nice and ambiguous ending, are we reading a diary entry?, if you go back early enough in the story, undercuts his whole story, if we drank milk we’d all be like cows, the doppleganger one, real science fiction, Mike Vendetti narrated, what supernatural thing happened? what scientific thing happened?, dosing with something apparently, spanish fly, masturbation talk, to perform for her guardian, doesn’t deliver, buy your thesis, precluded from science fiction, breed a new race?, white man’s law, given the period, philosophers have said, atavistic, ray weapon, primitive urge, the great simians who he resembled, a south seas story can be science fiction, Island Of Dr. Moreau, A Thousand Deaths, dogs and disintegration, The Monster Men, amnesia, therefore worthy of the daughter of the scientist, memory returned to Quarl, orderly procession of the stars, the artificial gravity, very early, pre-Heinlein, very interesting, as the ship rotated, a thick swathing of bandages, peaked face, rotten, a portable apparatus, progenitor, this will work, an agreeable warmth, a great lassitude followed, filled the blouse, tunic, blue trousers, gold braid down the side, clothing talk, one of the chosen, the chosen race, an out and out damned pirate, what else?, inscrutably melancholy, the idealism of a poet, many means, disguise one’s purpose, for instance, felt himself redden, Strom was a zealot, prompt penetration, the point is he wants him to join the team, breeding a new race, takes generations, Hitler’s plans, it won’t work, the fiction part, because it was real, trying to do something science fictional, before Hitler, not running his race programs, everybody loved it, homegirl, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, sterilize, its a good story for what it is, how short it is for the amount of material that is in it, romance stuff, an outline rushing through the material, get to the ideas, who in this group is fun to hang out with?, the author more than the characters, genuine science fiction opening, faltered in her course, stockholders, visitors, aware of a cessation, bad sentence beauty, parts of Cat-Woman, badly worded, fictitious gravity, main salon, the entire midship section, to flounder in helpless confusion, they’re being attacked, skipped past, not a good story, interesting and kinda fun here and there, trouble following it, poorly written, omniscient, first person, a character narrator, more economy there, how to tell stories, 1st person, 3rd person, close and far, really important, detective novels told 1st person, Sherlock Holmes, 1st person from the 2nd main character’s point of view, Watson’s POV, very easy to follow, if he did see it he didn’t observe it, 3rd person, tightened up, Ray Cummings masturbating while writing this story, sexy stories, the girl here is terrible, how she is behaving makes no sense, aliens who come to Earth to kidnap all the women, not writing in the first half of the 20th century, explorers, our universe is an atom in a larger structure, make themselves really big, you’re blind, why are your blind, my eyes don’t work, why don’t you just replace your eyes, execute him, more ethical than we are, had Heinlein written that, a 10page philosophical discussion, elemental and frenetic, and then this happened, why it has a bad reputation, Lester Del Rey writing really short stories, three book series, good stuff as well, more detail, more sweat put into it, Jonathan as a the new Paul, shownoting a show with Paul, invite him back, email Evan, Cora couldn’t show up because her mom died, reschedule for sometime in the future, other plans, I honor my commitments, arguing himself into something, Paul makes the show worse, talking over people, not all being in the same room, a delay, distracted, bad for the listener, Paul can contribute well but often doesn’t, “comps” is what they call them, bad thinking, being worried about spoilers, bad modes of thought, why are other people interested in spoilers, fundamentally misunderstanding, ladies in glass cylinders coming to earth, 7 minute story, aliens kidnap all the women, research projects, spiderwomen, an excuse to read it, beef with this story as a cat-woman story, made her a pig, wildcat, mountain lions, didn’t do any research, remote or something, not thinking it through, care about ideas more than writing, nice writing, experiencing the story sequentially, the end is the most important part, two exciting novels, Donald E. Westlake crime novel, new Ace Double, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos, no Alex?, LibriVox, set in Florida, good noir opening, Murder Mistress by Robert Colby, “Scott Daniels is a washed up showbiz announcer who hit the bottle a few too many times and blew his big chance.”, three and half hours, a lady drowning in quicksand as a sex fetish, mud, this is a new time, naked on a bed, I could read that, crime and mystery stories, more interested in the phenomena of these horny novels, naked woman on the bed pointing a gun, pink unmentionables, green negotiables, Killing Time by Donald E. Westlake, Ben Tucker, Smith will squawk, the small town aspect, Westlake is really good at his job, eating a ham sandwich, I’m looking for a guy named Smith, heavy browed, hand painted and too wide, front name, this is your lucky night, nice prose, painted ties, vintage 1961 feeling, Westlake is awesome, 4.5 hours, zoned out again, check in, a push notification, something stupid, addicted to the petty bourgeois, small freeholder, yeoman?, the dopamine, 46, pick up from you, it is good to get out of the house, enough to pay minimum wage, it is good to have hobbies, put a scanner somewhere in the middle of that, give it to the world, even just covers, archive.org’s custom scanner, ones from China, funky, wanting to preserve the book, designed for bound books, you can’t crack the spine on a sewn book, reams, come loose, quasi pornographic, Lost City Of The Damned by Alec Rivera [Charles Nuetzel], horny science fiction novel, sex, excitement, and the unknown, terrible in all the right ways, John Kendrick Bangs, Bangsian fantasy, like Beetlejuice (1988), The Good Place, A Houseboat On The Styx, inspired Riverworld, collaborative, a sequel, four books in the series, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s Inferno, ghost stories, it just goes on, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, so cool, he doesn’t know where it is going, offered him $100,000, Thorne Smith, person turning into a goldfish, The Stray Lamb, Topper series, a navy, nautical fiction, supernatural, when a book that’s falling apart, there’s lots of things I could do, an unassailable defense, E.W. Hornung’s Raffles, the gay response to Sherlock Holmes, not being gay enough, Conan Doyle’s brother-in-law, Bunny, a burglar, unbelievably gay, the lady in the mud puddle, in mud puddles?, why is this a thing, high heels, Barrett Whitener, mild mannered, Cary Grant, ok?, 1937 film, the novel is public domain, a few TV series, 78 episodes, Eric Idle, Transformers: The Movie (1986), Roddy McDowell, Bettlejuice sequel that nobody asked for, curious, what was left to be said?, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024), an imperfect novelization, something really cool, a lot of infodump, an excuse to explain, depopulated Australia, shot without permission, one week at a time, in terms of story, reading it through a novel, more action and is simpler, incredible astounding wonderful, dog dies in both, Mel Gibson, [he has a monkey in the third one], 4th one is not good, 5th one, worst kind of idea, go watch the backstory happen, a very unnecessary film, 7 minute standing ovation at Cannes, just because a movie gets a trophy, Eisner awards, a popularity contest, a lady doing the petition, more like the nebulas, people campaign, understood the process, how to get into comics, Maus, not entertaining for kids, better than other homework assignments, leaves his burner on, wants to save on matches, a very long term view of this show, Jesse has an ideology (campaigning for certain things, campaigning against certain things), very hesitant to ever give Amazon any money, most people go along, get along, bootstrap, the PDF page, to try to get more shit on Librivox, hasn’t worked out that well, LibriVox won’t use Jesse as a source, they use Project Gutenberg, Haithi Trust, why it takes so long, very precise, Canadian and Australian ones, FadedPage, Scott Miller [of the Lost Sci-Fi Podcast] is great, his agenda, to record unrecorded stuff, make a little bit of money, he likes this stuff, doing a ton of work, 200 episodes out, three times a week, he wants to mix it up, things that people request, ads in his podcast, the ones on youtube, on the other hand, an imperfect system, Mike [Vendetti] recording for Audible.com, he has other names too, The Last Spaceship by Murray Leinster, the mushroom world, The Mad Planet, Clifford D. Simak, more packaging?, mutual on twitter, stuff for fun, used to be Jesse’s job, a tape gun, very precise, do things fast, Halloween costume, against store bought costume, diplodocus?, cardboard costume, you can model things up out of cardboard, homemade costume, a standing desk, so unergonomic, way too low, no warehouse, fairly small objects, so lucky about media mail, guy from Britain, copies of Analog, Children Of Dune, $40 shipping, silly, Connor can’t get anything in and out of Australia for a reasonable price, New Zealand, horrific, a person in the world today, internet, worst shithole countries, tweeting from Gaza, delivery of things, if there was ever a case, start with mail, an essential service, what makes a country, parcels and letters and things across the place, what made the Mongols an empire, without getting Mongolized, the postal agency, the main job of the government, insurance and mail, universal coverage, being Westlakian, make that explicit, before eveveryone dies, he goes down so smooth, he’s a good guy, The Triumph Of Evil by Lawrence Block, the purported author, wanted to join the CIA, gets recruited, assassinating the president, love the premise, suggest both, five political figures, one man with a gun is enough for the job, a man who’s sole life function, Miles Dorn, he’s so good, the one set in Ireland with a folksinger, hung out with Maissa, Passport To Peril, Reading, Short And Deep short Lawrence Block stories, wonderful narrator, very powerful, good with the openings, professional newscaster, sidethings, horrible ads, normcore, Apple podcasts, regionally targeted, government health insurance, Uber teen accounts, big city thing?, am against, not invented something new, 88th birthday, surrounded by the elderly, dangerous, they can cut you in their gangs, make friends with young people, work at it, make em come on your podcast, meeting young people through science fiction, one pulp fiction friend younger, a year younger, everybody else, fifty is pretty young, aint that young, conversations with people, the whole point is the side benefits, a lot of time looking at books you want to read, help kids pass tests and get better marks in school, let’s do something that will help in the future, don’t lose money at it, shovelling money out the door is unsustainable, maintaining, spend time around cool paperbacks, real conversations about books, most people don’t read, they gain in value, an insight into that period, 1931, 1938, investigate more shudders, weird menaces, weird fiction, Weird Tales is still being published, dude, trolling Jesse, this ideology, only share things that can be shared, worrying about the terminator gene, monsanto’s plan to destroy farming, doesn’t affect your worldview, support illegal things to stop the terminator gene, watch a minute of it to see the BC legislature, Edison Motors, response to Tesla, as a guy, electrifying logging trucks, powerful youtube channel, we better pay attention to this, invited called the Green Party, a third party, pretty small in B.C.’s legislature, a bill to change funding for vehicle subsidization, election’s coming up, very different from American politics, not wholly incompetent clowns, so much clownage is happening, spread everywhere, clown world now, more enclownified, Kentucky legislative proceedings, seeing the room, special costume, threw off that yoke, judges don’t dress up funny, tradition is all we have left, a gavel, Alien Nation, tv series, main white guy, main human guy, alien girlfriend, the way they do the show, there’s aliens, pull out some fact about Mr. Spock’s physiology, builds up lore, lore is the most serious problem any Star Trek has, moved all her stuff in, I see you put up the clowns, paintings of clowns, we do not have clowns in our culture, cirsova, mental maps, no massive overlaps, new fiction, imagine if you were going to open a restaurant, not allowed to use food from after a certain year, recipes are not copyrighted or trademarked, secret recipe, formulations vs. recipes, why do recipe books exist?, she wants to try new food, the creative art, I should write a book, like their poetry, a reference book, not supposed to read it cover to cover, ooh we could make that, get up the courage to do one of the things in there, look at my art, the cookbook is kind of a dead art because of the internet, youtube channels, food algorithm, instagram, twitter, I’m now going to talk about god for the next couple of minutes, preface your conversation about god, why Jimmy Dore quit pot, a Jungian analyst, funny and interesting, spoilers skip ahead, fuck off, they think they’re supposed to, people are very copying, Seventh Victim, you really need to sell it, when they go to read Sheckley, unwreckable, a visual display, lots of money being spent, go to work and feel happy or sad, the narrator explains, hailing, cars going by, a weedwhacker, on a porch, in a room, a novel about cars recorded in a car, doesn’t edit it, how ratchet that is, so charming, can’t even call it pirated, never going to come into, he wanted to read this book to you, he’s a human being, the ideal form of being, people telling a story, another person enjoying that story, and talking about that story, a really good pitch, Louis Rossmann, laptop repairman philosopher guy, right to repair, not everything should be a subscription service, the right way to go, not getting a lot of traction, no money behind it, individuals trying to be ethical, something like a movement, Rossmann has a billionaire backer, leverage political change, leveraging their youtube channel to get a government subsidy, can’t find a place to build their factor, they’re a municipality, Merritt, B.C., other countries are courting them, moving farther north, less investment taken, idle land, investment property, vocal complaints, we want government to be somewhat responsive, Apple will fuck it up on purpose, past the pain point, Starbucks getting shit on for Israel, Nancy Pelosi’s friends kids were killed, Starbucks gave $3 million, special beans, be on the phone with Nancy Pelosi to get shit happening, two gift cards, Tim Horton’s ones, Starbucks, big corporate now, its fine, donuts, Starbucks’ food is very expensive, $3.60, cheap for their products, an expensive part of the world, in terms of land, hard to find housing, a city but suburbs, unhoused, hobos, houseless, tentless, half a duplex, half-housed, housing many animals, some raccoons, big swollen teats, some babies, what racoon milk tastes like, the science of racoon milk, latch on and give a little suck, made redundant, life in rural Kentucky, mixed up with weird apologies for Joe Biden, Trump Derangement Syndrome, sniffing kids, blatant lying, confabulating memories, gross children grabbing, Astounding, doesn’t know he’s on camera, nobody calls him on it, his daughter’s diary, she left it somewhere, like the son left the laptops, woman sentenced to prison for stealing and selling Ashley Biden’s diary, going to therapy and telling the therapist her dad was having showers with her, pretty damning if true, Hunter calling his dad a pedophile, to hurt it his dad, pawing children, hand on a girl’s breast, evil that he gets away with that, a lot going around, what percentage?, double digits?, a survey, look around, just in your own life, it’s not zero, Biden paws girls breast, video distorts, granddaughter, here’s the apology for it, Natalie Biden, Beau Biden’s daughter, a Biden who’s not allowed to be a Biden, John Snow, what Game Of Thrones is about, politics, titillation, perverted sex stuff, Scott liked it, George R.R. Martin, huge entourage of women, Freya Stark, women’s brains, not a handsome man, got money, an attraction to the storytelling, for women, something to him, the first book is in the show, why people are into it, so much of it, the media stuff is not reading, people like talking about things around the watercooler, Americans are very prudish, HBO would have a little bit of nudity, traditionally verboten, high drama, reversals, responding to Tolkien’s vision of Middle Earth is escapist, Martin’s vision of Westeros, trying to be realist, got dragons, war of the roses, infighting between royal families, bottom up characters, when you see a princess get raped, that’s dramatic, girl mind mentality, they’re different, common core, women are weaker than men, shorter than men, things growing inside your body for 9 months, women care about health more, watch Alien Nation with Meg, watch the pilot, cheer for schooling, the Ruby Bridges story, desegregation story, govt. agents, sit in a classroom by herself all day, very TV dramatic, how fucked up American morality is, prudishness, the names are so funny, the original 1988 movie, a family drama done as a buddy cop show, got punchy, funny names, Sam Fransisco, low level humour in the background, another baby, needs to find a binnaum, Albert Einstein, you’re gonna let Albert fuck your wife?, be in the room while the partner is being cuckolded, Heinlein style violation of norms, this is all biological, made up to tell stories like that, to break down prejudices, so lefty feelgood, genuine SF, little details, weirdly sexy show, sex stuff on Fox TV in 1990s, cancelled, brought it back, reshoot the final scene, set in 1995, highly rated show, second to last episode: child sex slavery with politicians, nothing stays in print anymore, Netflix shows removed from Netflix, lost the license or embarrassed, not vertically, horizontal, vs. spherical, own the mines for the raw materials for your cars, marketing and movie theaters, merging with competitors, productions that it greenlights, Quentin Tarantino will own Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019) in 20 years, a Star Trek movie, see you next week.

Cat-Woman by Ray Cummings - from Terror Tales, May 1938

In The Orbit Of Saturn by R.F. Starzl from Astounding, October 1931

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #804 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Mad Planet by Murray Leinster

The SFFaudio Podcast #804 – The Mad Planet by Murray Leinster, read by Roger Melin. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (2 hours 44 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Miassa Bessada, Will Emmons, Terence Blake, Alex (PulpCovers), and Jonathan Weichsel.

Talked about on today’s show:
Argosy 1920, posthistorical, prehistorical romance, H.G. Wells, Jack London, Stanton A. Coblentz’s The Wonder Stick, an Edgar Rice Burroughs book set on Earth, Under The Moons Of Mars, the princess, thoughts and loins, no dialogue, can communicate a little bit, he had no words, he speaks in a masculine way: a war cry, internal monologue, an external narrator, he looks just like rodin’s thinker, very well realized world, a nice Virgil Finlay illustration, butterflies and moths and giant, mushroom fire, bright and colourful pulp, colourful dark pulp, a very dark world, giant insects, apocalyptic taken the extreme, a natural apocalypse, global warming, very subversive of him, unintentionally so, carbon emissions, fissures underground, carbon capture, vast reservoirs, the african lakes that suddenly burps, everybody dies, offshore, frozen methane at the bottom of the sea, free methane, carbon captured a long time ago, this will happen this has happened, with humans is the shocker, very Clark Ashton Smith world, gone to Venus, heavy growth, pulp Venus Earth, the shape of the story, one guy out in the woods for the whole book learning things, not much of plot, great setting, unique, kinda slow, their ears wiggle, the smartest, the fastest, John Carter inspired superman, atavistic throwback, his ancestor was John Carter, I could make shoes, stick it with this poky thing, not even hunter gatherers, just gatherers, didn’t make it through 8th grade, an autodidact, inventor’s lab at home, The Last Spaceship, genius inventor, being your standard 1950s smart guy, way behind the slowest of our forebearers, a progenitor, the beginning of the new, the minimal plot, The Cave Girl, The Men In The Walls by William Tenn, Will’s second show, a great funny story about a human future where giant aliens (bigger than skyscrapers), women have litters, the alien kitchen crumb, theirs cockroaches all over this house, sprayed with chemicals, the insects are now giant and the humans are small, Fantastic Planet (1973), a french movie, breed with this other pet, more like pests (than pets), the reversal, we do care for our pests, a mouse in your house, maybe some vegans don’t, feral humans, levy whatever critique, enjoyable setting, where William Tenn succeeds, anthropology or sociology, an uncle, way deeper, like a savage or a child, it failed on the level of having interesting characters, breathing toxic fumes, doesn’t come across like a satire, an Edgar Rice Burroughsy feel, the setting is the showcase, indomitable human spirit, extreme environments, the spark still survives, rekindle the human flame, the connection to Burroughs, what if this was a little more realistic, using the weapons, I can leap really high, work and think and develop, the guy in The Cave Girl, cook meat or whatever, a framework to allow our guy to climb back up, a plot device, small triumphs, the line near the end, Burl saw the mighty armour, envied him his weapons, the juicy flesh contained in those armoured limbs, he need flee, in his hands he bore a long sharp chitinous spear, there’s no wood, remaster the earth, the dawn of a new-mankind, the proto-human in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and he won the girl, he did it for the girl, that was terrible, a voyage into weirdness, CO2 in excess, they’re not really trees, gets back home and gets the girl, nothing innovative there, Day Million is 7 minutes long, a guy is excluded from his tribe, invents the bow, spooky action at a distance, he tames a dog, learns how to make fire, invents the wheel, now he’s a hero not a nerd, club him on the head with their club, the exclusion, got separated, the tide took him away, the only real interaction we have is his thoughts, he likes sharing her with her, this whole thing is cute, strange character dynamics, a little more repetitive, the florid description of the flora, over and over again, Samuel Beckett does that, a hypnotic type style, a good invention to repeat, getting the girl, any pulp story, gesticulates at that, odyssey into weirdness, mid-20th century than pulp, before Amazing, 24 years old, the Campbell puzzle stories, with the fish, stuck in the spider web, the fishoil, a very Campbellian idea, ahead of its time, genuine science fiction, the title, [The Forgotten Planet], Electrical Experimenter, Hugo Gernsback, mad as in crazy, a narrator from a distance, a direct descendant, he’s recounting this period in history, made it through the giant mushrooms, in some Burroughs books, a frame, I’m getting these psychic images from the future, the Gridley wave, we don’t have a universal republic, the international geophysical institute, ways of framing the story, crazy and angry, if it was published in the 1950s, as we go, as we progress, as we iterate, non-linear progress, walk around long after you’re dead, people get confused, nutzo, if this was published in 1955, everyone knows what science fiction is, the title would be 30,000 years, Earth In The Grip Of The Mushrooms, Giant Spider World, people going into strange lost valleys, Empire Of The Ants, giant spider story by Robert E. Howard, people just spend their time enjoying their time and occasionally supervising machines, we’re scavengers, was it a sin that we did?, burned too many fossil fuels?, its scientific name is this, quick wikipedia look ups, that looks cool, lactarius deliciosus, mmm milky, abundance of food, everybody is eating everything, scientific name, very different and very cool, munching, spongey, lady with a dress and a whip, a gun and a spaceship, any educational value in here at all, the Chinese still publish science fiction, making it science fiction, caveman stories are considered science fiction, the process of technological acquisition and distribution, get the bow going, that phenomenon where we have to learn something, a setting rather than an exploration of that idea, we all would get like shoes, shoes are a good idea, strapping those on their feets, enough free time and resources, a lot of tribes today, material and or time, full time job to make shoes, gorging themselves and lying around, they’re lazy, a fantasy of the native, not anthropologically sound, a lot of lazy activity that gets people doing art, hiding in a cave?, fled to the mountains, huddling together for warmth, an old anthropological theory, the culture of poverty, considered racists, all impoverished civilizations are the same, an idea of social strata, through the lens of a higher social stratus, for poverty there has to be affluence, the potlatch, hard to understand, get together with their neighbours, a giving contest, making giant presents, foods, delectable items, bentwood boxes, massive amounts of luxury consumer goods, status and power, like the hobbits, people aren’t turned into chattel, trading, the culture we see in The Odyssey, just a series of home invasions, you’re never leaving, a lady who wants to have sex with you, turned into farm animals, delicate relationship between host and guest, stores, I could steal this, usually a refrigerator, a place to do commerce, you don’t have an economy, good relationships with your neighbours, a friend and an ally, reciprocal debts, family and friendship and bonds, a bit of leisure time, poverty, people starving to death, some external problem, hunter gatherers, decorate their bodies, making jewelry, weird things we can’t understand, stupid and not for Jesse, tell stories, probably a lot of gossip, have you seen what janice is wearing in her hair?, why isn’t Paul on the podcast, tattoos from strangers, your bunkee wants to practice, disrailed?, people that you actually know, a cool tattoo store down the street, bring their own designs, means something, words, words all over this guy’s arm, these worlds are valuable, pure hunter gatherer behavior, what people do when they get a little bit of money, sailor tattoos, grading, crossed the equator, circumnavigate the world, tramp stamp, no tattooing in this book, decorating?, lie around, not doing art, no culture at all, no songs, no stories, the feast of the full moon, they don’t even have a moon, is there food in my mouth?, food is their primary concern, they need to have a refrigerator, food everywhere, reread Dune, they eat worm shit, this is what people do, carbon dioxide poisoned, carboniferous, an impressive gene, an uplift story Children Of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky, spiders could evolve intelligence, more intelligent than us, savages as if they were human, anthropological science fiction, self-uplifting of proto-humans, matters of life and death and food and safety, comfort and luxury, technology is uplift, genetic resurgence, smoke those spider legs and centipede feets, put them in your cave, cave out of shells, how many other human groups are there on the planet, pretty terrific, The Integral Trees by Larry Niven, humans have been voyaging to other planets, found a star with an orbiting gas bubble, giant trees, revolving due to winds, squirrel people, their tree is rotting, termites, dexterous feet, they don’t even know, so many generations, a hard SF story with ridiculous premises, more time spent with the tribe and the culture, not being for a good reason, flashbacks, how to gather mollusc feet, live up to be like my grandpa, Argosy’s pay rates, it doesn’t make economic sense to do a second draft, trynna fill pages, readers want to be satisfied, give em what they want, two more followups, it explains much, still pretty good, infected Jesse’s dreams, dark things in it, moth’s tortured pains, hunting killing eating, our world, carried off by a spider and screaming, nobody focuses on that, his learning moment, in a rather unpleasant fashion, that’s a pity, that old gentleman since, never entered his head, say of the year 1920, pick a year out of a hate, doesn’t have hypothetical questions, pure immediacy, getting to hypotheticality, that’s the point of the story, hypothesis building, if!, there’s the science fiction word for you, it’s wild, sense of wonder, it’s crazy!, those ants, the army ants, right after WWI, burn themselves up, a repeat of this whole situation, this new prototype kinda guy, adjacently classified, Leiningen Versus the Ants [by Carl Stephenson], castle doctrine, late to the game Robinson Crusoe, indomitable German will, almost robotic, let yourself be put into the gears of this machine or not?, not perfectly aligned, sheared off, mechanisms in society are machine like, don’t get involved with the police, the robotic aspect of these unstoppable creatures vs. individual fights, the one with the fish, hunter vs. prey, the army of ants, once you join the army, go over there and get shot, got caught up in something, explored in later books, this is an unstoppable thing, like the fire, techniques, firebreaks, helicopters with water, incarcerated firefighters, what happened to the earth already, unstoppable, humanity was doing really well, wasn’t a robot uprising, shit happens, funny stuff, higher ground becomes expensive real estate, climate change!, melted into the sea, a bunker in Nepal, in case, fun, engages with this idea of 30,000 years around, tiny mammals hiding in holes, Science Fiction By Gaslight by Sam Moskowitz, London is destroyed by carbon emissions, 1890something, Earth is destroyed by carbon emissions, who is right?, The Doom Of London by Robert Barr, The Forgotten Enemy, Freaky Trigger, A Bite Of Stars A Slug Of Time And Thou podcast, a deserted London, it’s the ice age, a glacier slowly griding its way into London, the opposite way to go, flooded out vs. frozen out, global cooling, new ice age comin, New York suddenly freezes, The Day After Tomorrow, new Ghostbusters movie, ghost freezes New York, The Real Ghostbusters, read the fixup, mash em together, rewriting to make it flow, The Red Dust, has become the leader, 30 years later, needed the fixup, a terrible idea, defeats the whole purpose!, let’s do The Red Dust, not a lot of capacity, Return From The Stars, that’s a mental book, especially if I get to shit on it, about the same length, you who have read the Mad Planet, the world in the far distant future, tiny Man, acclimated to change, our hero Burl, nothing compared to the deadly red dust, thrusting his spear, shiny back, meat eating beetles, what does Bleiler have to say?, Blei this up, Moskowitz, a timeless classic of the pulp era, well written, fun, short, an interesting idea, the aesthetic is good, it has more depth, much better world building than Edgar Rice Burroughs, video game levels, designed for an adventure, still feel some enthusiasm, no invention in it, the new LibriVox of The Stainless Steel Rat on LibriVox, science fiction setting, Slippery Jim diGriz, very Futuramalike, future tropes, the police are robots, this other mode of reading science fiction, not what we do here, what a champion E.F. Bleiler was, just science fiction the early years, Gernsback’s life, closely typed 1115 pages, plot synopsis, would be great to have it, on the Internet Archive, searchable, google books, a supernatural book for all the Weird Tales stuff, The Last Spaceship, some more Murray Leinster, dubious quality, the very future future, 50,000 years in the future, a lady in a bathing suit in a belt and wristbands, mushroom guys, beautiful right?, Stories From The Sky (William Sky), This World Is Taboo, Mark F. Smith, a presumed plague carrier, but hey if he did the smart thing we wouldn’t have a story, Ray Cummings, as long as the audio is good, its a human, British (possibly human), pretty inhuman, homo sapiens non-roboticus, Thomas Burnett Swann, Popes, Japan, last December, June 2nd, A Spell For Chameleon, the minotaur books, human-minotaur love, an archive of our own?, wtf is it?, fan-fiction, won a Hugo, The Weirwoods, sail the high seas, records his crimes, not illegal, The Soul Of Man (Under Socialism) by Oscar Wilde, The Not-World, lure of the little folk, magic pen, one of the finest and most piquant, spicy!, Thomas Chatterton, mingle their fates with Arachnae, spider woman, drowning before sex, objectionable, everybody on the internet, objectionable, on Goodreads, very erotic, middle erotic, focused on Eros, eroticism deferred, not Gor, rapidly becomes weird fetish porn, a lovely novel, a smidgen of alternate history, the worst review, not helpful reviews, like the narrator, doesn’t understand the concept of what fiction is, a 30 year old novelist, a young sailor, you can disinvite Jesse from your birthday party, not-father’s day, the other Alex, regular Alex, never listened to an audiobook for this podcast, audiobooks when hiking, you wont miss anything by listening to the audiobook, popular long running series, a parody of Starship Troopers, Bill, The Galactic Hero, 45 years ago, Slow Horses, find it good, almost binge watch, fortunately/unfortunately, have a good Nice, new laptop, where Alex works, hear the insults roll in, perfect except the speakers are terrible, Lenovo Yoga, screen is so good, speakers are better, a lot of ThinkPads (but not for good reasons), all instant, $60, addicted to fixing up old laptops, Windows 11 (Tiny 11), the Pro matters, Brave browser, Microsoft Edge, Tubi.com, what looks like an app, no ads, works for everything that way, its amazing, in 7 months, get that Brave Browser going, running it as an app, never tried Plex, ad scammed all the time, Yes, Minister, this is not Scooby-Doo, nice and short, hits so fuckin hard, 79-80, stuff everybody should know about how government and the deep state works, any story in government, i’d like to reform things somewhat, loses completely, the language is amazing, Shakespearean doubletalk, he’s a right-honorable, the gossip network of other drivers, why the bus/train system sucks so much, if you were forced to take it, why the NHS sucks, force the PM or the premier to go to the hospital, truths that people that don’t understand, why govt fails to work, bureaucracy rather than corporations, meeting with the BBC guy, complaints about the BBC, something that is out of date, bribery and scandal runs everything, why don’t you get more female high end bureaucrats, a great idea, the Saudis won’t like it, they all have excuses, this one woman promoted, a really good satire of what is happening now, there’s some great stuff and nobody gets to see it, not on Plex, on the deep schedule, Darker Than You Think by Jack Williamson, puts on an alien planet, thinking about it as a writer, you don’t really need to, once you get idea, the Simak story, stuff like that, Bradbury?, as a novelist?, he smokes, the first Amber book, writing it by the seat of his pants, writing skill, that series, Larry Niven, supposed to be famous, Ice World by Hal Clement, Jack Williamson, not sci-fi, Legion Of Space, Gordon Dickson, a lot of series, a lot of repeated covers, a 2.5 hour one, Phil Chenevert, inhabitable planets, extremely young, covered with all kinds of life, should have not had a chance to even begin to develop, paleontology and geology and archaeology, a review or Bleiler?, Dorsai!, the first in a series, with an exclamation mark!, military SF, most valuable, The Genetic General, is maze a verb?, a short story that’s been expanded, genetic engineering, creating super soldiers, pee, look at Hal Clement reviews, Jesse puts everything in, there’s nothing cut, a champion of podcasting, the ones from 10 years ago are an hour long, [The Genetic General was copyright renewed RE0000404051 ], LibriVox, no women in it, Maissa is gonna love it, our base is old men, people smoke in this story, Attitude by Hal Clement, somehow in the empty rift, their captors had not harmed any of them at all, from Astounding in 1943, becoming a Campbell guy, Dianetics, Mission Of Gravity, Kurt Vonnegut, Galapagos, Slaughterhouse Five, life is stupid and crazy, isn’t that funny?, not chill, Mr. Sheckley, read by Phil Chenevert, 60s stuff, 40s is good, a good length, The Status Civilization, solid satire, thoughtful and interesting, interesting not just fun, The Journey Of Joenes, The Blue World by Jack Vance, an imagined future, a picaresque, Mindswap, fell completely off the rails, an ocean of terror, another Stanislaw Lem, Neuromancer, don’t get hit by that bus, bought a bombshelter with free crawdads, they would eat each other, arthropods don’t have our values, shoeless mouse people, The Star King, complaints: this is not science fiction, science fiction wallpaper, he can write good ideas, The Man In The Maze by Robert Silverberg, similar to Thorns, a penal ship crashlanded, giant lily pads, forgotten their origin, caste system, giant lobster, monster stories can be science fiction, the latest John Scalzi, The Kaiju Preservation Society, a stuff happens book, how to get metal, they’re criminals, a good Larry Niven, read his as a teenager, Ringworld, the whole focus on that book is about sex, the puppeteer wants to reproduce, wants to have sex, win a name, young nubile woman, we’re gods, its a sex book, they get worse as they go, more than one Ringworld, The Seascape Tattoo, all about sex, the first third, a monthlong break, Louis Wu being kind of a perv, cat-men, the complete list of all of the novels, Protector, World Of The Ptavvs, Lucifer’s Hammer, racist guys at the beginning, just putting his name on, he’s awesome, super-smart, a mean sense of humour, but not cruel, short stories, Neutron Star, early short stories, comedy stories, The Draco Tavern, young people real old SF, how young are these young people?, how the relationships are forged, dubious of young people, no longer feel like a young person, an organization with young in the name, young DSA, middle age DSA, Man Of Steel Woman Of Kleenex, you know the meme, which is a problem, can’t be long stories, is there beyond the meme, the kids comics version, to fully understand you’re going to need to read the book, Inconstant Moon, New Twilight Zone, the dad on Growing Pains?, another tv dad, anytime people quote Shakespeare, God Save The Mark, it was a good one, a perfect book, Outer Limits Season 2 Episode 12, Michael Gross, Michael J. Fox’s dad on a TV show, it’s the end of the world, a woman he has known for many years, he’s been in love with her for a long while, a few hours to make up for his foolishness, good right?, an episode of Doctor Quinn: Medicine Woman, 6 seasons plus TV movies, a corporate law lady who decides to become a public defender, bougie friends, woman professional story, Bess Sullivan, The Trials Of Rosie O’Neil, Ponderosa, Bob’s Burgers, short and lighter, in a two person home, mutual boxes, watching bureaucrats talk politicans out of things, it’s educational, if you don’t beleive this is exactly, ripped from the non-headlines, an anti-West Wing, Yes, Prime Minister, hugely convoluted long sentences, Obamaisms, Joyce Carol Oates giving Obama an award, a better time, for who? for whom?, inflation wasn’t as bad then?, the president had all his faculties, aiding and abetting an active genocide, H. Jon Benjamin actor is Archer, you can rewatch them, character based humour show, Pam, the HR department, a very dumb one, sniffing glue, pushing Picard and Crusher together, that’s not what this show should be about, professionals acting professionally, Moonlighting was a good show, not even a zygote, hatched in 86, became a feotus in 89, she has mammaries, a platapus, what colour milk would it be?, Carthoris, flows beautifully, only one kid, the second novel, each individual entry has a different lead character, Korak, side characters, Tarzan, such a legend, 24 books, 12 Tarzan novels, husbanding them, diminish returns doesn’t apply to economics it applies to art, Young Indiana Jones is a separate animals, early 20th century history, look at art, this is amazing, look at this!, look at this piece, a weird thing to do all day, art The Executioner Of Venice, Harry Lemon Parkhurst, Spicy Mystery Stories, September 1942, science fiction stories, how good are they at science fiction?, not all visual art, fiction, poetry, can’t we just do this all day long?, a pretty good position, report cards, be honest without hurting anybody’s feelings, not here to rebuke you, grading is horrible, learning something, what poetic devices, you’re getting this, it is important to love what you’re doing, hobby business of selling books online, sold to PulpCovers, had you scanned them, two scanners for sale, Herbert Schmaltz (artist), Zenobia, Palmyra, chained up, a comic series, Magnus Robot Fighter, has a nice backstory, stop them with your fists, the most stunning thing I’ve ever seen, another Zenobia, facial expression, Cleopatra by the same artist, boobs exposed, mammals love mammaries, birds other than the evil evil cuckoo, they give them barf, duck around, keep them warm at night, ducks might like you, they’re less like humans than cats are, cats are very catty, their default behavior, not quite individual animals, nothing like dogs, household pets, cats are very different, sometimes cats like you, dogs are loyal at least, pirate cat [Anne Bonny], allergy to her own saliva, saliva cats, lots of hair comes out, kinda wild, do your best, a big Jesse theme, copying Jason Mockman Thompson, he’s got good politics, he’s a dad with a toddler, a twee year old, the city in the distance under the dome, silver key in his hand, so much great art, Lauren somebody, Blue Book, Tarzan: Guard Of The Jungle, better in the pulps, more elemental, with the #LegCling and #KetchupAndMustardGetup, why are they so powerful, the combination of red and yellow, everything means something, reading the original magazine publications, ERB didn’t like to be edited, the sixth martian novel, 30-40 magazine pages, you have to drill down, the only way, the Amazing Stories Annual, the operating room table cover, available as a scan, Frederik Pohl, blew his mind, how come those ones didn’t blow your mind, how come that one blew his mind, a voracious reader, I want to be a science fiction writer, editor and agent, famously unsuccessful at making money, $30,000 in debt in the 1950s, no audiobook, too obscure, no champion, the Pohl estate?, can’t even get a Robert E. Howard biography audiobooked, Mark Finn, Philip Jose Farmer’s books, speaking to somebody who doesn’t understand, that sounds like something you’re saying, Frederik Pohl audiobooks, the Heechee series is not good, kinda broken, the main character is mentally ill, as a kind of a theme in later books, seeing a robot therapist, you can make anything good, fictional robot therapist, ideological objection, therapy is probably a mistake, talking about your problems in a structured environment, insane, hangups about making mistakes, is that true?, double negative, get confused, the whole point is it not?, especially with kids, very impressionable, most people don’t understand how impressionable people are, did it have the effect that was intended, even knowing that you’re being manipulated, offered her food, more dangerous than teaching or parenting, the thing that they know is true, school is prison, the reason that people become teachers, fall into it, a pretty good job, the school district you’re in, being a prison guard is a good job too, painful for the children and the teachers, catbird seat, you’re not going to get fired, teachers can do harm, many students only one teacher, teachers can single out a kid and fuck em up, parents can fuck their kids up for sure, indulging them, get any toy they wanted, how can anyone have this much money, casual with their toys, if every thing goes easy, if every thing goes hard, lift em up when they fell down, say: you’ll live, go superreligious, to fill them full of hangups, you have to come to terms with everything, hell was the scariest idea, let’s take this kid who is acting like a child and get them professional help, you need professional help, a way of saying I’m better than you, there’s something wrong with you, an old man who lives in the basement, big long fingernails and he smells bad, I can’t handle you, I’m going to outsource this to a professional, a master’s degree, how important it is to be thinking about what the kid is thinking about, a handle on their vocab level, a handle on their brain, cloistered, sent to school and sent to after school, we can have a really negative influence, you’ve been wetting their bed, a problem of a being a baby and something go wrong in your life, dangerous, it’s like knives, children are vulnerable to institutions, parents deferring their authority to experts, that living thing came out of my body, especially moms, it’s really really hard, in a random sampling, there are great people in the world, raising both hands, how much of a responsibility it is and all the things that can go wrong, takes your freedom away, spinabifida, drown the kid, a huge mistake, structured talk therapy for adults, talking about your problems, get past or through or around, wallowing, some people make their living, the effect in school, school counselors, what did they do?, becoming more confident, understanding how the world works, knowing who you are, most people don’t know who they are, model, a mentor, a lot of the time the best thing to do is to get outta there, the solution (often) is to not be there, traumas that we experience, that shouldn’t be what you think about all day, get out in the field and fix a boat, people who can help you, just like in the medical industry, milk customers, what do you think?, a number of very bad therapists, this video by Louis Rossmann, very religious Christian woman, buy a lot of scented candles, older woman nearing retirement, underconsidered psychological approach, biofeedback, behavioral therapy, literally experimenting on you, hate to opine, a little senile seeming, skeptical about the DSM, the big book, for the benefit of insurance companies, the laws, their theory of human brains, how things will be punished, constantly evolving, our theory should get better and better, a coding manual for insurance purposes, obsessed with death, as long as six months, these people are not regulated by an ethical code that makes exposure of unethical behavior public, very sketchy, old boss went to prison for sketchy behavior, defrauding medicare and medicaid, measuring, an outside check, an adult who is thinking I will submit to this system in the hopes it will help me, I yell a lot, regulating people’s behavior medically, the dismal science, at least they make predictions, criminologists and sociologists, an ongoing feud with psychology, care about methods, is it an art?, not all artists are equally good, Foundation, a fun idea, Paul Krugman, you’re just hearing about science fiction, predicting technologies, futurism and futurology, a specific Italian movement, Bryan Alexander, going out of business, massive endowments, declining to enter, full of administration, it can be both, it is really bad, do you value yourself more than a broken Macbook, a little autistic, he reads the comments, he responds prophylacticly and after the fact, went to therapy, trying to find a good therapist, online therapy companies, not everybody is the same, there are good therapists, active in looking for them, is there a good doctor, a serious problem, as a child you have no instruments, my mom is sending me to therapy, whisper networks, an adult who knows something, adults that know stuff?, people managing to float by in life, very skeptical of doctors and politicians and everything, Scanners Live In Vain [by Cordwainer Smith], Day Million, Paget’s hierarchy of needs?, Ted Sturgeon, Pruzy’s Pot, a living toilet, Microcosmic God, Gateway, The Voices Of Heaven, a great book for Will, gigantic caterpillar like beasts, he’s good, Kornbluth has a sharper edge, more biting, The Advent On Channel 12, about Disney under another name, basically Winnie The Pooh, feels very New Wave, a little early for the New Wave, prefigured before it happened, where Scanners Live In Vain, The Other End Of Time, the beloved leaders, are these replicas capable of reason?, characterized it differently, seems like a cool guy, Tunnel Under The World, Heechee is so overrated, what it must be, a lot of hype?, preorders are love, look what happens in this story, characters in folktales don’t say I love you, they give each other food, how mother bird feeds its child, I have something in this bag do you want it, I made you like me more, many bad teachers do all the time with candy, a zap, behavior cognitive therapy, you can trick people or manipulate people with praise or candy, the thing that was important was food, everything that’s in there for a reason, a story Connor wrote, finds a dead woman in the bog, she’s beautiful, parents in his head, why are there two parents rather than one?, for a reason, why does Tarzan have only one child?, if it is not for a reason that’s bad, The Brady Bunch‘s premise, evil Nazi scientist, Flesh Eaters (1964), Gilligan’s Island with a Nazi, there’s good thing in it, the dialogue works, that part of the script was well written, so good as it is, a budget for five actors and no budget for a set, a beach, an airplane for one day and five actors, solving problems, applies equally well to essays, passionate about good writing (not chat GPT), as a tool for helping students get through school, it’s humourous, it’s also evil, the corporations are there to maximize profits, extracting value from children from a system they’re unwilling to reform, art stuff is even more insidious, Jonathan did a poll about a robot narrator, publicity, trying to move books, controversy sells books, Chuck Tingle, are they meant to be read?, that fact that Chuck Tingle is a name I know, really stupid, just designed to get attention and publicity, doing life wrong, just talk to Will, we like to talk, spicy takes, he’s got a game going, fears disagreement, verboten!, zees vords!, need Cora here, sounds a lot scarier than it is, not in massive discord on it either, very extreme, tweet dream about weapons, right on, even if it is a dream, taking the discourse to a reality, it’s a show for them, gamestreaming debate bro, Destiny being called a gusano, talking about Mao, subconscious refers to the state as a million dudes with guns, a body of armed men that holds itself about society, proud of ability to record, they have to be done in the first moments, barely awake, a flow state, you can’t record everything, difficult to record, a textual expression of a virtual experience, your roof was domed, decorated not just with Star Trek curtains, Simpsons curtains, tacky admirable Star Trek curtains, not the biggest Enterprise stan, Deep Space Nine, not enough to speak about it intelligently, Enterprise’s entire run, the copyright system, servers full of movies, getting paid still, make infinite copies, mostly laser guns, phaser fights is not the point, a good Star Trek show almost never needs its phaser, those are the worst episodes, the ship has guns on it, very specifically not the point, a more martial show, it becomes a serial show, what it does is excellent, more consistently good, start with a good one, of all the pilot’s that the best first episode of any Star Trek, Encounter At Farpoint is garbage, captain beep, Spock goes haam (hard as a motherfucker), speaking not as a gen xer, Millennial Hunter (2023), his car is murdered by a millennial, kill all millennials, she’s a genXer, a daughter who is a zoomer, working for a big online website, something AF, almost great, this is amusing, meta genre?, clever, Chazz AF, give our listener a break?, a question about H.P. Lovecraft, listeners still listening, popularity waned during the cold war?, Bobby Derie, how old is he?, balding, people in their thirties can’t be balding, solidly a boomer, very useful information, google NGram, broke the cold war up into different eras, levels of exposure, Arkham House, really gets rolling in the 80s, the game, but also the movies, with the rise of Robert E. Howard in comics, Savage Sword Of Conan, reviews of books that are related, H.P. Lovecraft ripoffs, replicated for many other people of contemporaneous period, after life as a skinsuit magazine, a 70s startup, a current skinsuit, disconnected, the Ligotti period in the 80s, a paperback for three issues, a long weird history, there was movies in the 60s, a band called H.P. Lovecraft, what could he think about any of this stuff?, amateur press association, dedicated HAMF, hard as a motherfucker when it came to art, that doesn’t compromise, this is a story about art, sculptors and painters and musicians, even in the comedy ones, his focus is on art, that is unusual, Robert W. Chambers, models and painting, what it means to be original, his amateur press career, not well written, Sonia Green doesn’t have the gift of prose, the story as it is, biographical detail, why stories exist as they do, an old school thing, doesn’t drill down on Lovecraft, the reason she’s going to marry him, she believes like he does that amateur journalism is a good unto itself, I’m gonna fix him, making him able to do art, like believing in blogging and podcasting, download distributed without interference, steal wreck and exploit, Podcast Addict, Downcast, not married to it, the Fairphone, fair as in just, try not to use child slaves, operating on Linux, Framework (laptops), repairable, fixable, upgradable, old piece of tech, the Apple tax, into the playground, all the competitors, vertical and horizontal integrated, the ultimate Apple product will be you in a white sphere that has no buttons and no exits, the Apple car, Apple TV, Homepod, overpriced, google goggle, $2300?, really expensive, make your laptop in your face, artificial reality, just buy a monitor and don’t wear a mask on your head, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 wasn’t cynical enough, see you on twitter.

The Mad Planet by Murray Leinster, Argosy, June 12, 1920

THE MAD PLANET - Virgil Finlay

THE MAD PLANET - Virgil Finlay

Posted by Jesse Willis