The SFFaudio Podcast #781 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The History Of Hayy Ibn Yaqdhan by Ibn Tufail

The SFFaudio Podcast #781 – The History Of Hayy Ibn Yaqdhan by Ibn Tufail, read by Evan Lampe. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the book (2 hours, 57 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Evan Lampe, and Terence Blake.

Talked about on today’s show:
Terry the loner, a conversion, Terénce is better than Terence, the necessary existent, why are we listening to old dead Europeans?, it’s Tarzan, Stranger In A Strange Land, enriched it with sex, implied sex, conceives the possibility of sex being a distraction, might be converting to Islam, raised Lutheran, if Evan were to convert: Islam or Calvinism, neo-platonic symbolic interpretation of Islam, Avicenna, John Vervaeke, Awakening From The Meaning Crisis, alternative titles, human reason, the History Of Hayy Ibn Yadhan, is this a story of humanity story?, yes, a history of philosophy story, a scientific interpretation of a history of humanity on earth story, there was a pool of very muddy water, it had fermented a lot, it so came to pass, a receptacle, the crappy story of how earth got life, full sized human baby, cute and fun and silly and gets us where we need to be, a bad novel, a fun thing for what it is, forgotten about Roman novels, for dramatic events, more like a Philip K. Dick novel than Edgar Rice Burroughs, raised Christian, the aesthetics, he would definitely have dug it, this book doesn’t wrestle with evil very much, what is good, evil as blindness, on the ethical side, his moral code, through his system, life the universe everything, necessary existent, are your podcast listeners familiar with Avicenna?, ethics are rooted in communities, morals vs. ethics, ethics is for jobs, Deleuze’s definitions based on Spinoza, the application, universal constants, not in a hurry, puppy drowning in the river, get that puppy, dog catcher, commitment or relationship, I can help you cheat at school but I can’t help you cheat at learning, make your prison stay better, good ethics vs. good morals, you shouldn’t lie except…, find a way to be tricky and deceptive, on the same page, new friend, many points in the 115 chapters, this is all impossible, 28 years old, now he’s going to learning language, that burning bush over there, get past that, those things are in Tarzan, a primer (how to read book), he’s also a child, lots of impossible things happen, improbable things, either way the creation myth works, nurses her son, puts him in an ark, God take care of my son, beach, a roe nearby, the baby ain’t changing her own diapers, lick up their shit, how everything works in this, figuring out what the stars are, this is not a fiction story, a fiction way of making your students be introduced to all of these concepts, mostly right, wrong in the details, from the physical to the spiritual, wanting to live in a videogame, deny their body, focus on the mind of god, mortification and starvation, getting closer to that perfect union through understanding god with mirrors, largely concerned with science, the philosophy of religion, let’s form a society, just like the scholastic in Latin Europe, Thomas Aquinas, justify this through Aristotle, Plotinus, a doctor, scholarship, what makes it a golden age, parallels with what is happening, a condensed text, an autodidact, packaged like we think of as a novel, two creation myths, let’s just examine the facts of how the sun works, how heat works, all tricks to get you into the science, natural philosophy is what we would call science, talking about the food, the morality of the food that you put into your body, animals and eggs, vegetables, stand on fruit, fruit is the most interesting kind of food to talk about philosophically, fruitarians, not kill a plant, roots and bark, fresh vegetables, weird cases, fruit or vegetable, pumpkin, strawberries, parafruit, acting like a fruit, doing what the plant wants, how drugs work, obliquely referencing quinine, Jesuit bark, developing our relationship with plants, we had this discussion, eating fake meat, if it tastes like meat, super-interesting, modern Muslim and Jewish orthodox people, philosophically disposed, religious ideas people just accept, if you think it through, a consequentialist, being offended by a dildo, something is fake, dildos do offend people, glossed over, daily ablutions, the philosophy of washing up, plants rubbed into his private areas, he took them where they were abundant, more from the roe’s point of view, god killed her fawn, there’s no predators on this island, this ecosystem is fucked, two and a half hours, do your own Hayy Ibn Yadhan fan fiction, he spent a year thinking about his relationship to scented plants, why it is good to keep your bum clean, the Robinson Crusoe connection, eating of that guy’s food, not a food that he should eat (because it is too good), generally right, vaping scented vapes, a chemical that helps them regulate their mind and mood, drugs to excess, to escape the pain of capitalism or whatever, don’t enjoy things too much, sleep cycle, sleep hygiene, having this character learn about reality, the ecosystem, this other, philosophy of religion, all up their own asses, not on observation of the universe, inner knowledge, rationalist and empiricist, why is she not moving, she will move again, he loves his mom, after a certain point you can’t fix the plumbing, a traumatic theme, more of a medical explanation for why people die, going into the soul, better explained using brain chemicals, all reductionist, fastidious about what he eats, pleasure therefore not really necessary, drunk on the spinning, the Sufi stage, exercise, that’s still the body, you have to go in circles like the heavenly bodies, still material or sensory or corporeal, runs around his house, runs around the island, not far enough, whirling dervishing, little kids do it naturally, special dresses that fly up, his solution is go in the cave, get in the tantric pose, starve yourself, hare shirt, whip yourself, high on your own supply, mushrooms, peyote, Joe Rogan talking to aliens, the gateway to the aliens, just replace God with aliens, looking for meaning, satisfied with the educational steps, high enough state, we won’t have to worry about meaning anymore as we will be in communion with god, look at that lumpy rug, a history of mistakes, bring it together, better understanding, meaning has to be derived from experience on the earth, this is how we’ve been doing it, how early and how right, lot a Greek stuff in here, Peter Adamson on The History Of Philosophy Without Any Gaps, it’s never gonna end, other traditions, China next, third most translated from Arabic, the Koran, The Arabian Nights, it has a bit of a story to it, fish out of water books, utopias, which is why we like science fiction, what are the rules, Stranger In A Strange Land, subject to Heinlein’s philosophy, The Outsider by H.P. Lovecraft, surrounded by books, assumes he is like the characters in the books, candles, he can’t go into the forest, out of Plato’s cave, spiders and bats and silent rats, a familiar path, to heaven, did some horrible thing come into the house behind me, male or female, a memory of a better place, visions of heaven and being close to god, built into humans, a better place available to us, where the power of saying there is a God out there, how we’re different from the other animals because we have this faculty, a spirit that they don’t have, important unto themselves but not like us, why it is a story, scientist and proto-scientists, 1160 AD, thousand year old book, a meta-fiction story, the two origins, both are true, Moses and Adam, the bible has both stories, silly, incompatible but presented, it’s wrong but a good way to get access to an idea that is helpful, a stage of development, the princess puts her baby in an ark, the book is more intelligent than us, a few extracts from the introductions by modern editors, old science, when it seems really impossible it’s supposed to shock you into an allegorical reading, take away the veil, this story with the light, neo-Platonist, the light, divine light, materialist explanation with the clay is not enough, the light comes first to make the human, the end is not full enlightenment, worldly life, the next step, The Ten Ox-Herding Pictures, the enlightened one, the oneness of God, the story of the Buddha, nobody reads the bible as a scientific text, references to the Koran, a book about the history of why we can know things about the real world, engaging with the creator of the world, transcending the world to appreciate the creator of the world, sometimes he’s starving himself to get to enlightenment, don’t eat meat/cows, what the proper things to eat are, non-fable, things that are not fables, a mist in the center, empiricism, I study facts, steam, the soul coming out?, animal spirits, a white mist that explains that why it was alive, part of the heart is clogged, more than one chamber, one is empty one is full, heart attack, blood clotting, the whole point of that, he looks at the body, there are no holes in it, nobody poked a hole in my mom, if there’s something broken inside of her, what surgeons do, go in there and fix it, transcendence to she is a mechanical creature, but still good, not my job to eat all of these things, not completely separate, why does he covers up his genitals?, furrier genitals, they’ve got a tail, he duplicates that, he’s into imitation, he’s smelling good, he’s radiating light, dressed in a sophisticated way, he looks amazing, he’s not fat, only eating what he needs to, part of his movement, bodily objects in the heavens, get out and take a walk, Tai chi is based on circles or spirals, the best movement is spirals within spirals within spirals, doesn’t hurt the joints, low or no impact, he wants to be with God, he’s not allowed to kill himself, he has to be good to his body, he has to be good to the environment for God’s sake, he’s not going to uproot anything, when he sees a plant that’s too dry he gives it water, he’s healing the creation, a flash of Greta Thunberg, gotta save the world, but for what purpose?, minimize the corporeal element, the incorporeal element in him, too… be one with it?, where the author intends to be, the ultimate goal is that unity with God in the city, those two characters introduced at the end, a cave, an island, an introvert and an extrovert, a Sufi mystic approach, a duty to that community, those ethics are established, you’ve finished the book, as a young person, take what you’ve learned into society, in doing so your spreading the religion/knowledge, the way Jesse finds meaning, share it with everybody, most people don’t read, a nice poem in an old magazine, job well done Jesse, the others don’t like it, they’ll never get to it, be good, be nice, and protect your business, the writer is all three, too literal minded, follow your inclination then, be one with God and do what you will, born on an island and stay on an island, going into the cave and meditating until you die, you’ve gotta go into the city, you live in a dumpster, you laugh at the politicians as you eat your onions, that’s Diogenes, hang out with dogs, need to be close to services to dig through dumpster, masturbating in public, modelling himself on Socrates, Diogenes is mystical? tell me more, I’ll go live on Instagram, very backwards, selfish, lame, it might be immoral, he’s the one who could stay in the cave ethically, the problem with the libertarian point of view, Trish’s voice, not that way Trish, not more female voices in this sausage fest, a natural instinct, a goat that suckles a kitten with no mom, lonely, not of its own species, morality and instincts are related, go away or soothe, built in, for females they suckle children, they lick them clean, one day my child will take over my business, as a male we don’t have that instinct as much, categorization, taking things apart, the instinct to be a mechanic is more male, nurture and take care, cut and dried, people disagree are fuckin nuts, if this princess had had a daughter it wouldn’t go into a cave, lady sitting in a cave, meditating all day, early Christian church mothers, once they’re indoctrinated, female brains, blind people brains, different skills, definite dispositions, this book doesn’t go there because it’s just one dude, trying to go there, there are female religious fanatics, flagellate yourself, deny the body, a more male phenomenon, I gotta go, the baby needs to have milk, once your kids are grown, grandkids, supervision, the occasional story, wipe dirt off wipe dirt in, because we live in a gendered society, societies are gendered, we could abolish gender, males and females then, the progeny has to be raised up, done by groups of people, the suckling is only done by the female, more weaving, men weave too, hunting in the forest, once they get out of a certain stage they’re into a city, lenses, glasses, burning glasses, related to the tech you can get from the city, mirrors, do your science stuff, in order to have cities, bringing supplies to the lens-grinders, a guy who doesn’t have a lot of needs, when that guy comes to the island they’re having sex, funny, very high spirtiual status, have sex without even noticing, a baby appears on a puddle on the beach, a sealion comes by and nurses this pup, god is busy strangling it’s pup, married Apollo, Pythia, these are animals pretending they’re not animals, if there was a woman on the island, whatever the Koran said about marriage and family, he gets ultimately to Islam, multiple wives, a controversial position, the Jews not so much, one at a time with the Romans, making connections between tribes, Mohammad’s wives, the favourite wife, alliance style marriages, having lots of children, to build up, nation states and empires, go to Tahiti, if the food is easy and the weather’s nice, recruits for moving rocks, war with a neighboring island over rock resources, when he goes to the city, cities could be sacked, these are things that are not touched upon, nobody can critique my stuff, you need some guy to tell you to take the slide cover off, researching something that doesn’t exist, the car is out a gasoline, basic baby things that we need to learn, that’s not how real science really works, what are you doing?, ohhh!, solves huge problems, an argument for rationalism that I could flick away, trying to learn from experience, the community of science, it tends to go to the cave, learn this stuff on your own, an experience that’s very rare, a high on drugs style experience, non-transferable but felt real, fiction helps you learn things that are real, use a fiction example, you’re dad’s dead, I would feel terrible, j/k, if they can give their own fictional explanation, how you acquire that meaning, not just the engine, read this book then go talk about it with a bunch of other people, it can’t live without us talking about it, it’s missing something, one of Evan’s specialties is the history of the worker movement, a whole history, The Ignorant Schoolmaster by Jacques Rancière, master-pupil model, social power relations, science is collective, any kind of work outside of the most primitive is , underdog educated by the topdog, if I teach something we are now equal, educational establishments, I’ve been teaching him like he’s inferior, in mathematics, G.H. Hardy, strange letters from an Indian [Srinivasa Ramanujan], at this level in mathematics, workers education is social, you don’t have to go through official channels, I get that point, learning from other people, a defect of the book, he thinks in terms of heaviness, what do you think will happen?, heaviness is not the same as gravitation, it must be shorter, a proof on a page, the proof blew Terence’s mind at 11, a part of an infinite set is the same size as the original, math is a real problem, live in a cave with a slide-rule, Cantor’s diagonal proof, other kinds of knowledge, geology is not solvable in a cave in a human lifetime, figuring out the rock cycle, water’s states, impressively frozen on the equator, water gets bigger when it freezes, less dense in its frozen state, the Greeks, doing all inferences, takes that step into being the caretaker of the island and the animals on it, what the , he says to the deer he can make sounds of but can’t answer them back, this is not how it works, Rene Descartes, I have an idea of god in my mind, gymnastics, people can be wrong, people can be confronted, internal experiences, going in the wrong direction, reform a city, Plato to step in, that’s probably wrong Mr. Plato, retreat to the cave, get closer to God, Aristotle’s physics, look at how happy he is, why would the laughter cease?, would never have been able to write the book, language came letter, writing in parables then in metafiction, why Ibn Tufail has gone a step further, a book that encourages more books, heirachy in educations, becomes a guru, he’s the master, he has his followers, that’s bad, that’s the wrong attitude, inherently hierarchical, being older makes you more wise (not always), [Mikhail] Bakunin’s dentist, two people on a beach, the older one, giving my game away, knows how the oars work, pulls up a chain, a little cage, a crab or a lobster, Jesse’s not a lobsterman, eventually that shorter one will know how to do this job, where to put these traps, one of them is a young person, transfers the knowledge on, outside of school systems, flint tip arrows, one can’t do the lobster trapping anymore, more like a chain of responsibilities, explaining stuff, learn a lot, students aren’t always great teachers, if circumstances are such, so wonderful, learning so much, given the system we’re in, servers to pay for, a really nice book, they’ll learn even more in discussion, hear somebody talk about a book, talk with somebody else, how the genuine learning is genuinely happening, documentary, a room with a bunch of nurses wearing masks, swaddling babies, a table with forty or fifty babies, those babies have no names, piles of baby, raising children, this is my baby I love it, when your breast milk is working again, widgets, you’re in this class and I will mark you, they tell you about a book they read, I’m too old for that genre of book, that’s fun, the social aspect as well, recommend not just one book, not just ten, explanation, discussions, Evan’s blog on Philip K. Dick, built on a foundation got from society, a tabula rasa from birth, he’s not sharing, throw in other people, society makes something out of that, already enmeshed in social relations, factually wrong, allegorically interesting, podcast or write a blog, intellectual evolution, born on an island, possibly a puddle on a beach, get away from the ego, learn on their own, Evan’s blog is: philipkdickreview.wordpress.com, what book is his best, juvenalia, buddy, posthumous, Olaf Stapledon, also science fiction that is not a novel, Sirius, a novel, the banner is a big slum, Mars, kipple, everywhere humans go, trashy and garbage, super-socially active in his community, trashing the school board, make political change, writing congratulations to Richard Nixon, what an autodidact there, that’s when he gets nutty, stops engaging in society, big mistake you’re not meant to make, at the height of illumination you think you are God, something about avoiding the mistake, fell into the mistake however you define it, even along the way, the occasional place he would revert back, do something fun with it, we don’t need to be bipolar, the crazy ones, he believes everything, just great ideas, born on drugs, sparking all over the place all the time, his reputation, the drugs are to stay up late and write a novel, LSD, his fleshy hariry sweaty world around him, he wrote a lot about drugs, Heinlein’s sex-life, a guru for some aspect of the sexual revolution, weird cult, The Church Of All Worlds, Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, annoyed, Ayn Rand, The Harrad Experiment by Robert Rimmer, nothing can possibly go wrong, sexual anxiety is learned, educate he current generation, a wonderful book about this, Make Love, Not War: The Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History by David Allyn, Thermidor, vs. humidor, a month, effecting the social movements, drugs are cool, weird shit happens, chew that Chew-Z, druggie reputation, Heinlein is more deserving of his reputation, a pretty sex-free book, we need that sequel, Jesse and Connor, an immoral book, the guy’s a fuckin asshole, you’re my slave now, a Pierce Brosnan adaptation, they have to do things to make the characters not monstrous, Friday judo flips him, you look like me, I don’t understand words, food, cultivate this relationship, friendship is sealed, a non-hierarchical relationship, I’m doing a mini-colonialism and you can to, thank god for all your providence from god, then you get slaves to increase your yields, a go out and do this kid book, there’s a cave in the book, a general mistake, a way of retreating from horror in the world, born into a world of pain, so I can get closer to God, the stories are often quite attractive, if you’re really hardcore about this you’ll go live in a monastery, thank you for recording it, good discussion, Mating Center please, Frank Belknap Long, some other sex books, more Orrie Hitt, Orrie Hitt country, audiobooks, the beautiful and the frustrated fought to go to the…, eugenics society, social role, a frightening view of life and forbidden love, breeders, set aside to breed, horn people that can’t breed wanna fuck, a new rubric, Water Is For Washing, the original scan, one of his shortest stories ever, slavery for a while, Harriet Beecher Stowe, three of her books, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, two volumes, serialized in a newspaper, her whole reputation today lies on this one book, until next week, Terence is a pirate too, LibGen, studying up for the next podcast, writing, three episodes, the essays, say something nice about it, youtubing on the philosophy of mathematics, the poetical philosophical history of mathematics, Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth, symbolic logic, Bertrand Russell, some Greek guys, a comic about Oppenheimer, 3 hours is a lot, Terence sat through Oppenheimer (2023), the history of blowing people up?, something really baby about it, just look at the trailer and read the script, Dunkirk (2017) or Tenent (2020), no sound problems, people used to being coddled, Bane character, some special sounds, clear and distinct, a clear and distinct voice of god, a Goddard movie, attached to the dialogue, a secret advantage, follow better, subtitles allow you to read movies, just the words that are being said by a person, turning somebody’s podcast into text, simultaneously, double participation, you can see the artistry or inartistry, preparation, it’s a spoiler is what you’re saying, spoilers is the search light in the bucket theory, Popper’s famous essay, Karl Popper, I love deep buckets, Christopher Nolan, movie makers reputations as directors anymore, one of the last operating, Momento (2000), small scale, you could talk about the ending, the premise is awesome, the conclusion or beginning naturally follows, Insomnia, The Prestige, based on Christopher Priest’s novel, The Dark Knight (2008), Inception, it doesn’t have a fatal flaw like The Matrix (1999), sequels, one special cut of the sequels, cut out all the zion scenes, Interstellar (2014), idea wise it is slow, Contact (1997), pretty normal except for the last part with the voyager, the both have Matthew McConaughey, the religious nut, is it meaty?, movies aren’t as generally deep as good books, very well done for the gimmick that it is, look and see if there’s something I should download, more utube, Red Letter Media, Best Of The Worst, one of the characters from the Star Trek cartoon, he plays Hughie on The Boys, he’s in Oppenheimer (2023) as well, whatever those guys are, slipping him a script to give to Nolan, teach me to read, Jesse’s level of jokes, a nice little joke here and there, that format has never existed before, a kind of media that has never existed in any other format, One Minute Critic, a review of it in 60 seconds, over the course of 40 minutes or an hour and half, wonderful, right, when they invented plays, own TV channel, talk about whatever I wanted to, but now it’s real, the format and the server space, plop into the hands for virtually zero cost, when podcast started, you don’t need video, a slow motion big wrong stamp, to enhance the joke, Russell Brand, a little more flexible in the definition now, it’s something else, a very weird podcast, plan for a career in watching old VHS tapes, a career in reading old books, that they do this as a job is incredible, are you serious right now?, a big enough casual enough less time intensive, turned off books, longer blogposts into several chapters of a book, if you’re not in the system, if you don’t play the game, he’s terrible at marketing, a university professor contacted Terence about a blogpost about François Laruelle, in fact you will be paid nothing, things that need to be changed, can you do some more work for my book?, as if Terence was an idiot, normal procedure, academics write books and publish for free their articles so they can put it on their CV, you don’t need to sell these books, don’t bug me, I won’t re-write, I’m busy, online magazines, even if they’re not getting paid, makework projects, pre-existing contact or relation, to make them happy, keep money out of the system, lousy translation, improve it for them for free, they just forget Terence afterwards, busy trying to find their own meaning, when the web is inaccessible, you might stumble over an old book in a bin, whatever the version of scanning is in the future, a list of stories, a reprint of a 1959 short lived magazine, two Silverbergs under pseudonyms, two, Laurence Janifer, Demons Of Cthulhu, $23 shipping, I don’t need money just don’t get new things, occasionally replace a tire, be born rich, putting stuff online, find people who have a copy of that, what Terence just did for Evan there, that’s the great thing about working in a community, a little piece of advice, drag and drop and it’s done, get out of your fucking cave, three books just received, The Weird Tales Boys by Stephen Jones, relations between Lovecraft, Howard, and Smith, Robert Silverberg’s Monster And Things, The Thing Behind Hell’s Door, these are public domain, don’t ask is my policy, published in May 2023, the shipping, peripheral material, Asimov’s introductions, Worlds Of Wonder by Robert Silverberg, Science Fiction 101, Sheckley and Bester, you got it exactly, thank you so much, explaining a book, reading a book is more work, pay close attention to grok it properly, it’s the bucket and the searchlight again, an interesting light, college instructor, flying off to Germany, The New York Review of Books, a Stanislaw Lem collection, prefaces to unwritten books, Sartor Resartus, “Imagine dedicating much time and effort to a parody! (And a quick perusal indicates it’s quite well done, not a slipshod (albeit very droll) Devil’s Dictionary.)” a book about books, LibriVox, it will come, one on yotube as well, AI is fuckin horrible, it’s an AI, getting really good, they don’t know how to read sentences, even a flawed human, garbage truck makes a noise, a real guy reading a real book makes a huge difference, a readalong, sometimes they coincided for fragments of sentences, an extra dimension, quite good, 1.3 speed, it became a short story, incredibly dense, 900 years ago, when it’s that far back, whole decades and systems and fashions have gone by, Avicenna was contemporaneous?, when the king was sick, a trap, 1037, 1105, they were overlapping, court physician, the king died, his creed avicennaism, creed instead of religion, a formalized set of belief, you say these words Terry, ok, then you do it, your ethical responsibility, you took on this creed, the Nicene Creed, this guy who was mad at Jesse in Australia, Sci-Phi, evangelical christian, worldview, a cynic?, sounds bad, fairly skeptical, the Iraq War, dropping bombs on people, just war theory, this is not just, what about WWII, on forums, critiquing his podcasts, Battlestar Galactica, trying to be evangelical online, the movie version, it just doesn’t have the depth, Next (2007), The Golden Man, three levels in a story, Blade Runner (1982) is quite deep, they’re children, the movie goes pretty deep because it doesn’t have a definitive, a very watchable 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), fall asleep, we see the unicorn being placed, the world falling apart around them, they reinforce each other, the Denis Villeneuve one, the horrible setup for a sequel, three or four sequels, garbage, boiling his food, heavy kipple, the hitman showing up, the kids working in the garbage factor, the opening scene is quite solid, the robot and his robot girlfriend with no body, when he though maybe he was the one, stupid in itself, filled my barf bag, imperfect and flawed, the bad parts about The Matrix (1999), there is no spoon, fuck off with your spoon, we need to recruit you because it’s the right thing to do, space Jesus, a purpose for action, Come And See (1985), Belorusan boys, a mascot, witnesses horror, a line from the bible, Revelation 6:1-17, all shall be revealed to you, The Poor Miller’s Boy And The Cat, Bros. Grimm, Old Woman In The Wood, a good one, a good episode too, The Cat’s Advice by Jesse, for those still listening, seething, the cat is touching the knee, Puss In Boots, the curious feline, there are many options for a young strong thing, the moral at the end, problematic, what used to be called twitter, too involved, the entity that was formerly called Prince, it was temporary, you need to be active, don’t just react, be ready, worthy of a repost, what a stupid change, dangerous like slot machines, Hippocampus Press, a Clark Ashton Smith novel, a symbolic thing, put some money into a podcast you like, being a patron, a very small server, only for the Canadian stuff, these known billionaires, they hide it, he’s the dumbest of the rich people, he’s the trolliest, Peter Thiel, the lawsuit that broke Gawker, Hulk Hogan against Gawker, a sex tape or something, they’re gonna find out through this proxy, the rest of the billionaires, Bill Gates, MSNBC, positive press, very responsible for the COVID thing, Windows is getting so bad, on Ubuntu all the time, a very robust ecosystem for freeware on Windows, games were bad for Mac, same with phones, Apple is very locked down and pure evil, you can’t stop it, Android is locked down, Linux phones, a Linux basement in it, if you wanna fuck the system, Neuromancer, a very good book, Case, in order to do his hacking, know who the big enemy is and be very similar with their systems, you have to flow down the river, the river is taking everything, maybe capitalism is inevitable, it’s what I’m drowning in, a terrible extended metaphor, needs work, Anti-Oedipus by Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze, make their obsessions sound interesting, a river composed of rivers, taking us horrible places, some countries are on the same train or river, not in the same position on the river, the federal government of Canada is completely corrupted, deputy Prime Minister of Canada is the grandchild of a Ukranian Nazi, this country has been invaded, a standing ovation to a WWII veteran, fought bravely against the Russians, he was in the SS, fight the communists for the Nazis, magic wand waved, they surrendered, Ukranian Nazi moved to Canada, seen holding a Bandera flag, SS monuments in Canada, guys we might be making mistakes here, I can’t believe what a monster I was, a willful blindness, the corruption is such that…, the provincial government is much better (but not perfect everywhere), homeless everywhere, neoliberalism hasn’t fully taken over, except for North Korea, China, Burma, Venezuela, Cuba, let’s privatize everything and give everything to the billionaires, the Macron government, gonna survive?, nothing bad is happening to them, the arguments are wrong, sorry we’re just doing it, King Charles has come over, nobody much has protested, mass with the Pope in Marseilles, that was not his role, the new education minister, the Abaya is not to be worn, we’re a secular state, a personal trip, me and my buddy the pope, touching the king, against protocol, they’re in the same class, president is not the king of France, banging on the walls of Vatican city, this boat is very leaky, what’s the alternatives, this particular party is a Nazi party because it is threatening the establishment, Macron centrists, the major left wing party, Nazi again, whitewashed, they hardly say it, Réunion island, not a part of France you get to see much, Lahania, Maui, Réunion is more than twice as far, not quite a million people who live there?, how do the people of France think about Réunion?, what the general ideas are, isolated part of the world, Mauritius, islands in the Indian Ocean, Madagascar, never colonized, the remotest parts of the Earth, a comedy action movie, put your feelers out, a sports trainer, girlfriend is a dentist, they couldn’t earn enough, housing is cheap, imports expensive and not a lot of work, did pretty good, worried, prepared for a month, covers a lot but not very deep, university, several paragraphs from each chapter, this feels like that, don’t forget we’re very religious, working things out for himself, everything that is said is taking sides, stoicism, the different currents and schools, each and every thing, siding with Avicenna, combining Aristotle and Plato’s Timaeus, most of it is inarguable, today it’s all finished, it’s important, it gets us to the next thing, interesting discoveries along the way, Breakthroughs In Science by Isaac Asimov, more influence on the sequels, The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, and the angels, a book of essays, as if the writer was Robinson Crusoe, typical Hebrew scholars, what you care about books we never knew, doing their own stuff, nice to spend some time in that period of time, the golden age, get old books, read em, write your own, what makes a golden age, doing basic science, philosophy, and art, why don’t we do that again, not everybody is participating, the gentleman scholar vs. the university scholar, our income, mostly cover basic needs, freedom to a podcast every weekend or so, where did it all go, four hours.

Hayy ibn Yaqdhan

Hayy ibn Yaqdhan

Hayy ibn Yaqdhan

Hayy ibn Yaqdhan

Hayy ibn Yaqdhan

Hayy ibn Yaqdhan

art for The Cat's Advice by Jesse

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The SFFaudio Podcast #770 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Progeny by Philip K. Dick

The SFFaudio Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #770 – Progeny by Philip K. Dick, read by Mike Vendetti. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the book (45 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Evan Lampe, Mike Vendetti, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Weichsel

Talked about on today’s show:
IF Worlds Of Science Fiction, November 1954, we’re bringing it back, Worlds Of Science Fiction, IF, it’s IFfy, the tagline, a tier below, a tier above, James L. Quinn, early in IF’s run, 3rd year, Evan Lampe’s podcast, the Philip K. Dick review website, John Taylor Gatto State Controlled Consciousness, schools created to create utopian visions, close to Philip K. Dick’s perspective, the story about the autistic kid, not really autistic, a nurture story, the thesis of the story, raised by robots, kids in it is very unusual in actual science fiction, 9 at the end, Theodore Sturgeon, a good handful, Tony And The Beetles, The Father Thing, comes up every time, something that happened to Philip K. Dick, the hospital, the mental institution, typing on his keyboard, you know what we need is more science fiction stories about kids adopted by robots, Nanny, menacing, how menacing this story is, body horror, sweat and smells of the body, the aftermath of the meeting with the father, The Last Of The Masters, hairy sweaty man, girls boobs, almost connect that to AI, newspaper article through AI, a Promethean moment, Ed is left out of it, he doesn’t participate, channeling Eric Rabkin, the robot doctor, a sandwich, in fairy tales, a science fictional fairy tale, sharing food means you love that person, the squirrel accepts his food, Pete’s doctor/boss/trainer, I’ll eat at the cafeteria, pop the question: will you come and be my son, I don’t like to buy in the diner they skin you, six hundred employees, this is menacing, sentences that go unfinished, training to become a bio-chemist, a messiah for the robots, a go-between, what does the smell of his father remind him of, laboratory animals, a contemptible smell, I can’t place it, just like when he was a baby, Dr. Bish, the automatic heating system clicked on for the night, the smell as the experimental animals, the promising young boy, the boy smiled, awkward and humane, a secret private smile of complete understanding, evil emotions, you’re son’s deformed!, my god, what does it mean?, what about that first wife, a secret that he’s telling us over and over again, a secret Philip K. Dick child?, a waveshot of his head, talking about himself?, sociologically going on, there’s no manual telling you what to do, Dr. Spock, let the kid cry themself to sleep, the worst thing anybody’s ever done to Americans, ADD, needs a lobotomy, icepick lobotomy, one of the Kennedy children became a vegetable, you have to trust the doctor, towards that, that exchange, did he try and pick up the child, a circumcision or something, feel the weight of the child in his arms, sanitary, antiseptic, oedipal complex, and today, sex studies from the 50s, Kinsey studies, living back there, oh my god I’m a homosexual, I had no idea, lies and wishfulfilment, sweeps the nation as a fad, weird instiutional problems, you’ll be happier when you join the institution and follow the rules, Dick likes twists and layering of twists, a systematic distortion, growing up with the robots and imbibing their ideology, all the paperwork, the consent forms, what does see mean exactly?, the laws, math, age, why I was 19, sneaking into the rocket facilities, I was twice your age when this happens, more tired and sweating and balding than he was before, didn’t have a kid at this point, Beyond The Door, a wife cheating on her husband with a cuckoo clock and a boyfriend, whose Pete?, Mrs. Peters, this name, Ed Loyce, Ed Doyle, figures in his life, Pete might be him, the father became extremely busy, coming back, here I am I’m your dad, his dad lived in DC, a serious character flaw, when he’s 18, comes back on the delivery day, expects to have a say, he doesn’t get that, writing to his mom, boarding school, mom, send my pills, non-nervous pills, full of anxieties, nervous breakdown in high school, he takes their answers seriously, is that really true?, he writes about it, the robot is an institution, institutions replace parents, the doctor is not a human, fleshy cover over its arms, two robot taxi drivers, a strapping late model robot, they’re replacing Ed, the doctor adopts the child, talking about himself, these amazing psychological conditions, this unfeeling monster, the child didn’t need to be touched, these things are in the air, 1928, the abortion truck story, children hiding in thornbushes, The Crawlers, The Pre-Persons, the father agrees to go into the abortion truck with him, maths, 1974, the ability to master algebra was the test for having a soul, animal soul, authority says this, what happens if that’s true?, the neuroses that I have, served by robots in a cafeteria, being raised in a boarding school, mandated to join this army, a really bad consequence, keeping the baby with you at all times, Jesse is very talky, primarily about institutions, how institutions sell themselves, what was best for the kid, she trusted the institutions, being inhuman by not wanting to bring the baby to her breast and smell it, she’s not sad about it, I was chatting with the doctor, she’s smoking, people aren’t sad sending their kid off to public school, the entire ideology of the system, a sexual thing, smoking with the doctor, fantasy sex with the doctor, the post coital cigarette, a cuckolding going on, push psychoanalysis a tiny little bit, the biological becomes an institutional complex, 1986, your kid has ADD, your kid needs amphetamines, there’s a biological thing, the calf comes out of the cow, literally happening, how much culture and institutions erode, she is a monster because of it, we’re all monsters, a more primitive part, Dr. Bish what is this weird white liquid running out of my breasts?, he’s an idiot, what a moron, the internet is full of misinformation, an institute, Los Angeles Central Hospital, late for the birth, infodump, we don’t touch our son, when do we get him?, the waveform says he’s going there, another institution, once he’s fully grown up, his brain is no longer plastic, when he’s an adult, molded into what the institute wants, the mom is out of the picture, they’re divorced, Ed Doyle’s alternative, the frontier theme that Evan so rightly picked up on, no squirrels, Pete’s dad’s job is the plumbing, his only job is to supply the sperm, Star Trek, high end jobs, build and maintain those ships and those systems, in the end you still need infantry, pushed away his wife, away all the time on the frontier, a traveling salesman, as a result Janet leaves him, something really important, the gendered nature of labour saving technology, Philip Dick doesn’t get this, Evan’s Philip K. Dick readthrough, hostile to washing machines, microwave, refrigerator, who raises kids?, mostly womens work, the bullshit of raising kids, making the lunch everyday, stroll in from alpha centauri, the wife is making the rational choice, shitwork, Dick really has this problem, after a certain point in the story, son come with me, this is going to be our business, there’s a lot of things that need doing out there, out beyond Prox, nature, self-fulfillment, won’t even accept his sandwich, extrovert with the nerdy kid son, eat hamburgers, sitting at home, making plans to destroy humanity, make them less smelly and more docile, Sales Pitch, commuting through space, replacing body parts, have your colon replaced with a plastic tube, no more sweatglands, make everything antiseptic, just make sure that children are clean at all times, the runny nose, he needs to go on a boat and learn the ropes, the mom’s instinct and the dad’s instinct, when the answer is the institution they’re both wrong, giving up a lot of power to the institutions, Mildred Clingerman story, an automated kitchen, about 7 Ray Bradbury stories, Catharine Beecher, bastion of their power, use science and knowledge and education to rationalize the domestic sphere, a viewpoint, a little glowing breast, spray on glowing, she’s glowing because she just gave birth, baby needs milk, not enough baby formula, baby formula is bad for kids, you could use a breast pump, giant reliance on artificial milk, convenient, maybe its because you’re at work, factory or office or school raising other people’s children, bad marriage, the menace is unstated, maybe the Oedipus complex is worth it, not just corporations, government regulated facility at the very least, public private partnership, a legal person, not a caring person, not capable of caring, that’s what his waveform says, he’s going to be a rocket jockey, the son doesn’t even understand the question, he smiles, you think desire has anything to do with it, the robots and the man all have emotions, maybe he’s not the best boss, as close to lying he gets, designed to be sympathetic towards Ed, propaganday, why do we trust this institution, a photo of his plastic brain, bio-chemistry, they’re going to fuck around with humans, the alternative is the queen living West Texas planet, emphasizing the cleanness, unpolluted, smoking, drinks a brandy-frappe, what’s best of the child, she’s been reading all the books, Gayelord Hauser for nutrition, parenting books, how they sell of these things to parents, no shopping, no clubs, no social life, the optimistic part of the story, Earth is going to Hell, Dick was an optimist, Hello, Doc!, the event has happened, a top-level robot, it had fooled him, Dr. Bish appeared plump and well-fed, is the robot married, diamond-tie clasp, simulated manicured nails, a pinstriped shirt, white collar vs. blue collar, just the baby daddy, rushed in from the airport, have you seen a squirrel before?, leaned on one way, we can’t trust this, trusting it is the bad thing, we agreed to this, they were intimate at some point, to determine the gender of the child, he’s only gone six months, natural sex, a lady with boobs so he fell in love with her, she’s a monster because she trusts the institutions, yes I am, H.P. Lovecraft, that amazing transformation thing, regular successful businessman, not hairy, the robots becoming too human, Isaac Asimov’s Let’s Get Together, a critical mass of robots, Herbert Goldstone’s Virtuoso, learns to play the piano, music is supposed to be hard, somethings shouldn’t be automated, AI art, two robot taxi drivers are acting like robots, literally human beings who are obeying instructions, turning them into robotic people, ROTC, failed the first day, twirl your rifles, get a haircut, his robot stories are so different, fixed it, could have easily been a chapter in The Humanoids by Jack Williamson, serialized vs. novel, earth vs. an alien planet, expanded novel version is really good, an answer to any objection, a really important concept, any word you don’t know the meaning of your are subject, bleeding under your dura, doctor I know exactly how we fix this, subjecting ourselves to their ideologies, sometimes that’s a good thing, look both ways before you cross the street, a hard concept to get across, when we read these stories, wow that’s really powerful, but why?, escape valve, the place we can run off to, frontiers exist, a perceived option, go west young man, where do Americans run off to?, Taiwan, to Vietnam, not an option, Miss Columbia, propaganda, plant a flag, government giving you an outlet, free real estate, shaped politics for most of American history, pick up your stakes and go, everyone moved to Saskatchewan for free land, then everyone moved to Vancouver for jobs, the dust-bowl, the dirty 30s, 3 million people were displaced, we don’t have the language to describe it, people moving out of California to Texas or Florida, internal movement, region in this, State Controlled Consciousness, every utopian movement, Sunday school, propitiate your ideology, Dr. 2G-Y Bish, bishop, kids put into religious orders, designed to break up the family, outsourced to religion, keeping doctrine, interesting idea, not very many characters, Janet, Ed, a big jump, takes him out into the country, Los Angeles, go back to the city, a general experience, Evan’s generation, the first generation to go to college, those Thanksgivings, those times back are a little weird, at least four or five years to orient back to the working class culture, academic sorts, we gotta get this fence fixed, inspiring and interesting stuff, intellectual stimulation, trying to communicate that, it doesn’t translate very well, rebalance how you talk to people, most people don’t read books, unless youre constantly building up, Jack Williamson, Gilles Deleuze, cows, chickens, horse, chicken business, cow business, the second dimension, initiated into a more bourgeois culture, the double gap, so rich, fairly obscure Philip K. Dick story, following the 9 years, Paul sings the classics, Cat’s in the cradle and the cradle’s on fire?, kill his father and marry his mother, it doesn’t come from the Greeks, Sigmund Freud, is it true?, not exactly, recapitulate the relationships you are trained in, animals training other animals, interacting with other humans, any of the seven times I’ve tried, maybe that’s not true, a structure, he likes older women, where is the libido?, the attitude of Doctor Bish, looking at Peter the baby with a look that was greedy, in Anti-Oedipus, the bureaucrat caresses the forms, Anti-Oedipus by Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze, bottom of page 71, creasing the edges with his nail, plugged his desire into rules and regulations and forms, go to the police, see if there’s a detective on duty, it gives them something to do, he’s not like Mr. Spock, sinister and evil and aloof, like Data, Data had curiosity, satire, embodiment of authority, an evil twin (Lore), psychoanalyze Star Trek, the Lore Data stuff, gave him a twitch, Lore made Data have a twitch, there’s a twitch here, a libidinal twitch, different educational institutions, Hampshire College, Fordham University, unstructured to structured Jesuit university, post-modern to classicist language, a whole different language, small economically depressed town where half the stores are closed, an aversion, they were hit with books at school, lame TV too, a reality TV show was cool, marriage counselor reality TV show, what is it on cable?, therapy, if that was L.A., a level beneath, an aversion to reading books, the struggle, Peter Camenzind by Herman Hesse, goes back home, his rural town was better, a spiritual transformation, stained with sweat, page 74, he brought out his pipe and tobacco, a big sulfur match, murmured, this is a good pipe, 25 years ago, do the math, only about twice as old as you, a WWI veteran, WWII guy, at a certain point in life every man starts smoking a pipe, filling and lighting a pipe, old fashioned stuff, that ritual, sucking on a pipe, casting smoke out of their nose, a little bit interested, lost in his reverie, if he was a little more skillful they could’ve connected, he had the right instinct, what makes it a tragedy, when dads fuck off, there’s a problem, wife, institution, capitalism, we could work together, how long it is, almost nothing happens, a walk, a hospital scene, episodes over 9 years, backfill, infodumping, 3 scenes, permission, fill out these forms, the ride in the car and the walk, the last scene, off with Doctor Bish and Peter, the key to Peter’s reactions, emotional, that’s interesting that you think we can connect, oof, anthropological look at the father from the son’s POV, distancing, broken sentence, when you will…, quite right, the backstory talking, bumming around town, outside school rightly, sneaking into the rocket launching yards, hopped over to Mars, a hasher, Ganymede was all sewed up tight, space freighter, worked his way out to Proxima, workaway, I found what I wanted, swelling with pride, little retail and service place, everybody needs a plumber, a good job, the best blue collar job, the pay is very good, when the water starts flooding you need a plumber, building communities, he sounds very free, like a rolling stone, not an appealing life to someone who’s a part of the institution, she doesn’t leave the earth, she likes being under the system, you could go off, there’s fear involved, there’s the comfort of the institution, institutions can’t love you, fill out your forms, ivy coloured walls, drifters, cafeterias, you have money, an efficiency you don’t get at home, living in China, didn’t eat dinner, new job, cafeteria lunch, where do you wanna eat?, doesn’t the food just kind of appear?, where to eat and what to make, drops from your mind really quick, elementary schools in France?, fancy lunches?, 20 years in a highshcool, 2 hours or longer to come back home, sandwich, all sorts of good things in it, presence of the outside inside the institution, “I’m not reduced to the institution, I have my sandwich”, taco Tuesday, people get excited about the rotation, a crazy thing, homemade food, ketchup classified as a vegetable, school lunches program, the healthy food pyramid we just made up, at the top is a greedy corporation, like am institutionalized restaurant, weird hot things, hot lunch and cold lunch, 2 cafeterias in the same school, Cold Lunch Paul, bologna sandwiches, hot lunch for free, against the rules, a person who hasn’t been completely institutionalized, get you hooked on the hot lunch, back to bologna sandwiches, like the place, baloney, 70 liters of chili, more efficiency, the prices start creeping up, adulterating the materials that go into the pot, corruption, let’s have a daycare, a hired person, paying money vs. taking turns, we can lower the quality of the care here, just not loved, all in this little 46 minute story, chat GPT, it can do my homework, I can fire everybody, charge subscriptions, hire somebody to do this, you still hire dishwashers for restaurants, an open version of chat GPT, answer emails from other robots, an efficiency there, students are into chat GPT, grunt garbage work, pedagogical value of repetition, they’d much rather cheat, painting class, if they’re into it they’ll do it, most students don’t want to be essayists, kids doing their homework, punishment, if you get low grades you need more attention from the government forms, chat GPT can be really educational, dialogue with it a lot, The Three-Body Problem, Chinese TV series of 30 episodes, suggestions and prompts, analysis, no that’s not what I want, good ideas, some creativity sparks, Rossignol, better and better, The Ash Grove, makes you cry if you let it, makes children emotional, as a corrective, analyze Philip K. Dick’s story, Progeny, a search engine that’s weak, that’s not enough, you have to work for 20-30 minutes, write some John Adams Thomas Jefferson boy love romance, oh yes you’re right, you overestimate, most teachers can’t even get the assignment clear, make sure you have a period at the end of all your sentences, formatting problems, what this is perfect for, autobiography or memoir, just answer the question, a sophisticated text prediction, good grammar, less important for students, the facts don’t matter that much, formatting is really important, this is a lie, how they get good grades, cheating the system, a good solution to a bad problem, easier for the prisoners, abolish the prisons, new ways to punish students, make other kids do their homework, what chat GPT’s revolution, read this paragraph and reorder them, take out things you don’t like, living in an affluent area, I’m a governess, there’s a scary man, young Tommy is very bright, essay about thermodynamics, describing some of Jesse’s job, same advantage that rich people’s job, it doesn’t help them, how to understand great poetry, a bunch of assignments that are due, parents hire a ghostwriter to right a novel, ivy league school, Rebecca Black’s song Friday, I like sitting in the front seat sometime, super-well produced, something to make their kid feel like a superstar, chat GPT same advantage as the rich kids, we’re pretty conclusive, Pirates Of Venus, north shore of Minnesota, overseas, NSA work, top secret, Evan Lampe is gonna step up, Farnham’s Freehold, 12th – 23rd, Sailing To Byzantium by Robert Silverberg, solved, feeds and resources, podcast schedule, the music under it, crazy, a youtube thing, people don’t know, people discover that audiobooks because of youtube, excited for them, any sign of a ghost is excitement, it’s youtube vs. books, Arthur C. Clarke, past The Colorado Kid, Alex from Pulpcovers was censored, an appeal, after careful review…, sooo careful, a lady might not have any pants on, jealous losers on twitter, White Trash, HOE REPAIR, just exposure, what Jesse likes about Jonathan (he’s read a whole bunch of books Jesse hasn’t read), the guy from Switzerland who had nice handwriting, an autobiography of a character’s soul, a German genre, fake autobiography, Bohemian Europe in the 1890s, talking to farmers, dude, common for some people, fake and phony and putting on airs about intelligent they are, literary circles, don’t read anything past 10 years ago, Scalzi has replaced Heinlein, they say they believe that, keep current, you don’t have time to read both, most of everything was crap, harder to determine today, hasn’t withstood the test of time yet, debating how to pronounce Weichsel in 100 years, first hit rap group, recorded their songs here, hit song, fun catchy song, walking around the town, they saw the sign, that’s it, 50 years from now, this town has not accomplished achievement, absolutely amazing, on the ferry, CTV News, CNN for Canada, tell Americans, the shitty Justin Trudeau government, an extra bunch of money to poors, they want to get reelected, full blown Social Credit, a tax rebate, 19.8% commercial space empty, 50% is much more common in a small town, all for the sake of posterity, chat GPT teachers marking chat GPT homework, dead town, it’s just awful, hang out at the bus stop, hang out at the convenience story, kipple from Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, all the non-losers have left for the off-world, the world of the book, same world as Progeny, everybody is replaced by robots, squirrels are dying, institutional pollution, fill the ocean, thesis proven, same setting, same ideas, not literally true, working the same mine, working the same ideas, Nick And The Glimmung, Galactic Pot-Healer, a stepping stone to get to that other idea, androids, robots, three weeks from now, a really good one, Sheba by Jack Higgins, in response to people not liking Dial Of Destiny, the legendary temple of Sheba, put me down, Indiana Jones tanking is kinda bullshit, poor box office, in what period of time, one of the most expensive movies ever made, we didn’t need the first one either, we wanted it, now we don’t want them so much, two versions of The Warriors (1979), available as an audiobook, an excuse to watch it, comic book inserts, less real and gritty, Ship Of Ishtar by A. Merritt, work to do, editing this anthology, for secret operations, bunch of authors, substack, cool public domain stuff, Moon Tomb, the moon and death, Misha Burnett needs to promote better, some salty interesting points on twitter, great cover art, he’s problematic, jealous?, when you get famous enough people become jealous, Poe was a third rate writer, why did they say that?, because its true?, shit all over Lovecraft, lob a grenade and leave and close the door behind them, Edgar Allan Poe, who’s a better poet from the United States?, start making your list now, Annabelle Lee is popular and it’s good, The Song Of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Mark Twain’s parody of The Raven, Bugs Bunny, controversial, that’s Heinlein in extremis, alcoholic mother and the lawyer father, bridge party, people are not asking for an adaption, see everybody explode, skinny dipping, the young black kid, see you on twitter.

Progeny by Philip K. Dick

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

Reading, Short And Deep #388 – Chronicle Of The Year 1850 by Anonymous

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #388

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Chronicle Of The Year 1850 by Anonymous

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.

This story was first published in The Columbia Magazine, September 1786.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

class On The Gradual Formation Of Thoughts In The Process Of Speech by Heinrich von Kleist

SFFaudio Online Audio

Earlier today Terence Blake, a friend of mine who lives in France, sent me a link to a PDF featuring a translation of a short German essay. I printed it up and told Terence that I would read it in my class. Terence asked if I was going to record it. Kezia, my student, consented.

Thus we read and digressed on and around an essay entitled On The Gradual Formation Of Thought In The Process Of Speech by Heinrich von Kleist

Here it is:

|MP3|

Recorded Tuesday, May 2, 2023, between 330pm-530pm.

I love my job.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #652 – READALONG: Farmer In The Sky by Robert A. Heinlein

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #622 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Maissa Bessada, Evan Lampe, and Trish E. Matson talk about Farmer In The Sky by Robert A. Heinlein

Talked about on today’s show:
1950!, serialized in Boys’ Life, August – November 1950, its about farming, Ganymede, there’s no bad guys, there’s no conflict, no villians, boy against nature, father son conflict, annoyed at the annoying people, takers and bureaucrats, less bureaucracy hate than usual, a little lecture, the senator got him in, ultimately they will fail in life, the evolution in action argument, who is financing all of this, self-financing, the meta-economic stuff, Tunnel In The Sky, a Star Trek episode, boy and girl scouts, girls do something, Patty was a hard ass bitch vs. Patty was competent, Mrs. Schultz, in the domestic sphere, a big surprise, he chooses not to go to school, subversive, very unHeinlein, so scouty, we’re improving, were becoming disciplined, were footsoldiers for empire, a number of surprises, the twins are going to go to Earth to go to school, the Turner thesis, the frontier, why school is not necessary, so much about scouting, when the frontier was already closed, middle class, progressive, urban America, the Baden Powell scouts, the Boer War, you get to shoot at people, what little boys want to do, go out in the woods and hit things, a special two finger salute, listen to the older boys, Brownies leveled up to Girl Scouts, that Euro American tension, the Malthusian logic, pressures back on Earth, building colonies, like America up to the end of the 19th century, the progressive era, Jeffersonians, the Louisiana Purchase, Lions Clubs, Kiwanis, Elks, civic organizations, Paul was born and raised in New York City, I get to wear a belt with a pouch on it!, you have to buy your own uniform, you buy those badges?, you have to earn them and then you have to buy them, I need comics, swear allegiance to the queen, the motto or slogan, god and country, scout rallies, jamborees, an organization what was quasi-paramilitary, get involved in the community, the cadets, air cadets, sea cadets, ROTC, being a grunt digging ditches and burning latrine shit, a career resume, how to become elites, gliding in gliders, pushing people into a system of rank and authority, this is a scam, how did Evan get out of this cult?, I’m going to get my merit badges, coincidence, making our hero a hero, when the meteorite hits the spaceship, alien artifacts on Ganymede, a pro-Scout perspective, he’s lost so much, Peggy has been lost, he’s gonna get Gretchen, bothered by poor Peggy, poor Poddy, killing off the girls, somebody needs to be refrigerated, Paul, replaced with twin boys, they literally do Scouting, field patrols, some doofus on a tractor, they help old ladies across the road, can-do, he wore his uniform against his skin, his bones are in the scouts, appendicitis, be interactive in the world, pull out your whistle, what those merit badges are for, start fires when your plane crashes in the middle of the woods, exemplifying the Boy Scout mentality, go back to the meetings, very American foreigners, the Japanese Scout, Douglas MacArthur Okajima, a Russian kid, the German family next door, the triumph of the American future, a super-dystopia on Earth, this apartment didn’t have any windows, burning the dinner plates, a bad PKD future, Evan was triggered by Malthusian Earth, the Population Bomb, that horrible Star Trek episode, worked for China, too many people, 55 million Californians vs. 39.5 million, the stores have food, wrong about all sorts of stuff, the only version of birth control humanity will ever have is wars, Heinleinian old men characters, one of them is growing a beard, you did your calculations all off screen bud, what drives Jesse up the wall about Heinlein, how often an alignment of Jupiter’s moons, just because it was cool?, a Ganymede quake, Mars and Venus in alignment, earthquakes and tidal waves, astrological implications, what’s missing from this colony is religion, no churches, for a frontier society it is a giant lack, the good salt of the earth colonists, deliberate, they bring it into the war, if the colonists did it on purpose…, nobody else is talking about it, a deliberate oversight (choice), respecting silly traditions, that’s just how people are, they’re all scouts together, that’s their religion, Golgotha, he gets the tractor and smashes Golgotha, Armageddon, the only tree on the planet is an apple tree, and they chop it down and burn it, The Most Beautiful Tree On Ganymede, we did not bring weeds, a lot of things to like, ecology, we know what we’re doing, rabbits, dumb it down, weeds are anything don’t want, marijuana on Ganymede, impressively self confident, got rid of lockjaw, how agriculture is these days, GMO seeds, a broader issue, if you don’t know why you need clover, the scene on Ganymede vs. the scene on Earth, an immigrant lens, the space border, the boys dorm, endless food, food porn, a couple of hints, another very boy scouts sort of scene, captain’s mast, Star Trek Voyager, Tuvok gets promoted, Paris gets demoted, 30 days in solitary confinement, the federation is a nightmare, all of the food was not treebourne, ground food, strawberries, hand pollinate, their bees cant fly,

Listen to this: For breakfast we had corn cakes with syrup and real butter, little sausages, real ham, strawberries with cream so thick I didn’t know what it was, tea, all the milk you could drink, tomato juice, honey-dew melon, eggs—as many eggs as you wanted.

There was an open sugar bowl, too, but the salt shaker had a little sign on it; DON’T WASTE THE SALT.

There wasn’t any coffee, which I wouldn’t have noticed if George had not asked for it. There were other things missing, too, although I certainly didn’t notice it at the time. No tree fruits, for example—no apples, no pears, no oranges. But who cares when you can get strawberries and watermelon and pineapples and such? There were no tree nuts, too, but there were peanuts to burn.

Anything made out of wheat flour was a luxury, but you don’t miss it at first.

Lunch was choice of corn chowder or jellied consomme, cheese souffle, fried chicken, corned beef and cabbage, hominy grits with syrup, egg plant au gratin, little pearl onions scalloped with cucumbers, baked stuffed tomatoes, sweet potato surprise, German-fried Irish potatoes, tossed endive, coleslaw with sour cream, pineapple and cottage cheese with lettuce. Then there was peppermint ice cream, angel berry pie, frozen egg nog, raspberry ice, and three kinds of pudding—but I didn’t do too well on the desserts. I had tried to try everything, taking a little of this and a dab of that, and by the time desserts came along I was short on space. I guess I ate too much.

so good at it,

The first supper was mushroom soup, baked ham, roast turkey, hot corn bread with butter, jellied cold meats, creamed asparagus, mashed potatoes and giblet gravy, spinach with hard boiled egg and grated cheese, corn pudding, creamed peas and carrots, smothered lettuce and three kinds of salad. Then there was frozen custard and raisin pudding with hard sauce and Malaga and Thompson grapes and more strawberries with powdered sugar.

Besides that you could drop around to the kitchen and get a snack any time you felt like it.

lumberjack food, tilling the fields, planetary disaster, on a scale that’s hard to replicate, rain and snow, sublimation, Fritz Leiber’s A Pail Of Air, the bowels of a skyscraper, endless layers of blankets, an amazing story, if you’re Pluto, Titan’s atmosphere, liquid methane or nitrogen lakes, from its semi-terraformed state to its original state, -70 fahrenheit to -20 fahrenheit, this is an awesome book, the tacked on ending (was good!), the whole sister killing thing, the father – son conflict, Anne and George, call me Bill, a modern civilization thing?, he calls him Dad to us, he addresses him as George, a formal relationship, never?, you knew her name but you never used it, if you want to make a point, just mom and dad, almost never, running a business, focuses the relationship with the customer, its about power, you get a name before your parents get name, if certain circumstances apply, maturity and growing up, being a caregiver to your parents, asserting power, he’s right a lot, his dad is an incompetent cook, wasting rations, he lapses, growing up with depression era parents or grandparents, the household books, little Billy’s bike got a puncture, everything gets recycled, you scrape that bowl to the bottom, money doesn’t grow on trees, I just want to have an allowance like all my friends, that Golgotha rock, the same thing happens to his uniform, the rubber pillow, it was all rags, he cut off all the badges but he threw away the uniform, a home-made patch, imagining a sash, symbolically interesting, his merit badge exams, a maturing metaphor, the Soviet WWII veterans for VE day, so many badges they have to put it on both sides of their chests, grade inflation, give em another badge, I’m subverting the boy scouts, man, you can just be a farmer, Evan Lampe needs to do a Heinlein readthrough as a podcast, themes and hobby horses, like Philip K. Dick and H.P. Lovecraft, Between Planets, who your audience is, older and later?, Blue Book Magazine, not the onlt thing he wrote for Boys’ Life, Tramp Space Ship, the literal inspiration for Tribbles, Flat Cats, Space Family Stone, The Rolling Stones, a space opera radio drama, a used space ship, industrious children, Europa is next, Pigs Is Pigs by Ellis Parker Butler [not O. Henry], an unlimited amount of guinea pigs, hence the tribbles, Tenderfoot In Space is set on Venus, Tenderfoot -> Eagle Scout, you can wield a hatchet without killing anyone, the new scout handbook, all girls troops in the BSA, not a merger, trans scouts of America, atheist scouts, a list of things scouts need to be, you cant be reverent if you’re irreverent, a vocal atheist, tiger cubs (kindergarten), early indoctrination, Red Dawn (1984) is a very Heinleiny movie, strong women still subservient to the men, no line marriages, the Mongols, Cubans parachuting in to Colorado, the Nicaraguans and the Cubans take over the United States, they can camp all weekend, you’re never gonna catch my sons, out there in the woods and they are Eagle Scouts, a weird analogy for Afghanistan, the North Koreans invaded the United States, for movieland reasons, an Australian remake of Red Dawn [Tomorrow, When The War Began (2010)], we people of the hardscrabble lands know how to take are of ourselves, obedience to authority, love of country and love of the countryside, faking the homeless experience, the war experience, a lot of marching, a line of guys walking into the forest, WWII was a lot like being homeless, but with hot food, without the political an historical context, looking through the catalogue, there was something wrong about it from the beginning, there’s no boy scout tax, pre-pandemic, cadets standing in uniform outside of grocery stores, food banking, bottle drives, trying to sell oil change certificates, child labour sucks, rich families buy all the girl scout, cookies, a troop of boy scouts in the girl scouts, its not fair, when she’s selling cookies, book points, government bureaucracy, pioneers need good neighbours vs. absolute self-reliance, specialization is for insects, no good waiting for the government to provide soil, his straw man, Noisy, he never gets his revenge, kids today don’t understand violence [says old man Jesse], getting over it vs. turning the other cheek, Hank was the bad guy, go over the speed limit and lie about it, he eventually is the ally, go and hang out with the captain, Heinlein is so good, the same kid, they do the same things, tons of pets, i can’t give you my fish, the horse in Between Planets, the girls are irrational, our hero Billy or William is oblivious to girls, more oblivious, put them in a bag, is he wrong?, girls and boys should be put in a bag, the German household next door, the family stuff, George drops it, Bill pouts until he gets his way, George drops it again, Bill pouts again, leave his son behind, people are not one thing no matter what you are, bad at communication, Ann and George, Have Space Suit—Will Travel, no cupboards, our kind of food, processed food, the bounty planet, living formally, good characterization, so neat with some of his straw men, the dad was so intent on Bill going to school, get everything he could out of Earth, be a professor like his dad, the step-relationship, so many separations, until she is refrigerated, how much happens, how good the writing is, skillfully done, entertaining and interesting, for novels Jesse likes Heinlein best, somebody online said it was a bad book [correction: Joachim Boaz said it was a “blah” book], really good philosophy stuff, the crystals, he can’t see what’s in the cave, it seems to have legs, 38 legs, tractor?, spaceship hangar, the world is open, really really good, top notch, atmosphere plant, our slow space program, the Voyager probes, the ruined planet is the asteroid belt, a petty hobby horse, regular intervals of planets and then this missing one, its a mystery, one more point of science, back to back to back, 40 novels tons of short stories, in Requiem, Tenderfoot In Space, is there a more American author than Heinlein?, Hemingway is international, Mark Twain, Hemingway is cosmopolitanism, the soil of Missouri, a fetish for Joan of Arc, James Fennimore Cooper, the modern stuff, a fetish for the new, H.P. Podcraft’s episodes on Voltaire’s Candide, hilarious all the way through, not a commercial product in the same way as a lot of stuff, Evan’s restrictions, a leading candidate, mainstream writers, Steinbeck, Heinlein’s speaking to a lot of issues those guys don’t do, the power plants, atomic power, an atmosphere shield, fusion? the radiation level on Ganymede is too high for humans, a little handwavy, Rocket Ship Galileo, there’s Nazis on the Moon!, sub-Antarctic French islands, Space Nazis!, fight the Nazis on the fucking moon!, the frontier and the sea, following where the text take him, libertarianism, in some respects it is gross, Reason TV, a mock libertarian PBS, approx 70%, Fraggles: “you have right to put anything in your body”, SOCIALISM!, free speech, associating with neighbours, hospitalizations, there’s no mention of pay, the community pays, the barn raising, a cooperative nature, cooperative clans, I was promised X, Y, and Z, I refuse to do work, we will feed your family, you can go eat rocks, he’s an adult he can fend for himself, personal responsibility to stop the drug war in Central and South America, straw men characters, given we have to deal with people, reason with them, the alternative is violence or shunning or deporting or locking them up, excessive, he broke the prime directive, this water planet was being ruined by their own environmental policies, solitary for 30 days!, Pen Pals, the Prime Directive loophole, lots of people on Voyager who have no rank, she takes orders from Harry Kim, the Doctor doesn’t have a rank, Neelix doesn’t have a rank, Kes didn’t have a rank, not passengers, Maquis badges, helpful for us as viewers, who are you new actor of the week?, Chakotay’s side, we’ve transitioned out of this episode, some good episodes of Enterprise, stupid decisions, a country and western theme instead of some horns?, a whole bunch of mistakes, savoring Voyager, Red Letter Media on Star Trek The Next Generation, The Naked Now, Darmok, The Inner Light, ideas, they’d have to make it way stupider, the value of boy scouts, commanding voice, be prepared, punch that little kid in the face several times, the environmental disaster, a novel structure, how the gravity works, gravity plates, the gravity plates never turn off, TV is not smart enough to handle what Heinlein’s putting down, Red Planet, a case for a kissing book, Take Back Your Government, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, Tunnel In The Sky, Star Beast, Job: A Comedy Of Justice, Sixth Column, Anarchaos by Donald E. Westlake, The Puppet Masters, Beyond This Horizon, The King Of The Mazy May by Jack London, Nothing Ever Happens On The Moon, The Rolling Stones, Roadwork by Richard Bachman, Gullivar Of Mars.

Boys' Life August to November 1950 - Satellite Scout by Robert A. Heinlein

Boys' Life August to November 1950 - Satellite Scout by Robert A. Heinlein

Boys' Life August to November 1950 - Satellite Scout by Robert A. Heinlein

Boys' Life August to November 1950 - Satellite Scout by Robert A. Heinlein

Boys' Life August to November 1950 - Satellite Scout by Robert A. Heinlein

Boys' Life August to November 1950 - Satellite Scout by Robert A. Heinlein

Boys' Life August to November 1950 - Satellite Scout by Robert A. Heinlein

Boys' Life August to November 1950 - Satellite Scout by Robert A. Heinlein

Boys' Life August to November 1950 - Satellite Scout by Robert A. Heinlein

Boys' Life August to November 1950 - Satellite Scout by Robert A. Heinlein

Farmer In The Sky by Robert A. Heinlein

FARMER IN THE SKY by Robert A. Heinlein

Danny Flynn cover art for FARMER IN THE SKY by Robert A. Heinlein

PAN - Farmer In The Sky by Robert A. Heinlein

Dawn On Ganymede by Anonymous - from SPACE FAMILY ROBINSON / LOST IN SPACE, issue 15, January 1966

DELL - Farmer In The Sky by Robert A. Heinlein

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #645 – READALONG: Red Plenty by Francis Spufford

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #645 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Evan Lampe, Bryan Alexander, and Will Emmons talk about Red Plenty by Francis Spufford

Talked about on today’s show:
a book, not a novel, a fairy tale, is it a novel?, the novel format is old and no longer novel, a thread back to The Efficiency Expert, The People’s The People’s Republic Off Walmart, Four Futures, Trekonomics, Looking Backward, The Coming Race, The Iron Heel, a utopian international experiment, Karl Marx, things out of books, that terrible Vril book, THIS IS REAL!, Marxism vs. Vrilism, the worst takes on communism and the Soviet Union, a nice feel, a meditation, a very personal book, the different socialist personality types, taking personal responsibility for what happened in the Soviet Union, the blood clogging the drain, Pete Seeger, apologizing for Stalin, baiting people to defend death camps, Carl Davidson, Students For A Democratic Society, something her regrets, Democratic Kampuchea, Cambodia, the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, very touching, one man’s personal meditation about his feelings about socialism, does the dog die at the end?, writing into the newspaper, more atheism, unschooled in things can hit on stuff, whether there will be mental illness under socialism, what’s truly painful about what happened in the soviet union, millenarianism, I’m for the end of the world, our religious history, colonial South Africa, they killed all their cows, trying to end the, 2012 (2009) is a comedy, Greenland (2020) is even funnier, the sad part, magical thinking, religious thinking, QAnon, the Millerites, the great disappointment, group magical thinking, a harbinger figure, 12th imamism, how this will be understood in 1,000 years, Saint George, an issue in the collective mind, Trump will be a kind of figure like a Saint George, Babylon 5, The Deconstruction Of Falling Stars, the magical tablecloth, the seven league boots, the invisible cap, a protest letter, shut up and say nothing you’ll be fine, how long can this magic work, straight to the Soviets, Uighurs, Venezuela, do you think you’ll do it better this time, 100 years of building socialism, the worst version, industrializing quickly, the high cost, the book is focused on the 50s and 60s, the break from Stalin, Khrushchev, the utopian drive, the dream, GDP data, defeating the Nazis, industrialization, a weird idea for a novel, a weird beast, exactly on the same topic, a command economy, a planned economy, putting politics in command of the economy, Dracula, Kim Stanley Robinson, science fiction and historical novels are similar, 19th century social novel, very satisfying, the dream behind it, Ernst Bloch, better sausage, the framing of a fairy tale, something Disney never touches (hunger), Hansel and Gretel is about hunger, a house made of food, you become the food, the primal level, a genius move, Ivan is the Russian version of Jack, Lois McMaster Bujold, John Brunner, Stand On Zanzibar, a meta-level, John Dos Pasoss, Soviet film and literature, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Russian humour, Jacobin, Leigh Phillips, Michal Rozworski, linear programming, Verso sales, the Soviet Union as a corporation, the math wasn’t there, what’s always left out is the other player, Cuba, embargoed from the world and yet somehow they are still communist, Microcosmic God by Theodore Sturgeon, evident in all sorts of places, a thesis, where were the Russians were not really successful, Russian cars, everybody is competing, hard top argue that Russian military aircraft are worse, SU-27, the Steel Eaters (the military industrial complex), the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet Union was terrible at consumer goods, the kitchen debate, The Death Of Stalin (2017), Steve Buscemi, Network (1976), linear programming charts, lets address that idea, the problems of world communism, pro-american?, what small countries do, Vietnamese glasnost, Spains’ Mondragon, Mondragon vs. neo-liberals, a gleam of hope, not Stalinist, if Lenin or Stalin hated you…, Robin Williams, Russians jokes don’t have a punchline, the blackmarketeer, the buyer agent, standing in for a helluv a lot of people, very real, one of Jesse’s students, an unofficial offer from Harvard, this is the goal of every Chinese mom, hey I’m very happy to say my son is at Oxford, access to the reins of power, you’re one of us now, do amazingly well on the exams, you pay for it, legacy, something like an economy and rigged in the same way, Operation Varsity Blues scandal, just the tip of the iceberg, novelistic, demanding behavior, the scam artists, elaborate, my daughter is a professional rower, very real, when he gets picked up by the cops, a shakedown, a lashing out, a beat-down, spontaneous?, special arrangement shit, what greases the wheels, Pete Buttegieg, that’s very very real, a weird economy with perverse incentives, exploited effectively and efficiency, it is objectively interesting to see polite people interact with impolite people, why it is a compelling story, attempting a little Marxism, a system is going to be dynamic, look at the contradictions, the criminals became the main economy, China is the 70s and the 50s, automatically give birth to robust black market sectors, the education industry, Felicity Huffman, a bunch of rich people need to get their kid into a university, users and offerers of services, hire a Jesse, what Evan’s school does, more counselors than teachers, grade inflation, begging for grades, pressure from the bosses, top 50 or top 100 schools, they don’t really deserve it, the Svoiet Union’s education system, you can’t do humanities, more engineering, philology, a flood of highly competent flood, cancel cultures, the problem with cancel culture is it doesn’t cancel enough, during the purges, during the War, killing people and expanding operations, massively expanding education, massively educating in the sciences, so many programmers coming out of the former Soviet Union, Catch 22 by Joseph Heller, Kolyma Tales, the NRA (under FDR), an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Nog, “Treachery, Faith And The Great River”, Sisko’s desk, Picard’s desk, Jesse spends a lot of time reading, in the military, Parker’s backstory, he was selling jeeps to the Nazis, common throughout any system, external pressure keeps the people more united, the Cold War was not as pressured as we might thing, making the system work despite the problem, a lot of merit to what Marx was saying, part 4, this problem comes up, spread out the pain, prisoner’s dilemma, side quest with the police, The Wire, mandates from the top, middle managers, its kid of universal, this book doesn’t explain why all this failed, not buying the plan completely, some PUBG rando starts talking about communism, its becoming a genuine option at this point, the forever war in Afghanistan, their war in Afghanistan was too much, when the top people don’t care, the description of Kruschev, Stalin I really cares a lot, Kurschev: I care too, I’m more of an ideas man, I’m a psychology guy, Ronald Regan, George H. Bush, back to being competent, Obama’s latest 25 hour book, the clown president, no one is arguing isn’t demented, why communism talk is spreading now, the book is talking about private desires and private pleasures, overall despair at the broader systems, climate change, economic inequality, the cold war training (indoctrination), Firefox (1982) with Clint Eastwood, Gorky Park (1983), all a fantasy, in the movies its always winter in Russia, Galena’s giving birth, suffering in childbirth, give us morphine, pain in childbirth is capitalist propaganda, my husband is powerful you better give me morphine, corruption, one of the most important scenes in the book, a symbolic summing up, this really painful thing, she just breaks, this is what happens to the communists, relying on lies to ration goods, a very human thing, if that’s the attitude it’s not going to work, can they successfully manage information, free-market theorists, Ludwig von Mises, progress in women’s rights, childbirth plummeting, hero-mother, pleasure, physical goods, practical healthcare, housing, the replicators, industrial replicators, a machine that can solve your wants, 100% free when you show up, what is a little bit hard to understand, oversell on medical services, you have to be your own advocate, it helps to be vocal, I’m going to call my MP, hospital managers don’t want to deal with that shit, home-care, more and more disabled people have the ability to hire and fire their own employees, I need my butt wiped every day (not every second Tuesday), a mixed system, not top down bureaucracy, do what you want you know what you need, people are desperate, the current system of capitalism fuckin sucks, the industrialized countries are least interested in market reforms, a decline, its going to be guillotines and a revolution, time to revisit why socialism never happened in America works, the frontier, the Red Scares, running out of explanations, Russia Russia Russia!, the Democratic party, quashing its left flank, Occupy protestors, Woodrow Wilson, the populists, trans-partisan and anti-elite, upset with the status quo, Joe Biden, suspicious and skeptical, Pavlovian when it comes to socialism, Putin is communist, an old habit, reflexive, moronic, people under 50, what Scandinavia has, Canada, we’re going to flee to if X becomes president, closing comments from Francis Spufford, gender, teaching at an AP center in China, Human Geography, 6 kids vs. 3, Israel and Idaho, going through modernity, land reform, marriage law, revolutionary in terms of gender, no fully liberated, the education themes, Lenin’s parents, Philly Socialists, a public service program called Red Plenty, In hopes of 21st century socialism, the economist and the apparatchik, conscious arranger, Olaf Stapledon.

The Magic Tablecloth

Red Plenty by Francis Spufford

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!