eugenics – Page 2

The SFFaudio Podcast #637 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: In The Clutch Of The War-God by Milo Hastings

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #637 – In The Clutch Of The War-God by Milo Hastings – read by Kate Follis, for LibriVox. This is a complete and unabridged reading of novelette (1 Hour 46 Minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Evan Lampe, Bryan Alexander, Trish E. Matson and Kate Follis.

Talked about on today’s show:
Physical Culture, July – September 1911, the US vs. Japan in the war in the Pacific, a lot about exercise, why this story is so weird, overall impressions of a terrible book, maybe its kayfabe, in a heavy metal voice, who is the war god?, its a metaphor, Jesse thought there’d be a guy, the Emperor of Japan, the Emperor of the United States, who’s in the clutch of the war god?, yellow peril, City Of Endless Night, so interesting, written so quickly, serialized as he’s writing it, not paid off, Ethel has to write a letter, interracial marriage, one issue to discuss, Mrs. Oshima, a happy fruitful marriage, the Shōwa period, the big firm industrialization, the Russo-Japanese War, hence conflict, what the heck happened to Hawaii, not a state yet, set in 1958, astonishingly optimistic, no major wars for 50 years, Latin American revolutions, the Soviets, the Russians, the Nazis, H.G. Wells, an English dilettante vegetarian, The Strand, unclimable mountains, Little Mother Up The Mörderberg by H.G. Wells, Swiss hotels, they all hated me because I was a vegetarian, one of those annoying preaching vegetarians, outdoor exercise, plasmon, in the back, yeasts and pastes and kelloggs, supplement culture, more fit, not just male gym rats, female oriented, other 1911 issues, all the women are fit, 1911 yoga, a baby with a dumbell, reproduction, super-eugenics based, the purity of their race, race purity, eventually the soviets will not be so interested in, surprisingly modern, coming out the same movement, under Bernarr Macfadden, Milo Hastings’ editor, being outside, genetically pure, super cereals, Bovril, east Asia, a worldwide movement, Ling Long magazine, Sixteen, girl’s health, swimsuits, always women, we need to uplift these people for the health of the nation, how these ideas took off in Japanese history, the intro, Liberty, a competitor to Time, Cosmopolitan, one of many he edited, strange story of another day, the ultimate effect, self-satisfied complacency, sustained til the very, rough outline, he lived the stuff he was writing, all buffed up, a strong-man, he believed all this stuff, so annoying and so important, a fraudster, lies about his circulation, Ghost Stories, one Robert E. Howard story, a boxing ghost story, photo illustrations, some lady, a bedstead, supposedly true, geared toward women with a male audience, Il Duce (Benito Mussolini), up in the business, 16 kids starting with the letter B, urinary tract infection, a very important figure, he kept Milo Hastings working, why it is so wonky, chickens, the brood of the wargod, wasteful farmer class, 23 million, that’s bonkers, the Hudson River, they moved the Battery for no reason, Lower Manhattan, the neighbourhood, where’s that water going, a surprise, our quasi-hero, the Regenerationist Magazine, hero editor, a political movement, how weird the combination of ideas, socialism, admiration, positive gazing at the Japanese system, the mirror to Ethel, kimono, unresolved sexual tension, appreciation of the Japanese culture, no makeup, the editorial voice of Hastings, American sinews, vigour of the product of their loins, artifical food, they’re talking about us, tight fitting clothing, diseased and destitute, unsanitary, another movement, prostituted science, Dr. Pepper, doped and perfumed, advertising, very heavily advertising, perfumes and cosmetics, interracial marriages were uneugenic and hence immoral, Japan doesn’t accept immigrants, the problem here is not Japan needs oil, the Texas oil-fields, they need breathing room, new lands for their healthy Japanese babies, Japan’s birthrate, almost nobody fears, over production, population bomb, too many babies, the opposite, Isaac Asimov’s and Frederik Pohl’s Our Angry Earth, Plum Rains by Andromeda Romano-Lax, old Japanese woman, body servant, an example of progressive fiction, the run up to prohibition, every bad guy’s a drunk, old liquors, wet vs. dry, drunken Americans and teetotaler Japanese, Kate Follis joining us, make it a good story, awful as a book, full of terrible ideas, a plot, it moved along, Proof Listener at LibriVox, City Of Endless Night, its really about the world, how did this come about?, recommended by Kate’s dad, what else has this writer done, Dollar Hen, a how to manual for backyard chickens, the connecting tissue between these two books, an ex-inspector of poultry for the government, the Milo Hastings Show, eggs change temperature as they develop, using late cycle eggs to incubate early cycle eggs, using waste heat, another egg joke, constantly pumping out eggs, fascinating stuff, Bernarr MacFadden, weird fetishes, your interest in this is going to turn out really bad, anti-vaxxer, anti-FDR, trying to be incredibly influential in US politics, the original Jack Lalanne, Liberty, November 1940, reasons to be concerned about vaccines, falsifying circulation figures, I Lost 40 Pounds In My Garden (that was careless of you), how I’m Training My Children, the Massie Affair, Benito Mussolini, a bad guy, Michio Kaku, lying about stuff to sell his latest book, in 1900 , platforming, you don’t call him on it, he needs to be countered, eugenics is evil, really dangerous, really dark roads, forced sterilizations, it happens in prison now, it could have been much more, Japanese samurai cannibals, The Mucker by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the same stuff, Hastings is full of ideas, seems to lack the space (and perhaps the planning), astonishing stuff, cultural distinctions between Japan and the US, the Japanese way of life, racial fear, attraction and fear, anti-foreign riots, the Boxer Rebellion, The Decline Of the West by Oswald Spengler, 1922, always this fear, anxiety about being replaced, subtitled: The Tale of the Orient’s Invasion of the Occident, as Chronicled in the Humaniculture Society’s “History of the Twentieth Century”, Japan is ready and doing things we aren’t doing, we need to wear looser robes, a healthy outdoors, M*A*S*H, nudism, nudist colonies, keeping ourselves healthy and beautiful, land for their babies, breathing room, that’s what healthy societies want to do, take a piece of Texas, the way things looked, consolidation of the West, before the dust-bowl, especially verdant, empires, Camp Of The Saints by Jean Raspail, Europe invaded by African and Asian immigrants, feinting towards Panama, planting seeds, wasn’t allowing immigration, boat full of immigrants turned back, the Gentleman’s Agreement of 1907, the Chinese Exclusion Act, The King In Yellow, H.P. Lovecraft, 1960s, the shocking nature, the Okies make it to California, so easy to grow, he can’t resist, homesteading, aircraft carriers, the Wright Brothers, how aircraft can dominate forces on the land, flat-tops, Two Dooms by C.M. Kornbluth, breeding out the continent, yellow peril-ish, the start of a novel, a great premise of the story, early 20th century culture, just go to Wikipedia and pick a year, and pick a day, March 30, 1908, Durham Stevens assassination, wars still raging 20 years after they’d started, changed the nature of public focus, making friends with the Japanese, Midway (2019), planetary society, an inevitable clash, can’t just hand over the empire, publicly assassinated, what you’re doing overseas, suddenly a reveal, Americans aren’t focuses on foreign policy, really what matters is what they do with the military, domestic policy, my vote doesn’t count, what a story like this is really interesting for, a grain merchant killed in a dynamiting, Dan Carlin’s Supernova In The East, the Japanese Army and Japanese Navy in conflict with each other, teasing that out, somewhat relatable character, maybe I could learn to fly, a feminist angle, flying for the newspaper, stealing gasoline and food at gun point, a really good story here, the choice of the protagonist, if it had a male protagonist would he be a resistor from the beginning, they like athletic women, you need to do kickboxing, beautiful like me, Bernarr flexes, I Grouched Myself Into A Divorce, we;re getting there, Yawning Your Way To Health, the Acme of Physical Perfection, flexes his pecs, Do You Glow With Health?, Virex, violet rays, a crossover audience, metaphysical fitness, bodies not landscapes, what you put in your body, the truth about marijuana, Finding America’s Most Beautiful Women, When Is Marriage Sin?, this is what you do instead of going to church, walking dogs is a kind of church (very ritualistic), we need things to believe in, not spiritual, raising a healthy baby, pseudoscience, related to science, maybe violet rays do something, flower garden, healthily brown, reading a French novel (is bad), she tosses it aside, til up their gardens, cultivating the beautiful, the Hitler Youth, the Boy Scouts, scary stuff, the backlash against digital technology, Sherry Turkle, social and mobile, another anti-trust suit against Facebook, you don’t want to be downstairs playing Dungeons & Dragons, play football, you don’t want to be 4F, Captain America, bone spurs, F is like fail, you’re not fit enough to be killed, the Universal Army, the free healthcare you need, not eugenically pure enough, make them even more fit, Corporal Klinger, 1A, Black Hawk Down (2001), a modern American draft, the Progressive Era, WWI, the Wilsonian dream, the perverse progressivism, No Magic Bullet: A Social History Of Venereal Disease In The United States Since 1880 by Allan M. Brandt, the quadriplegic do not qualify for service, how the Empire can continue as it is, in case, you can’t hold territory with drones, starve the population, this book certainly brought out a few things, attempted rape, unrealistically gentle, we could poison cities, the scientist we’re supposedly following, what was the plan, the roller control GPS system, gyro stabilized GPS, Japanese scientists are a trope, The Curious Experience Of Thomas Dunbar by Francis Stevens, first superhero origin story, has the power of Samson, not finished, The Wind Rises (2013), Anthony Fokker, they had the best planes but their fuel was so bad, a massive interest in science and technology, the scientist here had a role to play, a basket, the number of hours in the air, grandson of the author, he should be known, a country under Berlin, the Third Reich but with royalty, producing under stress, cognitive dissonance, The City In The Middle Of The Night, he happens to look exactly like…, a phenomenon of books back then, Ruritanian Romance, a wonderful trope, relinquish the power, these whining dogs, commercial work, YA novels, love the old stories, The Mystery of the Fifteen Sounds by Van Powell, Planet Stories, the ninteen-teens, very focused on socialism, Mystery Boys and Sky Scout books, Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys, public domain reading is much more fun, less back and forth with the author, too whiny, much appreciated, everybody who works at LibriVox is wonderful, Planet Stories podcast, THIS issue of Planet Stories, book coordinators, The Dancers by Margaret St. Clair, how much content has hit in the last month and half, the OCR is the hard part, you just have to trust Jesse, Internet Archive, this ancient science fiction, definitely speculative fiction, Vegan Death Metal Chef, chop the carrots, Cookie Monster is Death Metal, plant rice, Kate Follis is really good, so many people are talented with their voice, this is the free culture, the post-scarcity world is coming through Gutenberg and LibriVox.

In The Clutch Of The War God by Milo Hastings

Bernarr Macfadden

Michio Kaku

Posted by Jesse Willis Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #631 – READALONG: Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #631 – Jesse, Maissa Bessada, Evan Lampe, and Will Emmons talk about Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy

Talked about on today’s show:
2000-1887, utopian, 1888, its kind of disappointing, Evan doesn’t agree with Jesse, sequels and rebuttals, 3rd bestseller of its time, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Ben Hur, responses, Mack Reynolds, Equality In The Year 2000, utopias and communism, we have a problem, not enough good work, academics complaining, UBI, you can’t spend the money fast enough, a real cool problem to have, going from Dickensian horror capitalism to a theoretical utopia, horrible and ok, underwhelmed, hey Jesse, William Morris’ review of Looking Backward, News From Nowhere, everything interesting about this book is the political content, FAQs, Fredric Jameson, Evan, idiosyncratic, about the person making it, Anglo-protestant utopia, Calvinist utopia, very American, smaller firms, Jack London, an artist, upper middle class dude, the Bellamy clubs come to nothing, economic fatalism, no political actions necessary, the extra homework, they’re sermons, Christmas In The Year 2000 by Edward Bellamy, Ladies’ Home Journal, Women In The Year 2000, February 1891, the way they read, less plot than sermon, so interesting, the true spirit of Christmas, they don’t understand what Jesus’ message is, weekly reminder you’re supposed to be like Jesus, give to the food bank like Justin [Trudeau] wants us to do, a few loopholes, some people to escape, no reservation like in Brave New World, totalitarian, council of elders, everybody old runs everything, Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, this is it upside down, the subscription services, Glenn Greenwald leaving The Intercept, actual journalists, Jeremy Scahill, Laura Poitras, you can’t talk about Biden and what was revealed in the Hunter Biden emails, New York Times has never apologized, the institutions of magazines all in the hands of people’s disposable income, Patreon or whatever, Substack, like Twitch for writing and journalism (the opposite of 1984), stenographers for the government, two anonymous sources tell us, a real functioning journalism, Dentists Weekly (journal), like regular free market within a UBI, how all the artists would work, go to art school vs. just do art, dental school, hair school, officiallize, before the eight hour workday, educational flexibility, child labour reduced, we’re done, education, the single most important thing, how cheap it is, we should be spending half of our gross national income on tutoring, the testing, there’s no bookstores, skin whitening salons and doggie spas, Costco grocery with pneumatic tube delivery, where Bellamy is totally right, The People’s Republic Of Walmart, The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer Lytton [that Vril book], the setup is the same, less eugenics based, a classical liberal, women will be looking at the genetics rather than the inheritance, unattractive men, an incel problem, credits for prostitutes?, cultural hangups, more cafes, more relaxed, everybody would be like Picard, organic mozzarella, Morris was essentially an artisanal anarchist, what Bellamy is writing about, nationalizing Amazon, internationalizing, other countries, two continents, three countries, empires in Africa and Asia, teaching them socialism very slowly, how China is impenetrable, seen what he’s done, okay but, better refinements, The Unincorporated Man by Dani Kollin and Eytan Kollin, The Coming Race is a little longer, somebody falls asleep and wakes up in the future, Edith, the secret we didn’t want to tell you, $6 and compound interest, the only person who is not a corporation, socialism and a universal army, just neoliberalize everything, sell your shares at age 18, the most horrible intrusive, Nineteen Eighty-Four not to crush but to extract value from you, keep going until there is nothing left to privatize, apprentice yourself or go to university, no employment and no skills, no public anything, the horror inversion of this, Idiocracy (2006), The Marching Morons by C.M. Kornbluth, a terrible terrible terrible story, a satire taken as an actual reality possibility, when George W. Bush was president, only stupid people are breeding, The Little Black Bag, a time traveling doctor’s bag, we’re going to dumb ourselves down, what people said about audiobooks back in the day, ‘audiobooks are not reading’, you’re saying blind people don’t read, push-button elevators vs. elevator operators, you need to be skilled, how to use a slide-rule, new weird diseases in Star Trek, there’s no tension, its a static society, all these other stories are stories, its a treatise, The Iron Heel by Jack London has more story, the gap between, the narrator might be a villain, Bellamy was a villain, a historical document from the future, people who live in this society, a government propaganda text, polemicizing against the labour unions, liberal elites, Trotsky said about American socialists, middle class snake-oil salesmen that are good at describing socialism to dentists, why is that?, American socialism, what happens in 1886, the Haymarket Affair, we’re really looking out for you here, suppressing continents, The Moon Maid by Edgar Rice Burroughs, socialism from the moon, also named Julian, time doesn’t exist, the socialist moon people, savage tribes in Africa and Asia, permanent dominance, Reconstruction, the scramble for Africa, reducing everything to economic questions, every class fragment is going to have an idea about socialism, the politics is a distraction, employment relationship, the woman question, Jim Crow, Rip Van Winkle, the 2nd American Revolution, a little bit dangerous, a bad bible for socialism, no strife, similar in the setup to The Dream Of Debs by Jack London, he comes from wealth, he’s at the club, his motorcar needs maintenance, general strike, our narrator is humbled, his foreman doesn’t have the labour to finish his new house, the labour of other people, a private tax, my passive income from investments is a private tax on other people’s labour, he’s upset his new wife is unable to move in with him in his new home he’s having built, the fact he’s having trouble sleeping, a hypnotist who is not a real doctor, a sleeping draught, a sealed basement room, when all of his anxiety at living off of other people’s labour, he doesn’t produce art or help to anybody, a consultant to historians, we’re all benefiting from the overall progress of humanity over the centuries, that labour has already been performed, the conversation on copyright, we’re standing on the top of this mountain, we are post-scarcity , he’s really good about post-scarcity, salesmen, styles and fashions of behaviors, no-pressure sales, Best Buy vs. Future Shop, HUGE in 1887, the employees aren’t trying to pressure you into sales?!, Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers, And Customers In American Department Stores, 1890-1940 by Susan Benson, shop girl, shopping for a husband, pre-show chat, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Picard, Deep Space Nine, The Neutral Zone, a homemaker (whatever that is), a musician, a capitalist (a CEO), you don’t need money you need to improve yourself, learn to paint, when not visiting Brave New Worlds, the kids lab, stealing a bunch of children, Wesley’s hunger strike, their schools are like the Bellamy schools, really good a sculpture, the ideas from this book are incredibly powerful, the responses never seem to have stopped, the early 21st century, it was really novel, think about how big this book was, like Harry Potter, Hedwigs and Hagrids, children vs. “adults”, everybody had something to say about this book, countries have actually tried to do this, this book had fans who went on to try to do this, more to reflect on, being in the Bellamy club, equality for everybody, basic needs met, Will cried multiple times reading it, a number of really good metaphors, that umbrella metaphor, about the carriage, you can see those people on twitter, go fund me, kids raising money for their cancer ridden teacher, when Jesse talks to Americans who are not Evan and Will, outside of the mainstream propaganda, what Jesse and Maissa has, you have to pay a parking fee, I hate going to the hospital, they don’t understand, you have to go to a country and just feel it, what its like over there, how can you be bankrupted?, from this perspective, because of segregation, the Southern Democrats killed universal healthcare, an apartheid system, so obsessed with suppressing a part of the population, two main barriers to progress, a large class of small property owners, the color line, reason with them, this helps everybody, you’re set for life, private health insurance, its guaranteed money, the cancer, the stroke, the TV is a CRT from the 1980s, there are problems, the thing that nobody wants to use but has to use, such a guaranteed return and they write policy, one thing that’s never going to happen, Bellamy’s method, why nothing happens, labour problems, some incentives, the Yugoslav postal workers vacation spot, now we don’t have that system anymore, special profit being made, super easily regulable, not a lot of surprises in the postal system, enough strife at the bottom, guillotines for everybody, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the counter revolutions, how to explain that, planning errors, where the pathos of the novel is, dreams, the Ghost of Christmas Present, you don’t have to worry about that stuff anymore, The Soul Of Man Under Socialism by Oscar Wilde, criticism of industrial capitalism in the USA, why the book is so popular, pushy salesclerks and urchins on the street, legit trying to solve things, when he’s looking backwards on the writing of this, how and why he wrote it, not fully understanding his own motivations, his attack on A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, All Good Things is a retelling of A Christmas Carol, Q is the ghost of Christmas whatever, a sermon from Christmas In The Year 2000, July 4th and Christmas, Christmas has been co-opted, just such a family feast, two beggar children, a picture that typifies the age, a hard-hearted businessman who doesn’t want to give his employee the day off, what’s the solution?, a Christmas goose, all problems of society solved, Jesus was hardcore, food banks are a new thing, soup kitchens, getting out of it through Christian charity, Will’s subversive reading, soviet propaganda, production is amazing, T-34s, get to the Moon and humble us, owning, soviet public housing, no style at all, they all have their own home, that’s why they built those things, a functioning feedback system, the internet is described with the music rooms, music piped to your bed, telephones, wired radio, a streaming service, they are really lacking CyberSyn, we need more Volkswagens, the gerontocracy thing, racism was solved somehow, needs some tweaking, classes and castes, a third rail, his basic premise is not to divide anybody, an interesting system for the elite feedback, the prestige is your pay, people admire, their legal system, fewer lawyers, what you want the law to be, tutored up to that level, judges should be drafted just like juries, the supreme court shouldn’t exist, 53 people, we can hear jury cases…, judges tell how to do their job, most cases don’t go to trial, discovery, for years on end, constitutional right, lesser charges, Louisville, Kentucky, electing judges vs. appointing, sortition, say “cast” instead of “vote”, bluechks telling other, a Shirley Jackson sort of way, An American Utopia: Dual Power And The Universal Army by Fredric Jameson, Stanley Aronowitz, responses, Kim Stanley Robinson, Slavoj Žižek, the video that summarizes the ideas, dual power, create new institutions of government, colonial legislatures, Lenin, the army, universal conscription, the army does everything the economy does, a really weird youtube and internet hole, Djibouti, where the pirates are, the Gulf of Aden, naval power, failed states, China, India, United States, Italy, the reason it exists, tourists to Djibouti, its a hell hole, really horrible, the police want to issue permits to photograph things, a horrible dystopia created by a bunch of foreign military bases and geography, Camp Lemonnier, a gym, tours of the countryside, the base store, we provide air conditioning, a tour of life under the universal army (actually the navy), what life is like in the army, specialists, life under socialism, trying to give you little incentives besides pay, hot showers, to stay in, attrition, the healthcare is free (of course), dentists, on base banking, a mixed system (100% socialism), back to Star Trek, Starfleet is socialist, Sisko’s dad has a restaurant, there’s no mess, nobody knows how to cook except for Riker, Sisko, Neelix, only sex magnets, learn the trombone, that and the beard, if you’re gonna sell the united states on socialism just draft everybody, a peaceful universal army, wars of aggression, the Japanese, the hoplites, if women and slaves were in the universal army, most of the military today is not the pointy end, pull the ropes (or cables), Carrier (PBS), the Iraq War, education, get out of that shitty small town full of drugs, some people are again it, ruin your career (by getting pregnant), everybody is housed, turn the tables, a lot of terrible things, who the audience, 14 minutes of congratulations to all the professors, a useless proposal, a political program called: REVOLUTION, wizened professors, the grad students’ questions, Jameson is playing, the NDP, Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbin, thought experiments, on comic utopianism, what utopia isn’t a game, the Star Trek Communist, the people he’s trying to convert, I like anime will you join the socialist party?, triumphalism, he needs to go the the Waffle House and replicate some phasers for them, heavy stun, The Lord Of The Rings communist, branded identities, Lovecraft Country, Raised By Wolves, Lovecraft Country communist, you gotta watch this, Banshee, the Communist party is in power in China, the Banshee communist, all we talk about, corrupt that with communism, Jim Howard, take downer, fire departments are socialism, the repair of the car vs. the repairing of my body, having bridges paid for collectively, that makes sense, what do they teach in school?, a sixteen part series about social systems, zone out and not question, having the test, made China the way it is, students the way they are, whoever makes the test is in control, control what answers (and questions) are acceptable, a YouTube REVOLUTION, remember the Justice Democrats?, completely co-opted, AOC might say a few nice things, push him in office?, actual leverage, AOC is running for President, YouTube controls what you see, Google controls what you see, become a duckduckgo guy, not gonna be an Apple guy, it isn’t going to happen through academia, a popular book, instill a lack of hatred, Marco Rubio, are all Democrats are socialists?, move to a small town in Italy and live there for six months, then I’ll understand it, until someone puts it in your hand you don’t really understand it, incredible popularity, a recognition that something was wrong, selling the message to dentists, how did the Russian Revolution happen?, it was the War, the infrastructure had been built for decades, Woodrow Wilson, the Bonus Army, a joke about how it was going to help them get jobs, 15 minutes of introduction, go listen to Evan’s podcast, Evan should give Jesse an award, we’ll bootstrap, quality edification certificate, trump university sort of thing, the Willis Institute, run it through Scott, spend 7 hours in this utopia, I’ll know that town, this is what the peace corp was supposed to do, working for the Clinton Foundation, stealing resources from your own government, books can be powerful, Marx had better ideas, look fellow comrade, this thumb drive, instead of watching Star Trek watch Das Capital, scientific socialism, the merger formula, an international American choice, fellow people who read books, you replace the body of Donald Trump and replace it with the Star Trek Communist, he was sticking it to the system, if you backed it up, his personal support, stick it to the people who need to be stuck, the elites, the Rachel Maddow audience, the deep state, the elites of those bureaucracies, their fiefdoms, Homeland Security is not going away, a path forward, very despairy, how to communicate its ideas to people generally, harness the bourgeois media, the left has to find the right spokesperson, some other mechanism of reaching the people, alternative media, the means of communication, 6 corporations (soon to be 5), the need for organization, Julian West was able to ask was that one of the workers’ parties?, Lexington, tenants unions, serious barriers to progress, the importance of America in the world system, the NDP are not powerful, until the USA gets its shit sorted out, what Washington, Oregon, and California will do, we’re never gonna legalize marijuana, Jesse, the Americans wont allow it, a bunch of hoops, Justin was permited to allow us this privilege, waffling in the USA, abandon the game, the current path, keep swapping Republican for Republican lite administrations, civil disturbance for 180, fascists, white supremacists, Oregon is kinda weird, Vancouver police, the lower border for this province as a colony, 54:40 or fight, Oregon Trail, a weird countries, a whole bunch of different countries, France is relatively homogeneous, who can handle it, Canada has it, lave each other the fuck alone, only Ottawa listens, Britain’s political system is fucked up too, is that because they got Vril instead of Looking Backward, Canada doesn’t have a national utopian book, pancakes and maple syrup and loons and bears.

Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy

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The SFFaudio Podcast #590 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Creatures Of The Light by Sophie Wenzel Ellis

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #590 – Creatures Of The Light by Sophie Wenzel Ellis; read by Kathy Wright. This is an unabridged reading of the story (1 hour 10 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Maissa Bessada, Evan Lampe, Will Emmons

Talked about on today’s show:
Astounding Stories, February 1930, the second issue, the subtitle, slimemold and flivver, super-science, there’s a reason we don’t SUPER-SCIENCE stories, this whole issue is on LibriVox.org, Into Space by Capt. S.P. Meek, here’s some volume for you, a retelling of The First Men In the Moon by H.G. Wells, a one bullshit gimme, not a scientific bone in the actual, bullshit science is everywhere in this story, launch into a defense of this story, an interesting story, a very silly story, intended, she’s kinda silly, between Frankenstein and 2001: A Space Odyssey, an evolutionary destiny to be god-like, can we create a better kind of person through science, the ideology of science, a Fantastic Voyage quality, hey have you read this Science article, a scary looking beautiful man, Antarctica, the fourth dimension, everything this exists, how deranged these experiments are, a crazy romp, it lives on in comics, Superman, Superboy, Superdog, villain mustaches, a good silent movie, a good bad movie, Captain America is a product of super science, one of the first super hero story, so amazing, Francis Stevens invented the superhero in 1904, The Curious Experience Of Thomas Dunbar, Sampson, bitten by a radioactive spider, unique, the fun, very sensuous bodies, lips, splattered with startling features, people are so beautiful they are magnificent scenery, getting into arguments on twitter, attacking Lovecraft for being racist, she fundamentally misunderstands, genetics and evolution, Philip K. Dick’s The Infinities, teleological evolution, racism is tied up with an evolutionary ladder, Evan’s podcasts on H.P. Lovecraft (the sea and forgetting), racism is bullshit, there is no end state, no perfection, humpbacked German scientist, the first creature that crawled out of the sea was a Man, man is going to evolve into God, all life is a part of an experiment, her bursting ideas, the solar powered helicopter, everything turns gray, new scientific ideas that are not really science, if you get a life ray you get a death ray, she’s like Ed Wood, hilarious, earnest, not hard SF, a science fable, the overreach of the German scientist, they’re all chill about it, Adam and Eve at the end, she’s the anti-eve, Lilith, She‘s Ayesha, so funny, somebody’s head has been on this pillow, hey let’s build igloos and live on penguins, yo-yo-y, the Savage Land, a continuation of the Burroughs, The Land That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Andre Norton’s The People Of The Crater, its all there, madcap bursting at the seams with concepts, she’s juggling, a low mileage, life-ray, super-race, solar sphere, telepathic, death-ray, superman, LibriVox, invisible man, time travel, an unconventional form of invisibility, telepathy, the story needs an interlocutor, Ed Wood needs to do the narration, this perfect black age woman, she had the good genes, keeping his disability, hilarious and amusing, like a kitten being angry at you, Beggars In Spain by Nancy Kress is an evil book, a new race of people who are superior to you, they’re eugenically more pure, none of the defects that we have, only for the richies, the liberal elites vs the basket of deplorables, Plan 9 From Outer Space is not a good plan for the space program, this is 1930s, what sexual selection is for, modern science is permitting the unfit to live, she doesn’t even get Paradise Lost, its 9 hours, comedic on purpose, a story with a happy ending in marriage, The Tempest has the greatest fart jokes on the planet, a slef concisncous commediane , Heard In A Grocery, The White Wizard, her letter to Weird Tales, the happiest days of the month for me, The Woman Of The Wood by A. Merritt, The Moon Bog, The Outsider, The Dreamer of Atlânaat by E. Hoffmann Price, Dwellers In The House, White Lady, a hunch nose, he smells bad, an Arabic scholar judge, it goes without saying, courting the judge’s daughter, personality change, its a Lovecraft ripoff, split people into multiple bodies, a happy ending, burn down the house that all the book were in, chaste and tortured romance, they don’t have houses, our whole lifestyle, we’re locked up in our houses, you need a gym membership, more logical, that’s crazy, a role playing game plot, Spirit Of The Century, E.E. “Doc” Smith, “they’ve adapted”, “only human ingenuity”, technobabble heavy Star Trek: The Next Generation, Will’s definition for super-science: science is part of modern mythology, the mythological power of science, fantastic and godlike things, The Flash, magic with science as the explanation, an ideological component, GURPS,

‘“Superscience” technologies violate physical laws – relativity, conservation of energy, etc. – as we currently understand them. (…) By definition, it is impossible to set a firm TL for superscience – we might discover faster-than-light travel tomorrow, a thousand years from now, or never. Equipment TLs are always debatable, but superscience TLs are arbitrary.

The Super-Friends wiki,

Super-Science is a term that refers to any type of science that is considered beyond that of the normal mainstream science. The Raven was a super-scientist, but his experiments were considered unethical.

a great episode, erasing the Super-Friends from the timeline, The Boys From Brazil, Teen Titans, Nazis are a combination of throwbacks to medievalism and super-science, In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg, The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, Eagles or Legions, 2,000 year old consequences, they’re their own people, a moral screed against Romans by Romans, German psychology of the 20th century before and after WWII, the chances of finding a couple Germans hiking in the mountains of British Columbia, blue eyed and yellow haired, he’s got the WILL!, the classification system, novel and cute hunchback, she would get destroyed if she was used in a touchstone, a womanthology, forgotten, wrong about everything, not a single correct move in any scene, the right guy, he’s a dilettante who doesn’t have a job because he has good genes, what about Mary?, she’s not beautiful so we don’t care, Friedrich Engels’s common-law wife, what’s going on psychological here?, dude, it’s so obvious, interested in girl stuff, this handsome handsome man, a middle-class housewife, totally fun to hang out with, disabuse her of her eugenics beliefs, almost everybody was ideologically deranged, H.G. Wells’ The Country Of The Blind, a lost world story, different kinds of assholes, H.G. Wells assholes vs. H.P. Lovecraft assholes, Æpyornis Island, that’s my ride, this æpyornis comes out, taking on Will’s mannerisms, …the one eyed man is king, sight (which is not a thing), these two growths in the front of your face, a scientific story, sickle cell anemia and malaria, its a mistake, Huntington’s disease seems to be bad, way to sophisticated for Sophie Wenzel Ellis, one thing everyone sort of got wrong, “survival of the fittest”, social Darwinism, there is no path that we’re on that is going towards a destiny, you don’t need breeding if you have a life-ray, confronted in the raw, Jesse went to university for 16 years, cloning, Kate Wilhelm’s Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang, The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, cloning doesn’t make any sense on a large scale because of , Hitler’s clone army, monocultures are terrible, what genetic diversity is for, this problem with bananas, sexual selection is about diversity, stupid but fun, emerald ash borers, tree farming, economically too, no ventilators, British Columbia’s Agricultural Land Reserve, you’re setting yourself off for a massive die-off, trying to diversify, riding the wave, stuff is complex, complex is hard to explain, its a bush not a ladder, seed pods, Paul is right again, an alternative to this story, eugenics and race stuff, Milo Hastings’ City Of Endless Night, all coincidence and fortuitousness, a pandemic and a plague and we’re all gonna die, how come he can fly, its not the right (or fruitful) critique of this story, it might reinforce your distorted ideas, now that its so silly its mostly harmless, the ubermensch, Superman: Red Sun, a great super-science ending, the story ideologically undermines itself to work as a story, inching himself towards godhood, we’re meant to be gods, horrible people who needed to be destroyed, watching the gods destroy themselves, a viewpoint character, René Girard, distracted boyfriend meme, Where No Man Has Gone Before, very super-sciency-stupid, but what does it mean?, this is inevitable, you can not rush it otherwise you will get monsters, Babylon 5, supercharged psi-guy, I’ll see you again in a million years, down the tubes, supercharged by Vorlons, another Star Trek: Voyager episode, when Paris goes to super-warp and becomes a lizard, retconing conversations with your mother, when Larry David was a writer on Saturday Night Live, pretended it never happened, George Costanza quits his job, that’s gaslighting so don’t do that, this really terrible Star Trek episode, another really annoying novel by Kurt Vonnegut (Galapagos), Margaret Atwood, humans as sea-lions flopping around on the beach, when Olaf Stapledon does it it’s cool, Will thinks seal people are a good idea, push straight through, a silly silly book, Maissa defends Kurt Vonnegut 100%, feted in a way that Jesse doesn’t think is reasonable, when Jesse watches an Ed Wood movie, he is dead, we must honour him by never talking about him again, day six I got displaced from time, I ran myself to my destruction, my humpbacked’s father: Jesse, Harrison Bergeron, The Marching Morons.

Heard In A Grocery by Sophie Wenzel Ellis

Creatures Of The Light by Sophie Wenzel Ellis - Astounding, February 1930

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The SFFaudio Podcast #551 – AUDIOBOOK: City Of Endless Night by Milo Hastings

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #546 – City Of Endless Night by Milo Hastings, read by Kate Follis.

This UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK (9 hours, 35 minutes) comes to us courtesy of LibriVox. City Of Endless Night was first serialized as Children Of Kultur in True Story Magazine, May – November 1919.

The next SFFaudio Podcast will feature our discussion of it!

City Of Endless Night by Milo Hastings (Dodd, Mead, and Co., 1920)

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #539 – READALONG: The Curse Of Capistrano by Johnston McCulley

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #539 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Maissa Bessada, and Julie Davis talk about The Curse Of Capistrano by Johnston McCulley

Talked about on today’s show:
All-Story Weekly, August 9 – September 6, 1919, a little too familiar with it, Bruce Wayne’s parent’s murder in Crime Alley, Batman’s origin story, Joe Chill, Zorro, like the gospels, apocryphal, the 1940s Batman, The Mark Of Zorro (1920), Gotham, Christian Bale, The Mark Of Zorro (1940), Tyrone Power, what a man!, oh I know this one, a revelation, I hate you now, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., such a good movie, twisting his own arm, silent movies, mouthing at each other, dubbing, lip reading, the year after the serial, identical plot, the action sequences are so good, Antonio Banderas, The Mask Of Zorro (1998), all the movie beats, one of those translation things, Don Diego Vega, a foppy guy, really into slight of hand, something that’s stuck with every subsequent production, The Disney, the 1974 TV movie remake using the same script and music, Frank Langella as Zorro, a strange choice, a board on the back of her head, visualizing the text, the beginning, middle, and end of his character, this handkerchief is turned into a flower, have you seen this one?, finger curlicues to show excitement about this kiss, the first United Artists movie, Star Wars (1977), Jaws (1975), a half mask like Batman, Zorro is the spot in between everything that came before and superheroes as we know them, Who was America’s first superhero, Tornado is the Batmobile, the dynamic duo, Alfred, a dual identity, The Scarlet Pimpernel, adventures in America, Americans can eat it up, California, westerns, I’m earning a living so I’m writing it all, he wrote lots of pulp, the elements, better than a western, help the poor, the beautiful woman, choose her own path, 1909, supposed to be a surprise, you were spoiled for it, the text doesn’t tell you, the reveal here is at the end, at what point does it become clear, four minutes later, a physical face to look at, the powers of Batman, an acrobat, jumping and swinging, in real life you have to wear a full mask, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde, no one will want to read it if it is spoiled, retconned right away, he captured lighting in a bottle and people want more lightning, like heaven on Earth, his secret lair, not a Batcave it’s a Foxcave, every superhero who is not superman, Bruce Banner, angry guy, he’s always angry, an issue with both, Zorro is the good guy because he’s fighting an unjust government, Batman’s doing the government’s job for them, a folk hero, being mean to the natives, when don’s have their taxes raised to high, Batman’s psychology, crazy criminals, a child of The Scarlet Pimpernel, unjust to the rich people, his posse is the sons of the dons, the families being oppressed, the focus around the family, the good aristocrat being oppressed by the government, the government is completely corrupt, Zorro as a libertarian hero?, an Ayn Randian hero, oh god!, the servant is both deaf and dumb, the Disney version he’s mute (not deaf), he’s everywhere, indio?, interesting to think about, pre-1849 California, the placenames and the missions, what’s the population?, fighting for justice, it’s all about blood, blood is everywhere, 1820 or so, blood x 79, 1,300 people, after the gold-rush, Julie’s read historical fiction, a backwater of Mexico, right across the street from the tavern, a phrase that was used in the period, WWI, writers read stuff, 1920s magazines, what decade based on the ads, fads that rise and fall, the 19teens and 1920s, eugenics theory, standard straight up racism, I’d rather marry a native than marry you, an insult, here’s how low I’ll go, badly OCR’d, the natives are on the bottom, less and less emphasized, you are of excellent blood, of the best blood in the land, class structure, a Vega when he takes a mate, woman-trading, some choice in the matter, historically accurate, its not super-super-clear what he is at first, he’s a robber, Zorro is already known, he’s already a legend, I was fifteen I saw something bad happen, two different aspects, Batman doesn’t rob the robbers, he’s Robin Hood at that point, a redistributor of wealth, Jesse James, Billy The Kid, Bonnie and Clyde, sticking it to the man, if he weren’t a fictional character, we’ve been trained by reality, killing people, Batman doesn’t kill, Zed not Zee, Zedero, Sgt. Gonzales, Captain Ramos, you’re not who I thought you were, a comedy relationship, Commissioner Gordon, he’s worse than the governor, sir leave this house right now, where not to me, quasi-rapist, he deserved his fate, he bought him his drinks, Sgt. Schultz is the same character, Hogan’s Heroes, a send-up of Stalag 17, The Great Escape, Escape From Sobibor, subverting the Nazis by staying in the camp, TV crossover, how does the timeline work?, the ridiculousness of Batman, most of the good super-hero writers have to avoid that sort of thing, zipping people, Catherine Zeta-Jones, its a cartoon, you can’t take Batman super-seriously, Arkham Asylum, Watchmen [and The Boys], The Prisoner Of Zenda by Anthony Hope, the plot of Double Star by Robert A. Heinlein, very funny, a tense line between serious and comedic, The Mask Of Zorro is a rebooting, Zorro makes a mockery of the soldiers, in the book he has a pistol, Sgt. Gonzales is a blustering fool of a character, physically comedic, a comic figure, he threatens death to people all day long, derailed for six months, my beautiful soul what have I done to it?, added to and polished up, suddenly he’s an 1820 superhero, Pirate Batman, The Lego Batman Movie (2017), he’s Robin Hood, reality is not as it is, formulating a plan, right from the start, he got his superpowers in the army, Captain America, romance, a ladies’ man, he’s the man all women want, he’s Tyrone Power and he knows it, the audio drama, Val Kilmer, Armin Shimmerman was terrific, Stefan Rudnicki, Dying Inside, he’s the Friar Tuck character, the same role, the Frey gets his licks in, serialized stories, they’re in Spanish California, he hides Maid Marian, a three hour audio drama for a six hour book, the framing, you’re buying drink, you want to know about Zorro?, at the end, Val Kilmer is about to reveal his identity, that’s another story, the change that had to happen, superheroes are not one offs they are continuous, the whole writing problem, writing for series, every book after that his identity is secret, Superman has a different origin, Captain America is an interesting case, recruiting and selling warbonds, all the things they did to recruit people for WWI and sell war bonds, pickle-helmet, a captured u-boat you could tour in Central Park during WWI, except for Dr Manhattan, masked vigilantes, Night Owl sits in his lair all day, kinda sad, the fundamental concept, they’re making fun of it, a very fine line, no the Batman you know, the 1989 reboot, where does he get those wonderful toys, Val Kilmer, Michael Keaton, nipples for George Clooney’s Batman, Holy rusted metal, Batman!, I’m walking out of the theater, there’s no winking, he’s not super-handsome, he did the adaptation, Robert Pattinson, a different way of running things, I’m gonna go practice my swordsmanship, reveling in that, this is a MOVIE!, Elevated short film, Vincenzo Natali, Cube (1997), set in an elevator, a student film, there’s something outside the elevator, when you make it a feature, most people read novels, once you get into that novel thing you sort of want more, the mask and the slight of hand stuff, this is why people get excited about film and making movies, cute and interesting, its not Zorro, a red flower, Zorro is a fox, the fox personality, Lady Zorro, Queen Of Swords, Jack Of All Trades, all so good, all died too soon, Bruce Campbell, the perfect combination of humour and physicality, that swagger, The Mask Of Zorro (1998), training scenes with Anthony Hopkins, the head in the jar, how many Zorro products there are, comics, the Disney colourized TV series looks terrible, Guy Williams, very Disney, the sidekick, his version of sign-language, sound effects, heavily music’d, a half-hour format, a cartoon, well done, Desilu, The Wild Wild West, it became a good show, Robert Conrad, you gotta see the show, there’s a fine line between ridiculous and perfect, they went the other way, all these things you see as a ridiculous, a subversive reading, is Batman just crazy and he’s the one in Arkham Asylum?, a spy-show and a western show merged together, you like James Bond and you like Westerns, this is that, so villainous, that Batman element pulled-back a little bit, a few gadgets, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Get Smart, the bumbling character, The Avengers, Diana Rigg, so quirky, its not romantic but its not not-romantic, Mrs. Peel, the ridiculous stuff but in a serious way, Moonlighting, they broke the formula, he stumbled into something, perfectly serviceable entertainment for 1920, the Zorro Legion, all the dons put on masks, I’m Spartacus, the opening of The Mask Of Zorro, I’m ZORRO!, Batman comics in the 1970s, they have to work through all these ideas, better in the original, a ridiculous little coda, the self-made, the little boy’s dream, the right age for it, he held onto it and perfected it, B.J. , Meal mush and goatsmilk!, sounds like breakfast, an interstellar version of Zorro, planetary romance, A Princess Of Mars, feels very open and similar, so imagination, what are the possibility around every corner, The Pirates Of Ersatz, dual identity, back to my birth-planet, how could people have missed that opportunity, the same ending (its over), I stared a series, a retcon, a tiny little infodump at the end of the book, the Frailes (Franciscans), I pretended to have a small interest in life, horsemanship, in secret, go to Tibet and study with ninjas, that’s a prequel, San Juan Capistrano, in the middle and the end of his story, designed to be a reveal, all will be revealed, this is a mystery, give us another mystery!, deliberately cruel, the whole thing was a big wink, about expectations, the reader is rewarded for the knowledge that they already had, what’s in this chapter, what’s going to come next, spoiler soapbox, go back to favourite chapters, chapter titles as a guides, The Lord Of The Rings, children’s books, a preview, an affectation, a movie about a book being read to a kid, Dread Pirate Roberts, playing with the tension between, why Deadpool is such a great character, Fred Savage, Wilfred Brimley, Misery, when you’re reading Prisoner Of Zenda you’re taken away with a wink wink, in our post modern era, go look at Shakespeare, breaking the fourth wall all day long, a bunch of tropes and ridiculousness, that perfect path between the ridiculous and what we want from a story, story solving problems, doing all that work for Jesse, The Princess Bride is Zorro, essentially, the same spirit, Julie will allow it, if Julie were Jesse’s judge, would Paul be legalistic, when somebody lies people gets really upset, seems reasonable, repentance is important, a kind of conservationism, strict father conservatism, a gut reaction, don’t fritter away your money, do you’re research, I don’t really care about the details, a narrow escape, nope, none of that, wait I can explain, exactly, where’s my gavel, there’s a podcast there, hot takes, duly noted, Canadaland, a podcast format, we don’t have time to do all of it, what’s really important, this is an interesting story, nope not having any, half-price bookstore, Jenny Colvin’s speed dating with books, she’s reading books about every country in Asia, the Hmong, extra time, she’s just a reading machine, help with the curse, Alta California, Baja California, a poor choice, a Hmong movie, endogamous, hmoung the highest, Saint Paul, Minnesota, the Ethiopian population of Minneapolis, Toronto, Gran Turino (2008), Captain Phillips (2013), bitter flavours, we’re done.

The Mark Of Zorro - adapted by Yuri Rasovsky

Guy Williams and Johnston McCulley

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #469 – READALONG: The War Of The Worlds by H.G. Wells

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #469 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Scott Danielson, and Luke Burrage talk about The War Of The Worlds by H.G. Wells

Talked about on today’s show:
1897, why it made a little splash when it landed, alien invasion, society falling apart, The Walking Dead, invasion novels, The Battle Of Dorking, properties and adaptations and allusions and alliterations, Orson Welles, War Of The Worlds: The Series, isfdb.org,

An English astronomer, in company with an artilleryman, a country curate, and others, struggle to survive the invasion of earth by Martians in 1894. Thirty five million miles into space, a species of Martians sets eyes on planet earth. With their own planet doomed for destruction, the Martians prepare to invade. Their weapons are ready and their aim is ruthless. The war of the worlds is about to begin.

a look backwards, Orson Welles’ The War Of The Worlds radio drama, future events, unfolding in real-time, instantaneous travel from Mars, the 2005 movie adaptation, buried, ridiculous, cannon shots rather than rockets, Robert H. Goddard, fix the physics, a pretty damn amazing book, philosopher-writer, a certain speculative writer, a final structure not unlike Martian, the Pall-Mall Budget, Nov. 16, 1893, Punch, natural selection, a cardinal necessity, “teacher and agent of the brain”, The Man Of The Year Million by H.G. Wells, can you satirize a satire and then go on to make it serious?, Ape Man Space Man, 9 days later, nutritive fluid, early in his career, the most published author alive, the artilleryman, the revolution, a realization, the future, The Time Machine, Weena, the Eloi, the Morlocks, little details, a wife!, a romance rescue version, John Wyndham, what the world will be, sprouting many tripods, derivations and inspirations, his most influential story, how science fictiony it was, a novel with science in it, Larry Niven invasion of the Earth book, the ramifications, filling in the technology and physiology, The First Men In The Moon, how the machines work, The Crystal Egg, The New Review, May 1897, a Palantir, an Ansible

An antique dealer finds out that one of his items(the crystal egg) allows views from a high post into alien life scenes. Upon close inspection, small lifeforms and structures can be seen inside the egg. With the help from the protagonist it can be determined from clues that the egg is in fact a viewer, and that he is viewing scenes from Mars.

a teaser for the novel, League Of Extraordinary Gentleman, it feels still current, getting flying machines from the Martians, diggers, kits, autofacs, black dust, up close, fighting suits, Starship Troopers with aliens in exo-suits, Armor, The Forever War, an inversion, graceful machines, lumbering hulks, the brother sequence, stuck in a house being a mouse, Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version Of The War Of The World concept album, the 1953 movie, why we should care about these character, between me and my brother I know everything, it feels like what it’s like to have your country invaded, becoming a refugee for the space of the book, it’s not our military might, Independence Day (1996), taking the first person point of view, if Tom Cruise doesn’t see it we don’t see it, the Pearson’s serial illustrations, squids or octopi, he was writing about writing about it, the main character is H.G. Wells, his brother is H.G. Wells’, Horsley Common, Woking, characters from his own life, the curate, a savage attack on organized religion, dangerous, the curate is coming apart, God is not an insurance agent, Monty Python, the narrator calls on God and thanks God, science vs. formalized religion, how we think, strip-away, the illustrations, what the movie does, Henrique Alvim Corrêa’s illustrations, Tintin as a horror show, the arm reaching into the house, we will become rats, the art, interpretation, a new BBC TV adaptation, Roman legions, it’s about EMPIRE, why it is set in the USA in the 20th and 21st century, the criticism of EMPIRE, being brought low, Return Of The Jedi, striking at the head of the greatest Empire of the time, an island is defensible, the navy must be defeated, by 2005 the world market for films is much bigger, if they can do it we did it, undermines the whole satire, it looks terrible, force fields and weird energy weapons, the super-science!, the briefing sequence in the 1953 movie, green gasses, a new element that combines with argon, science-based, the heat beams, artillery, a first strike mentality, subtly mentioned, they’re going for Venus, so many subtitles, desiccated bipedal bodies from Mars, if only, not just insane, in a hole, starved, blind, deaf, guy with a sword, hot shit, a class story, fit for this new environment, an alternate ending, great illustrations, the artilleryman’s underground London world, the gulf between reality and dreams, walks, breaks, cards, the imagination, your job is to pick the right boots, taking over a fighting suit, the concentration camps, a huge alternate vision, Julianne, The Sleeper Awakes, a utopia, a dystopia, images of a future from a madman, empathize and appreciate and disdain, psychology, not a one note character, when calamity strikes, living underground, a whole hidden society, Ewoks aren’t the best example, a circle of resistance, not realistic, the biggest exodus of human kind, no resistance, Wells had a lot of women, they used to skedaddle off to work, for fear they’d get dismissed, fear of the backstreets, one little miserable skedaddle, exiling weaklings, the eugenics, survivalists/white supremacists, weak or silly, ought to die, “to live and taint the race”, “clean minded women”, “no rolling eyes”, on the team, racism?, class based, the most prolific author of his era, on his second wife, a draper’s assistant, the way writers look at things, how is it that people are so insecure, in their mousy little way, the tunnel is in the wrong spot, Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague, class-oriented, the Chauffeur tribe, almost no people get names, Ms. Elphinstone and Mrs. Elphinstone, Tim Robbins is a combination of the curate and the artilleryman, PG-13 vapourized, the illustrations for Jeff Wayne’s musical version, the Earth covered in red weed, the fertilizer is human blood, the book is brutal, unworthy and uncharitable characters, the final image, the narrator (looking like H.G. Wells) haunted by corpses and the fighting machines, a war book, baskets of human bodies, the tentacle lights moving up and down, wholesale slaughter, the black outline, directly referencing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the first book Paul read for SFFaudio, Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, so racist and sexist, my thoughts had taken voice, the importance of sound, uula ulla, a mystery, a distress beacon, a death cry, an alarm, an average of 2.5 participants, Wells is a master craftsman, mean characters doing questionable things, writing what you see, retelling the story with sound, horrific, really scary, silence as a scary thing, the coulours and the dust, the crawling creeping nature of it all, what’s going on with the dog, The Spotted Dog, a dog-cart, a yelping dog, a lost retrieving dog, a howling dog, a good dog, man’s best friend doesn’t know what’s going on, a hoe-down, very American, a nurse’s uniform, weird reality, a Mexican character, disconnection, a horse, crows, a veneer over our reality, how things really are, peppered with dogs, paint by numbers writing, the unexplained, copying another novel, there for an unconscious purpose, stealing from a jewelry shop, a richness to deserted London, wives, his cousin, Heinlein’s redheads, too creepy, visually designed to create the disaster movie industry, showing this whole genre inspired by it, the ur text, the basis for other exploration, the taproot that everything references back to, Doctor Who, Planet Of Evil, Forbidden Planet and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, we men with our bicycles, guns and sticks and so forth, mere brains, appliances, the dominant feature: the wheel (is absent), we’ve made the world conform to the wheel, putting on suits, everything is suit for them, an umbrella is part of you, the fighting machines are holding their equipment, the machine is a suit of clothing, driving a car, I swerved, we become one with the car, all about brain, the philosophy of The Fast And The Furious, Pacific Rim, Daleks, all in favour of giant monster battles, tension and drama, learning to juggle, why there are no wheels on Mars, in the Amazon jungle, the Incas, salt flats, His Dark Materials, Jesse invented an alien bird, thinking through all, the necessary requirements, which is more efficient soaring or propellers, rotation, bicycles, nothing evolved from an air creature, a sea based system, propellers handier in the sea, squid, a bacteria with a propeller, greasing the alien bird’s wheel, 10 years in, The Time Machine, why did Jesse put it off so long?, head canon vs. head cannon, Cybermen, why is Doctor Who so good?, they’re stealing from the best!, aliens invading London, the danger and value of…, subversive, intelligent, the Tardis is taken away to engage with the world, never any sexual tension between the character and the companions, a “silly kid’s show”, Christopher Eccleston, Peter Capaldi, stealing from Lovecraft, the most brilliant science fiction show ever, Pyramids Of Mars, alien robots, Egyptian deities, Genesis Of The Daleks, not like Teletubbies, putting The Time Machine on the schedule?, re-reading, one and done, live with the consequences, Annihilation,

H.G. Wells' The Man Of The Year Million, 1893

1,000,000 A.D. from Punch, November 25, 1893

War Of The Worlds - Horsell Common - illustration by Peter Goodfellow

War Of The Worlds - illustration by Geoff Taylor

Posted by Jesse Willis