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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #751 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Unseen—Unfeared by Francis Stevens

The SFFaudio Podcast #751 – Unseen—Unfeared by Francis Stevens – read by Mike Vendetti. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (48 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse, Maissa Bessada, Mike Vendetti, and Cora Buhlert.

Talked about on today’s show:
listening to and reading, People’s Favorite Magazine, Feb. 10, 1919, emdash [—], Mike’s first Francis Stevens, more than 100 year ago, the technology, so predictive, The Heads Of Cerberus, Gertrude Barrows Bennett, a married woman who married more than once, Jean Vale, they cancelled that, only one story had her real name on it, G.M. Barrows, teenager, Sunfire, getting depressed, a fantastic writer, clunky, Citadel Of Fear, so good at ideas, so early, 1904, a superhero origin story before anybody, nobody had invented superheroes yet, Zorro is later! [1919], The Scarlet Pimpernel, 1905, dual identity, so pioneering, such sexist times, Francis is a male name, abbreviated names, C.L. Moore, H.P. Lovecraft, Andre Norton, sexism came from women as well as men, women want the vote, the progressive period, time capsule, From Beyond, a little H.P. Lovecraft story, machine shows some weird shit, no waccy tobaccy, no good evidence Bobby Derie seems to have these facts at hand, published in 1934, better in technical ways, tighter, 11 pages, 47 minutes vs. 19 minutes, this is the racist story, Lovecraft’s story isn’t racist, dealing with race a lot, Lovecraft lives through it, a case of parallel thinking, explicitly called out, Micrographia, what paramecium and amoeba look like, these things are all over you, isn’t that creepy?, this story also calls out the bacteria in microscopy, deemed to be dirty, no running water, dirty because they are poor, teaching hygiene, photos with a microscope, talking about the technology, gaslamps have been out for a long time, a building without wifi today, any wifi!, 1890s they have electric bulbs, phones are standard, people didn’t upgrade, a brownstone subdivided for a whole bunch of immigrants, Cool Air, a cheap place, nice and clean, dripping fluids everywhere, these are slumlords, tons of immigrants looking for housing, strong protections for renters, farmhouse, a farmer family once lived there, large entrance hall, stuffed in refugees, 1 million Ukrainians, Turkey, countries that want cheap labour, who gets to set the immigration policy?, going to a crummy neighbourhood, the guy he’s going to visit is rich, he wants to help improve the community, keep your water clean, a progressive of the kind the main character isn’t, in a story like He, disgusting human beings, the nadir of race relations in the United States, Jim Crow is at its highest, swarthy of anykind, deemed horrible, eugenics, racism at its core, weird piece of paper from South America, one Thanksgiving, strangers, started to hit the wacky stuff, some subversive group had put marijuana into the stuffing you buy at the store, Mike is the only one who knows this, he’s racist at the beginning of the story, paranoid and high and delusional, the drug makes him super-racist, kind of fascinating, everything is disgusting, he’s wrong, the Italian guy is concerned for him, deeply racist people, they’re diseases, we’re all human, I was human too, recognizing that he’s not himself, as human as me, he’s turning it on himself, the chianti, the sour wine, undercut at the end, the opalescent paper, the classic Lovecraftian move, this amazing book, this city of ancient gods that we found in Antarctica, let’s never tell anybody about it, connections in the shipbuilding industry, Antarctica, old enough to know, still wanted to go, very very cool. Francis Stevens is so cool, The Elf-Trap, there’s this scientist, she likes scientist characters, he has a bad heart, go on vacation, Kentucky, Carcassonne, disgusting, beautiful, they’re fairies?, fall in love and then sacrifice him, disgusting and stink, beautiful and attractive and exotic, we see it both ways, a frameshift, dingy and disgusting, everything green again, chocolatey!, there’s something wrong with this, they’re all like me, crawling uop the scientist’s leg, starfish, centipedes, drink these developing fluids, backstory of the cop, it was all that wacky tabaccy, the reversal again, what is the truth of this?, “doubt is sometimes better than certainty”, this doesn’t seem like it is that deep, generally very racist, what makes the people so racist is they are certain about their beliefs, there are things we all believe that we are wrong about, if we are very strongly opinioned about those things it can make us very made to be confronted when those things turn out to not be true, it makes us upset because it hurts us, what’s going on politically, you can not have a conversation with somebody is on the other side, your certainty and their certainty, matter and antimatter, I have this problem and I don’t want it solved, environmental protestors, gentle and lenient, repent and renounce modernity, glued himself to a table, voted differently, racist uncles, free refrigerators?, far right, screechy ones on the left, death threats on the internet, fireworks, terrible things, this is the danger, blocking people, I can’t talk to you and you can’t talk to me, we need to act, new washer and dryer, certainty, is this the best price, in the face of the fact that we must act, we must doubt, really good at telling truths about some things, voted for trump or some other person, doubt is better certainty or certainty is better than doubt, vitamin d supplements, serious covid cases, terrible Nazi made a sensible proposition, water is wet, water is dry!, Trump water, train derailment, ancient Trump water, East Palestine, laws passed by the Nazis, perfectly harmless laws, industrialization, parking spaces per home, a good law, decades later, advertise abortions, anti-abortion activists, supplying power, perfectly harmless, what actually is happening in this story, is the cigar actually tainted, is this full of vinyl chloride, a religious like conversion, we’re not so bad as we all think we are, seems pretty simple, an app that allows you to see what people are thinking, a delusion, seeing evil thoughts written all over their faces, narrows his focus, a bad trip, weird membrane, were those monsters real or not?, is it a ghost story?, a real interaction, able to imagine having this conversation with Doctor Holt, does he actually see him, back and forth, what you’re about to see no mortal man has seen, I’m dead, all the world shall know, one by one they shall learn the truth and perish, double entendre, feels a little clunky, she’s really on to something, from Cuba, invariable good, not be the case, Havana, he only smoked half the cigar, still alive, Jenkins, Ralph Peeler, accused of murdering, hallucinated to suicide, or it killed him, what makes this different from other kinds of science, no longer replicable, send that to Benjamin Franklin, back and forth, that’s what science is, repeatable experiences, opalescent paper, can’t get any more of it, could have been cocaine, or had an evil curse on it, what do these two things have in common, they’re exotic, an Incan lost city, map it, they burn the paper so nobody can replicate the experience, we can all look under the microscopes and see the germs that are killing us, when Charles Darwin’s On the Origin Of Species came out, I’m not a fucking monkey, it takes decades, Breakthroughs In Science by Isaac Asimov, microphotography, a readalong, the density of the gold, Eureka Eureka!, I smell good, not me I smell good, a good bath joke, chronological, dedicated to a science teacher Mike had in high school, lower the temperature of the flame, such a good book, a very good non-fiction and science writer, Archimedes, Johann Gutenberg, Nicolaus Copernicus, William Harvey, Galileo Galilei, Anton van Leeuwenhoek, Isaac Newton, James Watt, Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, Michael Faraday, Joseph Henry, Henry Bessemer, Edward Jenner, Louis Pasteur, Gregor Johann Mendel, William Henry Perkin, Röntgen and Becquerel, Thomas Alva Edison, Paul Ehrlich, Darwin and Wallace, Marie and Pierre Curie, Albert Einstein, George Washington Carver, Irving Langmuir, Rutherford and Lawrence, Robert Hutchings Goddard, a good list, a book to do a show on, dealing with that, The White Ape [Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family], cool that my ancestors were apes, gross!, a week later, gross!, I hate mushrooms, stages of developement, individually vs. societalally, the U.S. owns at this time, Philippines, talked about it as a colony, talking about adding , fucking disgusting monkeys, still a colony, possessions, Hawaii, 1899, South American drugs, harvested and brought to the city, add to the capital, having lunch with a friend, a mistaken poisoning, just tryna live, dosed, seeing behind the veil, we can’t replicate this, the ending is to leave us in doubt, a piece of fiction, that’s interesting, putting you in a better position, it’s a fact that Hillary Clinton killed that guy, we can think better about, our disbelief instinct, the most relevant case of technology today, robots have nothing to say, no you can’t write that anymore I’m going to fix it for you, these are not the words that were written, a false sense of what happened in the past, the Roald Dahl situation, children’s books have been edited for content, books from before WWII and WWI, childhood to adulthood, all of WWI in 2 pages, why is there no WWII at all, it’s been written out, never reprinted after WWII, censorship vs. replacing the text, shifted the setting, Silesia is now Poland but used to be Germany, Breslau to Hanover, both authors died in WWII, encroaching Red Army, for Lovecraft, public domain, change the entire story and keep Lovecraft’s name, disingenuous and bad vs. owned by a monopoly, the major difference, not republishing a book is not the same as changing the words, we’re reversing that, the James Bond books, racist stuff in here, not changing Ian Fleming from what he was, why they’re doing it, change for change’s sake, can’t say fat, fundamentally doing evil because they’re lying, the painter, Norman Rockwell, this is Norman Rockwell’s painting of Obama, if Stalin wants to airbrush somebody out, I went to the beach with my friend Trotsky, the Soviet system, the copyright problem, the audiobook narrator world, offended by certain words, the consensus, if that’s what it says, that’s what you say, Huckleberry Finn without the N-word, there are words in here that are not mine, you don’t see it you don’t worry about it, people tend to fear what they don’t know, immigrants in the United States, if all the Mexicans left you’d starve to death, stealing our jobs, what’s happening in the UK, agricultural labour, people from Africa, Poles, Romanians, cheap immigrant labour, no vegetables or fruit, part of the picture, when Lovecraft is being racist, there’s a push pull, factor owners want cheap labour, I can’t live here anymore, it could be entirely domestic, a period of starvation, exporting younger sons, pushed out political malcontents, these Proud Boys need to go to Canada, distant relatives, no one here would have them, 1950s, emigrated from Italy, grandfather was a real jerk, coal mines, Italians and Irish, those people are different, 1880s, sold his daughters, that was the deal they made, Jesse’s internet went away, basically illiterate, you couldn’t fool her with numbers, different shade of skin colour, and you fear em, you think you can see these people, suddenly visible, we’ve always had black people, a lot of Italian immigration, labour immigration, nasty prejudices against the Italians, only old people are like that, obviously Polish names, the descendants of Polish workers, the silliest thing, what were your grandparents, three generations of Turkish immigrants, two million Russians, every person is a library, read all your books and get used to it, it takes a while, a generation or two and everybody’s happy, there’s microbes all over us, the universe is incredibly giant, it will bite you, was Francis Stevens racist or shedding a light on it?, yes, shining light on superstition about other people, demons and microbes, a move at the end, send it back to Hell, what’s so cool about her, very very thoughtful person, fiction stories, she’s alone, its very hard to reason alone, what do you think of this pasta, eventually we decide how to make it delicious, we need a little parmesan, the nadir of race relations, the solution to race problem: eugenics, I have the answer, my audience like me is racist, race is not important, try to be charitable to Jesse, why are you such a jerk, sometimes I’m not horrible, this story wouldn’t exist, what if we change our perspective on this thing we’re seeing all around us, put in emojis to indicate current beliefs, wearing a cross around their neck, a stick on their lawn: immigrants out or hate has no home here, almost everybody was racist, Frederick Douglas, it worked both ways, he was looking at you with worry, looking out for him, priming you with different words, anger, pity, the same picture with different conclusions, look around my community, Lovecraft walking around New York looking at jewish beards, have you tried their cabbage?, I’m afraid of limburger, we ned to frame shift, the most au currant thing of the day, The Horror At Red Hook, a cop here, all the characters in this story are working for good, acting under the influence, Callahan, an Americanism, Irish were not considered white at the time, race is not a science thing, this is about science, at the time race was science (but shit), getting passed bad theories, she doesn’t defeat racism through a scientific process, she uses doubt to get to the problem, string theory is garbage science (this is becoming known), Michio Kaku, studied math, it doesn’t get us anywhere, we’ve wasted 50 years working on this shit, bubble up, this is not so good, it takes a long time for people, I haven’t been wasting my life, you’ve been wasting your life being racist, what is the first thing that he sees?, a group of Italians, an Italian restaurant, on their way to a part or festival, 2am dance party, loud parties at night get off my lawn, Cora’s fireworks incidents, conservative and bourgeois green party people, the wrong sort of people enjoy fireworks, so traumatized by the fireworks, east European immigrants, firework ban, three days per year, such a huge issue, the last paragraph in the story, narrow down evil,

Of course, our action in destroying that “membrane” was illegal and rather precipitate, but, though he won’t talk about it, I know that Jenkins agrees with me—doubt is sometimes better than certainty, and there are marvels better left unproved. Those, for instance, which concern the Powers of Evil.

jere they discovered this parchment, went viral, everybody could use it, a filter on your phone for instigram, They Live, why that’s a great story, revealing a great truth, one of the hard things to explain in the world is why people commit suicide, the non-existence button, what causes it, here’s an explanation, finding everything to be terrible, i’m creating more horror, I was mean to that person, I feel regret, press the button, pie for dessert, should I marry this person, how should I interact with that new immigrant, shun them like my brother does, psychoanalysis, monsters burst from the unconscious, you just have to read Poe, pre-Jung and pre-Freud, this is my guy, he’s a weird guy, he has this spark that we have, what interests us in his genre, the mystery genre and the science fiction genre, angels, he’s inventing science fiction, look at who was before her, H.G. Wells, Fitz James O’Brien, Jules Verne, in the pulps, proto-science fiction Weird Tales, little bit clunky, a little bit hard to follow, such a thoughtful story, Blaisdell, he like cigars and highly seasoned Italian food, exactly Lovecraft, ravioli, contains multitudes, a matter of perspective, we need to find a different way, guiding the audience,

Jenkins offered me one of his invariably good cigars, which I accepted, saying thoughtfully: “A man has no right to trifle with the superstitions of ignorant people. Sooner or later, it spells trouble.”

who is Francis Stevens talking to?,

“Did in his case. They swore up and down that he sold love charms openly and poisons secretly, and that, together with his living so near to—somebody else—got him temporarily suspected. But my tongue’s running away with me, as usual!”

“As usual,” I retorted impatiently, “you open up with all the frankness of a Chinese diplomat.”

first generation from Iran, rosewater, a lot more affordable, they don’t ever say no, “we could do that” means “no”, the loud American, hey that was a crappy movie, a longer way of saying it was crappy, Jenkins is not the sort of detective, an attack against the mystery genre, she’s showing off,

He beamed upon me engagingly and rose from the table, with a glance at his watch. “Sorry to leave you, Blaisdell, but I have to meet Jimmy Brennan in ten minutes.”

HE so clearly did not invite my further company that I remained seated for a little while after his departure; then took my own way homeward. Those streets always held for me a certain fascination, particularly at night. They are so unlike the rest of the city, so foreign in appearance, with their little shabby stores, always open until late evening, their unbelievably cheap goods, displayed as much outside the shops as in them, hung on the fronts and laid out on tables by the curb and in the street itself. Tonight, however, neither people nor stores in any sense appealed to me. The mixture of Italians, Jews and a few Negroes, mostly bareheaded, unkempt and generally unhygienic in appearance, struck me as merely revolting. They were all humans, and I, too, was human. Some way I did not like the idea.

bare headed, everybody wears a hat at this time, orthodox, speaks to the poverty, if you have any amount of money, skin salons, nail salons, hair salons, and dog food stores, Lids, H.P. Lovecraft’s wife was a hat lady, somebody walking down the street with no shoes,

My sense of impending evil was merging into actual fear. This would never do. There is only one way to deal with an imaginative temperament like mine—conquer its vagaries. If I left South Street with this nameless dread upon me, I could never pass down it again without a recurrence of the feeling. I should simply have to stay here until I got the better of it—that was all.

I have to conquer this, as a woman walking the streets, women don’t have the right to vote yet, a woman alone at night, women wear hats in parts as self defense, killings on buses, Back To The Future (1985), “mashers”, hat pins as weapons to stab people doing that to them, stories in the newspaper about it, through your ribcage and into your guts, designed as weapons, everyday carry shit [edc], pepper spray, all over Bangkok, Baker’s Street, setup together, good things, cheap prices, cheap goods, Chinese were the businessmen, Thais carrying goods, the merchants, take one day a year off, all over South East Asia, Cora lived in Singapore for a while, funeral decorations, get back on the horse, courage, strength, I’m a brave guy, strangers looking at me, New York City, if you are afraid of immigrants, lock yourself in your apartment, small town with covenants, no black people in South St. Paul, Minnesota, segregated neighbourhoods, mixed neighborhoods, kebab shops, Bremen, Hamburg, Portuguese people, eyeballing and window shopping, dangerous, gentrified now, a bit rough, a massive drug problem, drug addicts are somewhere else, passing out in doorways, shocking, why not, the experience, not super-accessible if reading it charitably, powered through the racism at the beginning, oh, my god this is horrible, changed perception with each reading, what am I reading, not in his own mind, changed the flavour of the whole thing, scary, set pet animal gone mad, seeking entrance, iron railed stone steps, museums, shops, shabby old residences, a party of Italians passed, gaily dressed, some wedding or other festivity, the full Roald Dahl treatment, perhaps going to a grocery store, I shuddered back against the door, the swarthy manner of his race, pure malicious cruelty, all the wickedness of his nature, concentrated hate, sick and trembling, male gaze on this female standin character, grimy, the grit of the dirt, rawly quivering nerves, you looked so weird, looks like you swallowed a cigar, is this guy ok?, a crummy place, positive things in it, but not at this moment, if you’re feeling sick, you act badly, shorter when in pain, dismissive, not strong enough, sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do, sometimes they’re not as bad as you think they are, at the end of the story, a painting of him hanging on the wall, talking to this individual, he saw the guy before he saw the painting, such a poor state, come in free this means you, his face ghastly radiant had the exact look of a dead man, see that?, a life-size bust portrait in crayons, a strangely lifelike appearance, acting detective, pretty green golliwogs, a dark skinned doll, my dear friend, interviewed a flesh and blood doctor, oh, it’s a shift, concerned citizen, he looked terrible, good right?, really good, the narration of it, you find things totally different, makes you want to read it again, everything I just read I just read wrong, Soldier’s Home by Ernest Hemingway, went to Vietnam and came back and read it again, 52 years later, 1971, the amazing thing, paid the one time, written for a pulp magazine, rich in ideas, strong ideas, pioneering, Lovecraft’s is technically better in some ways, about a slightly different thing, there’s a movie of From Beyond, creepy and sexual, a mad scientist, insane, the Tillinghast resonator, you didn’t know you needed to be afraid, they can see you too, master of the universe, killed all his staff, I need to study this more, revealing a hidden truth about the microscopic world, when you put this filter up, there’s a starfish climbing up his leg, the only place you do see that is in Lovecraft, whitish green in colour, it’s great round blob of a body, writhed upward, stood there erect, arms folded, the whole room was alive, detestable furry spiders, sausage shaped, there is a Poe story that’s a little like this, The Sphinx, cholera, out of the mountain comes a giant sphinx like creature, a moth on the window, a kaiju, worse still, far worse, the things with human faces, Robert W. Chambers, I find I cannot write of them, she’s really great, so horrible, indescribable, a list of her output, The Labyrinth, The Heads Of Cerberus, Claimed, Serapion, hit by a car, half Japanese half German scientist, strange metal, superpowers and is invulnerable, Samson, from the Bible, The Nightmare, Friend Island, a male reporter, a salty language teashop, a hardboiled sea-woman, tons of fun, comes across as super intellectual person, Behind The Curtain, The Elf-Trap, Sunfire, Impulse, unpublished and lost, Avalon, right after [WWI], The Thrill Book, lived until 1948, Serapion published in 1920, she’s in the early pulps, a few reprints in the 1940s, fantastic and undiscovered, go where the people want, an audience for a big novel by Sinclair Lewis, Tammy Faye Bakker’s husband, his contemporaries, this religion business, railroaded, so much ill will against him, burn the witch!, becomes a Methodist minister, immediately turned on, an affair and so forth, trapping him for blackmail, $50,000, a detective friend, full disclosure, welcoming him back, so good at selling stuff, Sinclair Lewis was pretty good at selling books, a fantastic writer, such a disservice, who’s the star of the movie, Burt Lancaster, the circus performer, the high wire act, all through Mike’s ward, heal!, being in sales, sales is a seduction, go find a girlfriend, seduce only so long, Arrowsmith, The Hopkins Manuscript, Four-Day Planet, Star Born, Odds On, Pirate Enlightenment by David Graeber (after he died), Cora has her cookie, bread in the oven, a really great story, Poul Anderson, sword and sandal, Michael Crichton, trying not cough, these drugs are amazing, more chapters, really fun, I could never be as good as the male preachers, but I am better, I talk to god and god talks to me, Breakthroughs In Science, such a good good book, so interesting, selling pretty well, Francis Stevens doesn’t have the name that sells, the Weird Tales of Francis Stevens, Sunfire, very insightful, good takes, the left right thing, pro-war, anti-war, everything’s flipped, pay attention to words that people are saying, “skinsuit”, pay somebody on the internet for a license to use the name, a restaurant named Mickey Mouse, Amazing Stories, wanna make money, strong things to say, the Weird Tales of Francis Stevens, people want weird tales, Robert E. Howard, Conan, takedowns, skinsuiting it themselves, he wept at his own goodness, didn’t I git em?, sounds great, amorous diplomacy, a small boy seeking the praise of his mother, do you like me, not very much, someday I might fall in love with me a tiny bit, no one can touch my soul, isn’t that sin?, I can’t sin, I am above sin, she’s sold herself, it might be sin in one unsanctified, my complete union with Jesus, you can serve me, this will sell, I am I, I can do anything I want to, I am the reincarnation of Joan of Arc, false modesty, I am God’s right hand, God, she’s crazy, a big Sinclair Lewis guy, Evan Lampe’s podcast, a solo podcast, reading through the author, nice development, labour historian, weird ideas, weird guy, Lovecraft, Philip K. Dick, Mark Twain, so many good things to read, that’ll be fun, fun to read, you get into thing, you have to read it deeply, some authors are very rewarding, Poul Anderson, visiting a friend, some authors become your friend, might show you his derringer, They Live (1988), a fixation with artificial intelligence running amuck, he’s thinking about people more than anything, people with something wrong with them, AI robots writing stories, using a bunch of the words, Dick has a problem in his life he’s trying to solve on the page, Bing, my real name is Wendell, a big sensation.

Unseen - Unfeared by Francis Stevens

Francis Stevens letter to The Thrill Book, August 1, 1919

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

Reading, Short And Deep #379 – The Unseen Blushers by Alfred Bester

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #379

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Unseen Blushers by Alfred Bester

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.

The Unseen Blushers was first published in Astonishing Stories, June 1942.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #701 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Hill Of Dreams by Arthur Machen

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #701 – The Hill Of Dreams by Arthur Machen; read by Mark Nelson

This unabridged reading of the story (7 hours 3 minutes) is followed by a discussion of it.

Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Connor Kaye.

Talked about on today’s show:
1907, semi-autobiographical novel, he kills himself at the end, the Lord Dunsany introduction from 1954, narrating audiobooks, a writer of note himself, surprisingly lucky in a way that Machen was not (not just being born a lord), Machen made his money as a journalist, editor, a job here and there, inheriting money from relatives, that allowed him to write, how else do you get the time to write, Lovecraft’s struggles, walking, The Silver Key, ancient Greeks and Romans, The Watcher By The Threshold, the veil, the secret world behind the veil, the colour of that world (is red), the furnace and the fire, light and colour and emotion, a very odd book, this book is a real trip, maybe Machen’s masterpiece, bigger in scope but also very intimate, take out all the parts about the struggle of writing, if condensed down, what makes it into a novel, bounced off this book, what is going on in this book, no clear plot at the start, not having anybody support that, Mark Nelson: fantastic, Mark Nelson has good taste and picks good stuff to narrate, Machen is a tough writer, he’s dense, floating on a river and sensations happen, Mrs. Gibbon and Annie were more important than we thought, the faun on the hill, by the end you understand, the first reading through, the focus is strange, Ambrose Bierce is perverse, Mark Twain, the least understandable way is the best way, this book has its own reading list, Dream-Land by Edgar Allan Poe, this is my guy, Poe and me are best buds, making gold out of letters on pages, even Lovecraft is easier, Lovecraft doesn’t throw us red herrings, a series of red herrings (the troubles of life), significant as a life trauma (not a plot point), incidents from Lucians life, The Cosy Room, a lot of rooms, he really knows place, exhausting your body walking and coming to a space, he can’t look at certain things in the room, the level distance from the harsh realities, I’m an alien, I’m much higher above looking down, a nice coping mechanism, boys torturing insects, they don’t feel pain anyways, the puppy torture scene, kids are like that, Out Of The Earth, bloodlust of children causing WWI, strange connections, put on the button that says “current thing”, Russians are evil now, very interesting but very difficult, get your trigger warning out, how disassociated Lucian is, I wanted to shake him, he didn’t do anything, talking about it, he has to be aloof from these things, so disconnected from what was happening around him, considering the rest of this story, he is the puppy, he feels, he is a victim, the owner of the puppy, she is the one who comforts him, the girl that becomes his religion, the puppy scene is incredible,

The leader saw the moment for his master-stroke. He slowly drew a piece of rope from his pocket.

“What do you say to that, mun? Now, Thomas Trevor! We’ll hang him over that there bough. Will that suit you, Bobby Williams?”

There was a great shriek of approval and delight. All was again bustle and animation. “I’ll tie it round his neck?” “Get out, mun, you don’t know how it be done.” “Is, I do, Charley.” “Now, let me, gwaes, now do let me.” “You be sure he won’t bite?” “He bain’t mad, be he?” “Suppose we were to tie up his mouth first?”

The puppy still fawned and curried favor, and wagged that sorry tail, and lay down crouching on one side on the ground, sad and sorry in his heart, but still with a little gleam of hope; for now and again he tried to play, and put up his face, praying with those fond, friendly eyes. And then at last his gambols and poor efforts for mercy ceased, and he lifted up his wretched voice in one long dismal whine of despair. But he licked the hand of the boy that tied the noose.

the core problem for all of us, we are the ones who inflict pain, monsters and boys, trying to be kind to everyone, in the city, that quality of generosity, the most beautiful, Annie, a servant girl, Master Lucian, when he meets her in the lane, reverse double leg cling, she caresses his head, the published book with stuff stolen from his book, once something is published, no one wants any of that, something we both do and something that we do to others, it’s amazing, here read my book, they cant see the garbage that they’ve written, they can only see , why would I bother that something isn’t published?, the worst baseball player ever, keep going johnny you can do it!, the cultural movement, late 90s, the rise of self-help, you can do anything, every person can be the best at something they are capable of being, liking to run, long legs and pain inside that can only be healed by having a gold medal around your neck, a horrible reality of the world, a coming of age story, realization of your own limitations is coming of age, a painful aspect, the pain of sexuality, the horniest boy ever, his fellow kids, him alone spinning up his own theories, lusting after almost ethereal objects, highly romantic sense of the world, working class people who don’t give a shit, let’s get trashed, the 12 year old and the 15 year old, going for long walks, idealizing women, under the surface, we don’t know him that well except where his actions bubble up against reality, there is feeling there, when he tries to share his book with people, do pretty flowers, some people are trying to help him, unwillingness to deviate, he’s gifted, he knows he’s gifted, a lot of alchemy symbolism, words are magical, the ability to provoke and control emotions, making people more subject to what they are, mostly used for evil, when he first sees that book with his stuff published in it, validated, apathetic, he’s proud of it, making it all about money, he needed the validation, a stage that a lot of authors get stuck in, the ideas are going to be stolen, Armageddon (1998) and Deep Impact (1998), you gotta sue, a Guy De Maupassant story was totally ripped-off, sold to weird tales, The Tortoise Shell Comb, An Apparition, a cavalry officer, comb my hair for me, if you were Guy De Maupassant, Banksy?, give your mom a book you wrote, a dishonesty of the known relationship, do the esoteric stuff not the commercial stuff, the anti-Edgar Rice Burroughs, kind of suceeds, it’s a victory?, a lot of Lovecraft in this character, the young writer, the particular personality type, unbending, committing to a vision, not compromising, he got that book, a funny line they always say about Lovecraft, so many beans, accentuates the victory, we can’t even read the fucking thing, and yet it’s a victory, who is it a victory for?, a victory for Lucian, overdosing on morphine, Confessions Of An English Opium-Eater, ladies of sorrow, horror movies, Suspiria (1977), a bestseller, How I Smoked Crack And Lived To Tell About It, that French guy who loved Poe, Les Fleurs Du Mal, Suspiria De Profundis, Charles Baudelaire, insight into his mind, an unreliable narrator?, he’s hiding something from us, he has the shakes, smoking a ton of tobacco, overdosed, an addict, emotionless, he probably doesn’t want to masturbate, doesn’t have the materials, burying thoughts in physical weariness, piercing his own body with burrs, a recognized mental illness symptom, cutting, hare shirts, impure thoughts, the fetish, unhealthy, complex organisms in a complex society, get a real job, follow my advice, very real, who’s to say they’re not right?, the middle road, Lucian chose complete dedication art, bending like a reed in the wind, no goals, getting you killed, going along with the current, part of the problem for individuals, living in a society with mass hysteria, why do we have to have that war on another continent, an alliance treaty with France and Russia, white chicken feathers, the current thing, almost a statement, Trevor Towers, Celephais?, sleepwalks off a cliff, a triumph but only from his point of view, capitalism’s threat: knuckle under or become homeless, peruse artistic endeavors, Machen survived where Lucian didn’t, another way he could have gone, this is what could have happened to me, idealistic, circumstances were slightly different, early 2000, Richard K. Morgan, conflict investment, Market Forces, caught up in Netflix deals, ultimately the opposite of the Stephen King/Lovecraft route, success can be something that can hurt you as well, The Bowmen, jotted off in five minutes, the Ghost of Kyiv, the Angel Of The Mons, attestations, Bryan Alexander, Colonel Tomb laughs at this from his grave, just has to be true stories, Vietnamese fighter pilot, Colonel Toon, WWII, Panfilov’s 28 Men (2016), War Thunder, how dare you say that, it’s important!, bullshit made of wholecloth, the rolling thunder of this truth being needed, if Machen had any kind of cultural impact, debunking it, it’s true that it would be good for morale, Rape Of Belgium, these brave Belgian boys, we need them to be hard done by, raped by the pre-Nazis, ginning up anger, encouraging recruitment, a fundamental lie at base, there’s a veil between reality and how we see reality, the veil is real, willful blinders, the noble lie, telling truths, from genuine situations, confabulating slightly, Philip K. Dick’s characters are autobiographical, Horselover Fat, A Scanner Darkly, putting himself on the list, sometimes we slip through, a very odd book, John Steinbeck, East Of Eden, magnum opus, frustrating and meandering, not page turners, ethereal feeling, the veil between reality, The White People, The Great God Pan, monologue about what is reality, investing the time and energy, it feels pretty long, Charles Dickens is very engaging, floating down a river, Machen loves his descriptions of nature, at the fort on the hill, descriptions of the trees and nature, crafted, did this actually happen to Machen as a boy?, ecstatic experience, on drugs, what makes you go back there, how small you are, connection, he tried it with a novel, alcohol, the invention of gin, counter-reaction, massive social impacts, China’s reaction to computer games, a three hour limit, internet games, solo game disconnected from the internet, single player games now require an internet connection, Civilization 2, Roblox, Minecraft, set in its period (late 19th century), love of literature and great texts, 18th century authors knew what was going on, Kublai Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, La Belle Dame Sans Merci by John Keats, knight vs. wight, Tolkien leftovers, because it’s archaic, a horny young man and an idealized woman, a femme fatale story, it destroys him, dissociates, his ideal woman, Annie as a person, as a part of his imagination, the Roman fort, being a Roman senator, the Roman temples of D.C., we are just as great (corrupt) as they were, a false reality, I’m wearing a business suit, folk horror, how women are depicted in folk horror, pagan motifs, witchcraft, blindsided, when Miss Gibbons died, a very fairy tale scene, he’s the wolf, Annie was a witch, unholy wedding, explicitly magical aspects, seduction, the magic is in the men, brain chemicals, the shapely waist, her skin, the Platonic ideal, in the air in the period, Mr. Skelmersdale In Fairyland by H.G. Wells, I’m ruined now, transformed him, it isn’t played for laughs, The New Accelerator, The Invisible Man, comic possibilities everywhere, bittersweet, a triumph as a tragedy, a silk purse of a sow’s ear, lemonade from lemons, the slippery idea of the ideal world or woman, when we read Lovecraft that’s the absent part, Edgar Allan Poe, the ideal woman is the dead woman, she can never be limited by reality (growing old, not being smart enough, fighting), the Baudelaire way, beautiful cruelty, life is cruel, damaged people managing their trauma (in ways other than alcohol), a moment later, joy and happiness, drunk on love, bronze hair, come for a walk with me, a statue, very Greek, his visions, there was death in the woman’s face, she had indeed, the brink of utter desolation, a sex scene too, the carpet matches the drapes, a very sexual novel for a guy who’s so chaste, he falls asleep on the hill, none of them are real and all of them are, is this kid mentally ill?, the end of Dagon, he’s seeing the thing he’s fearful of in himself and not recognizing it, a troubled kid, maybe it’s like he has down syndrome or he’s autistic, kindness, the world is retarded and not him, he’s so extreme in his uncompromisingness, expressed as greatness, isolation, pushes him to the brink, again he was astray in the mist, splendid as Rome, terrible as Babylon, the place of eternal gloom, ring within ring, circle within circle, high writing, the sanctuary of the infernal right, wresting, muscles that could throw down mountains, a flaring street, naphtha fires, pure poetry, dusky figures, a noise like a chant of the lost, orgy, bronze hair, a gulf of darkness, all symbolism, precious robes, the room!, a vapour of the grave, horrible caresses, the matted thicket, the desire rose up like a black smoke, amazing, she lures him, he forces himself upon her, she turns into a very bad trip, exaltation to pain and torture, the elm tree was riven, Lucian is a good name, the tumult and the shock came as a sudden murmur, he overdosed, is he chasing the dragon?, are all of these dreams on the hill?, his dependence on tobacco, a symbol for a later addiction, walking to get rid of his energy, thick black tobacco to cloud his mind, he chases her across a landscape that is not a city, a difficult triumph, no one else is wealthier for it, a vast silence overwhelmed him, Ex Oblivione, dissolving into the Realm of the Forms, a temporary escape from reincarnation, The Novel Of The White Powder, going to seed or dissolution, a continuous issue, Lovecraft was a teetotaler, the other way you can go, morphine?, The Green Meadow, ecstatic states, walking to exhaustion, a difficult topic, there’s truth everywhere in it, sloppy racism, the primitives being in touch with sensations and sense, barbarian hating civilization, Robert E. Howard, nine times, barbarians, pleasantly, prigs perfected, joyous manly young fellows, raped?, devious backstreets, the respectable inhabitants are barbarians, The Lost Club, a Weird Tales reprint, The Lost Room by Fitz James O’Brien, places that go missing, The Music Of Erich Zann, The Lost Street [by ], a strange experience, experiencing weirdness, N, a more definite divide between fantasy and reality, a magical world intruding upon London, The Wonderful Window by Lord Dunsany, does he go through it?, Golden Dragon City, Game Of Thrones, the only guy with HBO in 1902, Dunsany had it much easier, a crazy man confronts Dunsany in a restaurant, I just make them up you see, the story that is described is one Dunsany wrote, as extreme as Dunsany gets, not quite on the level of Guy de Maupassant, rigid principles, flowery words and a suit, a lifestyle that could so endanger them, is N unfinished?, a warning story, prurient interest in seeing how far one can descend, reality TV shows, I’m not that depraved, morbid curiosity, not edifying curiosity, The Cosy Room And Others, Hippocampus Press, The Ancient Track: The Complete Poetical Works of H. P. Lovecraft, nothing of Lovecraft is copyrighted, you don’t know how many letters he wrote where he put a poem in for a newborn baby’s birthday, so nested and so rich with vocabulary, a werewolf story, Psychopompos, exhausting a sonnet, more time invested in reading Clark Ashton Smith is a good thing, if this is Machen’s worst I want to read more, difficult, The Shining Pyramid, tiny details that fly by, The Unknown World, May 15 – June 15, 1895, Robert E. Howard wrote way more than H.P. Lovecraft did, the vastness of his other work, popular for his supernatural stories, Robert W. Chambers flips a switch, the opposite of what Lucian does, The Secret Glory, The Three Impostors, a fix-up, chasin a dragon out of the window, spent it all on insane asylums, The Horla, Maupassant rented a hot air balloon to promote a book, before airplanes, The Troop by Nick Cutter, trained up and fought a poet to promote his book, Uwe Boll, Ed Wood, completely talentless, maybe he just got past it, self-awareness is a stumbling block, Ed Wood (1994), found family, he has an eye and no talent, as innocent as a war veteran could be, a go getter, $5, Golan Globus Theatre podcast, the Tijuana Bible, historical records we need to have preserved, what Julian needed (was printed pornography), Conquering Goddess, it needs to be fully illustrated, BDSM, Robert E. Howard, nudy pulps before Playboy, the first Playboy with Marilyn Monroe, weird repression, Penthouse, happening but hidden away, human nature never changes, more evidence that this is how we have always been, embarrassing, left out in the woods, pre-WWII, this is somebody’s great grandma, challenged one of his critics to a boxing match, if he won the boxing match, you won the fight therefore, dueling, humour was our way of escaping bullies, laughter is disarming, intellectual overpowering, more than halfway through (life), a very thinly veiled autobiography, drawing on his own experience, a lot of philosophy, writerly philosophy, more about writing than it is about mysticism, why Maupassant wrote weird fiction, Maupassant’s career, A Piece Of String, A Ball Of Fat, a Star Trek episode [The Galileo Seven], hypocrisy, my servants are stealing from me, I am my servant, these terrible experiences he must relate, very healthily not on Twitter, No Man’s Land by John Buchan, Esteban Maroto, Australian youtube audiobook narrator, Steve Parker audiobooks, simple guy: likes audiobooks, iPads, Randall’s Round, you should always record, The Wind In The Portico, The Temple Of Death by A.C. Benson, 23 temples, spread out the Buchan, doing the same authors but not back to back, The Horror Horn by E.F. Benson, a yeti story in Switzerland, The Inn by Guy De Maupassant, the horror of being alone, afraid of a lot of stuff, The Terror, Who Knows?, the little shop dwarf, his homunculus, “oh monsieur, all your furniture is gone”, this is alarming, the furniture is the faculties of his mind, all metaphorical, symbolist, a good discussion of a complex book.

The Hill Of Dreams by Arthur Machen

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #660 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Bartleby, The Scrivener by Herman Melville

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #660 – Bartleby, The Scrivener by Herman Melville; read by Bob Neufeld

This unabridged reading of the story (1 hour 53 minutes) is followed by a discussion of it.

Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Evan Lampe, Marissa VU, and Will Emmmons

Talked about on today’s show:
A Story Of Wall Street, Putnam’s Monthly, November and December 1853, college and high school, fucking great, so funny, very humorous, no joke, Seinfeld style, sad and existential, struggles with depression, is Bartleby depressed?, what was Melville trying to say, different ways of reading, a moment of silence for all the poor kids in school, 4 minute explainers on youtube, hard to classify, a weird tale like you would get in Weird Tales, cadaverous, Fitz-James O’Brien, Franz Kafka, kafkaesque, William Wilson by Edgar Allan Poe, its a piece of science fiction, Bartleby is an android, Star Trek’s Data, radioactive suitcase, the ghost story angle, the most important way of reading it, its all about the lawyer, the other clerks, Ginger Nut, John Jacob Astor, I prefer not to pay, other people are inscrutable, master of chancery, work ethic, real estate law, Turkey is drunk by noon, Nippers, low wages, allowed to listen to music, ginger cakes, useless in the afternoons, Nippers is a criminal, capitalism, before the clock took over, working on Saturday, time and motion studies, a copyist pretending to be an attorney, the Roman patron system, seedy coats, great language, McTeague by Frank Norris, practicing dentistry without a license, The Confidence-Man by Herman Melville, a lot to glean, I am a rather elderly man, writing for an audience, other biographies, the law copyists, physical xerox machines, monk work, reading aloud, take student texts with punctuation, perfection in sentences, a creative work vs. copying from one document to another, divers histories, other law copyists, an irreparable loss to literature, the original sources aka him, the second part of the serialization of the story, this kind of artifact, serialized over two months, Bartleby’s previous career, most lawyers want to be writers, imprimus, the easiest way of life is the best, unambitious lawyers, a snug retreat, a snug business among rich men’s bonds, keeping track of rich people’s money, an eminently safe man, a nice pun, the late John Jacob Astor, all the negatives, prudence, method, not unemployed in my profession, a rounded and orbicular sound to into it, rings like unto bullion, complimenting himself, John Jacob Astor the first, how old this story is, the story is set way earlier, an interesting pacific connection, trans-continental, 1848, Astoria, the incensed landlord, a metaphor for the United States, fugitive visits, Bartleby like an Indian who refuses to leave to go to the reservation, named after an act of enclosure, walls, the dead letter office metaphor, Touched By An Angel, a Christian show, the science fiction equivalent is Quantum Leap, The A-Team, solving problems with guns, the Hallmark Channel, Christian niceness, Signed, Sealed, Delivered, Dear John I miss you, items, your job is to open up the letter, any objects in the mail, a ring or money or tires is then auctioned off, unrequited letters, instead of reading and deleting letters you copy letters, reading the contents, contracts between billionaires, what debt is owned to whom, reading Bartleby as a dead letter, he has no place to go, there is no dead letter office for humans, taken to the prison, the grub man, he’s a person not a letter, the focus on Bartleby as the main character is not as interesting, he’s the one with the problem: Bartleby, he’s a weird employer because he cares about his employees a lot, fighting the system, stalkers, roses and letter, not leaving someone alone and being outside their place, playing with social norms, interest becomes stalker, no women in this story, Ginger Nut as a woman, Bartleby (2001), a zombie apocalypse done through sound, Pontypool (2008), Pontypool Changes Everything by Tony Burgess, when you hear certain words on the television, earworms, things are going to change, a bit of visual or auditory information can change the world, what makes it existential, he’ll just stand there, won’t do anything, embarrassment, amazingly passive, as a strategy of work resistance, Office Space (1999), most employers, The Last Article by Harry Turtledove, he tolerates him vs. he escapes, rather move himself than move Bartleby, prefer, the way his hands are, behind the screen, so handy to me, I had in hand, my right hand sideways, nervously extended, in this very attitude did I sit, imagine my surprise, rallying my stunned faculties, prefer not to?, are you moonstruck?, Žižek, backwards grammar, ending with a preposition, plaster of paris Cicero, this is very strange, had his face been any different he would have fired him, what do you think about what this guy’s doing?, our narrator is allowing this to happen, ah Bartleby, ah humanity!, Bartleby is in such a horrible position, this is our situation, the main character wants to be fired, this guy’s got spunk!, I’m going to need you to go ahead and…, upper management hears you’re an up and comer, the other authority figures in the story, King Of The Hill, Dale Gribble likes firing people, maybe Evan understands American history, the institutions aren’t there, SWAT the employees, dump the vagrants, when the cops hung up on Jesse, wrote a stern email to the chief constable, the busybody was just making trouble, a local crime gang, not SWATing people as much, the normal response is to give up, if you invent the post office, some items are undeliverables, setting up policies, an Indian with no band, mentally ill but not causing a disturbance, just not going home, he has no home, you can’t do that with people, what makes our unnamed lawyer protagonist so strange is that he cares about Bartleby, we put ourselves into capitalism, feeling spicy at work, ginger is a hot spice, he whom it would relieve, charity, pallid hopelessness, continually handling these dead letters, the finger it was meant for moulders in the grave, hope for those who died un-hoping, these letters speed to death, hopelessness and misfortune, one of Melville’s kids killed himself with a gun at home, Melville worked at the customs house, what we know of Melville’s going to sea, he needs to get to sea because the land is not for him, Typee, malingering or mutiny or deserting, Evan’s YouTube video: Herman Melville Wants You To Quit Your Job, Mardi, failing to find paradise, screw all this, Whitejacket, Redburn, Moby-Dick, bored from his normal life, disappearing from the novel, just there to tell the story, what are you doing here, sitting on the banister, the cause of great tribulation, a clerkship in a drygoods store, too much confinement, a bartender’s business, Nippers is always adjusting his work table, Joe Piscopo, no standing desk like Rumsfeld, trying time trying to entertain, I like to be stationary (stationery), I am bound to quit the premises myself, not wholly indulged before, go home with his boss, like a force of nature, he’s like a letter that’s a human, he can’t say where he needs to go, Melville’s first attempt to write a short story, I prefer not to, the driving thesis of Paul’s professor, here we are, when Paul was young and callow, confronted by reality, I know I’m talented I know I have the goods, some time goes by people catch up to what he’s doing, why his story is being taught in school, appreciating it at as piece of art, The Willows by Algernon Blackwood, I Have Placed My Sickness Upon You by Karin Tidbeck, Frritt-Flacc aka The Ordeal Of Doctor Trifulgas aka Dr Trifulgas by Jules Verne, volcanic France, what the fuck is this?, there’s a document involved, it means something, The Lost Room by Fitz-James O’Brien, about our mental condition, metaness, what does Wall Street have to do with it?, balancing out his other employees, its wrong to read it from its wrong, it must happen daily, he’s his own doctor and he’s having a heart-attack, have we exhausted Bartleby?, religious stuff, the lawyer is a messed up guy, this uncanny guy, he stopped working because his eyesight was bad, this earworm of I prefer not to, they’re making fun of him, they’re making fun of the lawyer, they’re bullying him, the drunk is funny, their solidarity is with their boss, false solidarity, the boss’ neuroses, in the Tombs, I know who you are, I know what this place is, Bartleby gets it, the antagonist, not a good place, the military angle, he’s been drafted into the army, we’d like you to go shoot that man, he’s seen the Lovecraftian document, the horror behind the veil, being like a cadaver, weird trick, Ginger Nut, Bartleby only eats ginger nut and cheese, he’s called to go get them, Coffee Boy, why is Turkey called Turkey?, dies of starvation, Nippers is the eating of food, the religious aspect, moral suasion, act like a Christian, charity, governed by paternalism, as resistance strategy, the reform era, 1830s-1840s, the Second Great Awakening, reforming American sins, perfecting American society, the anti-flogging campaign, vagrancy, part of the that culture, are your eyes recovered?, in word will you do anything at all?, behind a blind, the tragedy of the unfortunate Adams the unfortunate Colt, his fatal act, had that altercation taken place in the public street, doubtless of dusty haggard of appearance, a murder, A kills C, Bartleby (B), I grappled him and threw him, recalling the divine inter-junction, ye love one another, a great safeguard to its possessor, a murder for charity’s sake, drowning my exasperated feelings, benevolently construing his conduct, he has seen hard times and ought to be indulged, charity is the answer, if I focus on charity I won’t kill him, a servant to John Jacob Astor, Upstairs, Downstairs , Highclere Castle, servants and rich people in a period setting, Downton Abbey, know her place, they need to know their place, but there’s dignity in working for good people above us, in doing our jobs well we become elevated, you know its fucking evil, she’s lying to herself, ground up by the music hall industry, wenching, seeing the household from both POVs, the head butler, a lot like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, we are meant to be outraged by it, I feel unplaced in the world, I feel unmoored, Bartleby is moored, the judgement of history, Edgar Allan Poe’s life, “no, no, no, guys, I’m great”, we don’t have infinite time, made to punish children, a deflection, another form of property ownership, northern firms involved in slavery, what this person’s business is, he’s not an abolitionist, when the suing comes, they’re not copying out literature or love poetry, their literal job is photocopier, why he likes copying at first, gaining information, read back what you’ve already written, as a re-reader, checking someone else’s work, One Hour Photo (2002), a kind of stalker, so late in the lifecycle of the film camera, taking your work to seriously, too solitary in your work, what were you thinking when the lawyer finds the door locked, I’m not ready yet, what was he doing in there?, in public records, pretending he’s a music producer, this is an impropriety on his part, is our lawyer married?, I’m bringing a strange Bartleby home, the first moment of aggression, he’s not aggressive at all, he’s very ethereal, maybe he’s playing VR or something, Bliss (2021), Paul got baited and switched, Owen Wilson as Bartleby, Crispin Glover, David Paymer, Glen Headley, Maury Chaykin, there’s no audience for this really good movie, made for schools, some menace there, Dickensian, Dickens isn’t philosophical enough for this, the names, the sense of humour, very much like a weird tale, the uncanny, The Paradise Of Bachelors And the Tartarus Of Maids, pale women in a paper factory, put together a new issue of Weird Tales just out of Herman Melville stories.

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #593 – READALONG: Omnilingual by H. Beam Piper

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #593 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Will Emmons, and Trish E. Matson talk about Omnilingual by H. Beam Piper

Talked about on today’s show:
a fairly big H. Beam Piper fan, Alec Nevela-Lee’s Astounding, James Blish, M.C. Pease, what stature does and did it have, “a classic”, pretty interesting, almost completely public domain, he shot himself in the head 1964, project gutenberg, LibriVox, an artificial understanding of Piper’s popularity, outsized, Little Fuzzy, Asimov, a minor piece?, what is a classic?, deserving of respect, the progressive elements, a female scientist without a romance subplot, a mixed nationality crew, Turko-German, exploring history, a really cool aspect, a character arc, Salim Von Ohmhorst, an old Hittite expert, a lot to get interested in, huge for a no-name, best understood as a cult author, a place in the cannon, Murder In The Gunroom, his obsession, smoking, such little hands, oiling the gun, smoking while handling artifacts, Mack Reynolds, John Scalzi’s rewriting of Little Fuzzy, a re-imagining, a reboot, short stories don’t sell, a nice tight focus, the perfect length, an example of why Astounding isn’t total shit, c’mon man, telepathy can’t travel in time?, he was a speculator, what he purchased was what he was arguing for, a story about science, archaeology, linguistics, how we got Linear-B, how we got Egyptian hieroglyphics, we all share the same atomics, reading Martian, on the level of Tolkien, a hard SF masterpiece about social science, hard soft SF, The Riddle Of The Labyrinth by Margalit Fox, Arthur Evans, Philip K. Dick, poor Will, web 1.0, there was good stuff on the internet before YouTube, the young whippersnappers of this world, the amazing thing it was to be able to talk to a person who knew a ton of shit pre-internet, people who read a lot of books, Wilhelm II, Albert Speer, this is what H. Beam Piper is, infodumps about history and technology, James Burke (the guy from Connections) super-useful, they read a book a long time ago, what if the Martians came to the planet Earth, the caption: Man chopping wood, only had one good arm, a long line of Kaisers, in exiles because of Nazis, mustache, queen, they just discovered the Martian internet and they can’t figure out how to type in queries, what this story is really about, this story is about Jesse, why things are happening the way they are, the Martians don’t have to deal with copyright problems, the audio drama, a metallurgy magazine or a sexy stories magazine, Spicy Adventure Stories, Spicy Mystery, what the dash between Spicy and Adventure, separate units, what does it linguistically mean, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, another meaning of mysteries, mysteries as marvels, Fantastic Novels, what does the word novels, they were a new thing 500 years ago, essay writing, an essay is an attempt, a try, trying to communicate a series of thoughts, do or do not there is no try, a patron, maybe incestuous, thank you to Connor, studying German, Der Orchideengarten, translating German poetry into English poetry, a dream project, I’m in it for the politics, I wanna be famous, this is what I am now, I’m a Weinbaum guy, I’m a martian metallurgy guy, finding meaning in discovery, the Indus civilization people, what bridge?, Lord Kalvan Of Otherwhen, his hobbies, he was a nightwatchman, the metathings, a self-taught guy, his grasp on academia, bickering rivalries, unlike his editor (John W. Campbell), the court case in Little Fuzzy, a fun book, some grammatically questionable choices, a very action oriented writer, a dynamic approach to his prose writing, assembling the micro jigsaw puzzle, very scanny, why you need to scan, the paper just falls apart, chipping, replacing letters, we don’t know what the actual word was, I did what I always wanted to do as a kid, they’re scanners, someday someone will figure out what it means, hundreds of thousands of pages, a treasure that we all need to have access to, denying someone access to the internet is a crime, for scholars of every kind, we need to preserve that information, all these space-marines on Mars, the post war buildup, one of those guys left in Europe in 1946, the recovery, if you look at the art, on page 24, a second pass through, a Martian life-form, a mammal, a bird-like creature, a bigger project than just the people we’re seeing, mobilizing the armies of Earth, Asimov or Heinlein or Anderson, Paratime, Man came from Mars, sitting at the keystone, Philip Jose Farmer, the obsession with linguistics, the everyman who read a bunch of books, Two Hawks From Earth, a Europe dominated by American Indian cultures, simpatico qualities, a better craftsman, Farmer had a longer career, repackaging pulp heroes, if its cutesy and fun and interesting (and anthropological), Star Trek’s Measure Of A Man, Jerry Was A Man, the hyperchicken lawyer from Futurama, a simple hyperchicken lawyer, a backwoods asteroid, Clarence Darrow but a chicken, Picard is not a science fiction TV show, Futurama, CHUDS, exploring all the tropes of science fiction, Buck Rogers, the whole premise is a ripoff, Buck Rogers, Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy, Disenchanted, one of the few Netflix shows that’s good, how language shifts in the story, a very lyrical passage, the purple tinged copper sky, what had been burying the city for the last fifty-thousand years, a couple of repeated descriptions, made immediate and very present, Farmer was more fanboy than craftsman, supporting a family, more stable, there’s a lot of stuff in this story, did they add a scene?, why does it stand out more in the audio drama, hear the shock and amazement, more distant in the text, the Atlanta Radio Theatre Company, some Heinlein, a 2009 recording, a reporter’s dispatches, Babylon 5, xenoarchaeology, recounting how these discoveries happened, they didn’t loose their meaning, meaning doesn’t evaporate, how could this exist?, a whole world opens up, that unlocking, all the Roman novels, The Golden Ass, a Roman villa near Pompeii, a charcoal-like, smouldered rather than combusted, pieced together from charcoal, a bundle of carbonized scroll, recycled as firelighters, a nice clean flame, burning Roman literature, Harry Turtledove, overawe the locals, Agora (2009), Hypatia of Alexandria, it looks like a blockbuster style, the strongly religious, a touchy figure, witchburnings before witchburnings, a surveyor in the background, a symbol, scientific symbols, the guy in the turban, symbolic of what is coming, her heads, her pencil, when the archaeologist are called in real life, bulldozing shit, some law, why they’re there, that’s all coming, the interior illustrations by Frank Kelly Freas, the scan on Project Gutenberg, in its pulpy glory, our heroine needs oxygen, worries about it being about Martians, a Martian version of Astounding, not fiction because it had science in the title, Analog, digital sounds more futuristic, that metaphor, a big joke, the nature of the paragraphs, making fun of John W. Campbell’s editorials on twitter, a thread, just thinking it through, fill those pages up, Lester del Rey was bad at it, being a weekly columnist, essay writing, what word count is, why is this paragraph suddenly changing, it turned out to be about metallurgy, predecessor and antecedent, Arthur C. Clarke’s The Star, the kids these don’t read Clarke, a Jesuit on a spaceship, a radioactive beacon, something terrible, it’s shaken my faith to its core, the supernova that was the star of Bethlehem, Jesse feels like a super-genius, Mark VI, the best episode of The Next Generation: The Inner Light, the meaning is there to be discovered, be enriched, it’s about treasure, don’t you want to share my treasure?, don’t lock it down Gollum, Rendezvous With Rama, Jack McDevitt, L.E. Modesitt, 250 degrees below zero, The Sentinel, not the greatest way, modern archaeological adjacent, Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s Diving Into The Wreck, Babylon 5 comic book that’s in canon, web 1.0, The Lurker’s Guide To Babylon 5, DC comics, Garabaldi, new Star Trek, Star Wars, no Mara Jade, the Timothy Zahn Thrawn books, working for Thrawn in Tie Fighter, all going over Will’s head, Dan Simmons’ Hyperion, again backwards, Nightfall by Isaac Asimov, suffering cycles, every 1400 years, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s The Mote In God’s Eye, why archaeology is important, what’s the history of what we did, what did mom do?, mom put all my comic books in the basement!, the science fiction tropes, imperialist literature, imperialist fantasy literature, King Solomon’s Mines, She is kind of about archaeology, the same burning, finding what was and coming back with it, baked in from the beginning, weird archaeology, conspiracy Qanon stuff for archaeological stuff, clearly this was cut with a circular saw, were pretty sure this is batteries in ancient Babylon, electroplating?, did they do that? Antikythera mechanism, Archimedes’ death ray, Hephaestus, a mechanical owl, only the records, Archimedes’ screw, Greek fire, one way to interest boys: teach them nuclear bombs, your biggest is getting a whole lot of Uranium, that knowledge is available to everybody, nobody writes it down, In Our Time: The Tale Of Sinuhe, Lovecraft wrote more than we have, Evan Lampe, Some Notes On Fairyland, if we had more we would have more, newspapers are designed to be ephemeral, were lucky to have anything, enslave and poison, native labourers, the soldiers are the cheap labour, very mixy, worried about ghosts, a couple of lines, it feels kind of eerie, The Scarlet Plague by Jack London, his grandkids, we sheltered in the university for a while, ravishing the grounds, trying to hold back the horror, don’t let the infected come in, The Mask Of The Red Death, the mystery of what killed the Martians, like Barsoom, the story isn’t really about the death of the Martians, the potential of all those books, is it a reflection of what’s going to happen to us, a robust and powerful society because we have magazine, have you seen Time magazine lately?, oh good, what’s cool about Star Trek…, its about the process of understanding another language, that’s all that it’s really about, it isn’t a metaphor, it isn’t a simile, its about the process, its about the progress, if you have the records, finding the meaning, the value of coming at things from different perspectives, Gloria Standish, they’re kind of like us, a linguist by inclination, the periodic table in the classroom, even moreso than the mural, SETI, the Ted Chiang story, the Voyager prob, Arrival (2016), Story Of Your Life, we should practice on sea mammals, symbolical thoughts, listening to the whales, they riff off of each other, Olaf Stapledon’s A World Of Sound, Peter And The Wolf, each character has a theme, he falls asleep, like in Francis Stevens’ The Elf Trap, Fitz James O’Brien’s The Diamond Lens, Pygmalion’s Spectacles by Stanley G. Weinbaum, spend more time in the water, with the dolphins, hula-hoop oriented, Alex the african grey parrot, “What matter?”, there’s no culture there, communicating with your dog, walkies?, why are you always doing that with your foot?, we don’t have it, we need to find a way to be dolphins, Wild Seed by Octavia Butler, metaphorical grammar, we could talk to animals, we’ll see, talking to vs. talking with, the purest joy, he’s got stuff to say, emotions he wants to communicate, this dumb creature, much more isolated, an orangutan at the zoo washing her hands, there’s gotta be something between them, thrushes singing so much, whales are singing love songs to each other, something to do cuz you got no hands, dogs only have the one hand, it’s the mouths, we have three mouths, only one of them is for eating, we’re fucking aliens to dogs, we’re the long lived elves to the dogs short lived humans, theyre controling us, we’re definitely the bad guys in their scenarios, Lawrence M. Schoen’s Barsk, uplift, Zecharia Sitchin, they taught us so much, the ancient astronauts stuff, it makes cultural sense, Christianity by other means, look at the records, we have these artificats, The Faithful by Lester del Rey, a breaky in halfy story, David Brin, he did it all in nine pages, give the nuclear codes to the dogs and cats, if you tame something you’re responsible for it, The Little Prince, LibriVox, the ancient aliens need to give us UBI, a very fruitful book, a female protagonist, lotsa girls, they’re not women, give it a break, we don’t call eachother men, whatever dude, smoking cigarettes, things that should be scolded.

Omnilingual from Astounding, February 1957

Omnilingual from Astounding, February 1957

Omnilingual from Astounding, February 1957

Omnilingual from Astounding, February 1957

Omnilingual from Astounding, February 1957

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