The SFFaudio Podcast #812 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Soul Of Man Under Socialism by Oscar Wilde

The SFFaudio Podcast #812 – The Soul Of Man Under Socialism by Oscar Wilde – read for LibriVox by Martin Geeson. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the essay (2 hours) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Evan Lampe, Will Emmons, and Terence Blake.

Talked about on today’s show:
the individual, therefore maimed, Martin Geeson, productions up on audible.com, some public property I can privatize, hundreds of contributions to LibriVox, almost all of it is poetry, about art, how to flourish with your soul, why Jesse likes Oscar Wilde so much, amused, a student for an hour, grammar, a deck of cards, images of various objects, leaves and bowls and roses, write a story in seven minutes using six sentences, a really good story, a king, a comb, and a snake, a lot of merit, “IT WOULDN’T WORK BECAUSE…”, a blind king who needed a wife, some tasty food, a mystery, there’s beauty there, Circe, Medusa, the missing card, works in many ways, no intended audience, central to the essay, problems as an ideology, that’s what he’s like, Oscar Wilde is also a fairy tale writers, an essay by Lovecraft’s wife, Commercialism: The Curse Of Art by Sonia Greene, she has the write idea, a case for socialism, the duty of society to liberate the audience, the audience for art, what the audience for a theater’s responsibility is, if the works of Shakespeare were presented as if new, Macbeth, counterarguments, long and rambling and strange, appreciated it, lasting impact, a good intervention, historically useful, by Wilde’s own metric, whether a work of art is useful or not, stories are incredibly central to human beings, society has a huge duty to the artist, he bends the stick too far, messaging the Che Guevara wikipedia page, Bill Maher, annoys in the right way, man can subsist under moral incentives alone, the new man, typical revolutionary, work 36 hours a day, student protests, what they’re protesting about, grieving, girl claims to be stabbed in the eye, shirt that says “Jew” on it, Che Guevara wasn’t, keffiyeh, huffington post, full of slurs, start drilling down, good or not, to tell a story that supports his point of view, we’re not socialists in America, a tenant that was talking to his landlord, the messaging has gotten through, we don’t live under socialism, everything is upside down, an interesting guy to read, in the context of a rich country, imperialist value chains that make British wealth possible, make a transition to socialism, socialist state builders in the 20th century, an immediate end to poverty, if we end poverty, through new machines, the William Morris book, News From Nowhere, a much more compelling story, whether essays can be artforms, designed to convince, an attempt, a try, not be prosecuted for your art, British vs. the French, a control of language on the cellular level, News From Nowhere is not plausible at all, how we got there, a pretty nice way, women do fabric art, men make wallpaper, an essay, his only political work, story is how people adopt, asked to teach essays, only the most insufferable people, the slandering of Che Guevara, A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift, undermines bad argument, functions like a story, within it are stories, best fricasseed or make a nice ragout, a series of plateaus, organized with a theme, crime and punishment, motivated by pleasure vs. pain, clusters of ideas, very Žižek in that sense, new paradigm, you can’t argue, counter-intuitive leaps, Terence spoke beautifully, agree entirely, very aspirational, quite beautiful, influenced nerdy graduate student Evan, do history, do podcasts, write it my own way, very juvenile about that attitude, the media, not just accepting the media’s interpretation about what art is, solipsistic, films and series, dumbing down, making everything consensual, why does popular art have to be bad, a democracy of individuals, ignorant schoolmaster argument, he’s in a knot, if this was the only thing we knew about Oscar Wilde, compare it to what happened to him, success and punishment, being publicly gay, physical punishment, a powerful lord, sent into prison, H.G. Wells, doesn’t get a sir, tried the wrong lady, royalty, it’s expected, previous conspiracy, a pretext for sending to prison, non-straight sex, Bill Clinton, he didn’t get punished for his art, lightfootedness, the Popes, the power of kings, a king with artistic sentiment, Voltaire, the curse of the public and their interest through journalism, successful, pandering to an audience, A Picture Of Dorian G[r]ay, a gap between, the abolition of property, the means of production, independent wealthy, a theme that’s in here, kind of, wealth and private property, Lord Byron, they’re not separate, he jumps around, you have to share your toothbrush, doesn’t really define it, the long section on how wealth is a burden to the wealthy, [Andrew] Carnegie’s gospel of wealth, that’s the legal system, entirely about private property, a warehouse is an amazing awesome technology, keep the rain out, books, pencil crayons/coloured pencils, keep your paper dry, personal property but not private, an apartment complex, no idea of transition from here to there, we got there somehow, this great possibility of free expression and individualism, he’s read [Peter] Kropotkin, crafts, automation, nobody should sweep, throw a fishnet into the water all day, quotas of fish, a serious problem with this essay, Will has intellectually warped himself through Marxism, the media does this says this, for what reason, what class do they represent?, the public’s ideas bad?, during the French Revolution, tear down the Bastille, all answered, this is not acceptable, a previous story which controls them, if that story is bad, suspicious of human nature, people progress, people change, how fucked up it was, starving peasants fighting for feudalism, The Third Revolution by Murray Bookchin, bottom up democracy, monarchy, liberals, Jacobins, sections of Paris, met in monasteries and churches, 1792/3, suppressed during The Terror, bottom up faith, Maoist epistemology, communists don’t make history, the masses make history, Wilde finds the masses to be repugnant, their condition, the rebel is good in some way, the thief, those who don’t believe the ideology, resentment is something that makes you ugly, living in squalor and full of hate, accept the squalor, more sympathy for the thief, you should be rebelling, it is right to rebel, it is right to rebel against reactionaries, Chinese factory worker be careful, the western interpretation, who one the Cultural Revolution in the end, too soon to tell, the Lost Decade, vaccination rates, two distinct periods, different factions, boring history, the developmental stuff, chaos, more chaotic than, Wilde’s views about what one’s duty to society is, volunteering to do more work, the barefoot doctors, is that so bad?, extremely useful, artists should be allowed to flourish, what the purpose of artists is, that’s why he’s wrong, all art has a class basis, to paraphrase Mao, the innermost kingdom of the bourgeoisie, who is the audience, the artist is the audience, onanistic, oppression, why this is not a great piece, art or light under socialism, giving you the feel, exactly contemporary, Christology, fun, religious group of people, what makes us so religious, is Wilde speaking to an audience that is Christian, he loves Christianity’s beauty, Catholicism for the aesthetics, Lutheran, the liturgy, aesthetically, a cultural christian, a slap in the face with a fish, Jesus, currently accepted ideology, before the socialist experiments, non-authoritarian, before Freudian type, pain and pleasure, very Nietzschean, robot slaves,

“For it is through joy that the Individualism of the future will develop itself. Christ made no attempt to reconstruct society, and consequently the Individualism that he preached to man could be realised only through pain or in solitude. The ideals that we owe to Christ are the ideals of the man who abandons society entirely, or of the man who resists society absolutely. But man is naturally social. Even the Thebaid became peopled at last. And though the cenobite realises his personality, it is often an impoverished personality that he so realises. Upon the other hand, the terrible truth that pain is a mode through which man may realise himself exercises a wonderful fascination over the world. Shallow speakers and shallow thinkers in pulpits and on platforms often talk about the world’s worship of pleasure, and whine against it. But it is rarely in the world’s history that its ideal has been one of joy and beauty. The worship of pain has far more often dominated the world. Mediaevalism, with its saints and martyrs, its love of self-torture, its wild passion for wounding itself, its gashing with knives, and its whipping with rods – Mediaevalism is real Christianity, and the mediaeval Christ is the real Christ.”

on the road to get healed somewhere, conversations with wives of Bath, a reflection of what artists are doing, a symposium of art making, by one’s self, music, one guy with a saxophone on a mountain top, pretty strong, his heart is in the right place, he himself wants his efforts to count towards social reconstruction, the overman is Caesar with the soul of Christ, one of his passions, art, science, politics, manual labour, craft and crafty, fishing, a self-help manual done right, come together in groups, very individualistic, kinda Ayn Randian, against business, against private property, against class difference, everyone a poet, as capable as him, been lucky, everyone can become creativity, more artists, better art, Roger Ebert, frustrated reviewers, easier to be a critic, snobby, Zack Snyder probably says that, why does he bloody show his movies, show to [Denis] Villeneuve and no-one else, a guy recording in his bedroom, stack of DVDs, free passes, free stuff, free audiobooks (that used to be expensive), becoming twisted and wrong, journalism feeding into bad behavior, cultivating an audience in a theater, utube is very big, hate bait, how to breed chickens properly, in that openness, feeling free to not have a popular channel, more ability to share, sharing is something he’s not fully thought through enough, so focused on oppression, the soul of man is art, whatever a soul is, why socialism is important, free us from the oppression of the property relationship, actual physical repression, the relationship is the oppressive thing, the freedom to comment, the freedom to review, if you don’t have your own printing press and your own distribution you don’t have freedom, mimeograph machine, the internet today, hard to find, the system is gamed against it, how bad google is, there but unseeable, virtually free to do that distribution, drowned out, ai art, an imperfect essay, handwaves a lot of this, the first line, we’re individualists in socialism, not making a program to get there, we’ll be freer individuals under socialism, we need other people to get us there, libertarian socialism, charity is the problem, amusing the poor, the accelerationist argument, the homelessness problem, people trying to solve, you shouldn’t do charity, the majority of people spoil their lives, he comes for the charity people pretty hard, this essay has such a humour to it, slave owners being kind to their slaves, let this outrage happen so the revolution will occur, in his back pocket, a program here, not detailed, it’s not for the masses, bourgeoisie cease charity, charity as a virtue, he’s for sympathy, for human feeling, otherwise socialism is going to be set back, it is immoral, the institution of private property, a personal program, under socialism this problem will no longer exist, places to organize, do what you can, Jesse might actually be right, Jesse is always wrong, a half sentence, the people who do the most harm, the charity degrades and demoralized, “Charity creates a multitude of sins.”, a hard argument, on French TV, presidential elections 30 years ago, equal time on TV, the marginal groups are marginalized even further, a Trotskyist, we are plundered, stealing everything from us, a star dancer at the Crazy Horse, stage name, as close to nudity as you can get, discovered by the head of the Crazy Horse, made her the star that she is today, the Marxist, I’m against charity, running for president to bring about the revolution, something sordid about this poor person elevated to stardom, patriarchal manipulation, charity vs. sympathy, property is theft, stealing $2 in the morning, Spider-Man should bite everyone to give everyone radioactive powers, with great property comes great responsibility, the logic of superheros, superheores are trying to stop the revoltionaries, Doc Oc, always some guy who wants to change things, Superman never zaps the president with his eye, judges shall not be impugned, questions in congress, happened for TikTok right now, you cant be super without lots of subs, sub-supers, The X-Men, homo superior, sympathy for Magneto, The League Of Evil Mutants, the oppressed group, the oppressed group, the oppressed individual, no one will have to seek approval, what’ll make somebody an elite under socialism, harvest more wheat?, an asian Soviet with a pipe [Semyon Nomokonov] who notched the number of nazis he killed on his pipe, 9 children and 49 grandchildren, not allowed to have open factions struggles, a war hero, a different sort of examples, Robert Sully Sullivan, played by Tom Hanks, whuffie, the congressional medal of honor gives credit to living people, Ulysses S. Grant, all the previous guys were all WWII veterans, you can’t give that status, Bush I, you’ve fucked up, can you have an elite, people’s who’s paintings you like, sweeps really good, tending to defer, a different kind of culture, this guy’s teepees are the best teepees, this collective, multiple elites, the stupid utube model, unbeleivable popularity, lowest common denomenator, flaming gold Ferrari, attract most attention for revenue, focusing on repairing fans (the things that you make you cool), Jordan U, why does he have 17th phones in his house, paintings on the wall of the warehouse, people who show off their rare book collections, Will’s greatest sin, scanners live in vain, scanner printer combo, the printer industry is superevil, Brother, Martin Geeson doing what Oscar Wilde is saying, unfortunate that Jonathan Weichsel doesn’t like Martin Geeson’s voice, the way to be popular, distracted by the whole socialism thing, a lot of people don’t get it guys, usually advertized without, its right in the first sentence, judging a book by its cover, talking about oppression, censorship on a basic level, people who can’t use words that they want to use, humanreadable, at symbols and upside down 3s, how much more could he say before he is thrown in prison, if the mood was wrong in the country, they chopped off the head of their monarch, restored the monarchy, Oliver Cromwell, if it weren’t for the Irish, Lord Protector, all cavaliers, now, a true leveller, entry points for people to grok things, start with what materials you have, making things easy for people is difficult, Martin Geeson is choosing interesting books, great voice, soul of an artist, valances with Sirius by Olaf Stapledon, the conditions of the people in England, under some social programs?, bankrupting the empire!, sold everything to win that war, the dog with no hands, the soul of dogs under socialism?, similar philosophy, an individualist quality, thinking together, working together, a particular novelist, Meredith, who that guy, Charles Kingsley, an immoral novelist, George Meredith, forgotten, didn’t have any science fiction books, just read Scalzi, The Three Body Problem [by Liu Cixin], The Dark Forest, Damien G. Walter, boycotting the book, the shows, why you have to do homework for this podcast, this podcast has homework, his sinophobia is facile and dangerous, too positive a view of the Cultural Revolution?, bad for science, the traitor to humanity girl, she meets up years later with the three women who lead the criticism and physical action of killing her father, privileged, before they joined the Red Army, able to better themselves a little during the Cultural Revolution, more complex than his propaganda, so empty, goes on and on, 2 hour things by him, you have to go to your death knowing that, did and didn’t, John Vervaeke, we need a new mythos, trying to determine what is in canon, you can’t do that unless you’ve read a lot, more of a media guy, an article, a list of all the women authors of science fiction not usually talked about, working through the canon, Mildred Klingerman, Margaret St. Clair, Judith Merrill, a great tastemaker, seems all right, writes really interesting stuff, leaning on make sure you get your diversity quotient in there, Madagascar science fiction, the same perspective, you can live in Bali, more about American literature, women writers and black writers, percentage, James Baldwin, first queer writer, Herman Melville, obviously super gay, if the stick is wonky, a qualitative judgement, compensating, black writers and asian writers and women writers, because he’s funny, being obtuse on purpose, Evan’s colleagues, eurocentric, teaching cohort, early modern history, too lazy to learn this stuff, we can tell the history of the world through European eyes, teaching world history, not just white European men, not about seeking out a quotient, not being ignorant about the world, people look for excuses not to read, because its propaganda, we all have to winnow, a bunches novel series ever written, Discworld, stuff without depth, not everything is showworthy, Tales Of The Gold Monkey, Indiana Jones pre-wwwii nazis, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century in the South Pacific, an ex-flying tiger, set in 1939, it’s impossible, no active duty until 1942, a hot lady in a hot tub talking to a nazi dressed up as a priest who wants to have sex with a native named Tiki, skin colour, sounds cool, what they called lived experience, their mom and dad were nice to each other, hung up on the wrong things, they’re all books, nobody talks about those, people need excuses not to read, Fearless Benjamin Lay, can we get more diverse than a Quaker abolition vegetarian dwarf who made his own clothes and lived in a cave, bend the stick to far against the liberals, what’s the baby, official commitments to anti-racism, why do you have a police state, the Deep State replaced Richard M. Nixon, the origin of policing after reconstruction, slave catching patrols, police hitting teachers, the philosophy professor being dragged off, sad but hilarious, I can’t breathe, she’s doing a callback, making an analogy to another situation, political correctness way of protesting, arrested and died, knee on the neck, oh you’re all right, fluids to make him calm down sir, heart massage, CPR, if somebody looks dead, we notice he looked unconscious, Evan is missing out all these amazing, give you you shittiest take, twitter is not good for Evan, talking about Reconstruction, the freedman wanted to be slaves again, quite good at governing themselves, Wilde in conversation with Mao, the greatest socialist intellectual of all time, something Damien G. Walter needs to read, Ursual K. Le Guin has a dangerous philsophy, The Dispossessed, not a lot of amazing art happening on that moon, a position of scarcity, post-scarcity, maybe Cuba has great art, musicians, health care, scarcity, internal production is not as efficient, a very small country, is Le Guin doing the same thing to criticize our man Oscar Wilde?, could be in dialogue, libertarian socialist, more liberal than anything else, attitudes towards copyright, for overthrowing the government, people don’t pay attention to what she says, near the end of her life, given an award, speaking about capitalism, a poem quoted in full on BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow had to take it down, The Master by Ursula K. Le Guin, the passing of knowledge and the mastery of tech, how to learn the slipstick, copyright in China, the argument that is always thrown against China is they steal patents/copyrights/trademarks, a serious problem, there’s a long story about the Tetris game, an ideological opposition to censorship, copyright is a form of that, Mr. Shitlib King, breaking copyright, not in favour of censorship ever, socialist/communist society, what’s the difference?, a communist society vs. a socialist state, a good place to be, philosophy of mugs, a really nice mug, spouse, a cute mug, bad shape for a mug, mugs should be functional, spoons, mug with hole in the bottom, a mug, an indigenous mug, made in an anti-imperialist country, handwashing, a mug is a device for delivering liquids to your mug, a cute mug, hence the drips, take a photo of it then get rid of it, emotional sentimental value, not broken yet, Mao would call that liberalism, use it often and carelessly, you should not be upset when it breaks, point in the direction, deception is allowed, the right shape, efficient, homeless guy who masturbated in the public square, Diogenes, u need a lamp, some onions, Louis CK, stoics, in a mugshell, one mug, thank you for everything, thanks for all the mugs, What Mad Universe by Fredric Brown, a novel, Lawrence Block had a book come out, a writer that Block appreciated, a way of getting into that relationship, a halfway important science fiction writer, a writer’s writer, Mack Reynolds, not his great novels, the fuckin system, after 1963 fuck everybody, copyright for 7 years, so it can be useful to multiple people, works in translation, a holdover from the imperial period, he’s cute, he’s funny he’s smart, a science fiction novel about science fiction, another case for the Baroque Cycle, interesting, long, as a long as a story needs to be, sometimes things need to be longer, this essay didn’t need to be 2 hours, why do we have long books, the cost of a credit, subverted, not why Stephen King writes long books, what censorship, he would never be censored, self-censorship, he’s not following the market, he’s 7 and a half feet tall, he’s not Spud Webb, most people who write long books, unnecessary sex scene, fetch quests, Evan went wild, a popular podcast, Geek’s Guide To The Galaxy, side quests, find the G.E.C.K., representing the game, defending it, The Stand, awkwardly updated the setting, the tone, this is here to sell more paper, he’s living life under socialism, he’s rich, people who are wanting to be Stephen King, writing novels, 7 sentences in 7 minutes, they’re wrong, you have to fill a certain number of pages, you have to have a cover, self-identify as a writer, not a real person, a class of people who aspire, doing a disservice by trying to make shorter or longer, when TV shows are about an hour are not confined by a hard number, when not helpful to the story it shouldn’t be followed, longer is better, big fat fantasy novel, wanted to live in that would, what Paul would say, room to breathe, he goes by instinct, develop a philosophy, make an argument, give me an example Will/Paul, favourite really long book Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh, doorstop books, a person’s whole life, a big Russian novel, wheels within wheels, Dune by Frank Herbert, a lot of plot, long for the period, every sequel by other hands, an important density in there, it isn’t room to breathe, it’s long because it has a lot in it, the Baroque Cycle, characters, packed with ideas, denser, despite being that long, the origins of capitalism, money, the scientific revolution, abolitionism, Anathem, Player Of Games, people who love Culture, don’t need Dune Messiah, bring Duncan Idaho back, that’s stuff happening, the guy has no name, the servant has no name, the lady who it is about has no name, ideas can’t exist in characterization, apple show A Man In Full by Tom Wolfe, an idea in it, military SF is more about gun polishing, ideas are central, fully explored in a short amount of space, the writing quality is less important than the idea explanation, the density, how many books I could read in the time I am reading this book, like Evan with women, build up the body count, women are the opposite of ideas, the people who like Dune too much, being immersed in the world, gets your juices excited, he isn’t heavy on ideas, The Colorado Kid, Mike suggested we do The Flitcraft Parable, a scene in The Maltese Falcon, chapter 7, like a fist when you open your hand, when processing it to consider it, Eric S. Rabkin, a really solid book, 196 pages, didn’t need to by 700 pages, Sam Spade is having sex with Archer’s wife, he’s one of the suspects, mysteries are an interesting parallel to science fiction, exploring our reality, in his rambling short book about the Flitcraft Parable, the length is appropriate to the idea, From A Buick 8, complain about his endings, life just sort of goes on, sets up characters as dominoes, eucatastrophes, shinings, the house forgot about its own boiler, not servicing fans?, intimate relationship with his fans, hurried to finish the Dark Tower, an old woman writing him, shitlibbery caused by a desire to please his audience?, Joyce Carol Oates, not normal for people to be liberals in our society, fucking suffer, can’t have a house, can’t have a wife, people are suffering, his fans are not all boomers, an Xer, Marissa likes him, it doesn’t define him, a 70s vibe, he feels the need to be relevant, comes off awkwardly, the Bachman book that was in a drawer, counter-culture vibes, hippie commune vs. the nazis, so not relevant, this old black lady, just show up, talk to the fascists, eucatastrophe happens, they’re mean and short, they have an idea and the character dies, The Running Man, Roadwork, Rage, The Long Walk, weary, just life, this oppressive thing the state is doing to them, questioning the purpose of life and why we’re here, droppin’ dead, a metaphor for life, an oppresive state, about school, the military and conscription, Carrie is nice and short, The Dead Zone, Firestarter on the backburner, in the zeitgeist, boomerness, what does Joyce Carol Oates represent in the zeitgeist, irrelevant Princeton professor, middle age guy, Killdozer, Marvin Heemeyer, Stephen King when still drinking, Thinner, gypsy curse seems silly, experimental in the 90s, the idea idea idea thing, one series, very meta, not like Hunger Games, a fast reader vs. a slow reader, you have to be in the right headspace, The Alleyman by Philip Jose Farmer, COVID doesn’t help, two boosters once, don’t accept injections unless literally dying, flu vaccine, now is the time to do Jesse’s epistemology, he’s a skeptic, have a police incident happen to you, it’s about that for everything, Sextus Empiricus, sense impressions, what’s a heap, suspend judgement, a lot of baby words, retweet a lot of far right things, show me one, nothing, heterodox, Jackson Hinkle, 1776 revolution, liberating Canada, absurdity, already captured, no need to invade, shampoo, how many of the words on the ingredients list can you pronounce, syllables, sodium lauryl sulphate, if your shampoo has more than syllables your children will have autism, putting all this shit in u, why do people do this?, a little discourteous, we know how long people have been smoking, spike it, most people who smoke don’t get lung cancer, that’s the weird part, a Philip K. Dick story, body parts you need to replace, if you can’t pronounce it why are you getting it in your body, there’s a lot of things I can’t pronounce, cancer too, NaCl (sodium chloride), end up in a whole bunch of cults you don’t know you’re in, dem vs. republican a cult, tribal thing, partisanship, demented tribal leader vs. demented cult leader, more cult like, Biden is in control, obviously he is not in control, reading the parts he’s not supposed to read, just defer to better him than Trump, against team bad, you should be against things that are bad, some sort of use for some shampoo, how an average consumer can know, a silly test, properly fund an independent agency that can check, it’s been corrupted, we’re left with the label, the Food and Drug administration is corrupt, Plato, you have feet, you don’t have the document in front of you, the documents exist, evidence all around you, assume corruption is the default, moms abuse, that doesn’t get us anywhere, there’s a mom over there, she’s doing, the shampoo supply is not safe, the stuff injected into your body, you have to buy food, flu shots, they don’t work, they’re full of chemicals, mercury, a chemical, salt is fine, know what the words mean, reading labels, margarine is not human food, lubricate objects, define mayonnaise, chlorine, basic chemistry, who put this shit together, something for sale, preservatives, calcium propionate, water that comes out of the faucet, no industry, there’s nothing, coast mountains, metal pipes (not lead), perfectly good to drink, bottled water full of plastic, advertised to, there water is terrible, the water in Taiwan, boiled water and bottled water, water dispenser, Coca Cola, drink the tap water, water are the ingredients, do what their parents do, who you probably assume are corrupt, maybe his graduate research, follow all his footnotes, bit the bullet, you could question everything, reasonable suspicion aroused, start questioning, bad puppy, cook that puppy, shot that puppy in an ethical manner, we all have to give up our inquiry, big flashing warning signs, recreate all these experiments home, this tub margarine has been sitting in my fridge since 1981, it doesn’t rot, food rots, alcohol is a poison, designed to kill things, sugar doesn’t rot, this is an industrial lubricant sold to us as a replacement for butter, seed oils and vegetable oils, a food product, you can eat industrial lubricant, your mom gave you butter and it seemed good to you, butter is really good for you, you need fat to live, asparagus fats, is this important, she makes a good point here, anything that is not super old, animals, see if they’ll eat it, when set of grandparents, switched to butter, poison that’s for sale, not human food, the coal butter, that’s what shit is, carnauba wax, employed in food grade polish, making food out of it, see you on twitter.

It Wouldn't Work Because by Jesse

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #807 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Game Of Rat And Dragon by Cordwainer Smith AND The Dragon-Queen Of Jupiter by Leigh Brackett

The SFFaudio Podcast #807 – The Game Of Rat And Dragon by Cordwainer Smith (read by Tony Addison, 38 minutes) AND The Dragon-Queen Of Jupiter by Leigh Brackett (read by Edmund Bloxam, 40 minutes). These are complete and unabridged readings of the stories (1 hour 18 minutes) followed by a discussion of them. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Will Emmons, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Weichsel

Talked about on today’s show:
Cordwainer Smith, Leigh Brackett, after Terence, before Terence, because the guy said it, which of these stories is worse than the other, one respect, more like the cinematic idea of science fiction, resolving the problems, back into the mainline of written science fiction, The Martian, engineering, conceptual all the time, higher level science fiction, it’s fantasy, engineering concepts, most of good science fiction takes place in the head, both definitions are current, a pretty picture, visually very interesting, characterization, near the worst, interesting psychological ideas, psychic cats see it as a rat, interesting setup, Instrumentalities, dystopia, neither was satisfying, formulaic and sad, sophistry, the French Foreign Legion on Jupiter, none of us using our right names, dismissed said Captain Smith, the story of the foreign legion, Alamo, Tex is in there, the first narrator, anxious about making choices, a LibriVox guy, Gregg Margarite, Phil Chenevert, Edmund Blocksam and Tony Addison, special effort, gives everybody an accent, most of them are from Venus or Mars, the Martian guys have a canal accent, extra effort, his correct interpretation of the text, that’s the French Foreign Legion, a 5 year stint, they give you ID, some French guys in there, mercenaries from other countries, safeharbour, practically a swipe from an adventure magazine, the Berber princess is a Jupiterian Queen, a fort they gotta defend from the Mexicans, every French foreign legion story, the Tex connection there, the North West frontier trope, red serge, driving a dog team, magazines like Adventure and Argosy, just French Foreign legion stories?, many movies of it too, a recent Netflix movie, [Siege of Jadotville], pyrrhic victory, a very sophisticated technique, but what did he say?, die for colonization, this is a really bad story, set on exotic planet, also titled Dragon Queen of Venus, isfdb.org, list of the changes, the Planet Stories version, Tex stirred uneasily, the heavily Jupiterian fog, the Venusian fog, Jupiter is a virgin planet, Venus is a virgin planet, 1941 Jupiter is a gas giant, not good at astronomy, a titillating queen of Jupiter/Venus, Earth and Mars are running out of food, lebensraum, lamest fucking excuse, Fort Washington, she’s bad at what she’s doing, the description of the lady on the dragon, she identifies with the native people, the heroes are the colonizers, kinda jerks, wins by luck, this thing with rust, taken with the images, we don’t get to know anything about the Dragon Queen Of Jupiter, maybe these horrible colonizers will be so entranced they’ll go over to this side, Jesse, why are you so stupid, there’s no time left for that, it just can’t happen here, wasn’t up to it, badly constructed, sometimes the oafs win, Alpha Centauri Or Die!, a fixup, native chick, there are these outposts, such a fuckin obvious lie, the reason we’re here colonizing Jupiter, the Indians on earth, kinda terrible, slow low pitch pablum, glimpse of a pretty girl on a dragon, hashtag sad, make the colonizers grotesque, sitting in a pot being boiled alive, something to this story, two reasons why this story sucks, ideology of this story is interesting, civilize these people by killing them, manifest destiny in space, a cultural document worth examining, mainstream American ideology 1941, really bad science fiction, the thing with the water coming out of your body, stupid, we can see that science fiction can be bad, saves this story, what’s extraordinary about it is that it’s a genre mismatch, some detachment, the government mandate of Mars/Earth, countries team up to extract from other countries, not self-reflective, there’s no pushback to the narrative, Hertford’s Jungles Of Jupiter, Alice In Wonderland, swamplands [of jupiter], animalcules, absorb all water vapour, dormant during the rainy season, attempting an ecosystem to explain dragons, a shoehorned idea, elsewhere as well, Spain has a foreign legion, an interesting but bad story, allowed, Jesse’s right again, a movie called The 7th Dawn (1964), the documentary on Cordwainer Smith, hagiographic, designed to serve a political agenda, a we love Cordwainer Smith movie, looking thin, his service during the Malayan Emergency, how many other movies are set during the Malayan Emergency, had they called it a war the insurance companies wouldn’t pay, rubber plantation guys are running Malaysia, WWII is over please fuck off, the British and Australians and Cordwainer Smith all get around and fucking around and finding out, heads cut off, text chat, The Rediscovery, local Malaysian girl, political satire, from a movie poster, this horror must end, holding human heads and hands, a very strange duck and a very strange bird, what if this!?, psychic powers, telepathy, Bester has a good book on it, John W. Campbell bullshit, ruminating on the relationships between humans and their partners, cats, everything is symbolic, what are the dragons, what are the cats?, they’re women, not even submerged, seas of rotting fish, different relationships with different cats, this entity out there, the enemy of people and cats, cats view rats as an enemy, viewing the enemy as a predator vs viewing the enemy as a prey, totally political, do some comparisons, why is he such a weird animal, another CIA person, ideas about womens’ place in the world, The Screwfly Solution, mens’ place in the world and vice versa, Houston, Houston, Do You Read?, all about here, all about him, Tolkien’s all about Tolkien, cats, cats, the cat element, I can see why Will is attracted to Cordwainer Smith, he had 11 cats, telling himself, what he’s doing for a living, one of the incidents, help surrendering Chinese soldiers not be killed, a very nice story, what did he do during the Malaysian emergency, working for the bad guys, how much he loved the Chinese people, the tragedy, the word genocide, the Great Leap Forward, little tidbit, deep in his bones, his opposition to communism, without suffering in the world humans can’t strive, socialism will remove suffering, suffered a lot of physical trauma, the eye, always being sick, pull out his glass eye to punctuate his lectures, take Heinlein, Tolkien, science fiction in space, but not so much about science fiction as it is about human possibility, a sensitive writer who write about people and their ways, personal in so many ways, a European dragon, a Chinese dragons, in European mythology, they’re evil kings, they’re hoarders, dragons/rats have a monopoly on space, Orson Scott Card, a pocket version of Edner’s Game, certain cats in your house are telepathic, destroyed at will, dreams infected, understanding this very strange man, “my boat of institutions are bullying to only one side” a key to understand, soaked in that story, when does Ender’s Game exist as a book, why do people like it?, Starship Troopers exists, any adult person and what they’re response to war is, humans have been making a kind of mistake, what is your relationship to war?, turns it inward, personal experience of war rather than the philosophical relationship to war, how we ought to relate to the state, why I support the Vietnam War, Tolkien’s response to WWI, trynna dunk on me, guy thinks there are no good kinds, Aragorn, a guy who was a king who didn’t do a lot of bad stuff, the Romanoffs were really nice to their children, Cordwainer Smith liked his cats, Hitler had a dog, he liked his dog, Psychological Warfare, rationalize it to “I’m helping”, Sun Yat-sen, revered by nationalist and the communists, riven with European and American exploiters, Korea, there’s a genocide, that war of foreign aggression, seems small scale, that’s sophistry, propaganda is often sophistry, tricking, a fantasy of escape like Tolkien, but done via a mode of Starship Troopers, this guy was a freak who liked cats, Heinlein vibes, little girl and middle aged man, fighting in subspace, light explosions, everything is symbolic, the psyche, experience as a spook, Tolkien was in WWI, it isn’t “no more kings”, it’s retreat into the fantasy, an apolitical response to a political situation, political quietism, why Tolkien didn’t like Dune, what makes the Harkonnens bad is they’re too hasty, the Atredies are wise and kindly masters who wage Jihad, we can do better than this by leaving earth and going to a secondary world, Dungeons & Dragons wheelchairs, they had wheelchairs back in medieval times, why wouldn’t they use magic to cure disabilities, what’s fictional, what’s real, famous Leigh Brackett story about green aliens driving a car in the South, giving them, what’s the C word?, about humanity, that’s what Star Trek does really well, you know what it’s about, why Cordwainer Smith is never going to be a mainstream guy, making Paul the good guy at the end of Dune 2, liking Paul as a hero, Paul mopes around, who is Zendaya, Chani, how the Japanese get Cordwainer Smith, the anime where the cats are doing Game Of Rat And Dragon, they also like E.E. Doc Smith, one novel, The Skylark Of Space, a good series, space opera, whenever Scotty has a problem on the Enterprise he’s channelling, character continuation from book to book, they age approrpriately from book to book, what a series should do, inventing tech on the fly during space battles, Scotty’s role on Star Trek, finds a way to break the laws of physics, make this shit go lightspeed, slaps it on the dashboard, Lazarus Long, Time Enough For Love, Heinlein doing Doc Smith, unless Akira Kurosawa it is impenetrable, doing it in a science fiction setting, cats are a dead end, can’t have babies with the cat, can’t relate to women, quick beyond all dreams of speed, undemanding, women demand things, where can you find a woman or a man or a friend, compatible with you at the animal level, culture, a bit like the woman nurse at the end, big and strong and beautiful and proud, stroke a cat, it’ll let you know, sidle up to your wife, put my slippers on to sidle up silently, literally talking about cats, almost 55 years ago, can’t quite remember what’s in this, magical in Cordwainer Smith’s style, sharp scientific concepts, everything, perspectivism, the fans are slans theorem, the cats are part of the escape, it’s a dead end and not true, Lord Of The Rings is a dead end, Christians on the internet, Theoden the steward, wants to throw himself on the fire, Christian symbology in there, life lessons, a beautiful fantasy, a quote attributed to Robert E. Howard, ‘one day you people will hope for a man with a sword’, circumspect, a piece of art, he shows you it’s a dead end, the horror of loving something you can never possesses, love is a dead end, you can’t find that with other humans, animalicules, sveltness, can’t find it in a woman, castrating nobodies, a woman with a strong personality, willing to go into rut and the right time, speed and grace and whatever alogical components of emotion that can be honoured, people who don’t understand him, the intensity of the war, the battle, like a computer game, in the title, a haunting title, divided up, turned everything into game theory, a piece of art, not his last word, green and purple, and counted ships, pinlighting, I’m cranching right now, Tolkien and Herbert, the thumb for the Andromeda, the ring finger, the thumb of the other hand, lost as people realized, planoforming, flatted yourself down into two dimensions, like nothing much, a sore tooth, a painful flash of light around the eyes, sitting in the Fighting Room, ticking around inside his head, for a second or a year, loose in the up and out, pimples on his telepathic mind, somewhere in this outer space, Man had never encountered, the light of the suns, drawing on Lovecraft, a lot of physical pain always, why?, a guy who physically felt a lot of pain, pleasure in ideas, pleasure in cats, what is he escaping from?, a bad man, a bad lady, working for the bad people, making art, the culture of the CIA in the mid20th century, culturally very liberal, Jackson Pollock, they know they were wrong, art by escaping, rock music, I like it, Laurel Canyon and creep around there, that’s bad, to serve an agenda is bad, woke up in the morning and told themselves they were good, the beautiful art they were making, Tiptree, Jr., Philip K. Dick was very bad, reported them secretly to the FBI, the way H.P. Lovecraft was bad, the life of someone to their creation, you could imagine in his psyche, inside him from a very young age, and lots of other things, a concrete application, that’s the bad step, so called good, not automatically tainted, can work in either direction, we write what we know, we know things that we’ve never experienced, from previous lives, me from a long time ago, something he knows, mediates that through his experiences, mostly reading, travels to places, does things, writes what he knows, does it symbolically, he does know what war is, saw how bad it was, when Leigh Brackett writes about the French Foreign legion, dressing up in a costume, wearing a sword, from a result, a different plane of existence, he was in the game, so symbolic, disagreed with American idea, disagree with the American ideas, eventually disagree with it, what do makes you a bad person, not what you think, the means are bad, justifies, any other reckoning, if we’re trying to figure out why Cordwainer Smith was acting like a CIA man, an American who can help people, the same job, probably not getting paid for it in the normal fashion, agent for government, why it’s called the emergency rather than a war, its about finance, working for United Fruit, stockholders back in America, rubber plantation owners, why those heads are gettiing cut off, we gotta extract because we want our money, twists himself into knots, become enlighten, savages civilized, a lady who’s not as sophisticated, fun but it aint got any intellectual heft, much more like Frank Herbert than E.E. Doc Smith, the Lovecraft comparison, Space Lords, very dreamy, very weird, fascinating, nothing that’s hidden, he’s not explaining anything, her most vivid one, nothing but depth, nothing on the service, both have the word dragon in the title, relationships with women, what?!, more thoughts about that, written by a woman, the woman dragon queen as this sort of ideal of beauty and savage beauty on a pedestal, but she loses to the oafs, a ruse instead of her wild power, married twice, especially his second wife, the women that are shown are silly, sterotypes, they don’t understand that he’s risking his life, the cat is sort of what a real woman would be, so heavily symbolic it’s made unattainable, hence he needs to write more to get there, The Ballad Of Lost C’Mell, strawman a woman?, mythology and classical stories, Joan of Arc, what is this based on where does this come from, with regard to this one, you get in an airplane, a frail guy with a lot of pains, you travel, you pet your cat and then you do your business, ruminating on this, two people take a bus trip, focused vs. unfocused experience, four people do a podcast together, the words are recorded, no way to get inside the experience, capital I idea, say it a different way, the American Hypothesis, the ideology, the other hyponthesis beside it, sometimes you’re a cat, transitional space between me and my interlocutors, a fuzz and a blur, not even an I either, the neuralink patient to write a tweet, read books through neuralink, absorb books, possible, just another input output, getting by appeal or electric shock, absorb it linearly, captial S for solar system, they don’t hit punctuation, I read a book, you can’t see the font therefore you’re not reading it, might not be listening, reading is an active activity, hooked up to computer at a recieving end, how do you compose a tweet, go back and fix, different kind of fixes, always not capitalize i-s or beginning of sentences, fix mistakes, a little trick, leave of the e in the, what does reading meaning, somehow through their brain, in science fiction, brain uploads, The Matrix, I know how to do kung-fu, upload dreams, sell dreams, experiencing it linearly, two different, try to recite the plot of any particular doctor who serial, The Brain Of Morbius, that’s not writing not reading, remembering and reading it are not the same think, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale?, conflating memory and experience, replacing pages in my old paperback, don’t grok them, not the way you learn anything, you don’t own that word, get it into your brain in multiple ways, you don’t remember how to ski you learn how to see, reading with your fingers, using braille, hard to figure out what it actually is, before there was punctuation people were telling each other stories, the primary way people, every word has every meaning it sounds like, bad good guy, good good guy, Jorge Luis Borges, how great English is, such amazing vocab, Spanish is very simple, not as rich in poetry, a man who did his own translations, with an English in mind, he knew English really well, the best translation, pay too much money to renew the translation, Death And The Compass, The Zahir, The Rejected Sorcerer, The Babylonian Lottery, Funes The Memorious, amazing what we can find, he wrote a Lovecraft story, There Are More Things, The Book Of Sand, equally monstrous house, published in 1975, as an insult somehow, a work of hack or pulp, pulp art can be beautiful, what she’s done here is bad, him doing his own thing, a mode of science fiction, he’s very different, Philip K. Dick is more mainstream, a run of PKD movies, they took the concept, very different from the novel, Hollywood, doing a genocide over there, shitliberal mindset everywhere, take the best I can out of documentaries, distracted, they thought it did, casual racism, in this day and age?, people are best understood in their time, the CCP, multiple genocide, aka the government of have, they clearly have, where have they committed the genocide, show me the videos, look up Nakba, i did but there’s conflicting reports, not a handwritten bill, a paid for poster behind glass, you can see them on twitter, children burned alive, parents holding dead children, show me that video for anything that’s going on in eastern China, they have phones in China, some trumped up terrorism, aka CIA, knife attacks, pits full of dead people, a cultural genocide, didn’t we do that in north america, that’s not happening and it didn’t happen, uyghurs, search it up, it’s not like it’s hidden, is there video, buried with bulldozers, the people who are pushing that, anti-Chinese government, Epoch Times, falungong newspaper, a very good paper for news that’s not related to China, the exiled billionaire Chinese guy, one accusation at a time, important for Paul Linebarger, kick out the emperor, a patriotic thing, Sun Yat-Sen classical Chinese garden, a public park, stickers everywhere, lampposts, Israel doesn’t occupy Gaza, condo’s movie theater, that makes it true, an authentic thing, astroturf, when the Ukraine signs were up, wealthy people’s lawns, B.C. Ferries, establishment stuff, Canada’s sending weapons to Israel, Canada does what the States wants, a stern talking to, that’s what happened with the Truckers, threatening the American economy too, come to the table, sad an pathetic, Time Is The Simplest Time, another dragon, Midnight Pulp, very interesting, total propaganda, they did a Lord Of The Rings, The Tale Of Tsar Saltan (1967), the more political one, Ilya Muromets aka The Sword And The Dragon (1956), defending Kiev, Jesse loves the idea that Russia owns Kiev?, cinemascope, brown skinned people, both live action, romantic fairytale type, Camelot stories, knights, epic, technicolor romantic, Ivanhoe, the 1939 Robin Hood, Ray Harryhausen fantasy, a different culture, the propaganda in both of those, very nationalistic, regional, satellite states, tell that to Stalin (a Georgian), after the time of Stalin, Khrushchev, he’s not that good a guy as a king, he’s a Welsh king, any [Andrei] Tarkovsky, big Hollywood movies, Spartacus, the Michael Bay movies, the Navy and the Marines, the Army puts them in there, the Chinese military, hardware, helicopters and airplanes and trucks and ships, Come And See (1985), a stock character, courtly stories, Chinese knight stories, marshall stories, so young, also haven’t watch a lot of movies, Bylina and Bogatyr, Will do you love movies?, the tiktok generation, movies? that’s not really a thing, not liking tv shows, microphone being weird, who even watches tv?, movies can be art, something else, you actively participate in movies, this is a presentation, a new film, like we treat plays, mostly we don’t do anything about them, what is this, Shakespeare, community theater is for actors and family members, youngness, films are important, a medium you can see amazing things, there are some great films, a treat for you, a period where they’re obsessed with one thing, that’s the autism, girl in her early twenties, every single episode of Bewitched, Bell, Book And Candle (1985), Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak, wait til he finds out Dr. Dre got his doctorate, everybody is dunking on him, not very creative then are they?, this sample came from here, this is called art, plagiarism, when they delete their tweets your jokes don’t have context, sheesh, looking for attention, he’s thirsty, didn’t do any original research, there was lawsuits about this decades ago, everything’s a remix, not new cultural idea, there’s no problem at all in putting together this comparison, we’re talking about it, the best way to get the write answer is to give the bad answer, Boyce Watkins, PhD – Wealth is Power, my friend Jonathan, the key to understanding propaganda, more like masturbatory purposes, is he gonna make a living from that?, he didn’t write all that much, Leigh Brackett is doing it for money, Black Amazon Of Mars, a richer text, individualist vs. settler colonialism, literally have settlers, Malaysia Emergency, money from these supervisors, control and extract from the land of Malaysia, Canada started off as the first kind, Hudson’s Bay Company and North West Company, for secondary extraction, on a planet that’s already been colonized, faceless fruit company on Earth, she’s not really there for that, she’s much better at it in Black Amazon Of Mars, hacky but not total hackwork, The Halfling, furries in it, this sounds good, a novelette from 1943, she likes both fortresses and citadels, rats are not predators, Chinese mythology, suss out the meaning, magazine author renewals, but the other narrator, and other stories, hard to get people to do novelettes, quite long, hard to appreciate stories, the story about the furries, Citadel Of Lost Ages, 1950, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Virgil Finlay Thrilling Wonder, a version sold on ebay, Hertiage Auctions, interestingly composed cut and paste, layered, as a colour artist, very distinctive black & whites, his line work, Darkness, nothing else, painful to thus aroused, the secret of an icebound cave that holds the key to the future, last week is a long time ago, Test-Tube Frankenstein, a race memory story, the Palisades, a good ending, very solid, listen to this, My name is Fenway, he told the voice, Central Park in the morning after the rain, I need a project, the one listener who’s listening right now, Hi!, where he lived at the end, big action scene, cliffs that overlook the Hudson, gruesome, weird menace, shudder, an extremely rare book, Fred Olen Ray, b movie director, Hugh B. Cave, 1994, just woke up, edit an anthology, self-published, Attack Of The 60 foot Centerfold (1995), Mike Vendetti things, People Of The Dark, Fafhard and Grey Mouser stories, Corpseless Coffin, Silverberg, William Sambrot, The Door by David H. Keller, short non-fiction, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, How Can You Be Reading This?, a bunch, 2 is a good number, When The Banshee Calls by Wayne Rogers, emdash, gruesome crypt, weird bizarre menace, on the one hand, more guys, let’s do one Wayne Rogers, one new guy, Will can take responsibility today, the scales are balancing, Ed Earl Repp was Jesse’s mistake, some sort of provenance, just so happened to show up on LibriVox, complementary to it, out in five parts, another banshee story, banshees are interesting, screaming ladies from Ireland, banshee related, a Cinemax show, gun violence and sex, Elliott O’Donnell, nonfiction, an essay, what’s the opposite of weird menace, you get to save the girl from a fate worth than death she will be generous with her body, what the lady looks like, Cat-Woman by Ray Cummings, the table of contents, the Starzl for that one, when Terence isn’t here to confirm, good to pair, pulling the rug out from under him, not about fault, proper behavior, not at all, Terence is quite delightful, always honest, you shouldn’t trust, easier to coordinate when people are here, Time Is The Simplest Thing is a novel, Attitude by Hal Clement, 2 or 3 hours, Spicy stories?, turning Mike onto Spicy, Spicy-Adventure Stories, 30 Seconds by Robert Leslie Bellem, the art is awesome, art continues, a dull squishy plop, unyielding asphalt, Dr. Zarkov, Count Zaroff, Planet Of The Apes?, The Most Dangerous Game, The Unveiling by Alfred I. Tooke, puny and weak undernourished the Bolsheviks didn’t kill him, disturbing art, a retelling of [Pickman’s Model] with a different focus, perfectly fine, too cliche, Ravenoff, russian names in early 20th century pulp literature, look how beautiful Jesse’s PDF is, all the words are bolded, Jesse is awesome at this, The Black Thing Walks, The Brazen Bull, the table of contents page, a ghoul, a bunch of judges, very funny, lingers on the things, danger and sex, parapet, a lady lying on a divan while men fight, stabbed between the boobies, a lady stabbed in a pillow near her bed, a little drunken when he parked the car, the sinister old cottage, a lot of whipping, this one has racism, you love racism, I love racism, get the black thing off our minds, whispered loved words, the tender softness, to feel those breasts, her halter straps crushed against my heart, page 37, a grotesque shape blacker than night, sensationalist, turn to page 103, my sudden blow toppled, gun in his hand as he punches a cultist in the face, so good, great science fiction hidden inside a shudder pulp, an exploitation piece, strapped to the device, and she seems to be enjoying it, metal bars up and down her legs, a little more advanced before we read this one, pretty hardcore, Cannibal Holocaust (1980), a problem, becoming more boring because of it, curating stuff for people, there’s a lady in Port Moody, talking up her virtues, she needs a computer, buying cheap ThinkPads and fixing them, happy to help out a blind lady who’s deaf and can use it, a concern you should have, a parasocial relationship with my friend Will, a little bit of both, try not to overly concern myself with, the download numbers vs. being available, the business, an anti-businessman, the business of playing the business game, you shouldn’t play a rigged game, which games aren’t rigged, they don’t always start that way, the levers and tricks to running that game, becomes corrupted, be on the periphery, a gas station in a small town, towns don’t sustain, extract value, Facebook marketplace is the new Craigslist, in the selling business, the tutoring business, the strawman in The Strangest Secret Book by Earl Nightingale, the very first self-help, first spoken word record to go platinum, ran a sales floor, what’s the point of trying, ok if you are in certain industries, the laptop game, institutions pump and dump, our hero Mr. Pulpcovers, they sell businesses on a semi-regular schedules, recycling is a huge scam, reused/resold, the recycle sells those, stores like London Drugs, refurbished laptops, great profit possibility, the secondary market, if you’re in the right part of the scam, what do we mean by scam?, blue bin recycling, probably better off without it, generic everything else, put in a landfill, sort your recycling, clean your recycling, glass is often redone, maybe it is better, metal recycling, that whole industry is propped up by government mandate, it’s okay for us to consume, how deluded they are, they’re basically decorating the landfill with washed garbage, find ways to navigate it properly, not a scam at all, how do we know it is public domain?, what is the strangest secret?, the secret it every self-help scheme, pretend Will is an alien, no original ideas, this one stole the other one, [Rhonda Byrne’s] The Secret, pure lies, Jesse only really cares about public domain stuff, a tick, Jesse’s autism, 1966, 1970, gold record status, wouldn’t you, Brewster’s Millions, Some Like It Hot, for historical reasons, the idea everywhere, making a lifestyle about it, Jonathan just uses chat GPT to write all his tweets, investing emotional energy, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos, the narrator is very good, a ditzy blonde, March 16th, it would make a book, a whole row of encyclopediacs, my favourite recreation, besides think, he is in the senate, all a blank, it was a diary, too late to begin with January, the wholesale button profession, the button king, interested in educating me, see how my brains have improved, sounds very Jonathan, like a cartoon come to life, book some shows, a mere 3 hours 34 minutes, a professional lady, a pseudonym?, book us up, two shudder pulps, going to Pulpfest, doing research, near Pittsburgh, it’s fun, Mars, Pennsylvania, driving distance, not rich or anything, guy walked from Philadelphia to New York, I’ve got a train to catch (back to Philadelphia), walking distance, get a little cart, the rag and bone guy: “pulps and paperbacks”, not very well run, looking for authors to attend, modern pulp, listed as a guest, a weird coalition of people, all the disappointed people, new pulp authors, lots of indie authors there, the dealer’s room is the place to be, Philip Jose Farmer people, guess again, between 2 or 3 dollars, author copies, Scamazon, Elantris guy, used his leverage to get a slightly less worse deal, selling his digital product from their servers, close to 70%, a 70 – 30 split, a pretty horrible chiselling, Jeff Bezos’ gazelle strategy, kill the weakest ones in the herd first, the only publisher, that’s the actions that have happened, the FCC lawsuit against Amazon, required testimony, that’d be the place, let’s go democratize the middle east!, undemocratized publishing, the history behind it, the reality behind it, the only game left in town, exclusivity, a sweeter deal, pay to play, Godless, one guy in Los Angeles, most of Jonathan’s book sales, that’s where the people are, Google is closing their podcasting system, itunes was the directory, also-rans, all gone now, big competitors like Spotify, directing everything to YouTube, a gambit, sucked a bunch of people in and now being redirected to YouTube, not going to get the downloads, not getting scammed, just as long as you know the game is rigged, I’m gonna make money by doing this gambling, what about your losses, gambling is not a good way to make money, invest in a casino, not the same thing, u know you’re getting fucked, a nice salad bar, spend money, a scanner, Firestick is pretty good right now, other than scanners, they’re 12 bucks, laziness, in small towns people have really good thrift shops, Goodwill, what’s destroying thrift shops, fast fashion, flippers, Crocs?, the companies do that too, flippers, massive extraction, too expensive to ship, an amazon link to one, money or attention, moral quirks, stopped buying books from Amazon, Uline (packing material company), they sell everything, massive catalogue, everything you could ever want for shipping, used bookstores, Half-Price Books, the smart move, in the industry for shipping, everything you could have in a warehouse, phone book sized colour catalogue, what’s changed in the tech, an affection to warehouse, things that are small, massive storage at a very cheap rate, a huge covered area, protected from rain, if we were really serious about the homeless crisis, why it’s not being done, the unhoused, as a temporary measure, we do not choose to use them, a great technology, you can put everything that you need to, big building, protected from water damage, retain heat, against the wind, a tech, a space or something, were invented, a cave, slabbers, living elements of culture, representative art copies, not a good medium for it, very few copies for preservation purposes, in case the warehouse leaks, both good and bad, evil but without watermarks, a lot of things are evil, what is something in the world that’s evil other than Jesse, confusing good and bad with good and evil, a bad movie vs. an evil movie, Birth Of A Nation (1935)?, evil intention, a distinction there, Bill Gates evil, Trump very very bad, murders and rapists, people make mistakes, words are dangerous, do hate liberals, do enjoy his jokes, grade on a curve, very unevil compared to most, on the evil curve, a sharp distinction, very useful, something that’s evil in the world, other than Trump or Jesse, almost the opposite of evil, bad to call things good, other things are bad in comparison, payday loans are evil, usury is evil, flipping real estate, the way a lot people make their living, it’s been encouraged, talking about how to make money, a small business owner that doesn’t make any money, capital is very important, you need to have pencil crayons, people breaking pencil crayons, coloured pencils, colouring pencil, cultural difference, Laurentien pencil crayons, used packs, $50, $60, the shit that comes from China, some decent ones, a tool for making art, making beautiful art in the world, you lose your capital, capital is absolutely needed, stuff to get started doing things, factories, artisanal manufacture, mass production pencil crayons, scanned and printed, see them cheaply, makes people’s lives as they should be: easy, relaxing and fun, going on hikes, hiking away from a bomb zone or a forest fire, we should encourage forest fires at some points, be smart, how the rain can damage things, printing press, quality control, we have solutions to these things, a mimeograph machine, quite stinky?, technology in the 1930s, making t-shirts, printing up leaflets or comics, coulda bin a printer, should be an insult in Canada, the Laurentian elite, $249 pencil crayons, a nice consistent colour, now $80, overvalue things, the old fashioned way (digital), not a young man, patterns in children, everything gets broken, everything is disposable kids, rich kids, sew it back together, non-care, short term thinking, not thinking about capital as capital, $1.50 a book, sell for $9, when Jesse is the government there will be fewer laws, a vague haze, the withering away of the state, thinking Biden’s not withering, Whosit? [board game], guess who they are, are you in a blue room, are you smoking?, do you have a hat or a helmet?, doing it with Jesse sensibilities, NPC, the guy from twitter, Wojack, Santa Claus, Robin Hood, jokers, the copium one, Pepe, the dog in the little room, is your room on fire?, the this is fine dog, are you taking copium?, a cannula, genocide in China, why do people say it?, it’s repeated, actual genocide happening in Gaza, not on Facebook (Jesse assumes), way more people in the streets upset, fake outrage, Facebook ads, American Israeli, students suing Harvard for anti-Israeli sentiments, the Gay lady, trying to hold firm, President Gay, the amazing cope, whatever the rage of the day, almost a noble stance, exposed as a fraud, plagiarizing other people’s works, as opposed to remixing, dissertation have any value?, breathing mask, make a game, uncancelled, parents could get mad, they’re lucky they’ve got me, a little too desperate, waiting to meet people, high turnover, “I am the business, 2006?, 2016?, Jesse’s the capital, the sports team with the mascot, put in some hours, the book keeping, the recruiting or the sweeping up, the reliable standard, the business would die, grade on a curve, very low level, too old makes it hard, your country, education system in Korea is superfucked up, politically fucked up, bad systems, fleeing from it, sending or bringing their kids, the genocide of the Korean people done by the U.N., not even a topic, Jimmy Dore says Americans are the most propagandized people on earth, know the score a little better, PUBG, people in China and Africa, all over the states, a serious marijuana problem, fill bowl, retired guys filling bowls with cereal all day, made me paranoid, playing with randos, not always legal everywhere, a marinjuana store, buy it from the official government store, BC Cannabis Store, bizzare an appropriate, 18 games, no dinners, “carry me”, a squad based game, interactions with humans, some people are very good at getting dinners, this guy can carry us, he’s going to bring us to a dinner, makes good plays, by avoiding fights, you expend fake capital, expend your life, it makes noise when you shoot a gun, “third partied”, don’t take any fights you don’t have to, a good strategy for live, wise Kung Fu guy, the blind guy stealing a pea, a pebble, got better at having eastern philosophy, doing research, raised in China, that’s fine, hung himself in a closet, photos or it didn’t happen, Robert Carradine, died in Bangkok, Death Race 2000 (1975), a satire, Cannonball Run style, clicking on death, Thai police, autoerotic asphyxiation, disputed discuss, the scoop on the Clinton Crime Family, he knew who murdered Seth Rich, not taking the official line on Jeffrey Epstein, not knowing is not evil, flipping books, ripping off old people for their collectibles, a pawn shop, are pawn shops evil?, superior to payday loaning, give up things they could give up, old people who have big collections of shit they’re trying to get rid of, a big pile of old junk, take it to the dump, try to sell it, a mugs game, try not to lose money at it, a meticulous spreadsheet, a premium on curated books, a humbling experience, to break the spine of an old book, it’s like killing something, you every part of the animal, food that will feed forever, a bad outweighed by great good, going hunting, the right part of the world for it, it will change you and make you wiser, usually with fish, with mammals, they want to get it done, not having the time, people who took time, don’t worry about it I’ll do it, take a paperback, start tearing it apart, to lovingly preserve it, take the cover off, how traumatic it is, as a guy who loves books, change your relationship with the books, the words and the pictures rather than the object itself, a treasure that gives forever, the guy who did it loved what he was doing, trying to preserve the art, along the same lines, a hoard of treasure, that is a good, destroying books that are never going to be read again, obvious evils in the world, not operating in the world, deaf and a bad lip reader, very long text messages, what a great deal she was getting on her printer, the printer subscription service is a fucking scam, she doesn’t have a car, she’s blind and deaf, having it delivered is a great good, busy doing her degree, telling the mechanic what a good car your are, printers soon, shipping label printer, Louis Rossmann is a good man, a businessman who wants to share how he’s been successful, liking music, oh my, teeth and hands are dangerous, not to animals, generally, lyrics are very dangerous, go to the post office, Pirate Ship (postal service), little piece of wisdom, the Wisdom Podcast, all profits are temporary, Raincoast Books published Harry Potter, better, different, big demand, by the tonload, non-book store buying a lot of books, Flower Fairies by Cicely Mary Barker, competitors, fucks around with the algorithm, things start going bad, lot of physical objects, way cheaper than regular mail, a good policy decision, production of printed goods, shipping water through the mail, live animals through the mail, small animals, chicks, can I ship live chicks through the mail?, yup, Canada Post, isn’t that interesting, something like a retailer, an online retailer, in 6 months, “send will twitter public to see if twitter still exists how his book business is doing”, wow this is great!, exhausted all the topics, pretty good, very good.

The Game Of Rat And Dragon by Cordwainer Smith

Dragon Queen Of Jupiter - Virgil Finlay cover

Dragon Queen Of Jupiter by Leigh Brackett

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #803 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Gun by Philip K. Dick

The SFFaudio Podcast #803 – The Gun by Philip K. Dick, read by Tommy Patrick Ryan. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (29 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Evan Lampe, Jonathan Weichsel, and Tommy Patrick Ryan

Talked about on today’s show:
his 2nd published story as a professional, Planet Stories, September 1952, that little stinger, Live Long And Prosper, something weird happened, knowing Tommy, the end, a specific sci-fi trope, a little weak, notes, an episode of Star Trek, Star Wars, fantasy, sci-fi, several Star Trek episodes, a little exchange about doing this show, there’s two: The Outpost, none of the characters feel like they know, let’s attack, interesting sir, Dr Crusher marry Picard, chasing down a Ferengi ship, got their whips out, trapped by some gun, guy in a cloak shows up, Arsenal Of Freedom, fairly similar, a robot salesman, Dr. Crusher is again falling in love with Picard, buy buying the gun, about to kill Will Wheaton or Tasha Yar, more like other Star Trek episodes, this story is like a lot of later science fiction, more well regarded, first read, in Simak, Asimov, should be very obvious to us, obvious to them (that we don’t see), how can they not know this?, don’t understand the concept of war and killing, their from 1952, you can make the argument in both directions, radio and remote control, 1929 robot ships (radio controlled ships), drone aircraft during and after WWII, a neat new idea, it’s innovative, that’s the end of the story, a menace and a horror, Evan’s episode of 2017, episode 3, 20 minutes long, later Dick: robots are bad, too long for the material it covers, super hilarious, the lady is the vice captain, i will devolve the power unto my husband, accept that as a normal thing, counsellor on the bridge, these are supposed to be professionals in a space military of some kind, 2 kids in the observation lounge, could you imagine, women are looking for more equality, entitled to the captain, I wanna give it to a man, declare myself mated to them, you’re handsome, you don’t argue with me as much as the other guy, a lady who is mated to the captain, a very immature man, The Simulacrum, the real leader is married to the token president, Now Wait For Last Year, always married to the president, the real power is in the first lady, they’re visiting Earth, mishandled, why would you put it in the middle?, far far future, exploring going backwards, this old planet, Old Earth, The Impossible Planet, humans evolved on Mars, Survey Team, a low end pulp, despite the lack of boobs, “slight”, shorter, spending time with a blonde, they are humans, you don’t do it in the middle of the story, Franklin Apartments, they never realize where they are, before Earth was destroyed, their culture has changed, they no longer fight each other, they marry their captains, to kill snakes, I can’t believe they would fight their own species, like a Twilight Zone episode reveal, poorly handled, military chain of command, family and institutional dynamics, why is that there, really interested in legumes, contaminated from the atmosphere, breakdown fats in storage, an incredible amount of importance as their treasure being film reels, music, a photograph of a boy, what are the treasures I will put in my fallout shelter?, shouldn’t it be replication, working these ideas out, the film studios, underground in caves, the Warner Bros. [vault], cups and crowns, treasure, a hoard of treasure, why do dragons hoard?, dragons are people, why do people hoard, their stingy fucks, lose control, a good king shares his treasure, re-reading Ulysses, we need to speak irish, Yates, you can’t cling to the past, a frontier, you really have to branch out, things become kipple, everything left behind, has no value locked away, put in archive that everyone can access, evidence of a culture has failed, a poster for a movie, the gun was smashed, examined the treasure, people not crew, the statues, winged, missing heads and arms, fairly famous statue, one of the guys is named Doric, Philip K. Dick is obvious, the archaeologist, we’ll take them home and study, will change us, Souvenir, those wings, it will change us a great deal, nuclear weapons war is a bad idea, why should the characters care about this crap?, in order for us to care, fun and interesting things in it, the exact same idea, The Star by Arthur C. Clarke, a jesuit priest on a starship, 1000 light years from earth, their version of Pluto, shaken to my core, the answer is the star is the Star of Bethlehem, god nuked this civilization to create Jesus on Earth, could have been a coincidence, this wonderful society, gut punch story, pro-Christianity story, to make this story good, more significance to the treasure that they find, Lovecraft, a story about the past, Forbidden Planet (1956), reading the murals in the city of the elder things, The Nameless City, still presented to the reader, this one is fine, why he screwed it up so badly, the gut punch that he’s going for, the automation disease that humans have always had, the Terminator movies, the claws, Second Variety, automated weapons, Autofac, something we worry about in science fiction a lot, technically relevant, the automated weapons sales company can’t be stopped, a jungle planet, no warning buoy, more grokable today, Screamers (1995), the worry of things that look like humans and act like parts of human psychopaths, works better than a big gun, bad, why was it there?, seeded earlier, paid off later, decent, themes, uhh, difficult to swallow, your Star Trek away party [team], Dorrel is our guy, finds the “dragon’s treasure”, don’t go in there, doesn’t have his glasses, what is going on here?, contact lenses and laser surgery, why would you leave the plane?, a huge oversight, the guy who can’t see, this learned man, insightful, overly cautious, overly macho, she’s the one who is acting really strange, until the blonde comment, don’t move, come back, it isn’t worth it, I’m the only one who knows what’s going, he melted it with his phaser, asshole Zap Brannigan, Dick respects this guy, warrior attitude, destroy the gun with violence, five people on this ship, just an away team, supposed to be an anti-war commentary, violence is it, turns out violence doesn’t work, to disable the weapon, how they kill the gun, they pick up sticks and beat it to death, they systematically disable all their weapons, seen in the newspapers, they roll into Berlin, Jap tank gets piggy back ride, a visualization of things overseas, group beating, the thing that shot them, kills her husband, all by yourself, just me alone with one stick, the pitchforks, luddites with clubs, beating the machines, the gun rebuilds itself, it can’t be stopped, more subtle and not so muddled, a TNG episode, they all don’t feel mature, amateurs playing at being professionals, undercooked ideas in the story, societal role, just weird, saying weird things with no explanation, imposed by the society?, little moments like that, little exchange, you or Fomar, whichever of you wants to be captain, “mated to”, she does express a preference for the one guy, then I can devolve the responsibility, Hugo scrutineers, that’s the weird part, why would you set up?, he just rejected her, tall and blonde, pressure suit, they’re humans, definitely humans, literal humans, the alien blonde, I’m rather partial to you, do as you like, the sexual politics in their society, it doesn’t pay off that’s why it sucks, the big revelation, just beat it to death, such a powerful woman?, the white stones, the great broken teeth, she touched Doric’s arm gently, in the ship they’re looking at the planet with a telescope, the nuclear war, shoots shells, a howitzer shooting nuclear weapons, this is happening at the time, what that would mean to a spaceship, why does anything happen?, he needs to die so she could be mated to something else, ancillary to the story, that guy can be captain, why is captain such a bad job?, the captain has to make bad decisions, all politicians on a certain level kill people, should I kill 40,000 people or 2000 people?, presented by bad options, by not directing the helmsman, let’s move from this position down to the river, the there’s a flood, good ideas here, All Our Yesterdays, Kirk goes back to France and does 3 Musketeers Stuff, Spock goes to a cave, spacelady, Mr. AtoZ, their own past, the librarian for their civilization, all of their treasures are stored, the treasures are the memories of these past ages that they go to, the literature, the sculpture, Doc Labyrinth, preserve music, turning sheet music into animals, a comedy piece, commentary on chamber music guys, the treasures of earth are its literature, it’s film, rather than money, such an uncontroversial opinion, everybody thinks that, a little more complicated with Dick, the copying corrupts it, a deadness to the past, stuff from long before, not about reviving some past greatness, a wooden cup made by hand, radically change their broken society, handicraft, a connection between art and living, inert old culture, get to some kind of frontier, we can’t extract that much, why does that one guy want legumes so bad?, put them in a garden?, financially exploit this?, trademarking, patenting, no, that’s not explained, a super-broad brush, Dick was 23 years old, a new writer, a reference to Jack and the Beanstalk, this guy is super-raw, 23 year old Tommy, shirking the responsibility, more masculine macho, the big strong man with the gun, some of this is ridiculous, he doesn’t know, he’s writing these very instinctual, except for the one at the end, bad writing, a mistake, he was young and inexperienced, he just thought it was funny, doesn’t mean anything, Beyond Lies The Wub, shorter, tighter, a more circular idea, engaging with The Odyssey, wub/love, he ends up eating himself, a little Thing On The Doorsteppy, also about food, breaking down the fat full of carbohydrates, food supplies, Enterprise D, the first season of TNG, characters are speaking out of turn, up in everybody’s business, not fully trained, they aren’t as mature, we see them as professionals, we felt it when Wesley was introduced, he’s wearing a sweater, if you’re mated to somebody, make babies for the ship, more like Lost In Space starfleet than TOS starfleet, military bonds, The Forever War and The Forever Peace, why are their so many characters?, he gets there in the end, a hodgepodge of Philip K. Dick, a floppy pencil, pretty bad, an entertainment perspective, I wish I had done that differently, keeping your interest, weak storytelling, threads he begins to pull, characters are pretty one dimensional, the role of the gal, the other characters, nobody pops for me, left the ship without his glasses, they’re everyman, they’re basically blanks, good job with the girl, five guys, Nasha, wandering around, The Crystal Crypt, a city in a snowglobe, the Martians are all Nazis, infiltrating the city, the nazi society on Mars, fill pages, there are good ideas, fairly unremarkable, Robert Sheckley is kicking down doors, Roog is a fantastic story, forgettable, he’s working ideas in before everybody else, the earth is dead and we’ve stored all our ideas in a vault, MacLeans magazine, Who Destroyed The Earth?, people are having this idea independently, earlier and sometimes better, he’s really thinking deep thoughts, Mark Twain kinda had this idea, Mary Baker Eddy, Christian Scientists, limited to two different factions, Christian Science And The Book Of Mrs. Eddy, Captain Stormfield’s Visit To Heaven, The Curious Republic Of Gondor, Tales Of Wonder, some of these would be fantasy, Robert Wolf Emmett, three years after, tiny fuzzy aliens come to the planet earth, they’re a family, older little fuzzies, they’re peaceful, we destroyed ourselves, episode 287 of Reading, Short And Deep, after, a natural accident?, bing chat, From The London Times Of 1904, criticism of Christian Science, healthfood, a religious component, eat a lot of wholegrains, Kellogs guys, veganism is kind of religious like, vegetarianism at one time, fantastically about, bodily purity, moral purity, dabble in veganism, more devout, how to be a vegan and still have friends, every religion has taboos about food, a belief system, the way Americans are, especially Americans, social movements, religious revivalist movements, abolitionism, a moral movement, if we didn’t drink so much, the imbibement of alcohol, the planet has a drinking problem, Ecuador, only a year ago, the French woman who owned the farm, she’s not wrong, even if it is good for me, so pushy, offputting, what happened was it was a breakaway sect of vegetarianism, from WWII era, a document that explains the naming magazine, can we have a special column for people who want to go a little bit farther, it wasn’t pushed, vegan sections, a big moneymaker, restricted their intake, apples, a price point, today veganism is a big business, followed the behavior, the demand has made it easier to become vegans, vegan options, forced to adapt, happily adapt, more complicated, a vegan debate (about honey), transubstantiation, like honey so much, everybody loves sugar, the honey vegans, ovatarian, flexitarian, a plant based whole food diet, anyone who may be listening, an article from MacLeans, a 1929 story about an all meat diet, the carnivore diet is growing, make the same argument, cleared up my skin, our food supply is full of chemicals, a vegan hotdog, a lot of them are not monosyllabic, salt, pork, fat, milk, put this story to bed, the vegan meat replacements are so processed, to mimic meat, the same health benefits (detriments) of the meat, morally we feel it was better, why are you even being that way, like a religion, there is no one text that everybody follows, a lot of influencers, every church is independent, eating is a community activity, smoker, right wing Christians, the same people who pushed abolition, progressive, greedy alcohol companies, breaking up families, The Black Cat is a parody of that, solutions through legislation rather than through abstinence, cigarettes, kids vape, vaping in the bathrooms at schools, the state as a tool of perfecting society, a way of dismissing people, stages of moral reformism, temperance people, the moral argument, you are bringing this evil into your family, how do you get at it without being repressive?, education?, what do we mean by that?, being able to drink was treated as a special privileged, have fun in college, I’m having fun, an integral part of our society, free drinks, provided as a reward for hard work, imbibing a poison that makes us feel creepy, everybody drink beer?, waking up in a gutter, it’s in the story, both good and bad for you, a small beer, contaminated shit, kills the bugs, even today people have bad access to water, South America, or Mexico, buy bottle water, the Mexican constitution, a water crisis in mexico, Mexico City, bottled water is a much bigger curse upon humanity, disposable plastic containers, a corner store, the same as a regular drink, excellent water, an influencer thing, everyone thinks tapwater is poison, students are horrified, relatively new pipes, how did that happen?, tea is another good solution, also a medicine, from Wisconsin, beer, brandy, New Hampshire, 4.8 gallons per capita, loses that social benefit, alcohol culture, lowering the recommended alcohol intake, the FDA, provincial, the federal government is very weak in Canada (foreign policy, copyright), dry January, somebody is trying to change everybody’s mind about alcohol, the trajectory, everybody smoked, that changing of the guard, an integral part of their lives, couple of old fashioneds, the zoomers are going to be the next generation of moral reformers, never smoked and doesn’t drink, reasonable and non-crazy way, don’t do that, BC Cannabis government store, BC Liquor Store, more productive interesting things, perfume, axe body spray, shampoo, cable car, nicotine, heroin and crack, super-addictive super-destructive, THC, a timewaster, a terrible addict who can’t accomplish anything, Thomas De Quincey, unless you overdosed on purpose, there’s no correction, heroin, distilled opium, legal, kratom, $400 a week on this stuff, they have jobs, unsafe and ineffective, safe and effective, the gas station sells you some kratom, it can be dealt with, the supplier is the CIA and they’re manufacturing it in central America, very established, early pop, sodas, citric acid, will melt your teeth, that ability to legally attack allows, cartels shit, we’re all onboard, kratom addiction, let those truckers or whoever it is, enjoy their kratom, some evil corporation will say let’s control this, giant vaping companies, the new peril, technological, all the other drugs u just stuff it in your body, just eat it or smoke it, alcohol, flavour agents, not a biological product, making recreational medicinal drugs available at the corner store, wrap it up, Eric’s (Rabkin’s) book club, a newer space, keep getting better, very excellently narrated, a Clark Ashton Smith, in a play in a choir, may the force be with you, Evan has been off the grid, some Heinlein, Richard Wright, active in the 30s 40s 50s, Native Son, very angry, angry is good, dirty is also good, Library Of America books, Elmore Leonard, crime, westerns, James Baldwin, equanimical?, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper, made her own zine, Flannery O’Connor, James Joyce, 11th grade, modernism, how racist was Flannery O’Connor?, that one story, issues with her, a separate book of annotations, unlock and understand, a long process, the cyclops chapter, exaggerated parodies, 33 parodies, comical funny ways, the catechism chapter, Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne, how horrible plagiarism is, Aeneas, a chapter about that, no trustworthy characters, a hack writer for 40 pages, overblown ridiculous horrible writing, Othello, A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, The Taming Of The Shrew, the opening of Macbeth, these are fart jokes, that’s a sex joke, so rude, they just can’t see it, why Shakespeare is cancelled, up in arms about how rude and debased, a black man in a story, a jew in the story, all of academia right there, why Shakespeare is so great, Iago wants to fuck Othello, damned in a fair wife, breaks up Cassio’s relationship, Cassio is effeminate, be closer to Othello, he’s married himself, he was between my sheets, he’s mad he wasn’t in the bed, an old black ram is tupping your white ewe, imagining going on, it’s not racism, Iago is gay for Othello, a latent homosexual, on a blog, a version with Laurence Fishburne and a Kenneth Branagh, dead on the bed, that does explain a lot, this is super funny, a guy pretending to be a girl, witches and Juliets, you read it subversively, No Fear Shakespeare, the side by side, not the funny or devious interpretation, written in poetic license, The Goblin Reservation by Clifford D. Simak, mythological creatures, aliens, extinct neanderthals, the illustrations, delightful, more fun than deep, more than Way Station, heavy handed, Over The River And Through The Woods, Mindswap by Robert Sheckley, very scattered, non-sequitor humour, talking to the egg, Douglas Adamsy fun, The Status Civilization, serialized as Omega, a “peon”, a path to status, a satire of Earth, on a prison planet, fights a robot, how status works, the theme, how does status work, very readable and funny, started to hallucinate, the length problem, he had a bomb around his nose, the girl, convoluted, lost interest, you would hunt an egg?, Seventh Victim, The Monsters, Tenth Victim, The Journey Of Joenes, A Game Of X, Condorman (1981), Das Millionenspiel (1970), like The Running Man by Richard Bachman, The Prize Of Peril, The Mad Planet by Murray Leinster, 2011, Roger Melin, a PDF from Fantastic Novels, which one is the best, on youtube too, sequels.

The Gun by Philip K. Dick

The Gun by Philip K. Dick

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #797 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The World That Couldn’t Be by Clifford D. Simak AND The Worlds of If by Stanley G. Weinbaum

The SFFaudio Podcast #797 – The World That Couldn’t Be by Clifford D. Simak, read by Gregg Margarite AND The Worlds of If read by by Stanley G. Weinbaum – read by Mike Mike Manolakes (both recorded for LibriVox). These are complete and unabridged readings of the stories (2 hours 8 minutes) followed by a discussion of them. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Maissa Bessada, Will Emmons, Jonathan Weichsel, and Terence Blake

Talked about on today’s show:
the podcast boosted intelligent version of Terence, The World That Couln’t Be and The Worlds Of If, paired these up, two short stories, they both have world or worlds, subjunctivity, subjuntivier, by raise of hands, Professor Van Manderpootz, Pygmalion’s Spectacles is very similar, The Ideal, student Dixon Wells shows up, uses the machine, falls in love with a girl in the machine, profesor dismantles the machine, commercially for a few years, off hand line towards the begining, check it, falsifiable, The Point Of View, February 1936, Worlds Of If is the first one, don’t need to be read in order, realized while listening, Philip K. Dick has a tribute to Professor Von Manderpootz’s stories, two short stories starring a professor who invents machines, narrated by a former student, Doc Brown and Marty McFly, 1st 2nd and 3rd Back To The Futures, crazy scientist and student or younger, Professor Dumkopf, Pootz is like Putz, mander like meander, greatest scientist who ever lived, beat the asians in 3 months, A Martian Odyssey, had read before, disniguishing each of the stories apart, they’re all the same, guy narrates his experience falling in love with a woman inside of a machin Girl In The Golden Atom, preceded by girl in the drop of water, Fitz James O’Brien’s The Diamond Lens, weird fiction, science fiction, The Short Happy Life Of The Brown Oxford, a dutch oven, a way of cooking or baking on top of a stove, shoes inside, they come to life, run around the yard like little rabbits and breed, combining these two stories together, dance themselves to death, Philip K. Dick’s brain is awesome, must have read in reprints, first visit to Von Manderpootz!, a story with him in it, a familiar character, Dixon, the Wells from H.G. Wells, just fits, the Soviet Union wanting to dig a tunnel through the Urals, various desserts, nothing about them being communists and evil, the future of 2015 or so, very 1935 optimistic science fiction, lobster salad, full future luxury communism soviet rocket, precedes the jetset class, post WWII, transoceanic flights, clippers, refuel in Hawaii, make your way to Shanghai, much more like getting on the Concorde, casual and fun, running late, misses his airplane, hold the plane for him, the Beirut office, very nice future, not the focus of the story, the picture we get of it is nice, a critique of the story: overwhelmingly bourgeois, inherited money, still financial crises in capitalism in this future, chorus girls and caddies, this high end education, a terrible student, highly incompetent and competent, no real consequences, bourgeois fiction, tends to dramatize minor inconveniences, cozy, the butterfly affect, there’s a whole magazine named after this story, what we deal with in science fiction is the worlds of if, IF, Worlds Of Science Fiction, a skinsuit mag for it debuting next month, Stanley G. Weinbaum stories, If Reader Of Science Fiction edited by Frederik Pohl, A.E. VanVogt, 1952-1971, the Galaxy guy, Hugo Gernsback delve, Gernsbacked pilled, read Weinbaum everyday, fluffy and light, an H.G. Wells story without the H.G. Wells heaviness, a very interesting cynical message, no matter which choice he takes is the wrong one, that’s what happens, a better deal, this is the best of all possible worlds, not getting the desired object, the best thing that could have happened, conflating the two women together, not good to have as a wife, silly airplane, fixated on him, a horrible wife as well, he got the better deal, like The Time Machine, you get enlightenment, you get affirmation, not satisfied, being not satisfied is satisfying, when their on the rocket ship together, expected to be a friendship of the ship, vacation girlfriend, together with another couple, promised to write, not proximate to you, friendship that seem really great, talking about the podcast right now, accidentally make a baby, desire is subjunctive rather than indicative, he was lucky he lost his money, a good wife who only loved him for his money, stayed in the subjunctive type of desire, a refutation of the power, of all the sad words the worst: it might have been, called out in the story, Maude Manner It might have been, [Maud Muller by John Greenleaf Whittier], it wouldn’t have worked out,

God pity them both! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall.

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: “It might have been!”

Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies
Deeply buried from human eyes;

And, in the hereafter, angels may
Roll the stone from its grave away!

a bit of hope, pie in the sky, we get sequels, two sequels, I want more, it didn’t need to have the same characters, easier, more commercial, people like series, here’s another with the same characters, more marketable, A Martian Odyssey, Valley Of Dreams, unneeded, Professor Challenger, Tom Sawyer, Detective, good story, expected to be more blown away by Weinbaum, our Simak story, much meatier, more interesting, three times longer, it’s great, an attack on Jesse, Clifford Simak didn’t have conflict, appears to have more conflict, how much Simak have we all read, a bit, Shakespeare’s Planet, Way Station, Goblin Reservation, Over The River And Through The Woods, really nice, of the countryside, Leiningen Versus the Ants by Carl Stephenson, a war against army ants, classifies as science fiction, German, foreigners going to Brazil, rubber plantation owners, Confederates went to Brazil, Confederados, the last country to get rid of slavery, NATO brought it back to Lybia, more alien than red indians, set in space Africa, hominy, exposed to it as a child, parched corn, dried popcorn?, food going on, sytha, slow drip of information, very cool story, thank you, asexual, James Tiptree Jr story, Your Haploid Heart, we’re doing this for you, sorry, gotta fuck you, taboo for them, they don’t want to tell, they don’t know how they reproduce, our main helper dude, Sapar, it says something, I grew up with that thing, all those other creatures are taboo, a list of creatures that are taboo, make a claim as to what is actually happening on The World That Couldn’t Be, like on our planet, adaptation evolution, an alternative form of evolution, this hunt, to help the Sytha learn and evolve, instinctual knowing but not consciously aware, who is it faithful to?, it is faithful to Duncan, the mother function, the same brood, several sequences of broods, a bigger Sytha, a planetary Sytha, Shotwell, is it eternal?, is it immortal?, a young one, right to the ending, oh wow cool, chapter 6, they halted on a knoll, vua, wearing thin, it is an awful effort to keep on being smart, it was nice knowing you, back to animal again, very simple said the sytha, just begin hunting me, get smart, I guess that will work, admirable, next time I have a brood, old uncaring comfort coming back again, seethed with happiness, won’t he be happy and surprised, will he be ever pleased, slipping back into unintelligent, you can almost miss it, a psychoactive drug for humans, it’s not good to be intelligence, pathologically trying to kill this creature, he goes nuts, reading from a collection of Galaxy stories, originally published in Galaxy, an H.L. Gold ending, making a lot of claims about editors, reviewing a bunch of random pulp stories, joint, especially when there’s two editors, a question about Planet Stories, Jerome Bixby, very interesting, it has to be Simak, otherwise Jesse’s theory wouldn’t be true, a lot more pulpy, the length, the character development comes out through the action, discover by talking, curious about the origin of the story, suggested by somebody else?, wonder, not early, in the middle, ended in the 80s, squarely in the middle, our main character is an asshole, for a Simak character, Philip K. Dick’s Beyond Lies The Wub, the natives, the way the captain treats the natives, our planter, our food grower, he is an asshole at the beginning, a typical Simak character at the end, projecting, conflict is fixable by cogitating together, not ethnic cleansing and not genocide, anti-colonial, in the same way as Wells always does, this is really good science fiction, by knowledge, finding out what the world is actually like, at the end, he’s found a way to coexist with this alien planet, he’s gonna get a surprise, little girls and boys, they’re all gonna be like him, they’re gonna be smarter, I found this very stimulating, actually smarter, added to the genepool, no species on the planet is sexed, adding sex to the planet as well, he’s gonna have a brood of Duncans show up, the sample has been taken, Donovan, a sampling, the Donovan kept walking, now we are even said the Sytha, the more assholish human on the planet, things that hunt, what’s cool about this story, this is a planet without conflict, two things: 1. the hunt, 2. is the ability to stop, much more aggro, a big preshow discussion, a lot of people goin vegan, they have theory that backs up their behavior, people who identify as vegan and practice veganism, everything eats everything, weird exceptions, we tamed each other, they found jobs for us, we found dogs for them, sheepdogging and cowdogging, mostly their job is companion/housewarmer, tooth and claw, in the form of Eden, healing the sick, some of it is not for their natives, hominy, they’re changing the planet, they engage with the sytha, a non-edenic planet, that’s a positive, almost religious story, the edenic world was imperfect, what we needed was a war of all against all, growing to something better, it is that, right?, felix culpa, back to Will, H.L. Gold, appraising a story, Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle For Leibowitz, wasn’t a damn bit grateful for it, not your pussycat editor, plain damned brilliant, a character in The Space Merchants, high speed tempo, the books success, the nagging nagging nagging presence, if he hadn’t demanded it, a great book, serious problems, pacing issues, a very involved editor, the anti-John W. Campbell, positive but annoying influence, a much different experience, a better experience, better stories, personal essays, more or less the same thing, you worked very closely with him, a Greek monster, Scylla, Lewis Carroll, boojum, alien names, nonsense words, hang your associations on, the endpoint is more satisfying, empathy is learned, emotional intelligence, up to a higher emotional intelligency, ends in exogamy, The Lovers by Philoip Jose Farmer, inputs, asexual reproduction at the end, Edward Sapir, even if just through the news, an engagement with the American landscape, bucolic landscape, Simak stories not set on a planet?, A Choice Of Gods, Time Is The Simplest Thing, these are native indians, engaging in a different way, enslaving them?, still in initial contact, smarter even though it is dumber most of the time, incorporating the new mode into its system, 8 year olds show up, the male female dynamic is needed, little Duncans that are different than each other, toes on their feet, like different flavours of ice cream, if we know anything, having sexuality, maybe not by volume, avoids the disease problem, develop a new banana, science class, clone armies will die, cloned mammals, a different kind of cloning problem, sea-lizard that does parthenogenesis, theoretical too, twins and triplets, same exact genes, in plants all the time, a genetic bottleneck, brown lizards, especially common in plants, letting the forest plant itself, monoculture farming, pesticides, herbicides, fencing, overwhelmed suddenly, cavendish banana, other plants as well, one guy gets a fungal infection, this whole planet is theoretically an army clones, genetically human, a cognitive mapping of human, the sequel to the story, the sytha will discovered that it’s fucked up, surprised at the reaction, more aggro, eating the others, close the restaurants, a good transitional thing, The Word For World Is Forest, The Queen Of Air And Darkness by Poul Anderson, become friends, a fascist story, overcome their prejudices, the wrong side and the right side, anarchistic hippy nature lovers, our prophet would disagree with you, a Vietnam war allegory, more grist to ignore it, they can do more than one thing, Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, it can do more than one thing, the bad reading, one of the things, environmentalism vs. rapacious capitalism, Avatar (2009), Call Me Joe, friendship with misunderstanding on both sides (colonialism), a positive ending, humorous, a big surprise, you need more humans just like you, could be very strange, a cat: my master would like a sparrow, will the empathy acquisition keep on going up, some descendant Duncan it, vegan, will he forget?, will he lose his emotional intelligence?, The Monsters by Robert Sheckley, this is a comedy of a morality that’s different, ecogenetics, little sexless natives, how can they have familial feeling without having a mom?, acts like a female, only one scytha on the planet?, multiple bodies, this one, all the oceans are connected, this embodiment of a scytha, a force of nature being, individual minds, not even eggs, budding?, the youngs are raised together, form their taboos in the same way that, poo poo go in toilet, don’t sleep with your sister, twist endings, very earned, if you’ve got a premise start with it, my god it’s a time machine, my god it’s Adam and Eve, overpopulation, good but necessary, underconsumption, The Midas Plague, The Stars My Destination, a final revelation, very Horace Gold, undercut ideas people have, this story is not that great, understood the world, a revelation, an evolution, we never see the face of the girl who’s so ugly, they were hiding something, the story wouldn’t exist, will his brood forget?, afraid of one of them, that one forgets, they’re gonna be like him, losing his place on this planet, he will be displaced, they’ll be farming, moving in a new direction, people don’t ask for rewrites, printed, asked for rewrites, Warrior Soul, set in the far future, set in the present, he was right, good criticism, a much better story, copy editing, put typos in the magazine, Cirsova, changed a little bit, sold 2 to him, Clarke of Clarkesworld, certain similarity to the stories, want their own voice, to get that voice, submission guidelines, traditional publishing, Barnes & Noble, the way tradpub works, agent vs. publisher, many cooks, reviewing a lot of audiobooks, somebody need to work on this book, why is this in here three times, Stephen King, pulp, lower tier, interesting voices in science fiction, in the old pulps, Philip K. Dick couldn’t work with John W. Campbell very well, Anthony Boucher, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Argosy, Blue Book, they wanted him to edit his story, rejected The Outlaw Of Torn, basically Robin Hood, wanted to make money quickly, a folk hero, The Cave Girl, King Richard, its just this particular royal is bad, being very frustrated, art and thou, medieval England, prince kidnapped as a baby, mislead by political radicals, The Lad And The Lion, democratic rebels that are really fascists, assassinate the king and rule the country, WWI basically, WWII references too, very clever, unable to rule because they’re incompetent, this pattern goes on continuously, more incompetent from the last one, more diluted blood, he has terrible politics, my Tarzana, nobody in the right mind would agree with it, a pet lion, crash in Africa, goes around Africa, happens everyday, the rewritten one, bidding wars, Heinlein, Starship Troopers, the juveniles too, Podkayne Of Mars, when a government decides to take away your guns, don’t kill her, Stranger In A Strange Land, late late Heinlein, The Pursuit Of The Pankera vs. The Number Of The Beast, Sam Moskowitz, book editor vs. magazine editor, a commentator, 1963 or prior, Weird Tales, Fantasy Times, Under The Moons Of Mars, the fluffiness, just another fluffy cute story, big long story by Simak, paying off so well, it’s built into the idea of the story, everything was leading up to that, why write the story at all, Simak over Weinbaum in this instance, Simak has more better stuff, in the course of a year, two handfuls of short stories, really good stuff, very solid, both fun, both good, pretty close to amazing, if this was a novel, a three character story, the anthropologist, one of them kills himself, he finished what he needed to do, he has a thorn in his foot, thorns come up a lot, just before chapter 5, I will be with you to the death of both of us, a very biblical thing, it stayed with me, it’s hard to figure out these jokers, seethings of emotions, what variety of belief, Simak trying to make an asshole out of the guy, missed the trail, fearing it had gone, loyal and faithful, the outlander and intruder?, is there a common meeting ground?, stroked it polished it petted it, just another chance, a steady bead, back to the farm and field, that misty other life, very interesting stuff, Good., a soggy blanket wrapped tightly around the body, another dirty trick, distraction from what’s about to happen, progress in empathy, relativity of beliefs and ethics, perhaps it has reasoned, sentient beings can do tricks, cognitively map the enemy, induce that mentality into error, a theory of mind type empathy, this dirty beast, a worthy adversary, here’s the end, your knife mister, if we take this as a falsehood, take it as a truth, looking straight at Duncan, the native cut it’s throat, from helping you to the end, psychic communication, spear, rock, smarter and smarter, doesn’t need to be alive anymore to evolve the scytha, the turning point for the story, committed to a purpose and a challenge, it was something more than that, weird entangling, this pronoun thing, big in the 2020s so far, as another man might stroke a woman’s throat, rubbing the gun, petting it, “mister” said a voice, bwana, respected outsider who we really don’t respect but have to, Duncan stiffened, it now can talk, the Sapir language, the story seems that way, never shouted out at all, for you to extrapolate, an elephant and tiger and a grizzly bear, how big is this thing?, you start imagining what he’s not saying, near great, our Weinbaum, the action scene are a little bit overdone, the action scenes are fun, went on a little too long, future stuff, another Simak on the schedule, Hellhounds Of The Cosmos, space opera, A Choice Of Gods, The Call From Beyond, Empire is a short novel, City, Kevin Green, City is a fixup, Foundation, Dune, when you’re doing short stories, you can’t talk about 10 Ted Chiang stories in one show, maverick science, threaten the corporation’s monopoly, sounds super-science, Fury by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore, super-science is kinda dumb, carefully modestly super-sciencing, Roger Zelazny, Unicorn Variation, The Horses Of Lir, A Night In Lonesome October, Creatures Of Light And Darkness, Lord Of Light, This Immortal, post-nuclear war, a tour of the Greek islands and Egypt, a rebel who wanted to kick off the aliens, undercover, torn between, might be a sequel, Damnation Alley, post-apocalyptic suburbia, before the white man came, robots are priests, how they fit in, very Simak, something we never brought up, “Moby-Dick with a twist”, let’s get something good, got distracted, Project Mastodon, Mastodonia, Second Childhood, Cemetery World, Time Is The Simplest Thing, A Spell For Chameleon by Piers Anthony, a book for the blind, how it was produced, in the commercial space, a special loophole in copyright, a great thing, put into the ears of blind people, not in favour of following the law, Xanth, exiled to Florida, Charles Burnett Swann, marketed to kids, 344 pages, On A Pale Horse, he liked to do series, a huge amount of effort and inspiration into the first volume, 12 hours, a nice 8 hours Simak, named the land after himself, before we lose anybody, Return From The Stars, what exotic location, a Valentine’s play, playtime, nothing can live up to The Taming Of The Shrew (1976), I will rip it, Marc Singer plays Petruchio, amazing peak performance, staged for television, if that was on TV!, remember Bravo?, artsy shit, television is full of filler, Dark Carnivals, we miss you, bud, Jesse’s email is a horror show, a Connor show, 50 Jesse messages, message him less, doesn’t engage with twitter for months, Confessions Of An English Opium Eater, go to drug guy, 5 hours 21 minutes, more possible, a lot of feedback on youtube, the greatest thing ever, almost all positive, he sounds insanely awesome, Martin Geeson, The Seventh by Richard Stark, The Gun by Philip K. Dick, The Mad Planet, its all gonna be on Will, its all gonna be on Jonathan, Alex pulpcovers, very understandable, a novella, it’s all on Alex, Jetta Of The Lowlands, assuming he hasn’t contracted shingles, The Pathological Liar, a case of deceiving the enemy, lie for the sheer pleasure of lying, a compromise, there’s no digits in my name, that’s a robot bud, The Liar, Penguin Classics, Dialogues, dramatic readings, acting level, thickest accent on the planet, it can be a nightmare, keep hoppin away, Plato, The Story Of A Cat, do this research off air, What Mad Universe by Fredric Brown, culture shock, sewing machines that open to a voyage in space, H.G. Wells, an implacably hostile alien species, Arena, The Case Of The Dancing Sandwiches, Lawrence Block’s The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown, The Jesse Show, 700 episodes in, Just Jessing, more demographic audience, none of the trolls listen to this podcast, The Triumph Of Evil, Paul Kavanaugh, do no research come up with an idea novel, supposed to be a true story, doing pushups and drinking alcohol, montagnards, heist a shipment of nuclear weapons, Vietnam War is happening, we need more Paul Kavanaugh, a guy confesses to a crime, pure writing talent, a historical crime, Not Comin’ Home To You, a Lawrence Block devotee, goes down so smooth, much younger dad, live to 103, not a sequel, would be wise to do so, writers abilities, Maissa won’t love it as much because she’s a girl, Travels by Michael Crichton, given the power he does nothing with it, he would prefer not to, Bartleby The President, power hungry dictator, Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, beloved, could be spicy, love the spice, there’s a podcast that exists because this show is too spicy, Julie Davis and Scott Danielson’s A Good Story Is Hard To Find, this is not a Christian podcast, this is pre-antivaxx, personality and flag, pirate flag should not be hoisted there, flags in bio, the Yemen flag, qualified, the new one is the red triangle, a theory about Yemen, the Rawandan genocide, houthis, who from the empires outside?, a big deal in Canada, how traumatized he was, Romeo Dallaire, a big deal in Canada, bureaucracy, macheted to death, sad spicy stuff, the Julie and Scott show, not supposed to be one of his best books, who chose that one?, not responsible, Wikipedia, Lem himself judged the novel as unsuccessful, treated in a simplistic way, who is responsible?!, we validated, convinced, Stan Lem, I’m not a Lem stan, become slan, the meme: fans are slans, more advanced than other people, form a world government, focusing on utopia, the least pessimistic, a hope punk book?, a 1989 Soviet play, yes because of the name, Strugatsky, asian racist, russian racist, they’re all the same, who is he to judge his own books?, Philip K. Dick, how trustworthy his own claims are, Solaris, the Andrei Tarkovsky movie, The Futurological Congress, to catch the drug experience, The First And Last Men movie, a short French film, hit by various psychoactive drugs, The Congress, what Cora says about it, boundless interest, needs his own podcast, when is that podcast coming out?, much easier to show up on Jesse’s, eventually, a lot of work, Eric doesn’t listen to podcasts, you can tell kind of, he likes doing podcasts, you can kinda tell, well hidden?, good at talking, he was a professor, University Of Michigan, Dean of Stony Brook?, lot of people don’t, cuts into audiobook time, you’re missing out on a whole genre, audio drama series, Toby Stephens, the Philip Marlowe series, what are you listening to, I have that in my car, used to be the BBC’s James Bond, British guys doing American characters, Raymond Chandler, Farewell My Lovely, The Long Goodbye, Red Harvest, The Maltese Falcon, two good stories, one really great, a silly question, the first season of Reacher, reviewed the first book, I don’t love this, he’s not human, he’s Conan, that almost makes sense, The Terminator, he smiled, he relaxed with his army buddies, Conan is not a patriot, he gets a pension mailed to him every month, a fantasy, the first book was fine, done with Reacher, a one concept thing, like a theorem, a deduction, a flashback character, don’t care, to be fair Jesse was sick, still a little bit of phlegm in there, F. Paul Wilson, Repairman Jack, still alive and on twitter, scary stories, Dean Koontz, Soft by F. Paul Wilson, makes you go soft, a blob of jelly on the floor, cats become your biggest problem, starts from the bottom up, New York City, I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, keep his daughter’s spirits up, before the rats get you, the softness continues, a hard story called Soft, The Keep (1983), Michael Mann, WWII Nazis, a retelling of Dracula, set during WWII, 80s music aesthetic, not winning any Hugos, Tangerine Dream, did musical soundtracks for movies, the 1977 epic Sorcerer, William Friedkin, fuck that shit!, completely subsumed, The Wages Of Fear (1953), they go to Brazil to escape death, 4 guys to drive 2 trucks, land be despoiled, snuffs out the fire, second gulf war, the dynamite has gone bad, nitroglycerine, girls won’t like it, but if you’re a dude, Roy Scheider, existential rather than psychological, I’m a movie fan now, Star Wars is good and all, The Exorcist (1973), way to popular, The French Connection (1971), the fish people one, The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre (1948) with fish people, names in profile, hyperBadiou, set theory mathematics, a scoop, explain it to an English speaking audience, this is really good, a video series, hyperthinking the absolute, occasionally talks about science fiction, Gilles Deleuze, François Laruelle, philosophy is generalized science fiction, if it’s not doing philosophy it is not science fiction, Bruno Latour, pioneering figures in science studies, the Salk Institute, an anthropological study, no preconceptions, what people did and what materials they used, Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Moon, when the Chinese land on the Moon, so loyal, Bernard Stiegler, grew old and died, Jacques Derrida, a seminar on Youtube once a month, conceptually powerful, used some of his concepts, individual and collective individuation, Marxist French theory type way, without needing to carry the Jungian baggage, Agent Swarm blog, Anathem by Neal Stephenson, his masterpiece, quantum physics, Logics Of Worlds: Being And Event II, Olaf Stapledon, Arthur C. Clarke, Xenoswarm blog, analyze Dune, hence your recent interest on being on a podcast a lot, dialogue is better than monologue, a defense of the bad review, a lot of time liking tweets and blogs in French, a friendly retweet, absolute silence, Ray Nayler’s The Mountain In The Sea, has Terence been blackballed?, The Peripheral, my videos are horrible, totally improvised, lots of umming and ahhing, well prepared, he’s high on his own supply, meaty for youtube, he has opinions, some of them are good, the occasional insight, the presentation, David Brin, thinks he’s the smartest guy on the planet, multiple podcasts, a promotional exercise, they didn’t know enough about him, he aint dumb, here’s the thing about Ursula K. Le Guin, the Ng person, the acceptance of the award, Joseph Campbell, really young, conflating Amazing and Astounding, Hugo Gernsback is not John W. Campbell, Astounding SF, similar name, Analog, Ray Palmer, women were discriminated against, hidden women we don’t know about, were not as many female readers based on the letters, discriminated against, by readership or editors, repeat what wikipedia says, how you end up being the prophet, this lady from Germany who does the, Sabine Hossenfelder, a baby explanation of capitalism and why it’s not so bad, turning all the externalizes, dumb smart people, got a degree, physics there’s almost nothing to do, Michio Kaku, some things are so base and clear, no matter what 100 years ago you pick, email is no longer usable says Jesse, most people don’t use email, full of spam, an email manager, never a message that is relevant, occasionally there is an important one, you have not paid your bill, dip into that horror show, auto subscribed to, already in every system, worried about the wrong things, when he becomes famous or more famous, daughter of Afflecks and Garners, email is not a great way to harass people, spreading rumours via email: not a thing, yahoomail, you might need this, 1997, 26 years full of spam, Mike emails twice a week, Mike Nowak, Jesse’s an indian now, or always was, adopted into the band, tsleil waututh, can’t wait to tell Paul, Indian status, if you want to bore everybody: you people gotta get off of my land, Paul will not like this concept at all, a hierarchy of people who need representation, BIPOC, fairly recent, excludes, so important, wanting to exclude Asians now, no acronym yet, reserve certain positions, Kamala Harris becomes VP because of skin colour, a scary ideology that is not wise, a black robot president, open source AI, dictator Jonathan to unite everyone, Will: this one is for you, student in a minute, Black House, excited about that, read it twice, early incarnation, a student in Sydney, does he reference, inspired to come to France, the cinema, a quotation from Confessions Of An English Opium Eater, well expressed in various films, more interested in drug culture, other than coffee, noted Will’s dream, I don’t need drugs I am drugs, brain under sleep is on drugs, tapping into it while awake, defenses are down, we are multiple drugs, dreams and science fiction (same thing), a coherence, the same thing for free, Will was in it but he was a pug, deceased dog, I wonder if he smells like cigars, dming reading Planet Stories, never smoke on a pulp, don’t smoke the pulps, they don’t smell when they’re scanned, nobody listens except for Mike Nowak, heartbroken mother, parents friends, almost never, the one time they shouldn’t lock, that was me in the past, delete it, a student coming in 1 minute, double talking to you, 5 hours, Jesus!, 10pm, something more presentable.

The World That Couldn't Be by Clifford D. Simak

The Worlds Of If by Stanley G. Weinbaum

Posted by Jesse Willis

Reading, Short And Deep #432 – Catherine And Frederick by Bros. Grimm

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #432

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Catherine And Frederick by Bros. Grimm

Here’s a link to the story |PDF|.

Catherine And Frederick (sometimes Frederick And Catherine or Simple Kate) was first published in German in Children And Household Tales (Kinder-Und Hausmärchen), 1812.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

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

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

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

Hayy ibn Yaqdhan

Hayy ibn Yaqdhan

Hayy ibn Yaqdhan

Hayy ibn Yaqdhan

Hayy ibn Yaqdhan

Hayy ibn Yaqdhan

art for The Cat's Advice by Jesse

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