Frederik Pohl – Page 5

The SFFaudio Podcast #560 – READALONG: Day Million by Frederik Pohl

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #559 – Jesse, Marissa VU, and Terence Blake talk about Day Million by Frederik Pohl.

Talked about on today’s show:
a panel on the New Wave, reading the New Wave, stuck in Jesse’s craw, against movements, cyberpunk, that one William Gibson book, steampunk, as it was happening, H.L. Gold, Galaxy Magazine, John W. Campbell, Analog, not that, Philip K. Dick, Alfred Bester, the label science fiction or fantasy, a reaction, quite impressed, really casual, the way it is written, the plot is pathetic, so meta, SF Impulse, mathematically wrong, 10,000 years from now, 1,000 years, the year 3,000, he’s describing 2019 or 1966, he met a girl and took her phone number, copyright 1966 by Rogue Magazine, a sub-Playboy, all the meta-stuff, just I guy who likes boobs, the whole thing is about sex, a direct injection of ideas, a little red convertible, how angrily you recoil from the page, who wants to read about a pair of queers, so innovative, transgender folks that are pronouns that aren’t male or female, the 1980s, born in 1919, sums up all of the issues we won’t care about, just getting used to the idea, 2012 review, what makes it feel old and dated, dude-bro, the dude-bros are back, the dude-bro phenomenon, click around on YouTube, all sorts of people, anti-gay sentiment from totally gay, women are all about peace, Margaret Thatcher, Hillary Clinton, Dick Cheney’s daughter, this dude whose reading a girlie magazine, interviews with Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1981, trending, a phenomenon, the last hurrah, the narrator is criticizing you, everytime there’s an objection, on this way I want to tell you about, a boy a girl and a love-story, none of it is true, undercuts, 137 years old, not a girl, the urge to rape and the urge to submit, psychology, a pedagogical lesson in what SF is, poignant sentiment, it sounds sarcastic and full of cliches, beginning with a hyperbole, just before the singularity, present day concerns, silly requirements long since left behind, the end, Spider Robinson’s podcast on this story, permission to read, what very well may be the ultimate science fiction short story, a lot of competition, edging out a lot of the competitors, more interesting, an introduction to science fiction, Robert Silverberg’s Science Fiction 101, a terrible story

And you—with your aftershave lotion and your little red car, pushing papers across a desk all day and chasing tail all night—tell me, just how the hell do you think you would look to Tiglath-Pileser, say, or Attila the Hun?

boom, he dropped the mic, and walked away saying “I just showed you what science fiction is, yo.”, whisky, shaving everyday, everybody’s all beardy, ride horses and subdue cities, a man sits behind a desk, he bbqs stakes in the back yard, that is fucking weird, some of it is preposterous, the most normal stuff, VR stuff, personality copying, prosthetics, cavities filled, rude parts removed, organs, a new wave retelling of Scanners Live In Vain, Pohl fell in love with Cordwainer Smith, stacking up the famous science fiction writers, eventually you would get to Pohl, he was there the whole time, the opposite of Campbell’s movement, writing and editing magazines, he didn’t do the Moon Landing, with Cyril Kornbluth he wrote The Space Merchants, the Senator from Proctor And Gable, a book for millennials, sleeping on the stairs, near death of capitalism, a near singularity story, Don and his voyages, circled Alpha Centuri, agricultural implements, 10,000 planets, but you don’t care about that either, its people who make stories, making a concession, science fiction has no real characters or character development, full of circumstances, he’s mocking the reader, double meta reverse irony, you think I’m crazy, that part is boring, it doesn’t deliver what the readers want, oh my god, he’s right!, you don’t understand your place, there just different, offhand comments, you might be thinking about, they didn’t care, Dora is a dancer, the audience doesn’t care, you can’t make babies with her, that’s not natural, he responds to every dude-bro idea, “No”, I still don’t like it, Jesse’s two personalities, natural is good bullshit, everything is difference and everything is change, the smell of peanut butter, that she’s got a pelt, lives under the sea, gills, zero-g dancer, capable of deploying more energy that Portugal in a year, she doesnt sweat in the normal way, she’s up to peanut butter, musky honey, she’s more like a beaver or an otter, a platypus, he’s cranching all the time, getting his legs renewed, only the brain feels, the top tier of the middle class, the ads, an MG roadster, tennis rackets, cigars, cars, turtlenecks, a men’s fashion magazine, even the title, he gets about, a naughty wink wink, an aspirational lifestyle magazine, a tame rascal, Dude, Where’s My Car?, The Hangover, hipsters WWII veterans, the many many anthology, Worlds Of Wonder, not for an audience that’s familiar with SF, for the thinking man who has boobs, the cover illustration for SF Impulse, a human female near the horizon, are you guys seeing what I’m seeing, those calypgean hips = nice ass, she has a tail, not literally childbearing, Podkayne Of Mars by Robert A. Heinlein, conceived earlier and decanted later, birthing technology, plausibility, you can’t gill people up anytime soon, beyond the singularity for Jesse, birth control pills changed things a real fuckton, PROFOUND EFFECTS upon everything, thinking about science fiction as NOT about rocketships going to planets, incredibly valuable, its not supposed to be hard SF, an interesting shift, we could have sex for fun, how is this going to go, Robert Silverberg’s Dying Inside, a mid-life crisis book, lets dwell with this idea, quite an interesting book, it feels like mainstream fiction, what effect would that have?, he can do whatever he wants, like a crutch…, there’s one person who had a cellphone that’s connected to the internet we have but his battery is getting weaker and weaker, you don’t know how to fix it, imagine you had that superpower for 40 years, and that’s science fiction, everything you know that you think is normal I’m cutting away, all the ground falls out from under you, more Buck Rogery style of story, nobody was writing it at that time, but it was translating into film, once you need Day Million in 1985…, a secret sin, science fiction as the literature of cognitive estrangement, it is but not what you expect, the tears and poignant sentiment, it made her feel sad, intensity of emotion, just their memories of each other, they’re not really human anymore, maybe dying earth, the death of humanity, post-human stories, I don’t get you, a couple texting, c u next time, being unable to understand, an ant on Jesse’s kitchen floor doesn’t know what Jesse’s doing in the next room, magnitude, an ant can’t understand a flea, singularities cropping, we’re not supposed to be able to understand, when the curve suddenly changes direction, artificial intelligence, deciding to give up peanut butter, record it for LibriVox, The Men In The Walls by William Tenn, what the people who were talking, Mankind consisted of 128 people, so vast a horde, sometime ago Earth was invaded by aliens, vast their huge their massive, humans as rats in walls of aliens houses, that change of magnitude, not only in time, an incommunicable difference, Virgil Finlay illustrations, dude, podcast, that’s the one, we can do that then, Of Men And Monsters, even if you’re the only thing in the universe, copies copulating with other copies, they need to meet each other, they met at the encoding room and they blushed, do they have to do it to tape it, making a digital copy of themselves, kids today, looking at their phones lovingly, all that sensory detail with them, they have friends too, passion of kiss in symbolic mathematical form, a residue of flesh or body, supercomputer tinder, when they lived in Seattle with a bunch of friends and dating with OK Cupid, a traditional Hollywood Meet Cute, oh shit vs oh hell, the exhibition has an open fly, balls you say vs rats you say, everything is virtual, dose of fleshiness, masterfully put together, Jesse feels to privileged, that wasn’t universally true, a story from Weird Tales called Pity Me! by Bertha Russell, in 1928, an old man who gets his jollies from having sex with dead bodies, she came back to life, how could this be?, this does not fit, 1920s flappers, great grandma and great grandpa were swingers, “problematic”, losing their jobs, they published that?, have you met a 15 year old, no matter where you go you find humans in time, comforting, they’re just like us but their circumstances are different, that big gap, what the publishing industry is putting out, whatever I’ve been reading recently will inform the plots, whatever you put in you’ll get out, if you only prime yourself science fiction novels you’ll get science fiction novels, read widely, watching science fiction TV and want to write a novel, new drafts coming in, the camera is panning in around things, a new phenomenon too, comics that are written as adaptation to Netflix, the art’s good, designed to be adapted as a Netflix series, what’s new this week, so many show there is no way to keep track, you could never catch up, feeding that hunger mill, all the competition for Netflix is starting this month and next and next year [2020], 40 other shows to buy that day, sometimes that works, give me your most innovative story, he was editor of Galaxy and If: Worlds On Science Fiction, playing to the market, being terrible, they say Netflix on the side, a mill aspect, what the reaction of the New Wave is against, Algis Budrys, regular science fiction of the 30s and 40s and 50s, a monetary currency that had been debased, a bunch of tropes that were all worn out, telepathy, Ray Bradbury would use that same vocabulary and do his own thing with it, Heinleinian style Asimovian stlye, more internal, one human being failing, taking drugs on a ship, Charles Stross, a human observer, Ted Chiang, hermeneutics,

Martel was angry. He did not even adjust his blood away from anger. He stamped across the room by judgment, not by sight. When he saw the table hit the floor, and could tell by the expression on Luci’s face that the table must have made a loud crash, he looked down to see if his leg were broken. It was not. Scanner to the core, he had to scan himself. The action was reflex and automatic. The inventory included his legs, abdomen, Chestbox of instruments, hands, arms, face and back with the Mirror. Only then did Martel go back to being angry. He talked with his voice, even though he knew that his wife hated its blare and preferred to have him write.

“I tell you, I must cranch. I have to cranch. It’s my worry, isn’t it?”

When Luci answered, he saw only a part of her words as he read her lips: “Darling … you’re my husband … right to love you … dangerous … do it … dangerous … wait ….”

He faced her, but put sound in his voice, letting the blare hurt her again: “I tell you, I’m going to cranch.”

set in the same universe, the 1950s housewife, the other Cordwainer Smith story, The Lady Who Sailed The Soul, explain a photograph to a neanderthal, our way of seeing telepathy, we know what they’re thinking, accessible to the inner eye, a perfect reproduction, captures a moment, what difference does it make, everything is fantasy, everything out in the world is projection, fighting in a Battle Royale for a Chicken Dinner, romantic relationships can be…, the encoding room, their friends were there to cheer them on, are the friends physically there?, he’s a star man, on Wednesday, he takes all his friends with him, like Yoda and Obi Wan Kenobi?, over there there’s Ben Kenobi, how much is virtual is ambiguous, I saw you on the bus you dropped your glasses, are you looking for me?, never lose those interactions, your ex-wife never becomes your ex-wife, and husbanded, the only thing we’re almost sure of, totally programmed world, atoms all fall down, all the rest could be 100% virtual, sometimes the requirements of the human need for storytelling requires a certain page count, two sentence long story, what day is it?, Day Million, that’s not the way we count, tweaking his audience’s nose, his tongue is firmly planted, these things are coming faster, in your lifetime, the sexy version is “Night Million”, how many words, wordcounter.net, all these things we couldn’t do before except by hand, 2,122 words, 2,500 words, a very cynical view of relationships, that dating farce, the instinct to submit, kinda crass, no chasing, too animal, it really changes things for women, the Vanderbilt on CNN (Anderson Cooper), he comes from billionaire stock, billionaire DNA, gay bath houses and sex sex sex, a very straight gay man, “c’mon man”, the BC Civil Liberties Association, always suing the border customs guys, somebody at the border, philosophy of law, the gay bathhouse phenomenon in Toronto, homosexual men don’t have to worry about babies, as much sex as they want, imagine if women if women don’t need to have babies, as many husbands as they want, it does change the female psychology, females are scarce, get the equipment or marry somebody, it really changes things, you all have to start acting like gay men, the numbers of transitioners, more modest?, more randy?, gay bathouse men from the 1970s, men now living in a woman’s world, modifying their behavior, how people are externally treating them, the whole phenomenon of Saudi Arabia, women in the middle ages in Europe, we gotta keep that all locked down, the whole chastity belt, you can do a lot without electricity,

SF Impluse - Day Million by Frederik Pohl

Day Million by Frederik Pohl

Stellar Audio - Day Million by Frederik Pohl

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #535 – READALONG: The Pirates Of Ersatz by Murray Leinster

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #535 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Maissa Bessada, Julie Davis, and Terence Blake talk about The Pirates Of Ersatz by Murray Leinster

Talked about on today’s show:
The Pirates Of Zan, translation, there’s no planet named Ersatz, inferior substitute, pirate planet, a terrible pirate, a great pirate, a successful pirate, replacement pirates, Darth pirates, actors, so fun, The people of Walden are pirating themselves, Zan pirates, regular boring farming, he wanted adventure, cover with a slide rule in his teeth, he wanted to be an engineer, climbing into the boat, a stun pistol, Jesse read it 10 years ago, forgettable fun, comic novels, The Incomplete Enchanter by Fletcher Pratt and L. Sprague de Camp, Space Viking by H. Beam Piper, between the two poles, Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding, a road trip, a means of pointing out flaws in society, “audiobooks are books, Paul”, back when Jesse was angry about stuff on the internet, the same Kurt Vonnegut story: 2BOR02B, where the PDF Page came from, The Aliens by Murray Leinster read by Julie Davis, Forgotten Classics, you’re welcome for the audiobook, the Astounding book, a nominee for the Hugo, Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein, Sirens Of Titan, definitely written for John W. Campbell, the competent man, a comedic novel, The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison, Deathworld by Harry Harrison, there are better con-men novels, with less infodumping, his tricks, not cheating as much as we might guess, Jesse is not an electrical engineer, everything is wirelessly charged, this is all very plausible (in theory), everyone is getting cooked with microwaves, magnetic coils, how romantic, a Tesla thing, a wireless radio without a battery, the radio waves themselves are the power, Julie wants no more details, the central problem and its resolution, a “death ray”, being set-up, an unintended consequence, he wrapped it up nicely, virtually in suspense, the political/sociological heft, a little too pat, the ambassador and the grandfather are the Heinlein characters, the mental wisdom for Hodan, oh yeah, gotta bunch of wisdom to instill in this kid, Walden Pond, here’s what comes from too much peace, stasis, civilization, the most civilized planet, frontier mentality, tranquilizing society, taking Oxycontin in their main hobby, the Captain Kirk of their society, an agent of chaos, he facilitates, some more of the embassies, the kind of Earth empire (not even a confederation), a larger universe, central authority, feudal chaos, different polities, a space patrol, The High Crusade by Poul Anderson, green-skinned aliens, the Krishna novels, fauna and flora, legalistic arguments down to a fine art, culturally sophisticated, the lord of this and the king of that, the bride of our hero, “this is the woman for you, dude”, the angriest woman in the universe, Chekov’s gun, Netta, the glamour of being associated with a pirate, cowing the barbarians, she wants to make a nice girl out of me, speaking of gender, the Gendered Text Project, suddenly everything’s different, when Bree Hodan…, she was a delightful girl, the weirdest one, it changes the feel, a basic romance, non-binary, Bryn, hir room, zee went to bed, hir ambitions, zee’d be well to do, such prospects made for good sleeping, grandPARENT, what does this do to the original story, kind of like a Conan story, the fools all around them, a softer Conan story, a very weird concept (with that in mind), the male version of the book, Thor is female (or was), a female Wolverine, a novel of a capable man, a capable woman (a Mary Sue), unlikeable, fun and helpful, what happens to your perception, Derek was almost like a female character to begin with, backing into the piracy, originally funnier, who wants to go off an be a civil engineer?, messing around, a new company comes out, ebooks, the Adult version of Harry Potter, Harriet Potter, does that inform your writing, copyright laws, we need a new clause, Indian films, Ghajini (2008) is the Hindi version of Memento (2000), non-creative, zero-respect, the point of writing a book, nyah nyah nop eugh, Julian Assange being taken out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, shelter, citizenship, citizenship revoked, “crime”, the science fiction romp frothiness vs. realpolitik, could that fictional embassy possibly exist?, how striking, shimmying down a rope, heat guns, a very Cory Doctorow thing, flashmobs, an ad on Craigslist: white wig and blue shirt, 10,000 Julian Assanges, embassy intrigue, not that kind of science fiction (really serious about politics), an adventure story, razed in a day, England and embassies, not so much pirates, Pirates Of Darth, the Danegeld, some viking will take them up on it, semi-civilized, William the Bastard, invading a neighbouring island (England), the really fun part, the homeless people are his fleet, sense of empathy, he’d been cheated, so angry, with the insurance, the bonuses, it’s his character, a soft-hearted pirate, why’d you come to a poor place, the poor will give you everything, the underclass, high fleet admiral, against the elites, the Walden society is fucked up, Robert E. Howard’s theories about civilization and barbarism, built-up capital, addiction and getting servants in to pick your crops, a built-in establishment likes they way things work out for them, not everyone is equally powerful, cops vs. judges, a critique of 1959 USA, a lot of lines like this, a lot of frothiness, the background buildup in the philosophy of the world, in cahoots, in support of that system, from the fourth paragraph, good writing, quite pretty, the highest in the Nurmi cluster, a supply of tranquilizers, the tigers aren’t after us at this very moment, blackbears aren’t super-dangerous, a bear up stuck in a tree, wealthy humans getting excited about a bear, so few bear skeletons found in trees, would they notice with one hand clapping?, straight thinking is a delusion, real things aint simple, aint clear, make it as complicated as you can, isn’t that the way, we’ll just do this to do that, that bit of wisdom, how politicians get out of hot water, death ray vs. he literally fell out of a tree, tying everything back in, luring them into understanding how it works, using them as a means to his end, in dealing with other peoples problems you can solve your problems, a helluva lot better neighbour, its not your business, US public healthcare would force Canada to go left, Jagmeet Singh, the US government can’t administer Medicare very well, corruption, we have to up our game, Jesse is not wrong, Canada defines itself in opposition to the USA, Nice, France, from the outsiders outsiders point of view, how clear that question was, 42, Twitter as a medium of links and pictures, Gilles Deleuze, the grandfather’s idea, piracy is good for the economy, things only work because they break down, piracy is a good think, a timid introverted poor student from Australia who went to France, a powerful thinker, what old guys thought might make sense, that history of failure is fascinating, see where someone else made this mistake a long time ago, 1987, an English teacher in a technical high-school, terminal, a couple of hours of philosophy a week, six or seven hours a week, general culture, written in the 1950s, this depiction of piracy, stasis vs. disorder, a product of its time?, relative stability, would people go for it?, a precarious situation, does this novel work today, Frederik Pohl, P. Schuyler Miller, adventure yarning, of piece of lightweight for entertainment purposes only, sneaks up on you, something funny about the names, Hodan like Odin, Bran, brain vs. brawn, Darth is dearth, things with the names, order and chaos, no longer applicable, capitalism is based on producing as much disorder as possible, Crim is the ultimate capitalist, Walden is sublimation, full of crackpots, for spite, a subtle sort of hidden intellectual side to the story, spot on, John Clute, “a competent but unremarkable space opera”, a series of planetary romances, The Odyssey, picaresque, Penelope isn’t delightful so he goes back with Circe, coming to mind, stasis vs. richness, Jesus: feel sorry for the rich man, a cyclical need, Jesse wants to read more of these, other Leinsters, The Forgotten Planet, A Logic Named Joe, Journey To Barkut, William F. Jenkins, one of the earliest science fiction writers of the pulp era, making a living, Police Your Planet by Lester del Rey, Badge Of Infamy, The Green Odyssey by Philip Jose Farmer, humans are pretty funny, a smelly barbarian queen, he delicately disassembled, a very nice sweeping line, one could spend a lifetime, absolutely true, industriously reading pirated books, so important, torrent site, not available in his region, deathbed conversion, sin-eater, something real about the piracy thing, the title is already a parody (of The Pirates Of Penzance by Gilbert and Sullivan), making fun of the romantic idea of piracy, the pirate nation known as the United States, Fred Himebaugh’s pirate novel (with Blackbeard as president), USA maintains a shit list, yo ho ho and a bagful of books, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, Laughing Shall I Die: Lives and Deaths of the Great Vikings by Tom Shippey, viking is a verb, you get a song out of it, heroic lifestyle, the Wild West, threats vs. warnings, we need an audiobook of this book, the last John W. Campbell story, angels, Alec Nevala-Lee, philosophy as a sort of science fiction, people are complex numbers existing on an imaginary axis, a last joke, Campbell’s definition of science fiction, non-philosophy, he’s gone beyond everyone, September 1971, On The Nature Of Angels, a pun, the really sad part, adhering the copyright law is hurting people, playing a little bit fast and loose, makes sense, a “sample”, pirates are nice folks, generally helpful, helping the insurance industry, Walden to the nth level, sad story for them, romance adventure and derring-do, The Runaway Skyscraper by Murray Leinster, stf = scientificition, Jules Verne, Edgar Allan Poe, H.G. Wells, 40 years later, 1919 – 1959, LibriVox, on the lam, The Creatures Of The Abyss, good basic pulp-type story, Sidewise In Time, passenger pigeons are back, pulpy goodness, alternate histories, Star Trek, First Contact, here’s an idea, poor Tom Godwin couldn’t write his way out of a wet paper bag, thick accent that infests every sentence, getting more Leinster up.

Ace Books, 66525, The Pirates Of Zan

The Pirates Of Zan, 1974

Kelly Freas' The Pirates Of Ersatz

Piratefleet Over Darth

ACE Books D-403, The Pirates Of Zan

The Pirates Of Zan, 1989

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #522 – READALONG: Astounding by Alec Nevala-Lee

The SFFaudio Podcast #522 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Marissa VU, Evan Lampe and Amy H. Sturgis talk about Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction by Alec Nevala-Lee

Talked about on today’s show:
Alex Nevala-Lee, a book and an audiobook, thinking about legacies, thinking about audiobooks before, the original cool guy, adorable, its nice to be read to, 100 pages of footnotes, Evan, your book doesn’t exist as an audiobook, nobody wants to read anymore, Evan’s gotten to the stage, reading history books, non-fiction is so good on audio, rekindling pleasure, everything is cited, really he said that?, “Fuck, Eando Binder!”, “lambasted dianetics”, its all cited, 13 hours, not padded, way too long, more about their sexual problems, wife-swappin’ again, a problem for a lot of books, so easy to read, just have a little listen, so engrossing, so well written, The Amazing, The Astounding, And The Unknown by Paul Malmont, the Navy yard, commentary on the stories, I Will Fear No Evil, John W. Campbell is important, Ben Bova, two confusing awards, Hugo Gernsback needs his own version of this, the one person who is completely missing from this book is H.G. Wells, Olaf Stapledon, Arthur C. Clarke, what about this?, Jesse’s complaints are not very legit, The Return Of William Proxmire by Larry Niven, modern science fiction, the intellectual historian, markets for genres, the 20s-30s-40s, the Cold War, turn towards nativism, a profound effect, the Science Fiction League, a self-aware community, WWII, a fledgling dialogue, this revolution, connecting SF with science, Microcosmic God, this is on Campbell, distinctly American?, issues sent as ballast to the UK, all the foreign editions of Astounding, the British fanzines, Hugo was nuts for electronics, we’re going to invent our own televisions, home amateurs, ham radio operators, the science fiction reader, Tom Swift, the edisonade, fertile soil, the radio boys, Electronic Experimenter, a pulp fiction collection, reading Amazing vs. reading Astounding, technical drawings and weird editorials, not only space opera, The Electrical Experimenter, Larry Niven, they’re weird dudes, a pathetic figure, a tragedy, a mire of pseudoscience, Asimov’s biography, Heinlein’s letters, no no, a horror suspense movie, uplifting, it worked on Heinlein, Asimov was his own little being, the tragedy is coming, blind spots and prejudices, good fiction and good science, the new wave, Harlan Ellison, Ursula K. Le Guin, a machine for generating analogies, he’s given them the tools to push back against him, still influential, descent into pseudoscience and self delusion, Asimov’s preface to Dangerous Visions, we’re the squares, the passing of the torch, the sexual revolution, a cultural revolution vibe, Asimov was a square, “I fuck a lot, man.”, almost sexless, The Gods Themselves, weird alien sex, Heinlein’s weirdness, a lot of revealing things, the role of the wives, a biography of Kay (Catherine) Tarrant, spelling the names, Campbell wasn’t needed, behind the scenes, Astounding is so important, still under copyright, Heinlein getting mad at Campbell, Philip K. Dick has one story in Astounding, what’s going on?, Impostor, Campbell wanted superhumans, The Golden Man, a superhuman idiot, writing in reaction to it, Galaxy Magazine, H.L. Gold’s aesthetic, Campbell didn’t take Alfred Bester!, a gatekeeper, Frederik Pohl, how important The Cold Equations is, you have to keep re-writing this until you get it right, what it does, this is what we are talking about, this is how far we can go, a Star Trek story, here is an episode of something that we can imagine happening, Nightfall by Isaac Asimov, what Campbell was aiming at, a study in what editors can do, seeding the same idea multiple times, turning Asimov down, how would that intelligence work?, a black POV character, a leap of imagination, racism and homophobia as compartmentalization, Dune World by Frank Herbert, Mack Reynolds, Black Man’s Burden, Commune: 2000, the problem is scarcity (there is none, except in jobs), universal basic income, it didn’t matter to you that the kid was Filipino, what the difference between a rationalists and empiricists, here’s how drunk driving should work, you’re not clear yet, a technical journal, that’s not how science works, how science works, grinding lenses, Verne -> submarines, Wells -> warplanes, Campbell -> atom bombs, science fiction leading the science, a legacy, Rocket Ship Galileo, Tom Swift in the Rocket Age, Nancy Drew is not the same, Nazis on the moon, action fun excitement, Elon Musk, pushing in all directions, badly inspired, Paul Krugman, Asimov’s Foundation series, a weird tension, the scientific approach to all things, psychology, a desire to make everything scientific, A.E. Van Vogt, enough to be dangerous, enthusiasm for the ideas didn’t follow through to the methodology, we can make this science too, Hubbard had no interest in science (or science fiction, really), Heinlein’s failing, Asimov was a sexual asshole, a tragic figure, Heinlein falls for Hubbard because he had a uniform, a lying used car salesman, cults, its not about your intelligence, lacking critical thinking, charisma doesn’t translate from the page, judging eyes, I no longer trust you, the worst insult Heinlein could ever give anybody, broken legs and gonorrhea, the asshole sections of Jesse’s email, Heinlein was really blinded by patriotism, the Vietnam War, we need a renaissance for the Heinlein juveniles, Farnham’s Freehold makes a lot more sense now, trying to make a point about Campbell being wrong, hopeful commentary, not including Hubbard, the serpent in the garden, transformative, “the competent man”, competitors and community members, we’re doing something that’s important, the conversations we’re having are important, they hung together for decades, personal loyalty, trolls, the story of the first Worldcon, women nurturing men who were nurturing other men, Donald A. Wollheim was a better troll than anyone living today, contributing something positive, Mimic, he bought a lot of Philip K. Dick, Asimov as a youth, your idea of heaven, the power of picking up one of these magazines, the one thing missing from this book is the history of the covers, the art, fill the space, a little bit of technology, pitch me three new magazine, Weird Tales, tiny little things, when H.P. Lovecraft turns down the editorship of Weird Tales, what would we have or what would we be missing?, a magazine with a legacy, Elon Musk is a Heinleinian character, old letters pages are fossils, D.D. Harriman, The Man Who Sold The Moon, a trap, not hard enough on the Soviets!, a whole lifetime of a really complicated human being, the whole point, the functionalist stuff sounds like Campbell, creativity doesn’t work that way, how writing works, The Trouble With Tribbles, everything is in reaction, H.G. Wells doesn’t seem to have a massive precursor, The Time Machine, Last And First Men, Olaf Stapledon, Starmaker, those men are heroes, page 370 and 371, Barry M. Malzberg, sympathize with his critics, the question of victimization, a problem solving medium, not everyone is a hero, the way science fiction is today, science fiction should explore everything, schlubs, we all live in a world that’s increasingly become science fictional, Wells’ heroes are assholes, the New Wave pushes back against the Campbellian revolution, J.G. Ballard, mistrust of the meta-narrative, setting up things that come later, wanting 15 other books to be written, a companion volume on the Futurians, creating editors, Judith Merrill, here’s another community, C.M. Kornbluth, glimpses, Arena by Fredric Brown, The Orville is new Star Trek: The Next Generation, the a plot and the b plot, season 8 Next Generation, Enemy Mine, Hell In The Pacific, Lee Marvin, no alien movie, Star Trek, Deep Space Nine, Enterprise, Space: 1999, The Most Dangerous Game, Predator, somebody sitting around, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, the b-plot, The Corbamite Maneuver, The Kobayashi Maru, Amy’s Looking Back At Genre History, Microcosmic God by Theodore Sturgeon, always asking questions, how do you know, a meta-story, it’s about what happens when you read Astounding, Sandkings by George R.R. Martin is a retelling of Microcosmic God, Dragon’s Egg by Robert L. Forward, Hal Clement, science fiction luminaries, missing an ode to Hal Clement, the chapter titles, Who Goes There?, it doesn’t give you what you want, Don A. Stuart, Twilight, two types of storytellers, historical narratives, a remarkable achievement, history is a pruning job, a really important book, more books just like this, every time we say “Astounding” take a drink, endnotes, bibliography, a gift that’s going to keep on giving, what happens after this, some editor discovered or promoted Dashiell Hammett, Black Mask, railroading magazines, westerns, isn’t Analog still going today?, finally why this magazine called Analog?, it’s a metaphor, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, factless, Willy Ley, trying to make the reality behind science fiction more real, giving writers a grounding, Asimov: what a man!, writers who are complaining about low pay rates, E.E. Doc Smith, the Dean drive, a reactionless space drive, more biographies of these pulp era mags, The World Of Nitrogen, The Realm Of Measures, Asimov On Numbers, super-clear writing, Campbell’s book of collected editorials, Lecherous Limericks, bra-snapping and carrying on, Annoted Gulliver’s Travels, a writing and learning machine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, mysteries, the joy of reading and the joy of writing, his mind was always elevator, that kind of curiosity is so rare, he wanted to know the answers to everything, a powerful force in reality, The End Of Eternity, a fun book.

Astounding by Alec Nevala-Lee

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #493 – READALONG: Tau Zero by Poul Anderson

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #493 – Jesse, Scott, Paul Weimer talk about the Tau Zero by Poul Anderson.

Talked about on today’s show:
1970, a storylet, a novelette, a novella, To Outlive Eternity, the title is a “SPOILER!” for the novel’s premise, the revised title, surprises, how it ends, keeping it hard SF, suddenly a fantasy, its not Earth, dragons, genetics, some resonance with Genesis, keeping it plausible, as hard as he could possibly make it, cosmic background radiation, relativistic speeds, Bussard ramjets, overestimating interstellar hydrogen, beyond the boundaries of the universe, great detail, world building loving detail, faster and faster, no big crunch, dark matter/dark energy, sadder and darker, a disaster book, 2.5-3 hours in, the narrator, the singing of the poetry, a conspiratorial voice, a slow start, accelerating, the format mirrors the speed of the ship, we’re on a planet – the end, starting 10 years into the novel, “they were doomed to roam space for all eternity” – people didn’t care about spoilers in 1967, what am I doing when they’re not doing disaster stuff, the other element of SF, is all of this about birth control?, the consequences of the pill, Catholic boys, ethics of relationships, were it written today…, not equal representation, is Jesse unfair to today’s science fiction?, dealing with this a lot, jealousy, relationships, conversations about who is sleeping with who, the subplot about a lady getting pregnant, sexual revolution, new when he wrote it, novel for the people then, a colonization program, something that Heinlein has dealt with, Larry Niven, psychology, feels like a Frederik Pohl novel, sensory deprivation, secrets, gotta fill those pages somehow, a back seat to step up, the characters are so bad, 25 men 25 women, 10 is too many, as Scott thinks about the book, things happening to the ship, the lives of the people on board, a few eye rolling things, 50 years ago, and even the women would be able to do this, we gotta have a party, these are human needs, a lot of that was uninteresting, it didn’t ring true, told from the wrong point of view, Golden Fleece by Robert J. Sawyer, a similar setup, a murder mystery, told from the A.I.’s POV, a reason to care, Swedes in space, hanging out at cafes, a whole novel, Sweden’s going to become the Roman Empire, a major figure in science fiction, the way Anderson goes after Scandinavian stuff in there, Roger Zelazny, Irish mythology, fear not Paul, Iceland, how this world was developing, the history of the Roman Empire, Dominic Flandry, The Psychotechnic League, world government, space traders in space, two future histories, Baen Books, what kind of Poul Anderson you want, Lenora Christine, a prison biography, Denmark, resonance for the plot, a poem, Aniara by Harry Martinson

Aniara is an effort to “[mediate] between science and poetry, between the wish to understand and the difficulty to comprehend.” Martinson translates scientific imagery into the poem: for example, the “curved space” from Einstein’s general theory of relativity is likely an inspiration for Martinson’s description of the cosmos as “a bowl of glass.” Martinson also said he was influenced by Paul Dirac.

he’s influenced by stuff, sagas, Three Hearts And Three Lions, Planet Stories, Boat Of A Million Years, 1970, nominated fro a Hugo, Ringworld, vestigial, aliens, you don’t say “I love characters”, you like his aliens and his scale of ideas, a big idea at its core, reproductive freedom, Hal Clement, Robert Silverberg, William Tucker, a new audiobook, exploring Poul Anderson, Bronson Pinchot, The Broken Sword, Flandry stories, connecting with Anderson, The High Crusade, along the same lines, Writers Of The Future Volume 23, (2007), Primetime by Douglas Texter, a time machine that can only go forward in time, watching history pass, 10 minutes long, 1955, Flight To Forever, forward to the future, helping a star empire out, The Accidental Time by Joe Haldeman, done twice, our tau is approaching zero, maybe the whole purpose of the novel: meaning, thinking about people back on Earth, how there’s no meaning to anything, they’re journey on the spaceship is of no value in itself, commuter bus value, keeping your regular goals in order, The Commuter by Philip K. Dick, travel for work vs. travel for tourism, newness, the journey was the point of it, the Paris Metro, did you feel this in the book?, the existential angst people are suffering from, the boring opening scene, a celebrity at the cafe, underdeveloped?, looking at our own lives, headed toward that goal, lonely at the goal’s end, after this I’ll do that, on to the next thing, what our purpose is, a shift, a lot to explore there, a breakthrough of some kind, hobbies, fighting with foils, what with the dragons there now…, meaning in progeny, passing all this knowledge down, a religious book, a whole abortion debate, seven months pregnant, the problem of resources, an actual debate, earwax and toenails, recycling, a discussion about resources and meaning, unlimited births, how people in regular life find meaning, Scott has kids and found meaning, there’s something going on, an epic time scale, the end is rushing towards us, an act of faith, too short for Scott?, a philosophical novel, what is meaning?, what is purpose?, the prefect setting to explore that, removing the things we all assume, “libertarian” is a slur, Rand Paul, Ron Paul, neoliberalism, neoconservationism, women can sleep with who they want, with only 50 people how could you not be communist?, no room to be libertarian, more rightward drifting over time, hard to imagine a libertarian generation starship, a generation starship that orbits one star, this concept of libertarianism is nearly confined to the United States, a scandophile?, the rude American, who is funding this spaceship?, the cultural dominant country, the international crew, dragon bone work, their new world, a premonition about standing on a hill, that which is spread out before you, a man stood with his woman, cinnamon, iodine, and horses, poetic beautiful, the ending is the best part of the book, the existential worries just disappear, it’s gone for the reader, sleeping too much, what is the purpose of existence?, you can’t just watch old movies – that’s no way to live, heavy metals, we’re not saying were not going to not have nuclear war, a new beginning is all you need to get rid of that existential god, “here you go, bud”, one of the amazing things about the Fallout games, Fallout 3 and 4, and New Vegas, that sense of a new beginning, a sense of freedom, an invisible wall, I can go any direction, I have my own fate in my own hands and I can see ahead of me, being presented with the New Earth, you can’t recapture that except by playing another game, why the ending works really well.

TO OUTLIVE ETERNITY - Galaxy June 1967 page 015

TO OUTLIVE ETERNITY - Galaxy June 1967 pages 28 an 29

TO OUTLIVE ETERNITY - Galaxy June 1967 page 39

Galaxy August 1967 - TO OUTLIVE ETERNITY

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #484 – The Lathe Of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #484 – Jesse, Paul, Marissa, Luke Burrage, and Evan Lampe talk about The Lathe Of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
Jesse, Paul Weimer, Marissa VU, Luke Burrage, Evan Lampe

Talked about on today’s show:
Amazing Stories, March and May 1971, the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s, the best way to be right more often is to change your mind a lot, different futures, eerily close in some ways, the opposite of this book is Nancy Kress’ Beggars In Spain, questions vs. answers, immoral vs. nice, a very evil book, some facts about sleep, lack of sleep, eliminating sleep, a horror show, Randian superhumans, robots, being robots who grind other humans into powder, A.E. Van Vogt, when fans are slans, not as a science fiction but as a fantasy book, Philip K. Dick, scientific explanations, the aliens, a fantasy book about a guy dreaming science fiction, calling out science fiction in science fiction, Star Wars, Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, the tropes of pulp science fiction, the 1980 TV adaptation, changes for changes sake, a good adaptation, the 2002 remake, they drop the “the” and the philosophical stuff, dying dream, WWIII, as he’s dying in a nuked Portland, Rumble In The Bronx, Mount Hood, volcanoes, Mount St. Helens, Mount Baker, how Mount Hood looms over the book, what makes it the classic that Jesse thinks it is, the first half vs. the back half, battling for control, the narrative goes off the rails because it’s needed, two bad utopianists, central planning, life goes on, Orr being passive, “George Orr” vs. “John If”, Haber is a verb, to express the existence of something, the perfect tense, future tense, Orr is wishy washy, using to perfect, cute, Lalashe, coward, an insect, a black widow spider, she click-clacked and snapped, changing reality, everyone’s skin colour goes grey, to have…or, the genie problem, The Monkey’s Paw by W.W. Jacobs, in imperfect dreamer, world peace (through war), no racism, overpopulation, internal vs. external, aliens ex machina, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, from ideas to reality, dreams -> reality, nightmare -> reality, Avengers: Infinity War (2018), the historical context, Stand On Zanzibar, Make Room! Make Room!, The Population Bomb, Star Trek, The Mark Of Gideon, The Conscience Of The King, Malthusian worries, people as consumers vs. people as producers, did Le Guin by into it?, Orr bought into it, it’s all about power and checking privileges, a diploma on his wall, a button on his desk, turned into an asshole and a user, somebody to use, a tool, Immanuel Kant, means to an end, what if there is no end, all we have is the means, the categorical imperative, subscribing to a particular morality, Haber is gaslighting Orr, civil rights, the dynamic between Orr and his psychotherapist, if this was expanded out it would be a dystopia, mild punishment for drug crimes, mandatory therapy, a little bit Brave New World, protein rations, climate change, the end of chapter one, the GPRT drivers, people on basic support, pretending that starvation is scurvy, at least they have unions, pre-Ronald Reagan, the logo of the white hand and the black hand are shaking, the anti-war movement, the end of the ’60s, wish for peace on earth (get war in space), simplistic anti-war ideas, asshole vs. misguided, wasting time on means, the consent form, the abuses of hypnosis, hypnosis as a device, Robert A. Heinlein, experimenting on patients, he hides his assholishness, getting violent, rejecting the second reality, it ISN’T morally ambiguous, Haber is so real, evil in our reality, what actual evil people do, belligerence, Haber’s arrogance, who was responsible for killing 5/6th of the population, how the establishment is: satisfied with the way things are, everything is getting better and better for Haber, why people are confused about Haber being a bad guy is because Orr is confused, he’s not curing me he’s encouraging me, being evil is using someone as a means to an end, rationalizing for evil, lying, the most insidious evil shit, why people stay in abusive relationships, compulsory voluntary therapy, blaming himself, hypnosis vs. persuasiveness, he wants another doctor, he wants help, what a medical ethicist would say, anti-psychiatry thinking, modern Scientologists, Dick thought this true, he’s not a mad scientist, his science as a means, his ends are good, aren’t they?, he’s right to go to a lawyer, so subtle, not everyone sees, the subtlety of Le Guin vs. the hammer of Kress, the most Philip K. Dick novel by Le Guin, out Philip K. Dicking Philip K. Dick, Ubik, Maze Of Death, PKD vibes, PKD and Le Guin went to the same school, a staunch advocate of Dick, one of the best novels, we are in danger of breaking the book by taking it apart too much, how different it is from Dick, feeling like a Dick plot, there’s no humour in this book, insectoid clicky boobs with a chitinous sheen, of course its a horse, funny vs. jokes, the focus on the power dynamic as a horror, sympathy for a horrible dictator, talking about that horse, Philip means “horse lover”, how George Orr lives his life, the homosexuality, dope, very advanced, no fear of bisexuality, NOT problematic, a very 70s way of talking, a 21st century book, the radiation, set a little in the future, undoing problems, mutating, the psychology of the horse and the mountain, erupting, everything’s beneath the future, evidence looms large, right out the window, only when Orr becomes upset, running away to his cabin, triple crown, Tammany Hall, Boss Tweed, corruption, a horse of corruption, is Orr naming it in his dream?, if you don’t treat it as a simple fantasy, is Orr’s brain creating the backstory, choosing between different quantum futures, switching dimensions, how Haber explains it, what does he know?, he’s confabulating it, this is a book about dream, dreaming about this podcast, less LEGO than in the dream, absolutely necessary, completely mysterious, we’ve all had that feeling, angry at someone all day, waking up stressed out, what is the reality, Jesse is sometimes surprised to hear his own name, explaining away the painting, that is not normal, it used to be a view of Mount Hood, the influence of Dick, the power dynamic, The Man In The High Castle, when you read a Philip K. Dick book you can imagine him writing it with a smirk on his face, this feels more dignified, the Laozi, Zhuangzi, Taoism, H.G. Wells, the quotes, too many, so on the nose, the book is prescriptive, in what universe are these quotes relevant?, why isn’t Shakespeare talking about bug-people and aliens?, my pigtail points to the sky, buttocks into a cartwheel, freeing of the bond, accepting the life that comes to you, guiding the reader, breaking the fourth wall, spoiling the effect of the book, The Beatles, she was making it a “greater book” but “diminished it”, more subtle, the I Ching, the characters are learning from the quotes, had the quotes been changing…, “Shotgun Funeral”, the character list that’s messed up, Brandon Sanderson, a missed opportunity, Ubik, advertisements, influencing the characters vs. influencing the readers, look at all these cool quotes I found, “dream quotes”, doing a service, narrative thrust vs. narrative wander, Bertrand Watson, Margaret Killjoy, this is almost an H.P. Lovecraft stories about dreams, Hypnos, drug taking and dreams, a strain of Lovecraftian stories with the horrible machines, From Beyond, Tillinghast’s device, Eight O’Clock In The Morning by Ray Nelson, transparent skin, birds, gross!, Herbert West: Re-Animator, the lesser figure, the passive witness, the dreamer himself, reluctant fascination than actual inclination, the power of dreams, dreams written down, had H.P. Lovecraft written this novel, what’s missing from this book, what’s missing from this book: lucid dreaming, continuing the dream, watching two episodes of a TV series over the space of days, Luke’s lucid knife fight dream, narrative control, did I dream dreaming, George Orr was so wishy-washy, falling under Haber’s sway, spineless characters, weak men, too average, Idiocracy, the most average person, did he make himself the most average man in the world?, which was is the causation, personality inventories, gaslighting, the augmentor, he’d never actually given it any thought, the lay-word sane, your median, by the end of the novel he’s called an artist, he’s a draughtsman at the beginning, grabbing the world by our hands, a celebration of human agency, creativity, character growth, Sidewise In Time by Murray Leinster, living with the pieces, the opening paragraph from Hypnos, Baudelaire:

“Apropos of sleep, that sinister adventure of all our nights, we may say that men go to bed daily with an audacity that would be incomprehensible if we did not know that it is the result of ignorance of the danger.”
—Baudelaire.

May the merciful gods, if indeed there be such, guard those hours when no power of the will, or drug that the cunning of man devises, can keep me from the chasm of sleep. Death is merciful, for there is no return therefrom, but with him who has come back out of the nethermost chambers of night, haggard and knowing, peace rests nevermore. Fool that I was to plunge with such unsanctioned phrensy into mysteries no man was meant to penetrate; fool or god that he was—my only friend, who led me and went before me, and who in the end passed into terrors which may yet be mine.

the audacity of this guy, we are gods, we are the creators of our own reality, dreams reveal truth, teaching things we shouldn’t know about ourselves, terror about knowledge, The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward, Thomas Ligotti, an early pioneer in a horror people don’t want to know about: science is true, the comfort of ignorance, melancholy characters, The Dispossessed, the novel is not about that, power relations, conversations where someone is playing a game, handcuffed together, it’s almost like they’re married, why change the lease 33 year lease to a 10 year lease, the age at which Christ died, no resonance, credited as a consultant (not a scriptwriter), Luke would give it 3.5 stars, the lips within the curly beard, then this world will be like heaven and the men will be like gods, the other paid no heed, volcanoes emit fire, fascinating, he has the beard, we are already (like gods), we can already do this, Le Guin is very good at not telling but indicating the direction, signposts on the road, course correcting, why Jesse loves Philip K. Dick, he always doesn’t give you what you want, the setup, Lester Del Rey, designed while it was being written, Jesse has four copies of The Left Hand Of Darkness, when you think of Le Guin this isn’t the book you think of, a step below greatness, the author is visible, here are the ideas I’m playing with, psychiatry as the mains science of the book, Gateway by Frederik Pohl, psychiatry is less science than economics (the dismal science), how primitive psychotherapy worked in the 1970s, A.I. super-intelligence, turned into paperclips, the greatest good for the greatest number, humans into widgets, anti-utilitarianism, how Orr is upset when his girlfriend is gone, not black and not white, it’s worth it, grey not pink not purple, pink dogs, Loving vs. Virginia, she’s not scoring points, a lot of books seem to think they’re the ones who invented being cool, I wanted to show a lot of diversity, rainbow unicorns, representation is overstated, go for ideas, a response to race as a problem, racism is historically contingent, 17th century, let’s talk about this a bit more, slavery, Doctor Futurity, breaking up into new clans, clans are a real thing, speciation, mountain lions and valley lions, family behavior, SNCC, integrationist model for overcoming racism, to solve racism by making everyone the same colour, if he was a PKD protagonist, why the genders are the way they are, Orr was a woman (never mind), the secretary/assistant, the aunt that gets deleted in the first dream, a retcon?, sexually predating on her own family, if Orr was a woman and that was an uncle…, exploring sexuality in other books, Orr had to be a male, male manipulation of women, Lalashe, the most PKD character, starts as a negative, a persona she can take it off, turtle shaped aliens, do they even have a planet?, allowing pink dogs to exist, reality will cover its tracks, when Evan is talking to his students, the origin of the prison, imagining alternative to prisons, the Romans didn’t have prisons, exiles, fines, crucifixion, it has always been this way, a historical invention, The Word For World Is Forest, weird side-bar, The Word For World Is Rainforest, back to PKD, a one sentence defense of utilitarianism, critical of bad and stupid utilitarianism, defer to John Stuart Mill, the problem of the pleasure wizard, Jesse thinks of himself of as a pleasure wizard, think about kids, they haven’t read any books, or seen any movies, you’re going to watch Snow White, god-like power, children are not best able to marshal resources, The Good Place, Kristen Bell, Ted Danson, way cleverer than Jesse thinks, Jesse hates the word spoiler, Jesse doesn’t trust people, “type it Paul!”, that’s cute, someone fools you it doesn’t mean they’re cleverer than you, intellectual journey, repetition, American Made (2017), Barry Seal, Hitler loses WWII is not a spoiler, is this Good Place better than Willa Cather?, time commitment, The Americans, look at it from the Soviet point of view, the ending was terrible because the bad guys were let go?, how we won World War II, the more you learn about the soviet end of the war, Canada boasts it had the second biggest navy in the world, gravitas, we can’t know, modern things, at the end of history, stagnating in place, the idea of the novel, historicity, podcast as a genre was completely unimaginable thirty years ago, still mysterious, how many music podcast are there?, it’s not a rights issue, Mr Jim Moon, The Lathe Of Heaven, With A Little Help Of My Friends, @SFFaudio “full film”, complete versions of non-public domain films, nobody cares, commercial concerns, podcast medium is fundamentally different, radio is almost all music, BBC is different, CBC is different, you have to keep it short, Joe Rogan’s three hour shows.

The Lathe Of Heaven - Illustrations by Michael Kaluta

The Lathe Of Heaven - SF Masterworks

BACKGROUND: THE LATHE OF HEAVEN by Ursula K. Le Guin from TV Guide, January 5 to January 11, 1980

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #447 – READALONG: The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #447 – Jesse and Paul Weimer talk about The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

Talked about on today’s show:
1974, if everybody in the modern era writes like him…, depth beyond the good writing and the ideas, what does it MEAN?!, a straightforward 1970s novel, ever further into the future, future-shock, war, Ken Burn’s Vietnam documentary series, accelerated time, mid-2016 and now, WHAT the bleep has HAPPENED?, clown show, a politically traumatic time, 1967-1968, 1968-1969, Paul is my senior, draft dodgers taught Jesse, “not my president, hashtag”, leaving the USA for Canada, they stayed, making a peep, the elites (or quasi-elites) might have to go, the real plutocrats always found a way out, Jimmy Carter, McCain, John Kerry, that trick still works, the Russia thing, collusion, what skills does he bring to the table?, the John Podesta emails, Bill and Hill Clinton, flipped the script, they swift-boated him, a perennial technique, bringing it back to the book, all weird, another tour, all word, Earth is a dystopia, Earth became Texas, the first section, training on Charon, power-armor, technology, silly and weird predictions, Mogadishu, Somalia, the farm, lawless Horn of Africa, the center cannot hold, ever expanding military, no health-care for the mom, death-panel, trying to figure out what’s going on in the mind of the author, an analogy, this is why people sign back up (go on another tour), going back and forth, the big takeaway, oh, my mom’s gay, everybody’s gay!, everybody’s multi-racial now and I’m the queer, that’s interesting, now everybody is a clone, a hyperbolized version of the political changes, Cassius Clay -> Muhammad Ali (and great) -> now he’s a war-resister, the kind of military SF, Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, Armor by John Steakley, Old Man’s War, ooh it’s a twist (he’s not even white!), the movie adaptation of Starship Troopers, doing something slightly different, following forward, Jesse’s a big fan of the montage, tedium mixed with fear and shock, the military-industrial complex, romance novels for men, a focus on the specs of the pistols, the serial numbers on their special hand-grips, what gets them going in the night, he did a lot of math, gravity curves, MIT, political stripes, the legalization of cannabis, the acceptance of homosexuality, having latent feelings, a little looser, among those artist types, he’s the “old queer”, a funny twitter conversation: what’s really lacking today…, VHS vs DVD, we’ve become more prudish, conservative marketing, “no, we’ve lost context”, sexist!, homophobe!, “a latent heterosexual”, whenever you put a pressure on a large group of people results happen, everybody in our society is gay now, isn’t that interesting, look at the way we’re living now, the lack of context rule, when Potter converts to heterosexuality…, he’s not trying to target the audience of today, Heinlein was a weird guy, the way he obliquely attacks problems, no qualms about this book, an asexual cyborg, Forever Free, Forever Peace is excellent (Paul doesn’t like it), all about drone warfare, more artificial, The Accidental Time Machine, funny and delightful, Haldeman on Prisoners Of Gravity, he won everything (it was political), overwhelming, a thoughtful and reasonable guy, four serials of this book, Analog, Hero, “Screw you, sir!” -> “Fuck you, sir!”, Robert A. Heinlein’s naval service, a deep respect for the military, a hippie planet called “Middle Finger”, it starts with a “fuck you” and ends with a “Middle Finger”, Mandela’s psychological profile, leading from a position of empathy and ideas (instead of will), how the Marxist soldier during the Spanish Civil War would do business, ambiguous (ambivalent) feelings, Mike Vendetti, not something you take lightly, his emotions in his tweets, he’s got mixed feelings, a big mistake!, this war didn’t need to happen, ultimately the lesson, “support our troops”, taking a knee, a conflation with honouring the military, into the arms of the other f-word (fascism), a very nice point, politicians manipulating the people is nothing new, actual journalism with a critical eye, both Gulf Wars, “embedded with the troops”, stories in a patriotic light, propaganda, still happening today, Brian Williams’ ‘beauty of our missiles’, this book misses, told tightly from Mandella’s POV, the veterans are toured around the world, the comic book adaptation of The Forever War by Marvano (artist), Gay Haldeman (translation) and Joe Haldeman (script), Titan Comics, he stacked the deck, a counter-pole, there’s nothing here, the serialization, We Are Very Happy Here, necessary for serialization, a plot contrivance, 84-year old moms, joining the army for financial reasons, Marygay’s mother and father, true for the people of Somalia, pirates don’t do piracy for the sea-shanties, manipulated for our benefit, in the tradition of Starship Troopers (and not in the tradition), Heinlein’s generation vs. Haldeman’s generation, war with aliens, we become the alien, “you don’t understand politics”, why veteran are the only people are allowed to vote, politics of the era of Nixon vs. the politics of the era of Roosevelt, a “take that”, there was a revolt of veterans on earth at one point, the Bonus Army, the Revolutions Podcast, support our troops is a whip, the American support of the French in Vietnam, depending on how you calculate, a sunk cost fallacy, JFK needed to keep the war going past the next election, we can only badly infer it, what Jesse appreciated about Ender’s Game, a wish-fulfillment avatar for 13 year old boys, a lot of time in the online forums, reading a really deep reddit post, why that book is powerful, and here’s what’s missing, the general is a child, it kind of explains the real life generals, Netflix’s thinly veiled McCrystal biopic, there’s no job to be finished, there are no victory conditions, a frameworks for continuous unending war, without a draft it is an endlessly churning meat-grinder, a constant war economy, the government is being fleeced of its coffers by war profiteers, why is my standard of living falling?, pointing out the unfair, labeling it is not the solution, the Las Vegas shooting, “this is an act of domestic terrorism!”, we’re going to calm things down, slave revolts are not terrorism, labels are not the issue, the guns and the access to them are a bigger issue, people get caught up on the words and identity politics, sidestepping racism, sexual norms, a made-up name, he dodged the question, the charge of racism, google n-gram, nobody got suddenly racist, when they do the movie, Channing Tatum, they made a decision, socioeconomic status, a person’s story, the Ender’s Game movie, Johnny Rico is Filipino from South America, Ensign Kim is Scandinavian!, is it a weakness that the novel doesn’t explore racism?, a beautiful time capsule, Mandella’s psychology, Doctor Potter: I’m not prejudiced, the soldiers he was fighting beside were all his team and the fear of the enemy was more important than the colour of the skin of the soldier in the fox-hole with him, a media construction, real human beings, outside your bubble and your fears, deep deep resentment, prejudices of all kind, lived experience, ameliorating intolerance, a chance to grow and understand, an overoptimistic story?, a combat team, it treats racism as settled, let’s deal with homosexuality, Heinlein on homosexuality, a greater representation of gender-queer characters (male vs. female), painful and uncomforting, seeing the flaws within yourself, he’s a dude telling his own story, Diana, Margay gets her own standalone story, Spider Robinson, many changes, an excised fourth part, people read science fiction the wrong way, dangerous territory, Jesse you should read this this and this, this is a story of a dude like this…, reading off in my own direction, books written before I was born, reading the books written by the readers of recent books, unlike other genres (with the exceptions of mystery and crime), science fiction is a series of conversations between stories, your going to be missing a large part of the story, Day Million by Frederik Pohl, Friday by Robert A. Heinlein, I Will Fear No Evil, gay characters in a story is passe, I don’t read the stories for the characters at all, reading it for the societies, reading it for the science, I want to see my values reflected, the battle on that last planet, where’s the rest of the story, why people read science fiction (other than to see their values relfected), world-building, effusive for Ringworld, literal world-building, reading to see representation, an era of character based, having not seen themselves they want to see themselves reflected, a sense of wonder, Paul Atreides is someone Paul could sink into, a white male protagonist, they’re not the classic, how cool the other stuff in that book is, why am I having a whispered conversation with this weird lady in my bedroom, kids never pay attention to the author until you graduate from that, cover artists, aha!, this other thing: the author, this Miguel Ferrer is the actor (not the writer), Tom Cruise movies have no writers, the French focus on the film director, it’s not the characters to me, what makes science fiction so different, soft science fiction, looking at trends and forces, here’s a society with a guaranteed annual income, he’s probably male, that Mack Reynolds novel stands out because it is representing me, the scarcity of jobs is important, world-building enough to spend, there’s no one true way to read science fiction, to misquote Rudyard Kipling, alien planets, we get to see Heaven (a paradise planet), we get to see life on a little planet in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, a deep dive into William Mandella, academic to grunt, what a soldier’s life is like, waiting in a time, a lover or a nurse, reading for the Marygay-William relationship, the Church of Science Fiction, if you read it for the romance you’re going to be disappointed, a Heinleinian bit, looking it as a modern book, are there books still to be written in this conversation?, how Jesse would film the novel, people don’t just live happily ever after, H.E.A. (a romance term), Jonathan and Gary of the Coode Street podcast, how you want to slice it, Linda Nagata’s The Last Good Man, the “Red” series, in this particular thread, digitizing The Lathe Of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin, Le Guin doing Philip K. Dick, a great appreciator of PKD’s writing, she’s trying to have a conversation with Philip K. Dick, the Lovecraft conversation is so loud and churning, fulminating, denouncers, he’s now at max volume, how many sequels to Innsmouth, Ben Bova, a legacy of Analog and Astounding, John W. Campbell seemed to interfere, a pretty stupid man in many respects, the telepathic (psionics), add some bullshit element and you’ll get a sale, nobody writes those (psionics) books anymore, Julian May’s intervention novels, The Many Colored Land, August Derleth, not only a bad writer (a bad person), show me an alien that thinks as well as a man but not like a man, nicely reflected in what happens to the humans, you poor deluded human, Murray Leinster, A Martian Odyssey Stanley G. Weinbaum, an important story, H.G. Wells, I’ve got these great ideas and this piece of paper, thinking through the ideas, tell a story based on that world, what makes Dune so great, a gender-swapped version of Dune, monks instead of nuns, set on a waterworld?, this book has something for everybody.