Tag: hard sf

Jesse, Evan Lampe, Will Emmons, Alex (PulpCovers), and Jonathan Weichsel talk about Exiles To Glory by Jerry Pournelle

Talked about on today’s show:
serialized in 2 issues of Galaxy, September and October 1977, a paperback, Jerry Pournelle by himself, YA in the style of Heinlein, here we are, is it true?, Heinlein style YA?, demented reactionary Nazi guy, garbage, fun to analyze, worth the bother, upset Goldwater was defeated by Johnson?, the worldview is demented, just disorder, a fundamentally reactionary worldview, all controlling government is terrible, actually create something, not be weighed down by the systems of the earth, the civil rights bill, hated every minute of this book, makes the same mistake, takes some Heinlein tropes, a crazy person, flights of fantasy, not enough incest, Starman Jones, a similar story, more synthetic, near the beginning, silly annoying things, the infodump, these rich people who own corporations, dumped with, why, why do I care?, a good chunk of notes, three main characters, significant characters, Kevin Senecal, ask me about my name, Jacob, diabetic computer guy, Ellen McMillian aka Glenda, the good which, Larry Niven, because the inherited wealth, the dedicee of this book, Dan Alderson, was diabetic, the roman-a-clef to understanding this book, a theory, cynical, pretty obvious, the Norman French origins, a steward, runs a household, a granger, chief of staff, John Wyndham, the children with the weird eyes, The Dunwich Cuckoos, the guy who goes around to all the local plebs and demands rent for the lord, all names can have meaning, didn’t pick this name randomly, heroes, they’re trynna save the company, by saving the company they’re saving earth, a comedy, they get married at the end, shouldn’t feel this cynical, very Shakespearean, Much Ado About Nothing, sparking on twitter in dangerous ways, saved it for the podcast, there’s something here, disappointed and annoyed, writing partner, question their continued relevance, dangerous, lock you up on a moon, a stack of Heinlein juveniles, science fiction in the Gernsback Asimov tradition, his focus, the rocket Galahad, effort into that, doing a lot of math, math about something that’s made up, an eidetic memory, by being rich, raised in a weird cult, Futurians, the ideological framework, a very timely book for the late-70s, stagflation, capitalism in crisis, an issue with hard SF in general, all this thought into how the tech works, a technophile, everyone is against technology, social structures, how government works, how political movements work, delusional, the rise of other economies in the world, seemingly endless growth was coming to an end, more of what Johnson had in mind, tried that in France, a welfare state forever, Marxism 101, far left vs. right, the modern administrative state, autonomy from capital, from the great Depression forward, a reactionary like Pournelle, opposed to capital in a fundamental way, more power than capital, governments are more short sighted than business, elections vs. shareholder returns, investment vehicles, privately held companies, the audiobook business, an audiobook producer, the only exception is Amazon, a monopoly in multiple, an acquisition company, Blackstone Audio, weather the storms of management school ideology, some family, learn the business, doesn’t always work, some heir fuck it up, what this book is about, a book about politics, useless and helpless, the STATE, they’re nothing, the actual enemies are other corporations, she’s a spy, corporate cops, kind of interesting, the cop who wants to have a beer, steals a beer, a person stuck in a horrible institution can do, too many other things on their mind, a broken system, the good ones leave, can’t just muddle through and take the orders, leave the earth to solve the problem, the solution to problems is running away, hints early one, some sort of secret society, did the cop nail the cat to the door?, what’s going on here, the Futurians were set up, global conspiracy, a weird book club, the early Earth stuff, The Rolling Stones, Grandma Hazel with the kids on a scooter, that anoxia thing, clay under her boobs, never pays off, Quixote, straight out of, The Turner Diaries [by William Luther Pierce], is there any evidence for that?, have you ever said anything about Africans, lifted off of that book, what’s it doing there?, the kick off the earth, motivated to leave the Earth, buckle down and get a job, a lot of people’s goal, your life sucks, had the sense to make the character a female, a healthy young man, a nerd who played football, trash can lid, loving the Society For Creative Anachronism, pandering to nerdism, a serious problem with the politics early on, 2020, beat up by gangs in the 1970s, The Warriors (1979), Escape From New York (1981), Death Wish (1974), desperate gang violence, Crips, muggings, Monica Hughes, the company is the bad guy, the people who work at the company are all bad, double agents and spies, that one company is good, he can’t get in the guild, do you have any pull with one of the unions, protesting groups, the cynicism about academia, fairly forward thinking, a lot of people a lot less enchanted with the university systems, there’s a column in Galaxy, giving his speeches, excited about his ideas, we don’t have to have zero population growth, where in here is it really really right wing, helpless in the face of black masses, police not enforcing laws, massive rioting, Black Lives Matter, not enforcing the drug laws, doing heroin in the streets, academia being unable, you’re never going to get out of this university, never separately, before he died, interested in tech, growing up during WWII, Italian POWs, not exactly a contemporary of Heinlein, the next generation, he’s on to something in here, how is Earth going to be better off, a competent manager, engineer their way, cheap energy, cheap food, the plot of the Fallout tv show, fetch quest fun twists, factions and themes and big surprises, cold fusion, help everybody, a comedy cynicism, you’re the naive one going into the world, giant eyes, artificially increased in size, the fun juxtaposition, super-mutants, coming out of Plato’s cave, puritan ethic, underdeveloped cult, parents are rich, a junior associate of the cult, part of her secret identity, her regular identity, loose threads, some other books, easter eggs or callbacks or fanservice, first and last Jerry Pournelle, not a terrible book, disappointing, the solution to one’s problems is to marry a rich girl, Horatio Alger, getting Bs in his courses, the prerequisites, when they tried to grade you, previously had gotten As, not politically conforming, walking around campus, the first one to stop applauding when Stalin gives a speech, zero-growth, pro-tech, variant, doesn’t matter which one you join, one of the officially approved protest groups, feels extremely 2020s, every time a new party won the White House, become entrenched, the Deep State, anti-Trump, didn’t make a lasting impact, back story in this, what was happening before our story began, too late in the book, hidden from us, there was the Watergate, a new third party, People’s Alliance, populist, one would hope, we’ve given up on Earth, we haven’t given up on humanity, princess of mars, brain implant, her story is much more central to this book, he’s the POV character, she has Daddy’s money is going to fuck me up, gravity is hard, stupid gravity, told from the male pov, Heinlein YA, you’re a boy who’s writing the book, general audience for this kind of book, not that many female engineers as a percentage, they buy her being a prostitute, rich girl who rebelled against her richness, the prodigal daughter, well done, what we expect, more mining, getting the load home, the criminal CEO type was doing most of the mining, Starship Troopers except mining instead of the military, Asimov not Heinlein, regular girl, believable or not?, from moment to moment, interesting character beats, I’m into you, let’s shack up, the near future, still normal for people in their early 20s to get married, a very wealthy woman, addresses that, things going on on Earth, Invitation To The Game, kids can’t find jobs, free housing but not jobs, improve themselves as a group, a VR, playing colonists on another planet, they are actually colonists on another planet, like Ender’s Game but with farming, Tunnel In The Sky, the people on Earth are fucked, steal back the unobtanium, make earth a garden, what is the ideology here really, cultivate your own garden, good and honest, find the lost boy in the woods, find a new home, good at heart, do your own thing, chaotic and disordered, how reactionaries see the world, only force can restore order, no institutions, the Mexican government is more competent, Baja, California, The Children Of Men, V For Vendetta, we’re holding firm, the whites in the south who oppose civil rights, if we move against segregation, to keep the fundamentally unstable force at bay, white civilization is under threat, reformed by liberal governments, fundamentally incapable, welfare to education, worsening the problem, only the market or a strong force, reactionary views, there’s too much strong man that’s trying to tame the world, crack down on the gangs, it’s Oregon, everybody’s in their clique, what recent happened, the drone strikes, Nancy’s Pelosi’s friends [worked for that group], killing 100,000 children is fine, I live in a gated community, amongst my peers and friends, I’m getting phone calls about my friend’s children being killed, if you’re in a union, you don’t want to fall, the judges, these guys have rights, fallen, a strata between, the haves and the not, the gangs tend to be strawmanned, what do gangs really want?, autonomy, unity, a means of a survival, official sanction, selling himself into indentured servitude, he meet cutes with, Gaza, the settler colonial project, informed by this very argument, the Algonquins, a chaos we need to bring order to, being driven out, Hungarians and Germans and Ukrainians, the French, the Irish, convinced to go to settler colonialism, you don’t have emigration, Americans being driven out, why did you make that choice?, professional, an American historian of Atlantic history in the Pacific, they’re looking for jobs, there’s no tenure track anymore, people are feeling this pinch, made examples of, the same university for 25 years and had perfect scores, declining rates of profits in the housing industry, capitalism doing that, disorder in the world, emigrating from the United States, keeping from leaving the U.S., tax season, retirees, under the cut-off, how international this book was for an American book, a very American writers, most SF writers who exist, does Sci-Fi still get written?, Ted Chiang, written vs. read, looks like it would be science fiction but is is not, science fiction in awards won, once we’re in space, the Mexican detour, Heinlein has stories set in Canada, very unusually, if it is written by an American, the Earth, Africa, mining companies, a lot of Switzerland, what African country gets mentioned, Canada is a huge mining, zero, Africa is not a set of countries it is a set of places to be mined, Isaac Asimov’s super quiz, which country controlled Angola, Portugal, Madagascar, Ethiopia, why Africa is uniquely interesting, didn’t really care about settling there, and Kenya, most violent decolonization movement, Rhodesia, Mau Mau rebellion, as a possession vs. its resources and can change the government, border crisis, stop fucking up those countries so hard, let them run their own things for a while, most people don’t know, they live in shithole countries, the reason those countries are shithole countries, the recent history of Ecuador, don’t get couped every couple of weeks, the claws and the snakes, where is the right wing part of this, white kid attacked by a black gang, you’ll be the one in trouble, the text is more focused on they’re kids, they’re minors, imperiled children, young people as a threat, strong families and strong parents?, the racial quotas, pretty explicit, a lot of class stuff just below the surface, the ending was largely about that, anxiety about diversity, a positive thing in his works, trigger Evan the most, the Malthusianism, population growth has destroyed the earth, need to eat bugs, I need you to eat bugs, my $300 subscription ice cream, your $15,000 refrigerator, a specific Nancy Pelosi meme, one job per household, restrictions, not going to use any resources, managed poorly, sexism thing, girl in space, that’s sexist, it is, fine with it, evolutionary sex roles, damage done to people’s bones, women were definitely put to work, some war not a lot, hunter gatherer society, have we evolved, humans never change, the things that infect their heads, institutional stuff, our capacity to transform nature and ourselves, ecology of nature, change our relations among ourselves, marriage is a totally unnatural thing, a development, many software updates, some occasional firmware updates, squishy/country, evolution happening slowly, domesticated apes, we’ve certainly lost a lot of hair, lobster stuff, Jordan Peterson, we have the enlightenment, not Pournelle, big heavy infodump late, the very end, his punishment is we pay off your debts, he murdered several people, very realistic, if they don’t just kill him, jurisdiction in space, wave a stack of cash, he would get himself killed, with the lawyer, incredibly satisfying, Pacifico, the Disney villain death, what made him bad, hoarding, embezzling, misallocation of resources, spy books since Ian Fleming, a free on Audible, corporate espionage book [Paranoia by Joseph Finder], at a phone company, basically Blackberry, a double agent, all of that being said, when the stakes are two companies against each other, android vs. apple, the tech that soldiers wear on their head, American vs. Chinese, China steals everything, patents, copyright, cheating at a game where there’s no rules, a layer of cope, the 10 commandments of the company, a lame cope, the reason is china is bad is they take our ideas and implement them, getting the unobtanium back, cheap fertilizer, all the babies in Africa and India and Bangladesh, cynical, the remarkable, a sense of humour, Niven’s sense of humour vs. sense of fun, playful, Ringworld, everybody’s motivation is about sex, Louis Wu just gets sex naturally, Speaker, Nessus, with the hindmost, Teela Brown, luckiest girl on the ring, a low stakes book, personal issue, where the cats were getting murdered, drowned in a toilet, nailed to a door, kill his own cat, pictured in the Galaxy illustration, why is that cat doing Jesus, Stephen Fabian, the cat being crucified on the door, drawn a lot of boobs, my audience for Galaxy really needs to see, Will couldn’t abide that, a Heinlein guy with regards to cats, unlike Jesse, more interested in editorial policy, hoping to grok science fiction through editorial policy, the reason H.P. Lovecraft is, editorial policy creates stories, idiosyncratic bird, market this book to specific audience, artists doing their weirdness, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, makes her own magazine, wrote everything in it, The Yellow Wallpaper, mainstream publication, Herland, women were oppressed in the 19th century, women are people too, some sort of allegory, largely autobiographical, the history of medical treatment: horror everywhere, not wrong to be interested, you have to go to that casino, see that Star Wars movie, capitalism, that’s pretty much everybody after a certain point, kill yourself like Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, drunk, why are you kind of a drunk?, everybody gets there eventually, hopefully, editorial policy at Galaxy in the 70s, James Baen, a different era, J.E. Pournelle, back in the day, a broad array of ideological perspectives, Spider Robinson, he’s a hippie man, Joanna Russ, a woman resisting pregnancy in an Adam and Eve scenario, publications existing today, no general audience, fragmented audience, oppositional ideas, being part of the choir, literally Futurians, as being a right winger, this book sucking at the end, the setup is awesome, allergic to the idea that the right wing even exists, thinking about Paul, he thinks right wingers exist and they’re bad, this policy and this policy, endless foreign wars, tribal cleavages, a woman’s right to choose, she does it anyway, does that make him right wing?, advocate for rational self-interest as a motivating principle, if this book were running for election, where you sit in the legislature, vibes, interested in science and no sense of humour, the fuck yeah science tribe, Andrew Yang, superficial, no depth to it, a surface level description, describing the physics, government and interactions between people, mechanical, not really a right wing or a left wing, ideological differences in these systems, a West Wing, deliberately insulting, doesn’t believe in basic human equality, conservative ideas, what do you mean by right wing, a relative thing, explain Jesse then, ideological incoherent, will self-identifies, focused against and focused on, radical centrist, what Alex was, circumspect, challenging political provocations, a political position, the self-immolation dude, did both, it was for Trump, the new TidePod challenge, finding out the hard way, 70s bombings, disaffected teenagers got into school shootings, ideological different, a left leaning populist, the vax stuff, loves Vladimir Putin, the Syria stuff, riding a bear, holding a cat, Jesse’s gullible, what a tankie is, militant opposition to capitalism, Stalinist, many British communists, a general meaning of supporting anti-imperialist, tankie shirt, defenders of anti-American leaders, pro-Russian narratives, Russo-Ukrainian war, soft-peddled, our politics don’t really matter, you run our country, doctor/dentist, everybody in the middle don’t, early on in this book, The Island Worlds by Eric Kotani and John Maddox Roberts, narrator was ok, Wyatt Fenner, squeezes his nose, hard earned money, before Will was born, born in 1986, so new, a flying Porche, a flying car book, asteroid mining, some Conan, alternate history about Carthage beating Rome, not DAW, MP3-CDs, follow up on this, Thor Taggart, a political party to take over Earth, colourful characters, corporate shenanigans, same tradition, Charles Sheffield, Nive and Pournelle should start looking over their shoulders, came out and bought it, somebody has these books, used bookstore, a NEW book, decent covers, actual science fiction books, the last gasp, John Scalzi’s obituary on Jerry Pournelle, he wasn’t Heinlein but he didn’t kill anybody, he borrowed, are liberals left or right wing, that circumspect laugh, generally considered left wing, John Locke: left wing, Hobbes is right wing, nasty brutish and conservative, pre-French revolutionary, old money and new money, The Economist: a left-wing publication, Adam Smith, more libertarian, libertarian as a subset of liberals, free things up to get more new money, if you’rre not pulling for the Holy Roman Empire…, always conservative, skinsuit Roman Empire, the old joke, achieved peak podcasting, The Worlds Of If is back as a skinsuit publication, Neil R. Jones, The Jameson Satellite, this asteroid road, with a flying porche, Australian ebay seller, the Romantic poets, Keats/Shelly, Coleridge: degenerate, agents chasing Coleridge around, Keats is more conservative, pining for a lost golden age, pretty active for a lord, the Spain of the day, was his club foot left?, arts movement, Tolkien very conservative, a revelation about Tolkien, look at the evidence, who are the rich people across the water, proudfoots, all the Hobbits who are rich indicate they used to be robbers, proud of being footpads, a thing he put in, Brandybuck, they’re buckin’ something, Took, it’s right in the name, I’m baggin’ that, “this is y Gandalf knew Bilbo was a natural thief, it’s how his ancestors got rich!”, it’s that amazing?, an excellent undergrad paper, where riches come from, hobbits as Englishmen confirmed, come home an build castles, sit back, and smoke pipes, ideas on abortion, some right wing stuff on the Spanish civil war, against lining nuns up and shooting them, pro-lining nuns up, line the anarchists up, marry the nuns to the anarchist, have a mixer, the liberal solution, there’s no losers under liberalism, educate people into the middle class, robot janitors, big roomba, you’re kids are janitors while they’re studying at interviews, work study program, older adults to tell them what to do, management was staff, liberal institutions, make kids do work, depends on the context, make other kids do work, old money new money, we’ve been making money this old fashioned way, universities are liberal because they maintain the system, meritocratic, people are starting to tip, pre-French revolutionary times, give it a few decades, how many decades can you have of incompetent government, incompetent government doesn’t really effect most people, hungry, deprivation, Lenin wrote that book, What is to Be Done?, when the system is failing, the Chinese Revolution, national unification, peace, haven’t had starvation in 70 years, famine forever, the Soviet famines were a manmade, all the famines are manmade, localized famines caused by droughts, it takes communism, socialism, communism is never achieved, a list of famines under British India, Pulpfest, all of July?, became a lawyer, among the better end of Conan pastiche, non-Robert E. Howard ones, alternating chapters, some ghoul lady with cold flesh, she’s a zombie, sex with a zombie, Conan The Champion?, a guy writing about Heinlein books, cracked the code on incest in Heinlein, there’s no incest at all, one of the pros on this book, conflicted, the problem with this book is Jerry Pournelle is not a crazy person, The Maltese Falcon, Red Harvest, with Conan, very much like hardboiled detective novels, a problem, a solution, Conan doesn’t have an office, one quirk or the other, Sarah Hoyt, a big claim, breasts, yoga, a female lead character, there was nothing else going on, make it stop, Heinlein’s crazy, one’s a legal term, the guy had a stroke or something, his books got weird, they were weird before that, bizarro fiction, childrens going down slides into buckets, idea based vs. gut based, before sputnik and after sputnik, satire, cynical, the Russians getting to space, very selective in your books and timeline, Starman Jones, getting off of Earth, the United States often doesn’t exist, American ideals in space, Canadian so confused, Jesse you’re balding, okay fuck you, more balding than Canadian, is different later on, older and demented, cognitive decline is real but not equally distributed, one Heinlein juvenile left, the most juvenile of all the juveniles [Have Space Suit, Will Travel], Rocket Ship Galileo, too dangerous to kill the Nazis, the stark difference, they’re fuckin Nazis, corporate guys trying to outjigger each other, corporate entities battling each other, Philip K. Dick, an older paternal knowitall, Professor LaPaz?, shepherds the younger man, the revolutionary girl, liberal and conservative at the same time, big claims are being thrown around, American ideals, Tom Swift, get to it spirit, extremely American exceptionalism, a reaction to a series of Young Edison stories, imagine today someone writing a successful series of novels about young Elon Musk fighting crime with inventions in South Africa, Jonathan’s going to get some money, Horatio Alger, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Jack London, does Bellamy have American values, socialism is German man, being obtuse on purpose, subaltern American values, the real america, making America great again, not particularly concerned, if we just wait 15 years of space mining, horrible mines, an environmentalist book, cares about the environment, ignorant fucks, undermining their own goals, nuclear energy bad, nuclear energy dangerous, exploding moons, nuclear positive, managed by corporate interests, those corporate interests are controlling their protesting groups, Bloomberg giving to the Sierra Club, the non-profit industrial complex, willing to do anything for money, you can make it sound good because we’re gonna do good, follow the money, read Pournelle’s dissertation and master-thesis, when did the book split in the magazine, archive.org, what kinda glory do they get?, married glory, a part of Galaxy Jesse is not super-familiar with, Stephen Fabian is a pretty awesome artist, the cover art was on its way out, not a bad book at all, pretty coherent, missing craziness, what’s hard to understand?, Jack Higgins’ Sheba, everything was on the nose, dragged on and on and on, the champagne of beers, miller high life, the serial picks up on page 73, chapter 12, Aeneas Mackenzie’s real luxury, when they get to the belt, right after the exciting cliffhanger, Star Beast, the functionary UN guy, interplanetary diplomacy, goes down a lot smoother, unearned, unprecedented, hearing the professor on a phone call, ooh mystery, the remainder of the book, the bad guys have no problem killing people, strand them on an asteroid in a mine, gestured broadly at, if they’re gonna kill him?, everybody gets forgiven in the end, main character syndrome, if they killed off the main character, our diabetes guy has to sacrifice, this is good art, jumping from capsule to capsule, the image of the cat being killed, in the shownotes, I’ve seen better crucified cat illustrations, inside front cover NUDE, nude Fabians, Kitty Cat Massacre by J. Manfred Weichsel, The Door Into Summer, the labour saving technology, she ages naturally, the grooming book, is grooming left wing or right wing, cryofreeze, a manipulable character, she sticks with it, some deep mind fuck, it fits with the theme of the book, what is time but aging?, a mismatch in the people’s ages, ususally 100 years ago, great grandmother, Timerider, Up The Line by Robert Silverberg, Heinlein’s pervy-self, The Lazarus Long stuff, hanging out with old men who’ve lived a long time, the immortal guy, Highlander: The Greatest Film Ever Made, Taladega Nights, double feature, they get in a fight, power fantasy about sleeping with his own daughters, smart and had issues, ability to produce text, Heinlein is weird, less pejorative, insane is a silly word, Jerry Pournelle is cute more than weird, wargaming, come on, that’s cute, Star Trek was one of the wargames he was playing, he’s a nerd, political opinions, both amused by people being enthusiastically wrong, procure a copy, the audiobook is no longer available, MP3-CDs, under DRM you’re fucked, used bookstore, let’s race, 2009, Baen’s still going, Clyde Caldwell, Boris Vallejo cover, Larry Elmore, can you compare, pretend it was written by Heinlein, worse than Rocket Ship Galileo, in the tradition of, the JPL stuff, the appeal of space, the commonality, an axe to grind, grinding to a point, more like a Tom Swift book in that way, a framework for a young man to have an adventure, Pournelle had a bad time in the 60s, sexual politics?, positive trends of the 60s, movement towards racial equality, social organization among students, students can get condoms, speak their mind, more chaos and disorder, degeneracy, he seems to not be a huge fan, they were fooling around on the ship, just finished embracing, left to the imagination, a lot of complaining about the lack of privacy, “lovers”, a remarkable magazine, hands, how do we prove this?, not a sexually liberated book, a honeymoon there, having sex in the subway, couldn’t bring himself to describe that scene, she’s on the pill, Heinlein couldn’t wait, Tunnel In The Sky they make babies, Time For The Stars, The Puppet Masters, nudism vs. sex, hate psychics, used to communicate between ships, torchships, any transgenderism in it?, talking to his niece, she’s the grown up, planet of the furry collectivist society, she goes native, another interesting contrast, a long clock, we do have microphones in America, not dedicated, Blue Yeti, need to buy wargames, to play on your computer while you’re in space, a trash can lid, really big in the 70s among people who wrote science fiction stories, Avalon Hill, chits, Panzers vs., Battle For North Africa, card games, Magic was so huge, when did Magic start?, the early 90s, what made it so big, as big or bigger than World Of Warcraft, a 20 year old game, reserved, propose a story, don’t have a gender, when Evan gets to I Will Fear No Evil, and interesting idea, long, a good book, Friday is better, man brain, woman hormones, more womany, good theory, hard to test, templar cigar, fine, more focused on the audiobook, not a pipesmoker, pipe curious, big long clay one like Sherlock Holmes or Gandalf, found in a midden, too long to finish, sunroom, sundeck, so you don’t stink up your house, the longer your stem the farther away the stink is, tend to stink, fezs and smoking jackets and cravats are all designed to prevent stinkage, chewing tobacco would be the worst, seems pretty gross, putting teabags in your mouth, chew on that beetlenut, khat, roadside penis enhancer, social traditions, stimulant effects, working class people take it like coffee, splotch on the ground, betel nut, implies that, Jesse is LSD, dreams getting solid, the themes coming right out, increasing your ability to dream properly, makes you not noisy?, high blood pressure, wake up a lot, keeps Will sleeping, one of the things that [Fallout] has, hacking minigame, the sense of humour, the show is funny, the game is funny, the VATS system, why Fallout is so good, it’s a FPS but doesn’t feel like one, stealing, dialogue trees, the storytelling, side quest sort of thing, science fiction, different morality, corporations, a lot of time spent pre-Nuclear War, the bad guy from Justified, comparing the politics from the world of Fallout, the New Red Scare, retro-cars, it’s not really our world, looks nice, almost extraordinary, a lot less shooting than the game is, a sensibility of a sense of humour, a hyper-reality tweeked up, Andor, the least Star Warsy Star Wars, bullion to pay its troops, don’t have direct deposit, goldbugs wrote it, the emperor would have created a fiat money system, why aren’t their mines, a thread about disabled people in dungeons with wheelchairs, a wheelchair accessible dungeon, there’s too much magic, the same healing system, the game mechanics, stimpacks, radaway, a walkthrough but shorter, Bethesda games, Skyrim, same shit, Fallout 76, the settler system, just tedious, extract story, the NCR, the Vegas one is slightly better, the lore is sort of given to you explicitly, Elden Ring, a list of things to do, make lists, hard in a frustrating way, the game teaches you to stop sucking, 1997, cheating, single player storytelling, isometric, Shady Sands is in Fallout 1, set in Los Angeles basically, the NCR, on the border with California, they never steal anything from any of the games, the organizations and history are all the same, a meeting of communists, everybody should pirate this show and watch it, and now it was two, Time Is The Simplest Thing, good things about it, the cover art from Astounding, The Fisherman, the pastoral, rural ruins, rustbelt America, Clifford D. Simak, died in 1988, a lot of 80s and late 70s, America is not what it used to be, academia, jobs, picture of the dudes by the truck, the premise of the book is very good, very Alfredy Bester, pack your pipe, need to read City, insofar, Philip Jose Farmer’s The Lovers, how most people have taken it in, down for more Simak, seems like good guy, the number one thing on the list, John W. Campbell, I don’t know about you, made a lot of people write a lot of bad books, it’s because you’re right wing, choose a team, Horace Gold, Anthony Boucher, fantasy, escapism, editor versus writer, creatures that live in the desert, Mr. Lupescu, the bloody Benders, family of serial killers, Kansas, 1871-72, a story by Margaret St. Clair that follows Kate, commonlaw marriage, the Oregon trail, kill, maybe eat, 11+ victims, They Bite, man-eating somethings, very Anthony Bouchery, The Compleat Werewolf, a mystery guy, issue of Unknown, Jorkens story The Club Secretary by Lord Dunsany, his editorialship at F&SF, a connoisseur who dabbles in the low, too high is too bad, open to the idea, fiction without those things, the friend and adviser to Philip K. Dick, Roog, dog upset, all humans may die, no dog murder, either the garbagemen are aliens or the dog is wrong, the dog does get to a farm tho, the aliens/garbagemen, Philip K. Dick is great, his first sale, an editorial by Boucher, Anthony Boucher, Theodore Cogswell, a real mistake to differentiate between fantasy and science fiction, Unknown and Beyond, wartime paper rationing, not wholly overlapping, the audience for fantasy, talking to Eric [S. Rabkin], mens magazines, women’s magazines, Omni, Chatelaine, really likes science, out of the 40s, get going in the 50s, evolved from Blue Book, a theatre magazine?, high end fiction magazine, When Worlds Collide, Tarzan, a Superman guy, after WWII, leaning into the adventure, well into the 70s, Argosy does a similar path, the height of the mens magazines, 1959, 130 competing titles, beat up by something like private equity, go into the barber shop, women had the hair salon, legacy with us, the dentist, Consumer Reports, thin volumes from 10 years ago, the sweats, on the cover there was a guy covered in weasels and it said ‘I ATE MY SISTER!’ and ‘I WAS FORCE TO MARRY THE CANNIBAL QUEEN OF MADAGASCAR!, who was reading these magazines, boomers coming out of WWII want to read about Otto Skorzeny, reading tiktok?, observing tiktok?, experiencing tiktok?, a Guy De Maupassant story, Cavalcade, a pretty good fit for this magazine, Today’s Woman, choosing to do it, it fit, great art to illustrate it, rather than shaping stories, by changing endings, curation of what’s available to them, a lot of psychic shit, selling it to a guy who thinks telepathy and psi-powers are possibly real, a huge fuckn blindspot, a bug, that magazine survived all the winnowing, you have to subscribe, newsstands, two legacy magazines, F&SF, Asimov’s, that’s pretty fucked up, scrappy startups, Wizards With Guns, 3 guys in their garage, now they have a place to put that stuff, times have changed, Horace Gold, extreme PTSD, what did he see, man?, the trauma, predisposed, unable to leave his apartment, Frederik Pohl came over, overwhelmed, a Mrs. Horace Gold, hit by a taxicab, imagining experiencing the 1950s indoors, the life of Horace Gold, an episode of Deep Space Nine, Mercury publication, Alfred Hitchcock, Ellery Queen, NPC Conan reviewing, The Worm Ouroboros, a crude failure, The Lord Of The Rings, translation of The Garden Of Forking Paths, a pretty dynamic guy, from Pohl, a weatherman, he did see five bombers get shot down, flaming wreckage in the sky, Masters Of The Air, a throwback, old fashioned, Cora got really mad, glorifying the bomber pilots, being machined gunned, I’ll never forgive them for that, a show about bombers, glorifying, no, not condemned in every scene, night bombing, any time you’re dropping bombs on people, a tankie position?, let’s try to avoid airplanes dropping bombs on people, drones killing other drones, going after human beings, main point of drones, it always starts with defense, embrace genocide, that situation in Gaza, really horrifying, follow the right accounts, made of bones, children missing body parts, does the dog do okay in this Roog story, the dogs and cats in Gaza are not doing well, homeless dogs, pets and feeds and cleans their eyes, Sitting with Dogs, people can do good on pretty small levels, how these dogs ended up there, the family had to move, but why did that happen, why couldn’t the dog come with them, couldn’t afford their house, moving out of country, you have to move for your work, not just rich family wanted a dog, bad cirucmstances for the human caretakers, homeless dogs in 3rd world/developing countries, humans doing their best of twitter and youtube, being forced to move, the border problem as being a political football, the place where they are is not conducive to living, natural disasters, Haiti’s problem, no-infrastructure, U.S. history notes, French history notes, the problem of the day, really cut-off Israel, probably can’t anyway, not a good reason to do it, they don’t have to be interested in winning the election, a little bit of interest there, hyper-incompetent, largely losers, a self-own, winning is losing for them, the hidden story inside today’s book, how did it get that way, how come the judges are insular from their communities, surface, girl is rich, boy is convenient narrator, The Soul Of Man Under Socialism [by Oscar Wilde], some coffee soon, a little coffee, Joe Rogan’s 4 hour podcast, conversations are largely dettermined by how long it takes before someone needs to pee, non-profit diversity training, poor boy, poor man, before entering into some conversation with any kind of stakes, physical needs, a checklist of science fiction thinking, when airplanes were invented, out in the lake, drop your paddle, if one of your wings falls off, human psychology needs such things, other things on that list, frameworks for thinking about expression, whether you can beat the shit out of the person you’re having a conversation with, a check to reality, can you have a debate with her, Destiny and Vaush having a debate on the internet, man-cave/gaming rooms, reading wikipedia entries and nitpicking particular words, approximately your peer, elderly frail man in a bed, a girl acting like a man, that’s not cool, guys shouldn’t beat up girls, some codes of behavior, they have not lived in the world long enough, one against many is not cool, two guys beefing it out in the street, take it outside, not make it contagious, thinking through this through, under the surface, moderate your words, handshake, let’s get a beer together sort of talk before or after, you can’t really debate on the internet, model UN, leadership class, violence, why Fidel Castro wore military fatigues, Kim Jong Un, Wretched Of The Earth by Frantz Fanon, overthrowing the French, fond of Krushchev’s pounding his shoe, space rockets, in the editorial right after, Iran bombing military bases in Israel, Iron Dome being ineffective, hypersonic missiles, really fast stuff, falling behind in tech, all corrupt, milking, F-35, Osprey, Boeing, short term profits good, everybody’s in, get on the gravy train, those two things are not compatible, things are incompetent on earth, the whole mining industry, I need to be a miner because that’s where the money is, dwarves love gold, or mithril, The Hobbit, the dwarves in the Hobbit, more focus on dwarves, motivated by dwarf wanting to get their estate back, never read The Hobbit, Justin fucked all Canadians, servers in North Korea, maybe not the best at advertising their services, insufficient Korean, a lot of different opinions, a reenactment on the whole of the war on the peninsula, one tiny UN unit, reacharound in Inchon, right up the the Chinese border, why did all that happen for, why?, still hard to understand, domino theory, we have to stop the bad people from invading a sovereign country, everything they say about them is what they’re doing, how come Isis never attack Israel?, Isis attacked the mall in Moscow, why did Isis do that?, why Isis is attacking the Russians?, I wonder why, could it be because it is funded, even the people who are taking money to oppress their own people are turning on the oppressors, hold out hope, can’t will this war military?, mowing the lawn on a bigger scale, the border shit, convincing countries to take refugees, lots, enmasse after some sort of horrific slaughter, very common, people appear on the borders, criminals, the Chinese are doing it!, much more direct about what they’re doing, what the IMF is offering us, would you like us help us exploit, an incompetent boob appointed by a demented man, children of this class, they’re not geniuses, their parents had their job before them, there is dissatisfaction building, great moments, Barnard College expelled 1% of their student body for protesting, autoworkers in Chattanooga, endorsing Biden, standard union crap, these are our plans, he plans to be a millionaire, a massive strike for the first time in decades, the auto industry, the Teamsters kicked UPS’ butt, top tier contract, $100k, to buy labour peace, an interesting period, he met with Trump or Biden or RFK, Cornell West, Marianne Williamson, the airy fairy stuff was it, that’s the totality, massive ignorance, if magically president, Obama acceded to everything, subsequently Libya was a mistake, imma think about it while I sip my tea at my estate, encapsulates Obama, stop the NBA from going on strike, favour for a friend, these are friends of mine, none of the players are saying, work in a strange job, highly compensated for their height, you’re embarrassing my family members and my friends, not a stack of dead bodies, a particular person in that stack, that’s just claptrap, you’re paid by Russia, she wants the FBI to look into this, literally lost his faculties, same thing happened to Reagan, it wasn’t on full display, we tell you he’s fine, there’s no question, why did Paul quit twitter?, cybertruck having to be recalled, why are you tweeting this, owning Elon Musk, that’s where we are, so partisan, willing to deny, no he isn’t touching his penis to your face, he’s fine, no he’s running things, but Trump, seeing it and failing to accept it, they refuse to see it, they’re the same picture, you hate Trump a lot, objecting to congressional republicans voting against funding the Ukraine war, Putin sympathizers, I’m not a leader of a post-Soviet state, he’s not demented, caught up on this dementia thing, you’re caught up on this guy flopping his penis on your forehead, it doesn’t matter who is the figurehead, how we judge a person, how many people did Anthony Boucher kill, Carter seemed to kill a lot fewer people, Reagan, more in Iraq, Afghanistan, just raw numbers, Obama, Trump, Biden, killed zero people, Lincoln killed more Americans than anybody, and Lakota, Vietnam War, George W. Bush, Trump is objectively better than Biden and Obama (going by the numbers), make a chart, what you’re grouping and counting, let’s get out of Afghanistan, happened under Biden, we got Ukraine on the back burner, the numbers do line up, Carter was the least killy, after WWI, westward expansion, you can get lost in it, this whole East Timor thing, no war declared, better than Johnson or Nixon, a preliminary way, Bush’s gulf war, Clinton, Kosovo, yo, many many times, no fly zones, Trump didn’t star a new war, we never had a boss, a documentary about Jean Chretien, do it without the U.N., limited rubber stamp, the guy you’re differing to, I’ve never been to a Thai restaurant, a mental patient or demented, whispering in his ear, question this relationship, it doesn’t matter, that didn’t happen, you’re a Putin puppet, a Trumper, or MAGA, a problem unlike other problems, deferred to his vice president, answer questions, how far can the farce go?, is there a parody beyond this parody, summoning that parody into existence, this is not the same man, body double, physically degenerated, lost muscle mass, thinner skin, a CGI of him, de-aging the CGI, AI voice, like the Luke Skywalker, they can’t crank down the decoherence, definitely AI, unbelievable silly, AI Biden replacement, still better than Trump, exposed to liberals pretty much constantly, Facebook friends, into Biden, meme about how Biden is a genuinely good man, get banned, pictures of Palestinian children, that’s just deep fake, is Paul wrong, he’s wrong, it’s unpopular, also focus their energies, wasting our resources, in a trap, the Elvis trap, a hate trap, the hate for Musk is to do with Twitter, Musk is very hateable, he thrives on it, Tesla is not a good company, people thought it was, an American car company, a domestic thing at least, all the people in my doctor’s office drive them, hydropower, being locked down, a little less locked down, a youtuber who reviews phones, found the schematics online, semi-open, not horrible on every issue, people get triggered, that was a bad one, that was embarrassing, that was creepy, this is an old person, not in touch with what is happening, still watching CNN, ABC nightly news, he’s not that old, of the same cohort, an enigma, fairly predictable, Alvin Toffler, he’s the futurist, Future Shock, there’s no jobs in the future, where exactly do all the components come from, more of the late 70s, deeply unsympathetic, a visceral reaction, he’s pretty hard line on some things, his hatred for empire only extends in certain directions, obsessed with America, the strain of American ideals that is inline with, border police, harassed at the border, authoritative at, taking shoes off, I’m not going to put up with your bullshit, fuck it, not going to participate, it’s fuckin retarded, I don’t want to be involved in your security theater, concerts, this is what I thought it was, mob violence, being in a group, submitting to a direction, a holy experience sort of thing, I gotta go dance, don’t submit to some sort of collective group mind, a prophetic leader standing at a podium, is being a college protester good for your career, helped Bernie a little bit, Dave Weigel protested for the Iraq War, money in organizing, what does good at your job mean exactly?, Kamala Harris, can’t get the AI to work, imagine Kamala Harris is in charge, if they though he was doing a bad job, perception, waggling his penis, oh I want that, seduce you, sniff you and forget where he is, Caitlin Johnstone, a girl wanting her legs back, Biden would like the taste of child legged flavoured ice cream, grandma was demented, I don’t know who you are but I recognize you, she still enjoyed chocolate, a lot less depressed, this is still happening, there wasn’t enough family to take care, the economy is fucked and people can’t afford to live anywhere, they 1970s government seems ideal, Jerry Ford probably was not that good, the Great Society, clapback, double down of stuff of the 60s, anti-poverty programs, Reagan and the welfare queens, that’s coded, the government was doing more for more people in the 1970s, the high tide of organized labour, they were planning for the metric system, you can’t even get that done, one little thing, all it takes is rolling it out through the public schools, they can’t get anything done, everybody hates daylight savings time, it would take a little bit of political capital expenditure, there’s no interest in that, massive priorities of cash, guiding signs, Canada will not change until the U.S. does, you didn’t pass the checkpoint, the Baltimore bridge, milking the fucking money out, to the Moon in 10 years, Nazi bridge builders, the Soviets did it without as many Nazis, North Korea is interested in building rockets, interested in billing rockets, a little scandal in British Columbia, a trucking company in Merritt, British Columbia, 18 wheeler Tesla truck, logging trucks go up a hill empty and come down full, hybrid, diesel for range, all the easy trees have been cut, a bill written specifically for them, rejected, consulting services, charge 20% of whatever they get, how do you become a lobbyist, throw away your morality and start sucking on that cock that’s lying on your face, 1 to 1 corruption, BC government voted against inquiring into it, some measure of non-corruption, reversed that decision, its buddy buddy, Alberta’s domestic politics, international shit, doubly evil, moderate little tweaks, all very nice, New Democrats runs British Columbia, Social Credit party, they’d run the province from 1950s-1980s, Miss Willis, secretary just assumed, not massive corruption everywhere at all times, suspicion of the collective, you see what happens without hands, can become corrupt in the process, sunlight and whistleblowers, soviet democracy, one long meeting, kinda what we have here, not much threat of violence, gesture more, not super-Italian, bang the table with my shoe, putting all out in the public record, making strong the ability to expose, secret meetings is not healthy, people should be having arguments as to what to do publicly, good feedback from people not in your group, allowing people to tune in if it gets exciting, firey thoughtful people, the Party For Socialism And Liberation, no outward facing disagreements, that’s why nobody cares about them, a thousand, high barrier, a candidate period, easier to get into the Hells Angels, if the party is doing its job, want to overthrow the government, a public domain, as a concerned non-Canadian, this mess that we’re in, Tsleil-Waututh, old pulp magazines, provincial and federal taxes, HST, GST/PST, based on estimations not on receipts, anything that’s not universal is really fucking stupid, tax codes, a graduated income tax, tariffs, fixing old people’s teeth, middle aged people’s teeth, built out, how medicare started, almost semi-innovation, people aren’t that upset about marijuana anymore, Biden’s new promise, you’re student loan money, the way you did before?, this is what he means, accidentally tweeting from Biden’s account, folksy vocab, c’mon man, Corn Pop was a bad dude, 2019, who is Trump’s VP gonna be?, pretend Biden won, Democrats are ruthless not clever, willing kill people, the FBI or the CIA to assassinate Trump, what is he a threat to?, he’s going to ruin the country, he’s got choose somebody, that’s going to be your next president, old enough to die in office, not a drinker, doesn’t smoke, a health freak, enjoys golf, he’s no RFK, offered the vice presidentship, ostensibly a Democrat, it’s tribal, the tribe kicked him out, he could come back, he’s not gonna be the VP, some nobody, Pence was a nobody, president material, Indiana?, Trump might know, Kamala Harris is Biden’s running mate?, Gavin Newsom, by the time this podcast comes out we will know, we don’t know what the next, he’s anti-popular, literally affects their lives in some cases, tuned-out, as they should be, if it isn’t boring it is dangerous, the ship is headed to the waterfall, captain knows what he’s doing, I was captain before, I hate this ship, how do you get off?, Evan are you on the ship?, no good jobs available, they don’t have great jobs anymore, American emigration over time, 29.3 million in 2005, 40 million in 2019, google from prior to it being useless, a lot of internal migration, a lot easier, they speak English, one big free trade zone, 40% of women would like to leave the United States, not organized this way, how about the 21st century, more Americans that are civilians overseas than military, a 2018 estimate, 9.4 million a year emigrate, you can emigrate to Israel without a passport if you are a sex criminal, media mail, a legacy, US copyright law, American government is better at getting shit done in other countries than it is domestically, Trump changed NAFTA, the US government can get shit done in other countries, the Federalist papers, fair but a mistake, how important geography, students don’t want to use the water from the pipes in the bathrooms, students can’t watch movies from 2023, you have to have some sort of training, when did you start becoming a reader, pick up the habit, pretty strange, deprived of videogames, sick in bed, what caused that?, movies are quite long, you need to be trained to do that, a feature length silent film, it’s really hard, you have to learn everything, kids up to mid20s, fuckin bizarre, how they were raised, in a nanny society, feelings and not facts, appreciate this art form, a standard gen-xer opinions, tictok is more addictive, colour for film is better, maybe 3d movies are better, allow more options, sometimes is appropriate, Schindler’s List in colour, objectively harder, we have to be trained to somehow, the same pipes, drinking from bottle, see that mountain up there, there’s no mines, no tailings, it tastes like nothing except, even in the bathroom, a cup of ice water from the sink in the Starbucks, we should be going to the bathroom with a cup, system?, the finishing end of this process, a lot changed during COVID, a form online, how many assignments are outstanding, ambiguous questions, you want me to fulfill a job, what’s the job?, marked online, no wonder they’ve given up, a seriously broken system, this is the good version, there aren’t lots of suicides, oppressive evil, hearing reports, what I’m hearing is we’re fucked, their ability, have you every ridden a horse? yes, have you ever driven a car?, no, musical instrument, they’re being driven, she’s unlikely to be riding a horse, cute and interesting, the level of wealth, they’re all here, have enough money to get out, it’s crazed, a reactionary, stuck in his head, what is it like in Taiwan, the rest of China, pro-Taiwan, an anti-China view, who cares which Chinese master is running you, building socialism over the next 50 years, middle class, working class jobs, roads, hospitals, convention centers, harbours, building is somehow valuable, a lot of capital, surrounded as it is, better off in the long term, an invisible barrier, a big offshore banking industry, Caribbean islands, Kentucky problems, our mountain region doesn’t have good infrastructure to get in and out, industrial parks, the land is flat so this is good, it’s not great, with the floods that came through, historic flooding, housing stock got destroyed, people getting forced out, rural communities, jobs at public institutions, the mayor of this small town, works at a hospital as a janitor, local Methodist college, the alternative, call center will drive you to drink, skeptical of AA, a debt collector, set-up payment plans, a sign of horrible government, if there is not a natural disaster, people like where they live, it is stressful to move, what are you gonna do with all those cats?, all these books, almost a full scan of Galaxy, printed enmasse, good covers, two copies of the one with The Fireman, time and friendship.

Posted by Jesse Willis