The SFFaudio Podcast #838 – READALONG: Fury by Henry Kuttner

The SFFaudio Podcast #838 – Jesse, Will Emmons and Cora Buhlert talk about Fury by Henry Kuttner

Talked about on today’s show:
one eight of his wife, the Gabrielle DeCuir read intro, pretty crappy, good, a little evil, the book was evil, calling things evil, pathetic, pretty pathetic, a Slan style book, Henry Kutter do good work, quite pathetic, to the mind of Jesse, summarize what the book is about and why anyone would care about it, read aloud the final up to this point in the serialization, Jonathan wanted to do it, Jonathan blocked Jesse, okay, seems like the plot’s starting now, texting a friend about it, a sci-fi from the 40s, everyone is lazy, amoral swindler, wouldn’t seem immortal, the necessary shock to society, jungle surface of Venus, immortal, some facts about the book, that’s interesting, interesting is not the same as a book, most interesting section, the introduction by C.L. Moore, what she contributed to it, I added the colours, I’m interested in tragic love, the theme that Henry Kuttner was going for, not trusting authority, what’s this book about, 1947, a decade or less into the welfare state, people don’t take responsibility for themselves anymore, pull their pants up, muddled by this immortality thing, a hot topic in science fiction, very immature, immature thinkers, everybody groks it, maybe I won’t, first grey hair, no no I’m not going to die, Heinlein has done this, not new to Kuttner, these mutant elites, a villain or a hero, agreed, a Will Emmons obsession, The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester, feels shorter, passion, experimental, wish Jonathan was here, not just blame him for this book, wasted a week, wrong philosophy, a modern book that’s similar, not modern at all, by a lady, Beggars In Spain by Nancy Kress, obsessed with not liking her, this book is evil, what makes it evil, take it in and say yes yes, the reason they’re better than you, genetic engineering, they can study all night while you’re lazy sleeping at home, all Elon Musk, inherited an emerald mine, all non-sleepless are contemptible, told from the pov of a persectued Slan, same libertarian vibe, why can’t your parents give that to you, plotting to murder everyone else on the planet, standard x-men, a sidestory in X-Men, look there’s a new mutant!, contemptible, a symapthetic view on both side, Golden Man cat, when Philip K. Dick did it, what if the ideal form of humanity has no brain?, a muddled version of that Nancy Kress book, more serialized, disgruntled guys, not strong enough to be evil, a toddler with a knife, dangerous, not evil…yet, both have fury, way more anger than this book, this book is not angry at all, a dispossessed slan, a rebel undermenchen, a good book, intellectual center of gravity, society under the keeps, no one is striving anymore, you don’t see any of that, a lot of tell and no show, a lot of churn, when he meets the prophet, also an immortal, not a robot, comes back later, exactly how C.L. Moore put it, we wrote this for money and there was no plan, the cloak that makes you feel nice and is a drug and kills you, what is this book about?, drugs?, not about video games?, a failed Heinlein book, the Methusela’s Children series, eugenics and a kilt, a secret society of immortals, flee for the skies, forget that Heinlein, not top five, he thinks its interesting, an immature idea, welfare state, immortal technocrats ruling everything, what is he really mad at?, his dad?, sad story?, temper tantrum, surgery, you don’t feel it, so upsetting, gut punch, skin is coming off, you don’t like the character but you’re with him, worse a nice blue dress one time, not boring, just bad, shoulda clued in, in Astounding, that magazine that’s not very good, another joint, Chan Davis, Pseudoscience In Naziland by Willy Ley, emigrated from Naziland, he’s the good german, pre-paperclip guy, paling around with the bad German, didn’t hang the three slowest Jews, upsetting, our modern rocket guy has a lot of problems, not literally a Nazi, fires some employees, capitalism bad, bad tweets, not literally an SS officer, John W. Campbell editorials, up his own smoke, high on his supply, telepathy or whatever, understand the impulse, dated this girl, no good reason to believe in it, running similar software, parallel possibilities, as to actual evidence, assessing, way too much based on that, of all the things that have happened to science fiction since the 1940s, what we’re doing now, Stefan Rudniki, a bad book, redeeming qualities, the devastating last line, weird authorial, the start of the immortal hero, a genre, the Amber book (Roger Zelazny), Phra The Phoenician, maybe Kuttner would have known, Gulliver Of Mars, His Vacation, a book that Cirsova (Alex) would like, portal fantasy, doesn’t take itself too seriously, the Mars books, crunchier, softer, sweeter, less filler, more killer, crashes on a planet, lands on a philosopher who’s a girl, go to a library, frozen dead people, magic carpet again, green muscle mommy, Soja?, Tars Tarkas’ daughter, a 40 foot lance, a big lance, lances were big in those days, pikes, the roundheads were overworked, a weird zone, the knife alluring, who’s the knife for?, for everyone?, there are no everyone, a guy who doesn’t know who he is, the priest who’s not the computer, blue dress, grandma, a lady who has a granddaughter, secretly, that reveal did nothing, why are we reading all this, the symbol of cash, the genealogy at the top of the story, the Bible’s a lot shorter, what things would happen in it?, deformed as an infant, see the lady, get got, colonization scheme, cheat everyone, wake up confused, get involved in the next colonization scheme, lost the thread, find the lady, 3 card monte, move their hands quickly, bet your money, a street level grifting scam, shills, they share the money, anytime the mark is gonna win the police show up, the guy who’s been gambling arrested, find the lady is a way to steal money from people, other than with my time, too scammed, after paying my 75 cents for 3 issues, not a good story, nothing is substantive in an idea way, the sea-creature that’s now a cloak, corrosive planets, just did a genocide of the entire ecosystem, for plot, for stuff to happen, telepathy, useless, pathetic, not even mad, wasted a week, sad, waste, Kutter is worse than Jesse thought he was, wrote so much, would write anything, Dragon Moon, a cover story on Weird Tales, just type in Dragon Moon, viking stabbin at a dragon, blonde in a green dress, the wild hunt, enthusiastically riding, cool looking, a novelette of drowned Atlantis, bad name, beyond good or evil, the Outside, a Chesterton quote, that Silverberg highlighted, Home Is The Hunter, Silverberg wrote a great essay about it, Kipling quotes, a secondary world almost, where’s the tech?, the closest we get is that cloak, a poisonous world, Clark Ashton Smith, sex and death, sexless, longs after a girl, breed generations of sex slaves, goes nowhere, people got tricked by the ending, immortality, is this something?, the meme with a butterfly, not furious or perverted enough, pretty cold blooded, deleting the entire ecosystem of Venus, plants that were dangerous, the drug addiction, no real life world experience, wasn’t a pioneer, didn’t kick a drug habit, hey I got a real theme going here, dreamdust, turns out he was in the backroom of the wizard’s cave the whole 40 years, okay, more Arthur stuff, Arthur Pendragon, put him underground, return and lead the people, a business startup, a free companionship, a startup designed to defraud investors, doesn’t doing any kind of running and grabbing, should be a lot madder, furiless and didn’t inspire fury, “Robin Hood’s barn”, the idiom, a robin hood’s barn sort of plan, at some point in a novel the novel reviews itself, a short story should have working components that are used and dissipated at the end of the story, spell components, three pinches of newt dust, Helen’s bones, blood from a surly teenager, disappears in a puff of smoke, shit lying all over the table, shocker, not impressed, people were smarter in the past, the reviews in the magazine itself, people should have been reading Thrilling Wonder and Planet Stories, if it was priority, Planet, Thrilling Wonder, five or six other magazines, Astounding, other magazines, the fifties explosion of science fiction, WWII, the wonder weapons, the rockets, people were not with rockets before WWII, almost nobody was into rockets, showing the v-2 rockets being tested in the states, the letters columns, talking about the v-2s, the censorship, circumspect, the V-1s hitting London, rockets are really taking off, Planet Stories, Fantastic Adventures, almost nothing good in it, Ray Palmer, somebody should have stopped him, too much power, exploit this mentally ill man, inner earth man, not just Shaver mysteries, worldview and approach to life, maybe people in the past were stupid too, UFOs, the truth is out there, UFO freak, if I believe in God, people get tripped up on words, barely a teenager, as if you know what you’re talking about, unidentified, what the hell is that thing, not a U, FO, trapped in the world salads, a spell, bring it back to the thing itself, talk to Meg about this story, okay to lie to people for the greater good, this story poses, immediately in the positive, try never to lie, communicating is complex, the outside thing about this thing, more specific about specific things, the way to think about this, just do this, what is an essay, here’s how we’re going to get a good mark, don’t write anything you don’t believe, play with the truth, telling the teacher that you know that, nobody knows what the word “essay” means, what is he trying to do?, what is the purpose of this?, how you do paragraphs, just filling the page, fulfilling the requirements, try to make good sentences, truth is very important, things are complex, words get in our way and trick us, that’s not how things work, this guy from 500 years ago still lives through, a cloud of understanding, trynna trick people, we’re gonna make you all immortal, working at this for 7 years, ha ha fuck you, a worker’s cooperative, that’s evil, for your own good, that’s a liar, what did Meg say?, undoubtedly evil, okay for the government to lie to us about UFOs, people can’t handle the truth, their gonna die, why we have religion, pretty sure, a mystery that can transcend, exactly like to was before I was born, isn’t it interesting I’m a brain in a vat already, includes skin and bone and digestive systems, sense data, that’s interesting, doesn’t make me think of a particular god, strange phenomena for the long time, a wish for immortality, a big part of it for a lot of people, lying definitely bad, we can’t handle it, lie to people to get them to do something good, back to The Stars My Destination, spoiler alert, superweapon, telepathically activated, gives it to the masses, now its your responsibility, hero, they don’t destroy the solar system, everybody needs nukes, if you don’t have hands, we want people to have hands, a real disadvantage for Sirius, Odd John, Olaf Stapledon, Kuttner can disappoint, a C.L. Moore stan, people love her, she likes hot kisses, scary kisses, atmospheric style, unfinished, that’s all she’s got, she doesn’t bring an idea to the table, Reading, Short And Deep recording, Probate, a legal term, about getting to the will, testament, estate, a science fiction story that deals with ideas in science fiction and dismisses them, mocking an idea by taking it seriously, it’s not what I wanted, it’s what I needed, an X-Men story, slightly telepathic, all the women find him sexy, no frontal lobes, just working on instinct, he’s beautiful, looking at it from a guy who is furious, on the wane, the homo superior are in the room, interested in pathetic things, full of all sorts of foibles, your beautiful child, assembling the components to destroy homo superior, better not the be a fuckin monster, not as fast or beautiful, slower to develop, very contrived and very silly, wham bam deals, A.E. Van Vogt, wipes it off the table and now we’re done, the Olaf Stapledon novel, Eric spoiled the ending, smart moral things to do, action and churn, Fury, boring slog, angry at Nancy Kress book, they’re fucking monster, they remind me of the shitlib bluecheck elite, fuck those Gazans, mad at The Washington Post for not endorsing a lady, let oligarchs fuck the world, seeing where the wind is blowing, the undecided voter, slant of various op/eds, not a big percentage, if Trump becomes president I’ll leave and move to Canada, trying to evoke a reaction, watch another youtube video and they react to it, this movie is too scary, twin brothers watching, a split screen, identical twin brothers, that memesis thing, still 3?, the thing being watched the you watching them, they’re watching each other, strange phenomenon, a girl in her bedroom, Damien Walter, words by himself are better, AI illustration of the Culture, retweeting them, that seems uncharitable, not giving a null prize, is this true?, the reason a lot of people are triggered by Trump is they’ve had no actual trauma, he’s not scary, hundreds of thousands of people being killed on the border, say things that are bad, the bad one, he’s pretty good, he did well that day, mobilize the army to deport people, the apparatus you have to build up, mobilized as a law enforcement agency, he was president already, he’s not very much like Hitler, he shouldn’t be that triggering, more like Heinlein than Hitler, only two people in the world, like the Little Prince, one is Heinlein and one is Hitler, pick your fighter, the future that liberals want, he’s not scary, internal enemies, the organized left, Palestine protestors, Arab Americans for Trump, pro-United States, Benjamin Netanyahu needs to finish the job, he talks a lot, what does he do, a different coalition, his staff, all the neocons, alienated John Bolton, learned his lesson, a confirmed Jill Stein voter, voted Green, when he says things he means them, a liar, he is a liar, I’m the best, I got the best people, the best country, the worst country, hyperbolic, is he lying when he says I want to use the military, on day one or maybe day two, someone who’s never been visited by the FBI, you live in a police state, he likes the FBI too, he’s a lot worse on Canada, the Free Trade Agreement, he’d be worse for Canada and better for the United States, doesn’t like communists, don’t understand what communists are, if Kamala is a communist, people you call communist, the dialogue is broken, we’ll see, laudable and good, more risk, the Black Uhuru movement, lazier under Democratic administrations, sleepier, drone stuff, domestic stuff, the MOAB, Soleimani, German government English propaganda channel, Venezuela, it wasn’t me who did the coup, fiddles with pen, in amongst that, persecute Russia more, secret talks, divide Venezuela and Russia, the State Department is running things, the Deep State hates him so much, a bad sign, tryna cozy-up, Bezo was vying for government contracts, less naked about it, Elon Musk picked a team, a lottery, he’s levering, For You, the ultimate test of self-government, returned your grocery cart, social contract, a fool’s framework, very simple, littering, mom didn’t tell you to don’t do that, why do people litter?, really strange lady, weird tiny house lady, keeps building things, trying things out, squeezing the juice out of her life, list of all the things that she’s tried, business startups, raise parrots, adopted from her or genetics, systems, don’t try to buy your way into hobbies, not lose money, you have to work harder outside, interested in parrots, very expensive, breed them, they’re in the house, there’s always more food, all that shit that spills on the ground, all the other animals do well, they eat and they drop food, we think of that as littering, not offensive at all, that’s what parrots do, dirtying their own environment, in a primitive society, sidewalks are a strange invention, do we need more sidewalks, not get run over, easier to get places, should we have roads?, they just tell you where to go, trails, humans in solidarity with other humans, just another animal, we train puppies not to pee in the house, they become upset, very similar to that, he’s not wrong, would you let this guy marry your daughter, he doesn’t return shopping carts, contemplating this, her being able to marry, implausibility, whether he litters or not, a stage everybody goes through, eventually your washing the dishes, community standard, Jesse’s weird, very childish, the grocery is like a government, somebody’s going to have to pick up after me, a boundary, get all your dirty laundry, your space, litter in your own room, don’t attract mice, this office, elected to the spare bedroom, the podcasting office, disenfranchised cats, peeing on the wall, exclusionary, the bourgeoisie, enclosed the commons, the crown, what a world, this election shit, provincial election came and went, Richard Lovelace, one of those cavalier poets, clergy in the house of Lords, wanting the king in charge, better than Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector, sounds like Napoleon again for the first time, get Napoleon III in charge, starting a list of the bad guys, Franco is on there somewhere, 19th century Stalin, a reformer, he put his brother in charge of Spain, make sure Spain doesn’t flip, the pattern, people trying to reinstate the king, why invading Ireland?, they’ll getcha, these Levelers, manhood suffrage, religious toleration (not for Catholics), modern liberal democracy, in bed with Cromwell, in the New Model Army, didn’t split the movement, this weird phenomenon, this English Civil War, conjure radical forces, aren’t able to use, Cromwell is Mao?, Sun Yat-Sen, sorta got his wish, the king’s back, roundheads, a short story by Lawrence Block, good character writer, good plotter, a werewolf story, Original Science Fiction Stories, January 1959, Make A Prison, the first Althean, he won’t languish and die in such a state?, ample opportunity, study the creature, the mere thought of a prison, the whole notion, an abominable one, wouldn’t do, he actually murders, subdue him, physically ill, for goodness sake, now you’ve hit upon it, a party of ten, he struck out at them, unprovoked assault, the first case of murder on record in 30 generations, he eats whatever we feed him, he is dangerous, very dangerous, as possible, perhaps I’m squeamish, positive, 130 feet high, right?, right!, it’s slides slope inward, a pneumatic tube, leaping from the top, littering, it seems safe, it is safe, not cruel, in just a few minutes, such a smooth writer, Cora got her times mixed up, sends her apologies, motor car, motor truck, forced myself to finish a book, she’s right not to like it, limbs securely shackled, the key to his shackles in his quarters, all the angles, one more page to go, a red light at the base, throw down the shackles, not something you see every day, plummeted through the air, he’s found the key, the key followed soon thereafter, gazing down at them, soared off into the sky, what is this story?, a trick, what?!, is this a science fiction story?, mostly a trick, as a practical matter, that’s it?, came across a key, hence Lovelace, a poem from 1642, To Althea From Prison, tangled in her haire, liberty, Thames, careless heads, thirsty grief, fishes that tipple in the deep, when like committed linnets, with shriller throat shall sing, voyce, inlarged, stone walls doe not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage, from an hermitage, angels alone that sore above, Lawrence Block read a poem, recognize those last lines, thing he’s going to be remembered for, secondary world, spun up just to do the joke of the story, that is very science fictional, take the poetic and make it real, okay but not, he is a dragon, that’s now science fiction, take it seriously, this world is not our world, they have motor cars, no murders for 30 generations, who is this creature from outside, how come they didn’t notice he had wings, that’s weird, just a joke, that’s actually, Brave New World is a line from The Tempest, a science fiction movie, that’s a joke, the world’s fucked, the second time it’s serious, the story becomes much better for what its addressing, kings are better than non-kings, in prison for wanting the king back, did some nice poetry, it’s okay girl, we’re like committed linnets, the poetry frees him from prison, the worst Kuttner/Moore book, just a terrible book, needed money, finish the bloody thing, blame Jonathan, partially responsible, worst thing Moore was involved in, knew how bad this one was, the prequel, Clash By Night, 1943, early military science fiction, also with Moore, fertility issues, couldn’t have a baby, miscarriage, contract marriage, mercenaries, jungle planet, The Little Prince, Attitude by Hal Clement, a bad summary, Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath, We Print The Truth by Anthony Boucher, unbeatable, it’s okay, the idea of a Little Prince planet, a very Heinleinian book, probably kill Hitler, [Methuselah’s Children?], Lazarus Long, Time Enough For Love, different writers, more sanguine?, philosophically interesting but evil, a toddler with a knife, who’s the knife for, for everyone, constant extolling, hedonism is bad, work them off for nothing, if you’re european, free healthcare, how terrible, second sons, people picked out of the enclosures, we’re plebeians, malcontents, emigrated to the U.S., hung out with the sailors in the harbour bars, she has a good husband, no one would have had her, high-tailed it to the U.S., the failed Bremen Soviet Republic, propaganda, New York City or Boston, the prairies, living in filth, westward expansion, things driving these things, Young Pioneers, colonize moorlands, the Netherlands, moorland colonization, little America, stay here and colonize the moors, after 1848, politically undesired, crises in foreign countries, selling equipment to goldminers, more wary, the lesson Jesse learned, more critical of claims, get a bad one, if you made this into a short story the answer is nothing, this isn’t a science fiction story, science fiction wallpaper, either the wallpaper goes or I do, totally disjointed, not substantive throughout the book, the introduction, some of the world building details, the happy cloak, you could do a story with that, Shambleau, most reprinted Moore, didn’t bother renewing it, sometimes people are dead, sometimes they’re distracted, step-daughter, retro Hugos, 71 Kuttner stories, easy to forget, her second husband, see the documents, SFWA grandmaster, had dementia, half a dozen Kuttners, The Proud Robot [was copyright renewed: “R494633”], asshole, that’s a great story, A God Named Kroo, Killdozer, good at comedy, The Proud Robot, solo Kuttner, fadedpage, the high priest of a Tibetan deity, the body of a yak, a bumbling Indiana Jones, a great story, Science Fiction 101, Worlds Of Wonder, Home Is The Hunter, a science fiction story, soft science fiction, the best kind of science fiction, space opera, hard, wallpaper, the biggest, the most ability to imagine different scenarios, what technology, ideas are kind of technologies, a future that’s not like ours, a post scarcity, 11 pages in Galaxy, credited to both, There’s noboy who I can talk to except myself, all my wives, Honest Roger Bellamy, Hunter, waterfall of marble steps, in all their jewels, this whole story of the narrative of how he got to this situation, he’s a headhunter, the most famous and best people kill each other, legal, proper, encouraged, his life is a misery, one giant rug pull, he woke up, death is real, what do we value, don’t do what he did, throughline in this, immortality is a thing, everybody wants immortality, why does this book exist, to fill pages, paid the rent, good for them, essentially hack work, sticks with me, Philip K. Dick is extraordinary, more short stories, fewer novels, Kuttner wasn’t a novel guy, Earth’s Last Citadel, allies, German spies, humanity has all but died out, huge citadels, rambly, a serious problem during the WWII, everything is about WWII, Fantastic Adventures, a story about fairies set on a military base, offensive, not very good, we gotta be more careful, descentish, Heinlein was too busy to write much, Ross Rocklynne, alien intervention, Killdozer, seabees, haunted machinery story, The Murderous Steam Shovel, Allison V. Harding, elevated train in New York, major food or family holiday, Thanksgiving, fucked up calendar, clumping of Christian holidays, patriotic holiday, Oktoberfest, Halloween, Reformation Day, time off school, a lot of candy, dress up?, native trick or treating traditions, St. Nicholas Day, recite a poem or sing a song, regional, lower German, seasonal poems, santa hats, wassailing, ghosts or Skeletor, paper lantern, Rhineland, Three Wise Men, the black wise man, blackface, paint one guy up, pretend to be a boy?, charitable causes, bless your house, Catholic homes, blessings on the door, Fichte, super Catholic region, the 30 Years War, chalk, imported from the U.S., unknown until the early ’90s, U.S. movies, college student Halloween parties, big candy, Carnival in February or early March, when Iraq, Kuwait, everybody was protesting, standing there, a peace protest, to stop the U.S. from bombing, serious about it at the time, why did we even do this, vulgar pacifistic, the best Halloween costume, a vampire a bunch of times, very good, in college, Doctor Midnight, the Justice Society, the yellow helmet, Doctor Fate, living like Doctor Fate in a tower, much more mysterious and less gay than Doctor Strange, definitively married to a woman, entanglements with women, not a medical doctor?, too many reboots, a few guys, a female Doctor Fate, snippets, the Flash with WWI helmet, stuck some poor guy in this silly helmet, Cora’s best Halloween costume, Psylocke from X-Men, the swords, energy daggers, difficult recreate at the time, Mississippi, Pippi Longstocking, a witch, devils, completely unknown at the time, kindergarten, Star Wars costumes, sexy witch, sexy nurse, Robin with a long cape, goggles, blind but can see in the dark, Daredevil, crescent moons, Watchmen’s owl guy, Batman with no superpowers, owl vehicle, mental patients he needs to punch, pines after a girl, very bad Alan Moore, very good, this is nothing, toxic fans, clickbaity title, something about Trump, fandom is not responsible, used to be quite different, fandom has changed, guys in their 40s, middle aged white guy, furious, LGBTQ women in Star Wars, reboot of a children’s cartoon, I’m A Celebrity, a real show?, super-intellectual, salability, Boris Johnson, Have I Got News For You, the Trump Apprentice thing, a helluva long time ago, not a politician, approach, why does this essay exist, he’s got a new book, funny words, febrile disgruntlement, his prose pieces, he’s a very good comic writer, you can see what he’s doing and you hate, big long letter, League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, his gandson playing Pokemon, asked to promote his book, random blocked, mocked it, random stranger, didn’t mock him, which hotel that is, a golf shop, what’s the difference, Tars Tarkas was queer, very queer indeed, quick on the block button, fragile, blocklist, win a null prize, H.G. Wells, super-eager to block, pruning what you see on twitter, a super-unfollow, can’t even see it in “For You” now, he’s funny, you don’t want to see him, Swiss weatherman, accused of raping his then girlfriend, consensual, rapist in my timeline, shitty excuse for a secretary of health, international journalist, get police out, really into the block button, never blocked a person, so many people who interact, other people would see it, I like Alan Moore, he’s cool, has problems, he’s gotta be 70, reminiscence of a guy, things have changed lately, “what we’re up against”, New York Times, the movie came out, can’t write about Neil Gaiman, rapist sexist, harassed women into sex, asking them, coercing, different from rape, didn’t rape anybody, otherwise consensual, seduction of minors, sexual abuse, the cutoff age, 17 and half years old, age of consent, lesbians, we forgot about them, still a shitty person, found guilty in the court of public opinion, The Graveyard Book, Coraline, Neverwhere, underground london, a show first, vintage Doctor Who, Sandman is pretty good after the first volume, shouldn’t have been in grace, you shouldn’t have a tattoo of Neil Gaiman, a tattoo of Death, are you into Sandman, girl?, must be into Sandman, he’s not the president, who cares, at a Hugo ceremony, accepting his Hugo for Good Omens, American Gods, special wheelchair van, as soon as the audiobook came out, George Guidall, 13 cassettes, Neil Gaiman in the United States, this overlay of the gods, blank main character, very similar to a Douglas Adams book, he is a good writer, he can write, Snow White Apples, he invented the whole genre of retelling for comics, after the Jim Lee debacle, Sandman, Walking Dead, all the Vertigo comics, Garth Ennis and independents, a little bit of French stuff, Belgian comics, Heavy Metal, 2000 A.D., a popular target, Ya Boi Zack, birthday party clowns, utubers who Cora really hate, Critical Drinker, closeted gays, wands, Captain Marvel movie, it’s stupid, way shittier things, delicious like Taco Bell is, she has no personality, Brie Larson, talk off camera, 2 brains cells to rub together, rewarded through the algorithm for hate, patterns pointing to, this stupid Guardian article is stupid, for retweeting, why are you linking, public health officer in Bavaria, how can you retweet this?, have their own ideas, the Gaza stuff, so horrible, pro-Ukrainian and anti-Russian stuff, what did stop the Iraq War, the 1990 one, treaty, that worked well, still not occupied even tho their occupied, the Taliban are the worst people, who made that happen?, Asian Muslim countries, headscarves, force men to wear beards, put this hat on, kids are roped into it, no kids anymore, kinda the plan, stupid actor, very upset by actors existing, people treat them like they are something, underperformed movies, German culture programs, what kind of show he’s on, political question, Bruce Willis can’t talk at all, a singer before he was an actor, if they write their own music, ring of fire guy, Johnny Cash, Leonard Cohen, quotes and the attribution, almost always a fake attribution, comes with authority, G.K. Chesterton, a Father Brown story, short stories, some people are Catholic, overly religious, doing a C.S. Lewis, asking them to not be religious in their fiction, Jordan Peterson, a stupid smart guy, Patrick Stewart is not Jean Luc Picard, he can perform Shakespeare, Shakespeare is hilarious, Charles Dickens, to be Scrooge, a fun role, a fun character, he performed Scrooge, Charles Dickens performed his books, unrecorded audiobooks, huge captive audience, no recordings of Charles Dickens, died 1870, audiences approved of it, Edgar Allan Poe went to one of them, anticipating the ending, Dickens fan, not enough science fiction, ghost stories, Oscar Wilde, the really gay writers, R. Murray Gilchrist, the yellow 90s, H.W. Hornung, Conan Doyle ripoffs, the Raffles story, the word fag, faggot, that’s not it!, in the British public schools there was a system called “fagging”, massive sexual abuse, that is is the sick part, a term of abuse, punks are on ships and fags are in school, an official and an unofficial system, commit suicide, who he used to fag for, burglary together, really fun and very well written, supergay, Oscar Wilde, great turns of phrase, fagging, that fucked up system, term for gay, being reclaimed, queer, we need the etymology, straight out of weird, the 1920s, gay balls, to dance around or prance, gay boyfriends, loves going to gay clubs, fun to hang out with, another German term, hot and sweaty, warm brothers, Toronto and San Fransisco, Turkish bath culture, totally gay, you carry, you gather wood, the evil part, you have to go to school, like regular prison, they had to go, forced to go, the parents forced them to go, mom I want to be home with you, governess system, the history right in front of us, gay writers, the Will digression, Will is a Jesseologist, his cowl is impossible, coveted the underoos, Conan Jesse with fur diaper, much taller, you’re too old for this, left out, a dog, how to make your Halloween costumes, the one made out of paperbags, paper bags for the ears, coloured pencils, a great costume, what if it rains, self-made, I’m poor, worst Halloween ever, bow was a coat-hanger, at a motel in northern British Columbia, no materials, Jesse had real trauma, a dinosaur, clowns, princess, costume jewelry, Hungarian girl costume, native American person, Romany fortune teller, Chinese woman, queen of hearts, a card-deck, very cheap, easy to due, carnival costumes, grading on a curve, none of your business, don’t vote for the Nazis, socialists, asked all the candidate questions, normal to endorse, Musk is endorsing, the party is dying, don’t say it, mainstream newspaper, we endorse candidate xyz, not doing it is the problem, the high tariffs is a good idea for the United States (terrible for Canada), customs fee, retaliated for tariffs, never took down the tariffs, it sucks to be a colony, next year’s Worldcon in Seattle, say hi to Paul, less littering, self employed, green card, might just stick around, sworn translators, no husband to go back to, not as terrible, crossing the border into the USA, refusing to come Kentucky, maybe under Trump, voted for Biden, pissed off, if they don’t denounce the Nordstream destruction, every American hated it, Ukraine and Russia were getting into squabbles, why do the Poles love the Americans, Polish politicians, owned by the United States, Polish students, a relationship, a girl from Finnland, very mysterious people, a bit reserved, Cora is not reserved at all, weird games, by a Finn, mini-scandal at the Helsinki Worldcon, My Summer Car, you bought a car, your going to fix it up, spray paint, the driving part of the game, something every person did in Finland, buy a second hand car, a Datsun, an alien planet, sauna culture, sweat lodge, demons I gotta exercise, Russian buildings there, don’t take down statues, Sámi people, Inuit is a very strange culture, look and act like Indians, teepees, dog culture, beards, from the same planet, reindeer, bilingual signs, northern cruises, had to go to Greenland, the Kola peninsula, Kamchatka, like Upper Michigan, across the top of the circle, central Asia, the horse people, Turkic peoples, Germans and Dutch, Austrians, what’s the American equivalent, affinity state, near Lexington, Richmond, easter half of the state, Appalachian, east Tennessee, normal Southern, gulf coast, anything South of Virginia, Kentucky accents, from the mountains, Hillbilly, oldest mountain range in the world, the golden triangle, Louisville, south of Cincinnati, totally devastated, stakes are low, technically true, Canada is very big, even in deepest China, Kentucky, horses, the derby, KFC, Kentucky Christ Fuck, ficken, sheiss, German actors, swear in a foreign language, need a girl, Black Widow, in WWII, fight Nazis together, Wolverine, shit friends, a letterer problem, Wolverine’s sense of smell, he sniffs things and he heals, if your bones are gone, his entire skeleton is showing, the new Deadpool movie, Blade, Wesley Snipes, I’m the only Blade, Blade Trinity, before Marvel movies were Marvel movies, a Punisher one, really obscure, Werewolf By Night, Iron Man, the 198[9] Batman, Superman (1979), a Spider-Man fan, he’s like a loser, having a good time, his life is just really bad, more relatable, the comeback, snappy, really smart, snarky, good hearted, he’s a teenager, Mary Jane, Gwen Stacey, in comics, Rogue, can’t be touched, Jean Grey keeps dying, hots for her, an Arthurian thing, she’s the Guenevere, Fantastic Four was entirely a boomer thing, when Beast starts to have Blue skin, master mold, makes other sentinels, Classic X-Men, John Byrne, Chris Claremont, 1975 to the early 1990s, the iconic cover, Days Of Future Past, reading it in Calgary, this is amazing, this is awesome, got some ideas, Jubilee, when X-Force came out, fuck these pouches, an early 90s teenager, Asian American, all good stuff, born in the U.S., mallrat type, sprinklers, Dazzler had a baby, she’s a mutant, does her own lightshow, comics used to be great, old people gene, really good things to read, the Claremont run, what the fuck’s with Morph, just a redshirt, Morph got fridged, Age of Apocalypse, better off with Richie Rich and Casper, he’s not just friendly, he’s not going to die, always the same, punished for being hungry, a grokkable psychology, Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, more like Tintin than anything else, undersold how popular Donald Duck, the writing, well written, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, menaces to Donald Duck, he’s not a great father, did they murder their parents?, the story of Inception before the movie, the exact same idea, such a great idea, working out the idea, a secret, straight out of A Scandal In Bohemia, everything’s in there, letters from the king of Bohemia, a rip off of the Purloined Letter by Poe, he did it perfectly, photocopying a plot, the New Twilight Zone, Jordan Peele, Not All Men, James Tiptree, Jr., meanwhile Harlan Ellison gets money and credits, Days Of Future Past, Doctor Who serial, I don’t like this Doctor guy, Christmas special, why are you so negative, watching Blade, half vampire, their age difference was negligible, 12 year between them, he looked like an adult, sad scary, not working out, Sir Patrick Stewart spends his time, Blunt Talk, a much better fit, he’s a no-nothing British guy, the Falkland Islands war, being a ditz, going to Starbucks, Star Trek feels, a reboot of one of the movies, actors having fun, alternate universe, no plan, making it up as they went along, not fun for the readers, how Kuttner wrote this book, actors having a ball, Star Wars sequels, have a plan, somehow Palpatine returns, gettin paid, J. Michael Straczynski, all non-union actors, him being the sole writer on it, as soon as he took control, one of the best science fiction shows, Babylon 5, Scarecrow And Mrs. King, skating, wreck the plot, that’s fine, pablum, the first three episodes, sparkles and no ideas, trust our sniffers, be like wolverine without the adamantium bones, didn’t fit into the bags anymore, deep Halloween trauma, the most special time of the year, go to people’s houses and threaten people, feel the power, American Halloween, witches and monsters, kids are talking about it, homemade costume, went to the mall, have to sing a Halloween song, Old MacDonald Had A Farm, custom jewelry, you have to say trick-or-treat, the Pledge of Allegiance, child logic, no song, Missy, store bought witch costume, definitely not Missy, every morning, Americans are weird, what the whole thing meant, got to hold the flag today, a good way to close our show, Wesley Snipes, artificial eye, stroke or something, wear sunglasses the whole time, pulled it off in Deadpool, guy wearing sunglasses, he’s cool, won Oscars, would’ve been fine, Demolition Man, the world than the action, a good science fiction scenario, the bad Judge Dredd movie, the sidekick was Rob Schneider in both, on a plane, Passenger 57, New Jack City, Gallowwalkers, using this technique, low or no critical reviews, Michael Crichton, Rising Sun, Westworld doesn’t have a book, Black Rain, Michael Douglas, Andy Garcia is fridged, yakuza and Toyotas, wet streets with lots of neon, little ones, Boiling Point, Mo’ Better Blues, the movies got smaller, in prison for a while, known as an action star, an episode of What We Do In The Shadows, tv miniseries, Netflix, Michael Jackson music video, good at dancing, Kevin Hart, could be good, something to download, writing about things that are stupid, working a lot harder than the writer who fucked it up, bad movies with high ratings, a short comedian, Eric Roberts, what happened was, small town low budget film, the star power, its actually pretty good, a small town seems to be a flame for the moths who are convicted criminals, murdered criminal, a Tales From The Crypt episode, a very specific formula, disposable character, based on the comic, super moralistic, people who are judging them, the violence in the comics, they want to have power, an easy get, 250+ ratings, 94%, 8.5 out of 10, Gone With The Wind, Lawrence Of Arabia, what the fuck is going on, local theater people, good muscle tone, half dressed packing a suitcase, I wrote this, my friends like the script, we can film here, who can we get, he’s in some good movies, famous as Julia Robert’s brother, mid-range movies, Runaway Train (1985), Akira Kurosawa, 700 credits, looking at his cue cards, Bruce Willis, tell him what his lines are, leave money to his family, they only have him fro three days, not the way Hollywood does it, an extraordinary, old people talk about old movies, 2005, time zone converter, another reason to hate daylight savings time, the regular time for Paycheck and The Weapon Shops of Isher.

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Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #810 – READALONG: Time Is The Simplest Thing by Clifford D. Simak

Jesse, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about Time Is The Simplest Thing by Clifford D. Simak

Talked about on today’s show:
The Fisherman, serialized in Analog, April 1961, a really good scene, fits the story, so ubiquitous, very surprising, pictograms in the text, this book is pretty hip, an Alfred Bester book, The Demolished Man, the mutants are an oppressed species, kinda derivative, Starman Jones, hitchhiking across country, hitches a ride, very Campbellian, Americana stuff, the whole premise is there to please Campbell, just an easy sale, lay bare sneaking suspicion, grew and grew and then waned, a retelling of the story of Jesus, the hero’s journey, goes into the outside, comes out of the cave, he’s a teacher, 10 pages, a Jesus thing, all that suffering goes on him, his great gift, people aren’t even happy with that, fishhook is big tech, Jonathan is Stone, Jesse is Finn, it has become corrupt, it is the church, the universities, corporations, Jesse is not Finn, the technology is great the organization is bad, the technology is bad, institutionalist stuck between the two philosophies, the word Stone, a guy named Peter, Godfrey Stone, a religious book, parallel scenes, lost in the willow island, The Willows by Algernon Blackwood, goes to paradise, he’s got the Good News, also a science fiction story, ah but it is a fantasy, shownoting, 7 people talking about a Philip K. Dick story, thinking about Paul Weimer, raised under a religion, strong opinions, so strange, deeply flawed, compelled with the journey, very solid, repeat itself a couple of times, what a book!, compelling and interesting, The Goblin Reservation, gets the knowledge, the internal journey, all the monsters are real, physics are different, buy this artifact, bringing back knowledge from the stars, a different tone, this has serious conflict in it, conflicts easily overcome very quickly, that blows Jesse’s theory, hunting the monster, hidden agenda, subterfuge, intent to kill, a whole society that is full of resentment, what Paul would have thought of this book, where’s the US government?, absent, not a conspiracy, responding to reality, star signs, decorating the truck, Stars of David, moon and star of Islam, the worries of witchcraft, science has been discredited, if Paul were on the show, we just went through COVID, I am the science, big pharmaceutical companies, don’t do your own research now, counter-science propaganda, that’s just in people’s heads, how science actual is, science fiction books have been replaced by fantasy, a hard to classify book, in a science fiction magazine, such a hugely silly premise, what hard fantasy was, Larry Niven’s The Magic Goes Away, fantasy stuff is science, show me, the Campbell problem, Henry Kuttner’s Mutant, Jack Williamson’s Golden Blood, Dragon’s Island, hiding mutants, algae, weird book, The Skull by Philip K. Dick, basically The Terminator (1984), a religious figure, chipped tooth, he is that guy, doing Jesus style stuff, a cafe, quivering boobs, goes back in time again, the mob comes for him, the cosmic joke being played on him, scenes like that, the Joseph Smith story, also Abdul Al Hazred, the Mohamed story, the country, how people are in it now, company stores, trading posts, the propaganda, industries out of business, new tech all the time, disrupting the no-nothing non-Slans, making them vote for Trump, Fishhook is for profit, they’re cheap, a dystopia for non-psi people, a way for Simak to sell to John W. Campbell, big tech, chatbots, image generators, doing this for your good, the taxi industry, Uber, Bezos’ Gazelle Strategy, democratizing publishing, doing that too, creating a problem in order to provide a solution to that problem, doing both, city governments, drive up the price of the taxis, a license, non-licensed taxi, make people work for less, what we’re seeing in this book is a broken United States, exported all its industry, resentment in the countryside, business man, they outlive their value, what the book’s all about, an institution that’s outlived its usefulness, Parries, why did you think the word Parry was interested, an Alan Moore comic, to parry a blow, Providence, art by Jacen Burrows, disjointed and bad and also really good, a suicide booth, from Robert W. Chambers’ The Repairer Of Reputations, wordlessly, Peri, New York in the 1930s, outstanding, a guy is killing himself, the lover of Robert Black, a moth flying around, the moth lands on the suicide building, a term for the spirit of a person, Iranian?, parry, leaves his body, go to another planet, information, a sleeping bag that’s a wolf, the wine, tech that they bring back, how to build a fire, disrupt industries, the great premise of this book, other layer, priest, sheriff, crowd coming to kill him, happens again and again, seems to be book length rather than story length, reading into it, derogatory slurs, peepers in Alfred Bester, the Psi-Corps, The Demolished Man, a great book with lots of pictograms, the X-Men story, Campbellian, Bryan Singer made them the gays, also the gays, circling the image of the moth, derived from Chambers, basically death, your body is a chrysalis, leaving their body and going to other planets, coming back to a husk, the solution is the fusion of mind and body, the gross way, the pinkness, explain the pinkness, the logic behind it, a spirit, winged spirits, peris are exquisite winged spirits, mischievous beings denied entry to paradise, djinns and devis, similar in angels to look, spelling is different, pronunciation is the same, the girl who is a newspaperman is Simak himself, or maybe Murray Leinster, Mary Magdalene, with sin, blank slate, not his greatest novel, mighty themes, just fantasy that has no real bearing on reality, Simak’s philosophical digressions, cosmic or political, plot sucks, the countryside, Mexico to wherever, it is boring, that Leigh Brackett story, aliens, black people not being allowed to go into towns, Lovecraft Country, stolen valour, Lovecraft is evil and racist, the sequel has another stolen valour in the title, coloured, it’s like that, these people are ostracized, a paranormal ability, Philip K. Dick stories with mutants, witches Halloweening in the sky, are werewolves real?, having it both ways, dragons are people sitting on hoards, komodo dragons, science fiction and fantasy and metaphors, the ending, the most modern part of the book, the false flag operation, the center of every modern conspiracy theory, the terrorists, Hamas etc., this plot play out, conspiracy theory sphere, a very specific false flag operation, pretends to be a parry leader, the league of evil mutants, respond by kill all the parries, a very modern idea, here in 1961, a historical antecedent, false flags are real, happened during WWII, happened prior to WWII, propaganda and sets of beliefs, after a certain point people get behind it, Pearl Harbor, immediately turning to the Nazis, disputes, denying fuel, even whales, 19th century dispute over whaling, Roosevelt, operation shoestring, was god doing a false flag with Jesus?, you know what these humans need…, they’re gonna execute him, what he provoked instead is Christian antisemitism, at the party, on the run, where is this gonna go?, things happen again and again, this is all fun but how many canoe rides do we need, 14 or younger, 56 years ago, the main plot points, the first meeting with the pinkness, Hi Pal, I trade with you my mind, real trading, cat’s bag of tricks, searching within, Hayy Ibn Yaqdhan, do science in the world then go to the cave and mortify themselves, triggered to Paul, Kim Stanley Robinson book, depressed by Aurora, Plato’s Cave, amnesis, draw knowledge out of forgotten memory, crisis situation, the drawing out, solving a crisis, remembering something, another crisis, the unmentioned book Stranger In A Strange Land, a bad character, Valentine Michael Smith, Forrest Gump (1994), stumbling through the story of Jesus, getting girlfriends, evil because popular, survive the Vietnam War, got it wrong, he follows the rules, uh huh, she gets aids and dies, buy in without thinking about it, fight Muhammad Ali, as if it, never go full retard, Tropic Thunder (2008), anti-intellectual and disingenuous, Star Wars vs. Sorcerer, the worst instinct in humans, Tarzan is an empiricist, and objection to rationalists, he can send people away, a true believer in Fishhook, working in Silicon Valley fucking everybody over, nice car, nice house, that’s the cost, then leaving, fixing a truck, leads to a transformation, just the things that you could carry, The Prince And The Pauper, Sullivan’s Travels (1941), riding the rails, comes back to Hollywood a changed person, the poors, a comedy movie to help them laugh, be like Jack London, a hobo, a communist, you gotta pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, bro, that’s why they’re going to Eden, with cats, killed their enemies, rapturing themselves, the promised land, going with axes, the Book of Numbers, Eden and Heaven are the same thing, the totality of your eclipse, some shitlibs, if they’re getting raptured by the eclipse, clutching their guns, deep in the liberal hivemind, do their guns get raptured with them?, leaving the non-peepers to rot, this book is bad because it doesn’t have a coherent thesis, come back for more tools, this is why this John W. Campbell push, a murder mystery, sparky stuff, science fiction is about the engagement of technology with humans, ideas, we do become mob-like, staunch Biden supporters, there’s a mass of mob that are low and stupid, and they should be left behind, riding the rails, mob justice, the interlude with the priest, a cool interesting book, more like Moses than Jesus, the idol being the machine?, money, these people don’t deserve to go to the promised land, the boomers, we could help you but we’re kinda scared to, the resort town, strange ideas from space, the Parry town, we sympathize, we’re scared, the kids help, the kids get to go to Jerusalem, to prevent a genocide, with The Skull, sacrificed at the end of the story, a broken, book, but still good, the solution is to transcend, when people think of Buddhism, one kind of Buddhism, he refuses to got to Nirvana, all the different symbols, which one works, all religions have some truth to them, the fallacy, a bad move, some can teleport, others can’t, can understand this concept from the Inferno planet, they’re homo superior, the x gene, all their powers are different, go bodily to Paradise, you’re never going to get to the stars, you wasted your time on science, tantric tai-chi, not anybody, it doesn’t give an explanation, paranormal skills in general, trynna sell a book to John W. Campbell, evil connotations around it, preach, it doesn’t got that extra step, an evil book: Beggars In Spain, some people are genetically better, they can study all day and night, this meritocracy, I’m smarter than you and you, fuck right off Nancy Kress, strong stuff about the resentment of the population, race and class, starts off superwell, a value judgement, somebody who does not believe in PK, hence he bought it, letters about this book?, didn’t buy into this peeper shit, super ubiquitous, it’s in Dune, an infection you have to deal with it, COVID, paxlovid, all in the news right now, do you have covid? is it covid?, the sniffles, sore throat, it’ll go away, it always does, an obsessive passion, not going out at night, late 70s, pegged as the 60s, the roads not being kept up, new tech, rolling into the future with new tech disrupting everything, the flyover country, the rustbelts, American RAH RAH industrialism, David Cronenberg, eXistenZ (1999), on the run chased by a corporation, David Lynch, noir element, neo noir, classic noir, femme fatale, she looks good, she knows how to dress, makeup described, hardboiled people, unearned, other parts he’s soft boiled, academic, muscular shit, worst Simak book?, he could have been Veronica Lake, writer brain upset, go against credibility, plotting, entertaining, he meets Paul on the road, the apostle, why is he going on the road, Simak has to recapitulate all these stories, carrying a load of something, a star machine, Shepherd Blaine, the good shepherd, a blankness, yellow, blah, clueing in, this is a religious book for sure, old paperbacks, lots of spaceships, Mischa Burnett tweet, tweet go wrong on him, he’s wrong about this but I like him, an arms race for cover art, authors should not participate, people are visual creatures, Alex PulpCovers, just make sure your name is on the cover, let the good writing get people interested in your writing, what got you interested in being a reader, you read books now, the theory of the shunt, not the line of least resistance, there’s cow patties to jump in, a book with a dragon on the cover, a little invisible guy, what is this book?, that’s The Hobbit, big pile of gold, becoming interested in reading, in the back of his mind at all times, an autodidact, a janitor at a university, university library, a university education, they rejected him, he’s not one of them, self-publishing, very different ideas, Small Worlds, a blue planet, a yellow corona, Atlas Of Bad Roads, terrible covers, he’s wrong, given something think about him, maybe it is a great book, the cover does not code at all, spaceship on the cover, a broken promise, if you’re not buying Analog, an old truck on the cover, a good cover, an advertisement, a collection of short stories, good marketing, objecting to a different thing, an arms race, why are arms races bad?, who’s going to get hurt in this war, justifying, an ill conceived tweet, only reaching his existent fans, a mixture of good rating and bad ratings, Jonathan’s books have good covers, cover idea, another anthology, describing an illustration, raise money on kickstarter, Sword & Scandal, violent and sexually explicit, an ampersand, scantily clad or nude, a male barbarian, female barbarian in chainmail bikini, miss a trick, grab her by the chainmail bikini pussy, hard explain in an image, looking shocked, Hillary Clinton face, topless is the safer way to go, people understand what is going on, harder, an awkward, big smile, in triumph, a funny image for the cover, Salome, old men in a tree?, the head of John The Baptist on a silver plate, naked and terrified, Susanna and the Elders, Book of Daniel, hot woman, princess/queen, hideous shriveled wizard, trying to explain, grab her by the chainmail bikini, a proper anthology, audiobooks, he had a bad take, a very soft dunking, bookbinding, a pile of loose paper, Endless Summer is on audiobook, Bad Dreams by Mischa Burnett, Dark Fantasies, a skull, Mischa is more popular than Jonathan, Bing chat, mirror mirror on the wall…, wearing a wimple, am I still pretty?, Catskinner, Tommy Patrick Ryan’s reading of A Present For Pat by Philip K. Dick, dialogue heavy, nice and short, almost no mistakes, time and half, read the text, listening while cooking, readalong, hikes, motivates, jogging, exercise every day, Jonathan is pretty fit, who is the more successful author, purely quantitative, the electors in the electoral college, grand wizards, grand readers, big fat readers, reading all the time, hope to interest, Exiles To Glory by Jerry Pournelle, hard science fiction, how many minutes?, 216 pages, about 5 hours?, High Justice, Birth Of Fire, technical and financial challenges, 8 hours 33 minutes vs. less than 6 hours, this is gonna be a great book, cleared cache, The Soul Of Man Under Socialism, socialism!, it has never worked, that thing that never worked?!, a social safety net, no money, heaven is socialism, falling through the cracks, getting rid of property, that guy (Martin Geeson), Willis not reliable, Evan Lampe for Starman Jones, R. Murray Gilchrist, very strange, very gay, I’m here as you summoned me, my son has to live his own life, back to France, 15 years old, go away for a few years, keep the money in the family, rich people problems, the aunt is a lich, proto-Thing On The Doorstep, ornate beautiful writing, a yellow 90s sort of story, humanskin gloves, murderess ancestor, they symbol of the stone dragon, plot wise vs. tone, not Clark Ashton Smith level, very yellow nineties, The Crimson Weaver is even gayer, tricked into going into a forest with a spider woman in it, abducted, Dungeons & Dragonsy, Will was a little mad at Jesse, no drama there, a manic side, a podcast, he can’t work a regular job, excited about selling books, misunderstanding how popular books are, media mail, servicing his hobby, retail space isn’t that expensive, foot traffic, a book town, incredibly dense, half an hour from Vancouver, the Palisades, across the river from New York City, you can’t do everything, write another book, two thing, people who’ve done it, Cirsova, help and notes, The Journey Of The Joenes, Journey Beyond Tomorrow, a tiny Pacific island, Sheckley, Mindswap, a short story guy, novels, short stories have to be good, some situations where novels are better, more crappy novels, short stories are the best form for science fiction, filling pages to get to that wordcount, the writers groups, hitting my wordcount, a crafted piece that’s exactly the right length it needs to be, a piece of art, a funny tweet, people who put PhD in their bios, that’s who they are, that’s their identity, you need to know they’re better than you, I need to be a writer, I want to be respected, written by a janitor or by a university don, might be a great writer, cover care abouter, Alex for The Not-World, pirate website, ebook guy, 10 Story Western, who cares?, getting things right is not important, Thomas Burnett Swann, Day Of The Minotaur, authors starting with the letter T, Where Is The Bird On Fire?, pretty obscure, new dude, Wayne Robbins, Their Flesh Is Soft And Tender, he’s an 80 year old, wow!, a Vietnam vet, left his leg in Vietnam, Mike Vendetti, The Greatful Corpse, Dread Exile by Paul Ernst, The Door Of Doom by Hugh B. Cave, Nameless Offspring, Fafhrd and Gray Mousers, Corpseless Coffins, come within reach, desolate miles of barren country, the native Britons, Murder Puppets, Ray Cummings and his wife, next time, we can be done, adult books, now it means stupid writing.

The Fisherman by Clifford D. Simak

Posted by Jesse Willis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Worlds Of If by Stanley G. Weinbaum

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #783 – READALONG: Ill Met In Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber

Jesse, Paul Weimer, Scott Danielson, Trish E. Matson, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about Ill Met In Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber

Talked about on today’s show:
F&SF, 1970, the first story comes forty years later, almost 50 years, Cora’s article, a huge span of time, friend of the podcast, Flame And Crimson by Bryan Murphy, a couple of decades off, revived later, a friend by cooreespondence, role playing by letters, amazingly common, Patricia Reid and whatsername, reprints in books, a response to what’s going on in Weird Tales, Conan, super-coszy Conan, a Conaesque setting, cozy, how rich the world is, Mouser’s girlfriend, silk, an ermine wrap, a snowserpent fur stole, wizard’s familiar, half earthstuff and Nehwon, not meant to be read with your mouth, read with your eyes, inspired by years and years, defining cozy, opposition to hardboiled, tough detective in a seedy city, Lawrence Block’s burglar books vs. the Scudder books, Agatha Christie precedes , Lillian Jackson Braun, too cozy, this has both, a hardboiled ending, nice cozy setting, all dying of lung cancer, London fog, the geography is well stated, the lowlands, Doggerland, northern barbarian, southern guy, supposed to be their first adventure, archetypes, Swords And Deviltry, The Snow Woman, one of the many many public domain ones, finding a narrator, not told in order, filling in the corners, the comic, there’s a lot, at least double Robert E. Howard Conan stories, The Circle Curse, The Bleak Shores, wandering in the wilderness, drill down into the geography and the story, by the time we get to this, cursing to their respective gods, read and loved Conan, Lovecraft’s letters to Clark Ashton Smith, playing a game of role playing as if they’re wizards, an almost impenetrable poem, a letter written inside of the book, what the referent was, here’s a book that we could have written, two of the gods in this universe, seven eyes vs. no eyes, split Conan up into two, northern barbarian vs. Shadizar thief, Robert E. Howard seems to hate magic, oh this again, a little more than a little more, ooh magic that’s that scary stuff, physically taxing, this magic of the world, fun characters, funhouse mirrors of each other, the city, the setting, as rich as the characterization, the archetypal fantasy city of Dungeons & Dragons, Sherlock Holmes stories, The Red Headed League, The Man With The Twisted Lip, thrown in jail for murdering himself, a gentleman’s salary, enriching the underworld, he’s brought the underworld to the surface, really do the lords run the city, cultivating their thievery, come and pluck it again, Zamboula, not as good as this, more muscular and beautiful prose, better characterization of the characters and the world, a city boy, he loves this horrible place, the beggars guild, the thieves guild, Alexander Dumas, Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, Tim Powers, girlfriend wants revenge, appear gallant, impress my new boyfriend, she’s the cause of the doom, murdered in one of their homes, not killing mongoose, not killing the thieves, a hardness, reading this the wrong way, reading short stories symbolically, how it was encoded, a miniature, the home that the Mouser has made, the whole thing’s rotting, the carpet thief and the rug merchant and the candle plucker, a fairy world to keep his fairy in, she’s was actually much harder than he wanted her to be, shrewdness and cynicism, coddling, her father’s torture chamber, knows more than his protagonists do, writing women with limited roles, what women get to do and don’t get to do, had to go a certain way, almost inevitable that the women get fridged, some alternative thing, disgusted with their drunken revels, more forgivable, known chronology, which would be a better story?, a joke ending, the harder ending, the men don’t come off to well, drunk all the time, their decision making, the deftness and dexterity, very Dungeons & Dragonsy, pre-D&D, Gygax was pulling on stuff, an Appendix N story, this is the good ones, transcribing a D&D campaign, the DM and the player, when the saving throws fail, in a spectacularly heroic way, epic, comic irony, thieves and counter-thieves, all about corruption, papering over the floors, by spreading the weight and money around the corruption seems lessened, all these rats, super-rich, every tunnel has a story, every sewer, the way the pillars are constructed, the armoured car attack, the peripheral hirelings, basically a perfect story for what it’s doing, not a footfault, two hours and fifty minutes, half of a Tor double, won the Hugo for the previous year, Ship Of Shadows, science fictiony psychological, a talking cat and werewolves, Clifford Simaky, pretending to be statues, pretending to be blind, more realistic as beggars, levels of irony, embracing, making the movie Chinatown cozy, guild beggars, my sacred butt, grown folk go blind, mindful of things as they really are, talking about readers as well, rooting for these thieves, they kill a 10 year old, that’s fine, plunging his named sword into the kid, that’s good writing, the level of description, the last year of Lovecraft’s life, one big long description, all the doors are open, missing in modern fiction, beautiful description of a rotting corpse, a big sprawling mess, dim alley, 70s batman comics, make Arkham, corrupt, the original Batman, big into Batman in the 1970s, sinking into a swamp, that richness of description, the destruction, quasi medieval city, ringing its firebell, burning down a district of the city, purify it, these are not heroes, counter-thieves, outside the union guys, a labour story, too corrupt, everything is corrupt in this world, all the thieves in Lankhmar are homegrown, the Conan excuse, The Tower Of The Elephant, I’m a Cimmerian I can climb stuff, pot-bellied master thief, team-up and immediately killed, there’s never a story where you see another character return, Valeria, Belit, to come back, it’s a team-up, two heroes, Green Arrow and Batman teaming up, a team-up issue, Green Arrow and Green Lantern, the instinct people want to go with, Conan, even Kull has Brule the Spear-Slayer, always alone in the end, even the the girls are dead and they swore off the city of Lankhmar, fate that these two guys are together, instantly recognize each-other, same weird plans, thinking about each other, a bromance, big fans, Savage Sword Of Conan, the letters column, Harry Fischer, best thing to be a thief, came up with that plan independently, very silly, had the author chosen a different pair, Fissif and Slavas, working within the system, he likes being afraid, they love their work, being in this gang is cool, not to home of nagging wife and squealing child, enough effort into creating the other characters too, the wizarding stuff, pouring on the wizard, put a knife between his shoulder-blades, inner thoughts of the wizard, horrified by his clubhands, magic has a cost, ableism, other signs, revulsed by it, revolted by what he does not how his hands look, parallel this with a Guy de Maupassant style figure wracked by syphilis, this is the cost of sexing around, the cost of magic in this world is yet another of the corruptions, damaged by her hatred, that that’s what caused her death, the only thing that’s pure and nice is the friendship of our heroes, climbing into a rathole and making it cozy, withering your arm etc., not mention it, all the good things in here, the agency that the women have, the world is different in the 1970s, not-super-sexist, disgusting ableism, sacrificing body parts for the power of magic, people have different ideas, birth defect, high level spells cost you, a duel with a wizard, a wizard-off, a lighting spell, Mouser knows, he grounded himself, pretty clever, one’s better with language, strong and quick, they have the same stats in different places, the character sheets, slightly higher constitution, same wise, dexterity 18, human maximum, you could predict this, Gygax’s numbers, three stories into book 2, Jonathan Davis was the narrator, the art for the audiobook sucks, the best sword and sorcery stories, C.L. Moore’s Jirel of Joiry stories, back into blogs again, the last story in the book, he’s filling in the corners, a hobbit’s second breakfast, Fantastic, Brian Murphy’s list, order of publication, Eric Brighteyes by H. Rider Haggard, She, The Sword Of Welleran, The Ship Of Ishtar by A. Merritt, Tolkien before Tolkien, Dwellers In The Mirage, inter-war writers, so many like that, The Moon Pool, the Munsey magazines, hard to generate interest, what is that Lovecraft thing?, the Conan movie, for this group, reprint series, rekicked back into gear, Seven Footprints To Satan, a silent movie, captive in a mansion, gambling, giant stairway, giant metaphor for the stockmarket crash, 97 pages, Creep, Shadow!, A Good Story Is Hard To Find podcast, incredible Virgil Finlay art, The Woman In The Wood, How We Found Circe, The Shadow Kingdom, The Tower Of The Elephant, Beyond The Black River, Red Nails, tortured by his apprentice for hundreds of years, The Threepenny Opera, Bertolt Brecht, an adaptation of The Beggar’s Opera, an organization, the Thieves’ World books, Elder Scrolls, Fallout, secret societies, literally underground, the smoke and the backstory for why everybody wears black and grey, so cosy, one Trish would like to live in, do you want to play the Lankhmar open world, a new startup for an open Thieves World, in an ironic way, a little post-modern, how ironic it would be if, the same way that killing that kid is fine, I gotta little crazy and I killed a 10 year old, so artificial, not even a hint this is 10,000 years ago, definitely not Earth, a secondary world, so secondary, Denethor seems to be going on and on about something, I don’t want to be a Boromir, no messages taken, when you read Conan, Howard has a hobby horse, an idea he’s dealing with, secondary world creation for fun, don’t get roaring drunk, don’t make promises you’re going to regret, corked jugs, get drunk is the message, follow the Persian custom, they don’t actually eat anything, wine fortified with brandy, small beer splashing, wine spritzer, dainty, order a Gray Mouser on, The Tale Of Satampra Zeiros by Clark Ashton Smith, Jason Thompson’s adaptation to comics, actually tentacles, sexy tentacles, Cora Buhlert’s essay Black God’s Shadow: Or Overcoming Trauma As A Core Theme Of Sword And Sorcery, a really good essay, lost his wife, so relatable, gloomy and depressing, the end of Red Nails, they’re just starting their lives, gloomy Guses, gigantic melancholics and gigantic mirth, emotionally powerful, Luke Burrage is getting tired of reading squeecore and torwave books, heists and trauma, consolation, there are other girlfriends, a whole world of adventure to be had, drink you latte and pet a cat, cosy to hardboiled, experience this noir things, sad and happy, Judgement Night, a princess in a warrior society, a woman for one night, pleasure planet, pleasure moon, loves the enemy now, a very C.L. Moore thing, very romantic, a little Campbell, less poetic and flowery, different themed rooms, chasing him through the planet, destroying all these romantic rooms, going up in dust, Dragon Moon by Henry Kuttner, not as mean as Bester, pretty mean, Fury, a dome beneath the surface of Venus, a totalitarian society, Stefan Rudnicki narrating, 27 pages and took the cover, inside has interior art by Hannes Bok, Atlantis, princess, viking dude, a dragon, the Wild Hunt, a quote from G.K. Chesterton, Rudyard Kipling, named chapters, we need to get an audiobook of that done, a novella or novelette, spread it around, Liane The Wayfarer by Jack Vance, Dying Earth, Poul Anderson, The Tale Of Hauk, The Broken Sword, Melnibone, The Dreaming City, Sailor On The Seas Of Fate, Bazarr Of The Bizarre, opens with a snowball fight, Frost Giant’s Daughter lacks snowball fights and skiing, the wrapping, well met, a rotten thing you carpet over and wrap it in silks, oh, right, gloomy and bad, the phraseology, Fantastic Stories Of Imagination, people loved illustrating these stories, prelims, how about this for the cover?, Robert E. Howard illustration, 10,000 people painting Conan, few Solomon Kane, lots of Red Sonja, even the rejects are amazing, a walking statue, the rejected cover, the very first story?, Adept’s Gambit, Karl Edward Wagner, a darker version of Conan, medieval England, a werewolf story, Two Sought Adventure, first one wrote, two left, David Drake, Imaro by Charles Saunders, first book was shitcanned by the publisher, Conan in Africa, 11 hours 33 minutes, with introduction by Charles de Lint, a third of the way through the list, writing that book, taken up by that, ages ago, an RSS feed that works, a keyboard that came out in 2015, watch youtube videos on it, a clock, an RSS catcher built into the keyboard, subscriptions, it was wiped out, I was there, Gandalf, substack is doing its best, what we really want is RSS back, they tend not to get supported, patiently waiting for Paul to start a Substack, problems with the owners of Substack, happily disconnected, next evolution of blogging, it was pointed out that neo-Nazis were using it, TERFs and other fun people, donates money to holocaust deniers, how do we get away from owners?, google dominates but it doesn’t own email, torrents, Cory Doctorow just wrote a book about that sort of thing, The Internet Con: How To Seize The Means Of Computation, plugs are good, Saber And Shadow by S.M. Stirling and Shirley Meier, a gender flipped Ill Met In Lankhmar, neither lady has pants, long sleeved tunics and no pants, they’re into each other, corruption comes from the top, unpleasant fanatics that don’t mind killing many many people, the nobles are corrupt, Earth many millennia later, homeless wanderers, red maned, just so we know, a creature of knives and magic, no ebook or audiobook, Discworld, Terry Pratchett, other comps, Scott Lynch’s The Lies Of Locke Lamora, felt like a YA, The Hammer And The Blade by Paul S. Kemp, a fixup, Scylla’s Daughter, now it is all novels, if you’re in fantasy and science fiction conversations, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, a quarterly blog, Tales From The Magician’s Skull, Goodman Games, they exist, people who buy things on Amazon, it needs physical distribution, Sword And Sorcery Magazine, September 2023, New Edge, a lot of places to read it, was sword & sorcery ever mainstream?, when Howard was writing, Fight Stories, Top-Notch, Action Stories, DAW books, very geeky, offshoot of psychedelic and heavy metal culture, most people don’t read any books, Readers Digest Condensed books, Michael Crichton, Nora Roberts, books need trimming, the movies were huge, theatrical to video, Xena and Hercules, gotta prep, you can talk all your Jesse talks to much talk.

TOR DOUBLE - Ill Met In Lankhmar

Ill Met In Lankhmar COMIC

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

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #379

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

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.

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

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #600 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Dawn Of Flame by Stanley G. Weinbaum

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #600 – Dawn Of Flame by Stanley G. Weinbaum; read by Maureen O’Brien. This is an unabridged reading of the story (3 hours) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Maissa Bessada

Talked about on today’s show:
The Weinbaum Memorial Volume, Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1939, The Black Flame, Fantastic Story, Spring 1952, The Margret Of Urbs story, kind of done, a story about a guy going into an empire and fuckin it up, headfaking, he’s a Conan figure, what was this about, what is freedom?, is freedom worth it?, better off not being free, helping overlords, the dawn of what?, just a bad book?, expectations, Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, people wanted Typee, Shakespeare’s meditations, what humans are doing, how foolish we all are, I wanted a cartoon, Weinbaum redoing H. Rider Haggard’s SHE in a science fiction mode, Black Margo, is he her puppet?, the last paragraph, he was silent the whole way through, its not Hull Tarvish’s story, he knows his audience, you’re mostly men, kids, girls, women, there are other people other than men, mom beefs, cuz I’m not a girl, men and women are equal under the law (but not in interests), upper body strength and ability to bear children, biological differences in her brains, snakes, birds, dogs, if you’re a man reading science fiction stories, dual wielding blasters, that looks cool, how much smoking was going on, lung cancer, is this a fantasy then?, both ways, I like fightin’ and I don’t kill women, this Ayesha character, this cursed immortal, a vampire story, they’re both cursed, one of the old lovers, what this book is really about, whatchu gonna do with your life?, to use the planet as your pillow, conquer?, something to while away the years, they’re not evil, as merciful as they can, Napoleon goes in and liberates, the mighty ancient civilization, he’s the half-brother, The Black Flame, setup for the backstory, a philosophical planetary romance set on earth, sword and sandal, what you know, what you should want, what you should do, the evil empire moving north out of New Orleans headed for New York, the work of the book, a civilizing force, but they’re cursed, his mom baked him some bread, epic fantasy, he leaves a stone hut, another woman’s stone hut, its a circle, a regular person’s brush with Alexander the Great’s sister, the sexual tension, divided in loyalties and divided in desire, given two choices, the mortal girl vs. the immortal woman, it judo flips us from where we begin, nice blade trade me for it, we’re all set up for trampling an evil empire down, are you sure that’s what you want to do with your life, son?, an anti-war story, why did WWI and WWII happen?, they engineer a plague that kills 60% of people, land reforms, build roads, Hull Tarvish isn’t the bad guy because he’s us, very subtle, America falling, Robert Adams’ Horseclans series, Greek speaking invaders, Jack McDevitt’s Eternity Road, Theodore Judson’s Fitzpatrick’s War, trying to put the US back together, internationalist, the whole world, N’Orleans, Ouroboros the world girdling snake, no worlds left to conquer, unhealthy personal behavior, drunken brawls, Hull Tarvish comes from a stable home, sow his oats, get his manhood on, fightin’, old man coach, a mistake rebellion, a reverse of the [U.S.] Civil War, these exotic figures, evil witch of a sister, they forgive him for his stupidity, why we needed Will: a barefoot bumpkin from the holla, philosophical after becoming king, what kingly and queenly activities are like, a line against becoming powerful, appreciate birdsong a good drink and time with your family, everything is science, a fantasy setting a fantasy setup, science and engineering behind all of this stuff, Lindbird is probably fictional, maybe he flew, microwave technology, beam energy, through air but not fog, he’s got rules, we are mistaken, Jesse was very impressed, we don’t know how the immortality happened, one tiny little thing, they’re sterile, where’d it come from, 100 years where no book was written, too big, She learned these things as a science, 12 hours vs. 3 hours, remember out point of view, an illiterate, a viewpoint to this world, he doesn’t ask a lot of smart questions, Weinbaum knows, teaching the reader a lesson, a mortality thing going on here, how many times does he escape death, The Willows by Algernon Blackwood, on vacation in Austria in a canoe, it happened hundreds of years ago, we can’t understand it, we’re not worthy?, she puts his hands on her neck and says “squeeze” the flame, the dawn of the flame, this black flame of hair, this attraction of a moth to a flame, drawn to the flame over and over again, in his arms, in his manly form, she sees a possibility of her being killed, ultimately they have death wishes, Hull Tarvish has a definite life wish, experience, have fun, not even a real battle, she’s dead inside, her conquering, bringing civilization back, bringing civilization back, she’s Prometheus, why is that?, he has an interest in her as a sister, half brothers have half interests, a mated pair, that’s my sister, retelling this novel from a female pov, that male female thing, she wants to be attractive, what does Joaquin, male and female psychology, usually the way this works in a traditional story: a young man finds a princess, assassinate a princess, the forgiving nature and whim of that princess, they’re to the focus of the wisdom that Weinbaum is trying to struggle to, a very philosophical book, a lot of conversations, talking with this immortal, She in SHE is evil, Black Margot is bored, a severe case of “is that all there is?”, a narrow escape for Hull Tarvish, cursed to be one of the mercenaries in this growing army, the footnote at the end, an anonymous volume, Loves Of The Black Flame, the very first Conan story, Phoenix On The Sword, the Black Dragons, Game Of Thrones, this is somebody very close, told far in the future, one incident in Princess Margot’s life, ancient St. Louis, both terms as anachronism, wicked world metropolis, a very thin slice of an incident, page 105, a bit unusual, the history weirdness of this story, a fake history of the future, a salacious history, the atomic rocket crashings, if Weinbaum had lived, The Black Flame, Sam Moskowitz, Satellite, December 1956, is Weinbaum overblown?, a diminishing pool of readers, Hugo Gernsback’s Wonder Stories, Astounding, “thought variants”, Charles D. Hornig, so new, so breezy, readers were unreserved in their enthusiasm, John Taine, Jack Williamson, Ray Cummings, Clark Ashton Smith, H.P. Lovecraft, A Martian Odyssey, The Wizard Of Oz, stylistic magic, Tweel, paradoxical actions, the interplanetary strange encounter tale, the silicon monster hat burped bricks, wheeling rubbish, a tentacled plant with wish fulfillment images, “I saw with pleasure someone had last escaped… -H.P. Lovecraft”, A. Conan Doyle, Edgar Rice Burroughs, a chemical engineer, The Lady Dances by Marge Stanley, a woman’s name as a byline, The Mad Brain and The New Adam, an operetta, Omar The Tentmaker, Helen Weinbaum, Graph, $55, Solar Sail Service, Mortimer Weisinger, Ralph Milne Farley, Circle Of Zero, a strangely acceptable trick, The Valley Of Dreams, Julius Schwartz, Flight On Titan, knife-kites, whiplash trees, tread-worms, Parasite Planet, Ham Hammond and Patricia Burlingame, the outre creatures, The Lotus Eaters, a warm blooded plant, Oscar, a series of questions and answers, under the influence of the narcotic spore, pontifical inertia, Pygmalion’s Spectacles, The Worlds Of If, The Ideal, virtual reality, Prof. Van Manderpootz, what would happen if…, synoptic, reading Weinbaum right, the attitudinizer, seeing the world through the mind of others, humour and style, a philosopher was at work, a masterful short novel, a woman of extraordinary beauty, The Milwaukee Fictioneers, the Radio Pirates and others, Amazing Stories, a former Wisconsin senator, True Gang Life, Yellow Slaves, Smothered Seas, formula material or go unpublished, The Planet Of Doubt, Weinbaum could do no wrong, the animated linked sausages of Uranus, The Adaptive Ultimate, Weinbaum had been “typed”, John W. Campbell, Jr., Don A. Stuart, almost plotless travelogues, David H. Keller’s Life Everlasting, one of his favourite authors, a tubercular girl, the ability to defeat death, dramatized on the radio, Tales Of Tomorrow, She Devil (1957), so adaptable, tonsil extraction, Proteus Island, imitation pneumonia, x-ray treatments, The Red Peri, a woman space pirate of phenomenal cunning, The Adaptive Ultimate, super-woman, a subconscious wish to meet a woman his intellectual equal, Smothered Seas, The Mad Moon, a semi-intelligent rat, minor masterpiece, Ralph Milne Farley, The Dictator’s Sister, Ray Palmer, Charles D. Hornig, 15 month after his first science fiction story appeared…, surrounded by radiance, The Weinbaum Memorial Volume, high poetry in the closing passages, maybe Einar is immortal, The Circle Of Zero, it should be read, an undersea wall, Real And Imaginary, Brink Of Infinity, The Tenth Question by George Allan England, he wrote it for himself, The Revolution Of 1980, transgender dictator, no end to his last stories, Tidal Moon, The New Adam, Edgar Rice Burroughs, fatal passion for a woman, morbidly fascinating, so gay a frolic, The Dark Other, Graph, Green Glow Of Death, Eric Frank Russell, Henry Kuttner, John Russell Fearn, Philip Jose Farmer’s The Lovers, before the curtain descended, a poem, a little long, 45 minutes of reading Sam Moskowitz, Ted Chiang, really thinking about the details, the attraction of the woman, Margot springboarded into another character, sometimes people are wrong about stuff, The Mound by H.P. Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop, just trying to sell magazines, suddenly flip, angrily ranting, screaming and yelling in a foreign language, a story needs to be parsed, better thinking about it rather than reading it, Maureen O’Brien, back in 2004.

Dawn Of Flame by Stanley G. Weinbaum - Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1939

Dawn Of Flame by Stanley G. Weinbaum - Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1939

Dawn Of Flame by Stanley G. Weinbaum - Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1939

Dawn Of Flame by Stanley G. Weinbaum - Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1939

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