H.P. Lovecraft – Page 4

The SFFaudio Podcast #769 – READALONG: Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub

Jesse, Evan Lampe, and Terence Blake talk about Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub

Talked about on today’s show:
blake house, a Dickens novel, 2001 novel, September 15, 625 pages, 810 pages, every cover is garbage, Gorg, the thunder five, a big sprawling novel, a horde of bees, a mysterious bee winking at us, put the bee on the crow, only revealed later, the point of view from the crow, the bee was hitching a ride until Gorg was killed, what!?, here’s our book, we’re gonna see him later, the realtime of Jack’s life, the time between the two publications, The Talisman, a co-authored book, mailed them off, 100 manuscript pages, more by email, some interview, more intertwined, King’s stories are always set when he writes them, it has to be that way, so Dark Tower connected, after the accident, there’s a lot of King in here, other than setting, Mr. Clubb And Mr. Cuff, Koko, seeing the parts that I was missing, Everything’s Eventual, another one with dinky dinky dinky, he’s penis obsessed, not only obsessed, anything low and base and childish, word magic, the magic words, the phrases from the DJ, zip up your fly, the repetition of it, a big sprawling novel, owes a lot of debts to a lot of other people, a breaker in that, a breaker in this, the breakers are defined, the first time they’re identified, that plot line, a bigness, how much repetition there was, having room to breathe, you took all of H.P. Lovecraft’s writings you could probably fit it all into this book and still have a little bit of room, this 3 file MP3 audiobook, too unweildly, go into a room soak up the furniture, a whole different kind of thing, how much this is character and setting, there’s a plot, an investigation going on, True Detective, the Crimson King, a Dreamlands place: the territories, the United States, a connection between, a shoutout to Talisman readers, a tragic death, right here and now, the catchphrase thing, keeping track of them, hit three or four times in a chapter, how magic works, words get inside your head and control your thoughts, a song, you can’t stop humming it or singing it, the Wikipedia entry, dark fantasy, horror, things that should be horrific, a chapter told from the point of view of The Raven by Poe, Cool Air, The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, black dripping goo, wonderfully heroic, horrific but not horror, gross out, the horror version of the hero’s journey, not noir fiction, the end of True Detective is hopeful, Rust, every word stolen, a vision of his daughter and love, maybe things are not so bad, the whole show itself is about horror, children being kidnapped, molested, and killed, thinking of themselves as royal, a queen, what makes her a queen, you call your daughter a princess, the skygod, the last living person in the entourage, adjacency, they have monarchy in the territories, the guy’s name is Stephen King, Kingsland Ale, strawberry fest, Strawberry Spring, Fish, the plot is very similar, a historical serial killer being called out, an amateur investigation, hiding the truth, press conference, Nic Pizzolatto, cop stuff, go visit an insane asylum, a prison, a weird house in the , we lie at the press confrence, we lie to our bosses, hides in the closet, why is this happening?, because it’s cool, that’s why, opopanax, New York Times crossword, a summoning word, really interesting, very Lovecraftian, the creation of the secondary world, cannibal, The Silver Key connection, Lovecraft is against memory, you need to start remembering, closer thematically, Through The Gates Of The Silver Key, objecting to the form, short stories are tight, sprawl out and enjoy himself, he’s mortal he has to do the work, Evan enjoys every minute, Jesse doesn’t, Terence enjoyed it a lot, despite the fact that the form is very funny, like a funnel, wide and slow and fast and tight at the end, deus ex machina after deus ex machina, the detective story is resolved by the cosmic background, stop suppressing, Evan always says: “it goes down smooth”, Thunder Five quote Hegel and Derrida, Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, he’s also in love with the landscape there, out of the country, London, King is obsessed with Maine, Straub liked Wisconsin, writers think about the landscape, when walking to get the mail, the lore of the landscape, TV shows, exotic location, anywhere other than New York or Los Angeles, Breaking Bad, Tulsa King, that sense of place, lovingly rendered, a good sense of the landscape, the other thing: character, Frank Muller, before his motorcycle accident, 22 years old, he goes down smooth, solid narrator, a conspiratorial sort of reading, is our DJ character supposed to be black?, cool, nice suits, how did he get his sense of style, interview with the agent, his own voice back to him about what the weather’s like, the magical blackman, at the old folks home, the n word is involved, wigger, Stephen King would revise that now, really?, the Bill Hodges trilogy, Mr. Mercedes, also a tv show, they’re all tv shows, the Duffer Bros., Netflix ripoff show, Dungeons & Dragons show, entertaining book, the psychology is off, the king and the queen, the cop psychology, our hero cop from California, he’s the kid, he grew up, forgot everything, fate moves him back to Wisconsin to be magical again, the astonishing thing, all the child coveting, coveting body parts, I’m going to eat your ass, it’s going to be delicious, he is a demon, so weird, a cartoonish type demon, there’s a level of humour or comforting cuteness, pseudo Germanic accent, fake British accent at the end, It just eats children, molesting?, raping?, likes killing children, a pedophile child murderer, I could have raped her, Albert Fish was a real dude, it was political, the governor and a senator, connected to church affiliated schools, funneling, Katrina comes and washes away stuff, if this could be adapted the tone would be really weird, a lot of coziness, the bikers are fun, the visit to the madhouse, comforting, getting the team together, kid gets abducted, the black feathers, the guts in the box, those Reardon Metal movies, Ayn Rand devotees, this can’t be adapted can it?, it is The King In Yellow, you’re in Carcosa now, take off your mask, time to unmask, a very very loose adaptation, as a part of a series?, Mike Flanagan, novel only, not everything has to be adapted, overlook hotel book: The Shining, internal, visuals happening in the book, cozy feeling based stuff that only comes through the minds of characters, The Raven scene, quoting while the assault is happening, Cool Air on the couch, black stuff coming out of every pore, [Mesmeric Revelation], Roland’s world, wherever they took Tyler, in another world, the multiverse before it was cool, bronze age marvel comics, William James, it was not cool then ever, latest Flash movie, different Batmans, move on, copisman, one of these phrases that infects the brain, policeman copisman makes perfect sense, personal identity magic, a baby word, very baby like book, lady sticks her tongue into a cup to drink, licking her tea, that’s super creepy, like the Dalai Lama, a policeman who uses his childhood innocence to understand, a childish book, capiche, Plato’s Republic, the silver are the cops, we’ve got a queen, there’s not a lot of contempt for everyone else, weirdos or good, the biker gang, they look rough, but they hold degrees in philosophy and one of them is a surgeon, Derry had slippage, French Landing is not as corrupted, Wendell Green, some fairly nasty characters, cynical not particularly evil, how Stephen King’s mind works, reading his stuff, lying to himself or blinding himself, something going on with twitter, an old magazine called Pirate Writings, going to find Stephen King, his small town in Maine, between the airport and the army base, a dark glass, press the button and state your name, is this Stephen King’s office, is he here?, I’m one of three secretaries he has, this is what you have to deal with when you have weirdos who want to meet you, meet your hero, Dean Koontz level, just these two, what Straub contributed, Jesse doesn’t have a good reading on this book, deeper, a bad reading of The Raven by Poe, it’s a vulture, shorn or shaven, turkey vulture, the Raven is what we’re supposed to take away from it, people memorize it and then don’t listen to the words that they’ve memorized, the house, the lights, the explanation, the talisman to assault the house, it may fit into a different puzzle piece, worst, the house is on fire, fire imagery, the room is filling with smoke, an amazing poem, people read it superficially, Roger Zelazny’s A Night In Lonesome October, sometimes an artist will crop the top so you can’t see the bird’s head, a heroes journey, not the ideal reader, least favourite Stephen King book, how many books he writes, doing it for 50 years, first 3 of the Dark Tower, The Gunslinger, The Drawing Of The Three, The Wastelands, The Stand, Cycle Of The Werewolf, The Dark Half, Blaze, Revival, the least interesting, more of a cozy, supposed to be horrific, Twin Peaks, demon from another dimension, the Black Lodge and the White Lodge, very robust (even though it is flimsy), what differentiates him from David Lynch, King gets ordinary people, Frost, what Stephen King prides himself on, a lot of dinky stuff, penis and poo poo, two modes, adult prude mode, how much poo poo pee pee stuff, Salem’s Lot, scummy and bad, cop judgement, I gotta keep this people in control otherwise…, groups or societies, family, groups that are made, The Mist, Fred, Alice, Dale, pee and poo people, a mischaracterization, the people trapped in the supermarket, a mass hysteria, sacrifice a child, a normal common thing to do, contrasted with the father, cheating on his wife, at the end he lucks in to not killing his kid, the hard Darabont ending, the implied ending, uncharitable, he thinks the people are base, only and always base, the journalist Wendel Green, a Heinleinian style strawman, seeks consolation with Sophie, more juicy, we as writers are sensationalistic, you’re prurient (as readers), we want a lot of poo poo pee pee stuff, Dirty Sperm, if you get in somebody’s car and they put on Dirty Sperm, regular dirty sperm, that could be Straub, must be King, bad to separate, split brains and personality, a work of fiction, presented as if it was by one guy, one guy with two heads comes into the bar and punches you in the face, they’re both getting charged with a crime, they’re both being charged with assault, they’re both being arrested, even though only one of the heads controlled that arm, a good joke, the double headed parrot, they’ve built it into the story, back to the Dirty Sperm, the Wisconsin Rat, George Rathman, gives into the blackmail, now I’m getting the psychology, interested in audio, a good book by itself, this is a big sprawling chunky book, can’t forget Beezer, Doc, Jack, Dale, Henry, Bernie, that’s a lot, not that bad for a Stephen King, actively dislike, Finders Keepers, a production machine, From A Buick 8, a little bit of cellphone stuff, Cell, the kids at the 7-11, a scene out of The Simpsons, buying Magic [the Gathering] Cards, he needs to show he’s relevant and hip to the immediate moment, the racism is the wrong period, early 80s racism, Stephen King always brings his own childhood, the magic of this book, it’s not integrated, baseball cards, collecting baseball cards, baseball cards are out, Gulf War cards, 1991, kids from an earlier period of time transported to the modern period, riding their bikes around, small town Wisconsin, border of somewhere else, French Creek?, fictionalized of Trempealeau, Wisconsin, Becky Thatcher country, set on the Mississippi, partially the same timer period, 2002, the 1990s, 2012, the landscape, a sense of the land is cursed and sick, ill, or mentally ill, or crippled, idyllic, small town, drug epidemic, suicides, the strange part is the children going missing, a much more optimistic view of child murder and abduction, an amazing novel for television, a good book, arguing about Blaze, looking for the political stuff, it’s not in here, Terence wonders, not directly, things are exploding in France right now, pillaging main street shops, clothes shops, lots of burning, six years, things are burning all the time, riots, forest fires, neoliberalism, the shock doctrine, to exploit, more and more advantages for the richest, more and more authoritarian surveillance for the poor, a good reason to begin with, mass discontent, the burning just likes burning, burning is good, tendency in the human psyche and the social world, King’s baseline politics, watch out for the mob, neoliberals provoke burnings, shitliberal not a neoliberal, a shitliberal will support neoliberal policies, using the children’s energy, really really sublimated politics, very sublimated, a straw of hope, put him on the wrong path, a tragedy, subject to I need a bad guy, eating children’s asses, studied up on Fish, absolute evil character, a callback, the villain of absolute evil, not in Bachman, the supernatural, supernatural villains, should I be happy about France being on fire?, people shouldn’t take shit, including good things, schools can be burned, libraries should be preserved, Under The dome, The Long Walk, societies rules, The Running Man, the best of the Bachmans, somebody’s going to pay, the mob is just society driven insane, the community of friends, a common purpose, both good and bad, sometimes people get hurt, in the long run, do people in France yearn for the days of King Louis?, Macron, get over the reality, nobody is calling for the tsar to return, a needed and necessary thing, pulling a bandage off, short term vs. long term, the French are supposed to be Cartesian and bureaucratic, they just do that when they want to piss people off, they have in their hearts the revolution, “don’t obey the rules”, people are not obeying the rules, he claims to be disruptive, the textual example, the lynching that was avoided, the magic lilies, nice and Jesus like, that’s his position, upshot, rewatch True Detective, Amazing when it was happening, The King In Yellow, the stories themselves are sort of a collage, that’s just an artist, a time travel story, an artist, the magic can be explained wholly by having drug flashbacks, the lore of Robert W. Chambers, Carcosa, California, wherever that could be, forgotten parts of Louisiana, cover-ups, corruption, the cost is real to the characters, addiction, pain, HBO shows that were big since The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Dark Tower stuff, how would Straub have felt about that?, to learn about the Dark Tower and the Crimson King, the breakers and stuff, figuring it out?, realizing, I’ve made something here, H.P. Lovecraft, he’s right, August Derleth, Carrie, and other books with The Shining stuff, fans doing that more than he did, Deep Ones, servants of Cthulhu, no, he likes those things, so good, so smart, how big the villain is, the corruption of the whole state, the school system, everything seems involved, a little underwhelming, a sewer, a fort, an offshoot of the family, a big tough guy, fucking his half-sister, eventually dispatched, one of the news reports, magic baseball bat, archaeology to dig up corpses, reports have been discredited, the police captain they threaten to murder, he’s complicit, he just didn’t question his boss and he got a promotion, literally a Lawnmower Man, the worst thing for the kids, a lot of cool themes, societal themes, the washing away by whatever storms it is, wrecking birth records, all these homes, a strange series of shots where we visits all the scenes, how we’re feeling, the corruption is still there, [Port Coquitlam], Robert Pickton, this was going on for decades, they don’t do anything, unless there’s political pressure, they will respond to specific incidents, they’re not the smartest or wisest or best people, they’re just the guys with guns and authority, sees a baby in a microwave, the cops in here are all doing their best, I’m a good guy, it covers ignorance, he uses the magic, it’s not a police procedural, the solution is handed to him on a platter, it’s cosmic, man, we did this book pretty good, 26 hours, one of his best, very character, good character things, reading for character, the narrative style, floating around, flying over the landscape, I’m going to show you the dead kid now, hesitating, we, us, the shitty cover of the book, we this and us this, us the reader?, us the narrator?, it’s everything, deconstructed, pleasantly surprised, more horror, more utilitarian, the prose is good, not a girl book, hard to describe, so well written, not really earned, intelligent as well, The Talisman, standalones, The Troop, a guy who is trying to be like Stephen King, a gross-out horror body horror book, eat each other, kill a turtle, zombies, Canadian government is going to nuke them, imitation Stephen King, the writing is more authentic, detective reading has been deconstructed, Fairy Tale by Stephen King, the hardcover is full of illustrations, the paperback, demand good interior illustrations, The Colorado Kid, Hard Case Crime, talking with old-timers, an old case, the mystery of who the person is, the revised version has interior illustrations, an investigative journalist, was it a mob killing from Boston?, physical evidence, leaving only impossibilities, Charles Ardai introduction, not part of the Dark Tower series, maybe Jesse doesn’t like magic, a little bit like Heinlein, Heinlein if the guy offends you, strawmanning, libertarian vigilante, Heinlein would be good with making out with a mental patients, competent ladies, wish they were born men, how much time it took, 1.3 x speed, taken up by it, rolls along, Progeny will be relaxing, Connor is back on twitter, bitcoin shillers, twitter is still broken, Evan must read like a reading machine, another flu, sense of taste changing, a wasted week, retired for the summer, except for the classes on psychology, Pirates Of Venus, A Meeting With Medusa, No Man’s Land, Zero Cool, God Save The Mark, Huston, Houston, Do You Read?, Skull Face, good writer, bad person, shitlib, not the end of the world, how many Stephen King books don’t get audiobooks?, when he does Hard Case Crime, they’re so stupid, TV and movies have the visual thing locked down, Paramount production?, the first Heinlein juvie, Red Planet?, Saturday Evening Post stories, Rocket Ship Galileo is the worst, Space Cadet, about nukes and what to do about them, Farmer In The Sky, some doofus on twitter called it a blah book, how dare you, they’re all pretty good, The Shining, more of a novel, all of Stephen King now, a lot of reading, reading Heinlein back to back is a mistake, The Star Beast, Starman Jones, Time For The Stars, Podkayne Of Mars, a lot of downloads, most people don’t read Heinlein they read a couple of titles, Black Mirror, emphasizing The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, line marriage, physical fleshy bodies, sounds fun, a bunch of hippies, destroy the robot, Pinkman from Breaking Bad, jealousy has to get involved, very American for a British guy, he likes art, he reads, more of an actual human being, prep her for the line-marriage, sometimes good, burned out by one episode, simulation being a lifeform, sixy times, Charlie Brooker, Hang The DJ, authors have their themes, can I do a new spin on this old idea?, yes I can, some classic episodes, robot with a knife, dogs, 15 Million Merits, Striking Vipers, the prime minister of the UK has to fuck a pig, White Bear, 2011, Joan Was Awful, Bandersnatch, we should probably download these before they’re removed from Netflix, we couldn’t afford to keep the servers running, PirateBay is still unkillable, 1337x, ettv.

Black House painting

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The SFFaudio Podcast #768 – READALONG: Scratch One by Michael Crichton

Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Terence Blake talk about Scratch One by Michael Crichton

Talked about on today’s show:
from Nice, our agent on the Cote D’aZur, 1967, early, 2nd published novel, maybe Cora mentioned this before, Lange means long, Dick means fat, John means dick, this book is very familiar, a heist book in Spain, the Spanish equivalent, Costa Brava, generic titles, The Venom Business, Grave Descend, Odds On, knock off holiday resort, not just a fact (also part of the plot), crossing over the bridge, casino hotel resort, something under the bridge, descends the steep cliff, scrambling down and back up, a surprise: flowers, planting a bomb, this actually happened, France and or Spain, sometimes with a girl sometimes without, vividly describes the descent, Egypt, drowned, the Nile, a similar scene in that book, mucking about down near Aswan, just like Richard Upton Pickman, release the Terence, the Negresco Hotel, Promenade Anglais, Avenue Victor Hugo, Rue Biscarra, Avenue Du La Victoire, renamed, after a famous mayor, Cannes, Monaco, not while the race is happening, successfully describes both, warm semi-tropical Mediterranean, seen it in movies, To Catch A Thief (1955), North By Northwest (1959), Roger bumbles, Carr, bumbling his way, add-in the international intrigue of Charade (1963) is public domain, Never Say Never Again (1983), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988), also turns out to be a conwoman, a lot of fun, A Good Year (2006), Grace Kelly, Stirling Moss, the restaurant, name drops, by magic romantic resonance, that’s enough, we don’t need to see her haircut, accidental spy books, Michael Crichton’s inspirations are paperbacks (not movies), a searchable thing, an early Westlake, the nephew novels, a case of mistaken identity, gets the mob after him, mistaken identity, there are jokes, it would be funny, attempted murder, Jennings, the nasty murders, this is not a joke, finds everything funny, Alice In Wonderland, hideous torture, that’s the disconnect, characters who die fast, we meet some baddies, what the plot, an arms shipment, are they supplying the PLO?, a disconnect, the comedic situation, the cops, the consulate, it will be good to let him run around for a while, very North By Northwest, God Save The Mark, Somebody Owes Me Money, a tip on a horse, makes book, run around New York avoiding the cops and the actual murderer, a girl who betrays him, standard girl stuff, the narrator’s voice, Australian accent, hard to identify, strong vs. weak Australian accents, definitely Australian, Crocodile Dundee Australia, Australia is not a monolith, Maine and Texas are the same accent, most people are not going to physically violence Jesse, preferring the read, him doing a female voice, Australian female, quite good, romancing, that scene is on the cover of the Hard Case Crime, she’s working for the bad guys, a dancer’s wages, it has to be a good book, extraneous character, he writes some scenes as if he’s fleshing things out, characters we don’t want to be in the book, false main characters, we don’t know that he’s the hero, the minds of other characters, the book is mal-plotted, obliging me to have lots of willing suspension of disbelief, what’s stopping this from being a science fiction book, Ringworld, Dirk Gently, synchronicity and coincidence, everything is tied together, still working on his stuff, novels are very different scene by scene, the opening killings are a lot like a James Bond opening, Smert Shpionam, Money For Nothing by Donald E. Westlake, you have now been activated, a sleeper agent, a case of mistaken identity, it’s a comedy but not funny, horrible torture scenes, our main character is a lawyer, he’s playing the bad guy in this book, he’s way dumber than us, you should tell them exactly what happened, no I am not, the Hugo Award winning fanzine, he’s a bit of an asshole, a gripe against this book, enjoyed, three quick hours, a light read, very light, the way Paul’s mind thinks, possibly going off a cliff, what does he look like?, especially the women, he’s amazingly handsome, he looks like a spy except to know what spies look like, he’s strong, he’s the reader, a paperback designed to be a paperback, Binary, a good book a pretty good TV movie, more things of his own, not a bad book at all, the two paperback scenes, 20 kilos exactly, getting his stuff weighed, the amount was less, he could have sworn his suitcase wasn’t that heavy, airplane reader, light and amusing of no consequence, reviewing their own book, chapter 10, a key scene, she was wearing almost nothing, her body was breathtaking, a few strands of blonde hair, A.C., that’s on the cover of the book, they go by Cannes, it’s not a book about movies, it’s a book about books, Grave Descend, literary based, a James Bond stand-in, the villain has a library, romancing each other, too literal, the gravedigger the whole scene, Thomas Mann, 10 sentences a day, Balzac, furiously writing, Wolfe, dropping finished pages into a wastebasket, Poe who was underrated, (not third rate), Our Opinions Are Correct, Larry Rivers, a nothing, Charles de Gaulle’s memoirs, was he president at the time of this story?, 1959-1969, an intellectual match, a high luck score, agency, a little fake, they need him for that?, ok, maybe, malformed, how to put together a great book, light and fluffy, a floated bid for Nice, where the French live?, a city to live in, where the elderly French come to finish their days, dry and warm, a big tourist city in Spring and Summer, the events, the Cannes Film Festival, the Monaco Grand Prix, near Italy, the coast just adjacent, cigarettes and wine, still using Francs, everybody was Euroing, Donald Trump’s yacht was there, how they gonna catch this guy? too many ways out, there’s no way to catch this guy, when he’s on this journey, drawn from, all lifted, places he went line up, things that happened, poolside lifestyle, in some rich person’s house, his father was a senator, he’s there for a governor to buy a house, talks about the library, selling the house, another place selling to an American, you can’t sell the library, the library is priceless, individual books, thesis: this is really about books, books of this period were often adapted to film, a Westlake novel that was to be a script for a James Bond movie, movies don’t get made, a spy book set in Hong Kong, Westlake wrote a lot lot lot of books, Killing Time is public domain, Brothers Keepers, a monks book, something wrong with the estate, an unusual choice for a lazy day on the beach, the opposite to the paperbacks at the airport, a literary book you have to underline and meditate, she is smarter than he is but doesn’t hold it over his head, he did one deduction, the short swarthy man that came to the hotel and gave him the ring, could that have been Jennings’ mechanic, a leap that I didn’t see coming, the mechanic disappearing, the associates, Algerian, the Italian guy, a library scene, you need not praise him in my presence, the maintenance of this house which I love, money will by the respect, a Maserati or a Bentley, some of my best friends are gangsters, Carr nodded politely, smokes, drinks, many of them must be crooks, dishonesty is their profession, laughs, nods politely, the library remains with the villa, just another rivera villa, Dickens, the Cruickshank illustrations, an interesting line, a phony sales pitch, that guy’s trying to get out, time to yourself, time to kill, time to read, the governor is very busy, he will eventually settle, you feel tired, still in the lead, still at the top, any man who does not do it is a fool, a propensity for saltiness, backstory, what is his price, what is yours?, why he’s in France to begin with, The Woman In Black by Susan Hill, the setup for Dracula, Jonathan Harker, buys an abbey, accumulates a bunch of other people with him, Victorian era, a lawyer agent for a rich person, haunted ghost house, an agent for a foreign buyer, not to reveal identity to randos, the wrong kind of agent, people are trying to kill him or figure out if he needs to be killed, a James Bond scene, shark tank, affable villain, Dr. No, just send sexy lady, the knife sharpening scene, there’s your To Catch A Thief, here’s your keys, the roof being down is part of the plot, agent for a governor, make it look like an accident, not fucking up constantly, they’ve got this Citroën’s axel, gearheading stuff, she’s a double agent, he’s mute, Find Your Fate, A View To A Kill, you are James Bond Secret Agent, a kid’s role playing game book, if you choose wrongly, what more plot is happening, ways to die, other characters with interesting things to say, the protagonist is so, a male heterosexual reader, taking it to Korea, Choose Your Own Adventure, You Are A Shark, Paul read a lot of these, illustrations, people go crazy there, The Curse Of Batterslea Hall, visit your English cousin, fantasy elements, a related phenomena, an ebook author, people think they’re inventing audiobooks, people think they’re inventing audio dramas, I’ll invent this thing, after a few years, nobody actually wants these things, get an audiobook then they put music underneath it, and then they add in sound effects, he lit the lighter, combine the audio of somebody reading the story with a layer of music and layer of randomly place sound effects, people who’ve never listened to an audiobook before, how BBC did it in the 1960s, a reading of a book, audio dramas are performances, a guy reading a book like he’s angry, when parents are sold on the idea of children reading a story about themselves, your daughter in the main role, leave the name blank, gas station keychains, all the common names of people, it has my name on it, a girl who rides a dolphin, kids are able to relate to other people, everything being about me, correct Carr, Carr got in the car, Parker parked the car, Parker left the car on 15th avenue, designed to be humorous, this book doesn’t really work on a humour level, at the airport, all these sides waiting for the same guy, something special about the way he conducts himself, dry humour, he’s literally dumb, he doesn’t say things, the stuff on the roof all fails, he doesn’t die, the chase scene, goes to the farmhouse and makes that phone call, close in on being resolved, the whole Monaco scene, the promise of the ending, go back to America and be married, the trope, she’s smarter than he is, he’s sexy, a good job he’s really not worthy of, ne’er do well does well, Kevin J. Anderson and L. Ron Hubbard’s Ai! Pedrito! When Intelligence Goes Wrong, body double, based on real life, when he was in the Navy, supposedly mistaken for this guy who looks like him, not a great novel, for eternity, he’s fine, about 20 times the word scalpel turns up, medical stuff even from Carr, he can’t help it, medical facts, Le Scalpel estate, the whole building was constructed by glass and metal, occasional use of bricks, tile roofs, in the fight with the guy with the scalpel, you don’t throw scalpels, stick your guts into your mouth to test your own intestines, tonally confused, the villain is much harsher than our bumbling dumb viewpoint character is capable of handling, in a regular role playing game, in this we have no options, things happening to him, playing arcade games on the ferry, a sidescrolling game like Defender, you’re a spaceship, a demo showing what the game was like, the control would respond to your inputs, I don’t have any quarters, the phenomenon of an amazing book, this matches exactly where it was going to go, the demo takes over, this illusion of control, what we think of as engagement, there is no difference, a fascinating phenomenon, disconnects, blithering idiot, a doofus, unable to communicate, a VR pornography, POV, has a camera on his face, the camera goes in every direction, look at the tv or something, looking at the furniture, what piece of furniture that is, a really great novel engages you in such a way, the experience of reading and the experience of experiencing it, slightly different moves, King’s Quest style story, watching someone play King’s Quest, engaging, getting read for sleep, streaming excitement, let other people have a turn playing, Hardcore Henry (2015), a first person action movie, a camera with two arms, the Doom (2005) movie, with the Rock (Dwayne Johnson), fan service, Strange Days (1995), somewhere near the bottom of John Langes, the one set in Egypt is the best Easy Go, Binary, Grave Descend, , where the title comes from, its called out in the book, from WWII, doodled furiously, scratch one nice confused American, the work of the Scalpel, well written, Battle Of The Coral Sea, American propaganda propaganding the domestics, during the Battle Of The Bulge, my general askes you to surrender, “Nuts!”, famous scene, Heroes In Hell, propaganda phrases, the Japanese navy, scratch one flat top, the phrase gets stuck, we have both fired machineguns, went to Harvard to escape the draft, Harvard law school, scratch it out, double meaning, scratch an American doofus and underneath you’ll find a hero, saves the day, lets the air out of his tires, not a man of action exactly, Cary Grant?, alcohol for breakfast, wine at lunch, sociologically accurate, easy girls fantasy, French girls are easier, less inhibited than north Americans, if you can’t find a girl on the Riviera, found a wife in Paris, the part about his dad, the distinguished senator, a business expense, for as long as it takes, four months, they’re just trying to get him out from underfoot, don’t just do work, getting to the other things, got along famously, struck it off instantly, fast friends, slightly debauched with a cherubic face, satyr-like, The Famous Teddy Z, becoming the agent for a big movie star, know all the ropes, John Cryer, satyric, the governor appreciated that, weirdly bonding, like to drink, chapter 2, a childish pudgy face, chapter 11, you know you look like a satyr, looks like Pan, Buck Rogers, a penis with goatlegs, the devil with a penis, a lot of truth of what writing was happening, he knew rich people, for your quote, a suitable replacement, people on vacation are looking for that, going into the Casino, gambling, wanting to lose money, short term thinking, a pleasure out of that, elderly people loving bingo or slot machine, pass the time between sleeps, choppin wood all day, dotting or pulling an arm or pressing a button, dopamine hit, how could somebody act that way, the alcoholism after WWII, drinking problems away, a large phase that people go through, not offered alcohol everytime, keep yourself avoiding, characters who are older than he is, observing his elders, grows up with the phrase, a generational thing, propaganda phrase, collateral damage, the first gulf war with Schwarzkopf, public domain, Schwarzenegger movie, laterally how things were produced, get a phrase, you know that disney movie that was a cartoon from 10 years ago?, it’s live action now, went to Egypt, Zero Cool, finish the set, the John Lange list:

Binary
Scratch One
Zero Cool
Easy Go
Grave Descend
Drug Of Choice
Odds On
The Venom Business

a bodyguard to a friend, Harvard rich kid, nightmare family, evil people, The Last Tomb, eight?, American radiologist, Angela Locke, a Spanish beach, Alhambra, darkest catacombs, a secret lost for centuries, a dark haired beauty with a huge problem, a desperate fight for survival, the audio drama, if you look closely, the Hard Case Crime, she’s reading Grave Descend, a pleasure to podcast, meta, mise en abyme, Mad magazine, the lady in the boat, very exciting, how Jesse gets his jollies, what’s the heat like?, warmer than usual, going for a walk, public garden, doing tai chi, practicing tai chi everyday, better than bingo, a different idea of chance, kills the hours between sleeps, jiu jitsu, Musk challenged Zuckerberg to a fight, colour commentary, an age difference, more like chess, find a way to backdown, he likes fun, very disciplined about it, the Pompey and Sulla, private armies, it doesn’t fit, a coup in russia?, the Wagner group, private mercenary groups, personal combat, very Weird, fight this out in meatspace, good dad, horrible evil, Bill Gates, a generational thing, Steve Jobs, Indian mysticism, ashram, Beatles generation, peripherally amused, what was tai chi’s high point?, big in Asia, seemed distant, Paul does yoga, you want to do something, wants to have cows, gets into cattle, martial applications, picking up steam, Emily In Paris, kids like it, a revisiting of the culture (a little bit), fun French stereotype characters, ideas and scenes, helps alot, filmed in Los Angeles, House, M.D., Bryan Singer is in trouble for sex things, sexual harassments, not politically correct, he’s a weird annoying character, Sherlock Holmes with medical stuff, we have to break into the people’s houses to look for toxins, if they needed to really badly, a fantasy of medical diagnostics, American murder shows, fantasies of how murders are investigated, everybody gets an MRI, that’s only for riche people, the vigilante fantasy, stupid bureaucratic things get in the way, full body irradiation, lupus, prednisone, ivermectin, Wilson’s disease, when reading Sherlock Holmes, doesn’t play fair, Agatha Christie is more fair, stares off in to space, remove somebody’s pituitary gland, you’re an idiot, formulaic and fun, special set, they don’t go outside much, the geography and climate of New Jersey, filming in the actual place flavours the writing, daughter, son, moved to Melbourne, something silly you can watch, a soap opera style type show, You, a serial killer who runs a bookstore, a romantic comedy where he stalks girls, based on a book, no although yes, you’re not upset when he murders people, Schwarzenegger’s Fubar, Citadel, very immoral TV shows now, justifying torture and violence, cartoons, a strange phenomenon, a sequel to the James Cameron movie True Lies, cheating on him with a used car salesman, generic Arab terrorists with a nuke, super competent, Jamie Lee Curtis, the same character kind, his daughter is in the CIA and he didn’t know, not well written, True Lies is also a television show, on network television, the guy from Game Of Thrones, sorta Philip K. Dick premise, memory wiped, Silo, Wool by Hugh Howey, when everybody was excited about Wool, didn’t care much anymore, a duty to read the book, Graham Yost, Terence is not one who necessarily executes his duty, conversations with elderly people, a retirement place, not something really intellecutal, Tulsa King, retired superhero, oui, yes, Jeff Bezos some money (Canadian servers), ratings on prime, IMDB is not reliable (except for older things), it deserves it, a forumal, it goes on from 8 years, 8.7 for House, M.D., Star Trek TNG went 7 seasons, the follow up to Justified, City Primeval, the 3rd season of Star Trek Picard, Terence didn’t see the good part, those movies were not good, not interesting, because Worf came back, fan service good is never good, that’s the best stuff, 30 years ago, time machine, cryogenic chamber, 1987, a holiday residence, we’d done everything that we could, doing all these other things, France at that time just wasn’t into science fiction, talking to students about science fiction series, car racing is very dangerous, the James Bond stand-in figure, flipping cars, a hard-top, pre-WWI pilots, after her first crash she never flew again, just fuckin dangerous, small planes, if you’re trying to race them, the water police, that guy’s dead, that was common, tinkering in the garage working on your motorcar, dirt bike racing, the special hospital for broken necks, that’s how you become a quad: drive quads, mountain biking, the opposite of bjj, out in nature, extreme canoeing, kayaking, at least as good an experience, the Sunshine Coast, a ferry ride away, fjords, inlets, the skookumchuk narrows, fast good ocean, a tide in or a tide out, a giant peninsula, to ride the currents, surfing for kayakers, you wear a helmet, smashed up real good, surfing but more dangerous, skiing, injuries are slower to heal, the risk of injury goes up and up, fun/fast, dangerous, expensive, things were cheaper, lift ticket, cross country-skiing, a way to kill time between sleeps: a retired person’s thing, the side projects of people’s activities, Sunday morning for Jesse, church time, why you going to church, really into politics, civically engaged, highest percentage of atheist, a powerful lobby, list of countries by irreligion, Afghanistan, Czec Republic, North Korea, New Zealand, France 28%, Canada, Australia, 28.6 percent, 16.4 USA, synagogue goers, heavy activity, 3.1% Israel, the problem with Jews, they don’t have to practice, belief in god, a cultural practice, the theory of god, he’s in the book, how to read the book, forming the question will help determined what answers you get, China, by population data, 91% for China, Australia 69%, China is full of atheists, saying India is full of atheist, total atheists, Chinese new year, scaring away ghosts, Japan, Shinto temples, government sponsorship for maintenance, same is true for France, Ireland, U.K., theoretically catholic, theoretically protests, Stephen Fry, atheist pastors, a masking mandate, Daniel Dennett, smartguy, a priest with his fingers crossed behind his back, unbelief among the clergy, begin starry eyed, Santa Claus, way smarter than Sam Harris, like a cartoon of a smart guy, he thinks he is a smart guy, a beef over something, emotional shit, he’s not good at logic, he uses a lot of words, cultivate ignorance in writing, think about what these words mean, that’s the exact explanation, consciousness is the center of narrative gravity, when you get into the brain, doing Phineas Gage stuff with big rods, a continuous sort of experience with reality we think, where is the center of gravity on a teapot, nothing inside the teapot has changed, shot in the head, part of your personality changes, if you remove too much, parts can be removed, Descartes theory, the reason I don’t cut off my finger, it’ll hurt, all those cells don’t want to die, battlefield triage, a person with a missing language, self is the center of narrative gravity, its fiction, another analogy, a fictional character in literature, did Sherlock Holmes have a mole on his left shoulder blade?, there was a truth to the matter, neither true nor false, you have failed to understand, neutrinos, why other people’s theories are wrong, a theory that works, the part of us that gives us I did this for this reason, what our dilemma is, when a book is rubbing us wrong, right to bring this up, what does this guy look like, he has no appearance, describing the main character is usually bad, what does Odysseus look like, Starship Troopers tricks you, a person of colour, exactly exactly exactly, why do stories work or why stories don’t work, Luke Burrage [The Science Fiction Book Review Podcast], gone down the drain, a lot of modern books, something has changed, they’re not science fiction, a weird subset of science fiction, anti-intellectual, not interested in the intellectual part of science fiction, the structure of books, outguess the author, guesses and inferences, not a key theme, Agatha Christie, letting it flow, Jesse writes a ton, 6 sentence stories, amazing, fascinated by his own dreams, almost all fiction is unsalable (including some that is sold), book series, the things that people are obsessed with reading and writing about, will they or won’t they, the romance that happens in this book, no investment in it, isn’t it interesting he’s made the girl an intellectual, sexy, a dancer, car shocks, can quote Shakespeare, opinions on Thomas Mann, and be a girl, too much, you can get all that with money, if she really was like that, like the Amish, make it more plausible, silly, how sexist Paul would think Jesse just was, Buckaroo Banzai, neurosurgeon, physicist, test-pilot, rock star, some actors like to play music, Doc Savage is Buckaroo Banzai without the comedy, supposed to be profound, no matter where you go, there you are, shallowly profound, what is the sound of one hand clapping?, take it as a deep thing, a comedy of a deep thing, a comedy, dream response, analysis of The Road Warrior (Mad Max II), Tina Turner, it’s the best one in a way, Mad Max I is an art film action film, Jungian psychology, dream response, black and white, characters being mirrors and shadows of each other, dressed like animals, claws and spikes, the fight sequences, an oil monopoly is the good guy, white football pads vs. black football pads, Max has one football pad, the outsider, he has no identity, the camera swoops in, we enter the vehicle with Max, Max is left behind, very solid analysis, everybody has violence within them, a symbol, when we enter civil society, a lot of people like to pretend, making a mistake, James Tiptree’s Houston, Houston, Do You Read?, extract, Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, the way people read it, downloaded, a hundred page book, One Light Hour, pretty good, Rossignol, Nightingale, The Screwfly Solution, everyone has aggression in them, take stuff away, its not the essence of men, the essence of a can of sardines, Jesse is afraid of male and female bears, afraid of tigers, tigers eat meat and I am made of meat, men can prey on women, using violence for moral purposes, just download it again, from the mouse, 20 files, Love Is The Plan And The Plan Is Death, a lady who wrote like a smart person, is she the best?, this is very difficult, she’s a good antidote, Ursula K. Le Guin, politically correct, The Dispossessed, The Word For World Is Forest, humans come out as the badguys, it’s Avatar (2009), Poul Anderson’s The Queen OF Air And Darkness, we’ve got prejudices and they have prejudices too, The Left Hand Of Darkness and The Lathe Of Heaven, its fun, she’s playing what if, the 2 film versions, real science fiction, another duty Terence has: Always Coming Home, the strongest strike against Le Guin, hoighty toights think she’s the shit, Octavia Butler, Margaret Atwood is feted by idiots, really good, Silverberg is very solid, better science fiction writers than Silverberg, interested in the hard or soft things, native ability, always in phase with the 1960s and the 1970s, her beauty is fading, people are mad Tiptree killed her husband, not a strike against her, a strike in her favour, too traumatizing to talk about or consider, you’re babies, grow up, put on your big girl pants, these are traumatized people they need to be sheltered, let the injury heal then work to make the injured injury stronger, they’ve never actually had trauma, verbally mean to them, making fun of rape survivors, heard about a rape survivor, their theory, trauma in society, what the government is saying we should be worried about are fictional creations, the narrative is not written from their experience, social influencers, the Yellow Peril is something that was manufactured, ginned up, reflected in popular media, Skull Face, The Insidious Doctor Fu Manchu, Fu Manchu is the hero, putting down this evil genius, the side I would be on, the War On Terror, sound and fury, a war that had been happening that people had been ignorant of, 24, always some threat, COVID, turns out that wasn’t really a thing, another duty, the Russians identify with the orcs, the Elves are Harvard educated, The Last Ring Bearer by Kirill Eskov, we should do a pirate audiobook of that, a symbolic Euro, maybe Archive.org, an amazing number of bootleg audiobooks on YouTube, the official Alien movie adaptation by Alan Dean Foster, published in paperback and never thought of again, The Terminator (novelization), a perfect film, sction science fiction oriented, it’s like a theorem, the perfection of a beautiful theorem, so well thought through, the Champs Elysee, lucky Terence, the budget, what is this?, seems a little short, the NAFO, NATO trolls, troll dog in fatigues, anybody who questions the Ukraine War, a tendency, pro-Ukraine people calling Russians orcs, the dumber side of science fiction fandom (pretty much all of science fiction fandom), orcs are black people, doing the Eloi properly, dumb and pretty, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, September is okay, Australia in December, Tip-tree, do you read me?, poly-valent, NASA stuff, do you read?, parody of SF fandom (amongst other things), save it for the podcast, already intrigued, Heads Of Cerberus by Francis Stevens, strict with the definition, amongst Jesse’s favourite SFF writers, sloppy and crunchy, amazing concept, a phial, pretty and stupid, but do they have boobs?, pre-pubescent, they’re supposed to be children, Dante?, set in Philadelphia, two burglars, the opener disappears, I’ve killed them, Ulythia, a spider woman there, a weaver of webs, mystical shit, a sphinx over a temple entrance, we’re out of time, a staging area to another reality, Philadelphia 2118, a 1984 style dystopia, their name is either a number or a job title, Prettiest, Wittiest, Strongest, governance of the city, contests, if you fail the contest or challenge you’re thrown into a spiked pit, this future place, cut-off from the rest of the United States, what to do with them?, the game and the story, challenge for prettiest, a fourth guy, Mr. Justice is the cop, not a comedy but very comedic, like a Philip K. Dick novel but better put together, super-innovative, two Mondays from now, LibriVox, cleaned up sound, a super brain in her head, you can tell if you read enough if a book was written by a man or a woman, I saw she had a boob, her hands are not big and veiny, check the hand sizes, secondary sexual characteristics, fingernails, how much attention has been paid to the fingernails, Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub, influenced by Zelazny’s Amber series, a sequel, parallel realities, Evan likes Stephen King, we exhausted Bachman, 20 hours, Straub died recently, 26 fucking hours, duty books, Progeny by Philip K. Dick, Pirates Of Venus by Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1st books, A Meeting With Medusa by Arthur C. Clarke, another Tor Double, in Playboy, a hot air balloon in orbit of Saturn?, everybody’s favourite: Farnham’s Freehold, he’s fun to argue with, No Man’s Land by John Buchan, planning three months ahead, duty!, Paul: you could take a break, Jesse, your center of narrative gravity says, pumping iron, too focused on image of the body, works for the brain, if you’re living in Ancient Athens, Socrates: you’re looking fat, people doesn’t like Socrates, Plato was a wrestler, footsoldiers, cowboys in the distance, learning to throw spears and steal rifles, they’re not discus throwers, what makes them famous?, what makes them good?, stories on the grape vine, stories that require attention, God Save The Mark is more fun, time travel, amazing theme, the secret hobby horse of Westlake is insurance, talking about insurance, hedging your bets all the time, is the insurance company fucking with you?, what makes things continue to function, David Foster Wallace, taxation, not interesting, a central thing we’re trained not to think about, if I don’t buy anything I can’t be taxed, tax rebate, in British Columbia and Canada, HST, GST, PST, harmonize it!, compared to the states, Justin is horrible, fucking terrible things, generally incompetent, not completely corrupt, negotiating these sales taxes, same as VAT, an 80s thing, we know its going to hurt everybody, luxury tax, the theoretical amount of tax they paid, fuel and food, a relatively good life, without working many many hours, inherited money, mortgage payments for 25 years, under COVID, Biden promised a $2000 cheque, never given it, student loans and all the other things, a standard flat amount for everybody, a statistical anomaly, $2000 a month for not working, condo crisis as usual, you don’t have that business anymore, a net negative for most, lose their jobs, doing podcasts, the difference between the two, something in France, up to a level being able to pay 80%, unemployment benefits, normally more stringent, that formula is interesting, most people were getting less, that flat number, cop still has to go to work, if you lost any work, the universalness of it, the province did other things, crown corporations, BC Hydro, automotive insurance, an actual attempt to lessen the damage, keeping track of it, amazing, right?, fairly well when somewhat interested, the fact that they can do good things is amazing, 1pm, Terence’s wife has gone to Paris for a week, this is good for me, I won’t eat, can’t stop it, might as well allow it, Jesse got that from Will, a post-Jungian, James Hillman, we’re made of stories, we’re made of images, Carl Jung, Jimmy Dore, the reason Jesse hates Michio Kaku, somebody’s got your shadow, there’s nothing shadowy about them, people who don’t call him on his shit, Evan or Paul get upset at people, there’s nothing upseting there, team based, not liking Jordan Peterson, said to be anti-trans vs. anti-trans pronouns, he’s dumb, he does say interesting things, psychological stuff, biblical stuff, basic, whatever he says the opposite is true, he’s a dad for a lot of men with not deads, not that many smart people in the media, John Vervaeke, the Meaning Crisis, charge money for their courses, religious people who nod in that direction, when Jordan Peterson talks about Marxism, probably just ignorant, Slavoj Žižek / Jordan Peterson debate, Peterson didn’t chicken out, talked around everything, a judo thing, he didn’t know what to say, The Communist Manifesto, intellectual flourishing, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Cirsova, Marx starved his own children, he was fucking poor, Victorian workhouses, he’s seeing it all around him, he was preaching about what was being practiced upon him, What!?, most people let it slide, this guy is my brain, end up like Sam Harris, Sam Harris didn’t care how many dead children are in Hunter Biden’s basement, a unique threat, mass emiseration, truth can be gamed, narrative control, largely true for most people, Letter To A Christian Nation, sparky and spitty, Žižek’s thesis, old hat, superseded by Gilles Deleuze, he became good, the roots of what he later elaborated, lots of stuff is useable, trans and woke ideologies, he can get away with it, current events, Benjamin Studebaker, the last American election, Cambridge Oxford same fucking place, annoying in two ways: smart and young, how’d you get so smart and so young, The Lack podcast, Political Science 101, pirate Jesse the side2s, its good to do, there are good ideas, listen to them a lot, Political Science 101 podcast, Nina Power, the three of them write little essays, French cinema, independent movies, a more intellectual Science Fiction Book Review Podcast (but for movies), the price of the book, thinking about his audience, paperback is probably good for most people, a very good sign, the opposite is Robert J. Sawyer, competing with my new book, he was a science fiction writer, turned his hand to trying to make a living by writing trilogies, on twitter in full length, the fundamental problem of what’s going on in the United States, right about everything, TV adblocker version, Lord Enoch, rando talking heads, that guy is a real intellectual on TV, just teeth and dresses and smiles and vague acquaintance with some of the issues, good public intellectuals online, philosopher repairman: Louis Rossmann, completely untrained in philosophy, repairing laptops, recently got hired by a billionaire, projects that are useful to humans, right to repair, farmers should have access to their tractors code, the least amount of interest in vanity of production, the opposite of that, a very solid philosophy, used to live in New York, Bill de Blasio, Paul was not happy about it, snitch out your customers to the cops, Texas, annoying young people who’s smart and good at thinking, no production value at all, people trying to learn to fix their laptops, people who don’t like bullshits, the price of real estate, dead city neighbourhood walkthough, he’s doing very practical present day philosophy, DRM is not something most people care about (even though they should), book management, take in different plugins, stripping drm protection from ebooks, minimizing time in front of screens, printing things up, the searchability, if you find yourself with 26.5 hours, not possible to tai-chi while audiobooks, doing bjj and listening to audiobooks, very strange.

Hard Case Crime - Scratch One by John Lange

Scratch One by John Lange

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The SFFaudio Podcast #765 – READALONG: Shakespeare’s Planet by Clifford D. Simak

The SFFaudio Podcast #765 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Tommy Patrick Ryan, and Jonathan Manfred Weichsel talk about Shakespeare’s Planet by Clifford D. Simak

Talked about on today’s show:
1976, Clifford D. Simak, late Simak, probably the 1st science fiction novel Jesse read, Madeleine L’engle, steered Jesse right to Larry Niven, not a great book, a lot of Russian reviews, a weird choice, teenage boys, as it would, a floppy story, the Darrel K. Sweet, Carnivore and the robot, working on it, 1978 paperback, a robot and an alien, 1982, fourth Simak, Special Deliverance, Way Station, A Choice Of Gods, most famous, The Goblin Reservation, three robot brain, why is this here?, gestalt was really big in the 70s, Baby Is Three, a way of experimenting with storytelling, tribunal ship thing, shove however many pounds of crap into a ten pound novel, doesn’t interact, Eric’s group, sort of a sideshow, the main storyline, there’s no resolution, given Shakespeare in the title, the wyrd sisters, they’re not gendered right, why are the people there, why are any of them on the planet, why are we here?, why does he need the ship, a philosophical novel, different monsters, desolate, Starobin by Margaret St. Clair, paradise sucks, an existential philosophical novel, Elayne, a rose tattooed on her breast, finally!, that’s what its there for, white cowboy boots, finally somebody looked at my boobs, this is awesome naked chicks with tattoos on their boobs, all the kids who read this were set back in their misogyny, very non-sexual, you can pretend I’m your dead old girlfriend, a very mature Clifford Simak, the blaster on the hip, a loos game, all doesn’t work, and all doesn’t work, existentialism doesn’t take you anywhere, for a totally sexist objectifying scene, some women do like being topless, free love concept?, super-cringey, woke people these days are gonna ban this book, gratuitous and unnecessary, starts out goofy, behaves in the opposite way, a similar game, very clever and very sneaky, taking those tropes and cultural prejudices, all fictional characters, Carnivore is the best character, honor ideas, proud warrior race, first impressions, killed and ate Shakespeare, hunting the best game, he’s Caliban, he doesn’t have a mom, the wizard dude in The Tempest, incantations, where’s Miranda?, he had a copy of Shakespeare, his skull talks, is it just because it’s the book, Shakespeare is being channeled here, Ariel and Caliban, a terrific play, shipwrecked, nose and throat sounds, passive mode, brain was hallucinating, a trailer for Orson Welles’ Othello, he doesn’t have any special effects other than his words, no laser beams or motorbikes, one of the major props is Desdemona’s handkerchief, the central focus of a story, Shakespeare is a philosopher of the human condition, to tell us about ourselves, as men and women we’re jealous, we are fatally flawed, Simak is not interested in conflict at all, have you read Simak?, conflict is diffused immediately, aren’t we in this discourse now, eat me!, you probably won’t taste very good, don’t gag on me, that’s his nature, he can’t do let’s setup a strawman enemy, what makes him different from everybody else, Heinlein’s strawmanning, a Philip K. Dick book, pretty good, not great, sexism, he’s the hero, Carter, Horton, brain skits, I guess they don’t read Seuss here, quite to the contrary, Gail Neiman, most people don’t read, incredibly rare, most people don’t read at all, Neil Gaiman in reverse, can’t experience some of the fun things that humans can do, time tunnels, C.J. Cherryh, break causality, the whole idea of stargates, breaks the universe, its a setting, shenanigans, a stage, the island in the tempest, Elsinore, strut around, a lot of speculation, self-aware, the play’s the thing, why Shakespeare is so universal, he’s god, he’s the god of this planet, he winks himself off the screen, he’s better at short stories than he is at novels, a good book, Max Deboost in 2013, succinct introduction to mysticism for the young adult, what Scooby-Doo is solving, I read it 13 times, planets and carnivores, robots and galaxy gates, the brain computer interface, telepathy, brain computer interfaces, hey, this is fun, all that stuff, and easy-breezy, and thoughtful, we experienced something, should probably read more, continue to read, objectively much better, lodestone attraction, Time Enough For Love, Martian Chronicles, I, Robot, The Hobbit, when you’re young you’re a sponge, 1800 words, impressed on their brain, frustrated, see ya goodbye, to do what and go where?, explore the time tunnels, that’s the existentialism, Paul is not big into existentialism, we like him because he knows who he is and what he needs to do, whereas we’re more like Horton in that we don’t know who we are and we don’t know what we need to do, very unsatisfactory, 1904, he’s from 120 years ago, very traditional SF, could have been written today, the robot can program itself, swapable modules, fits with the actors on the stage, a man plays many parts, the dowdy cook, everything on goodreads is 3.something, on a grading scale, ahead of the average, human beings as locusts, the environment, her gun is a tool, his gun is a weapon, solid concepts, cringe, written before Tommy was born, a big book in the public eye, what he was going for, there’s biker chicks, I’m an embodied being, at the thrift shop, weird things, a videomicroscope, looking at the cells on my arm in realtime, little puddles of liquid coming out of the skin, hairs and broken hairs, a piece of metal embedded in your palm, macro creatures, haircuts, very cerebral, biological organisms, sexual creature, bringing up the topic, the book doesn’t work perfectly, explore them further, scattershot, 20 pounds of shit, good fertilizer, 20 pounds of emeralds, spilled over, a quarter of what he’s trying to present, the beautiful crown or tiara, Heavy Metal magazine, Mœbius, expected to be there, he subverted and explored the trope, a personality, a sense of duty, map the tunnels, feelings for Carter, a very boring Heavy Metal story, standing around perceiving, presentation, sizzle, have you ever thought about this?, they think about another thing, a good introduction to science fiction, appreciated, an existential science fiction novel, when they start talking about magic, there’s a dragon in the story, is Prospero really a wizard?, interpret Shakespeare, they usually get him wrong, entertaining and edifying the low class people, his low class audience, low class brain, I like robots, I like monsters, what are we all doing here, man, was that Neo, Logan’s Run, it’s the same thing, The Thirteenth Floor (1999), zero sequels, not an action movie, action scenes, Simak does it really well, conflict between nostalgia for the past and anxiety about the future, dispersed across all these planets, an idea out of Americana, unthinkable future, a metaphor for this American train of thought, a very American writer, the whole civil war angle, A Choice Of Gods, really really really weird, he loves robots in a way that Asimov doesn’t, the Indians were robots, Heinlein and Simak were almost exactly contemporaries, Simak starts earlier, Simak was a newspaperman, Wonder Stories, Amazing, fantasy magazines later on, Astounding and Unknown, the same age, the reference points to rural countryside housing and the landscape, more of the Bradbury style, Jack Finney, Charles G. Finney, he doesn’t talk down to the reader, here’s some ideas to explore, made it longer, the voice of Carnivore, stupid brute, David Drummond, X-Men’s Caliban, Days Of Future Past, H.G. Wells, ugly mutants, Wolverine, Beast, Futurama’s ugly mutants, the people who read it, mimetic fiction, give me a guy who only wants to be eat and a guy who wants to be eaten, realistic fiction, Bel Ami by Guy de Maupassant, falls in love with a prostitute, The Midnight Bell by Patrick Hamilton, secret crush, prostitute’s POV, 20000 Streets Under The Sky, A Man In Full by Tom Wolfe, Fools Die by Mario Puzo, no ideas there, enjoyment, enjoyment vs. appreciation, PKD points, appreciate what he’s doing, Philip K. Dick’s Progeny is probably the best take on autistic children with capes being raised by robots, yuck your um, harsh the squee, relatively enlightened, unintentionally sexist, super-forward thinking woman, talked about it too much, pulled Tommy out of it, The Empire Strikes Back, anything on Dagobah, get me out of here, wise I am, Yoda is wrong about everything, your training not complete is, a pendulum, the court of King Charles II, Senior Dildo, a dildo expressed in poetic terms, other poems, A Ramble In St. James’ Park by John Wilmot, Roxana by Daniel Defoe, from one extreme to another extreme, we have definitely beaten that horse, so tame, this one is female, Pond, what’s the story on Pond, the undercooked nature, this intelligence that can split itself, a beaker full of Pond, it’s strange to be carrying a glass of your friend, pour out Pond somewhere, Ego from Guardians Of The Galaxy, the Deep Space Nine aliens, the glory hole moment, the God Hour, rough metaphors for something, the splendour of nature, this is sunset?, the Golden Hour?, the main theme of the book, gestalting, group mind, doing Dunsany, The King Of Elfland’s Daughter, in service to the drama, is there conflict in this story and if so where?, instantly resolved, fate, part of nature, not so toothy, not so clawful, he’s cool with that, even though there’s no one to spread the word, their understanding of the universe, limited perception, let’s try to explain that to him, they don’t understand something, we can dialogue this guys, conflicts resolved through lecture, there are only misunderstandings, a friendly neighbour sitting down: “uh, you’re an alien from another planet. That’s unusual. I had a brother-in-law from Tennessee”, it never is, a great attitude, a really really good grandpa, Heinlein would be insufferable on Twitter, wrong in interesting ways, he’s undeniable, 3 Hugos 1 Nebula and Grandmaster, audio of Simak accepting his award, polygrip, the lady who is always getting canceled, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Grandmaster, Gandalf awards, engaged with Jules Verne, Dickens, poor people living in London, reading A Christmas Carol, I like him because I got to be him, he deals with class, Paul is related to Charles Dickens, doing something about class, first class, more poignantly, TSA lines, treating other people differently, their boobs, caste vs. class, the Sikh religion, eliminating caste by name change, you’re one of those people, defeats caste or class, a famous name, my young daughter: you’re a maid, I wanted to be a princess, nobody aspires to be low class, I’m a Disney princess, give Hunter Biden a foot massage, pen-name, telemarketer, James Williamson, too ethnic, an FCC violation, a bunch of consonants together, writing with integrity, somewhat agree, Mark Twain, Richard Stark, name changes, invagle their way into a jet-set class, laptop people, vacations on tropical islands, lie a lot, Vistula, sounds strange, memorable, 2016, Masters Of The Maze by Avram Davidson, time tunnel ghost, minotaurs, oubliette: a very Heinlein word, dungeon, this oubliette called Earth, Elon Musk wants to get out of the oubliette, 12 guys have gone camping on the Moon, one more note, early Known Space, Wunderland, planets aren’t that great, Dan Simmons’ Hyperion, mythology, Simak has a better life philosophy, Dan Simmons is a horrible person, it goes without saying he’s a monster, Mecca should be nuked, Islam taking over the west, a broken step, generally used for sexual predators, what’s that, urban dictionary, missing stair, 9/11 broke a lot of people, untrustworthy or “managed”, that is evil, con culture, whisper network shit, author x has grabby hands, of the worst order, Until The End Of The World (1991), Wim Wenders, meandering plot, trafficking in a machine that allows you to record dreams, watching their own dreams, an opal mine heist, music by U2, Jesse is not a U2 expert, indie director, giant canons on top of the mountains of Hollywood, The End Of Violence (1997), drones before drones, Paris, Texas (1984), a live recreation of Nighthawks, almost cyberpunk, genuine SF on film, Million Dollar Hotel (2000), Harry Dean Stanton, awesome and fun, so critical of nudity, make you two connect, a lot of nudity, I enjoy gratuitous sex and violence, a progressive novel, he’s so old, right-thinking, Jonathan may think I’m a douche now, book titles: Warrior Soul and Other Stories, Kitty Kat Massacre, that sounds horrific, Savage Headhunters, came across as a social justice warrior, you’re fine, too aggressive, triggered, conservative thinking is a “you’re not of the body”, we need to kill the disease, people turn off receiving data, it’s hard to understand, shortly after 9-11, months later, hot dog, do you know what just happened, trying to bomb the hot dog stand, unable to recognize, a blackout happened, why the car stopped, these people are really scared, what’s wrong with them, fear is contagious, they’re being affected in an irrational way, why Jonathan doesn’t like social media, ultra contagious pathogens, looking within yourself is hard, followers to followed, I’m considering reducing my followers, 11,000 people he was following, Stephen King, a TV show from 10 years ago, tweet about politics, posting Chicken Dinners, people use twitter in different ways, a slow minute, upset about some Republican idea, a steady feed of everything that’s happening with Paul, Fredosphere tweeted a candy bar he liked, something to do with the people and not the media, why people were obsessed with premature burial, the 2nd Red Scare, Dashiell Hammett, Atlanta, Cop City, what Hammett was arrested for, Dashiell Hammett’s a hero, he know whereov he spoke when he wrote Red Harvest, it wasn’t because of social media, more visible, mass hysteria on crack, post 9-11, pro-ano sites, pro-anorexia, propaganda, tips on how to lose weight, moral support, all the trans stuff, social memes, beings subject to thought control, we are social beings, maybe the Mennonites are right, Leigh Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow, Orphans In The Sky, instead I reading what I wanted, I’m deeply subject to this shit, I have to be careful, David Currie, political tweets, Smouldering Toxicity, Max Blumenthal, Natsec Media Lackeys, Kit Klarenberg’s detention, that’s kinda horrible, a tweet of support and then took it down, sighs: Jesse, this is something more people should know about, he’s really dumb, what makes me really dumb here, some principles, these things are valuable, not these books, reconciliation, people tar sources, Evan Lampe got triggered by Elon Musk, triggered by Taiwan related tweets, blocking all bluechecks, the Elon Musk tax, a really good thing, we’re all strange, a writer and and artist, the input is what you read and what you consume, the output is what you create, a complex mathematical formula, lazy after a while, not accustomed to searching, iconoclastic, tweeting old movies, The Good Place, this is dumb I’m out, get good, new stuff is very divorced from the old stuff, how I want my brain to work, 20 Books To 50k, mainstream media talks about it, indiewriter, dungeoncore, read 40 dungeoncore books, making a formula, they makes that are unreadable, weird set of people, indistinguishable, create unique books, reading old books feeds into what Jonathan wants to do, expand vocabulary, Orwellian newspeak, doing that in the background, if this was 1968, Frank Zappa, make statements, people disagree with them, the artist taught me something, sophisticated, these are great covers, random paperback covers, painted, the theory on design now, the assumption is the other books sell, a foreign idea, look at you aghast, why would you do that?, bad tropes or bad ideas, if you want to be published…, agents personal tastes, if you read older books that’s going to pollute that, you’re sabotaging your career, you’re undermining yourself, writers on twitter, cat mom, trans flag, kofi, venmo, follower counts, Dollar Tree’s book section, Our Opinions Are Correct, Jesse is not understanding how the economy works, for a buck 25, intellectually interested, Charlie Jane Anders, they were iO9, Victories Greater Than Death, somebody is buy this and reading it, most of the economy is fake, passing the same five dollar bill around, fake it til we make it, I become a Tor editor you become a Tor editor, BoingBoing?, Gawker, Jalopnik, back when blogs existed, write books and manage a website and have a blog, they have a producer, not a lot of, H.P. Lovecraft, E.A. Poe was overrated, compared to what?, Charles Dickens was overrated, A Tale Of Two Cities, historical fiction, just like a science fiction story, a doppelganger, serialized, you seem like a reasonable fellow, this guy who’s a lawyer who likes like a loser vagabond, impersonate each other, Jesse doesn’t love Stranger In A Strange Land, gripping, subterfuge, political anger and angst, chopping babies heads off, a spilled barrel of wine, a slaughter, too many roosters, butcher some chickens, farm animals, Jersey cow, I’m a farm now, obvious reasons, the agricultural land reserve, Maissa and Will, think about government stuff, party change in BC, the latest one on June 1st, 2023, 21 minor medical ailments, skin irritation, social health insurance, why did they do that?, government can actually make changes, a mountainous region, limited land for farming, if you’ve paved over all your land, they shut down the border, a shortage of Alberta beef, a separate system, food production in the place where you live, the egg shortage, buying incubators, chicken coin miner, no food supply to New York, horrible riots, deliberately trying to fuck things up, what the citizens want somehow, its not impossible for good things to happen, making work, an inefficiency left over from a previous system, toll bridges, let’s reduce the amount of traffic, too much congestion, $17 to drive across the bridge, they gotta cut it down somehow, Chris Christie, Fort Lee, a bigger island than Manhattan, and a lot of empty buildings, Manhattan sinking, capsizes, sinking due to massive corruption, the Bronx, Bronck’s creek, the Gotham, Kumbaya (come by here), Gullah, scheduled for both.

SHAKESPEARE'S PLANET by Clifford D. Simak

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The SFFaudio Podcast #763 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The City Of The Singing Flame by Clark Ashton Smith

The SFFaudio Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #763 – The City Of The Singing Flame by Clark Ashton Smith, read by Tommy Patrick Ryan. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the book (1 hours, 30 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Trish E. Matson, Connor Kaye, and Tommy Patrick Ryan

Talked about on today’s today’s show:
two these, Beyond The Singing Flame, it’s an onion, should Jesse have asked Tommy to record that too?, no novels, pretty famous guy for a guy with basically no novels, he’s 14 years old, bursting with ideas, reads like a D&D campaign set in the Arabian Nights, a flame like in She, the copyright status, Hippocampus Press, The Black Diamonds, he’s really hard too, his writing is very simple in this one, his vocabulary, give himself some feedback, supernal, an archaic word for supernatural, Eric S. Rabkin, a 3 sentence prose pastel, splenetic, iridescent, arabesque, nympholepsy, mien, rutilant, ill-tempered, the least difficult CAS story, sentence by sentence story, that might make a novel, becoming from high heaven, ethereal, rife with words, he’s masterful with the language, construction is good too, the shape of the plot is really excellent, a very interesting story, The Emperor Of Dreams documentary, accessible, why lots of writers like it, sidereal, lead astray, considering his vocabulary, lepidoperous, did you think of Logan’s Run?, swirling around, transcend and get reborn (or die), moth to a flame, exactly, multi dimensional higher dimensional transcendence, really into the body, really into material, obsessed with death and beauty, Lovecraft likes stars, immortality, architecture and burying the past, sexuality, reproduction through death, the beauty of those things, the siren call of the city, where’s it all going, he’s obsessed with thinking about it and telling about it, his structure is really good, sentence by sentence, he didn’t really do anything with it, the structure makes more appreciable, missing the last chapter, asking for the sequel, the narrator gets inserted into the story, no wrap up frame, disconcerting, he didn’t have an ending, kill the main characters, kind of Clark Ashton Smith but not really, this document is now found in a cylinder falling from the sky, I found this cylinder when taking a hike, Angarth more Smith, he’s the illustrator and the artist, his friend who’s also a weird fiction, never met in real life, the real life connections, EldritchDark, the best etext versions, Arkham House along with the sequel, published during his lifetime, July 1931, Wonder Stories, We had been friends for a decade or more, the journal, July 1st, 1938, July 31st, 1930, I’ve been gone for two years, set in the future, originally, Philip Hastane, there’s always a war in Europe, the reprint in Startling Stories, The Scientifiction Hall Of Fame, Harry Warner, Jr., of all the living writers of fantasy, A. Merritt, an alien planet, read around, the word that kept coming up, Carcosa, a bunch of layering on Carcosa, True Detective‘s first season, anything Yellow King related, Robert W. Chambers, Gene Wolfe’s vocab, The Wizard Knight, even deeper, circle back, cycle of stories, alien city on another world, not as sinister, more sirens, more sexy than horrific and compelling, this city is relatively safe place, Giles Angarth, he still brings his gun though, inner and outer narrator, sandwiches, coffee, and a gun, The Demoiselle DY’s, The Elf Trap, Ambrose Beirce, a friend of George Sterling, a continental famous kid, often on the front page, wunderkind child poet from California, newspapers were hungry, syndicated, The Vancouver Sun, every city paper had that story, a little bit like, A Wine Of Wizardry, Jack London, never met Ambrose Bierce, titans of American and international literature, An Inhabitant Of Carcosa, An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge, a death story, I don’t recognize this landscape, I have the illness, recognizing the landscape, it’s California, the animals, no birds, no insect, a lynx, transforming the landscape into a another world, literally a hike, the Lake Of Hali, Tathagoua, the Book of Eibon, Tsathoggua, are their lynx in Colorado, they go on the hike that inspires this story, central to that, a ski resort, a deep mountain tarn that’s never been sounded, seeing the landscape from the documentary, otherworldly, rock formations, been out on a hike, what if this was an alien world, walking makes your brain start going, Sedona, like an alien formation, episodes of Star Trek, where am I, substances Smith abused, the strongest drug, coffee, dream like drug trips, The Hashish Eater, Lord Dunsany, Confessions Of An English Opium Eater, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an excuse to let imagination run wild, psychedelic ideas, your brain is manufacturing drugs for itself, H.P. Lovecraft is the opposite, Bobby Derie took cocaine for a prescription, HPL: coke head, it’s not for you, warned Clark Ashton Smith not to take it, wine, Atlantean wine, the wine state, schizophrenia, first and second guy bring the third guy, the structure, a brief summary of the book, British enough, does a really good Irish, third or fourth time, we keep going back, changed somehow, brings the cotton balls, suicide, gonna be great, after that event, the siren song has wooed him completely, he’s an artist not a wordsmith, what’s on the other side, a total utopia, only humans come back, the flame dimension, everything is in ruins, a temperance story, a big popular thin in the city, gin, Marvel movies, whatever drug, we gotta lock this down, depopulate us, kill yourself with a friend, a horrible destructive lure, what’s beyond this flame, death is beyond this flame, a transformation, an ascension, Downward To The Earth by Robert Silverberg, rebirth, everybody dies, choose to rebirth yourself, if your hand isn’t flashing red, on your birthday, you’re young and strong, swiping left, or right, nu you, is this a fantasy or is it a science fiction?, weird fiction, psychedelic fiction, very spiritual, technological or magical, a teleporter, an ancient doorway, more Coruscant, the thermos of coffee and set a little bit in the future, wormholes in place, a science fiction writer as a character, in a science fiction magazine, moer super-science than regular science, transdimensional, Algol, sangfroid, struck with awe, a spiritual transformation, we’re all one now, this feeling of singularity, moth people, purified or made unified, very-Lovecraft, Ex Oblivione, love being non-existent, H. Rider Haggard, these science fiction writers and illustrators are better people, earthly pleasures, Ebbonly, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, matching haircuts, stepping through the pillars and falling, falls a different way, using the scientific methods, pilgrimage, the earplugs, numbing agent, can you numb your ears?, super-meta, words couldn’t possibly describe it, here’s how sweet I am, here’s some really excellent prose about it, all the names, things to work into a story, Angarth, a small town in Scotland, is that his real name?, Clark Smith seems like a pretty boring name, working the vocab mine, Hastur, the tamarack, mid-California, the Sierras, Kim Stanley Robinson, Zenna Henderson’s The People, on the shore of some foreign planet, alienation, vertiginous, determine our personalities, shut-in, his dad traveled the whole world, back to the library, reads The Arabian Nights, this landscape, Crater Ridge, stones of monolithic size and shape, an unknown vegetation, luminescent amber, Anakim, spire on giant spire, stepped through the looking glass into a fantasy world, this alien city with a yellow mist, best be done animated, much more illustrated than live action, Anakim are giant humanoids, basically giants, gargantuan, that’s a normal world, Darth Vader, where they steal all their names from, he just read the Bible, the people of the city, giant stone people, they do not have ears, a Las Vegas, popsicles and silver suits and haircuts, many roads to this city, alien creatures, their corridors, other Earths, other planets, a plane of portals, The Black Company by Glen Cook, Las Vegas for suicide/transcendence, the sinning has got to be stopped, why it’s so interesting and demands a sequel, humans center themselves in their stories, we’re a sideline, spectators and not really important, the gun never gets used, siege weaponry, a tower with legs, like our good friend Sauron, suicide cult, why are they so certain there’s something bad through the flame, obviously you’re going to die, immolated, smoke, instantly consumed, near the end, mesmeric lure, succumbed to the desire, immolate himself, a giant lepidoptery being, so good, smart moths, compassionate moths, fellow travelers, rather sweet, deadly enslavement, he ran forward in a series of leaps both solemn and frenzied, sacerdotal, headlong into the flame, more dazzling greenness, benumbed brain centers, annul the perilous mesmerism, fled from the shrine, envying my companion’s fate, fiery dissolution, more people going in from coming out, this is very attractive, enjoying wine, not for me, ice cream, fomo, a hilarious short story [And All The Earth A Grave] by C.C. MaCapp, a computer slips a cog, two coffin garage, this face tattoo is very fashionable, emigration, people living the country, a moral upset, even maybe mention, telepathy, the incoming army, the foundation of the flame, Reno trying to steal Las Vegas’ business, the last pilgrims, the rulers of the outer lands, obeyed the lure of the singing fountain and vanished into the higher sphere, the story leans that way, you don’t know, one moth to the other moth, I used to be a caterpillar, many legends in the outer lands, guessed by only a few, the inner dimension is hated, a lethal and pernicious chimera, an opium paradise, a mecca for this?, suicide boothing, the build up the city, built up around it?, larger or more impressive than other buildings, like a beautiful waterfall for Paul, it’s too dangerous, we can’t have too many people being happy here, into a higher state of consciousness, a VR fountain, live in your basement a VR all day, hippies, spiritual higher stare of consciousness, the great resignation, there’s more to life, the religion vs. a cog in the machine, our viewpoint characters, lashed to the mast of the ship like Odysseus was, timeless concept, war on a peaceful nation, can they destroy it?, like a laser beam, a geyser, a geological force, the scoriac stuff, gotta read the sequel, when you read Conan, those were the days, jump onto a new ideal, Conan never revisits the same place, Poseidonis stories, 2 or other stories like that, that Averoigne series, why is this happening, the letters pages, is this really possible, we should ask, more by the same author, the nature of this world and the purpose of the flame, if Tommy wants to record it, professional grade, keep using that, The Black Abbot Of Puthuum, on my phone in a farm in Ecuador, a checklist, an excuse to read a story, read it at a level, getting to share that, accents, Irish to Scottish to British, theatre, Saturday Night Live, Alec Guinness and Obi Wan Kenobi with Yorkshire, all the British characters from Star Wars, a City Of The Singing Flame tattoo, explaining Clark Ashton Smith, Lovecraft is in the Marvel Universe, Clark Ashton Smith movies, a TV adaptation, he’s difficult, he’s high level, incredible vocab, the imagery the colours, chalcedony, they love their art, they’re art men, rectilinear architecture, the nod to Lovecraft, cyclopedia, a Lovecraft vocab database, why Jesse does the podcast, an appointment, J. Manfred Weichsel, William Jeffrey Rankin, it is up to individuals, denying the attraction of the flame, just another drug problem like heroin, gin, or marvel movies, your AI friends, my AI girlfriend likes the same AI movies I like, you learn stuff, what people think they want, just read Clark Ashton Smith, customized stuff, opt out, everybody’s an AI, too new of a book, the best science fiction books, AI generated, 23 books on the list, 1 book from 2016, some listicle website, integrated and got rid of duplicates, Arthur C. Clarke, Blake Crouch’s 2016 book, The Martian, best?, you’d do pretty well, full circle, The Sunken Land Rises Again by M. John Harrison, Viriconium, weird fiction, pretty damn weird, an assistant to a mad scientist, super dense and very prosey, light on plot, he’s on the long list, Light novels, an unsettling atmosphere, feels very very modern, Nova Swing, 19 hour collection of stories, Neil Gaiman, Jack Vance’s Green Magic, get magic, bitter and tragic, recursive worlds, not quite getting what you want, poignant and good, dying earth wizards, the Zothique series stories, William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land, sad story, Subterranean Press, premium paper, Logan’s Run, Shakespeare’s Planet, Invitation To The Game, The Charwoman’s Shadow, Scratch One, Progeny by Philip K. Dick, getting back to Philip K. Dick, 53-57 stories, always exciting, these incredible authors, Le Guin once, Arthur C. Clarke, Elmore Leonard, nobody knows they’re public domain yet, all the weight of the world is on your shoulders, it’s exciting, or gals, its nice to be appreciated, there for somebody, its not just for the moment, its for the ages, share it with somebody 30 years from now, put it on a bookshelf, big box computer games, selling it for $86, an arc of nostalgia, 286sx, Future Shop, couldn’t afford a 28.8, $0.99, nostalgic for their youth, an old broken 286, feel the floppy going in, become valueless and then come back, the Harlan Ellison version, an L.A. based radio show, not for the ages, an enthusiastic and emotive, very very elderly, the narrator of the film, Harlan Ellison claimed to have read it 200 times, that’s how he learned to read aloud, narrated some Ben Bova, Run For The Stars, passionate, going to Hollywood and getting cynical, born into a world weary wisdom about reality, he went his own way, a passion project, a Hippocampus Press DVD, shill for publishers, passionate people, sharing the materials, solid contents, effort into their covers, the complete poems of Lovecraft, a really handy reference, S.T. Joshi finds some scrap of poem, The Hashish Eater poem, delectable, makes reading delicious, so rich, the lightest and most accessible, 101 Clark Ashton Smith, high level, for bibliophiles, all this prose, a lot of sugar, a slice of cake, small desserts, you have to like that, niche, if you don’t like honey you’re not going to like it, the richest Tommy has ever read, Ambrose Bierce, challenging the reader, why are you trying to make your prose…, making jokes, carving magnificent sculptures out of mountainsides, he really does have something, why Lovecraft was his biggest fan, Robert E. Howard was a great poet, translations of Charles Baudelaire, Poe and Dunsany, Baudelaire and Poe, taproot, undeniable, the first Sherlock Holmes short story, A Scandal In Bohemia, The Purloined Letter, Conan Doyle is the accessible and dumb version of Poe, this hidden photograph, I will have her show me, we love Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson and London and Irene Adler, we don’t love Dupin, the contents of the letter are sick evil and twisted, the photograph is of the king of Bohemia, I’m doing a tribute to Poe and nobody knows, Harry Potter vs. Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, super entertaining, no Harry Potter tattoos, Harry Potter is breezy, Tolkien is fun but not breezy, an afternoon’s entertainment, Clark Ashton Smith: guaranteed enjoyment, intellectually interesting, attentive, tickles a different part of the brain, high art, good art, most art is good, one of his best plots, well that happened, Lovecraft’s plots are much better, not much of a plotter, 700 pages to explore this concept is cool but nothing happened, Pacific Edge, guy tries to get girlfriend at baseball game, not playing the same game, just a weird guy, how popular he was, talked this one to death, Pirates Of Venus, A Meeting With Medusa, Sailing To Byzantium, Farnham’s Freehold, northern Minnesota, almost Canada, just about out May, The Thing On The Roof, No Man’s Land, pick in August, 2 years is fine but 5 years is too long, lost tribe of cave people, troggies, chuddies, surprise chuds, Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers, lick and nip, Paul Sings The Classics, a singing voice for silent musicals, Nerds Of A Feather get together, Gather Yourselves Together by Philip K. Dick, from 1994, posting photos, Jesse misses Connor on twitter, usually eastern, an awful awful dream, discombobulated, very fun, that sentence sounds like he put a space in it, disjointed, a snip in the file, mouth noises, get closer to your mic, get a better mic, not all for the audience, caring a lot about art, Cat Killer by Donald E. Westlake, brutal an interesting sounding, Clive Barker, Jonathan is not a murder as far as I know, collecting human heads, Tales To Make You Vomit, not all horrific, that weird, you guys should be DMing each other, some sort of money arrangement, throwing around numbers, probably not even 4 hours, an hour and a half recording, relatively cold, ACX pays per finished hour, the going rate, $200 or $300 per finished hour, wordcounter.net, sell them not on audible.com, revenue sharing, Planet Of The Wage Slaves, diverse ideas and lots of nudity, amazing covers, their text over my art, Warrior Soul looks great, the lady’s hair in front of the title of the book, art direction vs. being an artist, coming up with interesting ideas, Five Maidens On A Pentagram, gothic horror sex-farce, Hasatan, sex-crazed demon, just sounds fun and pulpy, our reality, cycling through Smith/Howard/Dick, millions of great things, how to get this stuff out there, enough bundled together, anthologies based on themes, teaching the occasional yoga class.

Why The City Of The Singing Flame Is My Favorite by Harry Warner, Jr.

The City Of The Singing Flame by Clark Ashton Smith

The City Of The Singing Flame - editorial introduction

The City Of The Singing Flame art by Frank R. Paul

The City Of The Singing Flame by Clark Ashton Smith

Rowena Morrill - The City Of The Singing Flame

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Reading, Short And Deep #406 – The Cripple by Maurice Level

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #406

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Cripple by Maurice Level

Here’s a link to a PDF of the poem.

The Cripple was first published as L’Infirme in Le Journal, 1919.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #760 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Poison Belt by Arthur Conan Doyle

The SFFaudio Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #760 – The Poison Belt by Arthur Conan Doyle, read by Mike F. Smith (for LibriVox.org). This is a complete and unabridged reading of the book (3 hours, 17 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Bryan Alexander, Trish E. Matson, and Terence Blake

Talked about on today’s show:
1913, The Strand, republished, 199 pages, 3 hours and 15 minutes, what we might call a series, The Lost World, never even mention dinosaurs, does this book stand on its own, from a plot perspective, fall into the byplay, as characters, building on those characters, what character we needed, such a step down in terms of length, the mind blowing idea, discovered dinosaurs 3 years earlier, everybody dies, what challenger was doing, reverses all the damage he does, less potent thus less famous, the reception, invasion novels, village, how the rest of the world responds, golfers and babies, the end of the world, straight up, a giant stride being taken, the big setup, skull island, the plateau of Leng, Edgar Rice Burroughs, in Challenger’s wife’s boudoir, no action, the story as an idea, a request from publishers, more of that Challenger stuff, the adventures of these guys again, this story gets super-existential, I can’t report the news now, that old lady worrying about her stocks, in despair, we still have science!, all the roles that Conan Doyle is himself playing, aspects of his own personality, Sumerlee is the worst parts, Challenger is the guy who wants to be, Roxton is the manly man, the reversal, Aristotle’s unities, war imagery, corpses lying every which way on the ground, pseudocorpses, a gas attack, even more striking, propaganda operations, that’s where he got his, keeping up with the fairies, keeping up with everything topical, Danger!, England being attacked by an enemy using uboats, the spectre of death, War Of The Worlds, newspaper reports, telegrams, he wanted an [email protected] email address, clericals and anarchists, Paris has riots in the streets, racialism, the nigger at the beginning and the end, less complex societies, Sumatra, odious ideas of race, the pinnacle is all these people, after he bites his housemaid, a superman, making fun of challenger, short legs, the ride in on the traincar, doing a cockatoo, some rando, perfect for England in 1913, no colonies east of Sumatra, we peel around the world moving west, continues past England, eerily prescient, really poignant, layers of mediation, a snapshot of attitudes in this peak of colonialism, the Slovenians falling, the Teutons were slower to be affected, Doyle’s everybody here, could he have written this 20 years later, kinda stupid premise, ether is not a thing, ether has come back, Einstein, we don’t need this shit, you don’t need ether for the plot, a map of local interstellar space, a bubble of low density interstellar medium, pre-Einsteinian ether theory, cosmic particles, panspermia, what we’re looking at is not a gas, like the Force, allowing light to do its thing, it doesn’t make any sense, change the overall mixture, it can’t actually be a gas, the earth orbiting through this gas, diluting it, they wax papered the windows, A Pail Of Air by Fritz Leiber, a bucket of oxygen, a frozen gas vs. an etheral gas, echoes from this book, Brain Wave by Poul Anderson, supressed conductivity, a Vernor Vinge lift later as well, A Fire Upon The Deep, zones of thought, a sleeping field, the vocab word: catalepsy, I’m feeling cataleptic, can’t come into work today, The First Men In The Moon by H.G. Wells, a social novel, clearly sentimental, the imagery is powerful, the comedy aspect, makes it gentle, John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos, that scale is so different, every woman on earth is now pregnant, The Day Of The Triffids, knocking up a whole world, hyper-personal, played by Brian Blessed, if fictional people can be reincarnated into real people, A Thousand Plateaus by Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze, chapter tracks, a screaming thing, The Land Of The Mists, spiritually insane, 5% insane, luminiferous either, a spiritualist concept, observe as much as we can, if it exists, really?, takes it a priori, Lovecraft, water and salt, who he is and how, essential salts, materialism, too great a thing, three bucketfuls of water, ugly bags of mostly water, uses matter but is not of it, When The World Screamed, a Quatermass serial, a Doctor Who episode, Inferno, a Mirror, Mirror, evil UNIT, Brigadier has an eye-patch, like Spock, some other inventor, the Earth is a living organism, the crust of the Earth with the grapes, a wash to get of some virus or bacteria on the grapes, a line of 8 reapers, bloody golfers, machine metaphors, longing for simplification, early Christian apocalypse, Ragnarok, atomic bomb stories, after the bomb, Mad Max, 27 hours, makes a good play, its scope is much smaller, a total cop-out, just believe Challenger, all hold hands and become a better world, massive anarchist conspiracy, find people to blame it on, a prime target, lost a day, very controversial, personal reasons, hurts the stature, post-apocalyptic, not a plague, the policman standing up wakes up, traffic’s gone to shit, hard not to bring up Lovecraft, a science fiction story, field glasses, spot his housekeeper, a microscope, this microscope, this is wonderful, you can see for your self, and yet it moves sort of line, scientific method, emotionally interesting, existential, does my life have meaning, humour, Doyle’s such a good writer, everything flows so smoothly, our worthy Summerlee, mopping his heated brow, more easily condone, when my balance has been disturbed, one Sarah, so much classism, she is a woman of a sever and forbidding aspect, the royal we, alone at my breakfast, entertaining and instructive, imperturbability, upset a small vase, withdrawn the the study, I sank my teeth in the calf of her leg, ore herself free, some thoughts of an explanation, traveling very rapidly, is it illuminative?, pour this orange juice on his head, explaining the behavior, as you drink less alcohol, as you get older, restrain yourself, as your faculties go, laughter and impulsivity, rationalizing, this experiment is a good idea, so good, he’s become a monster, he bit her on the leg, use my rational mind, problems and issues, classism, rather horrified, loyal chauffeur, wryly sticks with the professor, such a domestic tyrant, they couldn’t appreciate it, we’re all going to die soon, while working on the engine, a common attitude, many rich people now, utter callousness, a natural progression, Sherpas are always missing when climbing Everest, Nepal, the last real town before Everest, a statue of Tenzing Norgay, without him Hillary wouldn’t have gotten anywhere, run 26 miles down hill, badass, Victorian, 18th century fiction, invisible servants, especially a British thing, French social novels of the 19th century, Russian novels, snapshot of the world in 1913, a maniac and a monster, we see this today, Kardashians, gigantic celebrity, talent on stage, staff was masked up, the science in here, the ether explanation, the ideas of what science is, pro-science stuff, what is this book about, what is a theme?, the hardest questions, you’re telling me I have to live, they don’t want to live in a world without…, you can’t published, you can find stuff out, the most stable idea, it isn’t the publication its the finding out, new things about reality, there’s still always going to be science, for science alone vs. life with him, some class stuff with the local guides, and racism, science is in many ways useless, too late to do anything about it, a Cassandra function, there’s delight, the future Earth will be repopulated, evolution is 100% true, a series of observations, predictions, errors, new observations, new predictions, very optimistic, horrific things happened and people were shocked for a while, Malone, feeble folk, like all the oft repeated truths, a lesson an actual experience was need to bring it home, still stunned by the suddenness of the blows, fires everywhere, one of the greatest tragedies, grim reading, her stocks! her stocks!, elide over millions are going to die, for the survivors, personally unaffected, wake up, a rictus grin, nobody died of dehydration, those people, COVID-19, awfully familiar, almost Lovecraftian, the abyss, how convenient, the engineers, this story is meaningless in a certain sense, what will not be forgotten, this revelation, ignorant self-complacency, what abysses may lie on the other side, all our emotions to-day, pushing the religion, explicit religious stuff, singing the hymn, that chastened effect, humility, a narcissistic element, we survived, a contradiction in the narrative stance, the only survivors, Huck Finn at his own funeral, headlines, DEAD LONDON!, The Star by H.G. Wells, almost exactly the same story, A Pail Of Air, a rogue planet, the new brotherhood, books and machines, a hint of this, cold last paragraph, Martian astronomers, Wells and Conan Doyle were really different people, you know why he didn’t get a sir, almost all his characters are monsters, imposing these things on people, often they get a comeuppance, The War Of The Worlds guy, their philosophies, The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter, a really ambitious book, a bunch of child murders, aloof, The First Men In The Moon, Cavor is wonderful, suicidal, a cool romp?, sentimental, moved by it, convinced the whole world had died, where that leaves us, humanity being humbled, the amoeba doesn’t save anybody in this, the human future, out of space, this invasion from Mars, the most fruitful source of decadence, the conception of the commonweal of mankind, very Wellsian, Eric S. Rabkin, that’ll never be the case, damn that gets me, such a magnificent book, a Challenger adventure, he’s a great character, why is he so enthusiastic, reading old stuff does more than one thing, a picture of the society I live in, Fraunhofer lines, we can’t imagine this today, our tame scientist at the office, they have a scientist on staff, at the New York Times, maybe today, he don’t write a lot of articles, 5 people wrote them, daily newspapers, a list of experts they call up, just there to consult, be a Wikipedia and keep up with all that stuff, the golfers and the cricketers, pre-WWI Britain, a “tame scientist”, this had to have been true, these were going concerns, going through old newspapers, the topics covered, university level writing, mistakes, Lovecraft had a syndicated astronomy column across the USA, the local newspaper, the Vancouver Sun, the Province, 5 days a week, not doing Mondays anymore, the fonts are big, the end times for newspapers, Bryan’s new book, Universities On Fire by Bryan Alexander, the bleakest thing Bryan’s ever written, possible extinction, Scientific American used to be amazing, magazines are dead, retired teacher magazines are better than national general topic magazines, encouraging people to get vaccinated, insisted they didn’t need vaccination, the wackiness of Q Anon, silver colloidal treatments, oceans of scientific stuff, the evolution of Wikipedia on SARS, we have a stupider media, access to scientific material, mis and dis information, reading wrong stuff, getting indoctrinated by it, we lived through COVID in real time, the vaccine(s), distributed quickly, excited about the science aspect, prediction supposition, action, correction, new prediction, combined with the emotion, ring the bell, all four of the men, a very religious image, smart, how do you communicate with a whole lot of people, Doyle also makes a point, the churches had never been so packed, the end of Soylent Green, not slept in weeks, it’s people, a very similar kind of image, a utopia, golfing at the world’s end, keep golfing, a dystopian vision, a continuity, the bucolic English countryside, Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement, Jane Austen, J.G. Ballard, pastoral, industrial, tamed nature, a lawn, feedstock for our machines, Kim Stanley Robinson’s The High Sierra: A Love Story, Switzerland, all about the hiking, under Mercury’s surface, Ministry Of The Future, catastrophes into eucatastrophes, he loves this environment, this landscape, lightly pissing on Yosemite, I hate Yosemite, The Comet by W.E.B. Du Bois, searching for other survivors, about to kiss, we have to procreate, only New Yorkers were killed, almost lynched, a cash reward, Pseudopod, another British writer, M.P. Shiel, the movie is pretty good, Harry Belafonte, The Purple Cloud, he just steals other people’s stuff, this is nothing like British Columbia, same story different location, different title, The Place Of Pain, a lens that allows you to see the Moon’s surface like no other telescope can, super-duper-liar, lifting and using ideas, The World, the Flesh And The Devil (1959), heavy-handed, Star Trek, bring back Jim Crow, the cyanogen scare of 1906, Cosmos, Carl Sagan, never explicated to any great degree, a lake in central Afica that had a burp and killed everybody around it, a Fortean style gas, a heavy gas, Lake Nyos in Cameroon, impeding in Salt Lake, invisible, the entire text, Z For Zachariah by Robert C. O’Brien, we don’t know what happened to cause Jenny’s death, her funeral over zoom, they had just adopted a kid, Redonda, this guy’s really kill, this guy’s horrible, fun, a liar, it might be worse than that, Colin Wilson, Michael Moorcock, The Yellow Invasion, child molestation, everything about him is monstrous, his grift goes on and on, a kind of stature, a couple of handfuls of books from that period, palate cleanser, a lot of fun, very moving, done more with it, end of the world/British invasion stories, good writing, just as valuable for the context, if you’re interested in genre history, Francis Ford Coppola, an ongoing joke, roots in a lie, his dad ennobled him, his way of inveigling his way into the good graces of publishers, not occupiable, ESP and reincarnation, would you like to be a lord, a way of having a conversation with Vincent Price, Hollywood creepy, giant cosplay, Arthur Machen, Umberto Eco, another creepy guy, pedophiles out in the world, Sailing Alone Around The World by Joshua Slocum, not acting on best behavior, Jesse’s politics: pirates stabbing liches, Anne McCaffrey, Jesse can beat her ghost, live afraid, The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey, Gutenberg.org, a great story, 30 pages, about 45 minutes to read aloud, Black Priestess Of Varda by Erik Fennel, he is that guy, lost an eye and lost an arm, a portal fantasy, the story is very illustrative, intermural television, can it be done?, 1930, only 100 years off, Science & Invention, Dick Tracy’s two way radio, Metropolis by Thea von Harbou and her husband, contemporaneous with the making of the film, Alan Dean Foster, an amazing BBC radio drama adaptation, novelizations of movies based on novels, Philip K. Dick and Blade Runner, audiobooks of the damned, pirate audiobook narrations of novelizations, The Terminator, get inside Sarah Connor’s head, based on the script, Alan Dean Foster’s novelization of Alien, fantastic, a stage adaptation of Aliens, a high school production, Sigourney Weaver in the audience, it stages really well, with film we don’t have to restage, refer people back to the original film, take care of that flood, rising tide, good book, Logan’s Run, Downward To Earth, Sixth Column, photography stuff, bud and stuff, hang out with Terence and see his beautiful southern France, abandoned lunatic asylum, changed it back, flash photography, photography takes practice, ghost hunters, flicker every so often, invite any spirit to play with it, arrange a card game with a couple of spirits, wild fun, the later end of Conan Doyle’s stuff, historical tours, hand hewn stone, 2nd biggest structure on Earth, built just before the Civil War, the rump state of Virginia, a Union unit seized all the money, ghost stories, the idea situation, a trash fire algorithm, the host with the most, do some Silverberg, life is really good, spoiled, choosing not to believe.

The Poison Belt by Arthur Conan Doyle

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