The SFFaudio Podcast #834 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Gods Of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

The SFFaudio Podcast #830 – The Gods Of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, read by Mark Nelson for (LibriVox). This is a complete and unabridged audiobook (8 hours 33 minutes), followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Will Emmons, and Alex (Pulpcovers)

Talked about on today’s show:
serialized in All-Story, January-May 1913, the first book, 1912, ten years have gone by, A Princess Of Mars, the atmosphere processor, Cohagen, kicked back to earth, told to his nephew Edgar Rice Burroughs, strange mausoleum, dead on the bluff, coffin, strict instructions, shrug, I was back on Mars!, ends on a cliffhanger, two manuscripts with him, no more gettin stuck places, know how much you love my writin, couldn’t bare to leave my wife, kidnapped again, ignore the fact there are 8 more backs after this?, what happened to Woola, Woola stayed home, alive enough to make it to the air factory, goes with Dejah to the white apes, first book guy, a dog of mars, The Dogs Of Mars, Jack London’s becoming a wild white ape dog, lizard dog thing, tusks, don’t read series, some interesting stuff in here, the black man pirate, gives the mythology or biology of the creation of the peoples of mars, very Edgar Rice Burroughs, crazy crazy stuff, as a mythology, world tree, Babylonian, very cool, favourite John Carter story, shaved a couple of the rough corners off, coincidence level, utterly shameless, and there he was on a whole planet, any direction will take you north, drift for two days, random direction, a smaller planet than earth, the Little Prince, if he runs really quick and jumps he can see the top of his own head, the nested fake religion conspiracy thing, real heaven over there, Gulliver Of Mars, mental hospital, Edwin Lester Arnold, [The Wonderful Adventures Of] Phra The Phoenician, it’s funny, sillier, not as heroic, more ridiculous, library action, weird gender stuff, polar area, glaciers, deposit their stuff in glacial lakes, collecting all their jewelry, heaven is fake, very similar to what we have here, eaten by plant men, limited ecosystem, very few vegetables, drink plant milk eat vegan cheese, one of the lower races, totally soy, Thark nutrition, saved in the desert by finding this milkweed, dead world, dying world, been dying for a million years, an old world, ecology is all used up, seas dried up, it’s fun, very silly, go with it, ten years?, I’m back!, meets his best bud, here’s my son, how martian years are different, is his son 5 years old?, hatches, a white egg, monotrim?, monotreme wife, hatch ready to fight, egg grows over time, nutrient packed, advanced martian biology, must take a lot out of a woman, Carthoris, jumped the shark, a few other things, gets pirates wrong again, fake pirates, the black pirates that live on the moon, super-advanced, extinct volcano, c they don’t eat themselves, yellow people, cross breed, black, white and yellow martians, Borderlands, movie that nobody likes, too long, didn’t need going back to Helium, chopping down 50 plant men, put in prison for a year, tunnels of Mars, just enough time to build a whole bunch of battleships, 1000 ships, little boats, Tars Tarkas says: I got my dudes, not just airships, also submarines, retrofitted, never seen water, they had a guy, the radium revolvers, the bullets are all handmade by Thark maidens, Afghanistan/Pakistan, ancient weapons, but radium?, the new hotness, not explosive, poisoned to death, radium explained, martian hieroglyphic means radium, explosive on mars, no helium involved, all transliterated, by our co-author, all mistakes, astrocharts, not going to bore you with that, late huge footnote, don’t want to throw the story off, the number of days, the Martian day, the Martian year, pulled it up in the encyclopedia, that footnote, this was the popular media at the time, people were a lot smarter back then, weird ideas, racism, eugenics, getting dumber, getting less literate, other media, without having to pre-learn, computer or video games, most consumable media, rizz skibidi toilet happening, long hand with a quill, the good stuff, more work, average text, at the time of the American revolution, high gothic English, written by people trained on high classics, more accessible, produce easier text, not complete rot, but pretty rotten, becomes verbal, Joss Whedon dialogue, books written in the last 10 years, raised on Buffy The Vampire Slayer, to make somebody cool, raised on sitcoms, I heard this about this book, The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi, that just happened, Godzilla Minus One (2023), John Scalzi writing a teenage girl, probably got a couple of teenage daughters, swore off of David Brin, guy looking at a computer screen describing a battle in another solar system, uplift stuff, read Lester Del Rey’s story [The Faithful], treading water, Will’s essay about the other book, weird American morality, something going on, summarize, hot take, Thark green man culture, breeds haphazardly, like snakes having sex, the chieftan directs who mates with whom, the greatest warrior ever accidently falls in love, queer in context, quote tweeting, being heteronormative is queer, raise your own kids in an atomic family (very queer), on purpose?, horrible place, break with tradition, adaptations, Del Comics adaptation of this book, completely dressed from head to toe, frogman with gloves on, wearing pants, it doesn’t make sense to dress them unless, it was the fifties, nudity, Dynamite Deja Thoris, naked Deja Thoris on every cover, mostly naked, not very memorable, the art’s nice, Edgar Rice Burroughs tic, preHeinlein Heinlein Tarzan and Barsoom, nudism, bodily transported to mars with his clothes on, the excuse, astral projection, real body on the other end, ghost planet, a transporter, his old body is also left behind, prudism, issues with that movie, not completely nude, not a settler colonialist, gone native, bringing his own, you and I can be friends, Woola can be my dog like an earth dog, normalizing certain aspects of American and earth culture, don’t believe in this bad religion, a reformer, he doesn’t bring his Christianity with him, the gods eating, reverse communion, blasphemous, Abraham and Isaac, give me you son I’m hungry, blog post, that’s against your culture, change the culture in a positive way, is Burroughs doing that on purpose?, bring them back to the good way, cave castle, raises his own baby, they’re almost communists, they’re the kind of communism, anything I don’t like is communism, you won’t raise your own child, a hobby horse against communism, The Moon Maid, Tarzan The Invincible, I’m here for you, swearing your lives, I’ll be your slave, the slaves were thrilled, I get stand behind your missing wife’s seat, Thuvia Maid Of Mars, that’s not weird, I’m in love with your dad, childhood fascination?, 600 year old, time works strangely on Mars, always looking thirty, never explained, put a lot of stuff into this first book, telepathy, that one time, immortal, it did the opposite, the most boring part of the book to read, interesting, so deep into the book, five miles away, a full mile, as close packed, very orderly, neither scoffs nor plaudits, tried by an impartial body of nobles, footnote 1, 840am earth time, whenever Captain Carter…, many martian tables, this vast fund, it will add nothing of interest, adhere to the original manuscript, the martian day is a trifle over, ten equal parts, revolutionary French, Jacobins, commencing the day at 6am Earth time, 200 brief periods of time, seconds?, yep, fifty zats one zoad, fifty zats in a zoad, 200 tals in a zat, a key to understanding how he wrote this, suddenly realized, the only footnote in the whole book, this is not Tolkien, writing as fast as he can, oh hang on, what did I do, he’s on a typewriter!, when you can just do it this way, that’s a lot of work, Will’s Foundation readthrough essay, Paul Krugman, something about being evil, portrays a profound disrespect for people, wanted to be a psychohistorian, when Asimov was writing that story, one day a New York Times columnists is going to be inspired by my writing, in the context of Will’s essay, it’s liches, liches are evil because they try to control the living even they’re dead, 10 jews per semester and no blacks of you want my money, find a workaround, the stupid codicils in the will, strange and ridiculous, I can write better rot than that, more coherent, would we have been way better off?, we wouldn’t get a lot of the text, how many books did Tolkien published, two novels, not meant for publication, a lot less stuff, meant to be ephemeral, wipe your butt with the pages, goes in the digested, before writing, Under The Moons Of Mars, letterhead for a failed business, Heinlein’s story too, so many of these old authors, spent 2 years in the merchant marines, invented a new kind of helicopter, wrote these 12 crime novels, don’t tell the truth, somebody’s, dress it up in frilly clothes, plant men at their email jobs, laptop class plant men, unconsciously, how he would like to interact with reality, wants to have a good friend, a son (but wouldn’t like to raise them), come on to him, oblivious to it, I will have all your eggs, I’m married to a literal princess, weird food for the black pirates, Sola and his relationship, these creatures from Mars, in various forms of dress and undress, thought it was hot, 4 boobs, thark muscle mommy, orc muscle mommy, let them be, she was teaching him, low position, all coincidences, special, coincidentally special, killing plant men for the first ten minutes and white apes, white ape action, too long, too much, the manipulation of the stuff, surgery in the next book?, growin guys in vats, yellow martians, trying to find Dejah Thoris, had an egg somewhere, why she named him, I didn’t know you were pregnant, stand and watch the egg together, watch it grow, probably done with this series, a lot of filler, have to be in the dungeon for a year, another year, very manipulative, on a sentence and scene level, the airship battle at the end, that got Will, visualizing it, in the 1970s for playing rpgs, matter replicator, play with miniatures, big airship battle, actual tactics, maneuver like this, an anchor, Sola fell off, a nice soft mountain, because coincidence, very hardy 12 feet tall, boobs and ass, the Burroughs bibliophiles, an important science fiction writer, space opera after him, planetary romance, in the atmosphere, five hard science fiction books you have to read, The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal, rockets, handwavium, a rocket program, Rocket Ship Galileo, if this goes on jum jum jum […], here’s a set of ideas, let’s play, Howard writing a Kull story, just is happening, the part of the brain that’s stimulated, sense of wonder, so many stars, the end of the Clarke story, The Nine Billion Names Of God, if these monks are right, an Isaac Asimov story, the same idea, if you could calculate, good writing, character stuff, way too long, worldbuilding, people disagree, fantasy story with science fiction tropes, telepathy was a science fiction trope, discovering things, turns out no, very popular bad idea, Alfred Bester, this is not doing that, kill people with my sword, let’s go, fun vibe, keeps you reading, changing Mars to be more compatible with Edgar Rice Burroughs morality, likes his titles, The Cave Girl, duchess, what if we flip this around, a martian comes to Earth, a thark or redman or white ape comes to earth, meets a waitress, side of a highway in Iowa, insists that she’s a princess, maybe she has a kid, you de-princessize her, a low woman who needs to pay the bills, lives in a trailer, the morality of mars to earth, traditional thark thoughts, one of many woman, go plant your egg in that field over there, falling apart instantly, what if we switch genders, switch classes, what we see in relief, Heinlein’s novel, Stranger In A Strange Land, Superman, the best culture: Kansas culture, weirdness magnet, hidden hand controlling his destiny, blue kryptonite, a kabbalistic connection to the letters LL, not a comedy, cute, cosy, action packed, noble, this story, the culture is even more alien, playful, more Mary Suey, making it so the reader can, I’m not John Carter, reuniting with my family, being locked in dungeons for years, supersane, chained to the wall, his muscles are fine, isometric exercises, no food, have to eat each other, Issus, so fluffy and frothy, barely in the book, in more scenes than many, clearly his story, the protagonist, unneeded, the mythology was really good, does he go on to impose or prop up, the books get weirder and weirder, Thurn high priest, the temple of the Sun, not a finished book, ridiculous cliffhanger, son has adventures, Thuvia Maid Of Mars, their daughter has a book, mad scientists, a fighting man of mars, weird adventuer, spider heads, he’s fun, create a new America, I’m a great guy, emancipating the slaves, an old Virginian, Burroughs or John Carter, he wants to be a noble of some kind, read the hold canon, the impression, not unusually racist, he’s nice to his slaves, no black men in the first book, the next book, they’re all bald, wear the wig with the crown, used to be blonde, they dress up for each other, oh my god, so cool, with regard to the slaves, gladiatorial stuff, people who speak for them, so bored she didn’t even open her eyes, didn’t have to bother looking, half way through the book?, slave uprising in the arena, this is actual science fiction right here, teaching students how to use chat gpt properly, given assignments that are ridiculous, whatever it writes, this is too much, reform it and refine it, can you do my homework for me, the blacks don’t produce anything, really interesting, she wasn’t even watching the combat, there are some even who have slaves who talk to them, transpiring within the arena, the firstborn do no work, the men fight, the women do nothing, absolutely nothing, with closed eyes, not tech, replace the word slave with robot, magically science fiction, robots wash them, robots feed them, with closed eyes, we see this with kings, learn to read, there are slaves for that, you have to read the actual message from your kid, to see that signature, trust with your own eyes, think about this a lot, a little dose of mainstream media, pre-digest your thoughts, she’s the biggest person on substack, Barry Weiss on Joe Rogan, he is an “Assad toady”, she didn’t know what the word meant, what predigested news does for you, wash your own laundry, when I want your opinion I’ll give it to you, fix my car, takes a lot of training, if you haven’t done it, all these topics, some jobs require some skills to be learned, essay writing, good jobs, fucked if I know, work in tech, written a lot, wrote a ton of essays, a real skill that helps you in a lot of places, put your thought coherently together, the tricks to get the results that they want, do you want this to be interesting and good for you, or good for your teacher, more flourishing, the short term, you need five paragraphs and this number of words, students don’t even know what the word essay means, A Modest Proposal, pushing away the joke, doubles down and doubles down, I propose we start eating the babies, coherent sentences, hitting word counts, way more to say or way less to say, how to say five different ways to say “in addition”, checkpoints they have to go through, how Will ended up writing essays, learned to like it, writing is fun, writing ideas, worked with Will a lot, how to communicate clearly, you’re lucky, a coherent person, columnist for the New York Times, any kinda good, communicate clearly in writing, building fences and fixing cars, more shop class, languages, a lot of that is weird liability stuff, bandsaw, can’t let them do it, fear is hugely driving things in society, more bad writing as chat gpt takes over, unfeasible to fund it, complete in five years, those jobs to make that shit, what a robot thinks about something, what’s the capital of Katmandu?, some of the questions make no sense, are those popular questions that were asked, they do nothing, no moral agenda behind it, so strange, how rich and decadent they are, if Robert E. Howard were writing this, The Slithering Shadow, decadent city state, ivs of opium all day, wtf you guys doin?, I’m busy fighting this slither shadow, that’s just how it is, I got my opium, much more of the science fiction writer, set on another planet, strong ideas he’s trying to work through, almost essay style arguments, when we eventually get to Rogues In The House, Murders In The Rue Morgue?, C. August Dupin, The God In The Bowl, Burroughs is deep too, levels to it, he hasn’t teased them out, he’s just shooting them, this is Robert E. Howard doing a gothic and having Conan hating every minute of it, a hobby horse against gothic fiction, frustrated the whole time, even Frost Giant’s Daughter, the siren, the tease, steaming on a platter, fuck that, I’m Conan, you can’t escape me, almost a rape story, why can’t we read this in school, a long list of things they want to put in your brain and this is not it, Burroughs taught in school, maybe shop class, fence making class, chicken breeding, anti-classical education, an elective on posting, a classical education in high school, doing it on our this podcast, The Symposium, three years of classical philosophy, very powerful, participate in a lot of weird conversations, make cocktails, vintage art guy, extracted what little juice was in this dry planet, at some point, all the insane coincidence, there’s the exact thing I needed, half-way across the solar system, exact same prison cell as my son, so brazen about it you can’t get man, the most deus thing that ever got machinaed, one big coincidence, two people survived, this is bad writing, my god how amazing is this, every piece fits together, The Terminator, more fun, not as good as a film, the more you elaborate on it, every piece fits, why is this happening, that word was created by him hearing it from himself, that’s just how it is, no clothes, no clothes, handwavium, I don’t understand tech stuff, every part of that story fits, an embellisment, the exact same beats, how the pacing is identical scene for scene, one is here to protect, I’ll be back, not a horror movie and not a b-movie, a car chase, a truck chase, crushed in the crushing factor, melted in a melting factory, 2200 word story, something not set in our conventional world, he’s not crafting a story, trying to tell you a fun story, going on adventures, so many other modes, mystery series, the mystery, Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, sandwich making and a lot of clues, The Hound Of The Baskervilles is a terrific terrific novel, a Nancy Drew style story, yard sales, 10 cents a book, art inside, cool covers, boys solving mysteries, one boy, the Encyclopedia Brown books, a knock off for even younger kids, who stole the bike, I’ve solved the mystery, got some trivia wrong, civil war saber, General Robert E. Lee, first Battle of Bull Run, The Battle Of First Manassas, Futurama, Wikipedia Brown, mode of mystery, H. Beam Piper novel Murder In The Gunroom, an Encyclopedia Brown story, the key to the mystery, weird menace show, Robert Silverberg and Test-Tube Frankenstein by Wayne Robbins, gonna be on it, so fuckin good, a Philip K. Dick horror story with Lovecraftian monsters, I have a story to tell you, rogue scientist, grinding up earthworms and making them into something, the guy he’s talking to is the earthworm, no mermaids in this story, Mistress Of The Dark Pool, find of the last five years, get the word out, very fast, listen to most of the story, so compelling, not the perfect way of doing it, slightly improved by framing device, tack on on he ending, the best excuse ever for taking a lady’s shirt off, can’t see anything they don’t get to see, replicate the outside, W. Wayne Robbins, goodness ahead, pretty much done, classic bookshelf, The Tower Treasure, later development, whole bunch of Tom Swifts for sale, The Asteroid Pirates, Victor Appleton, Victor Appleton II, The Shore Road Mystery, The Missing Chums, The House On The Cliff, LibriVox, why aren’t we bookin that guys?, four hours five minutes, one of the boys is thumbing his thumb, check out that thing, get a load of this guy, lady running down the hill away from the tower, criminals to justice, emdash, aiding their parent very materially, his loot had been secreted, The Three Investigators, Alfred Hitchcock as a character, estate locked down, 1964-1987, rewritten, complain about them, this minefield, shelf of Nancy Drews, 50s rewrite, edited them to death, a big account, people see it, the impossible to find first editions, the original, couldn’t be re-copyrighted, Franklin W. Dixon, rewritten, two Nancy Drews, every page was different, every sentence was changed, read it to your kid, people complain because it is different, changing the dates in Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, not an author, Carolyn Keene, ghost written, improvements that way, we’ll find out, November 24th, December 1?, that predictable, make some coffee, do some editing, 1:20, too late in the day, went to bed at 9pm, just go with it, up til like 3am, sleep-in, a good little podcast, pick your brain, current SF stories, this is nice violence, making fun of AOC, HMU, hit me up, there’s that too, science fiction is short stories not novels (generally), Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer, a series, funny silly agendas, an excuse, Planet Of The Apes, neanderthal comes forward in time, falls in love, gay cavemen need to reproduce, he doesn’t know how to write humans, a lot of representation, my friend the security guard is an Indian from India, he wears a turban, they’re not like the way you project them to be, standalone books, blew me socks off, Golden Fleece, a starship, murder mystery, narrated by the computer, last few years, kinda dumb in the way many pretty smart people are, gonna live forever, Ray Kurzweil: not a smart man, not even on a cope, it’s a hope, I’m gonna live forever is not a cope it is denial, secular version of heaven, a paperback, Quintaglio Ascension trilogy, tiny dinosaurs on a moon of another planet, an analog for a scientist, Far-Seer, he’s Galileo, no humans in this book, really into dinosaurs, child-like, neanderthal fetish, when did the neanderthal touch you in a loving way?, sharing the earth with other minds, literary fiction novel, Claire Cameron, The Last Neanderthal, woman archaeologist, make the book longer garbage, just like fire, [incest], her neanderthal beliefs, big words, make your vocal chords tired, The Ugly Little Boy by Isaac Asimov, probably like Hominids, planned as a trilogy, Shaman by Kim Stanley Robinson, Iceman (1984), Encino Man (1992), put him in a dome, cave-man Truman Show, unfrozen cave man movie, a nice length, John Lone, 10,000 BC (2008), Alpha the first dog, cave boy separated from his people, read an actual book, how you gonna find it, hear it from somebody you don’t have contempt for, need to know more, paleoanthropologists are hard to meet, get no work?, set on earth, Clan Of The Cave Bear (1986), wistful longing, Shogun, hand can’t span the spine, very doable, the original Pierre Boulle Planet Of The Apes, an inversion of what you see in the movie, and short, 1963, more recent reboots, current series, 246 pages in English, an abbreviated version, Science Fiction Encyclopedia, laptop, probably burdened down by the horrible operating system, Tiny 11, MacOS, the garbage never installed, people are fixing things, we can fix it, finding out about that, how many years, you would never find it, searching for weird shit, you’ve heard of Linux, who runs Linux?, whaevah, The Aeneid, The Odyssey is one of the best books anybody can read, programmatic and propagandistic, the end with the genocide, everyone should read old books, what’s the oldest book you’ve ever read?, the early parts of the bible, contemporaneous, 8th century BC, Gilgamesh, always finding new parts, James Gunn’s From Gilgamesh To Wells, Bryan Alexander is in Mexico City doing his Mexican futurism, trying Out Of The Silent Planet again, riffing hard on Voyage Top Arcturus, he calls out wells several times, Stapledon looms over it, 1938, The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe, age of Book of Genesis, 1400 bc, Moses, a redacted literary work, 400 bc, has great parts, boring parts, read The Odyssey in high school, a tv program of it, a great character, fun adventures, every island, go to university for 20 years, stop taking history, literature and science classes, math, a weird physics class, know about physics, the physics texts written by the physics dudes, readable, post-Einsteinian physics, what does physics need to know about me?, material science, how can we solve this problem, some it is just cost, hard to dig up and process, aluminum used to be the most expensive metal, more valuable than gold, now as cheap as dirt made from dirt, titanium, the price of titanium, mixing metals together, lots of great physics stuff to learn, doesn’t really matter what class it is as long as the teacher is good, the quality of the physics teachers in Michio Kaku, the science popularizes, worse than dumb rocks, not caring about facts, string theory is bullshit, nobody would say that for 30 fucking years, buzzword, there are things we don’t know why things happen, come up with a theory, come up with a hypothesis, if that’s true then…, is gravity a particle, gravitons, if we can detect a graviton, a particle and not a wave, we don’t know the answers, everything else is happening in other dimensions, the don’t fuckin test it, a collider the size of the solar system, nobody calls em on it, subscribing to Scientific American and Popular Science, some of this is scams, flying cars are here, they’re not in your backyard, this other kind of flying car, four engines where the wheels would be, re-on the cover of Popular Science, never ever fuckin happened, you need electric engines like drones and lithium batteries to make a flying car a viable thing, these are fly by wire, sensors, limiters, in the fifties they had flying jeeps, Neil Armstrong, helicopter blades beneath him, put soldiers on those to fly into battle, bird strike, blade of grass anything will kill you, a cool looking mockup, most of the people in physics, mock up of flying cars, keep paying me, that’s something else, a religious scam, the guy at the front: you’re all going to heaven you don’t need to read the paperwork, string theory, it’s coming along, a scam, in production right now, they’re basically drones, but you sit in the drone, there’s no market for them, fly in the sky over your suburb, operating drones, traffic rules for the sky, how crotchety and elderly the system of laws is, probably be Africa, where they’re interested in getting shit done and not feathering their own nests, more like golf carts, more like RVs or ATVs, used in the countrysides for farmers, check fence-lines, flying car guy knew what the problem was, using conventional engines, light enough batteries, gasoline is super energy dense, diesel, bunker fuel, kerosene is less, you can put them all over the spars, filled with batteries, just a few more years, not noticing they’ve run the same fucking article for 25 years, find a way to test this, the quantum theory is the result of Einstein’s stuff, the many worlds hypothesis, at the fundamental nature of reality, vibrating fibers, outer space as being the absence of something, coming into creation, bubbles of particles, brief existences, Wikipedia string theory, a theoretical framework, 1 dimension objects, when we scroll down, looking for the where’s your tests, brane theory, m-theory, supergravity, matrix theory, Stephen Hawking, another failed guy, entropy formula, counting microstates, an important test of any theory of quantum gravity, doing math not physics, phenomenology, no experimental evidence, pretty damning sentence, some in the community, question the value, what heaven will be like, in my father’s house there are many mansions, how many bathrooms are in those mansions, does it come with bidets?, just give em some more money, extremely high energies need, they proliferate, mansions have more than one bathroom, that’s what they’re doing, looking at the facts then doing bullshit, not science at that point, thought experiments, the table has a glass on it, the glass has water in it, the water is wobbling, everybody is playing this game of what’s making the water move, that’s a story, where’s the evidence for it?, Mr Bad, formula on a t-shirt, e=mcsquared has damaged a lot of brains, their castles in the air are bullshit, you can do all of this, you can see how it was constructed, hidden stories behind the construction of the stories, what it was, there are facts of the matter, way easier game to play, get some cool ideas out of it sometimes, cuz they don’t have any other ideas and it is funded, somebody enjoys funding theoretical physics, interested in science, the excuse for why they can get a caveman to modern times, a hollow chamber full of heavy water, neutrino detector, the neanderthal in question is also a physicist, Illegal Alien, Royal Ontario Museum, can we prove that god exists, a paleontologist, first human to alien contact, a spiderlike alien arrives, large collection of fossils, gather evidence for the existence of god, the same five cataclysmic events, an atheist, not what you want to read right now, so what do you think?, it’s a mystery, keep it a mystery, spoil is thoughts, smart but not smart like me, not wise, smart = wisest, how do you measure wisdom, Jesse particles, emitting them, to measure personal wisdom, concerning difficult behaviors, what is the San Diego wisdom scale, high validity, make predictions very easily, renowned and acclaimed, they think it makes them sound better, a passover word, my critically acclaimed debut novel, the New York Times says, an ok person, an accident, how they used to have Theodore Sturgeon, evil NIH website, healthy aging, abstract, not complete?, the answer to this is no, mechanical turk, as we grow older, do not rush, 28 questions, I’m good at perceiving how others are feeling, I have trouble making decisions, make snap decisions, a harder one for Jesse, others look to me, go out more, don’t talk to the raccoons talk to the neighbours, a wise quality, a neutral response, always wants help, 2-seater car, can’t help her move, bad boundaries, conflict, I have trouble thinking clearly when I am upset, don’t be upset, when was the last time you were upset?, is angry upset?, a couple of years ago, there is no existence of the soul after death, why would their be?, nebulous, soul is a synonym for spirit, still exists rather than lives on, all word games, others say I give good advice, wearing the uniform, therapists shouldn’t give advice, life coach, windows or apple, probably windows unfortunately, unable to do either, try not to make decisions, I remain calm under pressure, I have trouble thinking when I am upset, don’t be under pressure, when lifting weights, I enjoy learning things about other cultures, when they have this many questions, getting at it, asking the same thing different ways, I’m closed minded, I can’t learn, I tend to postpone making major decisions as long as I can, a wisdom in not making decisions, not making decisions about things you can’t control, I’m painting the walls blue, worry is a much bigger thing than it should be, I take time to reflect on my thoughts, you write, a little notebook, a few sentences, I would stop a stranger, morality or wisdom, an American dollar at the current inflation rate, my spiritual belief gives me inner strength, duty and how people should act, a spiritual thing, neutral on it, just havin fun here, I’m ok with people having morals and values other than my own, you’re a mammal, like your young, take more information on non-mammalian morality, lost it for about six weeks, spent more money, can’t even make the joke, I avoid self-reflection, about mirrors?, I would rather someone else make the decision, for me I am uncertain, a mistaken trait, waitress, what do you like, what was popular, people are different, such a strange question to ask a waitress, interesting experience, deferring to someone else on your decision making, is this a steak restaurant, I treat others the way I would like to be treated, not as an asshole, not as a piece of shit, please pass the podcasting juice, neutral, uncertain, it is important that I understand the reasons for my actions, finding out why you’re doing things, realize you’re making mistakes, the reason I’m doing this, I’ve always done it this way, a better or more efficient way, all connected on a higher level, a lower level, sniffing, they probably do, perfume, axe body sprays, horrible perfumes, can’t grok them, I generally learn something from every person I meet, drive through at the restaurant, an interaction vs. a meeting, generally learn something, the circumstances under which they’ve been pushed, condo doesn’t let them in, exposed to diverse viewpoints, meaning drift, diversity, equity, inclusion, exclusion, hierarchy, monoculture, the quality of being fair and impartial, the meme, boxes, a shortage of boxes, not a box rich society, they’re pirating the game, someone should knock down that fence, eyes to look at this game, their kid is playing in it, they’re cheating, mr umpire knock down that wall, why doesn’t the tall guy put the little guy on his shoulders, somebody had to lift, don’t handle me any more than you have to, bad back, fairness, these words are all tricks now, liberation, he’s in a hole, he could be a Morlock, post box society, I don’t analyze my own behavior, I often don’t know what to tell people, if you do your best you’re probably be all right, I can only emit so many, I cannot filter my negative emotions, not as stoic, this is an are you depressed or not, there is no overall purpose to life, a sign of depression, people of different ages, you’re in a nursing home, what pills to put you on, how depressed are you at being old, do yourself in, grandchildren not visiting you, hold the ereader up, cognitive abilities declined, let audiobooks wash over me, the last question, this test is not good, what do you do, Kentucky in your car, get a flat, cellphone is on low battery and no signal, no carjack, need to learn to change a flat, be prepared, triple A equivalent, an uncle who knew how to fix fences and change tires, spry, one or two of his brothers, the hoping that somebody comes along, hope is not a plan, foreseeing, that’s what wisdom is, a carton of water, some oil, alternator died, superclever, very proud of myself, using the tools at hand, it’s when you are great, knowing your great, not needing renowned or acclaimed, no RE no AC, how proud were you?, learning how to ride a bicycle, just gave up, can swim very well, came so naturally, proud to be walking around, do something you’ve never been able to do before, writing your first essay that doesn’t suck, doing some of your own research, good times, something you have to learn, but for what purpose, what the problem is and how we should fix the problem, reading some Foundation, getting at what’s wrong with it, putting it out there, for your own benefit, shared interests, nobody is interested in Foundation (even those watching the tv show), Paul Krugman, he should have read Alfred Bester, Dune, go to the park, out there to look at things sometimes, getting the sun, vitamin d bro, sniff some pheromones, a raccoon came up to me, let it sniff me, bitten, what did it do, being bitten, startled, animals don’t bite just to taste, special kinda crazy, fear response, trying to be considered by it, be more leery, the whole rabies process, animals with rabies, the episode of Doctor Quinn, she’s a medicine woman, the best of western medicine, it’s all danger of the week, fear/danger, reality more twisted and weird than it is dangerous and fear, actual fucking vs. theoretical fucking, your pension, defund your housing, you need to know about it, Netflix and streaming services, cost money and doesn’t give me anything, that consumer culture horror, digitial subscriptions to three magazines, Seize The Press, anti-capitalist, they don’t have a press, a red triangle around it, you love tech, old tech and good tech that works, not a fetishist, a smartwatch, wearing shit, what do you need that for?, being productive, bad heart, low oxygen, commanded to get your steps in, conspicuous consumption, apple watches, bombs to bomb people, screen protector and case, two finicky about finding the right one, one of those questions, making decisions is really bad, when their is so many options, act by not acting, alpha haven’t happened, make up a set of principles, change your principles later, don’t turn down money, wasn’t a decision, just a policy, makes your life way better to cut things out, what criteria to abide by, made in Israel, I’m not going to buy that, who’s better, Android or Apple, an LG phone, good features, all the things that make a modern phone, stuck into the ecosystem, expandable memory, the way you don’t get screwed by the phone company, their cloud, forget about the privacy implications, keeps you in the ecosystem, it’s free just press this button, you have to fight against them, it is slightly better, Apple is very very closed, texting somebody in blue (vs. green), a way to suck you in and keep you broken, who you gonna believe me or your own research, he can’t get his banking app to work on his phone, look into sideloading, theoretically can be done, how robust is it?, the official app store, they don’t want you to see Alex Jones, find a way, Android is very capable of being sideloaded, windows traditionally that was the only way, if you get trained properly, play a game on a website, don’t let them trap you, fuck with your food, fuck with your phone, fuck with your life, frozen with fear and regret, very afraid of regret, did something really mean, legal career, doing your best at the time, can’t justify it, let it roll through me, paralyzed by regret, inform our future actions, massive decline at some point, still producing Jesse particles, back among the children, 4 days a week, doesn’t suck, there’s lots of patterns to it, never even think about writing it down, scheduling apps, too chaotic for voicemail, spam calls, text message is better, some more particles next time.

The Gods Of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #798 – READALONG: Return From The Stars by Stanisław Lem

Jesse, Will Emmons, Cora Buhlert, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about Return From The Stars by Stanisław Lem

Talked about on today’s show:
a betterized Terence, what happened to Jonathan, refusing to speak with us because communist dictators, Bibi worship, need more Lem, great, really great, great science fiction, solid novel, there are moments that are excellent, great ideas, amazing scenes, the ending confused, Beyond Atlantis (1973), a 1970s movie from the Philippines, Lovecraft combined with Atlantean, a sexploitation movie, John Wayne’s son, family friendly, the opposite, an adult movie, hits all the beats, competent and funny, Jesse promises, The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre (1948) with Atlanteans, they lost all their pearls, that’s not funny, at the end of Gumball Rally (1976), “gumball”, illegal road race across the country, the bird at the end, the betrazated bird, no wild things exist, unlikely to kill humans, notice it isn’t afraid of the human, taught to be afraid, humans are no longer scary, confusing beginning, first gets on/off the airplane, cutouts, flashing across the ceiling of this tube, end of the book, sitting in the snow, eating snow, going home, acting like a child, pretty good at telling us about what it means, people don’t change, a pretty good theme, describing this book to a dude, guy comes back from space, stronger than anybody else on earth, no other men on the planet, they’ve all been castrated, like John Carter, jump super high, the chairs reach up to comfort you, masculine power has been turned into something useless, John Carter goes to Mars and there’s no problems there, he’s going to go on that expedition, sets up the sequel, turns this book into The Forever War, a utopian/dystopian book, Conan shows up in a kingdom, what’s your problem, ruins Robert E. Howard’s argument, undercurrents of discontent, robots?, drug to undo, an underground supply, we do that too, people consuming alcohol or cocaine, in vino veritas, there’s no escape from a dystopia, a non-dystopia, fell in love with a woman who belonged to that society, the adventure is good side, the final transformation, a star child or a messiah, nobody gives a damn about them, he becomes ordinary, echoes the end, I did not want the stars, crazy/derranged, a man must be completely ordinary, otherwise impossible/pointless to live, testosterone fueled adventurism, espousing conformity, he doesn’t seek betrazation, conditioned by capitalism, seeing creative destruction as good, its own sense and logic, he can never be at home, he doesn’t want to go and do it again, he falls in love with a woman who is ordinary, extraordinary didn’t interest him, chose ordinariness, exhibit D, a page from Teen Confessions, a redhead and her teen boyfriend are falling in love while visiting Washington, D.C., outside looking at the moon and the Capital building, you’d better agree, would there be a penalty?, then I’d kiss you and keep kissing you until you agree, romance comics, girl comics end with periods, in that case I refuse, I’ll keep saying no, thinking while being kissed, end of scene, she’s figured it, so interesting, the scene that’s like this in the book, trouble communicating, jesus christ people have difficulty communicating their wants, animal sex, are you okay with me kidnapping you?, the heart of the problem, when she don’t know what’s she’s thinking at all, she’s betrazized incapable, she can’t ask to be kidnapped and raped, unthinkable, the reason you carry a woman over a threshhold, taken her from her father’s house, a hairpulling thing, caveman style of interaction, maybe she wanted this and that’s why she’s afraid, women do like men and their male characteristics, not just a roleplay, I’m forcing my will upon you, that’s what we’re told by the narrator, he doesn’t know that at the time, that’s how stupid I was, we’re not telepathic beings, words are usually a good way of rationalizing thoughts, you’ve stated it perfectly, dialogues, not knowing what it meant, incomplete sentences, left puzzled, one of the topics of this book, Planet Of The Apes, The Unincorporated Man, its not about understanding it’s about action, it’s about metamorphosis, another possibility, by loving this woman, he turns into a child at the end, how much can love transform you?, he does not fit in, hence his attraction and our attraction to go back to space, ordinary is not the same as conformist, the anti-I Am Legend, he’s just a normal guy with superman muscles, 1961, East European science fiction, space books, the thing to remember, the official doctrine, we will have socialism soon, wonderful utopia, socialist utopia, there will be people who won’t fit in, German science fiction writer, socialism is like Christmas, just sleep a few more nights and there will be socialism, socialism was the endgame, we know this is going to be the future, how do we get there?, what will we lose when we get there?, the women in the book, there were three, progression between the women, no matter where Jonathan went, many such cases, it’s because Jonathan’s a handsome American, do you want me?, $200, pre-fall of the wall, interhotels, similar things in the Soviet Union, women who would do whatever you wanted for western money, she’s kinda like a whore, the screen star, the actress, the realist, she treated him like a whore, he was novel, maybe I can conquer him too?, eventually, figure her out a bit, take her from her husband and go talk to him, Terence came to France (the apes had power), spoke French very badly, a talking dog, quite amusing, fell in love with a French woman, became French, hear from Will, thinking in terms of dialectics, what is a dialectic?, two poles, old style man adventure, the betraized Eloi, John Carter meets The Time Machine, the death drive vs. the pleasure principle, discharging energies to get to a steady state, death drive, alcohol or crazy choices, changing paradigms, always a possibility of setting up a third way, dialectical, this society is impossible, there are contradictions in this society that are staggering, do this poorly, the propaganda version, a school textbook, have you read school textbook, school is designed to indoctrinate, the offical ideology, the robot smelting plant, does it set something up, underrealized, a reel of a realization of that, I’m in here improperly, I’m not broken, really crying out for help, what’s so cool about that, all the humans have become robots, putting them into recycling centers instead of death camps, the robots do the selection, really terrific book, Mockingbird by Walter Tevis, suggested based on a John Lange novel, from there to here, the weird German copy, The Terminal Man, using pleasure to counter the death drive, deep writers, reinforces the murderous impulses, inhibition is A Clockwork Orange, also a travel book, air b and bs, a utopian novel, a dystopian novel, Logan’s Run, the Berlin Wall, traveling was aspirational, Lem did travel, privileged, The Dispossessed, poverty planet, everyone suffers under communism, to capitalist planet, that’s the point of fandom, Donald A. Wollheim, how about reading this book as not a utopian government, fully automated luxury, safe under grandma’s skirts, communist countries were more open, Hillary Clinton couldn’t imagine being a woman astronaut, it was just different, Sally Ride, Valentina Tereshkova, she was a seamstress, this is girl planet, what makes a man a man, the ability to have violence in any conversation, handshakes are a big deal, girls and handshakes are copying men’s behavior, I can’t be pushed over, something wrong with their brain, apologize, farmers hands are all sinew, he doesn’t know all strong, a possibility of violence between us, many skills and not drunk, that potential for violence is always there, the holding up the hand is the unarmed, not a universal human greeting, the open hand, the how, you have to learn it, this is what its for, holding out your hand, as opposed to against that person, refusing a handshake, doesn’t know what to do with his hands, feels weird in his skin, what they look like or what they’re wearing, SFWA dm, the people over here are odd and strange in different ways, luxuries we don’t have, obviously German, weird acronyms, words we have to intuit, legal loophole, sold east German stuff to us, about being a man, many ways of being a man, most masculine hobby is smoking cigars, beer tents, unhealthy, one of the ways of being a man is act as a protector to the smaller female, women cops protecting male victims of crime, moderated, he’s a pilot, traumatized, backstory, why he’s PTSD, an Earth that can’t understand him, boxing matches aside, stolen girl, tell me about this scar, he’s such a wounded animal she can’t resist them, scars on men, a whole German society, a lot of Nazis, right wing, this is a planet that has been feminized, man against lion, the lion is not a threat, holograms, not a robot lion, where does the meat come from?, lion and a lioness, the hologram experience on the rope bridge, dives in and rescues her, everybody has been coddled, everyone has soft hands, physically strong, considered suicide, even the dudes are girls, everyone seems to him like his idea of a girl, a little hyperbolic, bring boxing gloves, I need someone to threaten me, would be as lost, nobody has to work because everything is free, if you want to have a car, the supervisory job, an archaeologist studying an ancient relic of human civilization, a very discombobulating world, becomes a child again, putting snow in your mouth, Jesse would still be a podcaster in this world, Ukraine or Belorussia, Poland was recreated as a state, after WWII, Truman was strongly involved, Stalin decided, after the Russian revolution, the Baltic states, put into houses where German people had lived, traumatic, always upset, uproot us again, Silesia, moved to northern German, literally stopped living, no chance to keep his farm house, a weird guy, felt sorry for him, 1921, survived the holocaust with false papers, always in the subject of the other countries around it, a post national world, does everybody speak the same whatever it is?, esperanto?, the opening is awesome, Lem has a plan, continously discombobulates, how the tech works, why the behavior is so stange, a lot like Logan’s Run without the depth, calling them Eloi, constantly young and beautiful, no predator underneath, even the robots, take this another direction, lead a robot revolt, if you listen carefully to what the robots are saying, reasonable, religious fanatics, a whole bunch of demented people, the other option is a horror, this whole society can’t be fixed, a lot of time in hospital, help me!, get me out of here!, just yelling, looks good on the surface, a totalitarian government, that is totalitarianism, propaganda, hypnagogic tapes, we don’t know who issues those, a smokescreen, they can’t, not wanting to as an excuse, an inhibition, they have all the tech for it, lost their sense of adventure, going to space would be dangerous, can’t place themselves in danger, if Niven took this book, Berlin, kids drowned in full view, their own comrades would shoot them, immigrant kids, people standing around, society is based around several lies, just as bad as the alcoholic, a religious fanatic who is peaceable might be annoying, dysfunctional, less likely to drunk drive you, dysfunctional neurotic, just as neurotic, in a different direct, less manly, there’s no PTSD on this planet, the primary contradiction, incapable of wanting it vs. incapable of doing it, the idea cannot come into their heads, the apologetics aren’t necessary anymore, space rapes, Theodore Sturgeon, penetrating other spheres, ideological belief in equality, no, you’re a homemaker, we don’t put women into danger, men are disposable, the tragedy of a woman being destroyed in space, given this premise, he would try, turn it off, fix it, even rapeyer, pretty rape, The Cosmic Rape by Theodore Sturgeon, castration, violent thought come from the balls?, the totalitarianism, Philip K. Dick’s Progeny, maybe Will is just totalitarianism, the one child policy, a blanket solution, oppressed nationalities, a button you switch on or off, totalitarian style thinking, you’re not wise enough to have children, turn off all these indians ability to have children, when in doubt sterilize, do it on the downlow, not something you advertize, controlling every aspect of reality, nobody has any boo boos, where Larry Niven could take this story, we could do a robot uprising, religious leaders, you could do a lot with this world, has the guy broken in the end, that expedition is gonna solve anything, super-anti-gravity drive, go away forever, unless they’re doing it Heinlein’s Universe style, posit something new, he’s going to inform, evidence against it, he chooses to become ordinary, his children will be betrazated, a profit and loss thing, 50-50, hence he gives in, the central thing that distinguishing, falling in love with one of the dogs, showing your hands in a weird way, incapable of doing the horror, what’s the central contradiction?, the solution to violence, it’s not true, those in power can order a robot to kill someone, money is not eliminated from the economy, money exists for more valuable and rarer things, she’s gotten illegally, the drug, where’s the prisons on this planet, what crime takes place, what makes it illegal, the robots are not the police, the robots will kill you if you’ve gone to far, the robots are the people, the robot might decide, this is a system, she’s studying at university to become an archaeologist, the robot supervisor (husband), wants to secretly confront him, legit there wasn’t a second engineer there, a false flag, an excuse to visit this horror show, compare this very good book to Mockingbird, there are only systems, a secret government hidden in a bunker in Cheyenne Mountain, not because it is illegal, robots don’t get upset, who’s really running things, isn’t this exciting, phones being tapped, the paranoid person from the past, insane, he’s a failure, he’s Conan, he’s Tarzan of the Apes, come back to a world of pussies, don’t, slap the tarzan out of my mouth, will?, like a really good star trek episode, the Betazeds, a trick question, you should be saying it, what kind of fantasy?, an idealist fantasy, a materialist piece of science fiction, not a contradiction between classes, understated, what are the classes, the robots and the eloi, the young and the old, the aging problem, a weird way to go, third childhood, the men try to look as young as they can, women would look for wealth, heroics, scars, we don’t need a biological solution to war, nations are an output of classes, trying to say things she’s unable to describe, no context, she seems to confirm it, wants to be taken but unable to say it, what female genes say: take me take me now, the y chromosomes don’t understand, character posing with two dolls almost kissing, Masters of the Universe collection, this is part of the girl version, the love of the relationship stuff, the Princess of Power movie, the original She-Ra, a continuous storyline, Days Of Our Lives, superhero team movies, don’t care about princess, princesses and magic swords, Sheepfarmer’s Daughter by Elizabeth Moon, The Deed Of Deed Of Paksenarrion, kinda like Red Sonja, Baen, terrible distribution, a fantasy solution to the science fiction presented today, not a series makes it even better, Lem can be very funny, The Futurological Congress, all brain material, super-science fiction stuff, under pressure, The Silent Star (1960), serialized on VKvideo, 5 part 1989 production, very popular for adaptations, a great book, second Lem, One Human Minute, grumpy about doing this one, it was available, The Cyberiad, last week, Jesse tried to pin it on everyone, we are all guilty, no one forced you to sign up for this, all your hands are bloody, the Wikipedia didn’t make it sound great, plot wrong, coming together right now, a little less than Paul, Australia or Poland, twitter is the best way to keep in touch, The Devil’s Elixirs by E.T.A. Hoffmann, in 58 parts, caveat under the audiobook, just during the high moments, an outcue and an incue, barring change, Bremen Soviet Republic, family secret, they didn’t talk about that, Connor is hard to get, 17 hours, Terence has nothing but time, Will studies science fiction right now, lifting weights, kettlebelling your brain, making critical claims, didn’t get the pseudonym of the dictator who went to Mars, always Pulpcovers, Scott Miller, dictator goes to Venus, his title was number 1, you have to infer it, the dictator is Weichsel, read the description of the tweet, Happy Ending by Fredric Brown and Mack Reynolds, whatever it was?, did Stalin like dogs?, Khrushchev? we are not destalinizing the dog space program, miniseries, a late night thing, the lady who plays the hologram, no excuses, Dark Carnivals: Modern Horror and the Origins of American Empire by W. Scott Poole, The Gun by Philip K. Dick, Murray Leinster had nothing to do with it, Mad Planet by Murray Leinster, The Liar is Jonathan’s idea, that was a robot, Demons Of Cthuhlu by Robert Silverberg, Time Is The Simplest Thing by Clifford D. Simak, up to speed on Fredric Brown, that’s a robot dude, that’s a fuckn robot, audiobook with terrible feedback distortion, the DRM?, you don’t have enough audiobook experience, an argument from authority vs. an argument from strength, a british fuckin robot, not a human, just listen, three tenths of a second you can tell, look at the hands, a lady drawing a sword, two handled sword, hilts on both ends, wait for the humans to do the human work, it’s wrong, my life is worth more, not going to pay for it anywhere, it’s not labour it’s love, you could eat toothpaste, fake sugar, aspartame, way too sweet, gotten sweeter, adulterating your toothpaste, toothpaste shouldn’t be delicious, baking soda and salt, East German toothpaste, read by a single narrator, this is where dictator Jesse comes in, can you have all the tools, a robot show, a good place to draw the line, a Margaret Atwood book, dramatic readings on LibriVox, almost incomprehensible Italian guy, Scott Miller looks up fuckin word, he’s a perfetionist, he’s a great voice, so good at producing his show, AI art, he spends a lot of time crafting some of them, Paul’s argument against AI art, not more than the usual mad at Jesse, busy being mad at Chengdu, if Paul was here, chat GPT style things, his argument, gives him a bad answer, you have to work with it, the way you play with your dolls, Lego Minifigures, going into a database of copyrighted materials, AI art is bad because it sucks not because its morally incapable of being good, if we were in power, AI generated picture, extra fingers, a stray head, Jonathan at some point robot narrators may become great, Gregg Margarite has good taste, if we can’t find a good Gregg Margarite, loved what he narrated, if you listen to Scott Miller on his livestreams, he brings the same interest and level of care to the production of his audiobooks, hired an artist, more difficult, Deviant Art, artists who are doing something approximate, rates and other stuff, if you objectively look at Jesse’s tweets: looks at art all day, oh lovely, appreciate/criticize, pretty good taste so far, nudity, sand princess, not nude enough, covering over her nipples is unfortunate, fuck off, artstation, that’s a good cover, hashtag leg cling, posted, tweeted, frickin pirates, hashtag leaked, reign over the museums, what’s allowed to be purchased to the state, handshake isn’t strong enough, the green creatures are around a woman doing things to her, doesn’t have the good taste that Jonathan has, exquisite taste, more minifigs than He-Man, allows them power, chat gpt gives you power, to really appreciate a good essay you have to be able to write one, when acting as an artist, planet’s worst actor, you appreciate good acting, good art, good writing, getting excited about it, little kids are excited about ai art, collage, on a book cover, ai art book covers are better than most industry book cover art prior to ai art, tin ear, the font matters, he’s Ukrainian and Jesse is pro-Russia, not a Nazi?, get out of your bubble, bud, embargo, we’re not going to stop Putin or Lukashenko, we’re not going to stop the Houthis by dropping bombs on them either, Cora doesn’t have sympathy for the Houthis, Appleonster, too cheesecakey, people need an eye for shit, you need to know what to look for, Uncle Horst, bought a bad car, overwhelmed by its beauty, beautiful mistake, ASAP, pirate website, step off, is it illegal?, you wouldn’t download, show me the law, taking a law course, terms of service, DRM interfaces with the law, a license, you can’t steal something that you can’t own, tab city, continuous defollowing, unfollowed 500 people/publications/organizations, mute people, muting Jesse, peak COVID, nothing but COVID, still coviding, we’re all going to die anytime soon now, maximum COVID panic, used to be the argument, verbal sparring, argumentation, loved university, meet a lot of young people, getting into fights, people who were right wing, confusing for people, that star trek planet, you’re not of the body, Operation: Annihilate, spore that go into people and betrazate them, racist, conservative, this or that, a fear of infection/contamination, precious bodily fluids, no brown grandkids, their dancing is pretty cool, put up a wall, dirty/icky/scary, show me the difference between that kind of people and people who are fearful of covid, left winger or right winger vs. liberal and conservative, calling people communists who are not communists, slurs, pro-vaxxer exists, pro-booster, this covid one isn’t very good, do your own research kinda guy, reading, Jesse is a fan, Hugo Book Club and Cora tweets, this is politics of being fans, not a fancast, calling people out, not playing the games, procasts, fanatic yes, fan no, a doomer account, sad, the only kid who masks at the tutoring place, white lady, corporate profits, can’t even process that, we are creating their future habits in realtime, COVID hysteria, long covid since 2020, the profit thing, open the businesses again, keeping the economy open, ruined people’s businesses, livelihoods, happily wears a mask indoors, bribed with hotwheel, people who are deluded, deluded people, seeing reality in the wrong way, the argument for licensing parents, every Jesse button, back to that well, Our Opinions [Are Correct], try not to follow accounts, mainstream comics, feels bad to unfollow people, I don’t value their voice, angry/annoyed/pissedoff, try to keep a good ratio, crown corporations and indian tribes, Jesse always was an indian, he just forgot about it, adopted, first nations, when you go to their indian reserve and you talk to the indians, some indians say first nations, Jesse’s sister, The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Jesse is Old Shatterhand, Cora is obliged to marry Jesse, Chief Dan George, what privileges does this get, nothing, hired actors to do acting, hiring indians for playing indians to play indians, CBC turned, a little tiny industry was cool, so Paul could get triggered, cool people, land acknowledgement at Davos, Turks and Vietnamese in Germany, Montagnards, pretending to serve food, authentic Chinese people, Italian ice cream parlours run by ice cream, ice cream culture, gelato, good ratio, still working on it, 2 to 1 almost, following 1700 people, bad for your brain, going looking for tweets more sketchy, three bad tweets in a row you’re a candidate, can’t call you out on the podcast, it’s rough out there, listen and learn things, interesting insight, what Puppies are, calling Jesse is not a fan, dealer’s room was the best part, something that will never happen, if they wanted to make the Hugos better they should not do media (tv shows and the movies), suggested for ages, coverage is only for dramatic presentation winners, send a representative, two ladies from Sony Ireland, animated Spider-Man movie, pointing towards an argument, undermines the whole prospect, do you need a Hugo?, Hugo Winner Cora Buhlert, a piece of land with two motorcycles, two cars and two Hugos on it, hanging on to the dream, indians rode around on horses, very few of us ride around on horses, if the Hugos are useful…, a reading list, as you evolved, David Brin’s [Startide Rising], when Harry Potter started getting nominated, late to the game, it all happened earlier than you know, bad book, badly written, stolen from Lester Del Rey, used to be interesting books, that was really good, associating Hugos with that, a learned response, The Wanderer by Fritz Leiber, the second weakest, based on the premise, They’d Rather Be Right by Mark Clifton and Frank Riley, Connie Willis syndrome, it’s her turn!, an Oscar thing, except of Ursula K. Le Guin, All My Cats Did This And That, such a baby, as the new adoptive parents to this new child (Will), The Demolished Man, yea or nay?, The Long Tomorrow, Double Star, The Big Time, A Case Of Conscience, alien Jesuits, Little Fuzzy with Jesuits, was an asshole, bounced off Blish, Starship Troopers (useful to have read), a boy book, not mandatory, you don’t get any vote, Heinlein was not a fascist, a military fetishist, overstated, A Canticle For Leibowitz, Stranger In A Strange Land, if you were a Heinlein character, the round ball that can make cute voices, teaching Will to fish, Clifford D. Simak, Waystation, not as good a book, Roger Zelazny’s This Immortal and Dune, giving people homework?, that’s not allowed anymore, didn’t get along with Dune, very dense, 24 different narrators, George Guidall, he’d be ideal, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, Manny is the non female robot, the guy with one arm, the head of the revolutionary cells, Heinlein is ridiculous, prison planet, awesome title, love the politics, endless speechifying is a problem, group [line] marriages, swinger club within walking distance, Lord Of Light, a lukewarm review, very 60s hippy dippy, short story, kill an old person to get an apartment, Stand On Zanzibar by John Brunner, so thick, The Left Hand Of Darkness, a big weighty tome, makes you grow up, bureaucratic country, listening to an old person, this novel is everything, Ringworld, the weight of that spinning object in place, let’s go to the ringworld, age-gap discourse, she’s so lucky she gets to have sex with him, just her luck, a very dirty young man, that’s fine, he was asian you’re not allowed to criticize him, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, a tough year, The Gods Themselves, three gendered aliens?, Robert Silverberg, Rendezvous With Rama, big dumb object, Time Enough For Love, Protector is so good, alien can’t do his job properly, chasing after the rumour, not enough people to protect chases down a rumour about an expedition to the far end of the galaxy, shows up in earther’s solar system, humans are not from earth, the soil on earth didn’t have the right stuff, a pupal stage (or zygote stage), tree of life root, power exoskeleton super-thinking machine, offspring, amazing idea, completely wrong, go with the premise, awesome hard SF, cool explanations for things, superinteresting, The Dispossessed, The Mote In God’s Eye, highly recommend both, Cora not the biggest Niven fan (because she’s a girl), Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, Old Man’s War by John Scalzi, The Stochastic Man, Alfred Bester, The Computer Connection, Inferno, Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm, Silent Spring, pollution, a Green party convention, Mindbridge, a clone novel, Man Plus, Shadrach In The Furnace, late Pohl vs. early Pohl, Gateway, crazy guy who needs therapy goes to therapy with AI doctor, disappointed, Lucifer’s Hammer, Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre, The Moon And The Sun, The Fountains Of Paradise, his short stories, his early novel, Eric S. Rabkin, good stuff in here, why is it a novel?, novels is where the money is, collaborations, terrible, The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge, Tiamat orbits a black hole, Hegemony, if it is okay, Ringworld Engineers, Beyond The Blue Event Horizon, C.J. Cherryh’s Downbelow Station, Claw Of The Conciliator by Gene Wolfe, Julian May’s The Many Colored Land, Project Pope by Simak, bias against Simak, Foundation’s Edge a book that should not exist, a book that need not be written, very hit and miss, Sword Of The Lictor, Friday by Heinlein, double strength muscular body, the worm turned, wtf?, Brin doesn’t work, nobodies doing nobodies, Anne McCaffrey, 15th Pern book, Robots Of Dawn, Millenium by John Varley, Tea With A Black Dragon by R.A. MacAvoy, an art book, he’s Clark Ashton Smith, art sounds, also cool heist plot, Job: A Comedy Of Justice, Integral Trees, year of Will’s birth, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, The Postman, Cuckoo’s Egg, Will is kinda corny, Footfall, teen in the 80s, Blood Music, the short story is even better, Greg Bear, Speaker For The Dead, Marooned In Realtime by Vernor Vinge, Uplift War, back to the shitty old business, coulda been summed up by Lester Del Rey in 15 minutes, When Gravity Fails, Mormons in space, dogs and apes, dolphins is Brin, The Faithful, as an idea man, he’s ripping off H.G. Wells, hold my beer dead guys, reading screens to the audience, he thinks he’s a the supergenius, doing bad work, why awards are dangerous, put bad thoughts into their heads, triggers Jesse more than doomers, Cyteen, bounced off, first third, masterpiece, most ambitious, I’m like a person who like is going to die, a cloning book, over the course of 22 hours, a very dystopian book, lots of unhappiness, lots of everything, 1990, Dan Simmon’s Hyperion, turned really weird, the sequel might have been better than the first one, steal their titles from poems, stealing the structure, it didn’t have anything to say, it has no message, it didn’t have an idea it was exploring, the characters were interesting, when you’re watching a new tv show, ooh this is promising, try not to get tricked, X-Files used to not do that, weird cases of the week are very rewatchable, the lore shit, Lois McMaster Bujold’s The Vor Game, a series of wins, she’s a good writer, Falling Free, space unions, set in the same universe, the modern era, where things show, A Fire Upon The Deep and The Doomesday Book, what I’m hearing is you hate Willises, cut her down to size, needlessly long, oh Mr. Dunworthy, all her characters are british, she has good ideas, needs an editor carving out big section, [Bellwether] the same topic over and over again, girls go back in time and the Blitz, can’t connect to her, some hot officer, very romantic for a girl, an observation, 1993, a big change in publishing in the 1980s, a big fuckin honker, why this happened in publishing, price of paper, hit a certain price point, spinner racks, longer and thicker, the airport bookstore model, Tom Clancy, James Michener, John Jakes, Kim Stanley Robinson, don’t pay attention, scientistis talking to each other, Beggars In Space by Nancy Kress, an evil book, an evil writer, evil readers, Virtual Light, Mirror Dance, Neal Stephenson, Robert J. Sawyer, doesn’t do characters well, The Diamond Age, nanobot lung, more series, Elizabeth Moon, Starplex, a Star Trek novelization, an episode of Star Trek Continues, addictive series, they won’t punch you in the guts, there’s one missing, a better book?, Forever Peace, more mature, Frameshift, Michael Swanwick, To Say Nothing Of The Dog, the subtitle of Three Men In A Boat by Jerome K. Jerome, kinda Jeevesy, through Heinlein, Connie Willis, Have Space Suit, Will Travel, read this book, Kim by Rudyard Kipling, a movie, filmed in Germany, on LibriVox, revisiting it, post modern age, Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, Darwin’s Radio, unreadable, height of Harry Potter hype, Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson, Calculating God, he used to write science fiction, a lot of people are not science fiction people, fakes, she loves science fiction, Robert J. Sawyer is a science fiction writer, just the ideas, that’s it, nothing else, Neil Gaiman, American Gods, Perdido Street Station, ends with an invite to the next book, done with Sawyer, Paladin Of Souls, Charles Stross, Susanna Clarke, stopping to pay attention, two Irons, met three of these people, China Miéville, Michael Chabon, diminshing returns, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, mainstream stuff leaning in the science fiction direction, The Graveyard Book, Paolo Bacigalupi, you guys hate liberals, The City And The City, Ann Leckie, never have to deal with Hugos ever again, Three Body Problem, N.K. Jeminson again, Mary Robinette Kowal, Murderbots, Arkady Martine, T. Kingfisher, reverse order, retro Hugos, Farenheit 451, a different unimportant novel Z For Zachariah, The Caves Of Steel, heavy quite short, More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon, do your own research, really great actors, just forced, hammerlock, you’re in a vulnerable place in your life, make you more manly, correct and cornily done ending, an interesting think, a learning experience, Hal Clement in 1954, a pretty good list, Childhood’s End, Juett told Will about it, the first version is public domain, 1951, whatever stupid don’t care, just fascist white men winning, Farmer In The Sky beat The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, Heinlein for the win, C.S. Lewis’ most famous novel, Maissa not Will, sad story, you still have an opportunity to read this excellent book The Dying Earth by Jack Vance, a fixup, super episodic, The Mule, The World Of Null-A, always a complete mess, a weaker year, 1945, Leigh Brackett’s Shadow Over Mars, Sirius: A Fantasy Of Love And Discord, Brackett over Stapledon, Fritz Leiber’s Conjure Wife, Hermann Hesse, Weapon Shops, 1943, Beyond This Horizon, The Uninvited by Dorothy MacArdle, Donovan’s Brain, move on from the Lensman, second stage lensmen, lost their legs now they’re slugging around, 1941, Slan by A.E. Van Vogt, a lot of people have not turned against fans are slans, planets run by women are better than planets run by men, this yes (evil), stay on your meds, final year, 1939, T.H. White’s The Sword In The Stone, Legion Of Time, Out Of The Silent Planet is a blather is space book, best off when it doesn’t happen, I was reading this great book Dad had given me…, make note, Narnia reference, Enid Blyton, court judgement for fraud case, how many of the guys are innocent?, actual numbers, what percentage are guilty?, sneak over to your purse, zero percent innocent?, Rawandan refugee, 4% innocent, most English speakers are guilty, illegal fireworks, drug cases, obviously guilty, prices.

Return From The Stars by Stanislaw Lem

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #772 – READALONG: A Meeting With Medusa by Arthur C. Clarke

The SFFaudio PodcastJesse, Scott Danielson, and Terence Blake talk about A Meeting With Medusa by Arthur C. Clarke

Talked about on today’s show:
under heavy pressure, Playboy, December 1971, the audiobook, superfamous, The Star and Nine Billion Names Of God, A Fall Of Moondust, Dolphin Island, a middle school library, an introduction to hard science fiction, all about characters in relationships, a mystery involved, a disaster movie, what he’s really good at, the twist at the end, sprinkled the hints, the paintings in Playboy, a hot air balloon, multiple gases, a giant medusa, aka a jellyfish, Jupiter, on Earth, the story this is most similar to by Arthur Conan Doyle, the Sherlock Holmes Professor Challenger guy, The Horror Of The Heights, pilots go up and disappear, crushed, giant jellyfish in the upper atmosphere story, Queen Elizabeth IV, an abrupt end, the sequel inside of it, awesome opening scene, imagery and everything, the shocking end of that section, really good, among the best Scott has ever read of Clarke’s, the structure hurts it, the beautiful writing, a bit of symbolism, an idea punch that hits you out of science fiction and into philosophy, he’s doing propaganda, he don’t cheat at all, is there an Arthur C. Clarke story where the knowledge of the solar system at the time of writing is ignored to tell an idea, he won’t write a story unless it’s plausible, petty concerns of being a human, deep time and cosmic depths, what does that make you, the Olaf Stapledon thing, characters, the guy in here, important to tell the story, solid, now he’s very solid, concentric circles of sense of wonder, a little bit in the future, almost cinematic action, some of the phrases are ambiguous, going on another mission, lightning reflexes, reconstructed him, after they reconstructed me, we’re just not fast enough, tai chi teacher, not explicit, his pilot’s reflexes, he doesn’t say this is the murderer, when they put me together again, the surgeons made some improvements, this is one of them, set more than 100 years in the future, treaty on first contact, the line that blew me away, the Mao Tse Tung in the American museum, what?, Americans got over their hatred of red China and think Mao is a hero as the rightly should?, the San Diego naval museum, war trophy, do you want to make friends with the Russians?, name an aircraft carrier after Stalin, or Ho Chi Mihn, named after people now, destroyers are named after cities, how do you embrace other countries?, incorporate their heroes, adopting Greek stuff, they’re ours now, we’re the inheritors of the Romans and the Greeks, it shook me to my core, what a good writer he is, it’s a good one, another ship that he named the Kon-Tiki, one man across the biggest sea, the prime directive in this, amongst six or more other phrases, Asimov, encounters with the American Indians and Africa, three laws, how to be in the world, don’t lie, what’s going to make you happy, start with that, it causes problems, fuck you is not a lie, be polite?, what would the basis of the prime directive, the categorical imperative, don’t use others as a means to an end, a negative, let them get used to you, not the Star Trek one, they break it all the time for purposes of plot, there’s something behind it, those are how you should act as a person, just replace the word robot with human, a human must consider other except where injure, my feelings are hurt, fuck your feelings, a person must protect his or her own existence, interesting application, we’re not robots, methods and plans of dealing with other people, taking stuff coming out of philosophy, parallel evolution, Asimov’s fourth law, the zeroth law, technically fourth, The Evitable Conflict, 1950, Chairman Mao, Nixon goes to China, detente, because Sri Lanka (or India) had to play a role, a tornado touched down, doesn’t cheat at all, an airship book, more of a hot air balloon than anything else, hot hydrogen of course, thinking through the scenario, the twist at the end that brings it up, this guy’s immortal?, a ship of Theseus scenario, rolls away at a calm 30 km per hour, 7 feet tall, to give him self-confidence, feeling separate from humanity, the ambassador between the ones made of carbon and the ones made of silicon, the aliens, radio dish heads, are they intelligent, I’m convinced that Medusa knew your blindspot, hunting, the intelligent species must be the predator species, a feint, a lightning bolt, why not, up for grabs, the aimed at manta fell like stone, Jupiter is a lightning bolt god, when we see him at the end, he’s turned to silicon, identified with his metallic aspect, Medusified, plummeting manta, I’ve studied a lot of jellyfish, Juliana and Luke on the Science Fiction Book Review Podcast, octopus books, a Ray Nayler book, spiders, eight-legged non-human creatures, the length of the story that’s required to do the job, an hour and half, somewhere in between, two parts, a view of humanity, superchimps/simps, clothes, slaves, brought out of mothballs, a POV of Earth from someone not interested in it, be a pioneer, no one could go, a super-pioneer, why this book exists, the opposite of the moonbus book, trying to conform, people want shitty romance cheating on your wife disaster relatable, I’m more like this guy, Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World, almost none of it is that interesting, his brain level, he’s just not interested in the normal things people are interested in, exploring the ocean, so interesting down there, Jacques Cousteau, collecting notes on hailing frogs, not the normal science fiction writer, maybe Olaf Stapledon, his personal life, not interested in slow pitch, Arthur C. Clarke goes to hell, develop a deep philosophy to deal with it, Howard Falcon, like HAL, Jesse I’m afraid that’s not possible, HAL has conflicting orders, The Sentinel, wow!, full of philosophical things, sense of wonder things, it’s all earned, if this then that, Criminolly, garbaugust, worldbuilding, there’s no distinction between science fiction and fantasy right now, cool ideas about how the world works, tried a few more, testing the theory, wanting to be engaged, turning into Jesse, why we have to be so enjoying about terms, The Kaiju Preservation Society, infodumps about made up facts, could you explore it?, honest, solid, he doesn’t cheat, he’s standing on what he knows, realities that might be interesting explored, he’s not a cheater, when Larry Niven cheats it’s so he can get to another thing, twists something, a third of the episodes, are there any Star Trek episodes that are hard SF, the closest they come is The Galileo Seven, a rip off of The Cold Equations, Spock gambles, there’s a percentage chance there’s a passing alien spaceship, why did I read this story, have their cake and eat it too, angry fights, be hard about these things, you inhuman monster, Spock’s being very logical, fan service episodes, not memorable episodes, social soft science, what should our relationships be, the good stuff, people watched a lot of television and movies with spaceships in it, wouldn’t it be cool if, aliens, almost none, Childhood’s End, even The Star, doing soft science fiction, why I don’t like science fiction and fantasy books, fantasy is a whole other thing, show me where Ted Chiang cheats, an interesting thought, The Merchant And The Alchemist’s Gate, Howard Falcon was unloveable, a novel called The Medusa Chronicles by Alastair Reynolds and Stephen Baxter, a sequel to The Time Machine, Terry Pratchett, the childhood of Howard Falcon, when Star Trek goes back and explains the early life of Kirk and Spock, a fallacy involved, for what purpose, what does it matter?, unless there’s an idea there, why it’s shit, this episode we find out Kirk has a brother, why?, a massacre on some planet, just to raise the stakes, to make the Holocaust personal, to do a technical job, a Chekov’s gun on the wall, Spock having eyelids, to press the reset button, a technical requirement of a show where it’s not serialized, Vulcan nerve pinch, the ears are not what make Mr. Spock Mr. Spock, an emotional being controlling his emotions, him being a spawning salmon Theodore Sturgeon episode (Amok Time), every time they bring up a Vulcan, there’s exceptions, response video, Michael K. Vaughn, he has good taste, a good youtuber, people say why don’t you, here’s a recommendation, seem to be following Luke Burrage’s podcast, a big thing in France, amongst the aficionados, how intelligent it is, boring, The Mountain And The Sea, quite into philosophy, coming at it from a philosophical side, setting the scene before anything noticeably strange happened, how long it is, judging books by their cover and how long they are, bad cover, does it need to be this long, poingant and mind expanding, the UK does better covers than the USA, the UK edition, RayNaler.net, translated into French, thought it was brilliant, June 2023, Cthulhu, Japanese style, maybe this book is necessary, another cover with more tentacles, almost doesn’t ever talk about tentacles, cosmic horror = tentacles, Antarctica, the melting and stuff, a giant frozen 17 tall penguin, Tekeli-li!, philosophies of writing, Robert E. Howard is writing for money, very successful as a pulp writers, 4 times as big, Lovecraft doesn’t write stories that don’t need to be written, this is what is selling right now, even when he’s doing very pulpy stuff, things that are not needed for the story (to make the cover), a born storyteller, writing story, they like stories too, they don’t have the chops, people who won’t write for the commercial market, antagonistic to commercialism, Clarke is a bit of both, very elderly collaborations, sullying his legacy, The Light Of Other Days, very disenchanted with Arthur C. Clarke, and Isaac Asimov, Silverberg, cash-ins, a reader need not be subject to the whims of the author, because your friend wrote the book, fuck you, go back to basic principles, Clarke has a purity in him at times, Bob Shaw, an expansion, Light of Other Days, the New York Times lie list, Talisman by Peter Straub and Stephen King, Black House, shouldn’t be trying or able, necessary compared to Asimov/Silverberg, Clarke/Baxter, Olaf Stapledon wrote this, he didn’t write for cash, the unique fluke, King’s psychology, King has a limiter or a governor, he doesn’t use it for evil (or for good), hurts his own work, a fantasist of childhood and American life, a fantasy writer, we just don’t think of him that way, “fantasy realm”, The Goblin Emperor book, secondary world fiction, worldbuilding is mostly bad, silly worldbuilding, 2001: A Space Odyssey, psychedelic experience, intelligent worldbuilding, to fill pages, fall apart in a mush, a speculative component, the sensory impact of the trip, highly informed, standing on what is know and speculating, if there was life it would be in this zone, that kaiju book of Scalzi’s, wonder about your purpose, none of this is helping me in my life, what happens during the game, processing a magazine, sitting too long, certain number of hours, that’s fun, but it ain’t a novel, it ain’t good science fiction, what would our guy from youtube think about Philip K. Dick, make a magic system work, things are happening because they have to, if time started going backwards, still in the Roman Empire, spins up a world in order to explore it (not to fill pages), his novels are all worse than his short stories, just better, his short stories are better than that book (The Man In The High Castle), a children’s book, Galactic Pot-Healer, work and being out of work, a frontier where people are challenged to find meaningful work, that gunfight was really cool, some people act like robots, unemotional or mean, is sex with co-workers cool?, very fun and very rich, he didn’t need a setting for some characters, if your story doesn’t have idea at its core it’s not science fiction, imagine with ideas, live with ideas, a Philip K. Dick essay, Olaf Stapledon writes big long thick books that are science fiction but not novels, that’s interesting, how do you do that, a history of the last and first men, like reading a whole bunch of Clarke stories, unique in fiction, poor guy, there’s a lot not to enjoy, How To Build A Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later, until you toss it across the room, a good theory of fantasy, fantasy is pretty big, the hardest of the hard, uploading and downloading your brain, it’s not, Ringworld, a whole bunch of gimmes, smart aliens, an aggressive species, they generate a D&D party, the Larry Niven character, just an excuse, a gravitational feeling thing, complete bullshit book, everything is fiction, it would just fall apart, 100% cheater and it works because he has an idea at the core and everything else is to get to that idea, he cheats in every possible way, Clarke has a very different philosophy, even in A Fall Of Moondust, not his best book, a bunch of boring characters, people get lead astray, super-good, a lot of Silverberg lately, Tor Doubles, read about a third of half of each of those books, a Silverberg novella, especially with his novels, he’s a contemplative dude, he’s sorta artsy and literary, he likes old books, Heart Of Darkness on another planet, elephants for the economy, sex on the brain, human relationships, the worldbuilding is to get to the transcendent point, The Book Of Skulls, being a good writer helps, Passengers, what is he famous for?, made Majipoor maybe?, Lord Valentine’s Castle, Nightwings, doesn’t have a killer book, big stature for a guy who doesn’t have a killer book, Neuromancer by William Gibson, rather than the fixup, his standalone short stories are really good, Phases Of The Moon by Isaac Asimov, a writing machine, wrote for money, still alive and not licensing his name out, 2010, now that he’s not poor, not getting his pension padded, good story, good writer, Arthur C. Clarke, he knows what to do, Farnham’s Freehold, he’s gonna rant about it, it’s not as bad as you think, Paul, oh my god, at the time, Westlake, revving back up, The Colorado Kid illustrated edition, Justified: City Primeval, there are character in it, Elmore Leonard short story, Tommy Patrick Ryan, some random guy on the internet, through Eric, 11th ever published story, readability through the fucking roof, so much characterization, got worse at the end, No Man’s Land by John Buchan, early evening, a reasonable hour of the evening, save the hunger to be angrier, approaching it satisfied, Houston, Houston, Do You Read?, Ace Double, a subpodcast of only Tor Doubles, we started with the first one, The Screwfly Solution, The Girl Who Was Plugged In, Run For The Stars by Harlan Ellison, savage, a juvenile delinquent in space, clairvoyant ability, very Harlan Ellison, A Boy And His Dog, Eye For Eye by Orson Scott Card, The Last Castle by Jack Vance, The Dragon Masters, I love the lengthy, Ill Met In Lankhmar, Vintage Season, The Sword Of Rhiannon, Ursula K. Le Guin, Kate Wilhelm, Kim Stanley Robinson short stuff, they don’t list the table of contents, The Ugly Little Boy, Edmond Hamilton, Screwtop, Enemy Mine, Hardfought by Greg Bear, an idea man, he shoulve had a badge that said “idea man”, The Blind Geometer, Fritz Leiber, Universe by Robert A. Heinlein, fantasy, Damon Knight, Icehenge, Press Enter by John Varley, Death Of Doctor Island also The Island Of Doctor Death, Karen Haber, Home Is The Hangman by Roger Zelazny, Wheels Of If, Gene Wolfe, The Book Of The Short Sun, Conjure Wife is on LibriVox, Ben Tucker is good, a five hour book, unleash hell, we got this in our back podcast, shownoting, back in the day, Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle, Naxos, the torch of science, a metabook, 1831 novels, so many good ones, Scottish essayist, Fraser’s Magazine, purports to be a commentary, Godborn Devilsdung, a book review of that book, transcendentalist, German idealism, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Immanuel Kant, there are things in themselves, things as we perceive them, the laws of our mind, ways round, suppressing different premises, this book sounds really good, in a funny way, Johnathan Swift, Tristam Shandy, Laurence Sterne, founding text and serious organizing study of clothing, fashion theory, sartorial ambitions, clearly a book we both need to read, my all time favourite book, this is one of the books that makes life worth living, only seeing through clothes can we understand life, not composted, a half-mad saint, 320 pages, in the PDF, the torch of science, not the smallest cranny or doghole can remain unilluminated, what is he famous for?, some sort of hero worship, a precursor to the superman, the great providential men who make history, Hayy Ibn Yaqdhan by Ibn Tufail, like Tarzan, most translated, 1,000 Nights, the dream one, very solid, very Borgesian, Borges never wrote a collab book to make money, Frank Herbert son, Tom Clancy ghost author to write Borges books, a funny tweet thread, Hobbits and wizards, good morning as in fuck off, Justin fucked every Canadian for 20 more fucking years, he’s bought and paid for and corrupt as fuck, persist, not a big damn hero, very bad man, make some coffee.

Playboy, December 1971 - A Meeting With Medusa by Arthur C. Clarke

Playboy, December 1971 - A Meeting With Medusa by Arthur C. Clarke

Playboy, December 1971 - A Meeting With Medusa by Arthur C. Clarke

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #762 – READALONG: Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #762 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Evan Lampe, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Manfred Weichsel talk about Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein

Talked about on today’s show:
get people to believe he’s Terence, J stands for Jonathan, Manfred sounded cooler, just change your last name to Scalzi and all the blessing will come, you can replace Heinlein, this John Scalzi book called Sixth Column, serialized in Astounding, not based on a Heinlein idea at all, the original idea was Campbell’s, all the problems it has are Heinlein’s fixings, Jack Vance shitting on Campbell, psychics and telepathy, well done for a bad idea, not one of his best, major works, thought experiment, opposite thought experiment, Revolt In 2100 in reverse, theocracy, make people believe, If This Goes On is Revolt In 2100, revolts against people in power, revolution, fighting against the forces of prophet, pan-Asian tyranny, motives of the character, technomage weapon, falls for a girl, the movement culture makes the ideology, the change in him, less emotional growth, learns to become a rebel, how people get radicalized: through women, against god, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, the conspiracy element, the secret society within and a false leader, Adam Selene, Mike, the disciple is coming, enjoyed the book, one of the strongest competency fantasies, this Ledbetter effect, what a Campbell move, they’re genetically different from us, isn’t the US filled with other than white people too?, race is a thing, in the original texts, the whites vs. the pan-Asians, setting from Asian to not Asian, tone down some of the binary, unfixable, Anson MacDonald was racist, tiny brain – galaxy brain, old Heinlein, troll way you want to do it, changes, some city has been atom-bombed, considering the year, it starts when the war was over, we’re the werewolves of this Nazi empire, individual stories were fighting, you can make the argument they’re still there, on the Moon?, still guys in the mountains, people being killed into the late-1940s, ideological true believers, a hand that touched them to make them military, an uprising, a prison revolt, start a religion to solve a problem, a very American move, the turbans and the staffs, the beards, he stacked the deck, pan-Asianism, this less is less bullshit, the pan-Asian movement, Noble Drew Ali, Moorish Science, fezzes, little Hitler mustache, if this was happening in your community, government did stuff, the Black Muslim movement, Nat Turner, a movement out of Japan, the Black Dragon Society, take over Asia, Pan-Asian Orientalism, they’re trying to create a force against European colonization of Asia, unequal treaties, China, an attempt to unify counties under threat, nationalism, a congruency there, civic nationalist ideas, anschluss, an Ottoman identity, Pan-Africanists, Sun Yat-sen, the Asia for the Asians idea, largely a creation of the Japanese, the Japanese Empire, we have to fight the imperial power, they’re bad like us, as a way to avoid war and fight the west, Manchurians, national ambitions, disconnect between political realities and what unites us in people’s minds, post-colonial African, a pan-Germanist, a pan-Europeanist, subject to the master race, propaganda to that extent, not serious about pan-Asianism, Savage Headhunters, Shinto, edge out the other religions, atrocities, the Rape of Nanking, they weren’t being altruistic, the psychology of creating this book, it’s the Japanese, a god emperor somewhere in Asia, they conquered India, this pan-Asian government, the Soviets, Korea, set in the future, flying vehicles, The Final Blackout by L. Ron Hubbard, 1940, the end of the world, Europe is off the map, Beyond Thirty by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the South Pole, a similar setup, blackout and curtain, blackout curtains, they’re out of the game, a country knocked out of the Risk game, right before the novel begins, the United States is washed up, a plothole in the book, buildings, people walking around, it wasn’t bombs, a electromagnetic weapon, Washington is gone, the last flight out, Cheyenne Mountain, where NORAD is, Colorado Springs, tentacles, a fun book, the swami hats, the halos, he can sell it to Campbell, Heinlein operating at the Anson MacDonald level, early Heinlein comedy, the great God Motar, it got the cover, the conversation with the prince, the Divine Hand, silly and racist, funny dialogue, if Japan wins, states make nations, a national identity, folklore, flags, constitutions, anthems, winning in Asia, controlling this vast empire, give it enough time, a white republic became multi-ethnic, the original illustrations, the troops look Japanese, the Hand looks Manchu, scholar hat, more Chinese than Japanese, Mongolian, mongoloid, the five races theory, they’ve got a religion too, a divinity aspect, they don’t understand American religion, just use Christianity, Japanese spies, Francis Xavier, Commodore Perry, the Non-Intercourse Act, Trinity RPG, why can’t you close yourself off, capitalism won’t let you, the Khmer Rouge, the 1st world, the 2nd world, and the 3rd world, unequal treaties, you’re trading with us now, we set the terms of the trade, gunships, they are really good at this colonialism, free trade, snuggle up, after a war, more unequal than others, Cuba is not allowed to trade with the United States, open up countries to trade, many port cities, everybody get their own port, a lot of dissatisfaction, you are the slave class now, protectorate, brutal, this isn’t as racist as it could be, these two groups think race is a thing, you have to buy in, a biological fact, what the theme is, defeated by your prejudices, binary racist skeleton plot, what leads to decline and downfall is a set of prejudices, a native American born Asia, subject to the ray, Heinlein doing his Heinlein thing, I’m different from him, so about racist, police are the same everywhere, will they stay bribed?, pedagogical motifs, people are prejudiced, the summary of the first 2 parts, the Blitzkrieg of the United States Empire, the Citadel, military research, Ardmore works hard, Colonel Calhoon, believes himself to be Mota, or Motak?, he’s John W. Campbell, complete atomic power, selective death ray, a general solution of unified field, well behaved slaves require religion, encouragement and disencouragement, render under Caesar, African American religion, religion is a delusion, Stranger In A Strange Land, so much time focusing on religion, it’s a fake from the beginning, he’s Jesus, the disciple depicted, black and a thousand feet tall, Joseph Smith (not Jesus), doing more than one thing, Valentine Michael Smith, the disciple of Jesus, vanishing people, he dies like Jesus, stoned to death, but didn’t come back, the Mormons get a very favourable mention, a good version of religion, practical, the business aspect, they’ve got good business sense, an infinite money generator, Robert Heinlein being a gold bug, a DC superhero character from the 40s, Doctor Fate, The Flash with a WWI helmet, Babylon 5, not for religious purposes, a Mormon-like branch of Christianity, mumbo jumbo, invent and remember, a short novel, people offended by this, an evangelical branch of Christianity, ripped from daily headlines, slot-machines in their megachurches, come die with us anyway, people die for Christianity all the time, there is a third rail in the United States, American friends, there are Canadian religious people, tied to the land in the U.K., writing for a very secular Science Fiction magazine, make up a Christian religion and say it’s all fake, people would be very offended, when the Beatles compared themselves to Jesus, Dungeons & Dragons, third hand worried, when the panic came out, an American media thing, spill-over, the one with Harry Potter, if it gets to be a big enough interest, having fun, all the names, the other aspects of Mota, reading this in the 1940s, smile slyly inside, he’s being sneaky but I get it, it works as an anti-religious polemic, what makes this a lesser book, if Evan got his away, people would think about it in a different way, tying Americanism to Christianity, John W. Campbell’s All, racialism, using the dopey religion, so religious they’d be wrong about using Christianity, the conversations with the Christian believers, wrestling with using this fake religion, so contrived, For Us, The Living, just ignore Europe, the religions of Iran or Turkey, Chinese didn’t know that Americans were Christian, an Iron Curtain around the United States, closed off from the rest of the world, Donald Trump, build a wall around America, consume itself in war, Heinlein has no interest in Europe, Hitler, Medieval European, a feudal Catholicism, like monks living in cells, armour, nuns, charismatic Christianity, Job: A Comedy Of Justice, literalist, the Republican party, living in Job’s universe, atomic power, the serial we are about to read, fair probability, the effectiveness of invention, plausible, the whole setup is wholly implausible, invasion literature, if we had this setup, so many coincidences, they just happen to…, so constructed so as to be not one of his best book, whoever that is, definitely Heinlein, biggest problems, general acceptance of drugs, magic, the drugs only have the effect they say on the label, you have to take sleeping pills, also I don’t you getting up, konking you out, a naivete about drugs, good healthy skepticism, what happens right after these pre-WWII books, a think tank to help win the war, L. Sprague DeCamp, commissioned as an officer, pressure suits, Astounding [by Alec Nevalla-Lee], is the tech ripe, tech-bro, is there government funding for this thing, Larry Niven and Benford, rods from god, beat the Soviets, same thing, let’s think up scenarios, now everybody has to take their shoes off forever, you could combine liquids and make a bomb, endemic and super dangerous, the Slan effect, reading a Philip K. Dick novel, now I can run the world, that guy is weird, what maleness means, maybe children are smarter than adults, principles, all you have to do is take your hypnodrugs and you can learn languages, he can’t see it about himself, spin-up, he’s wonderful, it’s hokum, man can he write, criticism of Heinlein, sexual politics, the collapse of America, not for the betterment, to undermine things, the society of Friday, Balkanized, royals have moved to Canada, California, Ottawa, never a threat to world peice, a planetary society, the beanstalk in Kenya, she’s the James Bond working for a secret organization, tied to Gulf, in the future of Gulf, a take that at his own work, takes his own piss, time travel pussy one: The Door Into Summer, why Evan needed to do Heinlein for his podcast, he’ll mention other countries, he’s trying to bomb America, bombing the Taj Mahal, mostly he just cares about the United States, practically the United States, he’s so smart and good at spinning up, no impact with working at the navy yard, the Edison trust goes on, like G.E. or Bell, Bell Labs, their existence is there because they’re a trust, wild speculation, you’re given the monopoly so you have to give back, he’s got transmutation, lead into gold, poison gas into oxygen, there’s a change in energy, win WWII with alchemy, a broad comedy, very comedic, forgettable Heinlein, religion as a mask for science, power-play, Isaac Asimov’s Foundation, Dune, is the religion fake in Dune?, planted, a psychology of the masses, staff officers, soft sciences, planted the seeds for that chapters, precedents, Orphans Of The Sky, Universe, the science became a religion, gravity as a metaphor, a secret society, long and too big, the concept is really cool, he takes the long view, six months?, how many years are they at this?, couple years at most, he has only three issues to write it, where did this idea start in American literature, Mark Twain’s criticism of the Christian scientists, diet books, Extract From Captain Stormfield’s Visit To Heaven biblical justification, post-apocalyptic, what’s the name of that story?, many different satires of religion, hardly anybody there speaks English, they jailed his corpse, are they believing their own shit, Theosophy, L. Frank Baum, you can’t say I’m an atheist, having an argument ready, what’s a Christian, take you to their temple, what’s that?, judo flipped them, join someone else’s services, soul-searching, doing good, whatever names doesn’t matter, unity of all faiths, a scientific based version of the theosophical ideology, Muslim cleric in a Jewish temple, the audiences take it, the scientiologiston the street corner, we welcome Christian, play to whatever, they don’t start with you’re wrong, I worship Mithra, The Altar by Robert Sheckley, Two Dooms by C.M. Kornbluth, half-colonized America, a very C.M. Kornbluth story, if Weinbaum had lived, could have been bigger than Heinlein, nobody’s trying to say Scalzi’s the new Weinbaum, Zelazny death anniversary thread, google nGram, his works aren’t in print, locked away under copyright, H. Beam Piper is bigger than it ever was, the evidence is huge but Paul is not convinced, Scalzi wrote a reboot of the public domain book, after 1963, sinecure, go to youtube and look at all the views and compare to sales on audible, it’s huge, I only read free, free as I can do anything I want with it, a certain racial slur against African Americans, the good stuff rises, peter want the better stuff, the bad covers on Amazon are commercial, excised, taking offense by being babied, flatfaces, yellow monkeys, aliens, slanty-eyes, slanties, made that up for this book?, made up slurs are less problematic, thought experiment, Farnham’s Freehold next, pan-Africans invading the United States, The New Sun, we’ve got some white guys we need to hate, the token guy, Heinlien is anti-racist, the character is in the serial, who would die from their beam, the antidote to the racism in this book, lifeboat rules, a prejudice you have to overcome, just take this pill, go in with a ray and kill cleanly, soul-searching, get over your prejudices, promoted instead of fired, took the black pill, have you ever butchered a hog, Heinlein wrote these lines, pages and pages of dialogue Heinlein talking to himself, walking down the street of Des Moines, roll tanks, you’re a slave now, handing out gold, one foot in the Great Depression, soup kitchens, poor relief, Beyond The Horizon, in this era of his career, the changing nature of the stake, ambivalent, biases, dismissing female priests, can’t wear the beard, the oppressor, comfort women, mobilizing the women, traditional, burning the past, no research in it, hara-kiri everything’s to do with face, white women turned into comfort women, we need to liberate women, all hands on deck, salable chattel, 1911, anarchist feminist Chinese radical, comfort stations, a discussion in Japan about the new woman, changing the roles of women, the audience for this, written real fast, writing so much, chronological read through of Heinlein, the development of ideas, not an issue in 1941, the future history stories are under Heinlein, a rule throughout magazines, whole issues written by Robert Silverberg, we need more L. Sprague DeCamps, guess Caleb Saunders is getting a cheque today, recruiting guys, almost every issue, one year of Astounding, off magazines, a quarter of the way through, a future history laid out, And He Built A Crooked House, competence fantasy, Elsewhen, if I was running the war, Civilization with infinite gold or tanks, fun but weak, a pressor beam a sucker beam, the stacks were stacked against, the chess move, god damn them, enjoyable but a weak book, Paul didn’t enjoy reading this book?, the gun one, compare, by Paul, going at it on Twitter, it’s about guns, head and shoulders above this one, silly, a paycheck, I have this story here, unsalable, doesn’t stop him, Campbell’s writing was never amazing, maybe you could do something with this, more ambitious, social credit, post-scarcity, honor culture, a gun controlled society, cultural regulation, also not one of his best, one of the best of his early works, The Green Hills Of Earth, the novels that go down hill, crackin little ideas, he excels at novels, Friday is a really good book, bulky, falling in love with your rapist, a relationship with the guy, some mitigating fiction, your puritan locked down guy, a bit strange, a minor bug, Heinlein is at his best when he’s challenging you, shallow appreciation of Starship Troopers, the classroom stuff, arguing against, engage, come to an agreement, some candidate for the evil party, raise the age to 25, as a platform, get more people not to vote, does the Army vote for Biden?, the cultural perception, officers vs. non-officers, pro-war vs. anti-war, what’s the purpose, explicitly telling you this is for engagement, that speaks very well to the society, indoctrinate, in comparison, to write about his present, a veteran teaching the class, teacher pay, anything that will disrupt, learning things, conformity, marks are a way of controlling, we gotta do way more of that, a weird book, a classroom setting, a very complex book, a poll before the election, the 2020 election, the Army voted for Biden, go talk to the people, 2016, a choice between warhawks, Paul needs to flee, Clark Ashton Smith, a google ngram, you see the spikes, Edgar Allan Poe compared to H.P. Lovecraft, work it to make it work, Silverberg’s Downward To The Earth, 1981, Majipoor, throw in a contemporary of both of them, his presence doesn’t drop like Zelazny’s, H.G. Wells, pushing people’s buttons, not as controversial, challenging, Harlan Ellison, mostly a TV guy, mostly essays, Edgeworks, really bad press, full of typos, shoulda been smarter, reprint rights, number one is Ray Bradbury, he’s part of the curriculum, book guy, if you wanna be big you have to be mandated, Bradbury is safe and tame, he’s not great, he’s good, he’s got real good stuff, The Martian Chronicles, The Veldt, A Sound Of Thunder, he’s all about the feeling, he’s nostalgic, his ideas always have to do with feelings, what makes Fahrenheit 451, books are good, he’s in the slicks, his novels come later, his first movie is so flat, Rocket Ship Galileo, the worst Heinlein movie is the one he was involved with, was he smoking, Waldo, Magic Inc., a messy publication history, a lot of fixups, The Penultimate Truth, the Virginia Collection, full of typos, archive.org, The Unpleasant Profession Of Jonathan Hoag, at a certain point, I love Heinlein, I hate him, I love him so much, wow!, the market is drying up a little bit, that furious pace, that was his job, he was a fiction writer, Hal Clement was a teacher, Searchlight, All You Zombies, he loves the drugs, By His Bootstraps, how can he be so trusting of drugs?, he’s a tech bro, isn’t it the same worldview?, they’re the problem solvers, COVID on the brain, ivermectin, Jesse gets credit for something?, not that long ago in the 1970s and the 1980s, Alzheimer’s vs. dementia, cancer’s an old one, cancer is fundamental, the chances get greater and greater, a Whiggish view of science, revised or updated, why be so arrogant about our own views, historian, Heinlein: Tech-Bro by Evan Lampe, disrupting systems, taking government funding, the French Revolution, Enlightenment tech-bros, how about a 10 day week, the Temple of Reason, we got some good stuff out of that, Silicon Valley, they’re lighting, disruption is good, computer miniaturization, making things small and faster, multi-threads, a legit improvement, it doesn’t scale to non-hardware very well, running cooler, can do more at a faster pace, the software is magic on top of it, your monthly subscription, a Philip K. Dick story, Cory Doctorow, Australia has month, you will own nothing and you will eat bugs, funny on slack, mass resistance to the policy, why do students have phones with them, the Cory Doctorow explanation, the Evan Lampe explanation, Douglas Adams, cell phones looks like crumpets, a mainstream guy, the zoomers have revisited the Karl Marx line, my cell phone is trying to kill me, William Gibson, hacking the gibson through my cortex, Transmetropolitain by Warren Ellis, Neal Stephenson, because they’re geniuses, after whuffie, how good my camera is, how fast the wifi is, how come i don’t have a clip tray in my Windows, better and better then real bad, Mark Twain, the Civil War, avoiding poetry, 100 page poems, take a break from Mark Twain, both very Americans, traveled a lot, wrote for a living, Innocents Abroad, Life On The Mississippi, A Tramp Abroad, a short story that’s an anecdote, A Literary Nightmare, Anthony DeSimone, the story of a meme, feels relief, an early example of a meme, a little rhyme to remember ticket prices, so fuckin good, so clear but also has stuff to say, started out very optimistic ended cynical, gilded ages, everything travel, The Number Of The Beast, sick in bed, bedridden, trails off into nonsense, veers into the wrong direction, To Sail Beyond The Sunset, episode 103, Time Enough For Love, gonna explain something in Methuselah’s Children, he’s his own grandpa, very Heinlein, maybe that’s a different book, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, upcoming slots, Paul’s not available, the first Carson of Venus novel in on LibriVox, it’s different, builds a rocketship, crashes on Venus, a parody of the competency narrative, wrong way Carson, read it as a self-parody, Bison Frontiers of Imagination, Pirates Of Venus, unusual for Burroughs, Lost Of Venus, do the Heinlein, Black House, Logan’s Run, Clifford D. Simak, a VR novel, Lord Dunsany, Michael Crichton, Progeny by Philip K. Dick, (Alex) Pulp Covers, bother Paul, totally racist, still really good, the mom’s an alcoholic and the dad’s a lawyer, the drama of it, the family relationships, mixed African race, enslaved all the white people, all good, he’s experimenting, The Puppet Masters, people in a certain class, different shades of skin, being extra-specially sensitive to this stuff, they’re just people, people are people, they’re all Americans, he thinks men and women are very similar, Heinlein’s sexual politics, screenshotting, raping his own daughters, sexy Heinlein books, they go to the future, skinny dipping, he likes lookin at ladies, missing in Sixth Column, a similar scene, the rebels are all nudists, Heinlein got over it, being comfortable with his body, marriages, he’s right about that shit, people bang more, abolish gender?, nudism in Nazi Germany, body culture, ready for the military, read the back of the comics, if this goes on, many different body types, the cat one, Nudist Camp, gold wire, David Ashton Walsh, just a fascist who wanted to fuck his mom, Mike B. Young, his twin daughters as well, who is going to stop you, Lazarus Long, these are his fantasies, The Roads Must Roll is anti-union, the Canadian truckers protest, as a guy, a guild, not what unions are after, they’re not for solidarity, eugenicists want to take over, create a master race, what the engineers are after, Starman Jones, without joining a guild, stowaways on the ship pick it up by doing it, Lester Del Rey, Badge Of Infamy, be a guild member to use Chat GPT, a class of people, they’re tv writers, movie writers, Professor Coolbreeze, a rich tapestry, who still fucked babes, they’re puritans, strawman the guy who’s a writer of books from a long time ago, do some raping, why does he have rape in his stories, all the libertarian sci-fi, libertarian tendencies, he’s thinking things true, people can’t win an argument with a dead guy without strawmanning him, a skill that people lack, what people read, formulaic stories, maybe challenging, Jonathan is a writer who breaks a lot of rules, accidentally vs. intentionally, intent, appreciation of popular fiction and literature, people say they read Heinlein then can’t believe how racist he was, the party discipline requires denouncing, you gotta say this now, a very twitter phenomenon, party conformist, people who still watch actual broadcast television, two different worlds, far right far left, a maga hat on, keep a sun out of his eyes, BCIT hat, visible maga people, hand painted signs, Trump flags, being visibly breaking decorum, rainbow pin on their lapel, Ukraine flag on the lawn, a laptop class, political people on twitter, very political most days, how is this processing, something Paul tweeted to Evan, there’s something wrong with me, how come I don’t get this, Elon Musk was defending him limiting some traffic in Turkey about the election, especially in right wing countries, hearing Erdogan is pro-Putin, not conforming with NATO, ethno-nationalist, continuing policy, he caved on that one, did you lose your brain, Evan is against ethno-states, always thinking about the people of the United States being white, projecting 100s of years in the future, doesn’t fit into his future history, should have worked harder on the re-write, the Americans fighting against eh pan pan-Asian, fundamentally flawed, you can’t really fix this, a thoughtwave pattern, those kind of experiments, a magic wand that kills all the women and Dylan Mulvaney is still alive, servicing John Campbell’s position and needs, I’m selling books here, kills only Asians, why not just disperse the death ray in a wide beam, the recruitment, what stupidness that it is, a very minor work, more silly than anything else, goofy, enjoyable, character heavy and painful and a transformed world, very engaging, the character of the alcoholic mother, he recycles them a lot, the mother-son relationship, allows him to be castrated, never before explored before, doctor my balls don’t work, insert some glands in yeah, some pain down there, okay doctor, drugs work perfectly, did he tech bro himself out of babies?, if he had had babies, he would have petered out, they’re all about children, childbirth is the goal, Lazarus Long has hundreds of children, what’s the point of life, I may be awesome, life is kind of absurd, reading writers who have these problems, Edgar Allan Poe, going to the ladies, Zora Neale Hurston, girls, yes, invented everything, for an American audience at least, much more than that, literary criticism of his, this is shit, here’s why it’s shit, a lot of context, his novel is rich, interesting nested, figure out what mode he’s in, he has to fill pages, writes a story to a piece of art, William Wilson, for the present volume, written for a book called The Gift, doppelganger and debauchery, Evan’s plan, Gertrude Stein, ambitious, 2 a week, 895 episodes, Lovecraft and Dick readthrough, Civil War, the American character, the American spirit, it came from those authors, Twain is much more of a common man, the great American author, America made its historical context, feed into later works, American culture made something distinctive before it went into massive decline, the anarchist socialist communes, counted out America, right after the Civil War, an alternative that doesn’t suck in the world, Jesse’s pitch, being America’s bitch sucks, do it in Canada, oppression but not much, basic government service, Colossus will get things done, getting the temple built, Mary McCarthy, Willa Cather, Margaret Atwood, the Canadian education system, Canadian literature is not the best, 10 times the population, extremes that Canadians don’t suffer, have your literature imported, the CBC’s job, other countries’ literature, Poe and Dick and Lovecraft, Stephen King, great literature exporters, chains, people claim there is, Mark Fisher, good history being written, new history vs. new fiction, Neil Gaiman, wonderful scholarship, self-aggrandizing, Jesse’s argument, a smart way to do it, nice microphone, quiet time, Jesse’s a terrible narrator, come to some arrangement, focused on audio, evangelical for it, audible [the website] didn’t exist, a growth industry, good product and great covers, listening while walking, from a commercial standpoint, only still on the rise, Jonathan has been converted, somebody is listening to this five hour show, gab in the background, nope, Tommy Patrick Ryan audiobooks, he wants to help out, not a money relationship, a wheelbarrow with a big hole in it, wheelbarrows are expensive, cover that hole, Jesse was right the whole time, publishing tasks, corporeal, orgy, divan, figures out the voice of the narrator, the Bronson Pinchot vs. Tom Weiner, straight reader vs. performer, a female accent, speech impediment or style of speaking, nobody has any inflections, there is a spectrum, transparent narrators, the elephants are very calm, he’s from Brooklyn, you’re never going to hear the end of it, people think they can reinvent the wheel, profits in new markets, used bookstore project, who doesn’t want to own a used bookstores, when 9/11 happened, homeland security, the US Postal Service, you’re fucking with me, street traffic vs. online only, a good location without a bookstore, buy a bookstore, you get the market, an inventory, people bring in free stock, pandemic rules, the pandemic was a very good thing, jubilee, she gets a prize you get nothing, wait until Kamala is your queen, reelected for the 2nd time, carrying his corpse around from press conference to press conference, Canadian foreign and domestic policy is largely dictated by US foreign policy, a demented guy in charge, the institutions, Bryan Alexander, speech impediment, its not on the news, shaking hand with butlers, juice him up, the clips are out there, that’s the scenario, brings nothing to the table, rumblings, Megan Markle, Oprah, renounce her royal title, a bad book, pan Atlantic country, H2O (2004 CBC miniseries), plausible scenario, a reverse coup, as sequel too, David Cronenberg, James Cameron, Marilyn Chambers, early controversy, a movie industry, set in Toronto, The Fly (1986), A History Of Violence (2005), Scanners (1981), filming there, architecture is Canadian, brutalist, a fetish for him, Canadian actors who never leave Canada, any kind of traction, just move to the states, William Shatner, where the work is, pass yourself off, Deadpool guy, aggressively Canadian, Ryan Reynolds, big weird country, kinda fake, founding myth, the North-West Passage, this big thing that was in the way, French Canadians, teach the controversy, two big companies, 54:40 or fight, break the line at 49, take up to Alaska, war with Britain, Vancouver, Washington, Hudson’s Bay, two business men go into a meeting, fuck the people who live on either side of this line, the black exclusion laws, Oregon has a racist foundation, escaped slaves, the problems that that entailed, no black people allowed, weird behavior, weird politics, every year Jesse goes with boats with clubs, Jesse puts his skins in a warehouse, all Americans live in California, a very arctic thing, more into salmon and cedar, three day festival and everybody goes clubbing, almost like a J. Manfred Weichsel story, satire, Heinlein and all of them went to the government, Astounding by Alec Nevala-Lee, there’s an audiobook of it, using science fiction ideas, Giants Of Eternity by Manly Wade Wellman, like in The War Of The Worlds, dig up all the super-scientists, Marie Curie, this is amazing, Charles Darwin, Thomas Alva Edison, Louis Pasteur, Isaac Newton, make fun of their personalities, got a big beard, the jokes write themselves, a cult of Edison, Edison skepticism, very important and also an asshole, a patent troll, a copyright troll, self-promotion, a machine that talks to the dead, break that out of the old dusty lab, Alfred Bester, telescopist, a baby seahorse nebula made out of anti-matter, wax cylinder, Ray Cummings, The Girl In The Golden Atom, super-science, a huge effect on science fiction, for a pulp author, still writing in the same mode, second pass at Edison, 1887-1957, the opposite of The Girl In The Golden Atom, our galaxy is an atom, just needs to fill pages, he had an idea about science, old fashioned for his time, Fitz James O’Brien, he’s sparky, What Was It?, dope smokin fiends, an invisible creature, while they’re smoking their hash, super racist, The Diamond Lens, a little lady, The Lost Room, Edgar Allan Poe, hoping to be sent to the front, lingered until April, died of tetanus, the biggest insurrection in U.S. history, 1/6, hundreds of people died in New York, The Wondersmith, nice big mustache, Guy De Maupassant, he’s in Weird Tales, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Vanity Fair, Atlantic Monthly, died at 35, he really did cosmicism before Lovecraft, a cosmic point of view, some tech, 100% down with science fiction, Mary Shelley, Margaret Cavendish, travel to other planets, it has to be Wells, Edward Page Mitchell, C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne, Jack London, 1899, The Clock That Went Backwards, The Chronic Argonauts, ancestors in Amsterdam, their aunt is immortal, one of them stays and makes her, Back To The Future, that’s like Heinlein, Travel By Wire by Arthur C. Clarke, The Man Without A Body, this new fangled technology called telephone, a teleporter or a transporter like in Star Trek, didn’t charge the battery, Victorian era science fiction, Sam Moskowitz renewed all his copyrights, Science Fiction By Gaslight, Under The Moons Of Mars, scientific language, carbon emissions are going to kill everybody, coal heaters, the air becomes solid, heavy stuff, an idea that is science fiction vs. feels like science fiction, this is science fiction, looking back from our perspective, writes it off, A Corner In Lightning by George Griffith, electricity is a finite resource, a battery in the Arctic, her non-fiction, the Royal Society, arguing against the scientific method, giant like a lobster, tools to examine the world, distorting the view of the world, her major argument, being facetious, people took it like I was serious, hyperbole, aka he’s evil, an over-reading, trying to enact political change, excluded, utopian fiction, women in power, all we need is Hillary and everything will be all right, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, he makes fun of himself, liberal positions, made Britain a very powerful science, the science, peer reviewed then it’s science, a 30 page essay, coherence problems, doing science, replicate it, that’s science, holy shit I did this thing with electricity, this Ben knows what he’s talking about, spoilers, trained not to care, peer reviewed scientific study on whether spoilers spoil, subsequent studies, they don’t want to hear it, they believe that spoilers spoils, hearing about a good science fiction novel makes me want to read it, who dunnit?, Twin Peaks, Glass Onion (2022), getting triggered, incorrect view of books, shipping, relationshipping, root for the two character get together, have they not seen Moonlighting?, lotta dumb people appreciate things because they’re dumb, people wanted to watch adult things, Are You Being Served, Yes, Minister, I like Scooby Doo, still stuck in the Scooby Doo phase, unable to put their pants on, they’re not thinkers, Dune, just gave a Hugo award to, they didn’t do the banquet scene because they’re making it dumber, Lady Jessica is crying every three seconds, no voice over narration, no whisper talking, the miniseries, Dune is a smart book, they’re reading it wrong, they’re reading it shallowly, jumpin on Heinlein, it’s literature, think critically about it, some guy wrote a fiction book, Kittycat Massacre, Cat Killer by Donald E. Westlake, the death of a fake cat, basically The Cats Of Ulthar with a juvenile delinquent in New York, Donald E. Westlake, The Balloon Tree, Nolan and Simak, slow/fast, new to audiobook, first audiobook last week, coming into something new in this format, Motar/Mota/Motak, page breaks, chapter titles, you gain your eyes back, ebook bumps (braille), feeling a book, so hardcore, half-assed job, oeuvre, exercise, Jonathan is not ready for this, never go back, Aftershocks to Shokz, they screw on your bone?, sits near your ear canal, transmits through the skin into the bone into your ear, vibraty, implants?, Open Run, Open Comm, one ear free is the rule, this tech is ripe, proprietary but magsafe style, big long charge, soon…, bluetooth doesn’t work underwater, swim while listening.

Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein

Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein

Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein

Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein

Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein

Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein

Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein

Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein

Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein

Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein

Paul Rivoche art for Sixth Column

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #747 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Space Viking by H. Beam Piper


The SFFaudio Podcast #747 – Space Viking by H. Beam Piper – read by Mark Nelson for LibriVox. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the novel (6 hours 17 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants include Jesse, Paul Weimer, Cora Buhlert, and Jim Kitchen

Talked about on today’s show:
serialized in Analog, November 1962 and February 1963, paperback in 1963, Ace Books, Little Fuzzy, the Scalzi treatment, gently disagree, Michael Whalen covers, homerun painting, a children’s book of Fuzzies, The Cosmic Computer, Lord Kalvan Of Otherwhen, cross dimensional novel, Roger Zelazny, rat hole, popular, used bookstores almost don’t exist, expensive used bookstores, why are those books harder to find?, how much was published, more printings of Space Viking, redoing it, a great inspiration for the Ewoks of Star Wars, Ewok-ish, translated into German, normal Ace printruns, fell into public domain, Jerry Pournelle, The Other Human Race, Uller Uprising, Junkyard Planet, Graveyard Of Dreams, Graveyard Planet is by Clifford D. Simak, a tier down, grabs your lapels, Dr. McCoy, still alive and on twitter with a pipe and gun emoji, it doesn’t work as an idea, obvious three things, two of them, three rules of H. Beam Piper, 1. throwback to historical incident or occasion, Sepoy Mutiny, fated to repeat our mistakes, hey that Hitler guy had some pretty good ideas, the big lie works for me, anti-cancer vaccine, 2. chainsmoking is still a thing, break out the cigarettes, hardboiled science fiction, drinking, gun oil and cleaning rod, firearms, everybody has cap guns in the future, after the crackup, the final war on Earth, only the southern hemispheres are around, race goes out the window, character’s looks don’t match the character’s names, Four Day Planet, Japanese name but looks like a viking, western colonization, whiteman-centric science fiction, go forward from there, the bleeding edge, he’s with Heinlein, a bigger name, Scalzi commented on his blog about it, his estate is in shambles, how amazing his writing is, his reputation has gone up since his death, all the people we don’t remember from the early 20th century, why everyone hates H.P. Lovecraft, standard beliefs, still read today, worse than Lovecraft, not that apparent in the fiction, Henry S. Whitehead, weirdos like us, 60 years since it came out, rotted in great fiction, Three Musketeers, Four Musketeers, character, romance, begins with a gutpunch, qualms with the society is a part of, the darkest motive of all: revenge, find and end him, a little worldbuilding, playing by the same rules, playing fair by those rules, an axe to grind, pschoanalyzing, a self-educated man, doing their hobbies on 500 journeys, history, he has his characters doing that, when not polishing his gun he’s smoking and reading history, a self-made man, somebody who champions the self-made man, a hardscrabble version of Heinlein, pocket money, by his bootstrapping himself, he was a working man, a nightwatchman, his interests, the way he focuses his characters on engaging in intellectual ideas, some massive blindspots but mostly right, a moral horror book, post-apocalyptic and protect my family, 17 books in this series, intellectual heft he’s working through, we’re utter monsters, I know what I’m doing is utterly monstrous, I’ll have a scene where I explain with a little girl and a dog, Beowulf raid, rape and other things, swordworld core values, Gallic law, innocent people, a quote, the Duke of Wellington, Siege of Cádiz, the 30 Years War, ya ya I know, rifles and pistols, they keep on fighting, what would you do in their place, terro-humans are all stupid like that, a massacre, a man made hell, a compulsion to share their guilt, it doesn’t stop him from writing the book, realistic, WWII, WWI, Ukraine war, The Bridge (1959), betrayed by the German Green party, all of the kids die, grew up to be famous actors (and a singer), whenever they swear, swearing by Satan, writing for magazines, “foul unprintability”, Katherine Tarrant, the system states cede, the collapse, the decline, interstellar ability, sick of what’s coming, raid the bones of the Federation, the atrophy that brought down the Federation, the Empire that comes after, Retrun Of The Jedi, Hoth is one of the planets, Dagon, Nergal, named after famous swords, Durandal, Excalibur, cookies, Gram, The Song of the Nibelungs, the Traveler RPG universe, Game Designer’s Workshop, good thing it is public domain, right?, the worst cover art ever, how did a game with such a crappy cover get any traction, Paranoia had great art, Battletech, Mechwarrior, a pox on you, 1976, Logan’s Run, the juggernaut that is Star Wars, Marc Miller, the great blurb on the cover, where D&D was just a box, the storyhook, Space Opera, Fantasy Games Unlimited, Battledroids, FASA, peoplw ere so excited about the blurb on the cover, a literary game, a board games, tabletops games, playing the game smiling, mmm interesting, explore the entire galaxy, ruled mostly by the French, WWIII, the superpower of the stars, Heinlein smoked, Heinlein could quit, Starship Troopers, horror and guns, a massively different book, different foundations, ideological, hobbyistic, a thing to look at, the names, an explanation, Morglay, Omfray, Nikkolay, Andray, this comes up a lot, pig-latin, in Shakespeare, dog become goday, God become Ogday, Google becomes Ooglegay, a game kids play, you have to learn, Ol’Nick, From, Morgue, Rand, a being from the same culture, Rathmore (wrath), playing fun games, giving the game away, a fun game, smart guy, self-made, he wants to be an architect and couldn’t afford to, a couple of different kinds of arches, what a cathedral you’ve built here sir, he only has marble, he can’t build with girders, a powerful intellect without enough time, he’s got to know he’s brilliant, we can all make it, all noble and good and smart, a very American view of history, very Heinleinian, adventurers who wanted adventure, Germans in the 1850s/60s, the 1848 revolution, gold in California, the apprentice who would never be the master, women who couldn’t find husbands, risky, he’s saying the crazy vicious people leave to go viking, slightly supported by a glance at reality, Scandinavia, barbarism and civilization, what would Robert E. Howard would have liked H. Beam Piper and arguing at the bar all night, very nice socialist emotionally cold, hygge, being cozy at home, exported their vicious people, anger makes him go off, dissatisfaction, describing the reality, starvation, new government policies, cleaning the lands, the enclosures, thieving bread, shipped off, exporting his best genes, not fully decided, viciousness and tenderness, from a ground pounder’s point of view, an infantryman, all the best officers start off as regular soliders, a grounding in what reality is, only people who’ve seen war, imagining a future, settled and collapse, barbarian is back baby, neo-barbarians are not the same as the space vikings, Heinlein started off as a socialist, went to seed later, where he’s at is not the mid Heinlein phases, a very sparky engine, rich or even overrich with ideas, Junkyard Planet, A Planet For Texans was a co-production, courtroom stuff, served on a jury?, people who think for themselves, do you have any set ideas?, let me make a list, strong opinions or closeminded, persuadable by argument, spark up, he wants to be a lawyer, he’s making arguments, ideas against monarchy, from the top down, he leans into it, sits down and smokes, what Conan does, similar guys, he was in a working class society, resident working class vs. transient working class, he had to have a trade, dreams are fleeting, solved their problems the same way in the end, amazing but unsupported is crushing, not all business with Howard or Piper, they both think that they’re geniuses, breathing room for characters, the little girl with her dog, arranging all the family dynasties, he likes the romance, having so much fun in this book, the murder of the new bride, the massacre at the wedding, Game Of Thrones’ Red Wedding, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Ian Fleming, different classes, an older trope, people will be doing Heinlein like deep studies on Piper’s books, war with Russia, we are lead by sad idiot clowns, incompetent on purpose, ex-Nazis, semi-competent, what would happen if H. Beam Piper had become a politician?, feeling based ideas, he would want to be a king, not a lot of room for diplomats, Keith Laumer, his standing has much receded over the years, every year that goes by, most writers decline towards the end of their life, later period Asimov, the smart ones stop writing, rising and developing and getting better, if Philip K. Dick was writing today…, you shoulda stopped around 80s man, a better short story writer than a novelist, he works pretty well at the novelette and novel length, ascended, people who want to record his stuff, ebooks with decent covers, people love making the art for his books, Wildside Press, the spinner rack, a whole month of pocket money, the ending, the hallucinations, shot to death, Elaine was with him, be good to her, then she was gone, such a romantic, the chivalry stuff, Howard likes girls and thinking about girls and describing them, Piper is a romantic, his writing style, his grammar is a little bit off sometimes, who says goodbye, Elaine?, its the author, suffering loss, a short brief awful bought with cancer, two ways you go, on off switch or lingering fade, goodbye dad, who is writing this book?, third person, her head against his cheek, one way of reading it, now it finally be said, I can let it all go, I got my revenge and there’s no heaven, it’s not by Trask, it’s by Piper, he’s so crazy, who else would do that?, sometimes it can hurt, a presence throughout the book, appears to him multiple times, in order for the plot to happen, fridging, he breaks the rule of the narration, reframing the whole book, that’s something on the page, lain in ruins, forays to loot the corpse, wealth of detail, how it has all fallen apart, if you wanna understand piper, set during the Federation, seams and threads, natural disintegration, key peices of the Piper library, a lot of himself into it, Jerry Pournelle: Piper was a craftsman, Uller Uprising, set in a common universe, let three authors loose, Twayne Triplet [The Petrified Planet], how these chartered companies work, an analog to the East India Company, sequential order, Space Viking‘s sense of romance, Piper in his prime, he’s put himself into the protagonist’s shoes, agree and disagree, Jesse’s thesis, Fletcher Pratt, Judith Merrill, humour stories, public domain but we didn’t know, it helps your career, hidden behind a paywall of an estate that renewed, Condé Nast, good and bad, still Junkyard, very different, a different girl, Adept’s Gambit, Night’s Black Agents, trans people and gay people in the mid-1930s, Gideon Marcus, Galactic Journey, comparable to Foundation [by Isaac Asimov], good at short stories and bad at novels, Asimov’s characters, big honking series novels, late period novels, horrendously bad, James Lovelock, Arthur C. Clarke, genetically engineered weapon, great ideas, three stages, the setup, the last third, the left turn to Albuquerque, courtroom drama, he’s right most of the time, reinforced from Terra, a hunt through pornographic romantic fiction, sketching on notes, meanwhile his mind is percolating along, interesting to read and not typical novels, the most straight up book he’s got, sell Jesse on Four Day Planet, the closest to juvenile fiction, let’s book it, sea-monsters and unions, one of Piper’s greatest jokes in it, a dad joke, fun, twitter is weird right now, Games Workshop, the worlds largest toy soldier company, Microsoft, stat at home dad, Illinois, tired of moving, all that wonderful stuff, a mover’s worst nightmare, Rivian, surrounded by where the car industry is leaning, why some materials are so important, Amazon delivery vehicle has a panic button, a very science fictional thing, something you’d find in a Heinlein novel, third parties to deliver packages, majority minority employing, the drivers love them, gigantic windshield, mid 50s, make friends with young people, a really good plan, pained but smiling, if you didn’t like her…, German post, electric vehicles, more and more, a facility in Vancouver, Calgary, The Sentry Box, sleep in a teepee, Coquitlam, outside Minneapolis, The Source, Tower Games, great game stores, 1300 game stores, the ones that survive, Staten Island, The Complete Strategist, comic book stores were hit hard by COVID, [Hourglass Comics] leaned into gaming, Diamond Distribution, 18-24 months, Comic World, Huntington, West Virginia, burns everything to ash, Pokemon trades, the black and white bust of the late 80s, a bookstore, they’ve got the space, literally 1 block away from light rail, Evan Lampe doesn’t understand toys, Cora’s got all the He-Mans, Funkopops, scarred by Diddl Mice, Beanie Babies killed an industry, Edmonton, Eternita playset, you deserve it, Rotterdam, they didn’t want to take the hint, you were always watching something, every single Ninja Turtle ever made, you have to keep doing, you can’t overcoming the inertia, Battle Cat, a slippery slope, now they need a Skeletor, Target and Walmart exclusives, I shall make you a queen amongst all the others, new Masters Of The Universe figures, want list, Lego minifigs, little H.P. Lovecraft stories scenes, Playmobil, some amazing stuff, Nativity Scene, general appeal, people are Christians, an A-Team Playmobil, there are no children who have ever seen The A-Team, this is a product that is marketed to adults, adult toys, not the kind you get at the sex shop, Star Trek, nobody sits down with their kid and says let’s watch some A-Team, German only jokes, George Peppard, Perry Rhodan, a series, audio dramas, not huge in North America, its not New Wave, Dan Dare, the morass of Doc Savage, small magazines, dime novels, lucky to have a newsstand, John Sinclair, the biggest science fiction series in the world, almost no impact in North America, an institution, issue 2254, a very robust industry in central Europe, a fan in Italy, Urania, similar in style, great art, pretending to be American, so wonderful, found some long lost friends, we’ve all lost some books you’ve read, Worlds Without Number, Jack Vance’s Tschai, remix everything, Jack Vance integral edition, nobody has the money to buy it, hear about Urania, all the Italian Giallo movies, Italian crime magazines, other European countries, romance and westerns, for the old men, back issues of various pulp magazines, Cora’s main comic store, elderly ladies coming in, romance novels, a lesbian elderly couple, lesbian bookstores are very common, that same collector trait that men more often have, lesbian couples, comics and games don’t pay the rent, the sextoy shopped, they’re in it for the books but the sex-toys sell, 90% of the profits, there’s a joke to be made hand over fist, Playmobil Perry Rhodan, he’s still in very good condition, one of the first ones, Jesse’s theory: Hummels are to the 1950s as Playmobil is to the 2020s, collectible doll,
Rocket Ship Galileo, some cookies, caught COVID in the hospital for the second time, wearing masks, negative tests, she never caught COVID at home, we’re being lied to.

John Schoenherr - Analog, February 1963 - Space Viking

John Schoenherr - Analog, February 1963 - Space Viking

ACE - Space Viking by H. Beam Piper

Space Viking by H. Beam Piper ART

Way Of The Sword Worlds ART

GDW - Traveller RPG, 1977

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #727 – READALONG: Space Cadet by Robert A. Heinlein

Jesse, Frederick Gero Heimbach, and Karl K. Gallagher talk about Space Cadet by Robert A. Heinlein

Talked about on today’s show:
former space cadet, such a fine upstanding proto-officer, the episode of Star Trek The Next Generation that is an adaptation, also an adaptation, Coming Of Age, taking some starfleet entrance exams, a fake holodeck emergency, make a hard decision, Troi wanted to have command privileges, Geordi needs to die of radiation poisoning, Star Trek: The Next Generation is to Space Cadet as Starship Troopers is to Aliens, did Wesley get whipped?, Sgt. Zim is almost in this, the space marines, a precursor to Starship Troopers, the attitudes towards the marines, leaning into something heavily early then changes its mind, everyone is an officer, O’Brien gets demoted, Chief Warrant or Chief Petty, everybody being officers is pretty weird for regular military, the Space Patrol is NATO?, the list of five people, the numbers are pretty amazing, better numbers than CNN, author of The Devil’s Dictum and Ronald Reagan’s Brilliant Bullet, that’s by H. Beam Piper, sidetracking, jokes on twitter: Heinlein was 41 when this book was published and John Scalzi is 53 and still hasn’t replaced this book, Scalzi’s background, midshipman or ensign Heinlein, marines are cool, you’d never cut it with the marines, they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about, Hugo winning podcasts have had such claims, the more mature distillation?, YA vs. adult audience?, going for the same audience, intended as a YA, the editor threw a fit, we’re divorced now, Starship Troopers is about being the person who protects your tribe, 100 hunter gatherers, put you body between the body and the danger, between beloved home and war’s desolation, impartial service trying to keep the peace (not NATO), blow up your own home town, relax, the captain will confine you to quarters, the darkest moment in the book, theoretical, “Space Cadet is a sequel to Solution Unsatisfactory“, dictator over the world, an elite patrol to enforce peace, the best title Campbell hung on Heinlein, four names mentioned at every roll call, the origin of that tradition, founded as a military coup but we’re better than that now, abolish global democracy, what people are claiming, national democracies, politically naive?, William O. Douglas, educated and reasonable people who think just like me, a panel of experts vs. corrupt bozos elected to congress, an adult actually believed that, what’s missing in the analysis, who pick the people who pick the people who get to be in the Space Patrol, the Federation, peacekeepers, solving problems, exploring, their job is be peaceful and officers and correct, they’re not elected to their jobs, approved by the authors above them for promotion, we can’t ask questions like that, they’re not democratic, a cadre of elite warriors, samurai 18th, 19th, and early 20th century Japan, the crusading orders, nobody in Space Patrol gets laid, a YA book from 1948, nearly naked, nudity, he loves his nudity, monks with nukes, deus volt, they’re defining the overton window, stay inside the box, very revolutionary, oh shit is this a rah rah military book?, mom and dad and sibling, they’d never nuke us, just to make the others feel better, Matt Dodson, we would nuke you, post-national, 2075, the North American Union, Sikhs in the Space Patrol, Asians, Africans, a South American, South Americans, Texans are barely American, a mistake to break away from Mexico and a mistake to join the Union, the plot, they go to Venus, Luke Burrage’s review of S, a Rene Girard hater?, mimetic desire?, everybody is a woman on Venus, Heinlein is very interested in transgender stuff, constantly, “All You Zombies”, I Will Fear No Evil, polyamory, and incest, a theme that he’s been telling me, he was really serious about it, manners are incredibly important, they study all these planets, kidnaps somebody he shouldn’t have, being polite, managing manners, he shocks them to our core, he really does really care a lot about manners, one of the Lazarus Long lines, manners are the oil, degenerated, she kills somebody for bad manners in Friday, cannibalism incest is fine as long as you’re polite about it, politeness demands, his boss is his mother, very noisy, a pronoun argument, call her she because she’s a person, the earliest argument about what pronoun to call people other than Shakespearean cross-dressing disguise, what Heinlein would be like on twitter, would his pronouns be in his bio and if they were what would they be?, trying to be polite, Mark Finn has pronouns in his bio, stand in solidarity with other people, the long grey beard saves everyone the trouble, not a justification in the book, we’re seeing that all in English, why pick she?, venerian males are never seen by humans, egg layers?, what were they eating, ovulations, insect paste?, mashed locusts or cockroaches, some byproduct of reproduction, the Mexican jumping bean, Uncle Bodie was the most interesting character, yeah Karl Gallagher, Thomas SFF180 saying Matt and the crew of Space Cadet are so old fashioned, they’re using slide-rules, they have cellphones, the SLS launch, Shaun Duke, how little science fiction authors, Bill Christensen’s Technovelgy, 185 ideas of inventions from the works of Robert A. Heinlein, the Torchship trilogy, doesn’t need batteries, it cannot become self aware, a strong advantage to the slide-rule, a solar powered calculator, one of the headmasters, do the calculation in your head, running math drills, Apollo astronauts, they probably had slide rules, all the math got done on Earth, why do you need a knife when you have a jedi stick?, presumably jedi sticks run out of batteries, atomic calculator, bring a slipstick with you, that kind of thinking is so fucking stupid, what science fiction is, we should be surprised if there’s anything, very easy to criticize on that level, what this book is about, we developed a fucking nuke now what are we going to do, a one world government, this is what it looks like in the best scenario, living in luxury by extorting nations, send more spacebabes the celibacy is getting very tiresome, Star Trek technobabble, Geordi or Data, how they got into this plothole, a bunch of sounds that come out of their mouths, where the plot of Top Gun Maverick is, Iran had a deal with the USA and a president canceled that, trench run, very simple, the countries that have nukes don’t have to be dictated to, go to war with China or Russia because they have nukes, a proxy war, a proxy war in Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden, a big game, a decentralized network or popular movement, he has a real idea behind it, anybody who misbehaves gets nuked, special highly trained negotiated, complaining about Heinlein’s major sin: he thinks hypo-learning is a real thing, that is the tech that sucks, hypnolearning, socialism’s bodycount, team-antisocialism’s bodycount, Earth is a super dystopia, Starman Jones has the best sliderules, the Scribners juveniles, Farmer In The Sky, a Ganymedian boy, Earth is so shit, one room apartment, not enough food, his most valued possession is his belt pouch, Star Beast is rural, what little we see of Earth here, minus the occasional craters like Denver, who did Denver, unexplained details is a smart move, that phone conversation, that tweet thread, whether he was lying to his dad or not, the reason Matt and all his buddies pass is because he’s just so gosh darn honest, looked stubborn, a Heinleinianism, they don’t have call display, how’s your leg, Matt dodges the question, all sorts of interesting, relationship between being honest and manners, that was delicious, mid-century masculinity, ow, I need some me time, a standard expected of men, rural traditions, farmer stoicism, not showing weakness, drill sergeants beat out the complaining not-fair attitude, why Heinlein put the question in, “Heinlein was a…” an endless list of ists, racists, misogynist, fascist, ableist, sexist, pederast, incestuist?, what about the …ians, libertarian, he’s anti-racist, Sixth Column, he worked it from an outline Campbell, he had re-slant it, after removing a bunch of racism, actively anti-racist, is there a parallel female service?, winnowing, hyper-selective for certain traits, other than those traits, precisely missing the point, take down the big figure to move up, ten years ago Heinlein, don’t read anything after 1980?, clicks by being obnoxious, that’s twitter, go full Fred conservative, an all male service, having females in the service undermines the formation of an exclusive military culture, Tunnel In The Sky, the Amazons, mid-thirties, make somebody dinner and become a tradwife, tradhusbands, most of human existence, sex and occasional other things, half-raising of children, women gravitate to some jobs, Scandinavian countries, more capital per individual, sexual preference, men and women are very similar, I’m good enough I’m strong enough and I can work a slipstick as well as any man, woman-hater, a concession to the very juvenile set, bad at predicting, dealing with the consequence when countries plural, 1948, it’s amazing, steer ships around the solar system, making serious attempts to really think through, he’s totally a hard science fiction writer, the gyros, he’s keeping up with the Willy Ley illustrations, the phrase has come to mean the opposite to what Heinlein was going for, spacey, you have to be ahead of the game, Rocket Ship Galileo, Nazis on the Moon, even going to the Moon, international commerce with rockets, ex-mail rockets, an intercontinental missile is easier than getting to orbit, double the delta v to get to orbit (vs. getting another continent), 10 times the structural performance, great power competition, motives to get to orbit, the Concorde, sonic boom, really fast travel has problems, Heinlein did expect that, supersonic trains, people would just live with it, cows going deaf, invent better glass, the reverence for the four crewmen who are always present and always , such a sentimental guy, on the level of literature, one of Fred’s favourites juveniles, the favourite scene in the book is not in the book, Astarte, the corpses, they were ghosts, ghostology, permission to land we have honoured dead, shut up and get off this channel, repeat, Fred has lived that scene, instantly legendary, you didn’t even right that!, write the fanfic, that’s the best scene in the book, connect some dots that were missing, remember the beaver people, so they weren’t bring them home, very Christian imagery, bringing Karl back to his cadet to active duty days, weather satellites, a space guy, telling satellites what to do, sitting in a silo, turning a key to launch an ICBM, contemplating space patrol responsibilities, do I turn the key?, how the US does nuclear missiles, a scene in WarGames (1983), it takes two, dozens of meters under the Earth each with a loaded pistol, we have our system set up, the elected politicians make the decision, those countries don’t do nearly as well, the logic of it hasn’t changed, the recent or current presidents, having the military make the decision, we don’t take our orders from people on the ground, you as an officer will ultimately take whatever orders you’re giving, excepting illegal orders, when you’re in a silo, browsing the internet, Q is telling me what’s really going on, the Starship Troopers defend your tribe thing, don’t do that or we’ll nuke Moscow, NATO has to step in, making the cringe face, a helluva noise, a very different situation, NATO is supposed to defend NATO countries, if you go the other way, have Russia join NATO, Russia asked to join NATO and was declined, one influential person into vetoing it, do you understand how to funnel the money into your friends pockets, you can’t have an enemy if you’re on the same team, now we have to go fight in Afghanistan, this one patrol for the solar system, they inspect whatever they like, the ultimate force, Wind From A Burning Woman by Greg Bear, to do terrorism, the Moon is also good at throwing rocks, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, a rock throwing contest with a guy at the bottom of a well, Between Planets, dragons, three legged and ball shaped martians, the destroyed planet, Red Planet, Stranger In A Strange Land, destroyed the 5th planet, they nuked themselves, ignite the nukes, it can not happen, don’t worry mom, it can’t fall on you, a different continuity, compatible, make the safety interlocks disappeared, other authors, prior to Heinlein, the asteroid belt being a planet, sedimentary rock, a simple plot, training, more training, interrupted cruise, cruise home, go to Venus, divide the crew in half, the distress call, the sub-crew, one lt. and three cadets, what Heinlein really wants: three boy scouts, Nothing Ever Happens On The Moon, in Expanded Universe, the only tree on Ganymede [Farmer In The Sky], a boy scouts book, Boys’ Life, a continuity, naval academy experience, the idealized, Karl believes in nation states the way he believes in trees, that’s what the chipmunks want you to believe, the classic Plato line, who will guard the guardians, we’ll muddle through with good virtue and boy scout honour, he gives the wrong salute, standardized testing, he was the squad leader because his name came first on the list, he goes for officer, it is forced upon him, it’s my duty to these apes, I am officer material, sidetracked as usual, the four ghosts, Rodger Young, a 1946 song, as an analogy he fits the same story as these heroes, Heinlein being ableist, is your leg okay after the operation you had where you were born a cripple?,the National Guard, blind and deaf, pacific atolls, inspiring Heinlein, the marine tradition, the pride in the individual heroicism, Fred’s dream: the confabulating of the scene, what Heinlein’s inducing in Fred, how they can be good silvermen, these traditions, he dramatizes, over a century, would have become corrupt, they’re ghosts, this corp has traditions, that mystical spiritual ghostly, into their bodies, all that crap that happens in the middle, boring vs. relaxing, looking at it from a writer’s point of view, legendary status, doesn’t matter he’s in a coma, rises from the coma to respond with the name of one of the four heroes, leapfrog in status, once they land and the word, the inevitable cellphones come out, seeing the video now on twitter, in keeping with tradition of the corps, these heroes coming back!, the post mission interview, there’s nothing to say because they did an okay job, that insight is very good, the actual crusades, a lot of people on a lot of missions, a lot of crusaders books, H. Rider Haggard’s The Brethren, She And Allan, he would have been huge, a personal crusade to the holy land to get back their cousin who is the niece of Saladin, assassins, two terrific female characters, two brothers who go on a crusader like mission, another half-Christian half-Muslim lady, in keeping with the Christian tradition, a moral heathen, generous with his victories, magnanimous in battle, one of Heinlein’s greatest sins is he strawmans characters, his villains are whiny entitled lazy incompetent, as a cadet, can’t we just break the rules, decides to go work for his dad, coincidence, lampshaded, he’s the one who’s responsible, je soif, the frogs, let’s give him from water, Heinlein is very good at plotting, meandering, always asking for showing what the main character’s goal is, get better at the job so he can stay in the patrol, he wants to grow up, we don’t know what we want , Heinlein can guide us, reading as an adult, Fred loved it as a 12 year old, dismissing Heinlein, I never need to read them again, I wouldn’t recommend him to people even though I read all of his stuff, how the corruption begins, Space Cadet is not a tightly plotted book, here’s what your world government looks like?, do you really want to have it?, he’s not saying this is not a good plan, if he’s secretly saying, utopias or dystopias, here’s a scenario people are asking for, exploring it, you can’t really say Heinlein did a bad job, almost objectively true, what is the book for?, it works really well for kids 12 and above, kids who have never seen a rocket that went to space, appreciating in good stories, thoughtful reminders, not leaving things hanging, when Matt goes back and does the job of his cadet supervisors, you’re getting your hunger back, new academy kids coming in, not so many people get to pass through, people retire in their 30s, mostly they’re not fit, what not fit means is they’re dishonest, they’re overly attached to their tribe as opposed to the truth, character, Rodger Young was short and disabled, rewarded with death, a song and book naming a space ship after him, the right thing to do, what makes you a good patrolman, a model for stability, what’s the point of military or civilian service, Heinlein is a utopian, people who’ve actually seen combat or put in service, made fun of in the Verhoven movie, service guarantees participation in the ruling councils, citizenship vs. the vote, graduate children into adulthood by means of testing, a very utopian and interesting idea, overwhelmed by people saying he’s a fascist, all these retirees, do they have an outsized influence?, he thinks that he benefited from it, a lifer was someone who got in at 20 years, you don’t need that many admirals, the patrol breaks your ability to be a part of your parochial group, had to by my own belt buckle?, Jesse is a Zelazny character, very different from a lot of people, this guy hates me, this guy doesn’t understand me, an asshole on twitter, abrasive on the podcast, sometimes other people have ideas that are cool, why Heinlein has people retire out, the Starfleet Academy training program, retirement in Star Trek, how to change society, you need more training, I notice you like spending times naked in the growery, the essences, the officer was a monk he didn’t care, some of the monks stay in the service and don’t ever get married, when you have a military service that is conscription, in for three terms, training for humanity, we can be done, this very solid book, majority of the population going through federal service, a distilled fraction, a very good point, sometimes he’s a socialist sometimes he’s a libertarian, winged, marjory taylor green, Assange should be gotten out of prison, Rand Paul is right about a helluva lot of stuff, one axis, one of the less interesting axes, people are stuck, what modes can we get out of, he was ahead of the game with his anti-racism, its an ideology of anti-ideology, this is the way you talk about the subject, these are the words you should never say, if you are a very shallow thinker, what is the correct word, black as the ace of spades, the word spade is not an insult, the kind of thing that someone would quote tweet, learn to appreciate by reading a fucking book from more than ten years ago, worked up about words that were in common usage, family text channel, is wetback a slur?, a paper on immigration in the 1950s, Operation Wetback, the teacher freaks the fuck out, privileged of visiting the uncle who keeps you apprised, are guineas Italians?, continent by continent, three guineas in Africa, there’s a guinea in Asia, its a coin, the observed behavior, racism is still around, it’s not a science, ignorance, thoughtlessness, pseudoscience, people who just don’t like those people, when you’re uncomfortable, Fred’s shy, when Jesse can talk for five.

Darrell K. Sweet - Space Cadet by Robert A. Heinlein

NEW ENGLISH LIBRARY - Space Cadet by Robert A. Heinlein

FULL CAST AUDIO - Space Cadet COVER art

Space Cadet HARDCOVER

Vincent Di Fate - prelim for SPACE CADET by Robert A. Heinlein

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!