The SFFaudio Podcast #850 – READALONG: Eaters Of The Dead by Michael Crichton

The SFFaudio Podcast #850 – Jesse, Alex (Pulpcovers), and Tommy Patrick Ryan talk about Eaters Of The Dead by Michael Crichton

Talked about on today’s show:
under his real name, 4th novel, 3rd book, if it was under another fake name, Professor blah blah blah, tricky at base, a copy of the paperback, just like what he did with The Andromeda Strain, stuff on the copyright page, footnotes everywhere, verisimilitude, a document dump, subversion, see what the score is, a more difficult time, shit information, the answer you would have got 15 years ago, some terrible reddit thread, ai summary of the whole thing, full of fake citations anyway, tripped up, the afterwords, an abridged audiobook, the movie, the dwarves, it wasn’t that good, the scenery was British Columbia, we got trees they got trees, fairly good adaptation, well regarded, late at night, sent late, Antonio Banderas still sounded like he was from spain, what’s with the no beard, Omar Sharif, champion bridge player, Lawrence Of Arabia (1964), his last film, learning the language, John McTiernan, slash, Michael Crichton came in to finish the movie, a very good director, Burt Reynolds tv movie, Norm Macdonald, they had to build a lot, a lot of horses, a lot of extras, rains, not a bunch of big names, European actors, our main warrior, the translator, the main viking for us, Buliwyf, Beowulf, the first 20 minutes, keeping it hidden, another Beowulf adaptation, pretty obscure, the Neil Gaiman cgi version, what if he was a coward the whole time, the sea-serpent scene, how he swam with the sea-serpent, the culture of bullshit, a great book, so ambitious, it’s really solid, the footnotes help somehow, in the middle of a battle scene, a little bit like The Princess Bride, very different from the film, the same structure, William Goldman, maybe we should do that one, it’s fantastic, part of it is the source material, a unicorn movie, really clever, a clever idea, a bet, did it on a bet, The Saga Of The Volsungs, deeply connected to Tolkien, Tolkien’s connection to Eaters Of The dead, at what point does it become complete fiction?, after chapter 4, an adaptation of Beowulf, as witness, historical figure, nicely implied, written down by this Arab dude, you need to tell my story, this wizard lady, lady of death, it can’t be 12 warriors, it has to be 13, Gandalf having the conversation, in The Hobbit, the reluctant participant, The Red Book Of Westmarch, There And Back Again, the same story, a mountain from also which comes a dragon, slay the thing and return home again, kinda funny, it is the premise of The Hobbit, all the rich hobbits were thieves, proud of being footpads, they’re old money, robber barons, they’re just Englishmen, hilarious, an Islamic scholar, drinking the mead, having sex with the slave women, he’s choking out a lady wanting to be sacrificed, wow!, not pulling his punches, very solid book, how good is that?, is this real? all the way through, that style of writing hurt sales, an after action report, setting up the frame, not a good writer, wrote it like an anthropologist, drier versions, giving himself a pat on the back, narrated by George Guidall, his vocal quality, very matter of fact, he had fallen in love, so I’m sitting there, super-hot wife, I enjoyed her for a while, all those locks on the door, an impotent rich man, he’s so matter of fact about it, that’s why they sent me out, the asides, the telling of stories, friend of the prophet’s, bearing his slippers, the miser, big long story, that man was cursed, a Guy de Maupassant story, out of embarrassment, gets fined again, completely destitute, he stole somebody’s shoes, our narrator thought it was a funny story and nobody laughed, cursed, you had to be there (in the culture), that culture’s clash, extended, Hrothgar and his son, faithfully done in the film, accidentally on purpose, beef, fight, quality of deception that they love, deception REALLY GOOD, quashes the growing rebellion, you send for a hero, questioning his loyalty, what did Buliwyf ultimately get out of all of this, and what else do you want?, the movie improved on, it’s good, the viking prayer, lo there, now I see all my deceased relatives, the line of my people back to the beginning, where the brave may live forever, he’s become acculturated, a very good adaptation of the book, any additions are structurally helpful, very streamlined, 6 and half hours, feasible, these books are designed to be picked up at a spinner rack at a drug store, typical Crichton heist novel, very ambitious, succeeds at every measure, the small big idea that it is, made his reputation, so well told, competence of the government agents and agency to solve a chemical mystery, he isn’t a faker, all my friends write novels for nanorimo, some weird idea that I have, an insatiable market for paperbacks, a new thing next week, The Venom Business, read Airframe and report back, Congo, The Great Train Robbery, terrific movie adaptation, funny, fast paced, clever, sexy, him showing off that he can do everything, a fake scholarship novel, not science fiction exactly, technothriller, more like a Robin Cook novel, his movie version of Coma by Robin Cook, Westworld, so solidly, characters, stop repeating yourself, Rendezvous With Rama, character and the idea, Arthur C. Clarke is not a normal dude, normal human relationships, ideas, Kim Stanley Robinson, Pacific Edge, this guy is clever, 2312, 900 pages, no plot, no characters, let me worldbuild, The Silmarillion, more plot, everybody wanted more Tolkien, great worldbuilding, novels, humour, very dry, a lot of writers, successful writers, cool ideas, some of them get awards, highly acclaimed books, this could be one third as long and be way better, he’s great at short stories, The City And The Stars is an amazing book, lean into the commercial success, a disaster set on the moon, A Fall Of Moondust, a terrible novel, The Nine Billion Names Of God, Crichton didn’t write a single short story, A Case Of Need, Dealing, a drug dealing novel, Congo, Bruce Campbell, after Jurassic Park, a date movie, everybody wanted everything from him, universally beloved, kind of a problem, everything is Jurassic Park, elevator pitch, the quintessentially example, Jurassic Park, The Meg, Sharknados, Rising Sun, 1992, Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes, Japanese businessmen are horny and probably bad, maybe too late in his career, one year after the book, 14 years old, moving into high school, he was a movie hit before Jurassic Park, Spielberg’s directing, get the kids going, shorts and boots, Sam Neil, Event Horizon (1997) is a movie, intense, how long is Congo?, chunky, King Solomon’s Mines, very King Solomon’s Mines, with lasers and monkeys, him engaging, writes books with poets as inspirations, big ambitions, gonna be interesting, white apes, intelligent monkeys, a little pulpy, a little longer, Sphere was weird, you can go wrong, Timeline, State Of Fear, weird ideas, talks a lot about science, The Terminal Man, MKUltra, tin foil hat, brain implants to control people, he’s really on it, whatever he’s writing, past Jurassic Park, what happened between 1980 and Sphere, no book for 7 years, in Hollywood doing tv shows, his Travels, sex with movie stars, every year after that there’s a new book, posthumous from there, one last year, with James Patterson, also not writing his own books, his fictional post-script, they’re neanderthals, has become less crazy, 1992, more than 30 years ago now, the state of neanderthal research, Robert J. Sawyer wrote a trilogy, homo sapiens are extinct, sexuality, their females going into heat, our hero describes the culture of the vikings, they are not pederasts, the culture where he’s coming from a pederastic culture, the Greeks, the relationship to females and slave females, marriage, is your wife faithful?, of course she isn’t, they’re your sons anyway, semi-reflected in the Scandinavian culture of today, a southern European thing, lock the women up, you wife may have a child from another man, something people wouldn’t have put in their book today, full of good detail, an adventure, action packed scenes subverted, capturing the alienness, a new york journalism student, basing it on a real document, carries that through, think differently, how influential Ibn Fadlan’s, rip off whole sections, handsome Hollywood actors, shows like Vikings, slavery among the Scandanavians, the worst slaveowners, most brutal, most casual, super-widespread, just kill them, get new ones in the spring, brutal, awful, some of that in here, complete casualness, raping the slaves, so good, choking out the sacrifice lady, she seemed clear in her mind, she was into it, that you’re into it to, god they’re weirdos, they don’t wash properly, the best sort of effect, a single player RPG, you in the final scene doing something horrible, really good writing, a very moral book, he grew into something better, what made it good, here’s this historical figure who really did travel from Baghdad into north country, meat into the story, suicide path, other female slaves, a question of consent, treatment of women, good for sex, procreation, and sacrifice, weird respect for women, treat em well, two female guards to prevent her from changing her mind, character growth, in fiction, the idea of progress, morally progress, technologically progress, from bronze swords to long swords, the Japanese katana is the highest form, the same job, chop or stab, the vorpal sword, light sabers, a cavalry saber, saber doesn’t mean what they do in Star Wars, all sorts of stupid stuff, progress is a mistake we impose on a set of circumstances, there’s change, and there’s continuity, people are not different, culture is slightly different, death cults, people remain the same, an illusion, we do this in story, stories should reveal character rather than show character growth, doing a lot lift, do you even lift, bro?, he isn’t as quick, trickiness and cleverness, shifty, you can change hands, your sinister hand, nobility, this other mode of being, being a tricky bastard, why Loki as a figure is interesting, his brother Thor, wrathful and kind of dumb, H. Rider Haggard’s Eric Brighteyes is a dimbulb, he’s a dimwit, strong and young, she’s playing him the whole book, a dimmy, 14?, he’s got so many good books, really good, a lot of really good books, he was supertall, standing next to Spielberg, 25 novels, Disclosure, 66 years old, older than Eric, born in 1942, he was writing paperback, put himself through medschool, CIA?, his memoir Travels, goes to Belize with his sister, almost dies, almost dead, this urge to have sex, not acceptable, connecting it to previous experiences, world traveler, the danger is these guys are gonna rob us, the physical circumstances, lives voraciously, a viking sort of idea, horny because you almost died, a biological perspective, pretty extraordinary, chakras or whatever, talking to a cactus, the cactus is talking back, sell everything, super-open and very hidden, as Doctors in everything except completion, mysteries to be solved through surgery, you don’t give them the other option, the show ER, long hours, cockiness, treat themselves as gods, that’s no way to be, a man who couldn’t be contained, Alec Baldwin movie, I am god, Malice (1993), The Bear The Edge (1997), Redbelt, David Mamet, House Of Games (1987), Tim Allen, Steven Segal, swordfighting movie, Conan The Barbarian (1982), cooperative play like in Wrestlemania, that’s fake, at dinner, Horatio Hornblower, Beat To Quarters, New Orleans, Phoenix, C.S. Forester, [lembas], healing energy.

Eaters Of The Dead by Michael Crichton

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #849 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Prize Ship by Philip K. Dick AND The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey

The SFFaudio Podcast #849 – Prize Ship by Philip K. Dick (42 minutes) and The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey (41 minutes). Both are read by Tommy Patrick Ryan. These are followed by a discussion of both. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Will Emmons, and Tommy Patrick Ryan.

Talked about on today’s show:
1954, 1961, 42 minutes or so, one is far superior to the other, which is which?, Prize Ship is superior to The Ship Who Sang, largely similarish time frame, pairing them thematically, Mr. Spaceship, thematically, far superior, first time Anne McCaffrey, a trick story, not a particularly well executed one, he muted himself but doesn’t know, this wide of a gap, particularily phenomenal, a trick, some comments, Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, never mentioned, Brobdingnag, Dragon Riders Of Pern, Eric’s book club with Tommy, okay, fun and interesting, themes, the Dick thing relied so heavily, the expanding universe, that gimmick is so thin, an interesting idea, naturally leads to sequels, leaves it open, the worldbuilding that she does, mentally good, physical deformities, these dudes are comin over, they go inside of her, try to charm her, passin out drinks, she signed off on this, that’s gross, being in love with him, a girl story, Philip K. Dick’s story is a peice of shit, way too long for the material, some other solar system, this one stupid moon, Ganymede, they don’t use cradle technology, horrible Ganymedeian emperor, so many characters, any distinction from each other, the Plutonians are Soviets or something, that’s on Philip K. Dick writing in his shit mode, time wasting stories, doesn’t put a foot wrong, leaves open the possibility of endless series, girl ideas, girl mindset, a houseparty inside of her, she sets her cap, she gets to have it every which way, she’s the girl in the wheelchair at the dance party, brain, brawn, a terrific story, also a little bit pretty, in sympathy, we probably agree, not the finest story you’ve ever read, the best McCaffrey story Jesse has ever read, what if this story were weirder or more upsetting, it should be upsetting, programming people, putting them in institutions, concerned citizens, step by step eliminates objections, increases the history, brain ship the third generation, Star Trek [The Next Generation] where Majel Barrett is the ship and Will Riker is her only crewman, girl fantasy romance in space, great at girl psychology, fetish weirdness, coyness with regard to sexuality, silly beyond 40 minutes, our primary brawn, he looks at her, being seen, whole bunch of titanium, he still looks at her, he doesn’t dance with her out of obligation, valid points, more comments about the Dick story, more to be critical of, better to shoot first on a strange planet, he fundamentally doesn’t understand military organization or business structures, when he fakes it he comes across as stupid, there’s greatness in the story idea, it’s a 4 second story, a joke story, a twist story, Gulliver’s Travels, junior year of college, of a regular curriculum, every planet and many moons, deep in the future, their own tech, an excuse to revisit the ideas that blue Philip K. Dick’s socks off when he was a kid, time travel not being really worth it, being silly, throw away characters, so long for the material, the guy who didn’t know the story, a fun brief discussion point, gone to the future, everything could be real, Wonderland, Oz, Middle Earth, Narnia, Neverland, today’s lexicon, maybe it’s not worth it, felt more dated, still out there, the story is dated by it’s dated references, when this is supposed to be, perhaps others, Erewhon, Pellucidar, all the the fantasy’s dreams, jum jum jum, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ hollow earth, going into it, tickled at the imagination, sorta fun, so referential, so meta in that way, way deep into the story, so much setup, so lame, the whole senator scene, boring, he’s terrible at that shit, so useless, did nothing for the story, the Ganymedean at the end, could have been half as long, one of these is a classic, the other one is absolutely forgetable, Return To Lilliput, something that is on his mind, boobs, direct references to The Odyssey, Strange Eden, childhood reading, work through this, social satire not science fiction or a true story, he can’t help himself, the joke is better, Prominent Author, the joke is really good, commuting, who the hell writes about commuting, multiple times, fucked by the robot at home, very fun, gotta commute, tiny little people, doesn’t report the hole, the joke is, slips of paper, not aliens from other planets, they’re the Israelites, he is god, Moses!, busy writing down the ten commandments, cribbing from the bible at work, a good joke, also this weird idea, what kind of idea is that, a result of technology, no such thing as commuting, transit time, your work can be hours away, a six hour drive to work, come back once a week, a second place in the Chicago area, relocate, a fundamental science fiction idea, the consequences of technological change, time travel is real rather than cradle technology, expanding universe isn’t just space between stars, the size of everything grows, he buries it, the title, buried by it’s own garbage, done as kind of a joke, vitriol, by having this discussion, the worst time travel story, pretty silly, it’s an idea, Robert J. Sawyer in a dinosaur novel, Shadow In Space by Philip Jose Farmer, any female characters?, liliputian female, not even a quivering look at her boobs, meat and potatoes make money mode, my beating heart, no emotions in this story, don’t care, things I should hate, Jesse hates characters and emotions, character makes you read big long series, Dragons Of Autumn Twilight, Dragons Of Winter Dawn, Dragons of Summer Festing, Time Of The Twins, reading for character, the death of Sturm Brightblade!, a way of tricking people into reading, how their stories go, the Dresden Files, Dragonlance, Drizt?, high literature, we literally form a relationship, we like them, Tanis Half-Elven, Wolverine, half-girlfriend, anti-Cyclops feelings, the X-Men has science fiction ideas sometimes, a bit of both, a bit of allegory, the junk story, the gem has problems, you want to see what happens next, the guy dies, that’s awesome, dumb, naive, the grandmother ship coming along, leads to the possibility, this federation, drug smugglers and vaccines, also The Cold Equations, a plague on Woden, just like Balto, a dog one, our noble brawn, so fucking girl psychology, the relationship between and ugly girl or a disabled girl, maybe she’s got pimples, kids exposed to thalidomide, We Didn’t Start The Fire, Jesse is very suspicious of music, things that Jesse should be worried about: institutions, corruption, abuse, is she being abused?, “power seek”, these brainships, total slaves, they have agency, how limited is that agency, later sequels, pick her person, it felt backwards, having a party inside of her, a gang rape [gang bang], a man who doesn’t suck, all as good as you can get, top 1 percent in everything, good at everything, they’re all Rikers, they’re not Barkleys and not Picards, fine starfleet officer, an exploration of the borderlines of the idea, a ship’s counselor, understand emotions, looks good in her outfit, her role is expanded when you have characters like Barkley, fucking up at work, expansive, read the whole series, the next story will be more of the same, and largely girl fantasy, all the men coming into her, a crew choosing party, courted like Jane Austen, the song by Rebecca Black called Friday, immensely inane, kick it in the back seat, that’s her life, zionists?, the disparity, her major problem is which seat should she sit in?, hilarious and endearing and stupid and anti-intellectual, almost asexual, the central question of the story, some level of agency is nice, Pride And Prejudice, just brooding, scary eyebrows, happy for Elizabeth, filthy rich, a bonus, take pity, he likes her for her, not for her money, that’s nice, themes in there, she’s the one who makes things happen in the home, she invites a man into her, they go out adventuring, planted on the ground giving advice, goes and talks to the nuns, we’re running out, runs back, they all follow Riker back into the ship, heroic efforts, a manly hero, it has everything, woman being virginal, woman being sexual, so perfect with regards using a science fiction idea, to explore female psychology, so good at it, is there a scene wasted here?, usally to give us a little information, to allay fears of abuse, institutions being very dangerous, separating kids from their families, either than our she’s going to be euthanized, pick up that ball and run with it, her other option, the Jedi in Star Wars, force sensitive, taken from their families, they can be good monks, in Judge Dredd, indoctrinated from age 5, a kind of priesthood or nunhood, saving this colony of nuns, this handsome man, parallels, jealous, only has eyes for her shell, the alternatives, the modern equivalent, put in the incinerator, a reality, taken away from your parents immediately, how the Spartan system works, out in barracks, murder a Helot, horrible disciplinary stuff, the British Public School system, brainships are female, the singing, initial attraction, her reputation, a girl in a wheelchair, a girl with a birthmark on her face, a girl with a limp, so girl psychology, it exceeds its premise, an excellent science fiction story, less luke war, the totality of the storyline, one of the joys of discussion, this does do a lot of stuff, reverse discrimination, she’s in charge, more examples, not desired, not into her for her looks, who and what they are, personality is important, physically deformed, an exterior body that’s powerful and capable, she’s the homunculus, a very Eric reading, a different kind of commuting, a pretty positive story, a female author, accomplished so well, artistic, she’s a person, not just a machine, makes her more fully round, she can paint the Last Supper on the head of a screw, and now the women are going to play the harpsichord, music, needlework, doemestic entertainment, business partners or whatever, the billiards room, a gathering at the piano, if you’re advertising for piano lessons, what sets this ship apart, she sings, music is one of the greatest things to exist, hostile, actively suspicious, it’s math in sound, what happens when people get patriotic, you shouldn’t get teary eyed at propaganda, music is fuckin dangerous, why the Puritains were worried about dancing, hymns, used to manipulate, why am I crying, I wanna get down on Friday, it shouldn’t be popular, Gagnam Style, a song about a guy who attracts girls, he’s your uncle, age and gender, older brother dances like this, he gets all the girls, translates from another language that we don’t understand, music is a direct line into people’s fuckin minds, the concern, they’re not all equal, try to get a millenial to watch a movie, Will’s seen 5 movies, try with a zoomer, obsessed with Star Wars, not all modes are equal, insidious inside of you, Mein Kampf, very few, into your ears whether you want it or not, a Burger King commercial, college sports, an earworm, Beethoven, Mozart, The Silmarillion, a joke, the opening, they make music, everything is vibration, Tolkien wasn’t a dumb man, all power has potential to be dangerous, when we make music, the source or the force, some would call God, music and yoga, more than church, about peace and stuff and understanding, use any too for good or evil, the knife that harms, toddlers are given nuclear weapons, undersea mountains, a power range, in law, noise violations, decibels or hours vs. content, physical contact is the point of assault, that demarcation, sound is everywhere, incumbent, upset at muzak in an elevator, brain activity, enjoying my audiobook, working in schools, special ed, have to put headphones, Jesse is weird and Will amped it up on purpose, Will is an agitator, not unprofitably, a key factor in human development, having heard that diatribe, we recognize the power of music, perfume, fresh bread not offense, laundry pods, but why?,no wasted characters, lots of interesting technology, psychology, what if Einstein’s theory implies this, also Lilliput, clearly they’re quite different, leaning towards Dick, the datedness, toxic masculinity, lack of women, patriarchy, not unitl Jennan comes along is she truly alive, apparently not interesting contributors, The Gun, doesn’t sound right, this is a classic science fiction story, dial down 2024 sensibilities, 2025, things have changed, [Project 2025], the only person who’s recorded those public domain stories, mostly bored, vibing, cringing, totally immersed in 1950s science fiction, had to turn in his first draft on this one, get canceled, in a very different light, not publishable in 2025, it would be independent and very popular, a tune up, it might be gay, Murderbot books, supposed to be really good, it’s awesome, character, Luke Burrage reviewing with Julianne, total Jesse hate, character based, relationship to humans, autistic relationship, book series, more more more character, Lord Of The Rings, Frodo’s going to off to the Grey Havens, oh no the story is over!, a little echo with Sam and his wife, I gotta read it again, that is a mistake, it doesn’t need sequels by other hands, several endings on it, The Scouring Of The Shire, longest epilogue, a great tramping, everything is opening up, this is depressing, debate about potatoes, what happened to Mr Sam’s frying pans, attention and relationship a reader has to the material, Murderbot is indulgence, how do we feel about Conan in this context, Conan vs. Howard, a space in which he can operate, forced to fit into a certain mode, with Dragonlance, become addictive, gather at a treehouse, they have food, two brothers, twins, warriors, gladiator, learn evil magic, fight the evil, oh, it’s epic, by book 30, am I really getting a lot of value out of this, Dragon Ball Z, Conan Doyle kept killing off Sherlock Holmes, that happens, people literally care, writing more to give people more, inevitably always happens, the fixup, that’s the first book, at least 7 books, enough already, not interesting at all, Siler, the German guy, Bassett was British, male lead, he’s Han Solo and Will Riker, a bard who’s handsome, everything a girl could loved, just like his father, the cowboy, the American, not well known for his great characters, The Wub is a great character, it’s Jesus, come to accept, non-superflouous, Instrumentality of Man, negative feedback, Player Of Games by Iain M. Banks, dangerous and insidious, the culture is like heaven, as a standalone it would be fine, anti-utopian societies, is this a utopian society?, the same premise every time, given you’re in heaven…, the edges of heaven, neat points, playing board games, video games, kids, 24 hours, their behavior afterward, what are you really getting done, fetch quests, 15 seasons of Supernatural, insightfully, “Jesse don’t you have any happy movies”, Paperback Romance (1994), disabled lady with a gimpy leg, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, admires her writing, a great movie, soft and sucky, if that is the range of your film wanting, brokenness inside of you, binging and other things, what is it for, how should we use it, how should we recognize what it is, many traps in the world, shared setting vs. series, the Ringworld books, the theory of series, diminishing returns, intellectual laziness, when sick, the ability to do the work, instead of going over to the machine, watch a couple John Carpenter movies, operating like that all the time, watch it again!, not just as a pacification, understanding and realization, somehow disabled, something comfortable, to stimulate and edify, to raise up, edify define, instruct or improve, when you’ve learned something, having the guy catch all your fish for you, good as a trilogy, gotten past the worldbuilding, The Empire Strikes Back, The Two Towers, how dense those middle parts are, they don’t want to have to learn it again, the prequels, the sequels, Rey and Finn, give me something new, not edifying, an excellent story, shown Tommy the light, take a dump in a bag and stamp literature on it, word rates, F&SF, a more literary snobby, actually produces good results, we don’t like your kind here, Boucher, by [19]61 he was gone, Robert P. Mills, quality wise it is excellent, they don’t have interior art generally, Astounding and Galaxy art, Virgil Finlay, a banana on the cover, a nebula and a galaxy and a banana, what the ship size is, the Millennium Falcon size, cooler looking, less knobby, light frigate sized, so much like the starship Enterprise, a landing gantry, female writer that Tommy’s mom likes, newer equipment, feedback, an entire book, any notes, the different accents, the interpretation an audiobook narrator brings to a story, Will is more open to dramatic readings than Jesse is, well done, is it appropriate for a man to do a story that’s so female focuses, Barbara Rosenblat, much more clunky, that’s the story, bounces around, there is no distinction between the characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the most notable character, closer and warmer always is nicer, a cold room, a bigger room, they mean the same thing, less echo more close, microphone based, room based, back off the microphone, snuggled into my microphone, get closer to the cardioid, dialing down the [gain], projection, tend to Levelate, just for volume, Levelator, levelation, when you look at a million LibriVox files, nice and snuggled, breaks all of the lows and all of the high, for volume control, raw files, too sick for too long, Will got his homework done, nice and short, a lot of audiobooks, Tommy’s stuff’s pretty good, awful Hegel audiobook, teach a man to fish for compliments, technical stuff, fish the pond out, theatrical experience, theater mode, theater voice, recording stories, one should do things, playing board games for money, how to stream games for money, you’re in your bedroom, a side hustle, as a performance for other people, a horror show, sing in the car, sharing something that has value, it’s not just fun, it’s edifying, Jesse’s conviction, some listeners that have similar experiences, saying similar, that’s enough, the superior man studies literature, it’s a simplified version of the world, that is enough, I can do these things, a chance to listen to it, put some headphones in, wash the dishes, do the laundry, next week is Eaters Of The Dead by Michael Crichton, The Jameson Satellite and Mellonta Tauta, Mr. Spaceship?, asking about utopias, Mack Reynolds, not his later novels, Border, Breed, Nor Birth, Mercenary, a strange new meaning, read by Mark Nelson, 23rd of February, probably Ben Tucker, Phil Chenevert, can I be late several minutes, much appreciated, always a pleasure, salient points, appreciate, mails it in, held him on a pedestal, may the Force be with you, so fucked up by illness on Vancouver Island, a great book: Project Pope, not exactly on Catholic matters, Lilith by George MacDonald as well, done for adults, people with lots of limbs, kinda about suicide, a new reality, very interesting, more Catholic redeption, The Magic City, Edith Nesbit, they meet a man she knew as a child, she is going to marry him, super-resentful, mom and sister is being taken away, the boy acts like a jerk, secretly he builds a city out of household objects, kinda like the DREAMLANDS, everything is magical, a fantasy of child creation, The LEGO Movie is very good, ip, Batman and Star Wars, childhood materials, Lord Business, he’s mad because his dad is always at work, creates a world and falls into it, redeeming, nice right, very charming, pastoral inside of a fake city, what food do they eat, there’s a prophecy, a visitor will comes, nice little nested story, what’s going on, reading a lot, gotta do that sometimes, making reviews and notes, ancient Chinese philosophy, worth understanding Confucius and Mencius, human nature as basically good, filial duties, an elder, and so sick, we have to consider that, in the Confucian framework, a stronger duty, equal universal love, snow melt?, safe inside, Haitian independence, what does this consist of?, ate food, strange and normal, honorary Germans?, every kind of person, weird conversations, a communist, comes across as very normal, into Chairman Gonzalo, the Peruvian Communist Party, a good time, Haitian soup, a savoury quality, pork, cabbage, the broth, squash, a tasty experience, spicy chicken pastries, blood pressure down, meat and meat associated products, lots of salt, crazy things we were told, salt’s fine, you need salt to live, why animals and humans lick it, not being productive, a very strange lady, 70 years old, highly disabled, huge knowledge network, hundreds of chickens and goose and 7 cattle, nature and nurture, a little genetics and little philosophy, being sick is frustrating and annoying, take vacations, why you trying to punish me, comb the beaches, explore them, map them, learn the lore, go fishing, 6 hour podcast to edit up tonight, get Jesse and Will talking, bad habits, a long show, The Journey Of Joenes, very good time, another human, good guy.

Prize Ship by Philip K. Dick

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #846 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Lilith by George MacDonald

The SFFaudio Podcast #846 – Lilith by George MacDonald (10 hours 5 minutes) read by Pete Williams for LibriVox – followed by a discussion. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Scott Danielson, and Tom Pace.

Talked about on today’s show:
A Romance, 1895, analyses, Christian universalist, congregationalist minister, a fantasy character, fascinated, first wife of Adam, where did that come from, Jewish mythology, Kabalaha, the Talmud, acquainted, an intellectual blah blah, Answer To Job by Carl Jung, predates Joseph Campbell, 10 hours, first 10 chapters, last 10 chapters, final ending, Mr Crow, that healing cycle, hope, a level of forgiveness, this podcast, the process of becoming wiser, read some more books, some of them stick with you and make you wiser, a George MacDonald, one of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy, old books are good, Tolkien, Lewis, Phantastes, The Princess And The Goblin, A.A. Milne, in dialogue, Edgar Rice Burroughs version is a Princess Of Mars, Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation aka Gullivar Jones: His Vacation, Edwin Lester Arnold, portal fantasy, whimsy and fancy, for a comedy purpose, not a lot of humour in this book, a world that’s a parallel society, not a lot of running water, a little girl, our solo male adventurer, a transformative experience, David Lindsay’s A Voyage To Arcturus, Lin Carter, very good taste and a very avid interest, his Conan knock offs, the curator, books on books, a man with good taste, mediocre fiction writing, done a lot of good for a lot of people, since they came out, late-19th century and early 20th century, Charwoman’s Shadow, The King Of Elfland’s Daughter, The Broken Sword, twigged to, Scott Miller’s Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, The Door In The Wall by H.G. Wells, encounters a woman, a fantastic realm, 2 panthers, shows him a book, the boy having adventures, outside the door, three more times does the green door appear, an exam at school, a minister in the British government, the third time he goes through, something else going on here, a construction site, haunted that boy, made him the man he was, he sought death, what is the meaning of all that in the story, after reading this, green doors are magic doors, something that doesn’t come up any more, a portal fantasy, an explanation, relatively mundane, servants quarters, baize, felt like on a pool table, little children were taken under the wing of a servant, magical land, they love you, no longer allowed to pass through that green door, quasi-memory, is she Circe?, full of symbolism, Aslan is a lion, that’s fine, supposed to be Jesus, the raven in here, Mr. Raven, Mr. Crow, little ideas here and there, christian symbolism, dying to self, selflessness is what you need to do, Lilith with her clenched fists, the Ring in Lord Of The Rings, progression would be dying to self, allegory, roughly use the term, a deep analysis, Mr. Vane, Charles?, climbing the mountain in the city of God, literalist toward the divine, allegorical towards our lives, the end of The Last Battle, a new version of Narnia, ups and down, up is heaven down is hell, the mirror was in the attic?, in the library, if it was in the attic, the head, the brain, the cellar is the guts, water in this book, no running water, red running liquid, when he cries, are those rivers, you would never finish reading the book, it made me clean, a nice book, a very weak book compared to this, talking animal, A Night In Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny, characters presented, Dracula, you’re supposed to figure it out, this is just a big shaggy dog story, wanting to read it every October, 31 chapters, a cute book, no substantive weight, dense with meaning, events that happen in it are fine, full of ideas, propaganda for a certain point of view, we can all get salvation no matter what horror we’ve committed, everybody’s got a path to redemption and salvation, making it very clear in the book, Aslan’s a talking lion, he’s the king, all these children with no parents, we find them in the forest, not a random encounter in Dungeons & Dragons, 19th century orphans, be like little children, innocent and fearful, stunted in growth, they don’t mature, there’s these giants who are scary and dangerous, reading this with a cynical mind, that adult man should not be sleeping with a bunch of children who are not their own, our relationship to other humans in the pure light of god, true and clean and just, a striking set of scenes, experience in this book, finds the corpse of the woman, dried right to her bone, nurses her back to health, mysterious bites, getting sucked on, pretty sure she’s a vampire, it was big bad snake, I threw it in the river, an intimacy there, to give it warmth, warming it somewhat perhaps, makes clothes for her, heavily symbolic, why C.S. Lewis loves it so much, really good messaging, I can use this, shades of Narnia in it, not a book for children, stars children, the very real horror of WWII to a fantasy countryside, morally educative, accessible for children, a good C.S. Lewis quote, “put away”, Corinthians 1:13, critics who treat “adult” as a term of approval, to be concerned about being grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish, in moderation healthy symptoms, arrested development, fairy tales in secret, read them openly, the fear of childishness, very grown up, the people who stop reading science fiction regret it, I don’t want people to know I’m reading Harry Potter, when you have actually grown up, making a mistake, need to move on from this stuff, graduate to mimetic literary fiction about nothing, Ray Bradbury, he was told he needed to mature, returned to that, he got back into it very enthusiastically, one summer, summer school, playing LEGO, looking forward to playing LEGO, didn’t want to zoom it around the room, unable to be that imaginative, let’s make this airplane look good, play better, a graduation out of a certain stage, get into writing, become playful again, a cool car that somebody built, design the cool car, taps into the relationship with childhood, a long way of saying, The Screwtape Letters, Out Of The Silent Planet, very interesting, the Good Story Is Hard To Find podcast, Scott’s a Catholic, Bishop Robert Barron, play is something you do for its own sake, the highest form of doing something for its own sake, a purity to it, think of non-human baby animals, become playful, the wrestling, the chasing, becoming what they are, a puppy on Tuesday, naughty is something little kids can be, an older dog, she has a job, no sheep available, border collie, naturally wants to herd sheep, when not full of puppies and nursing puppies, watching all the chicks, go back to doing her job, if anything ever goes wrong, she doesn’t play very much, this instinctual job of being a mom or a worker, graduate out of it, getting back in touch with it, creative and fulfilment, a better explanation, divines play, something done for its own end, a means to another end, in our society, we have it backwards, impoverished, the highest form of human, Catholic Mass As Play, Jordan Peterson, seems to be helping a lot of boys a lot of men, free from utility and practicality, more beautiful, more precious than work, means are not the ends, the means are more valuable, the ends are more meaningful, what I mean to say, the ends, a need to valuate is a need to defeat the actual experience itself, to valuate love, Halloween, go trick-or-treating, random stranger’s home, demand candy, be polite when you demand your candy, a year where you stop going, not because you’re not allowed, you’ve graduated from that, make their costumes, something scary, keep part of that story going, mass as play, all holidays are play days, Christmas, pretend that santa gave you a Christmas present, you need to write a note for Santa claus, we don’t have a chimney, drinks the glass, there’s only crumbs on the plate, perpetuate that play, prefer malt liquor, on the back, a quote from C.S. Lewis, most myths were made in prehistoric times, MacDonald is the greatest genius of that kind, what Tolkien had to say, a vehicle of mystery, twitter tweet, the end of The Last Battle, the ending and the feel of the world, the end of The Silmarillion, a supreme fan of it, the six parts, the chunk of the whole story, an epilogue part 2, Of The Rings Of The Power In The Third Age, ten pages, a little by the way, the scale, 30,000 pages, it ends after the end of The Lord Of The Rings, Gimli and Legolas sail across the sea, the last elf that leaves Middle Earth, the Undying Lands, the rift from third age, bonded over killing orcs, sailing over water, the rounding of the Earth, the same ending, Milton, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, what’s that all about, cycle of death and rebirth, a positivity that just carries, Novalis, a German writer, many hats 1802, the introduction by Lin Carter, The Land Beyond The Hidden Door by Lin Carter, William Morris, The Wood Beyond The World, The Well At World’s End, the school of modern adult fantasy, Lord Dunsany, Fletcher Pratt, a retired Scots minister, At The Back Of The North Wind, chemistry and natural philosophy, enormously successful, Within And Without, Tennyson and Lady Byron, adult fantasy novels, celebrated, famous, popular, Ruskin, Tennyson, Lewis Carroll, uniformly happy and fruitful, surrounded by an adoring family, a mystical genius for fairy romance, a large genial ebulliently happy man, Roger Lancelyn Green, an actor, Pilgrim’s Progress, his strict Calvinist upbringing, heaped atop, writer friends, begging for his opinion, instant love, so good there should be 60,000 more volumes of it, serene and happy man, warm and rare companionship, a wonderful time, fishing to his heart’s content, dark mountain caves, wild kelpies, romantic mysticism, psychological truths, deep and strong, woven into their textures, Scots blood, an inner faith, a rich multilayered style, a depth, a wisdom, and a strength, his two adult fantasies, a fairy romance, 1858, Bunyon for example, difficult to read, ten years before his death, seizes your attention, profound and moving, bright mocking faces, thrilling imaginative force, use of dream symbols is amazing, as you begin it, prodigious imaginative power, a secret door, the setting is worthy of Poe at his highest intensity, shadows of the past, ancient labyrinthine library, stifling silence, passing through he enters upon a mysterious world, a very unusual and stimulating book, Surprised By Joy, Wagner, William Morris, for The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe, much in MacDonald, W.H. Auden, Professor Tolkien, The Hobbit or The Lord Of The Rings, Curdie, behind Tolkien’s orcs, goblins, in an afterword, absolutely fatal, kills the magic, lose yourself in it, The Golden Key, the old man of the earth, you must throw yourself in, Poe, Jesse’s very supportable and correct theory about The Raven by Poe, the difference between Poe and MacDonald, Poe is not a Christian, conversations between angels, demons, Jesus is one million percent absent, an American 19th century, map on more stuff, make a whole lot of mistakes, the name of the faun, Tumnus, a pagan symbol, don’t read too much into it, even though he has devil legs, most Christian fiction is horrible, completely transparent, his worldview oozes out of it, he’s said such things, drawing on all these sources, what would happen next, based in his worldview, that’s the good stuff, revisions, like 8, a chunky book, super Dante, with every revision the Dante retreated, very dark, kind of a science fiction story but really not, also about suicide, the heart of this book, a lot about death, is he Adam as well?, multiple identities, he is also death, this whole land is death, a mode of being, works really well, pretty good book, a fairy romance for men and women, only 6 and half hours with a single narration, that essay was good, haven’t read much Conan, his contributions, you don’t even need to read Conan, read any Robert E. Howard will do the job, when he’s not a teenager, a real power and poetry, not lead as fulfilling a life as you could have, Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, they’re buddy buddy, in his poems too, to read fiction, gave it away, The Screwtape Letters, The King Of Elfland’s Daughter, The Charwoman’s Shadow, Lord Dunsany, short little tiny 1 page stories, chunky novels, normal size, the ideal novel size, 250 pages, epics are good too, a bin of books, 99 pages, James M. Cain, Mildred Pierce, the actual narrator, narrator Pete Williams, his mic was not good in the first few chapters, Levelator, intros and outros, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a straight reader, he’s a hero, he made this for free, because he wanted to do it, we get the benefit from it, he did another one, Hymns To The Night by Novalis translated by George MacDonald, narrator Jonathan St. John, he was excellent, a commercial release through audible, OneAudiobooks, interpretive illustration, Gabrielle Ragusi, a cover, some sketches beneath, her armour, Vane, this mirror, so audio oriented, 10 illustrations, make a nice gift for somebody, as a central character in the book, she’s the object of the book, she’s the subject being discussed, dragged kicking and screaming to her salvation, what’s our narrator doing there?, legit asking, he’s not her lover, The Odyssey, fills a trench with blood, ghosts come and they drink the blood, one of the ghosts is his dad, Upon The Dull Earth by Philip K. Dick, hell or hades, things go wrong, going into the underworld to get your girlfriend, a young man’s realization of spiritual enlightenment, ambiguous enough, he’s got more to do in life, stops going into the library, the world of childish things, that mirror is hidden from him until he comes back from school, what the mirror looks like, make Grok illustrated, a black eagle, a gold chain, a black ball, another black bird, the raven, the crow, not make distinctions, not just size but proportion, an eagle and a crow, behavior, the chain is gold, is that a weight you put on prisoners, a golden chain, not a black chain, not an iron chain, very interesting, Jesse’s excellent theory, textually evident, the beautiful sounds, a vulture, more obviously death symbol, how can you not recognize an animal for what it is, the same species, not an expert on birds, especially a bird up on top of a mirror, a guy named Mr. Raven, our hero follows him into it, a moorland, a place of emptiness, a series of, adventures, a series of dream images, participating in events, he doesn’t know his own name, when did that happen, in a dream, morph from one into another, making a mistake, let the story do its job, other people do do that symbolic work, it’s all just what it is, this beautiful other level, the beautiful writing, the line about the library, FYI, back to the mirror, makes more sense, I never again sought the mirror, profoundly changed by things, where is that place, where is the land through the mirror?, a secondary world, a connection to modern earth, it’s not hell either, some sort of purgatory, a symbolic place, ineffable stuff, strange dim memories which will not abide identification, I never dream now, when most awake only dreaming the more, Walking by Henry David Thoreau, a Novalis quote, our life is no dream but it should and will perhaps become one, a line about the library and his relationship to it, born into a library it will outlive you, studies at Oxford, why would he be doing that?, within a year, profound effect, desultory fashion, the physical science, shame shame, constantly seeing, strange analogies, physical hypotheses, about to fall into a metaphysical dream, spelling it all out, mental peculiarities, the house as well of the family is of some antiquity, a fine library, before the invention of printing, nothing surely can more impress upon a man than his succeeding to an property slowly flitting before my own, he shown into the room, who is he?, the feathering top of a fountain column, a portrait in a sort of niche, the likeness of one of my ancestors, for the first time I seemed to see it, made me turn and cast a glance to the farther end of the room, my optic nerves had been momentarily affected from within, just there I had seen, the old man in search of a book, just where I had thought to find it, very close to the opening of The Raven, in December, forgotten lore, wrought its ghost upon the floor, he’s in a library, a stack of books, enjoying the light, girlfriend or wife has died, she’s come back to life, a Guy de Maupassant story, a missing finger, a person alone in a library trying to find peace by reading, out of the library and into another world, the house is on fire, still is sitting, on the pallid bust of Pallas, shall be lifted nevermore, if he’s not dying at least he’s in hell, something different with the same situation, smart people can come up with the same ideas independently, Scott’s end, Sante Fe, New Mexico, excellent, Project Pope, the schedule, one of Jesse’ hobbies, Clifford D. Simak, a robot pope, Simak is great, the collected works of Carl Jung, a good way to conclude, chip in to that vibe, audiobook, readalong, a few bugs in the reading, some really excellent quotes from the early chapters, the poetic style, when Raven is telling Vane about the prayer flower, the silent voices of characters, comes out as a dove and it ascends, Jung’s Red Book, the Holy Spirit, an anemone, that is a prayer flower, not one prayer flower is quite like another, by the expression of it, could you teach me to know a prayer flower when I see it?, why know the name of the thing when the thing itself you do not know, beautiful poetry, discomfort vanished, a pronunciation error?, a proof listener for LibriVox, if you did deep into the LibriVox forms, make this project happen, some of the meanings, we sat down to the perfect meal, the bread and wine seemed to go deeper than the hunger and thirst, expectation took their place, comfort vanished, discomfort, all would be well, what will be well is even well now, rings so well, a good book, maybe some stuff aimed at kids, the adult fantasy series, At The Back Of The North Wind, Scott does a lot of church volunteering, what they need to do, The Magic City by Edith Nesbit, Jason Thompson, a really terrific artist, Shonen Jump, manga, comic book adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft stories, The Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath, Stephen Colbert had a TV show, a shot of the writer’s room, a poster of The Dreamlands, the book and the poster, find some rando on the internet, make a friend, we should do a show on that one, serialized in The Strand, a giant model city, alive with the people he has populated it with, The Lego Movie (2014), Synecdoche New York (2008), a robot bishop talking to a robot monk pruning a bush, 1981, search the universe, a robotic supercomputer, I’ll read any old Simak, we’ll get an audiobook, always associated, the audio part of the SFF, Prize Ship and The Ship Who Sang, very short stories, recorded both, Eaters Of The Dead by Michael Crichton, The Thirteenth Warrior (1999), redid the whole score, the story is fun, in the paperback he plays games, The Andromeda Strain, the copyright page and the front matter, meta-stuff, a combo on two short stories, The Jamieson Satellite by Neil R. Jones and Melonta Tauta by Edgar Allan Poe, memorizing and writing poems out longhand, creative bent, everything, from Jordan Peterson’s sources, writing therapy and reading of classics, booklist, Dostevesky, clinicians, what he said about Jung, doing your shadow work?, who is in your shadow, why do I hate that guy so much, Michio Kaku, all the people he talks to, pushed back and asked questions, he got so mad, basic lies, accept it and nod their heads, a supercut, not a one off mistake, 100 years ago long distance communication was yelling out the window, telephone, medicine has improved so much, in what ways, look I’m smart, a theoretical physicist, same thing with quotes, Canadian Quotations, where did this quote actually appear in this person’s work, Robert A. Heinlein, Heinlein doesn’t use this word, kinda similar to what Heinlein had one character say, that sort of stuff is in my shadow, all presidents kill people, not everything is equal to everything else, show your work, trying to understand string-theory, where was the tests that you did for this, all theoretical, that guy’s never flying that car, the rotax engines never got the thing off the ground, getting lied to, Jesse doesn’t want to be that guy, the objective of shadow work, psychotheraputic, root influences, his career, psychiatry, medical psychology, academic psychology, theorizing and la-de-dah vs. medical psychiatry, make a person better, psychiatry, intending to make you aware of the problems, make a person not so reactive, not so volatile and reactive, qualities that are annoying to other people, socially well rounded, allowed to be annoying, obnoxiously demand, disagree on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 70 hours for 1 volume, there are multiple Jordan Petersons, personas, his utube, subtopics, he behaves differently, private videos, personally talking to him, he know how to perform, a character quality of his presentation, he’s a presenter, rooted in his being a professor, you could call him out on those things, dignity and courtesy, an actual dialogue, when Joe Rogan has him on Yon Mi Park, too much plastic surgery and had some traumatic experience, the Korean refugees are all from South Korea, my kid can’t handle, the government isn’t controlled by the United States as much, politics, propaganda, Russia has definitely had its problems, one of the poorest European countries into one of the richest, same thing happened in China, the Russian revolution, a really interesting fact, after [WWI], have to support the White Russians, a forgotten piece of history, how did this hate-on for Russians come from?, a pea in the same pod as Jung and Peterson, not a marketer, getting lots of money, a very useful archetype, knowing that you have something that you don’t know, until you are triggered by the thing that triggered you, ceased to be psychological, three branches of the study of the mind, psychology, sociology, collective unconscious, canceled all television subscriptions, not a huge fan of Karl Marx, pro-Peterson people, things that he should hate him for, the shadow of the Marxian/post-modern thing, vilifies it all, alter strong criticism against Marx, what the final outcome is, people don’t approach Marx, bring Marx up, even interesting, the unabridged Gulag Archipelago, 2100 pages, endless, on archive.org, you wouldn’t read that, a giant report on the prison system in the Soviet Union should not be a popular work, who could?, volume 1 of the 3 volumes, what’s going on in the 2nd volume, the Ottawa protest from 2022, the truckers, if you were there, a whole world of unbelievable experience, truckers are heroes, not written as a report, more written for the human to read as a story, an experiment in literary investigation, a venting friendly strange story, not friendly, soul searching, Solzhenitsyn was an avowed Marxian, the biggest Marxian ever, Will Emmons, self-declare communist, read a lot more Mao, a Leninist Marxist, when you approach somebody as an individual, Hitler or Pol Pot, present yourself in an interface, I’m not a weakling but I’m not going to beat you up, enemy hormones, you’re my brother, it happens so fast, presenting something that’s attractive or repulsive, allyship, amity, character traits, the story of the photographer, meets Goebbels, demon eyes looking at the camera, all roses, weird experiments, all in the show, all your interesting secret history, almost nobody listening, it’s for posterity, strange experience with some random person, what do you think of contraception, not a hypothetical, a practical tool, something you think is very important, not a good question for twitter, not good at subtlety, an interesting bookshelf that people don’t like, I have Mein Kampf, that book is not banned, Mussolini and the fascists in Italy, what do you think of Hitler, a long show, not a simple story, if we’re ever going to talk about Hitler, hired to be a spy, like Ray Epps, trick people into becoming criminals, very successful at it, why Hitler’s evil, the system that he was the head of, who you going to point your fingers at, we fucked up by joining WWI, Germany wanted to be an Empire, a snowstorm, a rolling down a hill, Hitler wanted to be allies with Britain and the United States, deputy prime minister Chrysta Freeland’s grandpa was a nazi, did a documentary on plutocracy, if you’re going to have the conversation, allow the breathing space wherever the path goes, awareness and new knowledge, touches a lot on WWII, part of the Red Army, his criticism of Stalin, how Churchill is just as culpable, treatment of the Cossacks, the cute guy who liked machine guns and won WWII, the story of the Cossacks, GoldenEye (1995), Sean Bean’s backstory, the whole history of them, a subculture of mercenary mentalities, enforcers for the Czars, horseguys hired by the Czars to do a purge, the guys who attacked the Roman Empire, ancestors have done evil, happens all the time, empires do this all day long, friendly conversation, new awareness, counterpart to writing therapy, reading therapy where you read fiction, one book leads to another, a bunch of pirate books, Marcus Rediker, books, economics, not exactly communism, anybody can defect, don’t bring women on the ship, light the place on fire, The Fearless Benjamin Lay, participating the slave trade, book leads on to book, a Simak novel, value to be drawn from it, mimetic fiction, realistic fiction, horrible stuff like The Life Of Pi, just mimetic fiction with fantasy dressing, a mainstream novel, a lady that acts like a robot but she’s not a robot, just make her a robot, it gets past your defenses, only care about the ideas, the best path for reading, conversations that we’ve had previous, kind of weird, not pleasurable to read, how long is it, get it done in a week, a whole bunch on YouTube, underneath of Peterson is Jung, Maps Of Meaning, videos, the core of his work, the force to be reckoned with, what he’s approaching, from another perspective, standing on the shoulders of many giants, three tributaries, Jung’s Alchemy, a self therapy thing, the source of spirituality and the world religions, a giant basis, a singular pool or lake, nice metaphor, 30 hours, super hard to read, dense, extra hard and three times as long, don’t read it for this podcast, The Edge Of Thought Ideas, needs social almost every day, cognition, might help, 1652, Elias Ashmole, The Ordinal Of Alchemy, allegory that points to the real world, so abstract, as if the real world was abstract, the root of the I Ching, arabic, chimera, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, what everybody says about it, people queue up on what other people are saying, a comedy piece, am I wrong, is this not supposed to be hilarious, a really dry sense of humour, cut up dead bodies, uses electricity, gets materials, creates the creature, Galvani and other such, the growing man in a jar, material reaction happens, growing crystals, sugar water, heat and time, on the end of a string, sugar crystals, the mandrake, grow a man in a jar, grew a man in a jar or an alchemical process, bones around which to grown, stitches, a black man’s arm, nothing like that, oversize, translucent skin, the ugliness could be beauty, improper proportions, Marilyn Monroe without the beauty mark, the beauty mark moves around, she has the beauty mark, the little imperfection that shows her what the image is, a giant newborn baby, the psychological reading of it, the 1818 version, no stitching, ourside the family’s home, the creature destroying Frankenstein’s remaining family, fuck off?!, fuck you!!, his bride, his cousin, his father in the Creature’s shadow, more like an exam, the best it can be, regret, six or seven months after, spurs more research and such, Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde, it was supposed to be a reveal, spoilers, we know going in now, that’s what this is supposed to be, he rewrote it, a complete rewrite of the same book, earbuds, bluetooth, stuff about the writing of that book, him vs. his writing, Treasure Island, a nice guy to know, four copies of The Aeneid, the collected worlds of Carl Jung, Anna Karenina, Riverside Milton, Wagner, Voltaire, re read Candide, funny books, Der Ring des Nibelungen, Douglas Adams, a full cast production, you get one bad actor, just learning English, so distracted, reading styles, not worth the trouble, Tannhauser, Venusburg, seek absolution from the pope, only 2 hours, Nibelungenlied, epic poem, 1000 years ago, Canterbury Tales, 20 hours, the more time it takes to prep, fewer people show up, we lost three of those people, Christmas season, been fun, Geoffrey Chaucer, sharing stories, The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale, the prologue, scammery, very enjoyable, The Alchemist by H.P. Lovecraft, episode 567, kinda similar, the best story ever, still great, the head of a dragon, no mirrors in this castle, family is warning him not to go to town, hooked on that idea, everybody seeing him in his innocence, a metaphorical ugly duckling story, a goose, a shadow of all the people who are looking at him, it lends itself to reading that way, I’m alive!, he puts on clothes, the lab coat, wanders off into the wilderness, cold and hungry, nuts and veggies, his creator was afraid of him, he comes to a house, he spies on the people through a crack in the wall, an old man who’s blind, gather wood for the fire, a little interaction, learns to read, a really fun nested narrative, Evan Lampe, Hay Ibn Yaqzan by Ibn Tufail, a guy born out of a muddle puddle, he’s a baby, a female deer becomes his mother, the mother dies, I don’t know what death is, a history of philosophy and science told through the narrative of person, science and philosophy, raised by deer, the Tarzan books, read an old book and you learn a lot, silly alchemy words, in and out narrative, written in the 1400s, Hyperion by Dan Simmons, meet the shrike, books that rhyme with other books.

Lilith by George MacDonald

Lilith by George MacDonald - cover by Gabrielle Ragusi

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #845 – READALONG: Odd John by Olaf Stapledon

The SFFaudio Podcast #845 – Jesse, Terence Blake, Will Emmons, and Tommy Patrick Ryan discuss Odd John by Olaf Stapledon

Talked about on today’s show:
it’s good to be here with you homsaps, odd terry, just Tommy, not that odd, regular tommy, story between Jest and Earnest, story not novel, quite like, dislike, came around, comparing it to Philip K. Dick, who’s smarter, doesn’t have a frontal lobe, he has boobs, a failed superman, keep it all together, spoiler he dies at the end, we know that right away, what’s going on at the end, did Philip K. Dick read this?, doing a lot of the same things, The Golden Man, as we accumulate odd freakos with weird bodies, back to Terry, Odd Tom, a book by Koontz, The Crawlers, lifespans, an earlier figure, born in 1886, died 1950, 1928-1982, started writing before Stapledon died, 1935, where were we exactly, the superman the ubermench, 36 Olympics, Jesse Owens, before that, what was the world thinking about some of these ideas?, Nazis, genocide, Friedrich Nietzsche, amor fati [love or fate], pain and suffering, achieves joy, take joy in the pain of suffering, the eternal side of things, homo superior or not, the eternal return, the noble affiliation, not in the degraded Nazi affiliation, your fellow Jesse, hard not to use the term, that perspective that we now have, Superman, 1938, a lens from where we are, Shakespeare’s Planet by Clifford D. Simak, reaches out and touches the woman’s tattoo, living in today’s world, that would have been canceled, seemed enlightened, murders the policeman, find out about me, all the good I’m going to do, the treatment of Pax, she’s a cow, super-amazing kid, induced labour, in gestation for 11 months, bovine cows have very long gestation, silly stupid and important, mutant stories, golden skin, super magnetic to females, see into the future, he has no thoughts, his frontal lobes are missing, can anticipate all things, mutants that look like slug babies, aborted fetuses, parents unwilling to kill them, form a society, eventually an island, isolated and attacked by the homo sapiens, strikingly similar, these ideas are in the air, superpowers, weird features, telepathy, John W. Campbell thing, go backwards and forwards in time, psychic investigations, influence people, something like telepathy, when he collects up his crew, exterminates the natives, colonizes their land, how much of this book is an allegory vs. straight up science fiction, Sirius the dog novel, A Fantasy Of Love And Discord, a Clarke story, a joking answer, Stan Lee, David Bowie, better make way, more enlightened sexually, that’s in this book too, creepy, more serious, more of an intellectual, writing for intellectual purposes, make a buck purposes, more humour, more sexism, they both have it, the lens of 2024 me, Star Maker, Eric [S. Rabkin], gimmicky ideas, this can’t be taken completely seriously, what kind of abilities will man have, respond to Tommy and Jesse’s question, who’s smarter and by what means are we measuring?, Stapledon’s idea of intelligence, a philosopher, early adopters, Bernard Shaw, quite conscious of all that, after the war in France, redeem Nietzsche from the German debasement, signs of that sort of battle, in Europe, some of these ideas will be taken up and believed religiously, very intelligent in the conceptual sense, not cooked enough in the images and characters and storylines, Dick read Stapledon, Arthur C. Clarke was very influenced, the same sort of ideas, he read just everything, Dick came out of the pulps, there’s the island of England, he’s English and he’s intellectual, there isn’t as much crossover, A.E. Van Vogt, he’s reading the pulp magazines, not directly, doing the same thing, came to a peak, getting Clarkeian type ideas, proof of a real connection, presenting ideas in terms of breaking away from a philosophical treatise, Stapledon is only half-way there whereas Dick is fully there, obsessed at the end with VALIS and so on, the priority is the image, the character and the story, that’s how he vehicles his philosophical ideas, ideas behind his writing process, a more intellectual approach, up to Will to judge, make this about Philip K. Dick, Jesse maps, apples and oranges, different kinds of intelligence, very conscious of the things that he’s thinking and putting into his work, spirit, Will doesn’t believe in that, transcendent something, crisis of the spirit, a crisis of how we feel?, this about a do that doesn’t have hands and it really bothers him, we get where he’s coming from, a hypothesis about his process, very rich content, not always aware, Jesse now understands what’s going on, Philip K. Dick is the Golden Man he is the Odd John, what it is to be a dog from the human’s point of view, Stapledon imagined himself, at some points, an alien feeling, dissecting science fiction literature, the science fiction and fantasy literature of the Bible, what he means by that, kind of interesting, Eric and Tommy’s book club, not going to disbelieve anything, Scientology, specific Catholic dogma, there’s something more than just science, that spiritual project that they’re working on, at the end our narrator is hoping that they’ll finish their project, didn’t stop WWII, reading this as a parable, they make an eden after genocide, invaders from the outside come to their garden, don’t pull from the tree not yet bearing fruit, they’re naked, instead of being innocent, they know what they’ve done, these are evil people, in comparison to what?, the mercenaries that come to destroy them, telescopes and mechanical contrivances, the same project Jesus was working on, no more man against man, what he’s doing there, a mix, demythologized Christianity, affirmation of life, affirm the higher being, an ideal of Stapledon’s, our highest concern, our narrator, Fido, Pheado, Plato’s dialogues, brainwashed, they do horrible things, beyond good and evil, an attempt to describe what that could mean, allegorical, the same as the Nazi idea, the Nazis are deluded, these people are superior, failed, there’s a problem, a huge leap beyond human intelligence, hated in Dune, the inside mind of Paul, fused with the spice, mentat bene gesserit, weapons training, the thoughts of a superior being who thinks in language, telepathy at the end, totally superior but expressed in language, a human being compared to an ape, the treating people as cattle, the mom, sometimes described as dull and dumb, capable of all sorts of stuff, he’s action, she’s just making the home work in a mysterious way, the stupid question asked at the beginning, one is regarded highly in a certain class, there’s change happening, reading Stapledon, commercial success, more recent, Blade Runner (1982), turned into movies, in the consciousness, its important to get a stupid question to get better questions, always talking about novels, you should be but you’re not, his very important novel The Man In The High Castle, short stories are not well regarded, a status thing, our Fido character, damning Pax by calling her cow-like, knowingly writing a flawed work, Stapledon knows but the narrator doesn’t know that, Philip K. Dick doesn’t put together a novel this well, much better at short stories, novels are meditative, Poe, found it out this morning, the same story, an earlier work, canis superior, better than the other dogs, a better book, striving for the same thing, this book inspired that one, limitations of the dog, all the other animals, they treat the narrator as a dog, they’ll cut his balls off, we’ll do anything to them, church on Sundays, they can’t understand our spiritual projects, they’re mad, torn up the living room, tell this story again from the dog’s point of view, pitfalls, thinking about the sexuality that’s going on, homosexuality, jujitsu, switches to females later, everybody’s having sex with everybody, he’s trying to say something here, too Philip K. Dick stupid, not a roman-a-clef, a Socrates line, a fusion of Socrates and Christ, a homo superior we can attain, ugly but knowing about seduction, we did The Symposium, English respects the Greek more, he’s married, homo-erotic relations of uplift, Alcibiades, do you give up sex or do you sublimate it in a physical way, their problem at the end, they pluck the apple, a brief flash of the idea of this being the same novel as The Lord Of The Flies, how its forced on people, lie fallow and be fine, a curiosity and such, rescued by a British ship at the end, primitive communist, the horrible novel, to punish yourselves, doesn’t have the stamina for audiobook listening, podcast listeners, Terence’s comment is right, destruction rays, the original sin of murdering all of the Polynesians, conversations with the Soviets, do these other things, we like communism because its good, individualist communists, one of the real sins is lying, lying all the time, being deceptive, morally outraged by acting, so as to take your money that isn’t for entertainment purposes, are they lying about them being communists, throughout Stapledon’s novels, the official communist tradition, get his swipes in, earlier in the novel, fired for leading a strike, he’s lying to him, honest assessment, too hateful, stupider than Philip K. Dick, Philip K. Dick is or isn’t ideological, detailed and interesting, a specific attack, hitting at something that is more universal, what is being smart anyways (other than getting what you want), herd animals, wolves are smart, big cute eyes, puppy-like qualities, tiktok videos, replacement babies for many people, Glenn Greenwald, one of the moral heroes of the earth, a noble person, when it will be time to kill him, 17 years old, there petting, wearing diapers, great arthritis, talk about how intelligence is superior one to the other, when to put the humans down, going to the vet, they get the sense, how do we know who’s the smart one, they put themselves down, spoil the ending, they kill themselves, because they were homo superior, this is much more like the Heaven’s Gate cult, high on their own supply, smart and everything, not for our benefit, we’re on a project, reasons to do it, so, bye, I kinda wanna die with you, what’s going on?, these are not creatures looking down on us fondly, ambiguous or ambivalent, doesn’t hold together, moral supremacy, vaguely bad internet, moral supremacy falls flat, we can’t see it, we can’t understand because we’re homo sapiens, we can’t know him, to be the subject of a story, they murder a lot, suicide for their own benefit somehow, why kill themselves, you need an end to the book, a dark end, railed out of society, the author doesn’t do that, something missing, in the title, the life of Christ, impressing the elders, the temptation in the wilderness, John the Baptist, a preliminary sketch of homo superior in flourished form, a connection with daily life on planet Earth, Star Maker, the cosmic vision, Atlantis sinking beneath the sea, transcendence and imminence, do the bridge, a sketch of what homo superior could be, seems like Jesus, the forerunner, the precursor, the voice in the wilderness, more to tackle, Clark Kent yet to come, they can’t uplift themselves, the wolf boy, Hayy Ibn Yaqdhan by Ibn Tufail, the Egyptian, praise of Allah, becomes like him, Jacquline, that lifespan thing, us being dogs to them, having a dog is intrinsically associating with death, to treat it like your child, you might want to die, setting yourself for tragedy, the long lived elves in Tolkien, Tommy’s mind is mapped, the Dresden Files, Highlanders, the antediluvians, Methuselah, vampires, 1000 years old, Will’s art piece, a pug Cerberus, why are they so long lived?, magical powers like wizards, The X-Men, Wolverine is immortal, neoteny, we are intelligence because we stay in the womb long and we’re still not fully formed, the infancy is a lot longer as well, his precociousness is evil, the word naughty as opposed to evil, licked all the butter, he’s not going to live that long anyway, be more careful, confront the child about the cookies, you’ve been naughty, overindulge in cookies, set aside some cookies, this is a time for us to fight, you need to be corrected, whatever its for he kills a policeman, malice aforethought, studied for no good reason, of adult mind tried as adults, his level, he’s also a juvenile, precocious things, who hasn’t burglarized neighbours homes?, semi-rhetorically and for jokes, kill his wife at home because she’ll be sad without him, nephews 8 and 10, a 4th grade class, 9 year olds, self-aware, they know what’s going on, cookie jar metaphor, food fight, Eric says it, when you give your dog food it means I love you, the corpse of an animal, cats are better about that, capable of this act, kids doing violence, rational and cold, really disturbing, the inner workings of Odd John, emotionally or spiritually, he ought to be tried as an adult, bright 9 year olds, what a kid is capable of, he doesn’t overpower the policeman, kill the guy in a fight, studied anatomy, small for a 9 year old, when the cop caught him, a childhood prank, the exercise of that new found powers, when little kids do bad things, do we throw them away, set outside of society as a punishment, not suitable for among us, after a certain point, you’re not reformable, prison is for you now, schizophrenic, age out, mid 30s declines, there’s a logical chain to it, extra explosion of testosterone, aggressive tendencies, starting wars, is there really a point where we get less violent?, a lot less violent, diplomacy or good upbringing, diffusing situations, avoiding situations, also Thomas Ryan, looking for fights, they would fight club, its programmed in, a huge effort in society, an instinct for violence, self-defense, this other instinct to dig and build, the only reliable person on this podcast, hear everything there is to be said before Will’s response, the wise man at the end of time, the being that only suffers, doesn’t like to think about it, think about that being a lot, persuade us, natural normal and ineradicable, self-defense, internecine warfare, what violence is, AOC says those words a violence, in the context, playing chess, get to the language of it, metaphorically judo-flip you, call it violence, we gone of from there, ingroup outgroup stuff, we killed a deer in the woods, we might dispute, which group gets to divide the food, scarcity was a big thing, when capitalist arrange thing, you keep the thighs, the older hunters should, where soccer is super-popular, male spectators, a special age range, guy is digging some tunnels, they work together to build something, two real instincts, land reform is needed, force of violence will prevent digging, the violence is amped up, the Minecraft instinct, and the first person shooters, one is amped up and one is reduced, run the media, not representative of humanity, Jesse is more or less human, the appeal of both, a judo match, imprimatur for use of evolution, one of the scientific world building principles, wary of adopting a naive idea of evolution, instincts, and human nature, what Christopher Tolkien does, worth studying by someone, more to say, riff, improving through evolution, not a great science fiction concept, More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon, what’s the point of this?, war and fascism bad, pot-shots in, an essential idea, as a religious idea, a fanatical way, he’s on to something there, correctly observes, avoid all these bad things, pessimistic, we don’t have the hardware not to plunge into war and fascism, not scientifically supportable, not a useful intervention, we need to morally evolve, maybe biology can do it for us, a miracle, the ghost of Walt Disney, who liked the book, who disliked the book, push the discussion forward, his weakest effort, those stories managed to be compelling, Chris Claremont, high end stuff, University of Michigan, short and furry all over, a sympathetic character, having respect for Wolverine, he has a good heart, kinda savage, Cyclops is a total douchebag, a non-entity, they’re all suffering, Tommy is Wolverine, Nightcrawler, who are you?, weirdly popular, knives in his hands, wanna be Beast, Terry and the Pirates, when they came out, before Wolverine got in, Beast and Cyclops, before he turned Blue, the evolution continued, pleasure in the X-Men, the sinking of the island of Genosha, X-Men Annual 1, the same as this book, a million connections, an X-Men reveal part, take guesses, Magneto, Gambit, Canada is like France, Juggernaut, Professor X, school, Jesse is Jubilee, a late addition, sparkles is her superpowers, technically, more like Dazzler, two cabinets connected, six playable character, sympathy for Colossus, shooting them with your eye vision, Alpha Flight, Gaurdian and Vindicator, Sasquatch, Shaman, Chinese American girl, wapping up with a deep X-Men discussion, a good late take, this idea of human evoltuion is persistent, Joe Rogan, a popular idea that’s persistent, better than is done in Slan, the similarity to the idea of Slan, The Midwich Cuckoos, either Dick or Stapledon, not human, more alien in the sense of estrangement, one of the definitions of science fiction, how does Pax feel?, he sent visions of it, he kept her updated, mom, making a giant ray, postcard to her mom, nods sagely, some milk squirts out, emotional intelligence, the meditation model, the surrender model, Islam is surrender, I affirm the ending, the gap between and Stapledon and other people’s intelligence, a precocious boy, read a lot, what we see of this character, basing it on himself, the gap between him and other people around him, trying to communicate that, a gap between him and women that we see in Sirius, Plaxxy, it’s close, good call, the female is less well laid out, the gap between a dumb man and a smart man, whatever smart means, one of Tommy’s notes, Stapledon stand-in, a highly intelligent person, him being a consciousness objector during the first WWI, people just generally go along with whatever, does he have a religious excuse?, no, Bertrand Russell, ultimately is dumb, who he based John on, not easy to track down, Ludwig Wittgenstein, tortured genius, live in a cabin by himself, children in a peasant village, a new paradigm, take Odd John as a figure of a philosopher, some of his evolution, Wittgenstein’s 1st masterwork, 1922, a professorship at Cambridge, the legend around Wittgenstein, a vibe, a lot of the people are the same, Arthur C. Clarke, not normal people, they come up with their own ideology, they don’t subscribe to a system, he treats dialectical materialism like its God, an army vs. an individual, over time, one eye bigger than the other, African features, playing with something, things from their bellies, communists of somekind, bam done, couple of minutes, one more X-Men reference, H.G. Wells, the Morlocks, Nightcrawler, they all look weird, the old cartoon, a lady who looked like a baglady, they become less ugly as he looks at them, these other beautiful women, less pretty after her, when you look at your own dog, objectively that’s a beautiful dog, they are different species, bigger brains, bigger eyes, the H.G. Wells man of the future, nutriments through their skin, The War Of The Worlds aliens, grew up reading Wells, the sublime and the beautiful, the sublime in some ways trumps beauty, vaster and infinite, disproportioned, that’s a mess but more profound or impressive, Kant’s critique of judgement, back to Socrates again, the most beautiful guy in town, so much written in the X-Men, Caliban from The Tempest, Ganymede was a girl, in mythology, one of the cupbearers of Jupiter and his catamite, making a quadrilogy of the great mutant writers, doing a lot of good work, they’re not even called mutants, when it comes out, the word isn’t used, a sport of nature, early 20th century, sport?, a mutant, a freak of nature, good news old sport, good news old mutant, a dwarf Alberta spruce, reversion to the normal type, retained it, how does he produce the concept without the world, on faded page, sporting point, an ancestor, original mutation, they gave him opportunities, John’s a great little sport now, John’s a dear these days, very cute, 16 times, he’s clever, upset with the book, annoyed with it, disappointed than anything else, he does do better, you can go that way, not as powerful, Sirius is weird, dog/woman love, in companionship to each other, mutant and homo superior shit is stupid, ais, will they eliminate us?, what is intelligence, biological, the great replacement, how humans are creating their replacements, Battlestar Galactica with the cylons, really good and very fun, ultimately, Ronald D. Moore, a good solution to the problem, integrated with humanity?, they’re not really superior, photocopiable, an emotional exercise, when Philip K. Dick tackles it, if this goes on, he doesn’t end it with a suicide, it was all a dream, the island blows up and sinks, a cop out ending, I don’t know how to finish the book, how does Sirius end?, a vigilante gang, being very smart and being interested in suicide, you guys know about this?, from the Cross Plains Review, June 18th 1937, The Tempter by Robert E. Howard, who are you?, Alpha and Omeger, which Hagar, biblical, men call me Suicide, lusted for the resting as a lover for his bride, this world of human cattle, o’er the paths that I had wandered, pressed the trigger, my soul went gliding gliding, good smart boy, 2 days before he shot himself, the word cattle in there, a smart smart guy, isolated, surrounded by regular folks, a struggling writer, maybe all men consider at some point, pretty rare, teens a lot more, shownotes, an idea or a name, shied away from in modern talk, “put to sleep”, switch to bluesky, Gaza pictures with childrens’ heads blown off, scary descriptions, people’s dumb ideas about, floating around this planet for 7 or so decades, Albert Camus, the only philosophical question, Sisyphus is happy, The Host, very good for a mimetic story, Algeria, take care of a prisoner, meet some Berbers, not enough science fiction, another planet, make the main character a robot, more into science fiction, the robot makes it timeless, a play, Dirty Hands by Jean-Paul Sartre, heart failure, bad revolutionaries but good assassins, the narcissism of the deed, is this an op, calling for Luigi with Bat-Signal, the ops are in every direction, why did the FBI do January 6th?, against the assassination of trump buy for Luigi, yes of that dude, the place but not the person, capitalism would wake up tomorrow, there are bad actors, there are good actors, what he represents in his job, more security for CEOs, might backfire, was he insured?, buy a new CEO, estranged, 2 things going on, Luigi the hero, Luigi the folkhero, the guy who actually shot the dude, Luigi was probably the guy who shot the dude, carrying the manifesto, we’ll see, more video, people killing each other, news analysis video, a viewing room, this would not have been shown, censored as well, a pushing back of the barriers of what is horrible, videos of torture, seeing corpses, seeing someone shoot someone in cold blood, censored, Mirko in Germany, why retweet?, it is because it is horrifying and hard to look at, consensus tweeting, really twisted porn, something governments are supporting and we should know about, of course they don’t want to see it, we should stop this, it’ll go away, hey, that’s wrong, a bigger movement of people, fake or real Luigi Mangione, what do you do about Zionism, ideological, we could displace them but there’d be questions, that’s evil, he tries to make the case with the Fido narrator, just is evil, we are superior beings because we have superior lives, don’t accept the premise, Jews live outside of Israel, Iran has Jews, the idea of Zionism precedes the Holocaust but benefited from the propaganda of the Holocaust, forces that want to keep it going, hasn’t solved anything, we’re having a spiritual crisis, overly dense, wait a second, forgetting Hegel, moving forward, crises, collective conflicts, the objective, this funny thing, sing the praises of the creator, a transcendent spirit, something wrong with the book, post-protestant thing, he needs there to be a Star Maker, agnostics, wonder, awe, reverence, we can’t call it the Creation, make the atomic motor work, the Manhattan Project, how to make atomic energy, this panpsychic thing, they no longer obey causality, intuiting some sort of quantum idea, you could rewrite it, except for the influence of the mind, reified entity, the most reliable person, he’s anti-flaky, ideological consistency, you love him, upcoming shows, accusatory inversion, you can’t quit I promote you, Lilith, next year becomes mysterious and unknown to Terence, Deleuze and Psychoanalysis, a once a month course, high concept, access to the other courses, priming the pump, bootstrapping, a link or two to a friend, everybody needs to know about Deleuze, everybody needs to know about psychoanalysis, more unreliable, it runs for a year, Project Pope, E. Nesbit, The Railway Children, Jason Thompson, a magical imp, boomeranged, accruing some interest, Will has been studying many things, winter depressive mode, studying the inside of my eyelids, Theodore Sturgeon, a lot of Richard Matheson, the end of I Am Legend, he’s more successful than Stapledon, the homo sapiens consoles himself, and there’s a dog, supersolid, the best thing he wrote, Born Of Man And Woman, trick stories, if only Will Smith had suicide, The Last Spaceship, so long ago, June 2nd, before Jonathan passed away, passed in the night, the audio for it, William Sky, what to do, the consensus was, the goddamn thing was missing, LibriVox removed a whole bunch of stuff because Gutenberg removed a whole bunch of stuff, by different narrators, Paul Lawley Jones’ podcast Golden Age Fiction, The Boomerang Circuit, how Scott Miller [The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast] was removed from YouTube, fraudulent removal requests, living in Korea, takes Meg citizenship away, bye bye buddies, three separate stories, not technically a violation, all good narrators, Phil Chenevert, google suppresses everything, it looks good, H.G. Wells’ The Crystal Egg, a 10 hour show, trying to get ahead, the ‘holidays’ when Santa Claus is on the road, is Santa Claus jewish?, able to work on Christmas, also a robot, that Galaxy, The Yeast Men by David H. Keller, Robert A.W. Lowndes, gross and interesting, sense of humour, many episodes, many weeks, my greatest failure yet, The Weapon Shop, weird, fugue statey, Fury by Kuttner, wasn’t a good book, Jonathan suggested, he’s dead!, social media, self promotion, he’s in creative mode, how to way to be, too much mental energy, new stuff in, The Jameson Satellite by Neil R. Jones, suicidal ideation, Josh Horotwitz, read it in paper, this guy is good, more recent than that, less rough hewn stories about people being put into robot bodies, that are good?, that are interesting?, Robert J. Sawyer, volume 60, a Walter Tevis!, The Big Bounce, a joke length, celestial hammerlock, The Door To Infinity by Edmond Hamilton, Dale Grothmann’s a good narrator, Hamilton!, he’s good, a broad range of acceptable, for something that old, 9 reviews, Invasion by Murray Leinster, the comments, a product of its time, Jesse fell asleep, on my nook, a pretty good read, pure fantasy, Nailan Smith and Fu Manchu vs. Cthulhu, Fu Manchu is homos superior, all of the homos superiors were asian, an upside down chevron yellow on the left, green on the right, it means something, the Japanese symbol for beginner, a couple, a search for her husband, winky face, an endearing review, keep going, special chevron, emojipedia, Charles Beaumont, Holes Around Mars, Robert Abernathy, Mellonta Tauta, the balloon one, echo chamber, multiple balloon stories, moon man comes back, “the Poughkeepsie Seer”, April 1, 2848, The Skylark, Poerful, loves cats, obsessed with cats, a real foible, scrolling cats, Mark Twain with a kitten on its shoulder, we have sympathy for you, cut cats up, how many would you miss, 19th and 20th century science fiction, not buddy, friend, more formal, when you talk to your cats, a special relationship, you are their servant and also scratching post, likes us emotionally, for her comfort, as a person, as a food dispenser, if Will were a cat, a dog guy converted to the religion of catism, need less than dogs do, there’s no crying, super sarcastic, pointed, who my heroes are, Damon Knight’s book on the Futurians, Donald Wollheim kinda sucked, weird relationship, Eugene Debs, to make a living person a hero, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, nationalize time, racist French guy who loves Lovecraft, Michel Houellebecq, Lovecraft guys, Dick guys, born on Reunion, an Indian Ocean island that belongs to France, monologue about Jaws, H.P. Lovecraft: Against The World, Against Life, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, very good at stories, discovered Lovecraft as a teenage, an open slice of howling fear, anti-modernity, philosophical denial of the real world, two of the realities, sex and money, really true, also false, sex is hidden but happened, not into sex or money, an American existentialist, life and death are meaningless, racial preoccupations, the comparatively racially mixed, racism back to fear, a mammoth hideous city, a very good essay, introduction by Stephen King, 20 years ago, At The Mountains Of Madness, The Cats Of Ulthar, cats got their revenge, Dreamlands stories, The Outsider has a mirror, discovers he’s a corpse, a good title, Michael Jackson, The Tomb, the story of a boy, The Tomb for beginning readers, DeviantArt, R.J. Ivankovic, long johns, I’m not certain it’s mine, parade in my brain, keeping these secrets since I was quite young, down into a nook, the door was ajar, the door would not give way, schoolroom, Hydes, a mad monomania, the books I had found, infamous hosts, the blasphemous parties, the hard lesson learned, to tend to the tomb, with my research completed, the familiar foul odor, that’s the end?, the site is dying, power outages from the wind, Lives by Plutarch, very happy in his green face, one of the books that Frankenstein’s monster reads, what a terrible shameful rhyme, certain you’d swoon, just like my grooming, scandalous rhymes, about which you may wonder, from man into mouse, lightning as a cleansing thing, a long hidden cellar, a private investigator, he has a dream and finds a key, secrets in graveyards, to worship once more, the strangeness began, that cold temple of stone, left me quite changed, found the old chest, an old key, a repeated symbol, The Silver Key, a time travel story, Ex Oblivione, dreams harder, whiteness, drugged himself to death, back to the land to the Forms, all knowledge and no experience, a damnable body, a suicide story in reverse, there was no more to do, coffins and cobwebs, oof, nightmare excursions, the eyes of the stranger, hired by his parents, what I did in the night, neglected to mention, what I’d done down in there, my spirits could soar, enjoyed it somewhere, things you would not believe, by Hyde invitation, pony tales from earlier centuries, blasphemous strife, should have been decomposing, a little bit more, that’s Poe from the House of Usher, the *this if fine meme* from Lovecraft, a thought then arose, I must claim my place in the tomb’s empty coffin, some other guy, a spot on the ground, a box had been found, a small porcelain bust, there was something familiar about the man’s face, too long, Asylum, something’s wrong with my brain, except for old Hiram, my servant for years, for a Jervas, and he’s satisfied with that, a crazy boy who goes to a mental asylum, he wants to be dead, a lich story, an ancestor coming to impose his existence on a future existence, psychically travelling through time, more mature, there’s something to it, underappreciated, he makes friends with dryads and nymphs in the forest, interested in books, sleeps in the woods, really well told, the cutesy version, first person narratives, a much more popular story, Upon The Dull Earth by Philip K. Dick, more of a weird tale than a science fiction story, done scientifically, Sylvia is insanely interesting, engaging with the ancient piece of the Odyssey, if this goes on…, I’m a big blundering guy, giving blood to butterflies, sometimes, he’s pointing to something, what makes you different from me, everybody becomes Sylvia, she got what she wanted, The Symposium show, it’s about love, different kinds of love, cursed by the gods and separated male from female, reconnecting with your other half, your better half, a union of a marriage, why are men and women different, different parts, a nice story, not true, go back far enough, we used to be these amoeba like creatures, a deep genetic memory, your my only love!, a little too close, not as good as you thought it would be for all time, very deftly, just shows us something, left with many questions, if you were me aka Sylvia, one of Sylvia’s favourite Philip K. Dick stories, recency bias, The Days of Perky Pat, instead of rebuilding civilization, the game of Life, you never grow up, the kids are out hunting, Connie Companion Doll, perpetual childhood, a good story, the earth belong to them, more competent than the parents, holding on to money to play Perky Pat with, so many great stories by him, dozens, The Variable Man, bloated, almost novel length in its long long length, Colony, Autofac, Beyond Lies The Wub, A Present For Pat, Faith Of Our Fathers, Human Is, Mr. Spaceship, Paycheck, James P. Crow, robots and black people, Impostor, Captive Market, a Monopoly story, The Defenders, Out In The Garden, the boy who’s father was a duck, Prize Ship and The Ship Who Sang, her best thing, a lot of series, a lot of Perns, not a really big series guy, decreasing happiness, The Exit Door Leads In, post public domain status, not meant for publication, he’s not a good novelist, remembered as a great novelist, one of the two greatest, Ursula K. Le Guin, Asimov’s novels, Apple TV, read old shit, more and more sympathy for your old position, read old books, through comics, Howard through the Scanner Darkly of Roy Thomas, there’s no question, some good novels, tedious and badly composed, fixups that don’t fix, the Library Of America crowd, try not to have a lot of contempt, is it contempt?, the feeling of contempt is not healthy, opposite of respect, the face you make when you’re being imposed upon, deserving scorn, beneath consideration, disregard for something that should be taken into account, worthless, an up down thing, god that guy’s heroic, Michio Kaku is contemptible, string theorist guy, haircut, bald faced lies, the proper attitude is to see things for what they are, better to overestimate or underestimate your abilities, within reason, don’t agree to either, both are really bad, cause problems, correctly estimated your abilities, cost you money, correctly estimating, a judo match, that’s gonna hurt, why they have weight classes, guessing right as to what is going on, to be contemptful or deferential, the deplorables, let their decisions to be made for you, very difficult, he was trying to gauge the level of things, as a person, the progress, lower people around him, finding his place a little better, a real thing, they’re just wrong, wrong about that one issue, listen to the arguments, swayed a little bit, new insight, Robert E. Howard is doing something different generally unless he’s writing poetry, higher output, different hobby horses, judge them correctly, Sirius is a better book than this, matured as a fiction writer, Dick’s best novel is Galactic Pot-Healer, the relationship between art and work, a springboard, The Silmarillion, not a narrative as such, specific incidents, maybe, hinted towards Star Maker, the spiritual work, one way of explaining it is writing, closet and meditate, into my office and write, essay, sales pitch, philosophy, that artifact, the font, the spirit of that once living thing, inside of this dead man’s brain, the latest John Scalzi novel, understand the way his mind works, doing his own thing, Kaiju novel, stuff happening, “well that happened”, their reaction to what happened, character, what’s Sylvia like?, she’s a witch, he’s a journalist, when everybody is Sylvia…, and it is a horror, he’s Sylvia and he’s fine with it, becoming the Borg, a single ideology, the ending, 25 pages, the last section, the late afternoon sky, sparkled whiteness, alien and unfamilar, a difficult place to find, swirling hot steam, terrified above the bowl, tear-stained and frantic, waver and slide, soft brown hair, being tasteful, the girl at the bowl bent to dry herself, confused she hesitated, Rick she murmured, please Rick!, a horror story, she’s trapped in the hell of everyone, her spells went wrong, let’s assimilate it, way overdone, a melting pot not a mosaic, have it both ways, traumatic or fine, it should be traumatic, I’m losing my identity, that state you’re in, Patty Hearst, calm life, in it with the revolutionaries, you’re arrested, her friends taken away, my granddaughter needs a pardon, come back out of it, the Borg queen shows the utter contempt, just lore now, you now have to live with it, becoming Locusts, he killed people, part of the Borg, you become a zombie, not compus mentis, when they start Deep Space 9, feel guilty without being technically guilty, a more interesting way to do the Borg, pure evil, goes on too long, lore kills, much juice was squeeze, some odd juice from Odd John, the weird sexual encounter not put on the page, adult girlfriend, repulsed by her, she’s a brute, solace himself sexually, remain respectable, a similar scene, diddled, the spoken words used on the island “damned” and other ones not yet acceptable in written words, the word “fuck” doesn’t show up [much] in written language until after WWII, sex with his mom, Odd John fucked Olaf Stapledon stand-in, the human girlfriend, sexually frustrated and upset, will not spell out explicitly, another dear person, respectable middle class, a lacunae, elliptical talk, homosexuality, ragged, enfant terrible, Tommy walking, ragging with his sister, the two of them together, shunned all physical contact, electrified, initiation ritual, India, another boys’ school thing, the word “fag”, a prominent role, this idea of fagging, abuse downwards, making children younger than you, patching in ceremony, a rocker, a patch that’s lower, as you ascend the ranks, once in the gang, a beating, an outer beating, harassment, abuse, bullying, formal done by the group rather than an individual, a group beating, a psychological technique, beat a dog and then feed it, very emphatically, the complacency of a cat, a cat may look at a king, his insult, tickle him the right way, John would be ruined, pretty explicit, shunned all physical contact, a known homosexuality thing amongst boys in England, covered by this phrase, luxury and disgust, an amatory brawl, tearing at his ear, he was not above learning from his inferiors, woke with lasting scars, the adult girlfriend, unprintable thing, hanky panky, implied stuff, by the standards of the 1930s, a bisexual superman, widespread, Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, like The Fall Of The House Of Usher but gay, circumstantial stuff, act really weird, only in the society of males, so prominent, private schools for girls?, where’s all the lesbian stories that come out of that?, maybe they exist, that’s Odd John, Flowers For Algernon, the long one, a good book, identification with the mouse, a similar book to this one, construct a mental superman, questions about the perception of the world, not all with it, happy about it, exploited then disappointed, she’s a fucking hooker, I thought I was special, your older brother is paying, and you never find out, the expected outcome, the expected situation, what makes them smart, intelligence and stupidity, Understand by Ted Chiang, simple things gain new meaning as you are able to perceive them better, the story can change, The Secret World Of Og, adolescence, not based on the Robert E. Howard stories, adaptations of stories, quality goes down, quality goes up, a diminishing returns, Arthur C. Clarke, G.K. Chesterton, whole genres of fiction, didn’t expect to, the secret life, public life, obviously very intelligent, takes a pill, Limitless (2011), investments, pickup girls better, writing about a guy who’s smarter than you or he was, the way you do it, you go over it and make it better, an idea for a poem, this rhyme, a word, a phrase, echoes back, this word is really great, the last word of the story, wake, they’re on a ship, a character dies at the end of the story, what’s behind, a wake and a wake, baby level of double meaning, that’s intelligence, triple meaning, stupidity is making mistakes, intelligence is making everything meaningful, using the full meaning of a word, sympathetic to this idea?, why do girls like rappers, slingin rhymes, what makes them cool, their ability to sling, virtuosity, increasing your brain quality, one of the major attractions of humans to humans, a forced rhyme, you imposing your will on somebody else, the gush of slime come from the bucket on the ceiling, a little bit like charades, crossword puzzles, the traditional signs that you’re intelligence, crossword puzzles, know a lot about a lot of things and are able to use it, top 1% one percent of English speakers, this doofus on youtube, obliquely, disgrace, 10 or 11 wrong out of 20, uncle, still got it, still good!, some random 20 year old dude, that is something mechanical intelligence, there’s all sorts of kinds of intelligence, compared to other people, knowing your level is being smart, those guys at the bakery, what makes Ted Chiang smart, sixteen chess moves ahead, there are grandmasters who are stupid people in other areas, grapple with different areas, avoid bad outcomes, PUBG, getting the dinner, the only objective that’s built into the game, conciliatory, lots, steal a BRDM from somebody, get one over on somebody, a sneakiness, cat intelligence, smoked weed, really really high, highness, do you think you’re smarter than me?, bad at avoiding the house piling up with crap, more aware of her surroundings, women are very social, keeping track of what’s going to happen to the space, the old magazines, stacking them, men are much more collectors than women, a sign of a lack of intelligence, an area of interest, making it into a hoard you can’t get through, that TV, too low, they’re not stupid, interested in their interests, deficiencies, native talent for math, not super valuable, how fast he picks up languages, if they speak six languages like Mayor Pete, he’s not intelligent, a second meaning, information, vocab expert, turned into the victory, as long as we’re here, the level that you achieved, frequently struggling with Clark Ashton Smith words, gemstones, he loves kind of rock, a homebody, manual labour, our guy carrying water, a very intelligent man in his way, a very curious person, the entire library, Aaron Swartz, he was a hero before the FBI murdered him, naive, something very boy like about him, the guy invented RSS dude, a real simple idea, now we can get on reddit, we still have podcasts, he didn’t invent torrents, Mr. Internet, Mr. Everybody, Tim Berners-Lee, weirdo kid who only eats white food, he may have been Odd John, this you?, I was 7 when I read that, the original days of autism, Rain Man (1988), a popular idea, something that’s bubbling up, autists everywhere, idiot savants, stupid and smart at the same time, go gambling, uses his intelligence to win, incredibly intelligent and incredibly stupid, can’t put your pants on, too many holes, not enough holes!, brain damage and unable to speak, alleviated or worked around, regain the ability to speak, retarded, gain at the regular pace in school, this fake autism of schools, is it real autism, school is autism, autism is school, an imposition, kids impose on the world and are imposed upon, its a factory, we have a very special boy, just a normal kid, looks a little different, his acquisition level, his emotional level, slowly grow, a calf newborn is running around minutes after it is born, a little liberally, there is damage done in the case of down syndrome, a folded x chromosome, enough folic acid, the child from your loins, your baby’s spine and brain and skull, vitamin b9, when you don’t want to talk to them, he’s the opposite of autistic, supertistic, the stacking of blocks, especially boys, if that’s all you do, not getting interested in other things, where the auto part comes in, an estate auction online, cosmetic damage, passing on his wisdom, he had two bb guns, 150 bb guns, selling stuff on ebay, lots of people who are weird, all sorts of different weirdnesses, Jonathan’s Sword & Scandal interior illustrations, pornographic, a little more tasteful, too pornographic for Jesse’s tastes, if successful, scale, love of the game, latest kickstarter, Jungle Scandals, white lady being cooked in a pot, could have linked to the thing in the tweet, ironic, a subsequent comment, Jonathan loves to go on podcasts, told Paul that Jonathan had sent me that thing, Jesse’s too much work, a little tiff, calling him a liar, projection, many things but not a liar, deceiving, disagree often, we have really bad internet, make some coffee.

GALAXY NOVEL - Odd John by Olaf Stapledon

GALAXY NOVEL - Odd John by Olaf Stapledon

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #842 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Symposium by Plato

The SFFaudio Podcast #842 – The Symposium by Plato, translated by Benjamin Jowett, read by Geoffrey Edwards (2 hours 14 minutes) for LibriVox, followed by a discussion of it. Persons of the podcast: Jesse, Alex (pulpcovers), Terence Blake, and Tommy Patrick Ryan

Talked about on today’s show:
on the outside, a flute girl, from approx 2400 year ago, a nice conversation, how gay these guys were, 30 years, pretty peculiar, a callow youth, these guys are deeply gay, great books, Eric [Rabkin] our mutual friend, amp up the gayness, Socrates and all these guys were NPCs, the real love is with a man and a boy, his beard needs to be just sprouting, how okay they were with, it was the moral thing to do, it was the norm, they’re aliens, half the people aren’t okay with it, allies, real deep, what’s the cutoff line, very prevelent, slaves gettin wrecked, other dialogues, one of the Assassin’s Creed games, all these quests, very cool, the death of Socrates as a mission, Plato as a young boy, Hippocrates, Pythagoras was an elf, a few hundred years, names you would know, probably an awesome way to learn about that stuff, players appreciate depth, taking a walk, walkin and talking, partying in the street, everybody’s a master, the flute girls suck, are they filling flutes of champagne or piping of flutes, literature, right to the point, why isn’t all philosophy written this way, Aristotelian, sub bullet points, what is this book about and who’s right?, the story of the double people, two weddings, some part of that passage, the premise, connected, somersaults, androgynous, gay weddings?, best man, both were non-religious weddings, looking for that other half, in tears, I found you, not an emotional guy, 30th birthday, people being split, soul mates, super goofy, we’re punished, we’re cursed, we’re forever cursed, you need to find some way to connect, weddings usually involve some words, obviously wrong, a myth created for this particular piece, gets at something, a comedy piece, pieces are tucked in, move the genitals around to the other side, it’s silly, resonates with the Christian myth of the fall, splitting you in half, complete in another person, super-common, you complete me, people want that, not whole, a lot of propaganda in Hollywood, the #MeetCute, ideological and pathological, 17 years now, I got to find my romantic partner, I’m on the wrong path, I can’t find the one, Speed (1994), base it on sex, mimetic, Speed 2, the meeting the other half of your soul, higher and higher forms of love, inside this text, towards something, real love is a higher thing, Agathon, craziness, the greater the #MeetCute, the gal in Ecuador, randomly on the bus, a city of 400,000 people, hard to get over, there’s a narrative that we subscribe, the plot is breaking, this can’t be the end, no, it’s the end, look at the details, witty banter and personality defects that fit together, The Front Page (1931), back and forth, a high high, elevated horror, in the clouds with Aristophanes, love is wanting to share, step in, love is being drawn towards the good qua good, participating in the good, love is not inter-subjective, translated as love, erotic love, the lowest form of love, real eros is towards the good, middling eros, sublimated eros, philosophy, philia, a transformation of eros, the other forms of love, the appreciation of beauty, you have to have a consciousness, this is fun, what do I do all day long, Tommy in the chat, process stories to read them, beautiful art, it needs to be appreciated, beautiful women, why?, there’s a story there, I’m an animal, I’m a male, I’m not super-gay, what does Mr Pulpcovers do all day, beautiful pieces of art, higher DPI is better, costs a lot of money, that’s not the purpose, a certain kind of art, a lost art, commercial art, spend a nickel on a crappy magazine, designed to make it hard to look away, the same cover three times changed, aesthetic judgements, cave women uncovered pictures, suddenly jumps off the page, tasteful or better, figuring that out, a particular [John William] Waterhouse painting, one of Circe, a mirror behind her, in front of her in the mirror is Odysseus, his ship, you shouldn’t be able to see the ship, her wand, level with her head is a cup, incense burning, tile floor covered in dung, flowers strewn all about, an image rich in scent, took the painting, how is this such a great painting, recreating it in photographs, very good, in a dream last night, a poem without meter or rhyme is probably not worth reading, respect that some people don’t like rhyme, the greatest example, he has meter and he puts rhymes, prefer it, sonnets are sweet, nobody pays you for it, not something you do to get paid, unless you’ve got a guitar or are in a Korean boy band, a fun framework for a song, lyrics, one is the root of the other, grokking the image better, appreciating what’s going on, bare and graceful foot atop the head of man, how striking it is, the first story with a wand in it, very firsts, at the end he attacks her with his knife, promise not to entrance him, feeds him and bathes him, first they have sex, stay for a while, some insight into the Greek, talking about Homer, more Iliad than the Odyssey, Achilles love for Patroclus, this is part of Plato’s realm of the forms argument, getting at the same thing, what Socrates eventually talks about, Platonic theory of forms, the Platonic ideal of a pulp cover, #BrassBra and #LegCling, why is #LegCling a thing, she grabs at his knees, these Greeks are crybabies, when you have a lot of slaves and a lot of violence, a platonic ideal of a western pulp magazine, a horse a girl and guy and a #KetchupAndMustardGetup, Han Solo’s black vest, doesn’t make him any less a Western cowboy cover, when Greedo shot first, very reasonable, The Iliad, the heterome I am, iconic scenes, the sheep, the cyclops, the cattle, the island of the sun, Argus the dog, gone from 20 years, recognizes Odysseus in disguise, sees his master he dies, whatev you just a dog, how to be in the world, Odysseus doesn’t seem super gay, gets all the honors, Agathon, Alcibiades, the gay rapist traitor, famously a terrible traitor, fought for Sparta, he deserved the battle honor, saved me and my arms, he should be the one honoured, harder to understand, the desire to go home, defeat one’s enemies, so focused on male on male love, an appreciation of some sort of beauty, we can picture in our heads a pulp cover we’ve never seen, a rocketship, a bubble helmet, #SpaceBagLadies, this is this and that’s that, class notes, he would talk for years and his students would take notes, Plato is a lot more like [Saint] Augustine, more narrative, doesn’t have a clear answer, gesturing in the direction, sharing, in the content its not about sharing, harmony, the search for unity, the form, all together, Plato is giving several different answers in the content, the sharing in the form, all about eros, if it wasn’t too old, the symposium is about the love of sharing (agape), an anachronism, the whole setup is producing all sorts of concepts of love, riffing on eros, heavenly eros, earthly eros, eros as cosmic, takes you toward abstraction, excess and lack, later on we will give different names to those things, concepts at play, maybe he doesn’t even want to invent certain sorts of terms, a technical sense, terminological pinning down, in the text proper, one guy says to the other, sit here by me, let me pour myself into you, a bad vision of dialogue, drink of your wisdom, vampire, that is sharing, finish quickly, the example, water through wool, if you lay a strip of wool, capillary action, siphoning petrol, pour my wisdom into you, no wisdom by proximity or osmosis, you gotta do the work man, Zeus showing her true form, she was just exploded, ok, lightning bolt, Neo in the Matrix, download is the metaphor we are problematized today, downloading is actually just copying, copying over and copying across, an actual drinking party, the name Achilles, Diotima, super adjacent, super interesting, a narrative, almost a soap opera, some sort of different, what did you do in the war?, bard comes into town, two different Ajaxes, you don’t have to be from Ithaca to appreciate the story, Achilles was mad at Agamemnon for stealing a lady, borrows his armour, bolsters the troops, slain by Hector, taking the revenge, had a lot of lovers, The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), I go to bed with all my friends, they are really close, several lovers there, Phaedrus, lover of Agathon, unrequited love, the inverse of the image, the divine statue inside, the earthly parodic version, external beauty of the warrior, a reverse image, the Iliad is an earthly allegory, touch on this idea, why is it a symposium, a drinking party, who can get drunk, not a real drinking party, it’s diluted, the heavy drinking, the undiluted wine, dilute with some water, attenuate the effect of the alcohol, as the host, don’t give them too much, tipsy and good humour, the form is important here, ultimately, lets you understand what something’s true nature is, let’s close the door, later on in the party, when a party of street people comes in, a metaphor for his later betrayal, looking pretty and wrecking Athens, the host shares the wine with you, Jesse is not a wine guy, when the people are doing that, appreciate this, why do you invite people over to your house, diffuse good, spread it out, 48 Laws Of Power [by Robert Greene], assumes scarcity mentality, that’s not really the problem, a lack of scarcity, we are post scarce on almost everything, more and more people are skipping meals, the lower level of income, food is not scarce, scarcity is produced, the opposite of the love mindset, in fairy tales nobody ever says I love you they just give you food, a palpable need, she’s not trying to make money, she wants to express love, words are new, do you know what love is, they’re still alive, puppies covered in blood, licks them clean, helps them to find her nipples, she licks up her puppies poo and pee, they don’t have the word love, balls and owls, they did know love, this is the good, share the good, perverse incentives, using people to keep your position, assumes scarcity, the more you share information and skills and the good the better it is for you, your environment is better, comes at the end, how ugly Socrates is, it isn’t just about Alcibiades is pretty, the visual is the first step, born with your eyes closed, shared, coming there to party, drink of the ideas, the form being somehow connected, seminar is a 3 hour class, professors getting together and drinking, extemporaneous speeches, they picked a topic while they were there, set up that way, sophists or students of sophists, Aristophanes, the best versions of themselves, a literary device, an idea of preparation in it, plucked out of the air, a rhetorical competition, they’ve set pieces, so right, they’ve had this conversations multiple times, great speeches, kept having these speeches, Plato took the best of it, makes it compelling an interesting, working on it, they did it again, tweaking us, extemporaneous speeches, expected to have, frameworks, taught how to give a speech off the cuff, memorizing a speech by license, Protagoras, Gorgias, Homer’s poetry, rosy fingered dawn, each is relying on his previous work, half extemporaneous, serving up what they’ve got in their repertoire that they adapt, public speaking, canned jokes, Intoxicating Interests, the entire Skywalker saga, Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1000% they were ready to talk on this topic, experts on love, the warrior poet as a concept, Tolkien, the Battle Of The Pelennor Fields, Gurney Halleck in Dune, composing war songs on the fly, tattooed on my arm, a framework that’s lost now, a proper education for normal people, all the citizens were all senators and lawyers, coherently, persuasively, and passionately, any real powers of enjoyment, no human being has ever seen Socrates drunk, he can transform the alcohol on the molecular level, it fits, going back to Circe, Mercury comes, moly, mix you up a mess in a potion, he drinks it, he drinks the poison that’s going to turn him into a pig or a lion, turning water into wine or wine into water, part of the rhetorical story, he’s the intellectual ancestor of the stoics, self mastery, the statue of the Silenus, highly developed soul, a yogi, master the bodily reactions, that archetype, though phyiscally ugly, the tutor to Dionysus, in vino veritas, talk to a lot of randos, do you smoke weed?, what they’re doing, my brain is drugs, certain drugs, bad effects, alcohol makes Jesse stupid, makes poorer decisions, Friedrich Nietzsche, my good friend Yoda, not that wise, Yoda as a Buddha, inner beauty, whatever the yoda species is, where baby yodas come from, a female jedi, the only of that race, inner light, inner beauty, teach yoga a lot, friend from Russia, halo of golden light coming from his third eye, sees in these ways, waiver, would not take drugs, unlocked all this stuff, mistaking metaphor, Tucker Carlson, nuclear weapons were built by demons, a guy named Oppenheimer, that which is good, its as if, making it not a simile, very little metaphor, mythology of where some subset of humans come from, silly, designed to be humorous, speaks to the problem, the party gets broken up, the less of a good theory, a basic level, leveling deeper, what makes Socrates beautiful in that scene, saving his friend, retrieving his armour, his beautiful actions, talking about actions, could be taken to literally, a shift in perception, that’s not a pretty person, Steve Buscemi is not a handsome man, he fits some sort of archetype of beauty not in the supermodel department, people light up, a useful metaphor, seeing the beautiful actions, look at the actions not at the nose, Nietzsche’s thing, collective Greek psychology, beginning to come apart, classical poems, scipture, coming apart, mastered this chaos of instincts in his person, at the wrong time, the ugliness meant he was going to fail, the very next year, a series of sacrileges, the Hermes statues were disfigured, parodies, it was a plot, fled to Sparta, powers as a general, had to flee again, refuge with the Persians, assassinated, Macedonia, Agathon was one of the people accused of the desecration, this is the end of the good old times, banquet, known people who’s fates declined, judged and tried for being friends with people like that, his failure, good and strong and resistant, his undoing as well, the seeds of that were there, by implication, 416bc, the year before, high gear, the decline of Athens, underneath Socrates’s surface, the realm, to talk like Game Of Thrones, underneath the surface of Athens, this decline, this chaos, pluralism, criticize each other, typologies and instincts, the setting and the scene more resonant, written backwards, Hagel’s thing, the owl of Minerva spreads its wings at dusk, how you interpret the last scene, a paragraph, when Alcibiades had finished, you are sober, for all this long story, an ingenious circumlocution, I ought to love you and nobody else, the plot of this, has been detected, Alcibiades: Agent Of Chaos, each speech is more powerful and more inclusive, two different types, the medical point of view, the right dosage, the cosmic viewpoint, Diotima is Socrates in transgender dressing, up in the clouds in transcendence, a failed incarnation, only one person managed to do it, everyone else was scattered to the four winds, doublefaced, profitable to revisit, perceiving it as super super gay, that’s the deep state, Trump was elected to get rid of this stuff, the politics of the breaking up of the two bodies, androgynous, we only use that as an insult, he ain’t got no big bushy beard, it doesn’t fit with today’s aesthetics, too manly, the bad flow, they’re just slaves, not as sexual objects, cultivated slaves, how different the society is, appreciate the things we can connect with, supposedly a very advanced civilization, technological marvels, we were walking, so many levels of hearsay, piecing this together, we start with a walk, Ethan Frome [by Edith Wharton], frame narrative, Canterbury Tales, maybe in a novel, The Odyssey, everything is unreliable, most sacred and hallowed love, is this pedophilia, not really the best people, they’re not trying to impress us, there’s no wives mentioned here, men with men, they are literally at home supervising the slaves, another party in another part of the house, what classes you’re taking, the wife who goes down, Priam’s daughter, Orpheus tries to get into Hades alive, the relationship to women has massively changed by the time of Shakespeare, The Odyssey, Iago’s got the hots for Othello, you can have a conversation with a lady and the eros goes up, in Macbeth, she’s a real character, not the subject, the pureness of it, its relation to the pureness of it, Pulpcovers.com, the spacing between the characters, a celebrity face, make it look like Mr Spock a little bit, we want to see the original, raw, [virgin covers], making alternative covers, weird collectors, for investment purposes, we have these dudes hanging around drinking, being in academia, a trade issue, access to the Black Sea, in a finite space, they went to Ireland, after various plagues, get people banging, useful banging rather than pleasureful gay banging, tragedies, normalized those relationships, definitely changed, gay vikings, hot for finding ladies, show off too each other, interested in braggadocio, the one where Socrates dies, two dozen, not a Plato guy as such, why do they teach this one, this one’s funny, an instinct to share (not just bodily fluids), what makes someone spiritually ugly, using you to get what I want, thinking Ayn Randian thoughts, Objectivism is not that, sterile and kind of gross, mathematically planned, they both have contempt for the others, creator of great architectures, they don’t have souls, she did that to her own husband, I guess, she lived that philosophy to the max, it seems ugly, ugly in real life too, as a point of aesthetics, The Fountainhead, get it through osmosis, as great souled as him, stop watching ninjas and samurais on tv, do some more dialogues, The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown by Lawrence Block, Project Pope, Clifford D. Simak, The Visitors by Clifford D. Simak, how fun those Simak books are, Time Is The Simplest Thing, Shakespeare’s Planet, Special Deliverance, the poetess is like Agathon, let herself die, the singing pillar, turned into a mummy, Simak is a philosophy guy doing science fiction in those books, he never really was a big plot guy, the ones written for Astounding, late Simaks, spread those out a bit, Mistress of Mellyn by Victoria Holt, The Haunted Corridors, Odd John, Lilith by George Macdonald, step away, more out there, new good stuff on LibriVox, another Plato, six months or a year, pretty long, six months or a year, how this is sci-fi, kind of curious, another website, two wordpress sites, a very good argument, crime and mystery rather than police procedural, very much the same thing as science fiction and fantasy, help a student with some homework, Fugitive Pieces, canadian lit forced upon canadian students, unreadable garbage because they don’t have wizards and they don’t have robots, necromancers, not sent in the ancient past, mimetic fiction, the author grew up in a suburb of Toronto, dad was a holocaust survivor, it’s boring, interested in interesting, philosophy and science fiction go together like ham and eggs, and the ones that aren’t confuses things, in essence, if you want to stretch it and make it easy, eight-limbed two headed creatures, fantastical writing, myth, philosophy is asking questions, myth and fantasy aren’t the same thing, a lot of Manhunt, characters are disposable generally, a six page story, Shot by Gil Brewer, I’m shot!, every picture of ladies holding guns, noirvember, The Lady From Shanghai (1947), James M. Cain is not science fiction [usually], a fantasy story by him, they kill each other and go to Hell, crime stories do some sort of sparky thing that science fiction and fantasy do, stuff that’s really good and fun but nobody should do a podcast on: Tales Of The Gold Monkey, fun, stupid and silly, wasn’t that a great scene where the nazi’s dressed up as a priest, she’s in a hot-tub, the girl who’s name is Tiki, silly and fun not deep, spark, not mimetic, my dad was traumatized when there was a flood, praised to the heavens because it has poetic devices, its narrative, not interesting, overexplained it, starting to bore myself, The Tower Treasure, Mr. Pulpcovers, he doesn’t want it shared, Tommy works for me, names online, the account name, SneakyFokker, banned certain words, WWI aircraft designer, Mr Jim Moon, he’s not Jim, it’s funnier and funner, Plato means shorty or flatty, Socrates, nothing to be written down, who do we hear it from tho?, Socrates said this, that’s a good point, committing to memory, hard to remember, as soon as we are done with it, who’s this hilarious smart guy I’m listening to, we know it’s being recorded, rote, canned, happiness is the exercise of vital powers through lines of excellence in a life affording them scope, the them refers to the vital powers, copy things and share, to understand it, we don’t know who wrote it, we tell three stories, an eagle, a horse, a human, flying and eyeing and hunting, making eggs in their eyries with their sweeties, horses, what do they like, running, grass, running in groups, I have heard that, horsey things, it’s almost like they like being scared, Shadowfax is hero, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, so noble and beautiful, I’ll be in the barn with my horses, they like the power, horses are beautiful like kittens and puppies, what is man like, what would make an eagle unhappy, not being able to fly, being in a cage, not eyeing things, specific kinds of freedom, it wants to soar, doesn’t just want food, it wants to be an eagle, to actualize it’s nature, break one of its legs, don’t let it run in groups, I’ve herd, horsey things, being brushed, back to the man, so many opinions, a narrow specific kind of man, a king from some Greek kingdom, I do like my works, fleets of fleet ships, taxed away from my people, this is exactly what I do, impress other kings, this guy’s got all the ship, the happy shipwright, he’s motivated by building ships, making a tank maker happy, if you built one and put it in the water, had admirable lines, whatever a ship is supposed to do well, what we left out, do it over time, happy in the moment, designing things, making things, doing art, reveling in creation, that’s not what happiness is, the shipwright doesn’t want to build to make money, when the old man who’s built ship for 70 years, when they stand over his grave they say this was a happy man, before the internet, better at memorizing things, a muscle to exercise through lines of excellence in a life affording them scope, this is their cheat sheet, the George Lucas witching hour, the way to St. Tropez, HMS Pinafore, Pirates Of Penance, [Major-General’s Song], forensics, rhetorical, extemporaneous, interpretive, storytelling, duo, Tom and Tommy, performative, word knowledge, the narrator, Canadian, a similar register?, Geoffrey Edwards, 400 episodes, such good stuff, always just look it up, the artifacts in it are there because of the medium it was made from, a way of oriented, they’re lost, day is coming, just the next day, sixteen different ways of saying next, there’s always more to say, that’s why that show is only half an hour long, pre-stuff, wrap it up, he’s 85, it’s not a tragedy, we can say he was happy, happiness is a verb, a thing you do, its also true, it was good, you look back on it it was good, excellent and vital somehow, punishment, there’s no happiness there, you’re not doing it through lines of excellence, little kids, problems can be solved with money, money will get you more stuff, a fun one, a great group, sound issues, that was Terence, 8th and 15th, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, the Ayn Rand, The Time Machine, V For Vendetta, an actual novel, not written by Alan Moore, a little too hot right now, things being cold, there’s no audiobook for it, Treasure Island, read some things, I’ve always wanted to read, Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle, a very forgotten novel that sounds amazing, Good Omens some time in 2020, there’s nothing here, not everything needs to be discussed, that’s how I act, I’m not happy but we’ll see, caged up with a broken leg, making eggs with my sweetie, Steve Miller, go fly like an eagle.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #837 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Mistress Of The Dark Pool by Russell Gray and The Cold Female by Dale Harlow

The SFFaudio Podcast #837 – Mistress Of The Dark Pool by Russell Gray (1 hour 3 minutes) from Terror Tales, May 1940 and The Cold Female by Dale Harlow (19.5 minutes) from Adam, January 1957. Both are read by Mike Vendetti. These are followed by a discussion of both. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Alex (Pulpcovers), Cora Buhlert, and Tommy Patrick Ryan.

Talked about on today’s show:
Philsp.com Galactic Central, can’t get google to work, a huge magazine index, Sgt. Bilko, all the magazine contents, mostly all there, non-genre magazines, Cora’s entry is wrong, Stephenson Paine, only has one story, flourishing in the 1950s, this issue of Adam, pseudonymous, fairly well written, Jack Casanova, K. Robert Howard, a funny magazine, internet archive, before Palestine, you taking down, LibriVox is down, people who throw , PulpCovers, killed the internet archive, hackers?, online activists, a DDOS attack, LibriVox, one of the files was corrupted, work on something else, in 7 months when this podcast comes out Gaza wont be being destroyed, save the best for last, Russel Gray, excellent art, attractive and a good premise, Mistress Of The Dark Pool is just way too long, the biggest problem, an hour and 3 minutes, very similar, lakes, mountains, people in cabins, every stereotype ever, food and supplies and information, Cabin In The Woods, titular cabin, titular woods, go in clear eyed, weird sacrifice thing, the knew what they were getting into, willingly allow the vampire into your home, Reading, Short And Deep, connection through Eric [S. Rabkin], find the hidden sex, much clearer, definitely had sex with that woman, May 1940, written 5 minutes before it was published, before the US is involved in WWII, it wasn’t important yet, isfdb entry, Bruno Fisher (Russell Gray) (Harrison Storm), interesting quote, these markets, weird menace pulps, living in Florida with my family, terror/horror market, just one day the market was gone, 150 Philip K. Dick, the market collapses, it’s Chinatown, Jake, if you shutter the business that distributes magazines, paperback distribution, early 1990s, censorship, legal issue, a history of this, might be war related, all the way through the depression, ramping up for war, gonna be a paper shortage, preparing for war, army approved pulp, Playboy, I read it for the articles, the Saturday Evening Post of a certain niche, a magazine like Adam, much condensed, more censoriously, lot less placing breasts in hands, less explicit, implied more, some birds started chirping, Eric Rabkin comes out of the forest with his hat on, waterfalls and tunnels, fade away, necking in the surf, how many beds are in that house?, obsessed with the idea, too much to read, both stories use the same word, wood nymph, scary stories to tell in the dark, fireside ghost story kinda things, a filler story in Weird Tales, read versus listened, Mike Vendetti, how seriously he took it, very believable, so broad, come on guy, must be the daughter, who could have seen this coming?, a more enjoyable experience, weird menace pulps, both sex stories, ghost women in the mountain cabin, author vs. engineer, the author is the bad writer, the engineer is the good writer, forgive a lot of the things, nice art, paid by the word, seeing it in the relief, salacious title, could be a horse, sounds like it could be a Conan story, all of his titles, the blank of the blank, the castle of the harridans, a collection of Russell Gray stories, actual print book, Monster Of The Purple Mist, all sound awesome, go at it bro, Hostesses In Hell And Other Stories: The Selected Stories Of Russell Gray and My Touch Brings Death: And Other Stories, a new cover, no interior art, the artists on the shudder pulps worked overtime, great art, the editorial descriptions are good, the mangy dog he called her lover, I vowed I would kill girl I loved, way more appealing, too many scenes, repetitive, wife steps up and saves his ass, cool character, he doesn’t deserve it, the spell is have sex with this sexy lady down the street, skip to the discussion, find out pretty quick, in comparing it, so similar, the one was made longer, would it improve the story, pretty groany, yard work, describing her breasts, I’m so cold, start snuggling, reacts as a virile man should, adolescent fantasy, male fantasy, dear Ghost Story letters: you wouldn’t believe what happened to me!, jealousy is a thing, modelling Tommy’s mind, the alcoholism, drinking happening, pouring the alcohol down his throat, rye whiskey, the first alcoholism bad movie, The Lost Weekend (1945), a drug to escape reality, this potent medicine, a poison that’s hurting our health, enjoying a fine cigar, not going to make you beat your wife or drive drunk, a good glass of wine, a single malt scotch, useful for cooking, wine into cooking, so much more of it out there, the whiskey didn’t effect me, playing Hamlet, Richard Burton, what happens if I suddenly get a phone call, pulled over, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, way too drinky, a beautiful wife he loves, battles with alcohol, easier to pack up into the mountains, pretty normalized, an older time, drinking alone, a bad marriage, a lesbian or was going to murder you, women definitely drank alcohol, sherry, champagne, The Thin Man (1934), a comedy, social, the way it appears in this story, using it like a medicine, an alcohol spiral, the husband comes to his senses, the good wife helped him, saved her even though he was tired, personal psychology, go to a cabin in the woods, a beautiful woman requires you have sex with her, a mangy dog, he kills it, I didn’t mean to kill that dog, what happened to Amos?, perfectly normal, they left her body by the cabin with ribbons of skin, a better ending, together they bury the body, throws the whiskey bottle into the grave, he buried his demons along with his demons, he doesn’t believe in witchcraft, the red herring that makes it longer, six chapters, chapter titles are good, Americans are weird about alcohol, marksmanship competition, shooting clubs, the king and queen of the marksman, so German, get a gun license, a nice plaque, such a German thing, 35 and 75, nobody minds, much healthier attitude, get really drunk at a wedding, an addictive drug, Prohibition, grain into liquor, profit per ton of cargo, sever chronic alcoholism, rampant, Ecuador, major problem, French wine, getting schnockered, liquid, symbolic, Eric hat, a lake is very different than rain, or a cup of water on your desk, you go into the unconscious, let me tell you about it, a woman who goes into the water, her fantasy, her desire is the theoretical explanation for why the, sexy witch’s daughter, harridan harridan harridan, a dark liquor, the more lost you get, when you go in the water, went swimming, needed to clear my head, he’s going away from his wife, he’s straying, a symbol for femaleness, his engineering projects, the Canadian Rockies, in the off season, to go fishing, the thing that came out of the lake, the woman knocking on the door is a neighboring cabin woman, abusive husband, it went supernatural, she needs to come out of the lake, she’s a witch!, a market for science fiction, unusual, running away from a killer, and now we’re on the road together, in the mountains of Canada, not the end of the story, she’s dead, died a virgin, a male fantasy, Edgar Allan Poe, I at least married them, comes back to life, at least 20 years, really old women that looked young, The Lake by Ray Bradbury, the season is over, drag something from the lake, sandcastle, he will always love this girl, looks at his wife, why is this weird woman here?, an adult version of The Lake, never grows up, he still loves her, struck by the similarities, better scripter, retro review, on a lot of high school reading lists, May 1944, no school is in session, a link, how young, this is going to get weird, 19, it didn’t matter, might be committing crimes, she’s 19, she coulda been 16, 14 now, teacher and student, power dynamics, no one bats an eye, 14 and 19 year old, eyelashes batted, what do we make the names of Hulda and Amos, is that a name?, a witch name, a prophetess, Mother Hulda (Frau Holle), the legendary creature, what makes our character Hulda evil?, she’s old and ugly, a mangy narrator, our stupid narrator, linked to Christmas and winter folklore in the alpine region, always resorting to alcohol, stupider, mitigate it, pushed off the page, he uses the word to describe the male husband, supposedly a writer, in the mountains to get his novel finished, such a bad writer, he makes the connection for us, it explained by his alcoholism, the audience shouldn’t be ten times smarter, a different name, Timerider: The Adventure Of Lyle Swann (1982), back to the future, he’s his own grandpa, raped by his gandma, Cyngne, he didn’t make the connection, they share a family name, 6 pages, 19 and half pages, five times shorter, is it five better?, three times better, with great art, an anecdote you tell your friend, woman knocking on the door, a fish story, no creepy pun intended, he’s showing propriety, having sex with a ghost, just kinda sad, let me tell you about my Canadian girlfriend who’s a ghost and you can never find, almost wholesome, my dead lover who I turned into a dog for reasons, a shape changer, a dog by day, hot and sweaty sex, with I could have sex with humans, attracted to the wife, you dog, now you’ll live like a dog, don’t make the story longer, skinny dipping, the dog shows up, so crude and simple and badly written, kinda like it still, honest in its stupidity and baseness, Robert E. Howard, pretty good money, get enough sex in there, the explanation for why everything was happening was bizarre and bad, married couples never had children, sex happens, not newly married, three years, undue for the era, if you don’t have children, young children would be with them, off at military school, kinda the point of getting married, having kids, married characters in weird menace stories, New York brownstones, feeds you someone from the asylum, you attracted to the opposite sex, it complicates it and makes it weird, if this couple had a kid that was with them, why is daddy acting so weird, The Shining, a terrible drunk, as time goes on, this is a story about a guy who wants to kill himself, a bunch of King, a thing he says over and over again: I’m a horrible drunk, read The Mist, possibility he’s gonna kill his family, right before rescue shows up, a fog, the alcohol you’re imbibing, reading into his personal psychology, an assignment sorta style, gotta have a witch and a pool and a cliff, Test-Tube Frankenstein also had a cliff, I like cliffs, almost being stabbed, 1930 Margaret Brundage, lesbian whipping scenes, they look like they’re dancing, lesbian witch cult, way less about personal psychology and more to male psychology, so streamlined, three characters in the whole story, no personality other than hetero, the anecdote that it wants to tell, is she a wood nymph, could be a wood nymph, naked woman in the woods, a fleeting glimpse in the mist, life is a lot more interesting, straight to dryad, too complicated word for the target audience, straight out of Dungeons & Dragons, sprite, hamadryad, C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, J.R.R. Tolkien, the entire Chronicles Of Narnia, super-famous British actor, Kenneth Branagh, Vanessa Redgrave, Patrick Stewart, the performances are incredible, Phantastes: A Faerie Romance For Men And Women by George MacDonald, they all died on the same day, a photo of the Doctor, at the Kennedy assassination, C.S. Lewis died, Aldous Huxley, Paul Chadwick, comic book artist, Dark Horse, Concrete, Harlan Ellison, a movie with that scene, that’s in a movie, a newish movie, The Most Reluctant Convert, converting to Catholicism, Lovecraft says to Robert E. Howard: You should become a muslim, Robert E. Howard to Lovecraft: I will eventually, sweet as a nut, The Horse And His Boy, my favourite, the best book in the series, Voyage Of The Dawn Treader, writing/publication, how does that fit in, The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, Magician’s Nephew, The Last Battle, for the retro Hugos, so terrible, an all volunteer pickup basketball, a cartoon adaptation, series on DVD, live action, a BBC version, Prince Caspian, Lewis is public domain in Canada, semi-professional Chrisitan audio dramas, consider that, before we lose Tommy, The Tower Treasure, a shelf of them, December 1st, blind spots, Nancy Drews, simple, hilarious, teen detective stories, Enid Blyton, Lilith by George MacDonald, Odd John by Olaf Stapledon, Symposium by Plato, Fury by Henry Kutter, Paycheck and The Weapon Shop, A.E. Van Vogt, more pairings, all the reading on Saturday, wouldnt be new, close to an hour, a William Hamilton Osborne story, The Haunted Corridors, able to clean it up, The Noseless Horror, always happy to do Howard, precedes pretty much everybody, Assyrian, in Egypt, talk across space, recorded on the farm, a twist at the end, quite different, in Portland, can’t turn down Howard, advent coffee, looking through ebay listings, a striking cover, calling the museum that has his papers, The New Jersey Historical Society, the idea seems very novel, a scientist and his beautiful daughter, a “machine”, more of a ghost story, the cover is great, the little hint, the machine is kinda like a cellphone, in a different time, to hear what they can hear there, listening through time, an audio podcast, two hours of homework for Alex, mostly reader, audio processing issues, listen to podcasts, full cast audio dramas, a whole industry, mostly one company, still alive, excellent people doing these, Big Finish Blakes 7, actors out from carbonite, a kindly elephant, a kindly witch, action oriented stuff, licensed stuff, Knightrider, that’s for you, He-Man, the German voice of Tom Selleck, Midsomer Murders, the Max Max novelization, The Terminator novelization, if they exist they’re probably very expensive, Alan Dean Foster, a novelization of Total Recall?, Terry Bisson?, Piers Anthony, Poul Anderson, novelized everything, marginal movies, Iron Eagle (1986), Kevin J. Anderson, Timothy Zahn, personality defects, Predator (1987), took that hate, especially censorship, Huawei phone, Terrifier 3 (2024), Wild Robot (2024), Ladyhawke (1985), let us rent it, The Terminator (1984) at a young age, had to watch Ladyhawke again, an assigned seat, 1 ticket vs. ten tickets, a lot to do with real estate, everything ties together, new tech, delisted, woke now, trains and WWII and Ukranian War propaganda, chicken breeding, once or twice, your dad’s station, dull people talking about politics, it was fun, a gothic romance novel, a beautiful woman with perfect hair fleeing a castle at night, Slaughterhouse Five, the sixties people, Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, Victoria Holt, Marilyn Ross, A Place Of Sapphires, piracy, governess, more Scooby Doo than Dracula, an immigrant, a reverse Dracula, female fantasy, Jane Austen, Bridgerton, romantic comedy, romcoms, gothic romance movies, Frenchman’s Creek, Jamaica Inn, The Birds, drug induced time travel, Marghanita Laski, she’s a ghost, very stylish and well done, moved to Italy with husband, Mona Farnsworth, The Three Sisters Of No-End House, completely forgotten, nurse novels, pen-names, Swedish adaptations, lesbian, from 1960, cliffs of Cornwall, past tragedy and present danger, passions overpower reason, evil lurks in the shadows, perfectly in tune, kicked off the boom, dismissed, Northanger Abbey, those are bad, commit to this, literally includes a castle with a high lit window, wearing a nightgown, retro toy and game, getting a better handle on human nature through fiction, what compels humans, Harlequin romances, daylight savings, I don’t believe you, a stupid idea from the start, China has 1 time zone, 1 time zone for the whole planet, you’re somebody, the twitter blocking thing changing, logging into an alternate twitter account, blocked or deleted, bluesky is where the writers and covid panic people hangout, threads has women obsessed about menopause, toy collectors, Lego minifigs, square format, photography, twitter as it used to be, oh well, plain gone, mad at Cora, not sufficiently anti or pro, all the time, you cannot post about your book, focused on the news, American election about to happen, a massive increase in depression, every second tweet is about Trump, if Trump is the worst thing that happened to you, in what sense is he terrible, Russia is never going to attack us, might try to sell you some gas, Anne Applebaum, Nordstream 2, they’re proud of it, set this thing on fire, so furious, hate Biden, terrible woman, spend lots of money to protect against the Russians, rat out my neighbours, it is horrible being occupied, 2 million people of Russian origin in Germany, grew up in Kazakhstan, they work hard, gardening is ex-Soviet people, paves your driveway, Jewish people, sorry for the holocaust, escaped Ukraine, communicating is difficult, so stupid to fall for it, endless amounts of weapons and money into Ukraine, weapons into hot-war zones, Israel, exporting weapons, promise not to use them to commit genocide, the weapons industry, subcontractors, specialized weapons manufactures, Airbus, the people who build tanks, Heckler and Koch, Sigsauer, Walther, submarines, campus, shipyards, superyachts for rich assholes, techbros, oligarchs, stories to tell about rich people being assholes, the Russian oligarchs are gone, taxpayer money, terrible headache, go to sealevel, 4 meters above sealevel, for dinner,

Mistress Of The Dark Pool by Russell Gray
The Cold Female by Dale Harlow

Posted by Jesse Willis