J.R.R. Tolkien – Page 5

The SFFaudio Podcast #517 – READALONG: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

The SFFaudio Podcast #517 – Jesse, Julie Davis, and Maissa Bessada talk about The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Talked about on today’s show:
2008, a children’s book, hardcover, a book for kids, better than most adult books, Neverwhere, Coraline, who hates Neil Gaiman?, Sandman, pictures slow it down, he didn’t feel competent, a genuine classic, character and sentences, crafting language, the wisdom of his prose, insights into basic human beings, you know its true, his evil characters, thinking about The Jungle Book, he started with chapter 4, MouseCircus.com,

“We were young, and very poor. The rooms I was renting above a shop were in a building tall and spindly and old. The kitchen and lounge were on one floor, a bedroom and my office and a bathroom on the next, and, at the top of the house, there was a big attic bedroom, and a low, long room in which an adult could barely stand up straight and in which there was a crib and a playpen. My son, Michael, who was two years old, loved his tricycle more than anything, but there was nowhere to ride it in the house, not without him tumbling down the stairs, so I would carry him and his tricycle across the narrow lane to the grounds of the local church, and he would pedal around to his heart’s content, and I would sit and read a book in the sunshine, and watch him, and look at the grey gravestones, names half-erased by time, and marvel at how comfortable a child looks in a graveyard. That was where it started. I’ll call it The Graveyard Book, I thought. Like Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book.”

listening to it, ghoulheim, there it is!, the monkey scene with Mowgli, Silas is Bagheera and Ms. Lupescu is Baloo, the tribute to Lovecraft, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, the rubberfaced night gaunts, something Lovecraft dreamt as child, they became his friends, they tickle you, creepy and wonderful, chew off any meat left on the bones, tip-up the lead-lined coffin and all the juices, when the angles were wrong, a city built to be abandoned, just as odd, to find the equivalent, King Louis, the Emperor Of China, the 33rd President of the United States, Harry S. Truman is a ghoul, the full cast version, recorded in a Minnesota radio station, so fantastic a narrator, no better author narrator, Gaiman’s reading of Coraline, Scott Danielson, a boy story and a girl story, The New Mother by Lucy Clifford, Heather Ordover, the CraftLit podcast, very insightful, The Count Of Monte Cristo, a man and woman in a box, glass eyes and a wooden tail, the cycle repeats three times, never naughty enough, live on berries, worse than the Other Mother, children in Hell, where Coraline came from, no redemption, no mercy, fairy-tale-like, very Neverwhere-ish, has he ever written a book that isn’t about gods, regular Neil Gaiman stuff, the Endless, is there a god in this book?, who is the grey lady on the grey mare?, she’s Death, the sickle and the hood, The Old Gray Mare, she ain’t what she used to be, the Hounds of God, Romanian soup, boiled cabbage is kinda a good, eating Twinkies, Mr Lupescu by Anthony Boucher, Mr Jim Moon’s Hypnogoria (Hypnobobs) podcast, Neil Gaiman’s breadth of reading, Mr Jesse, macabre (macabray), imaginary friends, Thus I Refute Beelzy by John Collier, Scarlet has an imaginary friend, Scarlet’s story is a mini-version of this story, a kid romance, the angry teenager, play houses, meany, totally girl, so cute, very brave, going into the dark, five years old, before Julie was 3, barely remember yesterday, summer used to last several years, the perception of time, how you could get bored really easily, the world is so boring, tapped into the youth, the Sandman series, the conference of the Jacks, serial killer convention, where is Silas going?, he’s like Gandalf, standard mean horrible character, time-traveling hit-men, Connie Willis, the characters that work, there’s the deepness, Jack Frost is Shere Khan, fresh, very fresh, quite refreshing, the comic book adaptation, some of the art in here, Jill Thompson, P. Craig Russell, Galen Showman, the scale is bigger, the horizon is bigger, the ghouls, comic gross humans, monkey creepy horrible awful, the sleer, Gaiman gives you the outline and then you fill it in, the Indigo Man, the broach, the graveyard, the antique shop, super complementary, look how Silas dominates the room, there’s never a haircut scene, so intriguing, why does he hang out in this graveyard, knowledge of the prophecy?, the whole plot is way less important, why is the Danse Macabre in this?, Death is so beautiful, living forever, the living with the dead, each to each, names aren’t really important, find his name, one day everybody does, how come death’s so cool?, really smart, what’s true and what do we need to remember, the dead should have charity, Elizabeth Hempstock, Toomai of the Elephants, referential, winter flowers, we’ve crossed worlds, within generations enough, the other book that was homework, A Fine And Private Place by Peter S. Beagle, Beagle’s narration, ended up perfect, brought to life, ride that raven, they are both stories about a human living in a graveyard and they are fantasies, very gentle and slow, it could have been a little bit shorter, he made his case for all the relationships, overcoming fears, only 19 when he wrote it, mature, living a fantasy world life, a raven, taking some inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, Ezekiel in the desert, a loose connection, the raven is what kept him there, psychopomp, a real personality, a ride in a back of a truck with a squirrel, set somewhere in England, so rich, find some weird house, adventures in her back yard, fully realized, how stiking is it that 10 year old kids and adults can enjoy it and not be lost, Coraline is not as amazing as this book, aimed at the children’s market, 188 pages for $10 US, images conjured by the book, no description of the lines on his face, the relationship has to Bod (she’s not going to eat him), it takes a (graveyard) village, out of time, his parents are almost the least interesting characters in the book, the poet who punished all his enemies by refusing to write his poems for the public, from my cold dead hand, kinda like Scrooge, some Lord Of The Rings stuff, the broach the knife and the cup, the Sleer is awesome, Elidor by Alan Garner, a family of jerks, William Shakespeare’s King Lear, a sword, a spear, a bowl, and an anvil, escaping into a fantasy world while you’re a kid, The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, weaving in true history, he liked the roads, Celtic mythology, the ring connection, the barrow wights from The Fellowship Of The Ring, Jesse’s Roof Bear calendar, there has to be rules behind stuff to make it interesting, Roof Bear can’t leave the roof, Ghost Horse is waiting for his master to return, lifting from the Sleer?, children’s adventures, Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, fun stuff for kids (and for Jesse), remembering the sort of fun you had as a kid, we don’t get to play house anymore, the pretend has a lot of value, mud pies, hanging out in childhood, beautiful, children and grandchildren, so Christmas becomes magic again, that acknowledgement, Bod’s getting too old, talking to Mother Slaughter, you’re always you and that don’t change, truth, I’m still me, that double memory, one of those profound things, LEGO robotics on Apple II computers (LEGO Logo), you really do loose something, its impossible, something you loose and yet retain the memory of it, Locke & Key: Welcome To Lovecraft by Joe Hill and illustrated by Gabriel Rodríguez, the head key, take out memories, the gender key, you forget, exploring a big old house, a menace, it works in the same way, brilliant and well worth reading, The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin, This Perfect Day by Ira Levin, 1984 by George Orwell, “Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei”, very 1984, The Giver by Lois Lowry, a remake, the witch chapter, time in libraries, what forms your imagination, what tempts Bod is an apple, wish I’d left…, the groundskeeper’s pile of grass, she’s just a girl (who was murdered), “then I did my death curse”, when Bod falls out of his crib, a pile of plush toys, a nice doubling, do this kind thing, sends him out into danger, all the influences, nothing is forced, the mechanisms of writing, a six sentence story, all unconscious, it feels very natural, I want the magic, it takes him years and years, Tolkien: there were all these Catholic things in there, a good book, a good movie, what Neil Gaiman can do, just crafting your work, a lot of it is unconscious, an apple orchard, seeing things evolving, re-reading is not Jesse’s thing, when you run out you have to go back, re-watching, all these little things, Julie’s project, have they earned my shelf space?, deep in our cultural unconscious, 43 Bollywood movies last year, legal/police/moral situations, western culture branched-off, vengeance is looked at very differently, cultural thinking, shocked and taken-aback, northern Europe is full of apple trees, a ghost outside, Good book, what’s Ace barking at?, thought-yells, a Man Jack in the yard, a fun read.

The Graveyard Book - comics adaptation

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman - with illustrations by Dave McKean

The Graveyard Book illustration by P. Craig Russell

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #503 – READALONG: The Wood Beyond The World by William Morris

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #503 – Jesse and Evan Lampe talk about The Wood Beyond The World by William Morris

Talked about on today’s show:
1894/1896, novel?, fairy tale, romance, one of the first fantasy novels set in a secondary world, why people point to this, a pseudo-medieval style, very soothing, hypnotically engaged, The Magic Flute, tied to our world, utopias, many interesting connections out of this, how impressive it is, the power this book has is not in itself, J.R.R. Tolkien, modern traditional fantasy in novel length (or trilogy length), it gives fantasy its modern shape, medivale in manners and technology, “bend the knee”, George R.R. Martin’s Game Of Thrones, re-entered the lexicon, coming from science fiction fandom, something Promethean about science fiction, Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, The Return Of The King, a conservatism in fantasy, what a socialist would do with fantasy, News From Nowhere, forward looking anti-capitalism vs. backward looking anti-capitalism, radical elements, not a conservative tale, George R.R. Martin, everything that’s disgusting, George R.R. Martin is the anti-Tolkien, Tolkienesque, a little talk of war, getting into the groove, difficult but rewarding, The Night Land as Hodgson’s take on The Wood Beyond The World, dying earth, quest, Supernatural Horror In Literature, potent, old fashioned language, Thomas Malory, William Shakespeare, 600 years ago, fetishizing of strange words, bucking people off, the Wikipedia entry, Golden Walter and the maid, a goddess and a slave and a mistress, the dwarf, powers, in control of so much of the story, radicalism, a slave revolt, commute listening, Cori Samuel’s narration, the language, more time, themes he’s working with, the old coincidence formula, the only through-line is that is a book, are the bear people actually bears or are they actually people?, interbreeding, orcs, more like vikings, values, a humanoid creature, something feral, Beowulf, what’s going on in the woods, about Morris’ own life, a fascinating powerful figure, socialist, anti-capitalist, the establishment, so busy, an artist, a factory owner, newspaper, bookbinding, the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, was it easier back in those days, born into wealth, quitting jobs, his own life story, an escape from his own life story, escapist, Childhood’s End, a critique, an opting out tale, a walkaway tale, American Writers (One Hundred Pages at a Time) podcast, Frodo never wanted to leave, one of the most famous faces from the 19th century, Jane Burden, art history, the Pre-Raphaelites are not before Raphael, what didn’t they like about Raphael?, the northern renaissance, detail rules, early doctrines, studying nature attentively, attention in the places not normally given attention, eyebrows and ivy, a style, Rossetti, Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti, cheating and living together in the same house, Blunt, Cosima Liszt, Richard Wagner, a social activist who wants to empower women, chapter 10, in comparison to me, all women are the same woman in this book, are you really a goddess?, the flowers start blooming, promises, not their true relationship, a really deep thinker, written as an escape, an escape from the personal displeasures of one’s own life, when socialist were claiming this was a political tract, socialist allies, the revolutionary narrative, lifestylism, veganism, a call for more broad political action, the personal, being a hobo, walk the earth, a rich merchant family, is he 70?, as young men are mostly wont, knowing how to forbear, a trusty warfellow, Langton means boring, the passing of the names backwards and forwards, Hansens are sons of Han, the poetic stuff, all poetry, all the Ls, manifest tokens, she hates him, Dad I gotta leave, his dad has been murdered by his wife’s family, a descent warrior, the traditional hero, he chooses to go back, the coincidence, a cycle of violence, the old man, very Odysseus, how did you inherit this house, empire and the cycle of violence, that old man wants Golden Walter to be his son and heir and to slay him, something going on below the surface, the Zen Buddhism of William Morris, not to give into resentment, why is the wife sour on Golden Walter, the most noble of hosts, a sad story, don’t seek out the maid, that woman, how knowst?, war breaks out among the bear people, the cyclical story, 36 chapters, pretty big for a small book, Carl is the Scandinavian word for dude, The Walking Dead, house carls, here is a man, good in a fray, rather wiser than foolish men are mostly wont, Odysseus’s men, The Odyssey, a series of scenes that allow you to interact with strangers, stealing cheese and drinking wine, the proper response to dealing with strangers, houseguests, him and his girl, the first foreigner who shows up becomes king, god and catholicism, a religious element, more like an elf than a goddess, JSTOR, down on academic stuff for academic purposes, the scaffolding, Debbie Zapata, Goodreads, quest for love, verily, “…but next I must needs tell thee of things whereof I wot, and thou wottest not.”, to wot is to know, crispy hair, naked, from a real person, crispy = curly or wavy, he louted to the lady, lout = bent, stoop, or bow, villain = bad guy (or serf), we have adopted the values of the lower upper class, an Americanism, egalitarian social relations, boss replaced master, a honorific, working class language, chief, is language separable from a class system?, dozens of different types of people, very rigid structure, poor laws, the basket of deplorables, white on white hate, redneck, hillbilly, Morris thought class was a huge problem, Friedrich Engels, visiting Iceland, a resource poor nation, guiding philosophy, in assembling News From Nowhere, how the working class are getting the shaft, the position of the police in the class system, social justice, the poorest in Scotland, they all have copies of News From Nowhere in their homes, the return to the Middle Ages, a more egalitarian time, the village, the collectivity, the slaveholders in the American South, Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, slave collars, a wedding ring as a symbol of slavery to another person, he literally leaves planet earth, as escapist as you can get, not a normal political work, about the class system, when Lovecraft was a little kid, the mad Arab Abdul Al Hazred, his superhero name, reading The Arabian Nights, as a child William Morris convinced his parents to buy him a full suit of armor, all forty of Sir Walter Scott’s books by the age of seven, absolutely bursting with ideas, Tolkien’s dwarves in The Hobbit, the Saga of the Volsungs, Gandalf, this is where it starts, Tolkien is a country gentleman, Tolkien adores the class system, “Oh Mr Frodo, sir!”, all the rich people go to the land to the west (Elysium), the movies, where you start in life effects what you’re interested in, Jon’s World by Philip K. Dick, an alternate reality, Souvenir by Philip K. Dick, that same fascination for the middle ages, a race system, the idea of the “Boss”, A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court, the ethos of the hardworking American go-getter, thoughtlessly recreating the industrial revolution in Medieval England, we’re not slaves, The Wages Of Whiteness: Race And The Making Of The American Working Class by David R. Roediger, obsession with minstrel shows, what we think through and what we don’t think though, the Milwaukee Brewers, “problematic” team names, baseball, a course on sports history, Any Given Sunday (1999), what makes something good (the work that went into it that you don’t see), fetishizing the aesthetic, Le Morte d’Arthur, Lancelot, a super epic internal struggle, a wound that can’t heal, betrayal and atonement, the Holy Grail, Morgan Le Fay, Mordred, a bastard product of incest, traditional Hawaiian royalty, Excalibur (1981), The Well At World’s End, tough listening, webbed language, pre-television and pre-literacy word weaving, the episodic nature of The Odyssey, telling tales, coming from a real place, not a book I would recommend to everybody, a book about escaping the more serious things one does all day long, one of the busiest men ever, escape from WWI, Elfish, The Silmarillion, what that leaves out, this is all a way to escape the world, somebody named Kavanaugh, his comrades, all they’re about, a more complex person, eight hour work day, a choice that he made, why the Arts and Crafts movement, made shittly, factory jobs, intellectually, the degradation of work, scientific management, Philip K. Dick, the tinkerer or the repairman, Galactic Pot-Healer, The Hanging Stranger, the ethos of work, Henry Ford’s creation seem antithetical, Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy, post-scarcity, technology as a way to free us, the mental a physical connection, the horror of capitalism, Sales Pitch by Philip K. Dick, robots who replace you, Human Is, there’s nothing to do, that industrial equation, the uselessness of his job, coming from an industrial fixer, the pot was terrible, The Man In The High Castle, the jewellery making, abstract zen koan art, that tiny influence, something new created, a fantasy of escape, very important, this is the beginning, the Glimmung, you’re needed you have value, restore a cathedral, what is more epic?, so metaphorical, you can see the strivings the longings, these are not entertainments, Dick’s commercial strivings, Morris’ book was self published, Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, passionate visionaries, why people point to this book, once it clicked in, James Joyce’s Ulysses, one guy’s bad day, his wife’s cheating on him during the day, humiliation, masturbating on a beach, head to feet, people having there wife cheat on them, I can’t go home so I might as well write this book.

Proserpine by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #497 – READALONG: Dune (Appendices) by Frank Herbert

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #497 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Marissa VU, and Bryan Alexander, talk about Dune: Appendices by Frank Herbert aka the appendixes of Dune, the adaptations, and the book’s influence.

Talked about on today’s show:
the Appendix, a world first?, The Lord Of The Rings, Tom Bombadil, Tom Baker, most science fiction books don’t have appendices, Ringworld, Hal Clement’s Mission Of Gravity, The Ecology Of Dune, The Silmarillion, more fiction, out-takes from world-building, Neal Stephenson’s Anathem, glossary, what makes an appendix an appendix, non-fictional matter that explains and develops a world, really wants to be Dune, Christo Empire Silence , an empire must be get-able to, Aba – loose robe worn by Fremen women, usually black, another episode, Kynes came first, his babies, doing all that work, so fully thought through, the seams are as smooth as the desert sand, a skeptical point of view, past the point where you need it, the American edition of A Clockwork Orange, a glossary of the slang, a weird supplement, you don’t need the map, Eric Rabkin, transformed language, new or repurposed vocabulary, lasgun, a demystifier, the terminology of the impreium, demi-brother, cone of silence, Get Smart, a superfluousness, a playground of the imagination, peons, he put it into the book but he doesn’t use the word, the real reason, Dune lives beyond the last chapter, there is only one Dune movie, the Sci-Fi channel miniseries are fucking terrible, wasn’t there a book too, heartplugs, there’s no heartplugs in the original Dune book, a life much greater than the final word of the last sentence of the last book of Dune, sequels by other hands, Star Wars, Jesse’s spirited defense of the weirding modules, David Lynch’s Dune doesn’t capture the Paul – Duncan Idaho relationship, whiny Paul, “I just want to see my dad”, “Paul we don’t need your sarcasm”, Paul is the receiver of a long tradition, the Harkonnens, they’re not joking around, William Hurt, casting, ending scenes with a rhyming couplet, the Jodorowsky Dune, Pink Floyd, a fantasy dream, Jodorowsky’s Dune documentary, stories and stories, visual matches, Hollywood loves to pilfer from foreign films, movies that come out in pairs, Deep Impact and Armageddon, psychedelic, using drugs to expand consciousness, a sixties novel, a seventies novel, the ecological part, the rain at the end, the reward for the ritual sacrifice of Sting, the galactic setting, the mythical part, Beatles, El Topo (1970), a psychedelic western, The Holy Mountain (1973), it makes Zardoz looks like an after-school special, Santa Sangre (1989), Lynch was the wrong director, the anti-epic, the greatest science fiction film every made, trying to turn Dune into a movie, the Allan Smithee version, the Japanese laser-disc version, we gotta lot of characters, we gotta infodumping, all the things that happen, more than enough for a season of a television show, Francessa Annis, Leonardo Cimino, the Baron’s Doctor, your diseases made love to me, Brad Dourif, he treats everyone like an idiot, Jose Ferrer, Linda Hunt, Freddie Jones, and his co-stars, there’s nothing about eyebrows in the book, the kind of detail Jesse is loving, visualization, The Death Of Stalin (2017), Steve Buscemi, Brezhnev, Richard Jordan, Kyle Maclachlan, a blank slate, Blue Velvet, The Trigger Effect (1996), The Twilight Zone, very present for its time, Virginia Madsen, Silvana Mangano, Everett McGill, Twin Peaks, Jack Nance, Nefud, they’ve even got his music in there, it’s unbelievable, Jürgen Prochnow, Patrick fuckin Stewart, a battle pug!, dogs, Atredies, RPG launchers, Long live Duke Leto!, no pets on Dune, if Queen Elizabeth showed up with her corgis, Lynch added, he worked on the script for six months, so full, it works really well if you know the story, how come everybody isn’t watching this every night, the third stage guild navigators, giant slug people, Sardaukar Terror Troops, visually what is happening, Wellington Yueh, Asian, international casting, red haired, every grunt is ginger, a horrible sex scene, the heartplug is the symbol for that kind of perversion, it is the novel in a very real sense, the cat’s job is to show that Thufir is being controlled, they had to cut stuff, whole scenes added at the beginning of the film, it really almost is the book, its awesome!, so accessible, people who’ve read the book tend to be dismayed by it, the tradition of epic film, Akira Kurosawa, Kubrik’s Spartacus, the Battle of the Five Armies, The Straight Story, a really weird noise, finally a David Lynch moment, Inland Empire (2006), Mullholland Drive (2001), a perfect horror film in three minutes, a very strange scene, the floating fatman, never before never since, every war movie, the sense of pageantry, the sense of scale and heat, desert coloured fatigues, a sense of scale that the book can’t, the production history, Dino De Laurentiis, watching people on stage, the worms are fabulous, a universal film, Star Wars for grown ups, this is not Buck Rogers, completely belly-flopped, way the minority, a punchline, the existential bleakness of the Dune Coloring Book, let’s color the Baron’s Doctor, incredibly abbreviated, 129 theatrical, 176 minutes, how weird it is, whispered though narration, “My Duke. How I’ve failed you!”, literally weird as in weird fiction, hypnotizing, straight out of the book, the banquet scene, My Dinner With Andre, a whole episode, everything about the miniseries is terrible, more Irulan in the TV mini-series, disembodied head, nice and Lynchian, Dune Messiah, more cat-milking, the goddamn weirding modules, all the other versions of Dune, a jazz album from the 1970s, a board game, the real time strategy game, The Dune Encyclopedia, The Dune Companion, this isn’t a concordance, creative stuff, Game Of thrones, where it could have gone beyond, not-ordinary fan fiction, its the Talmud, oh my god!, especially Jesse, expanding out that universe, what’s in this that inspires that?, what would hook him?, that whole weird trip, the world-building that went into the book, historical novels, Steen Hansen, thank you Steen, Steen’s spirit animal is the Baron from the movie, he’s the ID unleashed, such a fucking evil shit that you love, little Alia, Rabban rips the face off a cow, “Yeth my Baron!”, this is not a rip-off of Star Wars, Tatooine, we got some moisture vaporators, some bantha tracks, Carrie Fisher back from the dead flying through space with magic woo powers, the comparison, the centerpieces, Paul Atredies and Luke Skywalker, the National Lampoon, the Dessert World, “my god I’m good, my god…I’m God!”, power fantasies, such a period piece, staying power beyond the 1960s and 1970s, the spaceship earth mode, oil and scarcity, the attitude towards sexuality, the homophobic strain, will that power last?, that’s just the way the world works these days, absent an adaptation…, Altered Carbon, a book compressed and shoved into a film medium, it’s time to talk about the weirding modules, untranslatable to film, much easier to film, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, Harry Potter is much more influenced by film than other fantasy novels prior to it, Rowlings books have scenes and sequences, rich and deep themes about psychology, loyalty, love, the weirding way, a specialized athlete, very hard to translate that to film, yoga mats, aligning chakras, montage, “you have the weirding way”, why these people are special, the new army, a second level guild navigator cleaning up urine with a broom, making small-talk, you are transparent, the emperor spills his guts, a filmable film, set the film in motion, a through-line, the training scenes, “kick it, punch it, yell at it”, they have laser swords!, some sort of gimmick item, Krull (1983), how the voice can control people, “My name is a killing”, Usul no longer needs the weirding module, a perfect film, “THE (film) adaptation of DUNE full stop end of story”, watching, listening, Dune Messiah, how we’re going to overthrow Paul, we once made a Kwisatz Haderach but we had to kill him, a prophet, many such prophets, Joseph Smith, Jesus, a lost of thread of Dune, that’s the kind of passion, a flying Dutchman of space, dates mentioned in the book, the history from 1980 to Dune’s future, so generative, Stephenson tells you everything, CHOAM, Noam Chomsky, why Jesse is completely wrong about the weirding modules, Arnold J. Toynbee, history, challenge and response, The Dosadi Experiment, Babylon 5, why the Fremen are such great fighters, the Vorlons are the democrats, the Shadows are the republicans, and the solution is to get out from under both, deliberately creating these conditions, serving wench, God Emperor Of Dune, unless you squeeze and squeeze the human race will be killed off, one Sardaukar throws two Atredies, the training montage, training a unit, “fit him with the weirding module, Doctor Yueh”, activate a fighter, paralleled in the back end, the fighting machine, this could have been a great theme, Denis Villeneuve, visuals, music, favorite actors, Arrival (2016) had scale, Blade Runner: 2049 (2017), if you’re doing the book, look at The Hobbit, they’re doing it wrong, five dwarves too many, where’s the poetry, to film the impossible film, Brian Herbert, Eric Roth, War And Peace, the Soviet 8 hour film, Lynch put such a stamp, when you’re watching the miniseries, sentences, spun and respun, the previous incantations, the power of the word, Soviet movies, formally possible, production, do a TV show, The Man In The High Castle, Sharknado 5, sigh, Sicario (2015), HBO, Westworld, cinematic universes, The Expanse, back into the book and the books, all those cultures and all those secrets, such depth, if you could read the book and enjoy it you could be my friend, in 1983/4, Starlog, the stills, one more adaptation, the Audible multiple narrator edition, George Guidall, a 2010 music video starring Christopher Walken, check out my new weapon, walk without rhythm you won’t attract the worm, the wonderful dance, this crazy book line, the power of these words, still influencing, an ars technica discussion, Second Life, three different Dune re-enactment levels, a still suit, a chrysknife, scheduled reenactments, Prim Perfect, a tottaly VR game, oh my love girl, knife fight with Sting!, prescient visions, the appropriate use the media, infeasible/unfeasable, nobody loves every episode, there’s more interest in Dune podcast episodes, independent of hype, Luke Burrage, Comic Book Girl 19‘s Dune show, holy crap she’s a genius, becoming hyper-intelligent when talking about it, doing something profound to the reader, fake excitement, New Releases/Recent Arrivals, most of it is artificial, Bryan do you want to show on Greenmantle by John Buchan?, the best of a bunch of bad books, revisiting Dune with you, is that the end? it could be the end, but there’s no sequels, that was just the excuse, the trigger for the movie talk, shitting on the Bene Gesserit for being a little dumb, the Religions of Space Travel, published by Chilton, what it did for Chilton, when you break the mold, people want the mold, the publishers tell authors what to write, John W. Campbell, the Golden Age, Extra Credits, the book business, the Golden Age for some people?, the dignity, a new golden age?, stuff was really great back in that time, The First Golden Age of SF 1938-1946, 1947-1959, the rise of the paperback, writing paperbacks, from short stories to novels (and then series), changing the SF genre immensely, a whole new market, Del Rey, The Sword Of Shannara, extruded fantasy product, the grim dark era, a piracy show, never underestimate the power for the demand of a product, Tolkien didn’t want his books published in paperback, the ACE The Lord Of The Rings, an authorized paperback edition, not-piracy per-se, the history of their own industry, demand that isn’t supplied, suppression, getting that supply, the words must flow, paperbacks and pockets, “you could get hardcover books of Tolkien at the library”, in the modern era, a digital copy, Tolkien’s feelings about the wretchedness, Dune rules as a paperback, piracy is just demand, Wayne June is super-popular, beneficial to Wayne June, they are loving giving him money, not knowing what the market’s actually like, fictional author: Alice Beth Chatham, both sides, look to your own experience, piracy is a way of getting stuff when you don’t have any money, really complex, sometimes flattering, a weird argument with the head of the RIAA, steal this episode, pay for this episode, obscurity is the big problem, somebody got mad, an author dropped by the publisher, lost sales, save it for the pirate episode?

Map of Arrakis

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #495 – READALONG: News From Nowhere by William Morris

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #495 – Jesse, Bryan Alexander, and Evan Lampe talk about News From Nowhere by William Morris

Talked about on today’s show:
a socialist magazine, hardcover later that year, a response to something real, Looking Backward: 2000–1887 by Edward Bellamy, historical interest, as a historian would, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, lefties read it, Frederick Jameson, Marxism, post-modernism, An American Utopia, universal conscription, the actual plan, the military budget goes up every year, segmented by geography and class, how the army works, a planned economy, Americans fetishize the flag and the army, only the poor serve, leftist history writing, the importance of fiction, Bellamy clubs, Nationalism, confusing to 21st century folks, a fierce reaction against, an anti-centralized anti-industrial, anti-factory, scythes, beautifully crafted scythes, odious labour is automated, a different attitude towards labour, Rossetti, the lesbian fruit poem, Goblin Market, Eleanor Marx, why am I arguing with the book, all the problems he’s not addressing, the audio drama adaptation, force power, not coal powered, salmon spawning in the Thames, it is a beautiful thing, about beauty, “An Epoch Of Rest”, arguing against motivation to work, he hasn’t defined work very successfully, Mack Reynolds, hardcore socialist, here’s a novel, Equality In The Year 2000, everybody has degrees, guaranteed universal income, no crappy work, a problem of robotics, a lack of work is the problem, how striking, the serious problem is a lack of work, lazy bums, not enough quality work, the drudgery jobs are eliminated somehow, primitive communism, no invasion, no starvation, real issues, revolutions in every country of Europe, way to naive, he’s writing a utopia, least religious, Dante Alighieri, Nowhere = Utopia, articles about police brutality, the eight hour workweek, dynamiters imprisoned, The Anarchist, this is news, economics and foreign relations, Karl Marx, utopians as bourgeois, the world we live in is not the only possible world, the Greek polis, the nation state, the prison, capitalism, this doesn’t make any sense, talking past each other, there are alternatives, the world we live in is not written in stone, 500 years, Ernst Bloch, Kim Stanley Robinson, making sense of Henry Tudor’s world, Pacific Edge is an almost feasible science fiction utopia, the political situation, small problems, eliminating currency, making manifest, can you really get rid of currency, “everyone is an artist”, David Graeber, debt, three chickens for your cow, debt societies, my son really loves your daughter, debt relations, swapping around debts, made up, fancy ledgers, the lecture in the museum, getting a cutter, load up on surplus goods, great looking wine, very happy dudes, the big projects, rebuilding this cathedral, rebuilding this road, Che Guevara with a scythe, a fantasy, having utopia in our own life, Lasqueti Island, the back-to-the-land movement, the real economy there, Bryan’s homestead in Vermont, snow from October to May, shedding every 20th century technology, rural internet, 1800s technology, the Amish and the Mennonites, scale, Karl Schroeder, Britain is depopulated, mass produced arts and crafts wallpaper, J.R.R. Tolkien, hand carved wood, working with stone, hand mowing the hay, boats haven’t changed, the emotional appeal of it, thinking about health, chemotherapy, we live well, how long we live, crib-death, surgery without anesthetics, kidney stones, the childbirth thing, primitivist?, easier for men than for women, liberatory technology (for women), epidurals, fantasy novels gendered female, fantasy as pleasant imaginations of medieval world, 14th and 15th century style, contemporary back-to-the-land literature, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, Iain M. Bank’s culture novels, post-scarcity, assuming robotics, dishwashers and Roombas and autodocs, two ways to get to post-scarcity, post-Ice Age post-scarcity, Bellamy’s assumptions, the Chinese, until we’re all wealthy, Steen Hansen, I bet that guy was born wealthy, you can’t even conceive of this stuff, the trust-fund hippie, ramping up wealth inequality, Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. , upper middle class enlightenment through international travel, a historical vibe, the Clinton Democratic shift to the right, growing the economic, neo-primitivist, satisfied with what they have, the turn of the seasons, the anticipations graded finely, the turn to handicrafts, making and smoking pipes, finding meaning, little cheaty things, the exercise of vital powers, enjoyment in production, making that bread, that bread smell, that bread taste, something real, that utopian problem, the resisters, the refusers, the classic problem of utopia, your real skills, a race car driver, he’s completely forgotten the tragedy of the commons, where’s the violence, where’s the threat of violence, so fantastic it’s less believable than princess fantasy, a deep, deep claim, reforming the material conditions of life, the new Soviet man, their art, anti-communists, you can’t defy human nature, socio-biology, social arrangements, creationists, Jordan Peterson, women are more free to be nurses, women wanna be more nurturing, dudes like hitting each other with sticks, men like writing these utopian science fiction novels, Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, progressive and fascinating and a utopia, 25 years later, sparking a love and aesthetic, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish, women serving food, William Guest, his age is 56, the romance angle, Dick and Clara, risque for 1890, to “be together”, still problems in utopia, relationship stuff, the whole marriage thing, Mardi by Herman Melville, Typee and Omoo, copies of European states, a Christian utopia, following the girl, a critique of utopia, Melville’s early novels, a failed job interview, Evan’s podcast, American frontierism, going off to Oklahoma, going off to Nevada, getting back to history, Suspicious Persons, content setting up a kingdom for themselves, an anti-work thesis, be with the cannibals, paradise, the fruits on the tree, work and traveling up the Thames, Three Men In A Boat by Jerome K. Jerome, maid’s knee, a model for all diseases, foolish doofuses, a series of ridiculous pastoral incidents without consequence, a madeira cake, told from an idle gentleman’s point of view, a huge smash, skulling, skulling all day, completely inappropriate, The Riddle Of The Sands by Erskine Childers, a German invasion of Britain, The Willows by Algernon Blackwood, going to the water to make a utopia, Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, living on breadfruit, making pineapples for foreign markets, it makes socialism seem like its fluffy-headed, one day the government will wither away, the ecological problem, an ecological lens, the green movement, cultural, all sorts of weird things are within human nature’s possibilities, ancient megaliths, some rich guy, what’s missing, notice how content everybody is, nobody wants to reach to the Moon, this is fascinating, I need six guys to help me build a super-collider in Kent, most people don’t need books, somebody has to clean the toilets, Hakim Bey, immanentism, the Bros. Grimm, the cultural creativity seems to have stopped, no new stories or songs, distressing Bryan, harder to imagine than a new tech, what we have now but streamlined, imagining the internet, human operators, Orson Scott Card got forums, the rich depth of Troll Culture, Locke is a troll, Poul Anderson, Olaf Stapledon, Samuel Delany, Philip K. Dick, fashions, the genre, the Gernsback model, utopianism isn’t exactly science fiction, an epoch of rest vs. work houses, the reason Sherlock Holmes can do his job, the uniform of a coachman, a ridiculousness, winking the whole time, the coming out is anticipated, asymmetrical, great scenes, the Victorian version of the new Soviet man, no longer seen by people, dull and bleared, dirt and rags, much servility, what the Victorian era is doing to humans, a positive idea prompt, this poor bastard was made by his time, the black cloud overhead, servility, the class situation, Upstairs, Downstairs, a speech the butler gives, Downton Abbey has a changed ethos, a fantasy of a fantasy, “they are our betters”, there is great honor and beauty in doing your job well, taking pleasure in doing a job well, scrub it well, finding dignity in your own work, for two reasons, why the British didn’t have another revolution, Jesse is really on to something, understanding as a historian, a revolution is social relations, ranks, profession or blood, The Radicalization Of The American Revolution by Gordon S. Wood, American slavery, “master” is replaced with “boss”, The Making Of The English Working Class by E.P. Thompson, “upper middle class”, Bryan is nodding and pumping his fist, republican virtues, a bipartisan love for the aristocracies, “we don’t do aristocratic politics in our family”, the least unequal period in British, Canadian, American and Australian history, more unequal, Downton Abbey is a celebration of aristocracy, Sex In The City, sukc down that fantasy and enjoy it, the Downton Abbey scenario, you’re the help, an expression of our acculturation, F. Scott Fitzgerald, WWI was fought as a love affair, the Trafalgar Square incident, Bill Hicks, how pathetic British crime is, fraying that love, the sociology of every nation (except for the USA), mutinies, broke France, broke Russia, broke Germany, that broke, the love affair is still there, “Boss”, A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain, a classic for the ages, the houses of parliament are used for storing manure, so savage in its takedown of all things American and medieval romanticism, Hank Morgan, why isn’t somebody wandering in, just get a stick and start hitting, no outlaws, no bandits, everybody is an artist, everybody be cool, universal basic income, the Manitoba Income Project, a decent response as to why would people work, cultural revolution, how the Romans saw the world, essential human characteristics, this book appreciates the idea that people find pleasure in being productive and helping one another, there’s a purpose to life outside a wage, a hard subject, the ultimate outcome is going to be close to E.M. Forsters’ The Machine Stops, starting a podcast after your oldest child moves out, changing how we raise children, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Russia, Eastern Europe, every single hotel has two hour rates, long workdays, imaging having kids, women are freer, Ecan is a stay at home father, the fake complaint tweet, the TV was a CRT, Walmart, giving the kids to nannies, what money does, access to birth control, universal basic income will help, the government is really good at mailing cheques, orphan’s benefit, cheap college, money totally helps, that Mack Reynolds novel, you have to spend the money, Townsend, the economy is predictability, bitcoin, deformational effects, government is really good at regulating, doctors still make a living, even with wait times, no dental care system, Sam Harris, Jerry Yang, some idiot (Dave Rubin), you don’t need plumbing or building regulations, people cut corners, all the products are designed to be sold, “makeshifts”, pop (soda), the history of soda, who is responsible when you put the phosphoric acid into the pop, The Soul of Man under Socialism by Oscar Wilde, satire, remedying the evils they see in poverty, destroying the need for charity, super-rich having a charity ball for the poor, The Clinton Foundation, charity salves the soul, carrying for the unknown, I would be a freer person, people on the right, a state burden, a way to liberate people, the rise of pet stores, pet service stores, children are too expensive, “fur babies”, not a single pet in this book, there might be more birds of prey, The Revolt Of Islam by Percy Shelley, the most dangerous animal in England is a badger, bears in the mall, missing kitten, when you push down on one part of the society, such criticism, the economic cost, I really like the idea of craftsmanship, I love art, some lectures about how bad it was in the 19th century, a famine in France, France is just like this, the Iron Curtain, why NATO is still around today, dystopias are the inverse of that, everywhere’s the same, a global catastrophe, is The Road by Cormac McCarthy a dystopia?, addressing the truth of reality, violence isn’t going away, wouldn’t it be nice, how they get there, several chapters, one good thing about this book, immigration, easy to have a guest, what are you Greeks gonna do about it, sometimes that’s the point, a naive novel, “that’s what Hitler’s trying to do, yo”, rationalistic vs. empiricistic, eight hour work week, one idea, motivation to work outside of forced labour, keep scythin’, sowing.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #477 – READALONG: Dune (Book II of III) by Frank Herbert

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #477 – Jesse, Paul, Marissa, and Will talk about Dune: Book II “Muad’Dib” by Frank Herbert aka the second third of Dune.

Talked about on today’s show:
the second third of the first and only Dune novel, exposed in the desert, Liet Kynes talking to his dad, more philosophy, infodumping, that surviving chunk, he couldn’t murder his darling, sand grasping, so long, he’s dying, a beautiful way to tell us about it, George R.R. Martin, why is he telling me this?, the Miniseries, terraform Dune, an invitation to pick up the torch, sort of Homeric, our moral purpose, his life is just as worthy as the others, Villeneuve, two movies?, David Lynch’s version, The Hobbit movie debacle, powerful scenes, the camping scenes, struck with, Chani was the daughter of Liet, parallels, they’re made for each other (dead fathers in common), you shall know them by who they despise, they hate Harkonnens together, both fathers killed by Harkkonens, the dream girl, a come-on line, when he sings her that love song, his mother is his enemy (in that moment), chilling, what Herbert does with psychology, people sometimes have criticisms, “you should more women writers”, 90% or higher, women understand women and men understand by men, the scenes where Jessica is talking to her daughter, Herbert’s a good writer of women, women aren’t just one thing, just like that scene in Dune, doing drugs when she was pregnant, you should’ve told us you were pregnant, the Bene Gesserit scolding, controlling the gender of babies, why did Jessica choose to have a daughter?, kind of a hole, Jesse knows how wise he is because he tells himself he is, two kinds of pie, the ability to choose vs. letting such thing happen, sunk costs, choosing badly, is the directive off?, 38% through, a prophecy of Paul’s, “only to serve”, mucking around with the Emperor, Irulan, ending the Emperor’s line, he has self-restraint, not manipulable, “I’m holdin’ off”, Count Fenring and wife, a fascinating couple, a power couple, a voice Will wanted to hear, sequelitis, why this book is so great, great backstory, why J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord Of The Rings is so great, backfill for a whole universe, using the religion to keep them obedient, Mission Protectiva, the channel Jessica uses, bringing the jihad, Bene Gesserit on ice planets become snow-witches, “wild”, Kynes’ father is responsible for the jihad, Cortez and Quetzalcoatl, a white skinned deity, a unnerving series of coincidences, “we’re taking this land guys”, horses, armour, disease, the Aztec Empire was ripe to fall, doing the legend, Paul territory, the Jesuits teaching the rules, special communications powers with the God, Catholicism, long term less thought out, the Protestant Reformation, North Vancouver, abuse of power, the Orange Catholic bible, mystical religious figures, multiple levels of interpretation, when Paul quotes from the OC bible, no expectation that you need to read the bible, a mediated thing, “Gods!”, Gurney and the Harkonnens and Jessica, tempt not the Gods of the desert, “Gods! What a monster!”, are the sandworms the only aliens?, the patterns of life are mimicked by the alien life brought to it, Caladanian plants?, slime on Gedi Prime?, the jungles and rice paddies, sounds like Vietnam, terraforming jungles?, the following five books…, Lois McMaster Bujold, 10,000 years later, one mixed thing, a native plant?, the Goodreads reviews, meta-reviews, subtle trolling, ‘couldn’t have been written today’, a thing veiled description of reality, John Kerry, squeeze and squeeze and squeeze, plastics factory, coffee, oil, the economy is run on oil, the spice must flow the oil must flow, a retelling of Lawrence of Arabia, the Harkonnens are the Ottomans, is spice-coffee made of spice?, coffee substitutes, chicory, coffee extender, fungal masses, the pre-spice mass, chaga coffee, a positive psychoactive effect, plus you, everything is made of spice, addictive like cocaine vs. addictive like oil, a metaphor, once you start farming with tractors, once you get on the oil, melamine, food made out of oil, sugar, horses and hay, inventing synthetic fuels, not just about fuel, an ideology in itself, a galactic economy, motivations, their computer technology, we’re going to have a Butlerian Jihad, proving you’re not a robot, against the ownership of AI, every phone has a button or an assistant, Alexa, Siri, we’re making our lives so easy we’re only responding, God made Arrakis to train the faithful, their goal is to become soft, a very Greek idea, the Spartans, the Persians were living easy lives, soft like the Ottomans, lion’s mane and chaga, Thufir taking stims, poison transmuted into a psychoactive sex party drug (ecstasy), just “look within”, manipulating the chemical bonds, a cool trick, weird fuel, acid and bile, transmutational effects, the magic in it is science based, aligning your chakras, prana bindu training to squirt the chemicals, the two kinds of alcohol, methyl and ethyl alcohol, drunk and blind, regular grain alcohol is an antidote for wood alcohol, extending regular alcohol with wood alcohol, it isn’t a book about one thing, politics, the Suez Canal is not just for fun, for moving product and controlling empire, a longer process, Jefferson, Barbary Pirates, the shores of Tripoli, doing lots of mushrooms, sex, when Fenring hums and haws, Feyd, everybody has a pink pouch of a mouth, the Windsor nose?, formic acid, this is amazing!, ethanol cures methanol poisoning, parallelism, Paul 1st kill vs. Feyd’s 100th kill, how much time is spent with the whole Jamis situation, expressing opposite societies, Feyd is the shadow version of Paul, Paul’s loving mother and father vs. Feyd’s creepy uncle and creepy cousin, an individual as deplorable as Sting, Sting’s smirk, the scene between the Baron and the Beast Rabban, the beast is on the ball, his spies and his addictions, they’re all flawed, Lady Fenring thinks Feyd was raised wrong, part of the failing of the book, I’m a prince and therefore I have a right to rule, King of North Korea, the rule of life, nature is really cruel, powerful monarchies, the rule is to try to be as tough and wily as you can, breeding a super-being, eugenics, breeding smart people, Ramses the III vs. Yao Ming, great writers who are the sons of great writers, Stephen King and Joe Hill, Kevin J. Anderson composing novels on hikes, Hitler’s son, opulent in their luxury, immigrants to Canada, Sardaran rote, going to Salusa Secundua, the Marine Corps, the tool of a bunch of tools, super-geniuses making huge mistakes, a thirty car pile up of different plots and plans, Thufir’s fuckups, the hawk symbol on the gladiatorial slave, trying to kill and help Feyd, a Harkonnen he can control, Feyd as Thufir’s weapon to kill the Baron, suppose Paul and Jessica died in the thopter crash, who would be the next emperor?, if the Kwisatz Haderach plan failed?, lighting round statements, respect for the truth comes close to the basis for all morality, a book of wisdom, poor princess in the tower, what do you despise? by this you are truly known, Michio Kaku, the future doesn’t exist, you cannot back into the future, an Uber car backed into the future at 88 miles per hour, Jesse’s Row, Row, Your Boat theory, life is but a dream, life is not real, the blue pill, we can never see the future, Barrett Brown, disrespect for authority, an amazing and hilarious writer, Thomas Friedman is wrong about everything, tricks and tropes, just read “Thomas Friedman”, why Noam Chomsky doesn’t have a column at the New York Times, your pustules are so beautiful my Baron, a suck-up to power, consistently wrong, a great philosophy, on drugs and about to have sex with Chani, we’re gonna make a baby, the hard part is not seeing the future but seeing the past from the future, tripping amazeballs, what is an Usul?, “that’s that scene where she said Usul!”, is the future known or is it experienced?, a nexus moment, a cloud, déjà vu, we have déjà vu, “ah! It is the prophecy, she is the sayyadina!”, the opposite of science, science isn’t in the business of proving anything, very meta, holding a physical copy of the book, Paul has the Wikipedia entry for certain chapters or certain scenes, the effect of magic mushrooms, everything is connected and seeing things as they are, The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called “spannungsbogen” –which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of getting it, the self imposed delay, delayed gratification, Jamis was pleased, “I was a friend of Jamis”, a political speech, constant tension, a sometime prophet, just a teenage kid, “my mom is so stupid, I hate her right now”, Gurney, dispersed, taking up new positions, mercenaries, going rogue, short shrift, smugglers, live to fight another day, learning a lesson, Staban Tuek, very honorable in a very interesting way, gratitude, cool your sorrows with water, green grass, the beauty of women, rich with characters and stories, really good writing, a weird book, no chapters, Halleck turned, landscape face, the shadow version of the Fremen, a stone is heavy, playing a circumspect game, destroying the witch, Hawat didn’t see the traitor, rumors and hunches, likely not even their bones will never be found, differences between the audiobook and paperbook, the number of Fremen, dragging that foot and walking without rhythm, an interesting parallel, young and trainable, no value in the mom (except the water), the water discipline, the middlemen between the Fremen and the Guild, fascinatingly interesting, a story amongst all the structure, systems within systems, so good, the worst scene in the book, no more terrible disaster could befall your people than to fall into the hands of a hero, meta-commentary, by not killing himself or his mom, “show me the eighteen moves of pleasure, woman”, Kynes was seduced, the wife of Hitler, longer and stranger, when Jessica uses the voice she has to have them talk for a while, Chakobsa, the power that Bill Clinton had, winning the room, using the words, legit the voice, the voice of command, pressing the buttons of what people want to hear, “Axis of Evil”, right to the root of the brain, when someone comes up with a new metaphor, everything is metaphor, a new martial arts attack, move and counter move, Mixed Mental Arts, chattering heads on TV, the Atredies win the room, winning the action, so good!

John Kerry Code Pink

Dune by Frank Herbert (dustjacket)

ACE - Dune by Frank Herbert

Waldtenapes - Dune: A Recorded Interview

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #465 – READALONG: Dune (Book I of III) by Frank Herbert

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #465 – Jesse, Paul, Scott, Marissa, Matthew Sanborn Smith, Will, and Bryan talk about Dune: Book I “Dune” by Frank Herbert aka the first third of Dune.

Talked about on today’s show:
1965, serialized in Analog 1963, 1964, 15 years old, start the training early, mentat training, Bene Gesserit training, a trope, the crowning trope of a certain kind of science fiction, we are the universal super-being, fans are slans, it turns you into an asshole, peak podcast, a lot of drugs, the truthsayer drug, #thedrugsofdune, a drug book influenced by a drugee, rachag, coffee, the cranberry coloured stain of the sapho juice, mentats is a drug in the Fallout games, Nefud squatted, semuta, trance drugs, call on Doctor Yeuh, a wakeshot, sleeping drugs, ups and downs, poisons, the gom jabbar, inspiration, mushroom collecting, some science, Joe Rogan’s mushroom guy, psilocybin, pretty obvious, mushroomy, ecological science fiction, the creatures, part plant and part animal, the spice is worm poop, the network of how everything is interconnected, why it is so different from every other book, Philip K. Dick, A Clockwork Orange, Brave New World, a technology of the self, a drug of choice, meditation practices, how embodied the training Paul is doing, a very Joe Rogan book, body training, he is Joe Rogan, consciousness expansion, a prophecy laid down for him, a nice book about a mother and son going on a camping trip in the desert, wherever Paul goes, trite and facile, when Paul was 14/15, he has the same name as me, a mentat duke, save it for the next podcast, the first book of the first book of Dune, and baby sister in the womb, up to the point where Paul is crying for his daddy, high on spice beer, Florida, reading while travelling intensifies the reading experience, Tuscon, Idaho, the belly of a sandworm, walking around L.A., wasting water, get the squeezings, water discipline, what makes Dune so amazing, ecological novel, A Game Of Thrones before A Game Of Thrones, read it, read it, read it, an electro-static charged novel, pushing fifty, Dune Messiah, sparse, elegant, The Dune Encyclopedia, thoughtful and oblique, think harder and reflect, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord Of The Rings, Arthur C. Clarke, a deep book, preparing for six years, sand dune migration in Oregon, comparative religion, psychology, twenty years, his genetic unconsciousness, a lot of poetry, Gurney Halleck, Dune World, try a Caladanian daughter, dense layer of referential, a second order approximation, a reaction to WWII and WWI, in different directions, Muslim history, resource politics, the ecological movement, decolonization politics, Orientalism by Edward W. Said, Napoleon, Lawrence Of Arabia turned on its head, exploiting the exotic, Misionaria Protectiva, a naked power grab, pretty subtle, intertwining change and stagnation, stress and response, the prison planet, galactic messiah, Arnold J. Toynbee, Chinese Gordon, Karthoum, the Mahdi, distributing information, a small film book of a small sandworm, a propaganda system, three great tutors for his sun, his mom is his yoga instructor, Thufir for math, Gurney for fighting, less internet than it should be, educating Paul, the Anderson/Herbert prequels, mentats are their YouTube, the Harkonen veil, basic facts, the Imperial Ecologist and Planetologist, the spacing guild, an information bottleneck, weather satellites, this information thing, the effect of a messiah on a society, the structure around a messianic leader, reflecting on the casualties of Paul’s jihad, unbelievers all, information transfer, Bene Gesserit fake news, accusing Russia, propaganda, this is a good duke, stories transfer (not YouTube videos), no rocketry, background ecology, door seals, meditation and the Arrakis version of chakras, a sense of pedagogy, a re-imagination of space-opera, Paul and Feyd are both students, formal and informal teachers, are you catching this?, loving relationship, one is the twisted and one is the pure, the policy and the curriculum, training up an aristocracy, Marcus Aurelius, Commodus, the medieval space opera, Star Wars, why it works for bad reasons, monoplocies, CHOAM, autocracies, a dream of Jesuits, House Corrino, the terrible crime of stagnation, cybernetics, the great mind, Game Of Thrones type tactics, a thoughtful parody, a retro universe, an intervention in the history of Science Fiction, your magna carta, family atomics, kanly, reading this novel after 1990, reading it in the 1980s, an appendix show?, the banquet scene, such a faithful adaptation of a novel, Dr Yueh’s droopy mustache, it’s not about what you film, the emotional undercurrent above the table, players roles, chess pieces, a microscopic view of the macroscopic greatness of this book, Ted Chiang’s Understand, picking up all these things, Paul gets an insult, Liet Kynes’ ally, this is why Jesse doesn’t like going to dinner parties, the most important scene in the book?, what a lot of novels are afraid to do, head-hopping, what they’re thinking, how they’re plotting, the power of Herbert, an unpaid-off plot thread, the stillsuit’s manufacturer’s daughter, who put her into play?, in light of later events…, George Guidall’s is the best audiobook version, how proof against modern times, “roles for women” and “mansplaining”, strictly defined, maybe we’re being double out-thought, from the eyes of other characters, false information, when Yueh gives himself away, the distraction we see in him, unreliable head-hopper, the narrator makes us like Paul, the epigraphs, you have a traitor amongst you, we know pretty much everything, the tension comes from elsewhere, who the father of Jessica was, the only surprise, so awesome, spoilers are not the important thing, who the hidden murderer is doesn’t matter, not Yueh, inconceivable to break imperial conditioning, B.F. Skinner’s behaviorism, a towering achievement of world-building, a classic suspense story, Ken Schneyer, Princess Irulan is a propagandist, the opening, inside the propaganda machine, Hart To Hart, predestination as storytelling technique, Agamemnon by Aeschylus, two great houses, a knowing walk into doom, a reversal of the hero’s journey, a romance, the seeds of tragedy are being sown, remixes of contemporary and historical events, Gom Jabbar as a pun on Kareem Abdul Jabbar? [or is the jabbar derived directly from the Arabic for coercion or force?], the “Lansdraad”, the Hanseatic League, whipping all these things together, Tolkien, very Shakespearean, the soliloquy, Piter De Vries, watching Dune under the effect of edibles, watch the David Lynch movies first!, Starlog, a fascinating movie and book, The Twilight Zone Magazine, the reader creates the world for themselves, how an ornithopter works, Jodorowsky’s Dune, sparking off your imagination, Eric S. Rabkin’s “transformed language”, dragons, worm = wyrm, the epithets, silky and effeminate, the Harkonnen sexuality vs. the Atredies’ kanly manliness, the Baron’s an awesome villain, appetites, plans within plans, surrounded by weak terrible characters, don’t waste this sexy lady, whoever seduced the Baron in his youth, the greatest villains, Night At The Museum, to enhance the horror of the Harkonens, a love of a certain kind of efficiency and morality, trying to get revenge, the unexpected, “Russian hacking”, the internet research agency, it’s a bot, billionaires know each other, foolish and stupid thinking, seeing the inner workings of people’s minds, subtle body cues and motivational signals, we are trained by Herbert, the “my dead wife excuse”, when did Yueh flip, for murder?, securing his seed for another bloodline?, a text for analyzing reality, James Risen‘s debate with Glenn Greenwald, we’re becoming the Kwisatz Haderach while we’re reading it, priming for skepticism, the weirding way, Bene Gesserit kung fu, the voice is real, “the teacher voice”, the “parent voice”, The Wire, Stilgar spits on the table, the book is sneaky and devilish, a science of pain, living your life in a pain amplifier, similar to LSD and hallucinogens, layers going on underneath, collective unconscious, everything is interconnected, Jungian racial memory, the Reverend Gaius Helen Mohiam, Siân Phillips, you treat her as a common serving wench?, sequel and prequel books, Hellhole by Kevin J. Anderson, Seleucus Secundus, Sardukar, mining ideas, marrying soft and hard science fiction, Dune as a fat fantasy novel, noble houses, sword fights, magical powers, a fantasy book with science fiction discipline, science fiction tools, anthropology, Black Panther, a scientific ecology, no sense of the fantastic, The Stars My Destination, cold eyed realpolitik, political science, Michael Moorcock’s Starship Stormtroopers, what makes Mordor evil, when Gurney becomes to old, a moral difference, the evil is real, wanting to have the scenes, the road goes ever on, but what are the healing properties of that tree?, a walking tour of England, the greatest connection to fantasy is with how the Kwisatz Haderach works, a cool insane idea, the Mass Effect games, space magic, “everything’s connected man, I can travel to the stars!”, “I can read your mind, man!”, when Paul has a dream of Chani, the waking dream, Muad’dib, drunken Duncan Idaho, Altered Carbon, brain chemistry, advanced mental training to appreciate your dreams, lucid dreaming, pure fantasy, working against the Missionaria Protectiva, never mind about Elijah!, actual nuns took Scott away, the zeitgeist of science fiction in the 1960s, The Nine Billion Names Of God by Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven’s indestructible hulls, Philip K. Dick, Athena visiting Telemachus, the metaphor for a bowstring being drawn and released, the Butlerian Jihad, human machines and our magic and engineering, focused consciousness, the animal and the human, love and duty, fantasy strips away choice, Frodo, a fantasy of international relations, Tolkien wants to leave the world, those orcs, ultimately killable, tools for dealing with the world, take walks and smoke pipes, a training manual, it’s all coming together, points of realization, “wow, my mind blown!”, the morality and humanity of your parents, Dune World (the Analog serialization), the heroes are wiped out, the trap is sprung, when Gandalf is killed, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, great relief, traipsing through Farmer Maggot’s mushroom fields.

Dune World - illustration by John Schoenherr

CAEDMON - Dune Banquet Scene - art by Kelly Freas

Dune illustration by John Schoenherr

Posted by Jesse Willis