The SFFaudio Podcast #785 – READALONG: A Time Of Changes by Robert Silverberg

Jesse, Paul Weimer, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about A Time Of Changes by Robert Silverberg

Talked about on today’s show:
Self-bearer, to outsiders, we are going to talk about, a novel, serialized in Galaxy, March April May 1971, won an award, a nebula, the competition, The Lathe Of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin, The Byworlder, Half-Past Human, The Devil Is Dead, Margaret And I, interesting Poul Anderson, arguably her best book, strong stuff, meandered all over the place, T.J. Bass’ reputation, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer, a scattered mess, The World Inside, a good book, liked, great, Paul has questions, liked the world and the worldbuilding, quasi-sister obsession, an incest book, lusting after his sister, takes his drug with his sister, the incest trope, incest is a big erotic thing, step mom, step sis, step bro, step-sister, it’s fun, the forbidden fruit, a forbidden love story, by the customs, bond brother, bond sister, it would be seen as incest, step-siblings, the only people they’re allowed to open up to and talk to, it makes sense within the world, you need to talk to people to fall in love with them, marriage and procreation is not about love, love is a dirty word, a very restrictive society, natural human impulses, puritanical catholic society, drainers, leave town, going for a sexual massage, literally it didn’t happen, a public drainer, a heterosexual dud jerked off by a professional whore, homosexuality, betrayed the confessional, all from our guy’s POV, such an important social outlet, we don’t see that part of the world, such an important social outlet, Catholic church, unfortunately, confessional booth, lawyer – client privileged, go to Silverberg, sociological ideas, a new wave book, drug books, drug smuggling, LSD or mushrooms, he’s Christ bringing love into the world, a good book, coded Catholic, protestant, puritan, corrupt, coded Jewish, a subversive element, a negative Jewish stereotype, wholesome and perfect, subversive Jew came in, a suffocating society, good ideas, the drug was coded as sodomy, butt sex, homosexuality, homoerotic, we’re doing it, a lot of pornography, to make money, because he liked it, explicit, a way of getting out of a book, not his best work, 9 minutes in, Jonathan’s gonna love this book, very homoerotic of you, I is a swear word, the worldbuilding was terrific, not many kids, the life of per-pubescent kids is minimal, other socioeconomic levels, he’s the son of a king, we’re focused on that, allows him mobility, he’s not against the king, his brother, a personal story, if this is the story of the Christians, the early church, not mass orgies, people out in the woods, the primitives, they have a wonderful time, the lower class betrays him, as a person who has experienced children in adulthood, people who’ve forgotten what children were like, completely distanced from it, me me me me me stage, not everything is about you, this is something that should come up in the book, his favourite word was Trump because it triggers adults, not illegal in the normal sense, the adults around him are triggered, sometimes it would work, cortisol spike, you have to share your toys, in a sense the idea here is very good, not focused on one’s self all the time, Mr Jim Moon, with ambient noodling by the Eldritch Light Orchestra, it’s not the way to be, one ought to be a good person, we actually believe this, made it very rigid, bond sisters and bond brothers, he did the easy version of this book, a really good idea, he did a pretty good job, it won the nebula, a book about a writer, the most taboo thing you can do, the solitary vice (masturbation), I gotta big dick, I have premature ejaculation problem, plowing that girl for three seconds, a very Silverberg book, overboard with his philosophy, too honest, too forthcoming, becoming self-absorbed like us, he’s all about love and barely mentions his children, he didn’t have any interest in talking about them, very thoughtprovoking, Jordan Peterson hell, assigned pronouns, that’s very interesting, you’re not supposed to say this, in Ontario, the thing that made Peterson famous, personal choice pronouns mandated, your honour to the judge, command respect, one ought not to do those things, distance it, constructed language, barely science fiction, mostly a fantasy setting, the drug is the technology (telepathy), a preview of Majipoor, a juggler, not fair to this book, a weird job as a writer, never a professor, always a writer, juggles words, he’s not a science guy, Dying Inside, The Book Of Skulls, very limited science interest skills, sociological skills, very far from Larry Niven, Ursula K. Le Guin in a male, Jack Vance, a veil around the sex, humans colonize a planet, the spaceships leave, The Blue World by Jack Vance, caste is pronounced kayste, giant lilypad, giant lobster, Big Planet lacks heavy metals, land on a planet, living in their world, very Le Guiny, earthman shows up and is the representative of us, why kings?, telephones, medieval, heat rods, laser guns, Gene Wolfe, Dying Earth/New Sun, groundcars, flying vehicles, sailing ships with auxiliary engines, but why kings?, makes it simpler?, personal, more relatable, how the mighty has fallen, spontaneous lumberjacks, he’s ready for it, didn’t go outside her bubble, why she did what she did, she couldn’t handle it, relativizing experiences, she’s a saint, very hierarchical, no mobility up, she’s incredibly repressed, all hidden, share souls, gotta dose, the reverse experience from the drug, loathsome, couldn’t handle it, travel psychosis, psychotic breakdown after being married, suppressed latent psychosis, go psychotic, winning the lottery, France, might get it again, strong feelings towards them, idolized and loved, very negative self-image, he doesn’t say this drug is good, he’s stupid, he is a self-barer, psychoanalysis, understood everything about themselves, two big errors in the book, the soul sharing experience, you have to say I, without changing the pronouns, Gilles Deleuze, clandestine, why do people say that the sun rises?, it doesn’t matter whether you say I or not, proselytizing, she wasn’t ready?, he was ready, one way of reading this, Timothy Leary, there are some people who need the walls, it’s because you’re fucked up inside, little funny looking fish, deep soul with krakens inside, angels or krakens, the wrong way of opening a hole in the wall, not the best way to read it, shows up personally in the desert, a little bit of pity, Jesse’s not a drug guy, what it don’t do is make Jesse he’s communicated with god, when you take some drugs, mushrooms as a group, the connectedness of everyone and everything, he didn’t learn anything from anybody, the way he acts, makes you less repressed, alcohol makes you stupider, chatting up very pregnant women, the Faustian bargain gone wrong, midichlorians, a normal high, bullshitting this guy, a reading you can make, suddenly realizes, the homosexual banker, you can hide things under the influence of the drug, self-interested, he’s also looking for someone to help him, a sharing contest with the natives, they did have a connection, two druggies, Downward To The Earth, we don’t have the legacy, the druggie experience, costs some people, melt into puddles, pharmakon, a world that’s very interesting, thinks he’s self aware because he’s saying a taboo word, not making the best decisions, his tactics were wrong, imagine we retell this story from the brother’s POV, taken on responsibility, fuckup of a brother, let me show you this thing, he thinks that’s everything, the problem of being the spare, he’s Mr. Pfizer, no side-effects, the society has a problem, too repressed, a famine in the land, the king’s responsibility, he’s interested in it, I don’t want to lie to you, very meta, the Nebula awards, a limited set of people: writers, after a certain point they stop reading, they give blurbs, a bad discussion, the drug is writing as well, somebody likes drugs, ambivalence, build the case, a guy who fucked up, a failed messiah, Le Guin’s Philip K. Dick book, more ambitious, a writer service, the opening, the whole premise of this book, first person is taboo, very sparky, writers trying to solve writing problems, why this character?, why not head-hop?, if we were in the head of the brother, the unhealthy obsession, I grew up, if you’re a middle class kid, some other family, why?, safety valved, a secret plot, makes them richer, why did this custom start, we hear the myth, bad stuff happens, myth comes from reality, the powder, this entire religion happened, the drug was the cause of their reactionary faith, hidden through myth, the world’s Satan, he’s a tempter, why does God want to keep knowledge from you, we’re reading the book, published backwards in time on earth, social anxieties, when gin is introduced to England, abstinence from alcohol, every culture that touched another, a druggie doofus, he has impulse control problems, passport works everywhere, sending him gifts, this could be a much better book if we read it properly, he fucked up royally, if from the brother’s POV, second guessing Silverberg, feels richer, working that literary mine, guilt, the secret, druggie ideas, the communion, the slaughter, the sharing of flesh, The Book Of Skulls, there’s a cult in the desert that has achieved immortality, you have to kill your friend, focus your prana all day, a road trip book, Twilight Zone style horror, riding around the planet visiting places, sex, drugs, not kids, sometimes they work amazing, a very Ursula K. Le Guiny idea, The Left Hand Of Darkness, this is better writing, how easy this flows, his vocabulary was incredible, so precisely, top notch above, if we follow the meta thing on the power of writing, Jean Jacque Rousseau’s Confessions, inventing auto-biography, take it back to Rousseau, he never considers how this is going to effect my kids, don’t you have to live what he’s all about?, he’s not a full rich Silverberg, he’s a druggie Silverberg, limited perspective, the salt of the earth, respect for the working people, age 30 in their years is 40ish in our years, there’s something wrong with him, fill in all the corners, very repressed, the implication, too conventional, job as a customs guy, corruption all the way up and all the way down, cushy job, a definite commentary, immense power and dominance, he gets gifts, he gets influence, he’s a customs guy, they make this drug illegal, a drug smuggler as an evangelist, addicted to the experience, he likes the sharing, you should do mushrooms man, selling religion door to door, maybe it benefits the church, official missionary position, a religion of sharing your inner soul, what information did he gain?, not combination to any locks, you were tripping balls too, explicitly called out in the elephant book, did he learn anything?, no, your just thinking you’re having, stuff that happens with our regular drugs, some people just don’t like dancing, that’s too much, degenerating, no man I got these really good insights, it helped me clean my house, reality is controlled by an entity, the CIA, see beyond the veil the CIA puts in front of you, so does it only help dumb people, kinda fucked up his life, seeing reality as it is, with the help of language, dialogue, discussion, William James, a blooming budding confusion, the alterity, the otherness of the other, a very useful world, gave up on LSD, the internet, he invented the app, ability to collect data on people, is what I’m hearing, mind mirror approach, personality tests, the PC is the new LSD, a similar experience, takes over your brain, videos of current events, lady in an SUV with a Starbucks on her way to her sushi job, Joe Biden bumbling across the stage, tricked into believing, anybody can be made to look a stumbling dumb idiot, same effect, too soon, the next six months will tell, criticize this podcast as soon as it comes out, creates telepathy, the fable myth story, tries to become a god, two real gods drunk, not actually a god, not actually there, he has to be a god to become a god, the only time he doesn’t share the drug with someone else, they drink together, having his drug alone, feeling the whole planet, smoking marijuana alone, drinking alone, a feel-good hallucination, feedback with somebody else, folie à deux, prophecy is fulfilled, having the book makes him the prophet, we have to imagine we are these people in the future, how do you know, like Battlestar Galactica, Silverberg is subtle, time travel drug, regressive hypnosis, while you’re back there would you mind killing Hitler?, it is from the past, 1971, spread illegally on the internet, the LSD of 2023, and legally, I believe in some sort of life force that can metaphorically exist, the reading of his own drug experiences, a good feeling of sharing, Fight Club with a Love Club, ecstasy, get hot, wanna dance, I’m taking it you’ve taken it, MDMA, without asking your age, 45 years old, a lifetime ago, things have changed, too late now we can’t talk about, six minutes in the middle of the night between too soon and too late, finding Friedman units in people’s arguments, genocide happening, the end of the world people, a moving time horizon, a drug book, a very challenging book, very suffocating, hard to read in the first half, a deliberate effect, an effective technique, doesn’t make for light reading, the ideas are right there, an unreliable narrator, you have to read him that way, what his ideas are, a veil between you and Silverberg’s ideas, that was first person too, people are merging into other peoples, broken in a way that made his smarter, not that self-aware, so many unnamed themes, religion, incredibly Freudian, liberated sexual practices, not naming to go to the general case, ambiguous all the time, maybe those Nebula guys were smarter than we thought, soft SF, dystopia, evolution, the jungle, the strange beasts, the tendrils, far future, language, coming of age, Time For The Stars, across parsecs, she likes me, is it a telepathy book?, communicate emotionally, selfishly, Deanna Troi in Star Trek, she can read emotions, autists, the drug is the thing, other people on this planet love their children, a Scandinavia thing, that must be hard for them, handsy and cuddle, supernatural or a drug, they feel dirty, they’re so repressed, alcohol does that, the backlash to the backlash, and watch football, people get together and drink, ought they?, a religion and the laws, smuggling, what’s good and what isn’t, isn’t it interesting, visits the house, it’s a palace, insight into his character, kind of a failson, a Canon movie from the 80s, hires homeless Judd Nelson, this is a failson, he’s a slob, he’s the premise, The Prince And The Pauper, we’re following the prince, journey to an ashram, an embarrassment to his society and his brother, he’s a tourist, tourist/entrepreneur, he couldn’t give a fig, he’s sleazy, he has an agenda, he plays a long game on this guy, he’s interested in taking it and selling it, synthesize it back home, take him at his word, still sleazy, corrupting this other guy, not so hard on the judgement, Socrates corrupts the youth, after several centuries, ultimately positive, their covenant is everyone should be an introvert, not express things, people who can’t really be introverts, living in repressive Finland, fuck this country, live in Mexico and Brazil, they’re all skinny (show a lot of skin), no cachet with the natives, an equalizing thing, the I I I I I, too self-centered, what makes it a dystopia is that he didn’t like it, slobber them with kisses, in the middle, the correct way, someway between Norway and Brazil, America is not fucked up, perfectly combobulated, happy medium, goes to the other extreme, enantiodromia, even when not appropriate, I want to sit between the sexy enantiodromias she has, goodbye Paul, Radium Pool, funeral, Lowdown Road, The Terminal Man, part of Jurassic Park, Time-Line, limited number of ideas, The Andromeda Strain, very cold and very solid, Prey, a cut-off point, his first 6, John Lange, Drug Of Choice, fucked up rich people, one in Nice, and one in Spain, very literary, who he’s reading, radical hemispherectomy, ancestor of cyberpunk, Gilgamesh The King, 7 people for The Weirwoods, drug withdrawal/depression, friends with Will, he’s a communist, his politics seem to be very snarky/cynical, aren’t Kentucky and Arkansas the same place?, like to talk to people who have different ideas, strangely, a little exchange about Friend Island, funny, insightful, sparking full of ideas, invented the Futurians before the Futurians, Paul Michel, either a piece of shit or making fun of something, it has to be a comedy, as supposed to be funny as opposed to pathetic, one of the words, called out, Hell In The Village by John B. Michel, Farnsworth Wright, Von Juntz, Sixth Columnist, Heinlein, supposed to be terrible, clew, a Lovecraft sort of move, shew, shewed, he just patted the female elevator on the behind, German professor scientist with a beautiful daughter, Lovecraft is called out, having fun, 1942, war stories, Lovecraftian pulp parody with a war theme, so bad its good, Lovecraft is funny, where he’s doing Jesus, The Dunwich Horror is a comedy, you have to zoom out, Stuart Gordon adaptations, a dream written down, a lame awesome ending, think through an idea, Call Of Cthulhu, it’s Dracula with a dream monster, Lord Dunsany, Chu-Bu And Sheemish, vacation, ruins of a temple, the destruction of the temple, the timing works out perfectly, a very famous Lord Dunsany story, he read this story and wrote his own version of it, an artists studio crashing down, The Tree by Lovecraft is a murder mystery, a historical setting, mother of Tiberias, Augusts’ wife, a poison story, that guy read that story, an axe to grind about art, Lord Dunsany doesn’t have an axe to grind, has fun and makes pretty stuff, I’m going to prove that New York is a hellhole, half French, half translation into English, epub, the life of Lovecraft, an ongoing feud with Heinlein, politically correct, always this feud with Heinlein, Lovecraft dies in 1991, a euchrony and dischrony, centenarian, too soon, he took an incoherent position, the next six month will tell, when Stephen Colbert used to be funny, he no longer gives FU, keeps on moving the goalposts, you should be both emotionally hot and cold, authors complaining about bad reviews is so lame, pretty weird, you want to hear about negative reviews, let’s play nice, share your toys, hang up and shut up, used to be proud, reviewers are part of the same bubble, professional reviewers, people are doing it for free, SUV with two sunroofs, go to university to get a marketing degree, cosplaying her parent’s view of what reality should be, go study business, the consensus is don’t say that, the consensus is too soon, a censorship move, not the same when you say it in the moment, people went to see the movie, Aliens was so good, Alien 3, Sigourney Weaver go a paycheck, resonant with ideas, a sequel can in someways surpass, a footnote, read everything about it, the dealer has an agenda, the situation now, writers who never get any meaningful feedback, David Fincher, studio notes, writes the next thing, goes on for 16-20 books, Charles Stross, random indie writer, not writing in a vacuum, writing in this vacuum, interpret it, a second pair of eyes, a message in the bottle, if you like this sort, intimated before, Pauline Kael, everybody does it for free, you’re friends with the people you critique, scrappy new independent, friends of the authors giving good reviews to their friends and bad reviews to their enemies, Chris Sempter, Poe’s relationship with a rich couple, tutor the wife in her sonnets, a vanity book, tried to make a living as a writer, I’m Nathaniel Hawthorne, every book’s a flop, Mark Twain died poor, desperate for cash, puffery, aka saying good things about an author, a savage critic, Tomahawk Poe, An Enigma, an acrostic, On Sonnets, sonnets suck unless…, without that context, doing it as a kind of work for hire, acrimonious break up, Philip K. Dick kinda worse, writing again to ask you for money, can I borrow money, grateful but come on, as evidenced by Charles Stross’ latest book, Laundry Files, Singularity Sky, a guy wants to make a living, not have to fix fences or whatever, the lie about all these authors are making a living, Stephen King and J.L. Rowling, TV and movie rights, most people don’t read, not making production like they were, streaming now, ambient pictures, getting a real bad feeling, Mike Flanagan’s Fall Of The House Of Usher, what relation is it to the story?, self-sacrificing for Foundation, a fashion house?, fan service for Poe but it’s own thing, rich people living in expensive houses, Glass Onion and Knives Out, rich people talking to each other, Veep, the best of Veep, every joke there were not laughs, people insulting each other, what satire is, insults are satire?, Airplane! (1980) is a parody, West Wing is a fantasy, Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister are supposed to be satire but look like reality, a competence fantasy with insults, insults = funny, laugh track, Married With Children, shoe salesman is humiliating, things have changed, satire for dumb people, parody makes fun of fiction, satire makes fun of reality, maybe it is dead-on, the writing on TV is really dumb, HBO was supposed to be better than that, are there some people who don’t have a sense of humour?, a ladder, fart jokes make little kids laugh, very very liberal, reading the New York Times has Trump insult, too soon, attitude of superiority, a rich person who has never known any kind of tragedy, Fawlty Towers is about a guy who is very class conscious, the insults there backfire, how dumb are you humiliation humour, you’ve have to had had no tragedy, coming from a place of privileged, a level of disconnect, an actor playing a poor character, the other level of humour, you are a dumb redneck hick, being impolite = humour, it’s true he’s dumb that’s why it is so funny, social faux pas, elicits laughter, gives her license to insult other people, has the president called, she wants to be important, maybe I need to get some of this drug from this book, so unfunny, professional wrestling, do suplexes, kayfabe, opera for stupid people, it’s not a comedy, the heels and the babyfaces, ancient Asgard, the criticism that it’s fake, you know the planet where this takes place isn’t real, right Jesse, dumb humour, medium humour, smart humour, smart humour is dumb, Adam Sandler movies are very funny, not high level humour, became a money laundering scam, cardboard sets, they make movies to go on vacation, stopped caring, the next Jerry Lewis, the first man-child, the guy in Elf, Steve Carell, Some Like It Hot (1959), Marilyn Monroe, the theory of humour, a very dry sense of humour, the podcast proper, causes problems for people who don’t know its humour, puns, what a crustacean is to make a Red Lobster joke, a vocab joke, fart jokes don’t require language, you can laugh without having language, Marx Brothers, switched studios, slapstick, Groucho was the intellectual jokes, Harpo is silent, jokes, tricks, Duck Soup (1933), aiming for the bottom, the middle will watch anyway, highbrow and the lowbrow, with superheroes, this is going to dumb down cinema, people got bored, Dark Knight, dumbed up, For Your Eyes Only (1981), it’s the superhero formula, class based action sequencing, skiing, scuba-diving, car racing, drops the sophistication and keeps the supervillains, the key to any particular episode, Captain Nemo is the badguy, The Spy Who Loved Me, abandoned the book, the old formula, the scubacar, all fine, train scene, lacking the sense of humour, polite lewd jokes, something’s come up, somebody being trash, rubbish, the most recent James Bond movies are not funny, I’m interested in women style joke, humiliating James Bond, doesn’t work as an action formula, a feminist joke, James Bond represents the anti-feminist, on the right side of history, people don’t get humour anymore, the concept of humour, fear trumps humour, Ebu Gogo‘s goodreads reviews, anti-furry humor, making fun of furries, at the furries’ expense, endorsing the furry lifestyle, furry porn one star, rightfully feeling tricked, woefully misguided, a theory about vocab words and phrases, stole from Lovecraft, brain puppet, anti-furry propaganda, an axe to grind, something to say, misunderstood, misinterpreted, Aristotle’s Poetics, a comedy section, elaborate blackmail scheme, kicked him in the ribs, a flurry of kicks, a lot of puritanical people, nudity, sex, especially common in the united states, scared away from the cover, scare the wrong readers off, strategic placement, a version on LibriVox, some classic stuff, Lucian’s A True Story aka A True History, he’s a fucking furry, triggered by a word or an image, everything else falls away, going in your own head, an instinct, this smells like bullshit to me, are you just being an asshole, if you’re drawing from the text, throwing dirt on people’s heads, bad, too soon, rude, sounds like feelings, principles, strong ideas ground in something, getting facts wrong in your argument, designed to hurt somebody, Connor recorded an audiobook, Thule, coulda let it pass, you learn from pain, one little mistake, the critic who believed this was furry porn was correct, taking the wrong lesson is a fun way to go, instead of entering her, rummaging around the closet, dressed in a furry fox costume, furry gloves designed to looks like paws, kink shaming, exposing his hard cock, triggered, a white rabbit, put this one, wittle bunny wabbit, completely repulse, too x-rated for the show, they know how to pronounce them they don’t say them, a repression thing, you could elide it, six months later, that’s not my particular fetish, the 1 star reviews are more valuable, the wrong takes people have, the problem of everybody being a critic, open it wide, shilling puffery, paid in attention, working on projects that nobody cares about, a bigger version, slapped together for a student’s essay, get over your own ego it’s not that exciting, the Friend Island tweet, obvious context, an opportunity to jump in, too involved for twitter, explain copyright to me on twitter, finding out how to do it, literally trained, attracting somebody who would be interested, I like your content buy why are you so political, a firehose of what’s happening, some guy falling down, a generic example, people live in bubbles, Ray Nayler, columns, short stories, shat on for being out of touch, 87/88, after a certain point your best work is behind you, John Cowper Powys, I’m senile and I’m dying, out of the fiction business, quit before, Lawrence Block is still writing, typos, afterward, introduction, speaking of mental problems, Edward Wellen, Mind Slash Matter, a guy with dementia who is a script writer in Hollywood, apps and home computer, make him functional, a murder mystery, the detective doesn’t know what’s going, a brilliant idea for a book, a lot of the stories had to do with sound, the chemical warfare service during WWII, Mouthpiece, who shot you?, to mind map the character, an AI that comes alive Neuromancer-style, get revenge based on the murder, sparky as fuck, the early 1990s, trans-issues in the 1960s, Day Million by Frederik Pohl, Mindswap by Robert Sheckley, Douglas Adams, jaunting all over to different worlds, talking to an egg, the darkness, a little lighter to cleanse the palate, 8 minutes to read with your eyes,

On this day I want to tell you about, which will be about a thousand years from now, there were a boy, a girl and a love story.

Now although I haven’t said much so far, none of it is true. The boy was not what you and I would normally think of as a boy, because he was a hundred and eighty-seven years old. Nor was the girl a girl, for other reasons; and the love story did not entail that sublimation of the urge to rape and concurrent postponement of the instinct to submit which we at present understand in such matters. You won’t care much for this story if you don’t grasp these facts at once. If, however, you will make the effort, you’ll likely enough find it jam-packed, chockfull and tiptop-crammed with laughter, tears and poignant sentiment which may, or may not, be worth while. The reason the girl was not a girl was that she was a boy.

How angrily you recoil from the page! You say, who the hell wants to read about a pair of queers? Calm yourself. Here are no hot-breathing secrets of perversion for the coterie trade. In fact, if you were to see this girl, you would not guess that she was in any sense a boy. Breasts, two; vagina, one. Hips, Callipygean; face, hairless; supra-orbital lobes, non-existent. You would term her female at once, although it is true that you might wonder just what species she was a female of, being confused by the tail, the silky pelt or the gill slits behind each ear.

Blish has never been that good, The Abominable Earth Man, C.M. Kornbluth, with Playboy’s market in mind, that’s a sparky story, inoculation against the future, treating trans-people as people, dead no kids?, fair use clause, earlier in the year, Misha Burnett, editing an anthology is really hard, a learning curve, editor is a real job, the same mistake, saying no to my own book, servers on the Moon, servers in North Korea, the legal ability to say fuck you, a closed internet, commercial servers, get in good with Kim Jong Un, a movie industry, Saddam Hussein wrote fantasy novels, favourite deceased dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, maybe not so much with the plastic surgery, paid money to get married, highest standard of living to the lowest, an active propaganda campaign, occupation force from outside, not many North Korean refugees, what’s the difference bud?, refugee status, until your area is unflooded, fleeing the oppressive education system, causes kids to kill themselves, how bad it is there, this particular school district, next to Fort Lee, New Jersey, the George Washington Bridge, if it’s such a great country how come so many people are fleeing it, a lot of corruption, a state founded on corruption, also dynamic, the Irish, successful emigrant groups, forced out, what if that’s the goal, the English were interested in making the Irish successful, this is a class thing, an economics thing, Cuban refugees, that’s geography, there are airplanes, a push pull, Iraq refugees, Afghan refugees, mostly externalizes, we’re in the bomb making business, send them to Ukraine, cluster bombs, Central America, those places not being actively bombed, happy stories, we’re making a lot of refugees, here you’re told so much, the next generation of Americans, measuring engagement, creating engagement, tell me what you think about X Y and Z, when somebody is mad, Jesse is blackpilled, being realistic about what’s going on, things are escalating to war in the middle east, proxy war, heading towards a World War, six months from now please tell you your opinion, the Friedman thing, we’ll always know in six months, unfalsifiable, if Donald Trump became president that would be the end of democracy, democracy ended many years before that, corporations and the ultra-wealthy, what the founding fathers wanted, unfinished thought, good idea or great idea, this is falsifiable, 15 months from now, American troops on the ground in Israel, already troops on the ground in Ukraine and Israel, Americans have been killed, what number of casualties, there’s an election coming up, after the presidential election, lame duck, no matter who wins, American troops are going to war after the election, president Kamala has a plan, vice president Buttigieg has her back, when this podcast comes out in 7 months, laughing so hard, Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, why Nixon picked Ford, tried to cheat and got caught, he won 49 states, put a bug in there, he wanted telepathy, two term successful president, a revered president, EPA, bullshit things people like, congressional veto, Ronald Reagan, totally drunk all the time, if Nixon calls you drunk, bugged his own office, slurring his words, mumbling incoherently, losing his stuff, some earlier piece of literature, claiming Silverberg rewriting Ayn Rand, Anthem, The Fountainhead, robotic and inhuman, Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, proto-SF, characterization is not good, to convert people to his ideology, Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach, she is the kulaks, she experienced some negativity, DRMd, written for the British, the terrible Russian civil war, mutinies in British Columbia, pro-labour, what was going on is Russia was a good thing, one of the atrocities, homes were built, people have housing?, build too much, hows the homelessness situation, doesn’t exist, homelessness situation in Vancouver, Los Angeles, so unaffordable, a Kuwaiti doctor, the housing exists, the power of a communist command economy, mitigation measures, a vacant housing [tax], that’s their solution, expropriate the land and build housing for poor people, all over Saudi Arabia, build a big building, commercial rather than residential, that was plausible at the time, how implausible it is now, a parody of Leave It To Beaver, a little cynical in the 1950s, those cynical guys would write Twilight Zones, project an image of America, homemakers, putting women back in the home, housing and schooling, the cream has successfully been drawn away from the cream-makers, they marry at 27, her life hasn’t really started yet either, secure enough to have kids, what can you afford, transgender surgery is free, what you can’t get done for free is housing, a mental contagion going on, remember bulimia and anorexia, strategies for getting thing, condemned by society, get skinny, doing bad things to your teeth, frowned upon, a fashion, now transgenderism is a fashion but officially sanctioned by every right thinking institution supports it, probably bad, people who want limbs or body parts removed, something fucked up, not exactly correct, pro-anasites, no such thing as water weight, all getting the same contagion, Matt Walsh documentary, don’t be mean to gays transferred that to anybody about anything, pro-furry, it’s comedy, just a fetish, ridiculous, a weird fetish, wanting to have sex with animals, fetishizing furryism, be nice to people, if you don’t support transgender people you’re causing their deaths, people often regret tattoos, the tattoo situation, tattoos don’t prevent you from having children, false consciousness, relatively non-invasive, a biker or a sailor, beards go in and out of fashion, those ear gauge things, an extra hole in your head, semi-reversible, taking someone’s penis away or cutting off boobs is radical change, shouldn’t be promoted even if allowable, solve an specific economic problem, state taking control of it, the whole gay marriage thing, I like living in sin with this dude, part of the attraction, they think it’s taboo, successful breeding babies, happy funeral.

A Time Of Changes by Robert Silverberg

A Time Of Changes by Robert Silverberg

A Time Of Changes by Robert Silverberg

A Time Of Changes by Robert Silverberg

A Time Of Changes by Robert Silverberg

A Time Of Changes by Robert Silverberg

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The SFFaudio Podcast #779 – READALONG: The Colorado Kid by Stephen King

Jesse, Evan Lampe, Cora Buhlert, and Terence Blake talk about The Colorado Kid by Stephen King

Talked about on today’s show:
Terence without a story, no story here, short novel from Hard Case Crime, pretty slight, the narrator, this fake Maine accent, a little hard to understand things here and there, you get used to it, the name of the owner of the restaurant, some of the beginning, Jack Ruby vs. Jack Moody, JFK is in here, a theme, a throughline between the stealing of the money and the keeping of the article, it’s our story, it’s not for the people from away, including the US government, everybody does it, not nationalistic, localistic, a political point, what these islanders are like, such places, lonely and weird, late 1990s, drive up from Boston to the Canadian border, Acadia national park, a rental car, an ice cream parlour, a cinema, and a gas station, we don’t like strangers here, local teenagers were hanging out, staring at us, talking German, the two strange women, priceless looks, an old A-Team episode, when you read Stephen King, exaggerates this aspect of it, condensed, a love letter to Maine, Pet Semetary, Derry, know the town’s secrets, talking to each other and playing cards, in the Lovecraftian sense, you gotta remember it, the illustrated version came out in 2019, the disc break, when it first came out, a really big deal, used to sell Hard Case Crime, no. 13, the biggest living author up to that point, when Stephen King hit, drew attention, Cora retweeted an article, a paid advertisement, affiliate links, Holly, whatever that means, in terms of sales, Charles Ardai, Joyland, Crichton ones, crossover appeal, Later, a thematic sequel to The Body, on a publicity tour, host of a TV show, NPR, hardboiled, noir, crime encrusted filthy books, Ardai bent the rules, an introduction to the 2019 publication, The Birth And Rebirth Of The Colorado Kid by Charles Ardai, revive pulp fiction, gorgeous dames in torn negligee, grab you by the throat, someone lay bleeding in the gutter, about the same as a movie ticket, bookstore, drugstore, a quixotic plan, half a century earlier, there was drinking involved, David Dodge, Day Keene, Wade Miller, maybe there’s a well known writer out there, write us a blurb, gone on record, John D. MacDonald, Lawrence Block, Richard Stark, the great Donald E. Westlake, I understand completely, I tried to sound cool, it would contain a mystery, a boxing story, a western, it presents a hard case, the mystery of the unanswerable, the classical mystery tradition, Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, Flitcraft, vanished like a fist when you open your hand, if that’s not a noir story…, a pretty weirdest book, an experiment, a thought experiment, a philosophical parable, metafiction, trynna make some points, teased, this is a fantasy book, continue their legacy, if she doesn’t go on to the New York Times, I’d like this to be true, small towns have newspapers, county paper, the Tri-Cities, the last issue of the last newspaper went online, its owned by a corporation, required by law ads, not doing news anymore, before the internet killed off these smaller newspapers, The Province (newspaper), The Vancouver Sun, a corporation asking for donations, this is a fantasy world, he has a fantasy setup about how things will work, there’s no Walmart here, wherever Mooselick is now, King Soopers, things have changed, corporate control, corporate extraction, the earlier setting in the 80s, he’s almost a regional writer, he’s been to California, what percentage are outside of Maine?, he’s not a city guy either, Deer Isle, Maine, other island stories, Dolores Claibourne, a zombie apocalypse, strangers experience, the island on the show called Wings [Nantucket], you’re gonna make it Stephie, passing the torch, making a story out of nothing, the story is there’s no story here, to make it a story, story construction, a central mystery, one of the two interchangeable, more than a single gunner, that’s Stephen King for you, can’t even separate them from each other or King, the girl is pretty well done, a fantasy, she’s from Away, write about hayrides, we’re gonna last years, a little fastforward, the really old one, skip to 2023, she sold the paper to a corporation has kids and lives in Ohio, is Jesse being too cynical here?, school is in, not supposed to be solvable by the reader, Jean Paul Sartre’s Nausea, waves don’t form a story, a thing without a story, an event without a story, a philosophical education, resistant to paradigms you bring to bear, even if you fail all the time, all the stories published in the newspaper are lies, a beginning a middle and an end, the meta-level, an inversion of values, the insular mentality, closed minds, they don’t like strangers, big city people, Heidegger used to say, even if he was a Nazi, in closer contact with Being, the real people in touch with what life is, inculcating existential philosophy, independently constructed a theory of story, the school of problems, is this deliberate?, what Evan said, what makes a book memorable, this story about story, mysterious lights, a story about how stories are told, real life events are turned into a story (or not), the other cases, weird lights, UFOs, church picnic poisoning, dead boat, a likely story, some kind of weird crime that was never solved, an unsolved murder, 22 years, Picnic At Hanging Rock (1975), the art in the book, the last image of the story, Stephie looking out of the view, there needs to be a sexy lady, a newspaper folded over the rail, Vinceteague, Chincoteague, wild horses, the story goes, a Spanish shipwreck, annual capture of the herd, sold to rich people, Cora’s experience, intruding on their local haunts, a defensive look, you’re a tourist, curiosity, you’ve just walked into their living room, boxes full of board games, a community center, we can’t blame them for the weird feelings, take your money and monetize, a generous tip, need two old guys who know the score, like they see it go round like it’s in a dryer, he’s gonna give em a book, bringing a book to our lowly new publication, Lawrence Block is a really great writer, nobody cares, everybody knows the name, everybody can act like him, that’s the fantasy, supporting local causes all over Maine, patriotism on a local level, Walter Gibson, he didn’t move away, he’s made it a virtue too, this is how one ought to be, 31,000 people, a Lovecraft idea, you can write from anywhere, I don’t fit in New York, August Derleth, those regional things your writing about Wisconsin, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Cross Plains, [City Of The Singing Flame], set on a hike, it’s for you, you’re local now, that’s the story, why didn’t they give him a story, they just take his money, right Evan?, I guess, it’s a response to the idea that stories must progress to a point, to critics, why is that there?, why is IT 1,000 pages long, meditating on that, letting the story breathe and be what it is, that’s the change, bring everyone to the parlour, why they kept it secret, Nero Wolfe isn’t going to show up, Jesse’s week theory: it was suicide, why would he do it in Maine?, the geographical solution, people running away, the physical limit of the border of the country, maybe his wallet was stolen, just like the food out of his hand, insure you choke to death and have a brain hemorrhage, old guy detectives, the money gets to the right hands, Stephen King likes moms, trying to help moms out, a less important gender for child raising, like an old gay couple, help out as best they can, published in all the papers in Colorado, desperate old men all over the United States, Hancock Lumber, a pay paper?, free weekly, no longer, two on Sunday, newspapers called out, New York Times, Boston Globe, Bangor Daily News, if done in realtime, restaurant to the seaside newspaper department, giant printing machine, go get a muffin, a pee, some coke, pee break, retro flashback to the future, he died six months later, obituary for the really old guy, 1915-2005?, she’s still there, smelling the seaweed and the fish, front page obituary, small town newspapers, editorial content, usually on the front page, local journalists running around, small arts events, festivals, local sport, shooting competition, report about Hugo winners, desperate for content, dine out on your story, a young woman, a man in his forties, the Russian coin, the red herring, a Russian sleeper agent, The Americans, told to come to Maine, a commercial flight, a very good theory, why do you carry evidence you’re a Russian around?, 10 ruble coins, a plot point or not, a sleeper agent from an alternate earth, he’s from another dimension, supernatural elements, he can’t help it, why not?, the lights, the author said it was extraterrestrials, Rendezvous With Rama sequels, Mary Celeste, the Doctor Who version: The Horror At Fang Rock, aliens landed in the ocean, Telefon (1977), the Soviet Union objected to the movie, the premise is that there’s been a purge going on in Soviet Russia, hardliners, trying to start WWIII, a detente, a Robert Frost poem, fugue state, suicide mission, Charles Bronson is a KGB agent with a perfect memory, when they die, this guy died in 1922, these are fake people, the birth certificate of a dead kid, the suicide theory, how to fit all the pieces together, the gun in the hand pointing at the head, assassinated, a calling card, maybe he found it on the beach, perfectly constructed, because it’s a fiction story, some newspaper stories are completely fiction anyway, without having the tweet thread, a bad idea of what actually happened, Sherlock Holmes, getting the quotes wrong, a well constructed meta-story, characterization is immaculate, backstories of various people, the widow eating her meal and looking great, this island and its people, a mystery that can’t be solved, no obvious solution, the church picnic, The Shining, Stephen King’s explanation, telepathic powers, ghosts come to life, the story is terrific, his way of solving, psychic powers, so good at telling the story, a problem of madness, a psychic command to go to Maine, much more elaborate, a central character who ends up dead, goes to quite a length to justify a death to alleviate a problem, drinking himself, fucking around with his boss, hurting his kid, trying to do right, go live with the magical blackman in Florida, Murder She Wrote, Jessica Fletcher, Cabot Cove at Universal Studios, giving school, the coziness of the town, the judge, another graduate student, a CSI guy, local time colour, CSI being a good show, grounding it in the period of time, peak of its popularity, so many spinoffs, it’s realistic, super unrealistic, weird tiny clue, the reality is Mark Furman plants the glove at OJ’s house, the theory of the case, fuck it he’s guilty, told not to look in the bag, the underlying theme: it’s okay to cheat, that’s just a Stephen King move, desperately wants to be Stephen King, a descent attempt, one aspect, kids, boyscouts, body horror, The Troop, Dreamcatcher, a central ideology, lensing all his writing through, this is what I believe, the NPR series: This I Believe, Heinlein’s, we all cheat a little bit, it’s good to like our locals, the definitive Terence thing, when you’re an old many running a newspaper in Nice, fuck off and sell your paper, a smaller town, an island off the coast of Spain, Glory Road, nude island off the coast of France, nude island, the whole island is news, Île du Levant, naturist resort, gonna have to get into nudism, inside on an offset typewriter, wear big hats, prove that you’re not wearing a wire, East German nudism, lingering nudism, Wreck Beach, sunbathing garden, close to exhausting this very slim book, 3.5 hours, padded out reprint, 2005 afterword not in the audiobook, a real case of a woman in Maine who died and was never identified, unsolved and unsolvable, the phenomenon, people hate mysteries, the reason the police are there to solve crime, a collective will, find somebody to blame, who the victim is, teenage drug dealers, not a story, cold cases, years after, calls after all these years, crimes no one really cares about, some kind of theory, one of the big fictions, it’s the drug cartel, they’re so horrible, court cases, drug dealers are so bloody stupid, they’re amateurs, that’s not their business, unsolved without a story, two boys [Sebastian Burns and Atif Rafay], murder, awaiting extradition, France off the coast, upper peninsula of Michigan, the Point Roberts anomaly, [turns out Jesse is conflating two cases from the same period, the Sebastian Burns Atif Rafay case and Frederick Gilliland (who was tricked into Point Roberts), Jack The Ripper, still trying to solve, supernatural solutions, time travel, space alien from Star Trek, 150 year old, the Zodiac Killer, annoying people, the police were not fully corrupted, lazy bastards, pressuring people into confessing, Homicide: Life On The Streets, a bunch of people to kidnap the governor of Michigan, money, retarded, lonely, not reporting on stuff, unsolved cases in Germany, equivalent of a state governor, Switzerland, a famous hotel where other people have died, a famous press photograph, late 1980s, dressed in the bathtub, someone important, Mossad, the Iranians, a shitty terrible person, the official verdict was suicide, Seth Rich murder, no story here, perpetrator unknown, no one would do that, Salvador Dali would have killed himself like that, constantly screaming, this is of course locked, July 10, 2016, 4:20 am, a victim of attempted robbery, with lots of citations, leaked DNC emails in 2016, hacking the email accounts, quotation marks around that, Hillary Clinton had broken the rules, Donna Brazile, thumb drive, how fast can u download?, no good evidence, it’s always Russia, Mossad is pretty fucking active, if you talk about Seth Rich on youtube, we’re nit going to have this be a story, shot in the back, some political reason, die on a beach, the thing that’s being addressed here, making a connection between or fear of random seeming deaths and how being unsettled by death is, The Body, the point of that story, hit by a train, dead crow on the sidewalk, who did this?!, it only matters when it’s people, maybe it died of old age, I don’t need a story to make me feel better about it, hit by a car, our response to the fear of death, what he’s going for, the the dead kid on the beach is Stephen King, he’s 42, hit by a van, 1999, mentioned at the end of the audiobook, a little biography, making a story out of the story, now I feel satisfied, satisfied there was no explanation, not knowing the others, always broken up, bathroom or muffin, we can’t experience it as a framed story, jump back in time, circle back to the table, a TV show, Haven, an FBI agent, relationships, she has a relationship in this book, somewhere in Ohio, leaning up against a garbage can, a little essay by Brian Aldiss, what sticks in your memory from science fiction stories, inspire you later, the example of a mad robot on the Moon firing into the void, not a powerful enough image, he’s a blank slate, emotion, empathy, whatever, before they knew the story from the widow, in 20 years, a vague impression, sounds familiar, short, bought the book at an airport, these old guys, a young woman, sitting on the beach looking out at sea, the new cover has that, looking at the corpse, a girl with the tape recorder, Glen Orbik, nothing to do with the book, really, Holly, simply written, for the Hollywood Reporter, a familiar King protagonist, September 9, 2023, Stephen Colbert, latest book, quickly shot to number one, 2014’s Mr. Mercedes, If It Bleeds, Finders Keepers, $30, just $19 right now, on audiobook, narrated by King, The Gunslinger, online for free!, lit window, silhouetted windows, by today’s standards, an improvement over that, in the 1990s, 80s are great, Scribener’s reissuing, The Institute, Rolling Stone, I like her so much, go on with, what she was up to, supposed to be a walk on character, stole my heart, the supernatural realm, dealing with covid, covid-denier mom, eventually succumbing to the disease, wear a mask, get your vaccination that doesn’t work, mom, a time capsule, devour, emdash, all the familiar trappings, covid books, I’m not going to read that, unimaginably deprived, the book’s description, summon all her formidable, professors, the shopping section, to bookmark it, crime fiction roundup, I’m reading a Stephen King now, of course he’s up to this, very well written, King likes Gibney, 15 hours, Evan is looking forward to it, Fairy Tale was illustrated throughout, Gabriel Ba, yeah, yelling at Evan, how can you stand this shitlib?!, build up a whole narrative, fully embrace how awesome, as a thinker, his essays, his fiction writing, not extraordinary, Lester Del Rey hits the buttons, build a robot lady in their basement, what happens if humans uplift dogs and monkeys, character constructor, limited ideas, stepping on his dick, the lone gunman theory, he’s a good boy, he has to, the sex scenes for Cora, Vaush is gonna misinterpret, free publicity by denouncing it, why does Cora read The Guardian so much?, triggered, the news is so fuckin shitty, translate them, nothing Jesse needs to know about, a few episodes, didn’t need to think about it at all, license Stephen King something, like Foundation, getting sued by King, how many ongoing TV series, Castle Rock, the good one, not the quality, the sheer number, Netflix tv shows and Netflix movies never have sex scenes, foreign language, an American company, Jessica Jones had sex scenes, boobs?, Oppenheimer, HBO, Cinemax, in the 1990s, slightly less than pornography, sex in them just to have sex in it, titillation while watching a murder mystery, random sex scenes rammed in, Outlander, Foundation sex scene, dirty limericks, well shot, unAsimovian, how would Asimov take it?, Janet Asimov, Terminus is destroyed, ruined it for her, a symbol of the whole series, we’re destroying Asimov, taking Asimov back from Asimov, the format, interesting idea, you don’t have to watch it, Cora has made herself into a fan writer of this sort of shit, Terence is a glutton, Terence hates himself, Wheel Of Time is better, lowest common denominator, bad crime dramas, some SFF stuff, Star Trek, The X-Files, 30th anniversary, nothing to watch, interestingly quaint, corrupt but not in the way it really is, aliens, skeptical of the government, the official policy is aliens exist now, when are you gonna release the videos, space force, Time For My Stories (Chapo Trap House), peak of the American Empire, anxiety of decline, The Sopranos, plagued, watch old movies, watch Mission: Impossible original TV series, CIA competence niceness, overthrow their elections, not actual agents, very good competent, actor, strongman, electronics experts, model, patriotism, out to help people, works, well made, the music, the editing, cliffhanger stuff, they don’t get what Mission Impossible is, Miracle Mile (1988), Trombone nerd, WWIII, Los Angeles, Tangerine Dream cinematic universe, westerns, Jesse gives Terence too much homework, The Last Run (1971), car chase, working class detective, weird today, still really good, dutch without subtitles, Tangerine Dream, striking, online somewhere, William Friedkin died, in with the news, The Exorcist (1973), Sorcerer (1977), The Wages Of Fear (1953), bluesky invite, Sopranos memes, no use for it yet, good meme, 1977, releasing his movie against Star Wars, we’re gonna wipe the floor with that shit, I was still right, The Mandalorian, trapped in South America, stuck in the jungle with no money, the dynamite has gone by, very very slowly, fuckin Amazing, almost wordless, the name of the truck, don’t the French love Friedkin?, a French film star, a huge hit in Cannes?, be your boyfriend from highschool, jungle vs. desert, very international, Steve McQueen, Roy Scheider Ally McGraw, Dominican Republic, popular holiday destination, not very American at all, Austrian actor, really really good, science fiction, fantasy, not a wink of fantasy, we’re done, put the book in the mail, Ill Met In Lankhmar, Evan is going to send the audio, in the original French, Arabic through Greek, own private language, what we all do, whatever language we are tweeting about, good discussion.

The Colorado Kid - ILLUSTRATED by Glen Orbik

The Colorado Kid by Stephen King

The Colorado Kid - ILLUSTRATED

The Colorado Kid - ILLUSTRATED edition

The Colorado Kid - ILLUSTRATED

The Colorado Kid - ILLUSTRATED

The Colorado Kid - ILLUSTRATED

The Colorado Kid - ILLUSTRATED

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

Reading, Short And Deep #422 – Frozen Stiff by Lawrence Block

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #422

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Frozen Stiff by Lawrence Block

Here’s a link to a |PDF|.

Frozen Stiff was first published in Manhunt, June 1962.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #761 – READALONG: Downward To The Earth by Robert Silverberg

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #761 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Manfred Weichsel talk about Downward To The Earth by Robert Silverberg

Talked about on today’s show:
downward dog, the sad story, a biblical quote, Nightwings, lots of short stories, 200 short stories?, sensing a pattern, The Book Of Skulls, Up The Line, Thorns, Dying Inside, similar tones, 1970, 1972, serialy in Galaxy, awesomely similar, Sundance, maybe having a mental breakdown, Tom Tworibbons, first nations native, setup the colonization, exterminating a possibly sentient pest, Colonel Kurtz, favourite writers, Lovecraft has Poe and Dunsany, Silverberg’s is Joseph Conrad, The Secret Sharer, Conrad is not really sciencefictional, rather elderly, a whole basement full, the comic book, its very French, one of the guys looks like Silverberg, aware of the adaptation, why did they make me that guy, Philippe Thirault and Laura Zuccheri, same bear same hair same face, messed around with the plot, so internal, such a novel novel, as opposed to Harry Potter, in his head, try to make a Dying Inside movie, cloud forests, getting into his racist head, voice over narration, look at the original Dune movie, that’s the book, the Villeneuve, why Jessica has to cry all the time, a superwoman who must cry in every scene, being upset all the time, more evil or less ready for their rebirth?, a different part of Gunderman, dialogs struggling with his internal self, the tour guy dude, Kurtz, externalize all of the that, cut them down and synthesize them into the basic idea, decide what each character represented, Avatar 2, a 3 hour movie, my unconscious is smarter than I am, a one hour on a similar theme, The Crunch, a tv movie by Nigel Kneale, most of the good stuff out of the UK is just Nigel Kneale, former island nation colony, takes place in realtime, natural resources, we’re all friends now aren’t we?, now pay us back what you stole from us, kinda like science fiction, resentment, African or North American or South American or island colonies, The Mouse That Roared (1959), drops you into it, similar to what we have in this book, the colonization of a planet, back for more, they thing that they wanted to get: unobtainium, a piss take, Cameron was a science fiction reader, moving off Earth, financing the whole trip, capitalists from Earth, makes you immortal, killing all these sentient whales, the relationships between the na’vi and the whales, the two alien species we have in this book, to see that pattern, interconnected, they literally link together, commune with each other, let’s do colonialism, let’s pull back from colonialism, Stephen Lang, he’s a Colonel Kurtz, twisted and evil, seeing the ending coming, foreshadowed from the beginning, quiet about things they shouldn’t be quiet about, meat-eater vs. omnivore, peaceful aliens, peaceful vs. pacifist, our main elephant we’re riding, him, permission from the human to kill the human, taking it as an order, whales are not allowed to fight, one of the whale characters, bad whale, excluded from the group, being violent to another sentient being, we warhawks here on earth, yeah getem!, power armour, a meditation on African colonialism, the Humanoids comic book company, I went to Kenya in 1968, I’d always liked Conrad, his mode at this time, he’s really into this stuff, Philip K. Dick drug-trippy, transcendence, interior life, immortality, relationships gone bad, Majipoor, a big series, strange dream and psychedelic stuff, wandering, getting into adventures, less interior, more Vancian, a new wave book?, painfully new wave, I like this book, what new wave proves, complaining about navel gazing, navel gazing is good, meditative, Sundance blew Jesse out of the water, alien baby factor, disturbing, they left that out, why?, amped up the sexuality and the nakedness, a French move, what scenes parallel what scenes, that snake pumping station, the three witches?, maybe, what they’re doing is horrible but we don’t know why, giving hallucinogens to horses, that’s the horror, cultural appropriation, species appropriation, terrible behavior, a native secret ceremony, how do these taboos develop, no photography, connected to the people, the taboo is there in part because we don’t have the physical transformation, a healing ceremony, an activity done by people who know what they’re doing it, solve some community problems, not scientifically proven, backlashes with the insects, everybody’s friends, some of the alien lifeforms are not you friends, eaten by some moss, you can commune with everything with your pony-tail, your horse, your sky-horse, your whale friend, cougar behind that tree, the bear will not meditate with you, the coyote will take your kid, the quasi-cultural appropriation, the tounge thing from Maori, the tree people bear their teeth and hiss, we’re all going on a spiritual journey, we can’t talk about it, respect our cultural practices, more Silverberg than Conrad, an initiation into the shadow side of things, Marlowe, sitting on a boat waiting for the tide to change, experiences in the Congo, a framed device, I went up the river, heard about this Kurtz guy, doing genocide, the slaughter of the elephants vs. the cutting off of hands, this book can’t exist without Conrad’s book, after colonialism, Kurtz is going back for forgiveness, it’s its own story, tourism as some element of every Silverberg, he’s writing what he knows, immortality but not in a way anyone would want, regrows limbs and heals damage, the rebirth ceremony, makes your sins go away or turns you into a puddle, on a symbolic level, the original X-Men movie, Magneto can turn people into mutants, forcibly mutantized, interior nature and interior sin, reflecting the inner life, none of the robots get to have a rebirth ceremony, patient AI, wall decoration, not a threat, the physical animals, fucking around the meaning in the comic, more Avatar earth mother, the planet is alive, the mother of souls tree, waking up the life of the planet, do the revolution, the plateau where transformation happens, a poor substitute for rebirth, go downward like beasts, gaining psychic powers, starchild in 2001, he becomes space Jesus, Paradise Lost by John Milton, the better the angel the more he can fall, Ecclesiastes, maybe animals and humans are or aren’t the same, if we’re special and they’re not, creatures without souls, munching the weeds, they are beasts, their leaden spirits go downward, sapient spirits go upward to the mists, the boom boom boom, he thought it was drums, they don’t have hands, a very pretty comic, huge hardcover, Paul should’ve loved that, not recognizing what a map, communicate with my dog, the frisbee section, the knowledge game, what a map means, not recognizing a picture, visual representation of an object, so many questions, what he’s doing in this books, spent some time, starts off the main character as a racist, that was me in the past, the other elephant guys are telling him, a new wave thing, engagement with the ideas, the sweat lodge, they need to, a cultural practice, we got to get your head on straight, a dance ceremony as medicine, dance therapy, bandages and drugs, a real solid engagement with non-western medicine, Badge Of Infamy is a medicine book, the baccy weed is gonna solve all our problems, the drug has actual effects, as used as a medicine, get Tolkien smoking pipes, changes your brain state, we’re not using it properly, the wafer on my tongue, transubstantiation, a dream state, I’m going to break into the rectory and get me some crackers and wine, special penance ceremony, kill things, pretty brutal, go down to earth temporarily, a healing ceremony to prep for transcendence, I am the emissary, I am the light of the world, love one another, he’s space Jesus, milking snakes, a funny phallic scenes, what stays in Vegas, masturbation contests, help all the other humans go through rebirth, galactic faith, an ecstatic state, this is that thing, impose the elephant people’s stuff on the humans, already in a state of grace, The Word For World Is Forest by UKL, Vietnam War, a pugnacious book, in the afterword of the colonization, a quiver full of kids, his blue children, an adopted white (human) kid, the sky people are back, Apocalypse Now (1979), the other way to go, after, goddamn those horrible fat cow people, maybe I’m not right, the same debates, relinquishment, 20 years in Afghanistan, they’ll just not let girls get educated, Eye Of The Monster by Andre Norton, playing a conservative author, a more nuanced view, a more liberal view, in science fiction in general, healing vs. drug abuse, fried up on drugs, A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick, psilocybin, body horror, a liberation for our disabled main protagonist, a joy, a different attitude towards the concept, very palatable, wanna live in Avatar, a fantasy, living in a VR meta, his brain transfer, thinking you can be immortal, downloading your memories, that’s not how it works, Think Like A Dinosaur by James Patrick Kelly, way more engaged with a reality, puddle Kurtz, a thing on the wall feeding you black liquid, much more Alien (1979), only if they have to pee, people are alienated from their own bodies right now, they’re not comfortable in their own skin, the mind-body connection, ceremony connecting, body and mind and spirit, separate vs. connected, Silverberg vs. Cameron, where the horror is, the inside manifesting itself physically, a very solid book, grandmaster award, what is his standout work?, Heinlein, Philip K. Dick, short stories, little things that he’s done, a huge long career, is there any such thing for Silverberg, Born With The Dead, pretends his dead, why they don’t care anymore, sounds great, due to Audible and their evilness, brilliant, he can be amazing, Up The Line, Thorns, a picaresque comic novel, time tourism, a slacker flunky, a time courier, a tour guide for time travelers, have sex with their ancestors and drink a lot, causing a serious paradox, motifs, helix parlours, future drugs, weird connections, light/fun read, also light, Project Pendulum, a lot of fun, futuristic humans, bamboozle them, the quintessential Silverberg: Nightwings, graphic novel, the mouth, Roman Holiday (1953), some audiobook narrator, The Asteroid Stealers, Vampires From Outer Space, Thorns, really good, really dark, really depressing, a psychic vampire, reality tv shows, what authors do too, the short story guy, pretentious, new wave = pretentious, Avatar is just dumb, went on the journey, compared to Andre Norton…, the lack of a map is a feature not a bug, the dreamlike nature of this book, he gets lost, the elephant guys, a theory about the alien’s name, Borgazor, the most beautiful words in the English language: cellar door, that Anglo Saxon, Celtic, less Germanic, a logic to the language to the nameing of the things, an Elf tribe in Tolkien, old guy traveling a landscape of his youthful adventures, This Immortal, Call Me Conrad, [Damnation Alley], now they’re all old, rekindle alliances or hostilities, you see this in so many authors, back to the scene of old battles, the plot of a lot of new wave fiction, just because Jonathan’s old and has had battles, a new new wave writer, attracted to things and not do them themselves, I love Star Wars…, that’s sad, probably never gonna write a westerns, I can like westerns and not make westerns, we can enjoy a whole lot, late 1960s early 1970s, playing on the old pulp stories, less naive and more cynical, relitigate, redefine, Humanoids questions, how did you get into comics, Planet Comics during WWII, how did you get into paperbacks, then I found science fiction fandom, that was a long time ago, since 1969 to now, he thought he was getting old then, I’m an old man now I’m fifty, its taking this time, he exists and he loves the internet, gives the occasional speech he gets yelled at about, Heavy Metal, come out of retirement, famous fantasy novel, Lord Valentine’s Castle, I have more to say, keeping up with all the new books, 90s collabs, regular editorial, had to apologize for offending somebody, the big three magazines, out of retirement so many times, 2015/2016, Lawrence Block has retired several times, here’s an old book I wrote, a habit that’s built in, people like it still, I got this need to write it, it makes me feel something, wasn’t Marion Zimmer Bradley a grandmaster?, so many movies, Isaac Asimov, fixture on late night television, what do you think about speculative fiction, a rational and sand and excellent writer, I never heard of that, hundreds of works, his reputation, series are generally popular, what’s crazy about Silverberg, manic depressive thing, a ton of novels, fallow seasons, he turned down a nomination, compete with one another, Tower Of Glass, he was writing that many books, pretty darned good, Hawksbill Station, very prolific, A Time Of Changes, a J.G. Ballard vibe?, the guy who died of crystal infection, in reflection, the stuck couple, the brooding pit, a Drowned World sort of horror, feels less new wave?, Terence loved all of it, not a very visual person, descriptive passages are less interesting, the audiobook voice, Bronson Pinchot, bad experiences, a pleasure to read, Sailing To Byzantium, Grover Gardner, like and dislike, forced to tone down the performance, they only have gestures, by looking at their eyebrows, sardonic or whatever, a performance that can overwhelm a book, reading Tim Powers, the other kind of narrator, a straight narrator, getting the pauses perfectly, better audiobook taste, from the sitcom, The Bronson Pinchot Project, a weird hobby, 1985, Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein, prepare your racists selves, language changed for the book publication (vs. the serialization), City Of Singing Flame by Clark Ashton Smith, Logan’s Run by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, two dudes, Shakespeare’s Planet by Clifford D. Simak, Invitation To The Game, The Charwoman’s Shadow by Lord Dunsany, A Midsummer’s Tempest by Poul Anderson, the Canadian less shitty Andre Norton, Michael Crichton, Stephen King, Peter Straub, Progeny by Philip K. Dick, A Meeting With Medusa, just a blah book, his pre-post war stuff, 6 hours, do you have a Heinlein problem, sir?, as one should, you’re angry with the man, Farnham’s Freehold, most people are afraid, a special ranting booth, oh my god, this is getting creaky, The Number Of The Beast, the original illustrated version, next Heinlein, everybody wants to be on Starship Troopers, let’s do all the racist ones, winnow the podcast, a completely different interpretation, A Voyage To Sfanomoë, how he got his vocab, he read the dictionary, completely self-taught, one week in the United States, Boy Genius!, George Sterling, no you cannot do that!, his mentor guy, okay father figure, Lovecraft became his Sterling, revering, the opposite of August Derleth, Robert E. Howard, a tie, his terrificness, his ideas are weaker, beauty, Charles Baudelaire is a freak, Les Fleurs Du Mal, Terence put his hand in the mouth and is still two handed, put something in there, we need to talk about your audio quality, plug in some headphones, earbuds are not comfortable for two hours, more active noise cancellation, iPhone is pretty darned good.

Humanoids - Downward To The Earth

Humanoids - Downward To The Earth

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

Reading, Short And Deep #394 – Hard Sell by Lawrence Block

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #394

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Hard Sell by Lawrence Block

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.

Hard Sell was published in Ed McBain’s Mystery Book, No. 1, 1960 (ghost written for Craig Rice).

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #748 – READALONG: Passport To Peril by Lawrence Block

The SFFaudio Podcast
Jesse, Maissa Bessada, and Will Emmons talk about Passport To Peril by Lawrence Block

Talked about on today’s show:
Anne Campbell Clark, 1967, internal stuff, guess what year this photo was taken, asking about JFK like he was still alive, Teddy Kennedy, the Irish connection, proud of him being president, very few people have read this, a book worthy of reading, noped out, pretty horrific, too sunk into it, a cocoon of singing and countryside, a lovely little book, not going anywhere and not upset about it, almost plotless, not all books need to have plots, spending time with Hobbits in Hobbiton, an old lady who likes to bicycle, red herrings, Will’s first Lawrence Block, the trip to the countryside, all of the lovely singing, I never shall marry as long as I live, really liked this book, who is the audience, Helen MacInnes readers, neither had Lawrence Block, spies with a little romance, romance with a little bit of spies, how smooth did this go down, easy drinking all the way through, it was a formula, the bad guy came around, there he is, why does that priest want her passport, maybe I’ve misjudged him, he’s back, women protagonists, usually a male, page by page, line by line, a little bit much, intoxicated, a 24 year old in 1967, the height of the sexual revolution, chaste for a folk-singer, they get snug and snuggle, she hides her nudity, not so folksy as one might imagine in real life, the scene with the IRA, pastiche-ish, that part never happened when Lawrence Block went to Ireland, a massive amount of violence, let’s go have a party, one of them gets shot and they keep having a party, movie-like, none of the dialogue felt clunky, what kind of folk-singing, Airplane!, lady with a guitar, inspirational songs vs. historical events, WWII essay, WWI, WWI’s influence on Ireland, the Irish Rising, home-rule in 1922, according to Star Trek [The Next Generation] and Mr. Data they’re going to reunite next year, all of us under the British rule, the overlords in Egypt, real bastards, it doesn’t translate across generations as well, gearing up, the ultimate McGuffin, because of the title, back to the passport, easy listening, P.J. Morgan, a lot of singing, male voices too, accents, a really good job, if I was P.J. Morgan and I had finished this book I would be superhappy with myself, a recipe, 191 pages, 5 hours 38 minutes, a short novel, a young lady who goes on a trip, chased across the countryside, a monster, a hero, delivering what women want, nice and smooth, the historical research, enthusiastic about Irish history, great fun, a double checkmark, creepy and scary quite late, when’s it gonna turn, grusome, burned to death, legs blown off, shoots somebody’s brains out, starts with a horrible murder, really violent, a nice guy from Philadelphia to leg cling to, a nice old lady who gets strangled off screen, the German guy with a family, what happened to the kids?, the casting room, spy training school, the woman with the red hair, in the ring?, a nice Londoner, leaving cards together, he’s playing a great great game, I need to tip my hand, when Ellen gets into the car with the priest, you’re just ahead of her, ahead of Jesse, I wish I knew my Irish history better, a really good promoter of stuff on his blog, the afterword, the blog post about Passport To Peril

In 1966 I was living at 16 Stratford Place, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. I’d spent a year in Wisconsin as an editor in the coin supply division of Western Printing, and just when it looked as though I might have a future in the corporate world, I realized it was the last thing I wanted. I’d been writing books all along, and I moved east and resumed writing full-time.

My agent, Henry Morrison, came to me with an assignment. Lancer Books, for whom I’d written a few books during Larry T. Shaw’s editorship, wanted to publish a romantic-espionage thriller in the tradition of Helen MacInnes. I hadn’t read anything by Ms. MacInnes, though I knew the byline; her books were published in hardcover, and frequently wound up on bestseller lists. Mine would be published as a paperback original, and bestseller status would be not even a fleeting dream.

I don’t know if I actually read any of the books which were to be my model. I probably skimmed a couple. I knew what was required—a clean sweet likable American girl as the heroine, a reasonably exotic foreign locale, and a couple of people who were not what they appeared to be, including an evident villain who turned out to be the unlikely hero and love interest, and a dashingly attractive good guy who turned out to be an absolute rotter.

I could do that.

And I knew just where to set it. Ireland. Where else?

I’d actually been to Ireland, which gave it a leg up on the rest of the world. In the fall of 1964, a few months after the move to Racine, my wife and I flew to Limerick and spent the better part of two weeks driving around Ireland. We had a day in Edinburgh and a few days in England, but Ireland got the bulk of our business.

Aside from brief forays into Canada and Mexico, this was my first time out of the States, and if it felt like an adventure, it felt even more like a homecoming. It’s clear to me that I spent at least one past life in Ireland. Among my earliest memories are ones of listening to Irish songs on the radio. (There was a girl who sang “Toora-loora-loora” on a local amateur show, and I’m pleased to report that she was the winner three weeks running.) I had a set of the Book of Knowledge, and from it I learned all the lyrics to Wearin’ o’ the Green.

When I had begun selling short fiction and was casting about for a book to write, I decided a novel of the Irish rebellion and civil war might be a good choice. But what did I know about it? I amassed an extensive library of English and Irish history, and read a surprising amount of it. And, around the time that my interest in numismatics was steering me toward the job in Wisconsin, I began collecting Irish coins and tokens and medals.
No question, then. I’d set the book in Ireland.

Ever since the trip, I’d been picking up records of Irish folk music. The Clancy Brothers, of course, but also a slew of Folkways albums on which various singers, some more gifted than others, collected songs of the 1798 Rising and other blighted periods in the land’s sad history. As G.K. Chesterton wrote:

For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry,
And all their songs are sad.

Well, why not make my heroine a folksinger? Why not send her to Ireland to collect songs? There, of course, she could meet the wolf in sheep’s clothing, and the sheep in wolf’s clothing, and things would look decidedly dark for a while, but eventually the sun would burst through. I mean, it would have to, sooner or later. As far as we could make out, it was always either raining or about to rain in Ireland, but maybe I could cheat and have a little sunshine toward the end.

I went to New York to write the book. Don Westlake had sublet a studio apartment on West 24th Street in Chelsea; he’d lived there briefly, during a marital rough spot, and kept it as a sometimes office until the lease was up. I moved in, and brought home Passport to Peril ten days later. I don’t know if the title was mine, though I rather think it was. I know the pen name was mine, and I know that forty-five years later nobody else on earth knew it.

Henry knew back then, but I’m sure he’s long since forgotten. My first wife would have known, but I don’t think she ever read the book, and would be surprised if she recalls anything about it. Irwin Stein at Lancer would have known, but would have had no reason to remember. Among the book-collecting fraternity, no one had a clue. This book, and Fidel Castro Assassinated!, are the two works of mine that somehow escaped detection. The latter, written under the name Lee Duncan, was recently reprinted as Killing Castro by Hard Case Crime, and has since become available as an OpenRoad eBook. Passport to Peril now makes its first post-Lancer appearance as an e-book, and I can only hope you’ve enjoyed it.

I read it myself recently to ready it for publication, and I was surprised to find that I liked it. Remember what Yeats wrote?

Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave. . .

True too of the Ireland of the 1960s. It was a curious pleasure to revisit the time and place, if in my own work.

the exact same thing, good at remembering how things happened in the 60s, very Lawrence Blocky, passionate about foreign revolutions, a CIA plot to kill Castro, a cheque to the farmer with the dead sheep, what ever revolution is happning in that country, the Evan Tanner series, comedic and silly, almost perfect for what its doing, broader, like James Bond, cartoonish, fun but silly, a Korean war veteran, shrapnel in his head gives him a superpower, The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep, why readers would like a book like this, I become a supergenius, whatever republic that wants freedom from colonialism, participating in their revolutions, joke book, The Canceled Czech, light and fluffy, Tanner On Ice, literally frozen, a participant in the ideas the book he is producing, numismatics, a book on racewalking, walk faster than other people, the Hit Man/Hit List series, cozy, there’s a guy in Mexico who needs to be shot, I like Mexico, observations in a restaurant, really into stamp collecting, an action scene, whatever subject he turns his attention to becomes a very very readable book, can you write a book about assassinating Castro?, technically required to do this, Will material?, not-enough enthusiasm, emphasis and underlining and exclamation marks, Classic Crime Library number 15, how quiet it has been resting, Lawrence Block took control of his publishing, he’s the one, making you buy his stuff, around an participating in his estate, incredible, he’s so good, Westlake through Block, turns out its a real book, Westlake’s highs are higher but Block’s more consistent, a lady on vacation, why that guy slipped, an excuse to have her in peril, an excuse to have a lady chased by spies, maybe she will marry, he was trying to be caught, no one knew, there’s a tip off, out of genre for most of the people who read Lawrence Block, she goes to a movie, something drums, “A Sound Of Distant Drums”, a calling card, or a signature, somebody coming out of a movie theater, that’s cool, his Burglar series, The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart, The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian, topic books, exploring some little niche, standup comedians bits they connect together, researching and polishing ideas, Burglars Can’t Be Choosers, the girlfriend is the murderer, settles into a formula, really really fun, passes the time, go have a sandwich, oh yeah one of these, that paperback book industry is where he really lives, take a paperback and enjoy the weekend, a song saved her life, why I like folksinging now, Kumbaya, historical information, how to be, in America 2, here 12, makes you want to drink stout, listen to folk music, the festival circuit, the premise of this book, the state department in real life is evil, spread American culture, money spent on evil not on good, cultural activities, Eastern block, throw money at a problem, Lawrence Block needed to have an excuse, her family’s all killed off, one and done, they’re happy and their Irish now, both green, 2 cigarettes, more cigarettes, they stopped to buy more cigarettes, the new taste, so much smoking, they don’t need food they’re thin and young, dates the book, you could write this book, their sten guns would be something else, Berlin, Ukraine or something, delightful little book, make you say “I’d like some stout.”, Guinness, a wish fulfillment fantasy romance, read the back cover, little tipsy here and there, poignant moments, the songs, the stories, a Brothers Grimm thing, went out to all the pubs, music and stories are the same, all personal histories, probably wrong, music that’s close to the people, in the process of collecting these folk songs there’s some exploitation, selling a record, who’s going to see the proceeds of that record, what is the purpose of this?, to commoditization it?, spread it?, share it?, Stan Rogers, Barrett’s Privateers, east coast Nova Scotia Irish kitchen, a fun song, it has swearing a letter of marque, Sherbrooke, god damn them all, Halifax, the staggers and jags, such a good singer, sea shanty folk song, Montego Bay, sailing terms, incapable of catching a slow moving ship, smashed like a bowl of eggs, both me legs, in my 23rd year, six whole years, War of 1812, while you’re paying attention, similar to The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, a homeless beggar on a pier, the big Coleridge poem, the same story as Annabelle Lee, grateful and thankful, what has Will been doing?, back into politics, a tenant union, a communist caucus in the DSA, COVID last months, 2 and a half weeks, testing positive, not very sick, flu-like symptoms, paxlovid, our medicines don’t protect us or help us, that’s crazy, a lot of cat action happening, a core group of nine cats, stranger cats, a high number of a cats, all feral, the boys that aren’t fixed are both named Brandon, one darker than the other, let’s go Brandon, telling the Brandons apart, laser eyes, that’s the dark Brandon, smaller feet, chipmunk feet, Brooklyn Dad Defiant, a very 90s name that’s a 2020s name, Owen with Gs, beg to come inside, Tobias, to bite toes, a bias towards toes, a negotiation, mother and grandmother of them all, a mean old cat, a sour disposition, the dog will let her, irritable, you can just come and rub up on my dog, mean old girls, on the roof some, Maissa’s fascinating life, editing Ace Galaksi, social media stuff, blogs and newsletters, let’s do an internal podcast, a link on the dl, what is Maissa’s job?, lots of divisions, pr, edit videos, write and produce pr things, listen to the podcast, if I need to know, 15 minutes at most, once a month, reediting a novel for 20 years, middle school, rewrite a billion time, I got out my library card…, regarding that game [chronophoto], everybody’s wearing fucking masks, anytime after 1950, AOC, 2018, an I voted sticker, eerily obvious what year it is, figure out what year that was, talking about Kennedy being president but not talking about Kennedy being assassinated, in county Cork, is the book dated?, no, it’s a period piece, au courant, everybody’s playing with their iPhone 6, bullying each other, only play with a group, a couple repeats, playing PUBG, a faster version of the game, early January, online vs. in person, got rid of some old computers, that to lean on, Scott does the editing for Reading, Short And Deep, 4-6 hours per day, 8 hour days are horrible, and the show’s over, 10 hours per day, send me a secret signal, Burn Notice, a comiccon, Battlestar Galactica, Archer, a throwback, Pulpcovers/Alex, the last of an earlier era of television, problem of the week, and a weak overriding plot every season, he used to be spy, just a premise for the show, exotic locale, it has a car, 80s, A-Team van, Kitt from Knight Rider, Dukes Of Hazzard, the car is the star of the show, an actor based show, Gabrielle Anwar, an IRA terrorist, Jeffrey Donovan, Bruce Campbell is the sidekick, the Evil Dead series, Sharon Gless, Cagney & Lacey, flip phones, 2005-2011 show, a fine show, a comic book, a sidekick on Xena, western shows, The Adventures Of Brisco County Jr., short lived Fox shows, Zorro style, Jack Of All Trades, what you can do while you’re at work, a half hour syndicated action comedy, 1801, East Indies, a swordfighting, masks, Napoleon Bonaparte is character, Mr. Charismatic on screen, bicker in fun ways, a good fun show, Spider-Man villains, Bubba Ho-Tep (2002), Elvis and JFK, it should be an amazing movie, a little long in the tooth, the cylon lady, Lucy Lawless, you see those people together, the Spartacus tv series, Blood And Sand, 300 (2006), the acting and the dynamics, a slave morality show, diaries?, slave folk heroes, Kirk Douglas, what would it mean to be a slave, having sex with the slaves, a great villainess, New Zealanders, Evan agrees, a slave rebellion, the servile war, amazing history, super-compelling on-screen performances, green screen, practical sets, thinking of it as a play, a tool to get stuff done, laidoff, Vikings was a better show, blood eagle, why you don’t want piss the vikings off, doesn’t overstay its welcome, a maori gladiator, sticking to the facts is fascinating, what is it like to be a celebrity slave, I am Spartacus, a consciousness raising movie, also very sexy, they’re sexy too, regretful but should be done, killing the masters, killed in the end, sexy jumping naked slaves, emotional resonance, very underrated show, 39 episodes, 2013, All In The Family, Happy Days, about as substantial, a monologue about Riverdale, too soap opera, just soap opera enough, Twin Peaks, the original, Deep Space Nine, a very resonant show, better is substantial ways, Miles got trapped in the mine for 20 years, extreme amounts of trauma, poor Miles O’Brien, his wife doesn’t love him, his kid doesn’t care about him, the writers were picking on him, Canadian?, Irish movies, the Canadian film industry, Black Summer, a Netflix show, Calgary, that explains it, the old zombie trope, you are the camera, you don’t know why, you follow that person for a while, this is our main character, nope, they’re killed, weird compared to regular television, Z Nation, an art film, the Asylum, notorious for making cheapo rip off movies, a company designed to make money, the coattails of Hollwood, Sharknado, very surprising, going back all the way, April 2019, not a show like Star Trek Discovery, storytelling techniques that have lain follow, basically praise, the endless sprawling suburbs of Calgary, Alberta, The Crazies (1973), worthy of attention, only one trick: surprise!, the trick works a lot, Stephen King’s The Shining, The Picture In The House by H.P. Lovecraft and Pigeons From Hell by Robert E. Howard, White House-style, axed by ghosts of slavery, based on a black person’s story told to him, a traditional slave folktale, pretty scary, a TV adaptation, anti-mystery box show, sparse in dialogue, what the fuck is going on and why am I so scared, The Extraordinary Attorney Woo, sweet and innocent, childlike, well packaged, young and more than middle aged, a broad range of interests, I think you want it to be great, sweet and fun, Korean film and television industry, clips of this autistic lady, The Admiral: Roaring Currents (2013), Yi Sun-Shin, Korean George Washington, defeated Japan, 12 Korean ships vs. 333 Japanese ships, a slog, historical epics, great horror movies, The Host (2006), the Americans pollute the Han river, evil tank juice, a Godzilla movie, lighter than Train To Busan (2016), kaiju, the worst Korean accent ever, A Man Called Ove (2015), enforcing block association rules, boisterous new neighbors, spends half the movie trying to kill himself, when a movie is not so good, theatering?, Avatar 2, beautiful and too long and mostly a setup for the next one, every crew has a crazyass white boy, very satisfying to see giant arrows go through people, a very clunky writer, repeated himself, Titanic (1997) has gravitas, a big weighty movie, Avatar 3 The Way Of The Rocks, the four elements, exhausted its idea, the na’vi won, Dances With Wolves in space, free of his bad body, a trans story, the transgender kid episode of The Orville, too Star Warsy, special effects heavy, the other way around, show the gender surgery working, trying to sell it on an alien, Ezri vs. Jadzia Dax, a funny situation, Macklin?, they’re both boys, hilarious, like Star Trek but funny, less funny, less good, very wrong of them, Obi-Won was horrible, Andor is not shit, Stalin robbing a bank, a heist show, Diego Luna, Star Wars: Rogue One, many boffins died for this thumbdrive, slow paced, beautifully framed, casting is pretty good, Star Wars writing has been shit, hang out with some labourers, smart but evil, political aspect, Blesson Yates, Imani Pullum [playing Topa], IMDB is getting shitty, a fill-in show, The Venom Business by Michael Crichton, Nazis on the Moon, Evan Lampe started a podcast series reading through everything Heinlein wrote, talked him into it, and maybe Mark Twain, Pirate Enlightenment, Or The Real Libertalia by David Graber, he’s been posthumous for a while, I’m posthumousing right now, autistic style take, all the same, his third posthumous book, “enlightenment, liberty, socialism all the same thing”, hey that’s us!, a radical social experiment, The Hopkins Manuscript by R.C. Sherriff, The Crawlers by Philip K. Dick, crawling abortions being run over by trucks, pretty great story, The Pre-Persons, a weird guy, an interview with Ray Faraday Nelson’s kid, David Agranoff, Philip K. Dick: babysitter, Philip K. Dick shows a 7-year old his derringer, why you have a derringer?, what are you thinking?, this is America, man, too American, we just got problem, do something different in this country, Four-Day Planet by H. Beam Piper, Poul Anderson sword and sandal, Francis Stevens is always interesting, dystopia in Philadelphia, The Heads Of Cerberus, a weird lady, what the fancy people do, Unseen-Unfeared, a few things missing, first published in 1904, Jean Veil, People’s Favorite Magazine, a low rent Italian restaurant, he sells love charms, not tempting, a review by E.F. Bleiler, guy breaks into a house, fights with best friend, a knock at the door, the safe was open, very convoluted, a phial with a stopper with the heads of Cerberus, Dante’s gate, no diamonds in here, what did you do with my cousin, alternate 2018, weird dystopia, no names, just numbers, Mr. Handsome gets a municipal job, a fascist state?, goes in the pit, head of the music department, it’s like the Hugo awards, also stirred up the ashes, seat of her pants, spinning up ideas, opposite of well put together, ideas like rockets going off, Science Fiction The Early Years, Guide To Supernatural Fiction, emdash, 729 pages, a special photographic filter, the soul of a recent suicide, only like an hour, how hard is it to do 47 minutes, we had a good chat, Evan’s been sick, isn’t Paul always at a convention?, socialize, Paul is lonely Libra, Jesse’s just a cancer on society, someplace, pulpcon, money, hassle at the borders, no excuses, lining up for celebrities, Pavel Chekov’s signature, the conversations at the panels are surficial, Pulpfest, 2016, intervening years, a long drive, pulps were more expensive, pandemic prices, Planet Stories for $20, hold it in your hand, oooh look at that ooh!, stay up all night talking to people, if Cirsova were in local stores, Jesse doesn’t want to support Amazon, good used bookstores, lesbian couples are in it for the long haul, a trope almost, they’re bookish, Little Sisters, super-prudes, super-evil, a place of prominence, rent is low somewhere, small town Alberta, a town full of Mormons, an amazing town, Cardston, Alberta, Justice League building, Fortress of Solitude, something out of Ayn Rand, it looks like a bank, cost of living, inflation, $850 for a 3 bedroom and big yard, what does that get you?, giant assessments, working online, the fever has not yet broken on covid, an excuse to fuck everybody and line pockets, definitively its a wash, almost none of the positives are with spreading the disease around, wrecked the industry for in-person tutoring, in person classrooms, kids don’t learn very well online, Paul’s masked up at his convention, the vaccines don’t work for almost any of the people getting them, let’s go back to business as usual, tele-judge, on trial with the judge not in the room, fixed camera, ai shit, a program that you run, that changes where your eyes are focused to make it look at the camera, creepy and interesting, simulated real-life but also fake, no modesty at all, Hawaiian Mormon templeing, nice people, just in this life, Brandon Sanderson, Orson Scott Card is a black name, church homophobia, he’s following his church beliefs, this is the doctrine of my church, and I contribute money to prevent people from getting married, religious objections vs. non-religious objections to abortion, Scott is quite nuanced, say things in a polite way, the same claim about the papists, pushing babies into wombs, bio-ethicists say it is okay to use brain dead women’s bodies, clickbait shit, frustrating fun game, coffee, I can still have coffee, too shaky, three cups max, a catfood shortage, egg pricing, incompetence of a cat named Brandon, personally responsible for inflation, not solving problems, price controls, stick it to the egg industry, milk control board, 59% increase in egg prices, realer food, no-corn in Canadian pop, some breads without soy, Italy has basically real food, pink slime, slight advantages to higher food prices, wrangle some cats, try to find cat food, inexpensive kibble, possums, raccoons.

Passport To Peril by Lawrence Block

Passport To Peril by Lawrence Block (back)

Passport To Peril by Lawrence Block - AUDIOBOOK

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