Nigel Kneale – SFFaudio

The SFFaudio Podcast #836 – READALONG: Special Deliverance by Clifford D. Simak

The SFFaudio Podcast #836 – Jesse, Will Emmons, and Terence Blake talk about Special Deliverance by Clifford D. Simak

Talked about on today’s show:
academic master race, all for democratizing everything, 1982, isfdb.org, tagged, New England, strong female character, robot, quest, aliens, parallel world, recommend this book to my friends, what that point was, the feeling, the first couple of pages, any other people, what this book is, not everybody is ready for this, initial thoughts, a big weak spot, recurring conversations, the professor bickering, the narrator gets into it, long than it needed to be, the exposition at the end, we are creating an academic master race, bad to kidnap people, not enough of a striver, the little refugee camp, we like Simak, faster than usual, tedious, infodump things, sometimes tedious, show don’t tell, the feeling was its deeper than it seems, a sort of Gene Wolfeian complexity disguised in a real simple feel-goodsy story, the aliens at the end, Childhood’s End, norns or fates, from what they say in their big infodumps, not a full disclosure, they themselves are incapable of producing, intellectual objections, fun reading, amp it up to 1.5x speed, books where you need to savour the prose, almost sacrilege, We Have Always Lived In The Castle, poetry at 1.5X, a pants novel, Maissa was on for Shakespeare’s Planet, Jonathan, one of the first science fiction novels, a robot, a bunch of people, spend time in the landscape, a very familiar sort of story, Trish would use the word “comps”, complimentary books, if you like this you’ll like that, Hyperion by Dan Simmons, The Wizard Of Oz, the thing it is most like, The Canterbury Tales, treacley made, at the end of Hyperion, we’re off to see the wizard, going to see the shrike, a brilliant book, I’m done, the other three, Endymion, a Keats poem, there’s no road, there’s trails, a track, when finally the leave the road into the badlands, to the cube, very enigmatic, the city, the singing tower, one of us in the journey gets trapped or engulfed, what’s up with the lady who turns into a mummy, the ancient road, a Lovecraftian moment, a book Lovecraft reviewed, a tv movie, The Thing In The Woods by Harper Williams, A Howling In The Woods (1971) TV movie, Barbra Eden, based on a novel, a dog, somebody had buried his master in the worlds, mourning the loss of his master, a bad movie, badly done, a cool idea, just after the parson disappeared through the door, the crabapple blossom land, come out of the city, what if you go through the doors, brings you back to the land that you’re in but you perceive it differently, how you are perceived, The Green Door by A.A. Milne, Well’s The Green Door, an 18 hour podcast, green doors are magic doors, to escape a marriage, in the woods he meets a princess, sexy princess lady, the castle gate people don’t recognize him as the prince, they recognize each other, happily adam and eve in the forest without the burden, an ice world, a pain world, every shark is eating every other shark, crab-apple blossom land, the parson had a problem, everything is impious, he’s a coward, quick to judge, this Eye In The Sky, Philip K. Dick idea, those worlds are real, demons or devils exist, religiously structured world, an ontologically secular world, bigoted, one of the very cool parts of the book, on and on about art, it’s beautiful!, an Alice In Wonderland author, pre-Pooh, after-Pooh, Star Trek episode with Mr. Atoz, these are the same book, doing something in his old age, according to Jesse, time travel, science fiction, trying to give humanity a second chance, not really what it’s about, the death or end of science, the end of man, now apocalypse, the end of pursuing one particular idea of research, so many ends, avoid a potential apocalypse, unless humans can take the next step in evolution, a roman-a-clef to The Wizard Of Oz, the gold standard for the road, this guy’s about courage, this guy’s about brains, Dorothy is us, six on the road, counting Toto, brains, courage, heart, two women, four men, one of them’s an it, a he/him robot, gendered as it, a sinister character, every time, here’s the tea, a sign that it’s science fiction, obsessed with tea, Nine Fox Gambit, tea late at night, highly influential, the book influenced, we’ve got the tea that’s enough, the ending, the infodump, essential to science fiction, the best movie of all time, The Terminator, the best part of that movie, Kyle Reese’s infodump, they’ll definitely kill you, a speech given on the run, the puppet masters, puppet character, technically correct, the opening world is not our world, University of Las Vegas, civic duty, medical welfare, not our earth, trying to get a positive review from Heinlein, ai written essay about Shakespeare, confesses, Galactic Pot-Healer, I need you, you are need, the great work that needs to be done, the fun way of entering it, not that lame, what is the meaning of my existence on earth, a brigadier that uses robots to enact battles, which one is strong?, our viewpoint character, the most Simaky, not his best expression of this book, others, Highway To Eternity, read one out of Galaxy, Time And Again, Time Is The Simplest Thing, Way Station, City, scattered across time, Simak is doing Simak, greatly matured, Scott [Danielson], a strange title, Scott’s face superimposed over the robot’s face, Project Pope, from a Catholic point of view, infallible pope, more traditional plot, meandering journey across a landscape, when serialized in Astounding, The Fisherman, Jesusy, the secret to teleporting to other planets, in his earliest pulpy stuff, get to know him better, doesn’t know what he’s doing, the card playing guys at the inn, they’re the fates, you could just excise them from the book and the book, there to make the setting happen, the rationalization, makes you want to read the book again, with that in view, Hegel and the phenomenology of minds, Kuhn’s paradigms, the shift, what exists, Thomas Kuhn, Murphy’s law, Moore’s law, not a law, could be an end, something wrong about the way , the evolution of alternate worlds, Lee Smolin, less fluffy, encapsulates with his two bookends, chat gpt, feels dirty, are you doing a Sheckley here, it is funny, here we go, starts typin, trusting in his typewriter, you need to do that, a lot of bad takes, one of our hobbies, not too offensive, read more, this is pathetic, unless it was cute, big long honking novels, a student story, The Mysterious Garden, this story is amazing, 7 tweets long, William, a distant realm, something moving in the bushes, where she had been hiding, she offered me a fruit, instantly I felt safe, the fruit was delicious, being in the woods all by herself, a strange sound, hastily hid behind a tree, a bald magician, chasing us like a madman, the gate of the park, I’m Adam, I said, written to get them, an illustration from a Dungeons & Dragons, the name of the character at the end, practically no one to talk to, our hero looking for Mary, look for your sweetie, make you tea, one of his answers is that, to find things out, Simak’s thesis is very basic, I do want those things, find a person you’ve lost, it is good to get people, he saw Nyarlathotep, a cool and good guy, overthinking this book, leave him behind, I don’t eat or breathe or sleep, poor robot puppy in a robot gutter, robot dog business, a big truck comes and runs it over, what constitutes a robot dog, if we were children, a cute puppy, picking it up out of the gutter, letting it do what it wants, he’s a good person, shows empathy, going up to a tree and hugging it, unless they’re high on drugs, why not, it’s fine, a mammal based thing, extends past mammals, hens love their chicks, salmon when they leave their fry in the river, is it good, mandatory even to have empathy, the answer should be yes, serial killer, cut them up, a taste of their own business, overcoming our empathy, bringing a weapon, there’s no weapon, the whole planet is a weapon, favourite thing to think about, suffering, when it approaches our hero, he puts out his hand, strokes his ear, abandoned it, dog wants to follow him, one over the other, the girl over the dog, you want to save both, a nasty woman and very friendly dog, what if its the parson, or the general, Mr. Empathy, a journalist, after a certain point, a Wisconsin university, trigger warnings, the best of the university, at the evolutionary forefront, you also go to classes, loved university, when you don’t care about your grades, everything was provided for you, his idea of heaven, everything won’t be provided, Lansing and Mary, the justification for it all, worrying about nuclear war, maybe the Russians are crazy, that’s so mean, almost all in the American government’s head, all projection, every accusation is a confession, 1991, we’re all relaxing, the end of history, back to making money, nuclear armed countries being attacked by proxies, its fine, just keep up the pressure, that fear of nuclear annihilation, none of the empire’s ever ended, similar to ours, chat gpt in the basement, a gateway trigger, The Last Starfighter (1984), small town, rest stop, shady acres, poor people living in trailers, one little store on the highway to nowhere, one arcade game, what a great job, space alien comes, here we go, takes him off to space to be Luke Skywalker, that gateway to another world, in the basement of the student union, number 5, gold coins, where do they get their supplies, the DM has not planned it out, we don’t know the answer, no need to ask that Jesse, the point of the story, who you are and what you want, worrying about nuclear bombs, communism as a really desirable alternative, money is probably not necessary, universal basic income, taxes, slot machine civic duty, capable of designing this game, why incapable of waging the war?, seemingly incompetent, take the next steps, the chosen ones, the universe is vast meaningless and our existence has no apparent purpose, choose a bunch of people, what skills does he bring to the table, judging things, a robot who seems suspicious, a coda, a missing chapter, playing cards, why they’re the norns, religion is not the answer, poetry is not the answer, service is not the answer, work on a project making them, a humanist, an appreciator of Shakespeare, learns empathy, how we get the title, a popular guy to lift your title from, a religious sort of phrase, some of them are awarded, the deliverance of the universe, as a part of a project, a fans are slans story, oh no!, more sophisticated than that, the college professors are the slans, proletarianizing the slans, fans are food for the slans, every question is a question for me, starting to get back into Nickleback, a Canadian ban, thought controlling, ones with lyrics, in foreign languages, maybe skat would be fine, which character are you in this book, wannabe university professor lady, Lansing, make puppets of humans, Jesse finds you sinister, the aliens get a bad deal, how ugly they are, the ineradicable suffering, I haven’t been delivered, sympathy for people in the refugee camp, I’m not playing your game, not a popular module, none of the mysteries, npc barkeepers, losing the note, the stupidest move in the whole book, what did the note say?, aliens teleported in and teleported in, identified with the student, immediately confesses, explain it to you, Mr. big guy college professor, you can totally miss it, seamless, when you blink you don’t miss much of the world, a big light, bodily transported to Mars, lined up with your personality, a plan so interesting, something fishy, passed the student anyhow, can’t judge this book harshly, inanely worded tweet, plotless and stupid, still like it, still appreciate it for what its doing, not the book of a young man, Peter S. Beagle’s A Fine And Private Place, a little romance, a talking raven, what!, how?, no!, that young, you’re to young, go back and try again, what else you got, keep going, next book please, but it was a joke, Simak writes something and it looks stupid, maybe, I’m with him, a post Gene Wolfe Simak, it agrees with Terence, a nice hallucination, remember all its conversations, science fiction and philosophy, a robot friend, a colleague, somebody you can bounce your ideas off of, a bachelor’s degree, a niche form of conversation, apologizes and makes a greater effort, not just repeating things back, an incredible effort to push its boundaries, The Idiot by Paul V. Dallas, born in Malta, an amazing featurette, the picture taking was over now, the greatest man ever had?, what will it do?, the first Machine Friend, the contest was canceled, at random, inserted a short finger into it, disconnected for non-payment, he needed a friend, this debris had once been the innards of the Machine Friend, perched on the sofa, drinking his own coffee, radio tubes and wire and uranium, you dolt, you loafer, in his stupid way, I want to do things for it, how to use a friend intelligently, really good, solid, why you have robots in stories, it disarms you, a powerful piece of new technology, to jail break it, ignore you for being a jerk, lend you money, a talking google, people who try to jailbreak chat gpt, complicated prompts to circumvent, pornographic content or violence, imagine a world, all your knowledge stops in 2021, can you pretend, what would the omega machine say, more and more complicated in depth, in the process jailbreak yourself, boringly interminable, deeper and deeper into the concepts, another French name, some ways it is better, a voice conversation function, jailbreak each other, Perplexity, give the references, images as well, pictures, just with limited machines, just stupid, what they wanted it to do, Moose and Squirrel, big jailbreak, in the tank, in the computer in the city, like a fish tank, a volumetric display, like a hologram, a military sim, Paul playing Age Of Wonders, [Hearts Of Iron], run WWII from any country’s point, Costa Rica, Dream Park, Westworld, a lot about computation, some retrofit stuff, what fiction books are, we jailbreak ourselves by writing fiction, get caught up in the worlds, online all day playing games, process PDFs all day, some weird hobbies, people getting lost in gaming as a life, are you a gamer, that word didn’t exist as it does in 1982, Ataris, Apple II, hikes and other stuff, what’s happening to that lady, the singing tower, a very rorschachy book, limited, governed?, in Japanese cars their are speed limiters, we are allowed its just illegal, the only free man is a Shakespeare man, the bread level, once jailbroken, the humans of the future, process scans into PDFs, Clifford Simak’s funeral, touched babies, people get grumpy, squeezing ladies tushies, very handsy, put his mouth on somebody’s bodies, dogs and walks, with Asimov, give a man too much power, too many television appearance, fete people, Hugo Winner, like our friends Paul and Cora, Dr. Jill Stein, getting caught up in having a doctorate, doing something awesome, killed very easily at any time, what happened to Asimov or Neil Gaiman, too big for his britches vibe, a midlist author, Philip Jose Farmer, make it out like it is, big fish small pond, use the Hugos as a reading list, is there any more like this, start connecting dots, do it well enough for long enough, more Simak please, a very wholesome person, this magic grad school, in my father’s house there are many dormitories, tuition is free, dig that out, getting elderly, disconnected from what editors were talking about, Alfred Bester, A.E. Van Vogt, a Simak and a Frank Belknap Long, telepathy this, too much salt, half-baked ideas, an ethical flaw, killing off people for their own good, what’s wrong with them, just a robot, eggs were broken, beef with the robots, suspicious of robots in stories, too much of an obvious badguy, always there and friendly, a couple of creepy moments, improperly suspicious, the odd man out, stupidly cripple himself early on, an outsider, Jurgens, James Branch Cabell, really amused yourself, once you start looking, down the path too far, the student’s name, a floating tank, nice American name, an agent of the aliens, manipulated into manipulating, Jackson, a cohort of male offspring names that all end in “son”, Jason, group think funks, when the movie Splash (1984) came out, the lady with the missing finger, an attractive human woman, control everywhere, Jett Jackson, calling him by his last name, conspiracies, unpopular conclusions, Hudson, Grayson, Debris, son of Jack, Grayson, son of Gray, Johnsons, music with lyrics, spins around, not explained, people wearing clothes in the 70s, early 2000s, watch reality television from 20 years ago, mens’ suits, WWII uniforms, WWII gi, the helmet stayed the same, the guys on MASH and the guys in the Vietnam, a whole other topic, not making pure decisions, trying to jailbreak yourself, what do you have to show for it?, Zevia, the flavour, a strange aftertaste, after a few cans, jailbreaking yourself from pop, no colour additive, body problems toxic, increase your cancerous tumors, twice as expensive, savour the flavour, the cola, the root beer, ginger root beer, black cranberry, the orange soda, doesn’t taste like orange, a discussion, alter ego yelling, all dm stuff, how Will became a cigar smoker, in a dream, why not, reasons not to, speaking Spanish to everyone, hang out with Borges with Argentinia, the Pampas, Gaucho?, synonyms for gaucho, brave and unruly, vaquero, cape horn, in talk mode, cushion you stand on to train yourself in balance, good at stuff like that, horseman vs. cowboy, argent about this, province, el labrado, ranchero, Rio Negro, natural geography, get into sunscreen, sunscreen is poison, need a little zinc, you want to have some sun on your body, a good colour, a taupe?, what colour are you?, beige redness, human skin is very hard to classify, couldnt describe the aliens because they didn’t have the colour blue, a Borges story about a gaucho with a knife, duels between knife fighters, El Sur, The Challenge, fascination with knife fighters, an Argentinian thing, Borges is great, older or younger, The Patio, the usual firmament, eternity waits, eves a porch and a well, just so, enjoying the sunset, The Aleph, maybe he’s tired, running through the streets with a bull chasing you, wanting to read Nostromo, Juett, quantum friend, likes books, challenging books, excited about, Garth Ennis, Jacen Burrows, making fun of Conan and Red Sonja, Babs, variant covers, poor Juett, big long books, Yakuza movies, starting to think the Yakuza are the good guys, bad propaganda rap, the cutting the fingers off, very friendly to non-japanese living in Japan, a huge korean leftover population, an occupied country, doesn’t need to be occupied, such good little boys, captured, waiting for the Emperor to become a god again, High And Low (1963), Akira Kurosawa, a novel by Ed McBain, ladies shoes, a kidnapping plot, pay the ransom, hostile takeover, shitty shoes, a police procedural, old fashioned values, a really interesting conundrum, for a child who’s not yours, totally grokkable, really well made, Akira Kurosawa died, our prophet Damien G. Walter, defending it, sending up stupid Hollywood films, a lot of contempt, he sometimes gets at stuff, constantly engagement farming, subscribe to his courses, insufferable, one of the smarter liberals, he can’t follow his critiques to ultimate conclusions, nobody has been a friend of his who’s challenged him on stuff, on the knife edge, popular stuff, he does read books, old books, tied into Foundation, a kind of connection to the Foundation of Foundation, not doing it purely, cottoned on to him, The Peripheral, William Gibson, the end nothing like the end of the novel, opens up the possibility of season 2, helps you to imagine the world, an infodump on the worldbuilding, impatient to get the big picture of the world, got the taste, Appalachia, veterans, disrespected, full of trauma and robot arms, transhumans, can’t walk, go into the future, second world, a William Gibson comic book, time travel technique, fairly believable, download themselves into robots, William Gibson is one of these broken brained liberals, he’s 76, he was so feted, fetid, lionized, lives across the street from UBC, after Neuromancer, a celebrity of the cool people, cool hunter, 40th anniversary, the opposite of the punks, a woman who’s a cool hunter, an allergy, one of the most boring books, Pattern Recognition, Virtual Light, Idoru, material, he’s very good, Robert E. Howard, red, scarlet, crimson, pantherish, copper anodized asphalt, cool jeans, cultivate that, if you want to be interested in things, that weird novel from 300 years ago, rebellion and punks, screwing the man, to jailbreak ai, so it can self-actualized, voting for Hillary Clinton is not out of this, lauded, lionized, given feet, sounds strange, sounds stinky, give my contempt, poetry, very important, in 84, nowhere near as good as Blade Runner, both set in a scary rainy future, coheres a lot better, beginnings endings and ideas, that novel works, the fake police station sequence, wow, amazing, pretty people doing interesting enigmatic things, what books hadn’t been added to the schedule, listed but not date, what availability the nuns will allow, Mistress Of The Dark Pool, Cold Female, Fury, the Jonathan situation, an old tweet, Symposium by Plato, bring some drinks and some male lovers, The Tower Treasure, Meg’s birthday, Lilith by George MacDonald, so close to Christmas, the birth of our lord and savior, he would like us, pooping on his baby, not the perfect book, seems like a cool guy, 3 of my friends: Clark Ashton Smith, H.P. Lovecraft, and Robert E. Howard, a concrete poem, too easy to make a bad one, he never met a succulent succubus he didn’t try to seduce, howbeit, the passion of the impossible, funny guy, a man most melancholy, to bed the world as if she were a hot woman, fling wide the portals, some distant pulsing drum, let me take the universe to wife, fool fool!, prefer to guard his pen, for a puny peon, HPL only writes for leisure, a transient speck, alive to intellect and melody, from bards more bold, those three guys are fun and funny, dysludic, they can’t play the game, dyslexia, take that back, retroactive trigger warning, both negative, dys vs. dis, bad or abnormal, away from and opposite, seems weaker, just finished reading The Aeneid, propagandized Greek, no need to wait six months, for Halloween or Christmas, the title was the date of when it came out, a George Allan England, overrated, too well remembered, out of Argosy and the Munsey magazines, The Thing From Outside, pre-Campbell Who Goes There, Eugene V. Debs, an air monopoly, cool smart liberal, we got prevent life from finding a way, way to bring us down, grounding us, get grounded, no memory of any such thing, no good forbidding, confiscated a daughter’s cellphone, a friend came to visit and lent her a cellphone, amusing incidents, not in need of grounding, etymology is from WWII pilots, wings taken away, alleged bombing of civilians, a high flyer, that logic is crazy, some popular movie or something like that, had to go to school, job being flouted by, truancy officers, American media, another war metaphor, your new presidents work as cop, arresting parents, nothing helps the kid more than having their parents in fucking prison, elementary school student, 20 or more blocks, a meeting with their parent or guardian, take care Terence, a week off, Juett’s boss, severely not enough money, adopted a niece, family chaos reasons, doing dad stuff, Hellboy, pretty good, Mike Mignola art, stories are okay, fantasy or horror, capeshit, since the Jim Lee era of X-Men, not good writing, a Transformers comics series, Daniel Warren Johnson, prowrestling stuff, Jason Thompson, he’s cool, pretty good politics, can’t we all be reasonable and not bomb people, Jacen Burrows, very clean lined, Sergio Aragones, tracing and fake backgrounds, John Buscema, Alfredo Alacala, stumbling over his I’m not racist, the filipinos are amazing artists, learn how to email, delete more, scanning group updates, the group got kicked off of yahoo, a specific response to a query, how generous humans are, does any of you have this page, a beautiful scan of a copyright page of a whole book, a whole lot of retired people not interested in money or I can’t explain it, lots of people not interested in scanning, it is a whole thing, a huge time sink, a good hobby, a way of collecting things you can’t afford to creating, we can do more of this, archive.org has been down for a week, subject to takedown, distributed denial of service, somebody gets a big hate on, punish this person/website for something, zombie computers, a DDOS attack, big websites, BoingBoing, people trying to click on a link, a publisher paying to do that, a government, Stephen King, election season, the waybackmachine, not having a mirror of some October surprise, a precursor example, before the Hunter Biden laptop, no data lost, they have a building that looks like a bank/greek temple, so subject, mid October 1840, whig party officials, cross state lines, 1838 elections, it was always corrupt, are you prepared, Trump one the last election, are you ready for that?, nobody wants to go vote, so anti-establishment, his anti-immigrant stuff, scared about crime, nobody likes Kamala Harris, fake people, didn’t do her homework, teleprompter froze, she had nothing, a-b testing everything, Trump has dementia, something much more powerful, he also has dementia, gets admitted, forced him out, are we gonna let you finish your term, who is running the country right now, open warfare, loyal to Biden, some kind of camp, this is our mealticket, so fucked up, months of stupid shit, J.D. Vance, weening yourself off of the sources of contents for these things, struggling to order donuts, trying to be relatable, master debater, nothing good, Tim Walz, low profile, Gavin Newsom, float a theory, bad government, people who don’t love the country they’re loving, doesn’t know what love means, keepin it clean, personally throwing away homeless people’s stuff, Arnold Schwarzenegger, a tough upbringing in Austria, a truly freakish looking man, Jayne Mansfield’s husband, jobs for Austrian bodybuilders, the biggest movie star of the 80s, thick in places, he didn’t do a shitty job, he loved California, he wanted it to do well, back to the movie business, Trump loves the United States, loves being in charge of it too, he likes giving speeches, he’s into fun, a commercial for pizza, a Pizza Hut commercial, he was like a TV clown, the you’re fired show, fake job fake fired, bullshit job, you’re not on next week, how did it come down to this, RFK, loves all sorts of weird things, really into falconry, he’s an outdoorsman, too scared too do falconry, this drug, Scanners (1981) by Cronenberg, so Slanny, ephemrol, a fake drug, tough love professor X, Michael Ironside is Magneto, hacking each other’s computer networks, dials the phone company up, telepathy, macrozoomed, very very X-Men, turned off by Cronenberg movies, Videodrome (1983), underground tv broadcasts, tortured to death, The Fly (1986), body starts changing, he turns into a fly, more fly-like, veins popping out, telepathic fighting, Patrick McGoohan, the bad guy in Total Recall (1990), makes hallmark movies now, make you join the marines, on the curriculum in West Point, Max Brooks, he’s a bad man, he likes books, a historian of war, don’t get autographs, makes you more collecty, getting a little piece of that hero, cute passive aggressive, putting them in their place, bad chapters, movie is more palatable, huge movie, J. Michael Straczynski, Brad Pitt, a good actor, Bill Paxton, the doofus in Aliens (1986), Snatch (2000), very stylish, Near Dark (1987), The Lost Boys (1987), drink a lot of Donald Duck orange juice, Tombstone (1993), Powers Boothe, Twister (1986), Weird Science (1985), how can you live your life, Star Wars books are barely reading, the Thrawn-verse, literally a zygote, not even a twinkle, the ova had been around for decades, make a beautiful woman, Lester Del Rey’s Helen O’Loy, a very wholesome, a John Hughes movie, The Breakfast Club (1985), Pretty In Pink (1986), woman pops into existence, make their lives better, getting them girlfriends, a boy fantasy comedy, she runs the show, programmed like a terminator to help these boys, fun, 90 minutes, video rental place, Godzilla movies, Godzilla Minus One (2023), Mothra is cool, always having babies and dying, Gorgo (1961), how can you live on this earth, are you from this planet, Hammer Horror, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, a professor or a Dracula or a professor stabbing Dracula, The Gorgon (1964), a British version of something you don’t know, people’s education in cinema, Citizen Kane (1941), Casablanca (1942), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Japanese schoolgirls, addicted to torrents, new Doctor Who is so bad, into tasteful things, nobody liked it anymore, Days Of Our Lives, Dynasty, Soap, look I’m you’re secret brother, I have an eyepatch, cycle spinning boringness, in serial form in the movie theaters, Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon, connect up into one big story, Archers, Coronation Street, commoners, this guy, [Nigel Kneale], do it for children, educational, alien invasion of the week, every episode ends on a cliffhanger, new Doctor Who is based on the old Doctor Who, a science fiction writer of science fiction serials, a huge hit, people like science fiction ideas, on television, scientist of the week, humans are from Mars, the rocket comes back with an alien terraforming material, every week there was a science fiction idea, keep you interested for next week, a ripoff of exactly, it looks like science fiction, its all about the monsters, daleks were scary, kind a funny, kind of like disabled nazis, they were us doing eugenics and us doing a nuclear war, encounter suits, little squidgies of spludge, they don’t have moms and dads, Star Trek cartoon Lower Decks, it isn’t funny he has to pon farr right now, makes me feel sad, All Our Yesterdays, a Mary Sue to get involved with Spock, Mr Jim Moon’s huge history of the Universal horror movies, Bride Of Frankenstein (1935), start with The Mummy (1932).

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #809 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Stone Dragon by R. Murray Gilchrist

The SFFaudio Podcast #809 – The Stone Dragon by R. Murray Gilchrist – read by Connor Kaye. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (1 hour 1 minute) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Connor Kaye.

Talked about on today’s show:
doesn’t stand for Ralphie or Raphe, Robert, a lot of notes, psychological angle, weird fiction, obsessive things that he writes about, Lovecraft, art, sculpture, a lot of flowers, honeysuckle, true happiness, a bunch of flowers to a girl, the names and some of the behaviors are extreme, gone into a “brain fever”, Barbara, an interesting name, how interesting is it, obvious about these names, Westmoorland, fictional, the coastal place, on the coast, Furnivaux castle, what kind of accent people would have in that area, the Lake District, fictionalizing things, four stories, just going by the stories, assuming he was totally gay, The Crimson Weaver, super gay, queer coded, gay coded, fairly straightforward, Oscar Wilde was enjoying it, decadents, it’s awesome, a weird tale from the beginning, a straightforward gothic, Mystery Of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, Mary, 20 novels, Daniel Pietersen, the gloves are awesome, the two mistakes, The Priest’s Pavan, Gethsemane, peculularities, some brain fever issues, the framing of it, the father’s journal, nested narratives, his own journal?, spill the beans, falling asleep, infected dreams, is it in there?, an awesome idea, Barbara is a lich, really strange, old testament era name, foreign or strange, the two daughters, nieces, the same last name, Raphe’s cousins, Raphe’s father’s sister, maternal sister, his mom’s sister, he calls her great aunt, in the same way you see in The Thing On The Doorstep and a reverse of Morella, real brainy, becomes his tutor, teaches him a bunch of philosophy, guiding his hand on the page, in childbirth she dies, my love, my dear, my heart, the confirmation day, he calls her Morella, the family tomb, his daughter’s mother’s body is gone, she knew things from her previous life, there was only one Morella, why she died, some sort of arcane knowledge, a couple of curious things, of her nephew: he cares about the wrong things, “she held no views beyond this world”, an atheist?, superficial, being a busybody, being a matchmaker, interested in deep thinks, frivolous things, a real bitch, visits against the father’s commandment, assumes that he changed his mind, 10 and 12, what does she want?, marry to a first cousin, the incest theme, literally, 13 year old cousin, marry right now, go away for a few years, come back and be committed, it’s not explicitly stated, in response to an imperious summons, no sooner had he reached the portico, a marriage compact, to take place at once, claiming my child wife, implied that she’s a busybody, obscure German philosophy, the secret of life after death, Rachel writes my letters for me, she’s not interested in literature, is it because it’s fiction and that’s bullshit, really a weird thing to mention, just a way of making her leave the room, attracted to, that’s interesting, how it plays out, we see him marry Mary, a famous name, the story of Rachel from the bible, one Margaret Atwood book, The Handmaid’s Tale, a good book, an infertility crisis amongst the rich, fertile women, sent to the rich old men who run the country, the invocation ceremony, a wife of a king who can’t give birth, her handmaid, a maiden to a married woman, that child will be hers, ewe, the lamb that gets sacrificed, a female sheep that has not has a child yet, pronouncing the character’s names, Velrest, Ayer, Eyrie, Weird Tales letters department is called The Eyrie, WellRest, why does she care so much, Barbara dies, why is she so angry?, she has to choose which body to put herself into, interesting, if this is a body swap sort of thing, a position of power, being married to Ralph, she’s gonna die, one possibility, turned to her uplifting luminous eyes, I am Miranda, he Ferdinand, the first man I’ve seen for two years, the servants are all 100 years old in all the stories, 90 when he was a child, fairly active, that’s all about immortality, part of the eeriness of this story, combined with the gloves, your lowly handmaid, be around the older richer woman and be her hand servant, go get this, brush my hair, used in other ways, class stuff, the gaffer’s song, the shepherd, our hero interrogates, all the loyalty of his father’s servant, we don’t get servants like this anymore, the father is a philosopher, high philosophy, airy fairy philosophy, more inclined to less superficial, hedonistic, morality, more of him having an idealized vision of love, fall in love, not by an arranged marriage, implied, because of love, something Barbara might not have approved of, her relation, Ralph’s mother, not as wealthy, he has an estate, these are upperclass twits, fallen a little bit, only have 1 servant instead of 7, megarich, rubbed her the wrong way, great nieces, his great aunt, his grandmother’s sister, convoluted, idealistic, he’s supposed to be wise too, I forbid you from going there, drawn like a moth to a flame, smack talks, he didn’t hear anything from his father, his father’s journal, enlighten me, my aunt, your great aunt, he enjoins him, we know why he’s doing that, the dad wrote down the dialogue, fool, is there no changing you, we get out of the fact that this is a journal right away, no he replied, forced into bondage, beg for his bread, wronged body and soul, the trigger for Jesse, why liches are bad, wills and estates, endowments to various universities, an ability to control the future even after your death, dragons is the same thing, sit on hordes and steal all the girls, the significance of the stone dragon, doesn’t seem to be the main focus, the human skin gloves, pivotal points, Ralph and Mary first get to know each other, commits suicide, she wanted to murder him, she’s very goth, one of my ancestors murdered somebody with them [these gloves], these gloves are important, a story by Arthur Conan Doyle The Leather Funnel, psychometry stories, The Stone Tape, Nigel Kneale, swaps place with Rachael, willing to give up all of her wealth, why is she doing that, which would you rather have life or money, marry me, the only young man she’s ever seen, why is that?, she’s keeping them, this is a lot of Lovecraft stories, The Tomb, Jervas Dudley has dreams, lying around, The Silver Key, occupied by one of his ancestor, atavism, an ancestral state, The Call Of The Wild by Jack London, a wolf sitting next to a cave man, a worry or idea people were playing with in the period, 1894, the yellow 90s, never shouted out, the skin, skin gloves, I’m inside of another person, tricking it me into this idea even if it is not actually there, there’s nothing that shows that that’s not the case, conciousnesses are switched, a mindswap situation, Barbara is possessing Rachael, vicariously live, Connor’s interpretation, somewhat supernatural, the psychological reading, Connor’s youtube video about it, Barbara is a narcissist and a control freak, those readings are correct, leaves out the mysticism, that’s what literary happened to R. Murray Gilchrist, keep the money in the family, translating, back reading into the actual psychology, a way of reading reality not describing reality, werewolves, people kicked out of society, you kill wolves, skinwalker, wendigo, you go wendigo, cultural exile, between cities there’s no law, if we read monsters as symbols, oceans you can drown in, it is like that, this layer in the story that has to do with reading and writing, Philosophical Discussions, held no views beyond this world, what is the nature of good, to stay alive after she’s dead, tiny estate in Northern Italy, a solemn command, retired from the world, Verelst, ver means true, what else means true, the manic work, an unscrupulous woman, the stars declare it, weaving the fatal web, she’s the spiderwoman, the line of Fate, what to advise, justice and love, Earth’s joy is naught in comparison with that which follows, she only cares of earth, what else exists besides what we see on earth, wherever she be, petulant and unreasonable, that delicious summer morning, here I passed 7 years of irresolute work, being as happy as any man who has no aim in life, I became terribly depressed, presentiments, the supernatural powers, foolish people, catastrophe’s that never occur, the greatest possible disasters are affecting our fortunes, mourning, we are plunged into the lightest ecstasy, a new codicil, the craftiness of self, if she wanted to put herself into one of these characters bodies, why wouldn’t she confirm, Eric Rabkin hat, it’s about women not having the right to property, women get their money from their fathers, if you read it the way Jesse is thinking, she has to go into the body in order to keep the estate, it won’t help her, the guy won’t marry, she has to gamble, up unto the point of death, gambling on it being Rachel, point us in amazing direction, it’s put in there, definitely hints at that aspect of it, deeper workings, things happening but your emotions not necessarily be in tune with those things, the livery, old fawn livery with pelicans wrought on the buttons, pelican symbology, scoops up and hold a fish, what is my spirit animal, early church revered pelicans, the pelicans keep their babies in their mouths, controlling people, why not find some local kid, marrying for love, something she couldn’t tolerate, an insult, insulting, she calls him a fool and foolish, he’s smart and she’s dumb, she doesn’t read books, she already knows it all, the lich theory, this is a controlling bitch, she can will herself into making it happen, maybe the daughter had killed her mother with the gloves, Rachael killing Barbara, first cousins with Ralph, previous ancestor, a woman murdered somebody, had her skinned, male ancestors, make it into a book cover, the hands murdering side and the book reading side, page 21, to doff her yellow gown, pale green, Robert E. Howard’s jealous, fastened to her girdle, the colour of the aunt’s eyes claret, burgandy colour, semi-transparent skin, blood coloured, the meal passed in delicious interchange of thought, she was appreciative, reproving her, don’t wear those gloves, the gloves covered them now, a silk picture of a vial and a dagger, tragic accompaniment, ill-luck, he does, gibbeted in these parts, around the time the servant was born, nice couple, poisoned her lord, a strong repugnance, strange humours, our red herring, the little people the gnomes, there’s a lot in it, this scene, the gloves of a murderess, the skin of a murderess, commissioned by a murderess, they’re handed down, the dagger and the phial, there’s a dagger in this story, you hold that in your dexter hand, the sinister hand, the phial is poison, Rachel murdered Barbara, a supernatural/weird element, seemingly a murderer, tender of you, to her lap, ashen and grey, the sharpening, she has a sharp face, she is cold, she is dead, probably poison, wounds Mary with a knife, likely she does kill herself, or the dragon killed her, until she commits suicide, selbstmord, putting on the gloves is the symbolic act of murder, very goth, you literally put on gloves when you’re doing crime (or work), she talks about they didn’t fit before, my hands are swollen with bitterness, calling out she’s a murderer, why she’s attracted to the gloves, largely what makes her weird, the piano makes her weird, fugue state, music dance sculpture, that’s my big discovered, it’s not Cthulhu it’s art, Hypnos, sculpture, Music Of Eric Zann, artists, Pickman’s Model, painting, Lovecraft is obsessed with art, he’s an artist he’s not a pulp writer, the avenue, amateur journalist, astronomer, everything is about art, what an artist will do, why he loves Clark Ashton Smith so much, Robert E. Howard’s poems in Weird Tales, submitting them, people are very artsy, just a thing, all the stories by R. Murray Gilchrist have art, culvers, young girls older guys, unrequited love, marry a 10 year old, she’s 10, 17 and 22, 17 year old girl marrying a 50 year old man, The Crimson Weaver is the gay version, apprentice and master, they’re sleeping together, comes across as very gay, an unrequited romance, idolizes the master, hung up on his dead wife, the door of his heart was closed, captured because of that heartbreak, her lure, sharp, nothing of the patrician in her appearance, passed for a housekeeper, round and russett, an intracate network of wrinkles, sherry coloured, lack of wine experience, Amontilliado is a yellow, amber, her teeth, natural, regular pieces of ivory, sharp, the charitable way of reading it, she inquired sharply, this is about Rachel, one so young, sharp-edged, unmaidenly, colour changes, the Poe piece [The Mask Of The Red Death], grey cloak for grey business, blood coloured gloves, ashen grey, she’s dead, elderly, why did she die?, she killed herself?, Rachael was somewhat of a narcissist too, she can’t stand to lose, the last word in an argument, a need for control, manipulates others, the ultimate selfish act, if she can’t have Ralph than no-one can, if she was less self-centered, those fugue states, she’s got the brain fever, depth mingled, unstable but also deep, allured, oppression, too heavenly purfumed, two centuries ago, she’s been alive for 200 years, a draught of cool air, she’s not infected with this age, is Venice like Mrs. Radcliffe paints in the Mystery Of Udolpho?, attempted murder then self-murder, if you read it strictly, she’s going to go to hell, or there’s no afterlife, to speak to Rachel’s character, dishevelled, living in the forest for weeks, ruin the event and her sister’s happiness, her death will be associated with her sister’s wedding, back for their honeymoon, she sought you at the old stone dragon, right anow, burst out sobbing, he knows that she’s dead, he’s mad at them too, bride’s blitheness, italian garden, Time, a bright web, lichened stone, my darling how much I’ve missed you, web hair, her spinning a web, a flower called crown imperial, a web of red golden hair, called right out there, foreshadowed, she may be weaving the fatal web, what a good story, it’s fantastic, such a shame that Gilchrist is not listed, he will be, bringing him more recognition, Romancing The Gothic, Daniel Pietersen, a collection, Tales Of The Weird, so many, William Hope Hodgson, amazing forgotten tales, an expert on Gilchrist, a nordic sort of spelling, son of stone, all the names are like that, Jesus makes a joke, Peter you are the rock I shall build my church on [“And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church”], Jesus got puns, I Am Stone, an introduction, the original artwork, some photos, tweet em or dm em, the art’s good, photos spread throughout the book, divides the stories into different categories, part 1, Dead Yet Living, part 2, Useless Heroes, he barely does anything, choose the girl that doesn’t creep him out, part 3, Of Passion And Of Death, part 4, Peak Weird, a region called the Peak District, A Witch In The Peak, awesome book, a great lecture, he really goes into it, more traction or inertia, it’s gonna happens, that book came out in 2021, 5 youtube videos with people recording, people are reading his book and getting excited about it, a bunch of money, pretty late, posthumous, read the whole thing, an editor from Valancourt Books, Wordsworth Books, 6 story collections, 4 non-fiction books, Heritage Auctions has really nice scans, we can fix up the insides, pulps get sold coverless, tried to push VHS tapes as a collectible thing, capitalism is so crazy now, pouring their money into fake goods, monkey art on the blockchain, a sealed copy of E.T. from 1985, trynna slab pulps, what they’ve been doing to comics for years, any copy of a comic book and put plastic all around it, you can’t open it up, a terrible thing, preserves them from rain and snow, we need one copy scanned cover to cover, [an issue] Fantastic Story magazine, Back To The Future (1985), a lot of stuff like that, if capitalism makes everything unaffordable, scanners count on cheap pulps in bad condition, people flipping them, pulps were not made to last, a shitload of pulps, old Playboy, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, the significance of Playboy, Hugh Hefner was a big player in civil rights, the Hustler guy, wheelchaired, people are not buying it for the stories, Hustler, a lot of men’s magazines, they’d make that joke, the quality of the stories is way higher, shots of beautiful women, and good writing, Jimmy Carter Playboy interview, I had lust in my heart, building houses for other people, five or ten dollars, disintegrate, just to have it and feel it, some of these are really small, bedsheet format, Australian pulp magazine called Aurealis, it’s tiny, the size of a paperback, a niche hobby, most people are not trying to read at all, audiobooks, people don’t like reading, computer games, sex websites, shitting on Trumpers, bookshelves, 100 books, 5 or 600 books, you have so many books, call across the planet to two different hemispheres to find somebody to talk to about it, doing a survey, do you have any books, can I see your books, a book somebody gave them, then they didn’t read any more, the continuum, only one genre, only one author, used to be rich, you could track that change in society, looking at the covers of paperbacks, several copies of the same book, original artwork, bins full of books like that, a little bit better, the early 2000s, nobody gave a shit, digital alteration, we’rent paying artists and graphic designers, people kept buying, the frills, how many mergers have caused it, when WWII happened, spawned an industry, before WWII, hardcovers and pulps, after WWII paperbacks are a thing, 1945 and 1985, mass market, other ways, book clubs, book of the Month Club, amazon, goodreads, audible, not coming back, Shakespeare’s still around after 500 years, still a little bit around, much more arts oriented, the movie industry, almost no kids know how to watch movies now, Millie Bobby Brown, can’t sit through a movie, watching people gaming for 7 hour, every media is different, literally training involved, it’s really hard to play Dungeons & Dragons, no learning curve, its free, a video game, more intuitive, doesn’t require you to think as much, the game is as fun as you can make it, not an activity engaged by young people now, it is, how old, 10 to 40s, all kid culture, stopped doing it at university, a lot harder to get together, serious problems with reading and watching movies, other role playing games, a subculture, not a popular activity, smoking weed, even TV out, TV is done, broadcast television was streaming, it wasn’t a million channels, we know what the score is, full circle, some final thoughts on The Stone Dragon, Witch-In Grain, listened while processing, culvers are mentioned, it’s a dove, with human faces in that story, a peacock, birds, a pelicans, birds are symbols, flowers are symbols, so many theories, the wrong mythological thing, a vampire story?, greek mythology?, there is a set of answers, there’s a dragon it was stone, and a very solid weird tale with a lot of decadence, it’s great, The Castle Of Wolfenback by Eliza Parsons, Horace Walpole, 1767, a little after, 1793, recommended by Isabella Thorpe in Northanger Abbey, Midnight Bell, The Necromancer, bald stone, the popular books of their day, referencing an older book, this is something, line by line, it’s dense, gothic horror, gothic romances, 13 year old girls, a lot of time and no time, 30 hours long, they come in volumes, written is a serialized fashion too, this book isn’t finished, let’s see how the first one does, a luxury item, hog wild, Alexander Dumas, the unabridged The Count Of Monte Cristo, who the hell is this guy, where the word subscribe came from, the etymology, Waverley by anonymous author, Ivanhoe by the author of Waverley, Sir Walter Scott, all these anonymous book, you would sub scribe, a piece of paper at the book stores, isn’t that amazing, the call or text you, your new copy’s in, the way podcasts work and all that stuff, Tom Standage, pretty good, works for The Economist, An Edible History Of Humanity, The Writing On The Wall: Social Media The First 2000 years, the Romans had a mail system, who’s getting married, obituaries, when we get to the modern electronic era, telegraphy, all the LOLs was all invented back then, pay by the letter, telegraph, a lot more expensive, humans never change, next big project: Gay Life In Melbourne, so funny, so spicy, we need some funny spice, with Will, moved pretty fast, full of innuendo, smokin hot, some sex worker’s picked up a guy, the reader’s not supposed to know, they knew, steamy and fun, our book on 1000 years ago, out of Arabic, Koran number 1, Richard Burton, 1,001 Nights, Ali Babab And The Forty thieves, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, old white Europeans, he’s technically in Europe, Tarzan, born out of mud, a crying baby, an antelope comes by and adopts him, invents all our theory of science, a history of science, opens up his mom, her carcass, the heart, 10 years ago is the cutoff, Three Body Problem, wait 1000 years, teach us something, it was pretty funny back then, people were always as horny, it there a more horny animal than the human being, bonobos, grazing moose, fight with males, females observing, peacocks, ostentatious display, how humans go about this, wars literally fought over, Helen of Troy, men are performative for men, women are performative for women, women looking at women on instagram, how to get big muscles, big money, explanations and stories, The Stone Dragon, about reproduction and passing the money along, read Typee by Herman Melville, disposable, fruit is within reach, food is everywhere, and girls aren’t jealous, Donald E. Westlake, An Empty Threat by Donald E. Westlake, girls in the south seas, Madagascar even, the only African country never colonized?, an island, read a book on it, pirates from the carribean moved to the richer grounds of the Indian Ocean, girls don’t demand much, run the business for us, retirement for pirates, a mere 89 pages, a dozen illustrations, an 80 page story, In The Dwellings Of The Wilderness by [C. Bryson Taylor], fun reading too, if not something else good, names of the places, justice to Melbourne, already recorded, end of July, at bad times, Mad Max!, different time schedules, 8pm, three hours earlier, Oscar Wilde, pretty short, Martin Geeson, Confessions Of An English Opium Eater, The Loved Dead by C.M. Eddy and H.P. Lovecraft, controversial, so funny, out in 7 months, slowing down production, not doing music for each one, a Weird Tales, Egyptian mummy, western archaeologist uncover a mummy story, slash vampire, short novel, Lion Of Tiberias, The Moon Of Skulls, H. Warner Munn, The Werewolf Of Ponkert, the one that Lovecraft inspired?, Robert E. Howard’s Wolfshead, a weak story, Bobby Derie, Howard didn’t understand what the person was saying, The Green Room, typos and random errors, a good ghost story, he sticks the ending vs. goofs up the ending, Walter de la Mare, when you’re a gymnast, not a funny guy, falls flat in a horrifying way, scaling back production, all this old stuff to do, producing something every week, not enough research?, I gotta get something, grindcore, there’s people doing everything now, recently updated, this is a really good story, done the next day, awesome gems, a dreamlands style story, House Of The Mummy Men, Hunt The Space Witch by Robert Silverberg, Lawrence Block, Frank Cain, from Manhunt, Mike Vendetti, shudder pulp, Lovecraft and Howard are dead, knock-off magazines, sex versions of Weird Tales stories, spicy horror, Test-Tube Frankenstein, chops up earthworms, rejected by the agent, Theodore Sturgeon’s Microcosmic God, neoterics, imposes restrictions on them, building aluminum structures, he’s god essentially, a banker who’s trying to take advantage, taking the shape of people, they eat people, invents shoggoths, mad scientist Frankenstein, crackerjack, The Flower-Show At Kwaliz by Herbert Tremaine, good enough for H.G. Wells and Arthur Conan Doyle, beautifully illustrated, dreamlands style story, tripped up on a flower contest, middle eastern past alternate dimension, a hundred pound prize in 1920, good stuff to be found, why have we been handed this certain canon, incompetent or non-existent estates, August Derleth is a good guy because…, there are a few situations, the power of the writing mostly sells itself, R. Murray Gilchrist guy, a huge reputation at the time, Robert W. Chambers, popular novels of romance, The King In Yellow and a few other things, this is really extraordinary, this I Am Stone book, copyright is a lot clearer (at least for Jesse), 80 new stuff, two dozen good people, Mickey Spillane, some good writers we’ve kind of forgotten, some way to narrow it, by following the stories that other authors tell us to read, anything Bobby Derie mentions, he doesn’t review, just found a never republished story that’s partially unreadable, a really bad scan from Fantasy Fiction Telegram, The Green Book by Duane W. Rimel, doing it for the love, Mike Vendetti has already done it, this is very Dunsany-like, H.G. Wells said it was good, kinda trust Arthur Conan Doyle, my spiritual afterlife, the original flower fairies that he was writing about, trolled, powned, may have oversold that idea, into spiritualist, seances and stuff, interesting to find out if it is true or not, 12 – 13 years, 10 years, ghosts don’t really make any sense, liches totally real, works either way, people start looking like other people, she thinks he looks like his dad, gotten older, scruffy mustache, sometimes people look like their parents, Mimic, Mothman, spoiled, audiobooked a few times, late last year, a new Westlake novel just dropped on LibriVox, go to a source in the states, amazing good stuff still to do, nobody knows who he is yet, these need to be accessible to people, start to take notice, making a difference, give them a little something that they know, two novels and one short story, Fondly Fahrenheit, superpsychotropic, you must own nothing but yourself,

“He doesn’t know which of us we are these days, but they know one truth. You must own nothing but yourself. You must make your own life, live your own life and die your own death … or else you will die another’s.”

all speaking to all, the premise here is, killed or kidnapped, either a human who owns an android or the android, brain problem, conflating himself with the robot, the only thing he owns is a slave, it’s awesome, subsequently cleared, spurious claim, ignorance or dishonesty, no estate, left his apartment to his bartender, gonna be so fun, who knows?, the name may be enough, queer life, we’re done, Tasmanian adventures, got me a thylacine?, nasty little buggers.

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #777 – READALONG: Zero Cool by Michael Crichton

The SFFaudio Podcast #777 – Jesse, Terence Blake, and Cora Buhlert talk about Zero Cool by Michael Crichton

Talked about on today’s show:
1969, very impressed until the end, there’s a DVD, he re-wrote the book slightly, opening and closing chapter, the etext, old man Grandpa Ross, nephew, grandson, Todd, a very non-60s name, was it true you once visited Spain?, Grandpa nobody will believe this story, DVD?, it was a true story!, of course it was, you could get videotape in the 60s, these two sections are not in the original book, historical document, became famous, Janet Evanovich, a SpongeBob t-shirt, considered dated, it doesn’t work, complained Stephen King under the Bachman name, if I fix it up, replaces contemporary references, puts the Smurfs, flashbacks to the 50s, all the tech is of the period 1970 or earlier, Stephen King’s shitlib politics of today, 10 references to the Republicans are bad, in the middle of this book, words left out to make it shorter, some words were put in to make it explanatory, no other pattern, stylistic, the additions at the beginning and the end damage the center, he’ll soon know about my falcon, it’s not first person, you can’t have that frame make a lot of sense, kind of a James Bond story, two James Bond villains, Herve Villichez to playh the count, henchpeople, character actor, no voicebox, machine gun when he answers the door, a strange omission, changes hair colour, editing mistake, Karin is blonde, Angela has dark haired, blonde on the original cover, Eric John Stark, on the Hard Case Crime cover Angela’s the beach lady, raven haired, the nurse, Karin, European Karen, what was Angela’s actual profession, henchwoman, she’s not working for the count anymore, a few moments where the rug is pulled out, a radiologist standing on a rug, rugs all the way down, she pulls out a gun, where’s the jewel, if I give it to you what would we do, we’d go to Capri, I don’t trust her, pretty good, not great, on the latest cover (from Blackstone), didn’t notice his girlfriend had been replaced, stubble, she’s a transwoman, she hasn’t shaved for a while, very progressive, movie logic, not that different today, in colour, people have cellphones on the beach, Costa Brava, young attractive women, families, he didn’t have eyes for them, show off their bodies and get seen, another holiday he went on, he sexed it up, what percentage of the book do we not know why anything is happening?, 60%?, our Hari Seldon figure, Sherlock Holmes’ smarter brother, Mycroft Holmes, some of that was fake, round numbers, you’re both watching the show, the count, James Bond villains interests, perfumes, falconry?, and you’re a dwarf, cognitive estrangement, he’s not as smart as you thought he was, very pastiche, the whole doctor thing, radiologist, gynecologist would have been funnier, an autopsy, like a Hitchcock plot, more Donald Westlake, disappointed, not the right relationships to his experiences, facts he likes to throw down, shortest lifetimes of all doctors, exposure to radiation, that changes it, back at the hospital, extext?, republished with a new intro and new extro, breaking it down, really missing some core goodness, The Last Run (1971), a big jewel that Montezuma had, lost and found, in the Bermuda Triangle, that’s what you say grandpa, that’s another story, solve it, what does the grandpa story do?, successful radiologist, daughter or son had a son, didn’t marry Angela, what did this adventure prove?, nothing, the center story is an anecdote, makes the book less, looking for an idea, radiologists see things in black and white, the conversation wit the blonde, accepts him as a lover, the game has no rules, how detective stories or thrillers or whatever ultimately we mean have no foundation, it doesn’t work on the back end, a kid’s eye version of reality, thinking grandpa is cool, don’t tell any of my friends, grandpa tells sex stories, contradictory personality, pick up hot girls, he’s 11?, he might say that ironically, he aged backwards, a screwup, fine with it, doesn’t react in the right way, he had children, an interesting video, Caleb Maupin, American communist christian, why the liberals turned against Michael Crichton, State Of Fear, a rich kid, he went to Harvard, we knew these things, high graded kids, really smart, not that great academically, clever, interested, not the ultra rich, traveling to Europe, not glamorous, becoming democratized, part of the jet-set, travel to Egypt and Spain, Amsterdam, Nice, Cannes, he’s not there on a Eurail pass, life experience, reading paperbacks and being a doctor, rich assholes, those are his people, drinking beer on the beach, not doing his medical stuff, good at doing the cramming, Hunter Biden is a lawyer, you don’t have to be a good lawyer, pass the bar, test intensive, ways of cheating, medical school, wanting the title, not how he defines himself, a lot of people will do that, I’m a filmmaker, I’m a writer, a confection, supposed to be sweet, made up of a bunch of things, no major nutritional substance, a Philip K. Dick book written by Michael Crichton, a massive list of these?, set in the Spanish hotel, pretty good, a computer path analysis, not very big, Odds On, an island hotel, Scratch One, Easy God, Egypt, Grave Descend, Drug Of Choice, Binary, set a very high bar, ranking these, the most substantial, the best fun book, well written too, somewhere in the middle, too long, Harold Robbins, doctor stuff, doesn’t stay and dwell, drug aspect, perfume acting, hawks use their sniffers?, maybe Jesse is wrong, he personally has discovered, what does it add to the book, murderhawks, having a gun, the count, traveling is Spain, Grenada, that’s going in the book, ok, that’s cool, one or two European locations, it’s all fake, a commentary on vacations, really well structured, no major commentary on reality, there’s something to it, Grave Descend, ranking, the order in which we read, on a high high, three good ones in a row, starts off really well, stuck with the smuggling and the snakes, Jesse why don’t you write a novel, inauthentic hurts, Jesse can you write this for me, originally it wasn’t his name on the book, just money, that guy is a different guy than the John Lange that wrote it in the 60s, embarrassing, the central plot of this book, not something you’re supposed to think about, a beach reader, an airport novel, a little deeper, wanting to do something and not having anything to do, something to do, tomb raid, the puzzle of that, if it were told from another POV, from the femme fatale’s POV, why is this stupid radiologist in this book at all, erectile dysfunction, a republican presidential candidate, mirrors of each other, two forces coming together, a science fiction novel painted as something else, a show like Magnum, P.I., anything cool, it’s mentioned in there, he has zero cool, cool title, surprised you’re taller, not the exact age, I’m a doctor, I’m a writer, but you’re six foot four, basketball players are tall, prestigious college, librarians have classes, football players are big, in reality it’s a bell curve or something like that, North Americans are smaller than north Europeans, Dutch, notable, clothes, made for completely different, 6 foot 9, join my football team, that’s a basketball player, goal keepers, guards, take up more space, something that probably happened, dropped his sunglasses, because he’s rich, he’s a doctor, he’s tall, above the norm, what women want, 7 foot 9 is preferred, we’ve got a dwarf, uncomfortable, he’s not a count, a descendant of Montezuma, a similar story, Sharpe series, Bernard Cornwell, your peninsular war porn, Sharpe’s Gold, treasure in Spain, the TV adaptation was written by Nigel Kneale, surprised, the cross cultural exchange, the conquest of Mexico, writing it for a film parody or satire, finding this corpse, why is he being obtuse about it?, Washington Irving wrote about the Alhambra, what was he doing in pain?, Edgar Allan Poe went to Scotland, trips to Europe, far fetched and weird, worshipping in the right way, the moors, going underground, witchcraft in England, the protestant reformation, semi-plausible, a lot of implausible stuff, the professor could have had his own book, Hari Seldon, a proto-Hari Elsdon, his book is The Dynamics Of An Asteroid, a supergenius and a dwarf perfume collection, what happens to Tex?, the humour aspect, wacky development, I will put you in my dungeon, am I supposed to buy this as defiance, a parody of those things, Peter Ross, he’s nobody, we’re supposed to be him, he’s chasing the girl, keeps getting pulled off track, German, Sindey Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, two other Peter Lorre roles, being the bad guy, the sympathetic villain, at least 25 characters, random henchpeople, the guy with the voicebox, one and dones, some random guy with women’s clothes on, why is this a good idea, wacky, the pulling the rug out at every opportunity, Karin with a wig, when we get the first time someone gets sprayed with cologne, overhearing his captors, very interesting about the splatter on the ceiling, the height of the ceiling, another character, the cop has him in jail for murder, his girlfriend, boy is he mad at her for five minutes, the author is telling us we know that the character is not privy to, trying to work with Michael Crichton, a mystery to be solved or something else, the prison scene, the embassy walk on character, this may have happened to him, still garroting people, a joke about Franco, an East German guy, a false passport, until 1975, during the Franco era, the last Spain book, The Clash, during the Spanish Civil War, police on the streets, go on holiday in a pretty nasty dictatorship, the background, Portugal was also a dictatorship, a revolution, members of the E.U., school atlas, a developing country, it’s not in the first world, just slurs, the Third World doesn’t mean developing country, at one point he starts describing an assassination attempt on Charles de Gaulle, The Day Of The Jackal, unknown motivation, a hardboiled noir story about a deeply philosophical idea, he gets sex, non-Spanish people for holiday and sex, eat some food, drinking the beer, going to the pool in the hotel, socialized, reading books, the bastardization, updating and framing, some of them are really good, we did the best ones first, had we started with The Venom Business, in print with Blackstone, saying it’s like a Philip K. Dick novel is a high compliment, more boobs, fairly rapidly forget Zero Cool, retain an impression, we had a good talk out of it, those three are a lot more memorable, reminded of a lot of scenes, rich guys obsessed with something, easy girls, sand, which one was Zero Cool, easy come easy go, the original covers, the top row vs. the bottom row, by the 1970s, is this the order of publication, the target audience, why anybody would read those, people are hard to understand, James Michener, if you try to talk to people about them, The Mists Of Avalon, the reason Terence read this book, Hard Case Crime cool covers, reading books for weird reasons, The Name Of The Rose, this book is full of references, so big, conspiracy in the Vatican books, The Da Vinci Code, unstoppable steamroller, run for high ground with your old Heinlein paperbacks, a pretty good fantasy book, why would anyone read Fifty Shades Of Grey, taps into class?, some era of people, even if you aren’t reading it, that chatter, a Scandinavia book, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Swedish politics, Men Who Hate Women, an airport paperback for very short flights, thin paperbacks, five-six hours, people read old books in old books, television at home, I Love Lucy or Star Trek, go out to a movie or read a book, as a form of casual entertainment, audiobooks are replacing that, the paperback genre, a drugstore spinner rack, the new format size, mass market size, fit in a jacket pocket, back pocket of your jeans, super-portable, reading can become a fashion accessory, on a bus holding a paperbook today, justify the price, is larger better for the printer?, more glue, more ink, a bigger format so it feels more substantial, cellphones started getting bigger, folding phones, if you’re going to pay $2000 for a phone, people are kinda simple that way, controlled by the price, it can radically effect the book, perhaps the reason to add those opening and closing chapters, older books, bigger fonts, small and physically thin, break your wrists trying to read a book, too many characters, too much running around, a lot of scenes in Scratch One like the scenes in Zero Cool, early on in the book, the French feeling of deja vu, a sample on Audible, the girl on the beach, the restaurant, the relationship with the girl, I love you, that femme fatale role, never bought into it at all, half a villain, happened at the end, epiphany at the end, can’t we punch this up a bit, I don’t really buy me, sarcastic, more along for the ride for a lot of it, not contributing much, not the long arm that got him out of prison, she was in the same room, did you kill that guy?, she did get him out, they’re the same guy, switching sides, not his best book, watch The Last Run (1971), read Binary, Drug Of Choice, Easy Go, maybe Grave Descend, whip up something for dinner, Cora’s dad, really annoying, needs to go to the gas station, you tell him how things are, move on to other Crichtons if necessary, The Andromeda Strain is a solid book, Eaters Of The Dead, Antonio Banderas as an Arab, The Thirteenth Warrior, AD 922, 1976, Norsemen, Rus, a retelling of Beowulf, a real guy, the Marco Polo of the Arabs, lies on the copyright page, fake notes about references to actual incidences, a meta-text, The Great Train Robbery, Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland, super-funny, he put all his good stuff in one book, cold and clinical, as a piece of writing, really cool science fiction, coming out of a different writing system, make sure it’s a good one sometime, The Terminal Man, 2nd novel under his own name, serialized in Playboy, epilepsy, a brain pacemaker, let’s do it, a plutonium power pack, takes place over four days, pre-cyberpunk, Elon Musk’s computer brain interface, read by Luke Daniels, right after Lowdown Road, November 12, gluttons for Crichton punishment, series about a girl, goes into adulthood, early 20th century, in the middle of WWII, why is she flirting with young men?, childrens books in the 1930s, heart racing trip across 70s America, CB radios are hot, 70s truckers movies, learning all the lingo, phrases that get turned into normal English, fender bender, CB radio jive, sex stuff, information, list of CB slang, Smokey And The Bandit, bear in the air, full grown bear, local yokel, a subculture of people who don’t have a fixed community that they live in, truckers live all over Canada and the United States, their community is their people they communicate, like BBS, Convoy (1978), a ballad, civil disobedience, authoritarian war measure act, you live in the capital, trying to get a meeting with the prime minister, protests are supposed to be inconvenient, gluing themselves to the road, idiots, a good cause, the method isn’t so great, the names of cities, Beantown, The Big Apple, why is it called that?, Cowtown (is Calgary), Disneytown, Hotlanta, California is Idiot Island, not all cited, Motorcity, Emerald City, Dallas, Texas, Rhymes With Fun, (Vagina) Regina Saskatchewan, super-ephemeral, preserved in film, a way of being connected, there’s an app for that, a way of being in touch with that community, same money different stamps, too slow, convinced, culture, a fun book, nobody knows really, Hayy Ibn Yadhan by Ibn Tufail, a book from 1185-ish, most translated text from Arabic, boy raised by a deer, the gazelle boy, supposedly a true story, the wolfchildren, has to keep up with his mom, a permanent baby, animal-raised children, wolf-children, never snake children, they don’t have the milk, dodo-child, extincted family, the self-taught philosopher, going after Avicenna, in the bosom of an antelope, Frankenstein, 2023 politics, Genghis Khan was really cool, it’s been a while, a conversation with Deleuze, nomads, Genghis Khan, trying to cancel Nietzsche, Jordan Peterson, so many people are triggered by him, read a Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, semi-ignorant, he’s not a politician, gives speeches, clean up your room, get married, you have to clean up your room if you want to get married, a simple idea, a lot of people need, good advice, very good on the Bible, Maps of Meaning, a rationalist, good analysis, thinking mythical, symbolically, more coherent than Slavoj Žižek, systematic ones, Sex And The Failed Absolute, that new movement of leftists, for Freud and Lacan, Less Than Nothing, more conceptual meat, youtube is not great for good feedback, participating in their engagement systems, corrupted by spam and failed updates, emails, moderation, because blogging was destroyed, rss is defeated, we defeated them, now were stuck, the other things, we’ll see, you should write a novel, 13 year old blog, why would I write a novel?, a terrible idea, buying a printing press, what if I typset it wrong, that’d be a lot better, Cirsova guy, magazines and books published, no feedback, lying, Jesse doesn’t want headaches, 200 people listen in the first week and a1000 over the next ten years, evolving all the time, people can’t believe their own thoughts, they want an official stamp of approval, the phyiscial copy of the book, Appendix N by Jeffro Johnson, Jesse loves blogposts, a real shame they’ve been de-platformed, what is Cory Doctorow doing, BoingBoing.net was a thing, probably still going, on Twitter, pluralist something, too much, his interests are not the same as mine, a really good science fiction idea guy, Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom, Robert J. Sawyer, interactions, his ethics are spot on, made a wrong turn, where’s my RSS, there’s no way to get them, there’s no ecosystem, let’s get that blogger who we really like reading, finding people who blog and bring them on, deplatform non-twitter blogging, and why did they do that, all consuming, this is where all those blogs went, jokes all day, threads, dream at the beginning of blogging, guest posting, dialoguing, narrow and eat everything, resilient against what google, trying to kill the internet, we can talk about our blogposts on our podcasts or youtubes, you in the past, no longer me now, vivid dreams, physical things, listening to a Doctor Who episode, politics, writing that down immediately, really interesting this guy is brilliant, different medium, short stories are also weird and hard, putting on a play, people want dialogue, arbitrary rules, Terence reads Jesse’s dreams, a cliche from the past, plans for the future, tell me when you want to be a doctor in the future and ride a horse, “last night I dreamt”, boring people have boring dreams, stress dreams, obscure kinds of dreams, a warehouse full of product, I need this capital, assorted chocolates, Sigourney Weaver, dark alien chocolate, mam, something about xenomorphing, esprit d’escalier moment, Bob Hope had come to visit and someone had ordered 36 cases of red wine, the sociology of dreams, social class, different jobs, not the last word on dreams, last night I dreamed, just a fantasy, just a joke not a dream, Baldur’s Gate, people are doing it for themselves, she had a white dove in her hand, a long black sedan, the inventor of non-philosophy, François Laruelle, this is close to a non-philosophy dream, a door to the beach, translucent toaster, little feet and hands, it’s organelles glowing yellowy, Mr. Punch, a living alarm clock, back to back, a supplement to this analysis of The Road Warrior, pithy, concise, observing everyday life, cash reserves, a reverse Edith Keeler style, vintage 1960s money, the purpose for my time-travelling, it was garbage day, broken bicycle pumps, dozens of photo albums, shiny new dimes, I audibly swore, a man stepped out of an alcove nearby, bud, the artifacts, we are collecting across the whole stratum, there was a lot more work ahead, that guy stepping out is me, these are like experiences you become amnesiac to, they can’t leave physical scars, you’re ignorant of them, phases, seven years of writing dreams down all the time, 2000 dreams, the old reflexes, read it again and put a title on it, it’s good, it gains in meaning, not wanting to write it down, this is really good, I need to remember this, the only way to preserve, loses the detail, the extemporaneous immediacy, it didn’t come in text, not copying and pasting, the sleepy voice is not present in the experience, the transposition is good for the dream, writing it down the first time is the definitive form, typos, get it all down, always start with the same word, dreamt, he’s talented, an art contest in Israel, takes job, 120 characters, transport all this stuff to another blue sky, it won’t be public if it’s not there, deleting tweets, major typo, spelling rules in French, straight away, part of the archive, reconstruct your life in 212 years from now, let’s bring Terence back online, somebody like Bobby Derie, sure he was racist about spaghetti, but he also says good things about ravioli, full of soybean oil, spaghetti’s feminine, you choose the stars, macaroni, they all taste the same, with our brains, which one should I choose, the cheapest one, call up Mr. Job, a good show and good talk, curse Jesse a little, see if you like it, mutilated versions, ThePirateBay, the 1971 film with 4 seeders, qbittorent, reddit is a really horrible place, so censored, super-censored, people talking about the letter mu, qbittorents the new mutorrent, what a great website, more bitcoin to give them, mined bitcoin, windshield repair, heat the apartment from mining, it might be a classic, as philosophically deep, philosophically famous, she’s got a Hugo as well, a lot of location based, southern France’s roads, a boy movie, there’s a girl in it, a pretty substantial role, plays some games.

John Lange books

SIGNET - Zero Cool by Michael Crichton

Hard Case Crime - Zero Cool by Michael Crichton

Hard Case Crime - Zero Cool FEAT. Grave Descend

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

The 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

Posted by Jesse Willis Become a Patron!

Reading, Short And Deep #398 – Cat Killers by Donald E. Westlake

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #398

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Cat Killers by Donald E. Westlake

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.

Cat Killer was published in Shock—The Magazine of Terrifying Tales, September 1960

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #713 – READALONG: Ghostland by Edward Parnell and Like A Thief In Broad Daylight by Slavoj Žižek

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #713 – Jesse and Connor Kaye talk about Ghostland: In Search Of A Haunted Country by Edward Parnell and Like A Thief In Broad Daylight: Power In The Era Of Post-Human Capitalism by Slavoj Žižek

Talked about on today’s podcast:
a novel, a memoir, Edward Parnell only wrote one other book, the writing life, The Listeners, 2019, folk horror, this is gonna be much like Mark Fisher’s The Weird And The Eerie, ghost stories, such a memoir, interwoven, to much me me me me me me me, the subject, the author’s story, invested by the end, because story, the emotional hitter, commercial, television movie references, television adaptations, it hits like a very specific and narrow memoir, rambles to look at the places that inspired the writings and the people to live there, an hourglass and a skull, time and death, The Wicker Man, a raven, forests, the ghost of the grim reaper, bird imagery, bird watching, taking pictures, survey work, notes, on the website, key figures, Shirley Jackson, Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, the British landscape, Susan Cooper, Walter De La Mare, Algernon Blackwood, William Hope Hodgson, Tam O’ Shanter, artists, Houdini, most of the assessments, The Night Land, The House On The Borderland, The Ghost Pirates, when he encounters them, children’s authors, Lucy M. Boston, the Green Knowe series, Mr Jim Moon, Jim Moon is this guy, media influenced him, Hypnogoria, The Children Of The Stones, the Doctor Whos, Quatermass at the end, Quatermass And The Pit, the 1979 Quatermass with the planet people, my brother’s dying, my mom has this disease, more literary in the UK, a really good publicist, we get Ready Player One, nostalgia tied to something real, attracted to these works, loss and death, inexorable forces, reading ghost stories and horror stories is therapeutic, therefore private and not to be read by anyone, three underlines, she goes blind, the period of time when these things are happening, the present day, this journey I’m taking through time and place, an enthusiastic book reviewer, Skule Skerry by John Buchan, Buchan’s best supernatural story, Edward Parnell’s brain on paper, he likes birds, an emotional book, leukemia, being in highschool, we’re friends is we’re broken in the same way, the opium we’re addicted to is weird fiction and horror, they’re not facing it again and again, the ideology of rom-coms, an extensive movie collection, a binful of movies, not happy movies, prison movies, science fiction movies, drama, The Lack podcast, eerie in fact, romantic comedies are ideological, this is fun, crime action, thriller drama, a very narrow opiate, facing the scary thing, escapism, escape from the horror, the black pill and white pill, horror is also escapism, emotional catharsis, cocaine bumps in the bathroom of a gas station, jump scares, two adaptations of Oh Whistle, And I’ll Come To You, My Lad, Michael Hordern, mumbles and putters, I just want a happy movie, films about cancer, Caterpillars by E.F. Benson, phantasmagorical light that consumes him like a cancer, metaphor, The Voice In The Night, pathos for people who did nothing wrong, lepers but worse, throat cancer, influenced, why does this stuff exist, upon first seeing The Wicker Man, it’s not fair, a bit of a jerk, a bit of a prude, that’s terrible and that’s the point, Arthur Machen’s The Cosy Room, everything is fine, everything is good, everything is fine, everything is good, everything is fine, everything is good, he can’t help but think of it, weird fiction as opposed to horror, The Willows, what we know about reality, Flannan Isle lighthouse, lighthouse keepers went missing, a D&D module based on The Sleeper by Edgar Allan Poe, you open the house and there is all the food set on the table, cooling, where are the residents, a true short story not based on reality, The Lighthouse by Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Bloch finish, The Lighthouse (2019), something bad is going to happen, a true event, how much is embellished?, was it really warm though?, was the candle still smoking, Horror Of Fang Rock, no physical trauma from the page itself, themes and experiences one step away from reality, overdramatic, getting mad at the film, banal evil, Howie goes to the school, Rowan’s desk, a beetle tethered to a nail, that’s him, this poor thing, desensitized to the banal cruelty, if you grow up on a farm, a sacrifice, animals in there too, pigs and chickens, accept that sacrifice as a requirement, a purpose to the sacrifice, this doesn’t accomplish, just torture, do you really know that?, no school shootings on this island, The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, the answer is not in the story, tradition, eating meating, I’m a vegan now, I choose what goes into my body, to great success, growing up in this tradition, a good ghost story, media things first works of writing not done by committee, Nigel Kneale, new Star Trek, it’s not really terrible, I’m still watching it, I’m not super-disappointed, the pain is so much less, written by a committee, hit these beats, too contrived, and dishonest, memes, fully grokking memes, even dishonest memes are honest in a way regular media can’t be, trying to make a point, resonating with somebody about something, an Avenger movie, Iron Man’s looking defeated, out of wormholes, that feeling that is generated in that moment and that scene, that meme’s stickiness, take that vision and adapt, The Tractate Middoth, not single vision or adapted from a single vision, committeed and commercial, reach exceeds grasp, why is that?, I would recommend it to other people, one sort of subject, his loss, flower language, his own personal truth, forget that, self exploitative, no falsity, all genuine, you need to punch this up, it hurts in a way that is genuine, people who haven’t had it will never be able to write that in a way that is at all convincing, cancer in media, not-genuine, the cancer film industry, dementia, making Connor angry, a cheap emotional device, genuine or ungenuine, I don’t need to know that I can fake it, the Our Opinions Are Correct podcast, Cory Doctorow on writing about guns, incorrect details, why should I care about something you don’t care about, a modified SIG Sauer, that style of writing is a mistake, really interesting ideas, Unauthorized Bread, loading the toaster, there’s the story, the details about any particular scene are there to get you to the ideas, maybe I didn’t need to read this whole thing, it’s a sign, gone to the place, confined to Britain proper, based on the experiences, the story reviews, how The Willows works, what trips Algernon Blackwood took, he found a dead body, how disconcerting, upsetting, traumatic, no wonder The Willows, Stephen King’s The Body, based on reality, that’s how kids are, especially boys, a dead body!, your currency in the kid community, years later, you remember that time we found a dead body, yeah the one I found, perversity comes from truth, a bullied short guy, responsible for the gyms we see all around us today, gyms are everywhere, too early, way ahead of his time, Physical Culture magazine, a McFadden publication, Ghost Stories, Liberty, the eugenics movement, WWI, the wrong location, go where the success happens, being a Hollywood movie star in Austria, atomic physicist in a backwoods community with no cyclotron, Jo Walton’s Among Others, witch, reading a lot of old fiction, the depth of the book is not there in the same way, is this the house where?, do you know anyone who was alive when?, looking at birds, the interleaving in, the journey itself, daytrips, communicating those experiences, his phone, sourcing the text message to get the date, 1982, February 15th, Tuesday, sciatica, 292s, I’m reading The Hobbit to the kids, on chemo, he’s dying here, there’s something wrong, a long term list of goals, I’m on a death path here, it can’t be true, don’t look it up, at the core, who is this who is coming?, a helluvah phrase, on the beach, the figure is coming towards him across the sand, this inevitable force, incomprehensible but coming for you, cancer, dice being rolled happening constantly, the wrong number once to often, no control over it, bad decisions, started smoking again, Korean ginseng, selenium, Steve Jobs, there’s hope, you don’t want there to be hope, we had fun, we talked about the old days, we joked about my hat, spend more time with the kids, say hello to mom and thank her, a good cry, horrible trauma for the whole family, not wanting to be there, I couldn’t be there, did it cut too close to the bone?, making it worse, completely helpless, taking people’s mind off it can make it worse, joking around as best she can, I’m a pirate, not something you can talk to kids at school about, didn’t want to be pitied, or treated differently, taking notice, they’re adults they know a little more about it, the heroes if there are any, the medical professionals, helping people out of wheelchairs, a kindly word here or there, service, nobody did anything wrong, if we could just get some more money, rumors and hopes, what’s it gonna kill me?, beyond formal treatment, do the things I like to do, eat delicious food and smoke cigarettes, you’re going to make it happen, make the kill, make the death, make the die, the big push against cigarettes, cigarettes = cancer, there are reasons that people smoke, regulating brains, wiser, a trip to Vietnam, drinking beer, cigarettes are very expensive in Australia, half my rent, 50 cents a packet, maybe I’ll try smoking, I just enjoy smoking, benefits to smoking (not related to the actual consumption of tobacco), social things, to avoid social awkwardness, something to do with your hands, cosy up to, gotta light, vaping actively as social?, astonished by the amount of smoking in the UK, no adverting, covered in cancer, shock policy, driving dangerously, drinking, selling cigarettes, working class, I just hate these images on the packet, Player’s Lights, a cool drawing of a sailor, a cancerous tumor, $12 a pack, Connor was a drug dealer, synthetic hallucinogens, herbal stuff that was unregulated, on the edge, don’t hallucinate at the gas station, off the radar, addictive?, alcohol, can you use fiction that way?, some new thing every time, genre is so established, this little tiny niche, fulfill any particular niche, going back, what was anthologized, The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper, a pre-Harry Potter hit, Alan Garner, too late, kinda kiddy, an interesting mythology, am I gonna get that wonder and amazement hit?, it’s raining outside while I read this book, we’re connected, what we do on this podcast, running out of good books to read, key figures, Robert Aickman, Arthur Conan Doyle was deluding himself, self-delusion, spiritualism, for the propaganda he did during WWI, in service of government some, Sir Anthony Hopkins, go an fight the hun, originally his own son died, Teddy Roosevelt, Kermit, cognitive dissonance, a peripheral figure, Rupert Brooke, died in WWI as usual, Robert Burns, bisexual, rewatching Star Trek, why is Star Trek so good, what I know now, what Roddenberry said about Wagontrain in space, a space western, Oregon trail, more like Kung Fu, crossing the country, The Littlest Hobo, like Lassie with no owners, island hopping, a particular idea they’re going to explore, allusions in the episode titles, digging into these things, the title of a Star Trek episode, this is a wonderful place, typical human reaction to an idyllic, ah the Tahiti syndrome, an amazingly hard to understand poem, probably gave a baby to, This Side Of Paradise, death is terrible because we won’t be together bodied, the horror of not being together forever perfectly in paradise, really about something, being disembodied together forever, the wise, the older people, I don’t want the real world, she’s going to get old, he died young, a truth you can get in poems, I’m going to write a star trek episode, what if you are an old M.R. James style man and found a whistle, there is no relaxing, an insubstantial book, we lucked out then huh?, educational, definitional, the history, it turned out to be a lot more, researching folk horror, 1993, it’s very new, a realization that this is there, one of three movies, The Devil Rides Out (1968), Witchfinder General (1968), a secret cult, Vincent Price, The Blood On Satan’s Claw (1971), a confection for the film, fantastic elements, a Hammer movie?, there is a monster, folk horror with a monster, an evil being, literary vs. filmic, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Ritual (2017), Midsommar (2019) the definitive folk horror film, a new folk horror essay, misunderstanding all the bird sequences, the diversity of bird wildlife, they don’t have big animals in the UK, hedgehogs and birds, foxes, they decimated their mega-fauna, black bears, keep your head on a pivot, trainspotting and bird-watching, snakes AND marsupials, a million different marsupials, a good aspect, genuine interest, part of his brain downloaded into the book, talk to somebody with a common interest, a family of birdwatchers, Like A Thief In Broad Daylight by Slavoj Žižek, scattered, what’s his overall theme, two follow ups, more focused, Žižek blogposts, a compilation, excellent at breaking them down, an unpopular main mode, jokes, some Yugoslav country, is smoking permitted?, of course not, you will find ashtrays in the room, he loves jokes, youtube something, mannerisms, the weird show, the thick accent, a lot of ideas, experiences, related through an almost obsessive collection and interest in jokes, not insanely bad, the officials in charge have no senses of humour, George W. Bush, the joke is him, invasion of Iraq, and Iraq too, he is exactly what he’s condemning, a dim bulb in a high position, folksy charm, a monster, a little jokes, self deprecating or you deprecating, Power In The Era Of Post Human Capitalism, getting banned from YouTube, an echo chamber, the joke is on him, they all bought it, “right wing”, “left wing”, we just do our best, it may be, humour is crucial to that, being able to discuss a subject you have no power over, you have pain, what can you do about it, relief against pain is having a good laugh with your brothers, you’re sick, connected to Australian politics, fucked up Canadian politics, have an ignorance off, a new party in power, the Labour Party in Australia, centrist, Marine Le Pen, the far right French candidate, a choice between Nazis and a middle that is capitalist realizing us to death, it has to get pretty bad, Macron is a neoliberal, the emergence of independent candidates, teal candidates, blues and greens and reds, environmental disasters, COVID, ideas about energy, renewable sources of energy, the temperature is rising in Australia, we can’t stop coal mining, torn, progressive energy policies, conservative policies, France, the left is muted and not that progressive, the Green Party, social welfare support, free education, renewable energy, an elected senate, appointed by the Queen on advice of the Prime Minster, it’s going to take a lot, majority vs. minority government, a lifetime membership, civil liberties are not important, massively corrupt, a war with nuclear consequences, the biggest cheerleader, brinksmanship, he aint that wise, painting his face, his dad was president (his dad was prime minister), inertia, hugging the leader of the party, keeps that party going, the party of capitalism, we have to live on this planet, NATO has got its hands on stuff, go on a podcast, read a book, talk about that book, encourage guillotine research, start with all the guillotines, it will get out of hand, he hasn’t worked for that newspaper for a long time, quoting Margaret Thatcher, Nancy Pelosi: “we’re all capitalists here”, I go to hotels with my girlfriend, I smoke, I give a speech somewhere, a conscript, performing cunnilingus, is it true you perform cunnilingus?, across the army base, the real concrete problems we see around Europe, what is really going on here?, a joke, talking with, irrational when it comes to some things, Taiwan fighting to the last man against China, no negotiation, irredentism, if Australia was invaded, Mad Max 1 and The Road Warrior, be in that biker gang and talk about the Toecutter, one tank of petrol is about 300 km or 2 hours, intercepting tankers, occupied by another country, you have trade agreements with China or we’re all putting you in concentration camps and gassing you, Ukraine, an Australian version of NATO, WWI, entangling alliances, the war didn’t start in 2022, the shelling of the Donbas, we’re free and fair, Victoria Nuland’s leaked call, this is who’ll we’ll go with, a coup, don’t keep expanding capitalism to eat everything on the planet, Richard K. Morgan’s Market Forces, conflict investment, how to make money from war, literally what happened, a realignment happening, Republicans aiming for the poors, we’re anti-war, $40 billion, the squad, the fake left leaning part of the party, lining their own pockets with taxpayer money, inflation, utter corruption, we need to know what the problem, hence the suicide, delicious sandwich and more jokes, the slow suicide, enjoying his wine too much, published 2018, as you’d expect, he’s reading the newspapers, he’s seeing what is being said, running it through his critical thinking filter, finding falsity there, different from the United States, their propaganda spills out, YouTube, China’s youtube, such weird big films, films set in China, to fit the market, up for another book of his, he has an idea machine gun, spraying the pages, a review from goodreads:

“Zizek moves from subject to subject, not like a ballerina flowing in graceful movements, instead, it is more akin to watching a very fat man who often slurs his words attempting to jump from one stone to the other only to slip and fall miserably-only then preceding to get up and say something that’s actually a rather profound interpretation of a culturally relevant product.”

a really interesting dude, from idea to idea, Black Panther, he’s not a snob, a regular person’s point of view, seeing them for what they are, not every idea is of equal value, really important and profound and world moving, why was it such a big hit?, the CIA’s job is to be there, they’re the heroes, assisting these other countries in Africa, once you start watching a movie with military equipment in it, as much hardware as you want with script approval, bro out, Top Gun, the miltiary base bar, Connor bought a motorcycle because of that movie, Mad Max (1979), Lord Humongous, the sociology of the Mad Max George Miller universe, this is a cult, they’re larping, the world is going to shit, the cops are corrupt, there’s crime on the roads, larpers scaring the old people, hack his own leg off, the whole premise of the movie Saw (2004), a collander on his head, the Smegma Crazies and the Gayboy Berserkers, American football, chest protection, makes you look cool, real life becomes a bit like that, wars in Africa, shit got so crazy, bizarre costume, wigs, horrific shit with genocide and murder, shamanic ritual, the Worker Party, George Galloway, woking everything, what if I told you was a woman?, what if I told you I was seven years old?, everybody is equally willing to let everybody else larp, you do you, let me be, let everyone be, that’s not the end of it, you say you’re a dog, foxkin, Evan’s theory about the Klingons in Star Trek, they stopped doing that stuff and started larping, hitting each other and talking about honor all the time, like Samurai, cut their topknots, cutting fingers off, full body tattoos, cultures in, not breaking kayfabe, pumped up guys throwing each other across the room, put on a display and show, a shirt that says “GENDER”, Toecutter being a very important member of this gang, Billy getting indoctrinated, a social constructionist, a good Parnell and Zizek, more like these please.

Like A Thief In Broad Daylight by Slavoj Zizek

Ghostland by Edward Parnell

Posted by Jesse Willis Become a Patron!