The SFFaudio Podcast #707 – READALONG: Villains Of All Nations by Marcus Rediker

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #707 – Jesse and Evan Lampe talk about Villains Of All Nations by Marcus Rediker

Talked about on today’s show:
Atlantic Pirates In The Golden Age, 2004, the narrator, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, And The Hidden History Of The Revolutionary Atlantic by by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, a lot of overlap?, the hydrarchy, dueling powers, bottom up, from above, the authority of the sea, abolitionism, the Putney debates, sailors are the threads, not the best scholarship, a concise argument, struggling with evidence, where the sources are weak, correct conclusions, a longer book, right on almost everything, a claim in the introduction, women went into piracy and discoursed on gender, a means to discuss those things, class, race, gender, the dual terrors, really convincing, to talk about terrorism, the Noam Chomsky arguments, state terrorism, the War on Terror, something not mentioned in the book, the Jolly Roger, to make the icon on twitter, the colour, the black flag, the black standard, 2014, 2022, the ISIS flag, 1716-1726, the last phase of the golden age, the barbary coast, book piracy, Captain Phillips, the excuse for Djjibuouti, corporations from all nations, not just contrast, these are not satanists exactly, not conforming to Christianity’s authority, why Roger is so jolly, the second meaning: fucking, making merry, what the pirates want to do, party, dancing, getting drunk, merry Christmas, a warm glow, happy fucking, death is coming, a momento mori for the whole ship, they know they don’t have long, as an extended slave rebellion, fly away from danger, and fly to party houses, take their stuff and go party with it, an intellectual history, how liberty and the French Revolution (and the American Revolution) coming out of it, Black Sails, 1715, the Bahamas, declaring war on the whole world, Charles Vane, John Rackham, Mary Read, Benjamin Hornigold, Blackbeard is not what you think, a prequel to Treasure Island, pirates don’t bury their treasure, an egalitarian society, an adaptation of this book the themes of democracy, maroons, runaway slaves, one of the best arguments, revenge, they purposely went after the slave trade because they despised it, they hated slavery, they slowed down the slave trade, and what caused their persecution, hurting them where it hurts, modern day connections, the propaganda against pirates, Cotton Mather, we gotta not send our children to sea, sea conditions are so bad, pressure against regular against internet piracy, Kim DotCom got raided in New Zealand, so much piracy has been domesticated, the Napster stuff, albums in the 90s had one hit song, I can just get the one song, how this becomes tamed, you wouldn’t steal a bike, everything its on youtube, spotify, ads, streaming for movies, 50 different streaming services, a wave that won’t go away, the Azov battalion, Ukraine has a Nazi problem, they’re on our team, the propaganda against pirates is needed because they’re attractive figures, Robin Hood is a folk hero, he and his merry men are there to have fun and make hay while the sun shines, figures to be made fun of, gallows humour, the church is something you can’t trust, Ivanhoe, everything bad is King John, free men hunting in the kings woods, outlaws, wolfsheads, making outlaws our outlaws, ‘Al-Qaeda is on our team is Syria’, the U.S. is funding Al-Qaeda in Syria, strange bedfellows, this book is about power, one of the responses to Rediker, pirates were petty capitalists, making a separate social order, a more rational marketplace, when markets matured pirates weren’t needed anymore, same propaganda to tame them, rock and rollers, so rich, Neil Young and Spotify, a monetary move, apply pressure, Joe Rogan’s ruining the world, if we think of rock and roll connected to be being merry and piratical, siton your treasure, he never was a punk, Lipstick Traces, counterculture, punk was never that mainstream, an ability to sell-out, they’re not gathering funds for a mortgage, cruelty from the masters, low pay, bad food, sickness, disease, a revenge principle, Nietzsche master morality vs. slave morality, the romans worshiped power, being cruel to your slaves was moral, a new religion coming from the east, Greek tutors, turn the other cheek, rotting in hell vs. living in heaven, the way of peace, the whole state apparatus, a capitalist realism way, a more sophisticated tool, Christian pirates (nominally), put them in slavery, kept them sick, injured, not enough alcohol, I’m a devil worshiper, inverse slave morality is no respect for authority, our only god is death, our only god is making jolly, not sustainable (they lost), a human lifespan, the particulars don’t kill piracy (just this golden age), without ourselves against those who wish to control us, you need to pay for my profits, not getting what you were (supposed to be) paid, a revelation to see it as a slave rebellion, the main plot point, Captain Flint, a particular treasure ship, dissatisfaction, ahistorical, quartermaster emphasis, Rackham was on Vane’s ship, fuck Treasure Island?, Starz, Spartacus is very class conscious, focus on sexuality and human bodies, the children’s book, where it veers, Flint’s overall goal is to negotiate with the capitalist system, I will be your king, the most ahistorical part of the show, it shocks the boatswain, there was no alternative to kings, there was no country without a king, Holy Roman Empire republics, England was the most democratic place on the planet, Florence, on the Roman model, the rise of empire, consolidation, Italy being turned into a country, when Germany gets its shit together, the way the Prussians thought about it, they way we’re teaching historical narratives, new interpretations, critical thinking, why do we make our narrative a history of states, progress, why is that the case?, France becomes a nation state by repressing local culture, the same propaganda, speak the same language, the Yiddish Press in New York, super-socialist, anarchist, communist, teach them English, that’s happening today, imposing a state on the sea, brutal violence, public hanging, pardons, the power dynamic is not as monolithic as it is here, suppression, lockdowns, kicking people off platforms, George Galloway, a former Labour MP, RT has been banned, Russian State Affiliated Media, Ed Schultz, Abby Martin, Chris Hedges, no Russian content at all, interviews with Cornell West, interviews, commentary and criticism, nobody gets a pardon anymore, applying to faceless corporations for review, African slave trade, the Royal African Company had stockholders, hope for their ship to come in, make new laws, this will solve things, sea-raiding, a pardon for all piratical activities, a free pardon, the buccaneers and the privateers, state mercenaries, Europe was in constant war, now you’re a warship, letters of marque, part of the defense budget, how it works with Al Quaid, stingers, 9/11, Osama Bin Laden, bad dirty feet on our holy soil, declaring war on the most powerful, the invasion of Iraq, disband the army, ISIS, let’s focus on Syria (what’s important right now), we’ve got a pipeline to put through, the pardons are not publicly stated, those guys were Nazis ten minutes ago, deathsheads on their uniforms, the ADL say they’re not Nazis, whipping gypsies in the street, a critique of capitalism, the origin of Capitalism, an expansion of one chapter, the share system, pay vs. shares, pre-money, the Romans, constant war and expansion, paying their troops with slaves, land too, but mostly slaves, fucking around in Gaul for a decade, enriched by the slaves, a co-op, the CEO gets paid more than a line workers, pirate charters, 1.5 shares for a captain, captains murdered by their crew, reading and navigating, reading, the quartermaster, the connections to the tribune, a stupid system in Canada, senators are appointed for life, party loyalists, tenure, untouchable by federal party in party, senatorial removal, 9 supreme court justices, a super-reactionary institution, political appointees, a quartermaster as a balance to the captain’s power, states on a ship, in battle they are at war, the articles are their constitutions and the captain is not their king, writing that first constitution, tradition, Artistole, the Athenian constitution, the Iroquois, “on account”, bandits and pirates, Eric Hobsbawm’s Bandits, an escape valve, providing hope, releasing the pressure a little bit, redistribute the wealth a little bit, stickin it to the man, the signing of the articles, I never signed onto the constitution and I never will, signing up for the Boy Scouts, a non-sea shanty, an implicit submission in that song, the U.S. founding fathers worried about this, Thomas Jefferson, re-write the whole thing every seven years, after the Civil War, repealing prohibition, voting rights, getting rid of slavery, defining citizenship, signing on, churches are even better at this, a class, confirmation, the age of consent, by reading from the Torah, confirmation for Christians, 13/14, at the beginning of your adulthood, adult baptism, children can’t consent, Jesus was baptized as an adult, re-baptized, born again, anabaptists, the Quakers, the puritans, religious nuts, strong opinions, the Putney Debates, debating class, authority, aristocracy, the New Model Army, spread these ideas, these tendrils of knowledge and discourse, across the Atlantic, carried by the sea, in H.P. Lovecraft, The Call Of Cthulhu Castro, a weird cult that no-one in the straight society likes, the interview, Cthulhu promises us freedom in this world and revelry, we’re not going to be slaves in this world, we’re not going to mortgage our lives, Cthulhu is beyond good and evil, same with the Deep Ones, immortality, kings under the sea, freedom in the sea, the same language, Robert E. Howard’s pirate stories, The General History Of Pyrates by Charles Johnson, disrespect for hypocrisy, the Voluminous Podcast, Howard was offended, how crime works in the South West, wanting to have children do better, pioneering, moving to get away, gun culture in the USA, keeping guns to keep the king honest, you better not come into my house, the fear and escalating via swatting people, we need to be able to crack down, Black Panthers are getting uppity, open carrying weapons, Paul has respect for the state in the way that Jesse does not, the police are there to keep order (or as the unfair captains of states), not sharing with the workers on the ship of state, having access to the ship’s store of arms, the Roman dictator, going to a frontier, the tradition, relinquish the power and currency and disband their army, not bringing armed troops into the city, to keep the state afloat in the right way, thinking of nations as something of value, everybody has a blue and yellow sticker in their twitter bio, a good person always trying to help things, people are suffering, teaming up with one state against another, inescapable capitalist realism, a badge or a patch, swearing to obey, submitting to power, if the captains hides information, the incident with the dresses, no guard on the shared hold, how dare you, to be sold at auction, a hint in the opening episode, John Silver, a cook, hiding something of value from the crew he’s joined, open up the books, if you can’t read, we have to rely on our representatives, in collusion with the captain, on a small ship of state with a black flag, connecting with the creation of the USA, the John Locke connection, the provinces, Providence, the state of Massachusetts, the spread of these ideas, writing fiction, show grammar, a thinly veiled description of the Boston Tea Party, dressing up like Indians, we are the natives of this land, we are protesting, we are barbarians, what January 6th was about, British provocateurs in the Boston Tea Party?, the etymology of the word strike, sailors striking the sales!, is Evan super-jealous?, Pacific history, blackbirders in the South Pacific, logbooks, not many mutinies, the Bounty mutiny, near mutinies, someone was beaten, put in irons, protesting to the mate, its really tense for a moment, a non-shitty captain, Captain Bligh, near-mutinies were common, worried about the competition?, how upset would he be that Jesse pirated his book?, he can be upset if he wants to be, Peter Linebaugh is more openly political, May Day, the commons, outwardly political, The London Hanged, dense and hard to read and wonderful, violence against the working class in England, theft over a pound, transportation was the out, pleading the belly, on account I’m pleading the belly, Newgate, Belmarsh, Neal Stephenson’s The Baroque Cycle, a right-winger?, a believer in tech, tech salvation, gaols vs. prisons, commerce, prostitutes could come in, I’m a young woman, I steal a bunch of silverware, a capitol offense, wink at a guard, the name of Evan’s book: pleading the belly, Jack London’s south sea island books with dogs, Jerry Of The Islands, Goliah, such a great story, a huge book, The Call Of The Wild, a terrier’s pov, blackbirding, slavery by another name, The White Pacific: U.S. Imperialism And Black Slavery In The South Seas after the Civil War by Gerald Horne, John Barleycorn, Michael: Brother Of Jerry, this amazing place, Robert Louis Stephenson, Treasure Island, pre-homework, Tahiti, wife and step-kid, not an asshole, pretty cool, Travels With A Donkey in Spain, pirate charters, Daniel Defoe, Captain Charles Johnson, The General History Of Pyrates, fun names, Vane is a fun name, famous pirates, the two lineages of pirates, two families, jolly rogers, the final form, the dinseyfied version, the hourglass, skeleton, black background, paintings from the Middle Ages, Cockaigne, highly literate and oversexed monks, the land of milk and honey, hanging out with the nuns down the street, the dork version of pirates, making memes about what would be fun, waifu pillows, breaking out of the monastery, taking the ship of state and going a-pirating, cheese raining from the sky, a hilarious thing, a bottom up thing, something that comes down to us from such a long time ago, an interesting connection, all brothers of the sea, some sisters in there, not racist when thinking about freeing slaves, recruiting, make more liberty, make more merry, doing piracy today, the US military rules the seas, there literally in the Black Sea, the Red Sea, they’re on every sea, Aral Sea, the US Coast Guard is off the coast of Iran, maroon communities, places to run to, aggressive behavior, new society, new rules, the seas were a wild place, the taming of the wild spaces, where does piracy move to, this ethos, Jesse James, the outlaws of the old west, the Frank/Younger gang, the underclass, every man’s hand is against them, shot in the back while hanging a portrait, bounties, shooting outlaws, that outlaw spirit, crossing oceans, into boats, loading stuff on, an ability to trade and get things, you need to follow the more experienced person, how to navigate, before public GPS, how to tie ropes to the docks, you need to learn how to swim, like school, farming, harvesting, less fraught, the weather, time of day on the land, running your ship afoul, a need for skill, a need for respect, the pay is low, disconnected from most people’s lives, an anchor tattoo, a writer, a gay man, the merchant marine, a thing that profoundly changes a lot of people, the sailoring business, bully and bluff, a fight with Houdini, how terrible it was to be a merchant sailor, Luke Burrage, cruise ship, the talent vs. the crew, Philipinos, Malaysians, the global north, bullshit jobs, engaged in production, resistance is more significant, how we started this conversation, author and editors doing all this work for free, writing fiction for tiny audiences, late capitalism, teaching, our jobs exist (teaching) because of higher institutions, the byproduct of teaching is learning, the veins and the arteries, preying on the slave trade, railroad workers, the great railroad strike, Starbucks workers unionizing, the resistance and dismissal of the Truckers, the lack of acknowledgement of the yellow vests, blocking access and refusing to tow trucks, seeing Justin Trudeau, a war measures act in everything but name, seizing people’s bank accounts, Greta Thunberg, gas prices, ordering from Amazon, buying dog food through the mail, there aren’t that many independent truckers, the land problem, the original Mad Max (1979), two stories, the story of the toe-cutter gang, road pirates, reduced government power, incompetent government?, the life of the merry, disrespectful, the legend of the Night Rider, his scag, he falls apart emotionally, threatening communities, drunken, lascivious and rude, pirate swearing, a call for non-decorum, conversation in the discourse, some words are not allowed to be said, people with callouses on their hands, this is bullshit, the word bullshit is taboo, the constant replacement (euphemism treadmill), increasingly few kids at the grocery store, a kind of discipline on the crew, disciplined for expressing dissatisfaction, oppression from above, collegiality wasn’t written into the pirate codes, if we have a beef we have it out on the shore, formal and ceremonial and more accurate, somebody did some homework, making war on the world, we have this set, bringing all those sailors who are watching it, a lot of money, the right move, not enough sea-action, they don’t like sailing they like partying, sex and drama, Spartacus did it better, four season, Spartacus is so smart, Blood And Sand, the psychology is brilliant, my identity is tied to my , internalized their slavery, their favourite baseball player, a fraternity of players, what a big deal, when Wayne Gretzky left the Oilers to go to the L.A. Kings, emotional trauma, Edmonton is just so great, so naive and dumb, extreme loyalty, Any Given Sunday (1999), all about class, class solidarity, loyalty, I Am Spartacus, embracing his slave identity, we don’t know his real name, Batiatus, Crixus, the drama with the wife, the psychology behind being feted and respected as a slave, a star football player and criminally underpaid, baseball lockout, on the team with the guy with the tool in his hand, The Many Headed Hydra, Will would be get on this, Milton, literature connections, William Blake, Tyger Tyger, a radical anti-capitalist interpretation, horrible scary awesome creatures, the hydra metaphor, the hydra was the good guy, Hercules, the state has to be Herclues, on the side of the monster against the gods, Thungerb challenged her parents to lower their carbon footprint, becoming vegan, upcycling, giving up flying, popular with a certain set, Naomi Klein’s argument, we need to dismantle capitalism, a kid, George Galloway, Ed Schultz, Thom Hartmann is not a threat, running a political party, Jeremy Corbyn, being a bad pirate, a progressive, a left wing democrat, Predator guy, I ain’t got time to bleed, Minnesota, Jesse Ventura, state affiliated media, opposed the Iraq War, I will always speak out against war, there’s a lot of pressure to suppress, youtube, twitter, facebook, The Thing In The Woods, the author of the Velveteen Rabbit, a werewolf book by an American, something freaky about that book, it being a stuffed animal, stuffed animals trying to kill Evan, ideas for making money, a stuffed dragon with tiger print skin, Peter Rabbit, a horror story, Mr McGregor’s garden, a big white beard, god chases him around the garden, the bold one, he almost dies, Margret Williams, can you tell by looking at someone’s behavior that they have Asperger’s?, is Evan aspy?, is Eric Rabkin aspy?, spectrum diagnosis is very suspicious, always missing the context in direct messages, here’s somebody’s tweet and here’s my response: Jesse “I know other people are starving and unable to move out of their parent’s homes but I’d really like to quit my office job and write full time”, Jesse: “speaking of which, have you seen Hunter Biden’s meth mouth?” Evan: “He used to lick milf pussy. Sad.” a reference to Trump, laptop pictures, him with the milfs, lady on a chain by her hair, the president’s son whose existence was a non-entity until we find out he’s getting paid $50,000 [a month] for a no-show job in a country the United States is trying to steal from”, Jesse: “watched first episode of Moon Knight”, Evan: “does Squirrel Girl show up?”, Jesse: “not so far”, Evan: “Pity. She’s hot. I think she’s autistic. Can she be hot? She has a tail. Butt plug with tail. That is a thing.”, Jesse: “Wow.”, Evan: “watch more documentaries on porn hub”, Belmarsh Prison is in the latest James Bond movie, I was glad James Bond was dead, where they’re keeping Julian Assange, a previous Bond movie had a Julian Assange character, an evil program, smartblood for no reason, still talking about documentaries on PornHub, I can’t pay my rent, do they still have stories, why pornos still have stories, theories of story, stories are about conflict, Clifford Simak stories, conflict in the universe, Waystation, seeing things revealed, a slight misunderstanding for a minute, what stories are at core, you order a sausage pizza, that is a story, it doesn’t have any conflict, that’s a display (not much of a story), why do you need that at all, go right into the fucking, a forty minute scene, Emanuelle (1974), a full length feature film, tags, stepsis, same stories again and again, Jesse needs to study more, researching later.

Villains Of All Nations by Marcus Rediker

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The SFFaudio Podcast #548 – READALONG: The Ministry Of Truth by Dorian Lynskey

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #548 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Marissa VU, Maissa Bessada, Evan Lampe, and Terence Blake talk about The Ministry Of Truth by Dorian Lynskey

Talked about on today’s show:
June 2019, direct from the publisher Penguin Random House, the last chapter, the afterword, there are four lights, the first part, learned the most, an intellectual history, the life after Orwell’s death, a grab-bag of memes, the cold war, the conservative revival, too loosey-goosey, H.G. Wells, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, flat, comprehensive, how it touched other people, David Bowie, Star Trek, Babylon 5, it didn’t have that rigor (in the second half), a funnel, a shotgun, The Prisoner, the momentum is gone by 2019, how many places he’s infiltrated culture, computer games, blind spots, America was a blind spot, Orwell’s anti-Americanism, Trump, when you’re writing about history thirty years ago, perspective, Margaret Atwood’s appendix theory, a lot of bad theories, China and 1984, through the great firewall, censorship, The Guardian, June 4th anniversary, The Atlantic, why 1984 isn’t banned in China, the inner party is going to read it anyway, it’s at bookstores, Animal Farm, discussed in colleges in Canada, Hearts Of Iron IV, so deep, play Honduras during WWII, what officers in the army were active in Honduras during WWII, Paradox Games, insane on the details or mechanics, cannot be done in any other medium, fascinating, that they ban that, the meme of the day issue, PUBG, blood and gore restrictions (green blood), switches from being about Orwell and the U.K. to the United States after the war, the Apple ad, social media, fake news influencing the Taiwanese elections, who gets taught this book and who discusses it, how Orwell is used by the CIA as anti-communist propaganda, why so many people are forced to read it in school, school is indoctrination, training workers, who what huh?, what was your first encounter with Nineteen Eighty-Four, trying to learn about dystopian fiction, self-educate, a roman-a-clef (a book with a key), most teachers suck, who the fuck are those guys?, its not a kids book, Animal Farm is a kids book, propaganda, everybody wants to take control of Orwell, anti-totalitarian, notice how its not considered science fiction, she’s a stumbling block, she is double thinking when she says her book is not science fiction, in her mind, the pulpy fifties sort of stuff, a wilful blindness, voluntary ignorance, an article on Margaret Brundage (for Playboy), I’m going to write a science fiction novel, I’m going to write a utopian, a massive list, We is public domain, E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops, I’m inside the machine, I worship the internet, just like the lady in the story, Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy, the premise, H.G. Wells (the guy most responsible for modern science fiction), in response to Looking Backward, the Bradbury Building in downtown Los Angeles, she uses the appendix theory in The Handmaid’s Tale, she needs that hope, had Orwell lived, Wells gets dragged, nobody likes Wells’ later stuff, H. L. Mencken’s review of Wells’ later stuff (The Late Mr. Wells), When The Sleeper Awakes, Mack Reynolds, the problem is everybody has a good income and no jobs, no waiters or waitresses, no service jobs, everybody wants meaning (and there’s no jobs), The Unincorporated Man by Dani Kollin and Eytan Kollin, that book nobody reads anymore, the turn from utopia to dystopia, a theory that’s just an idea, people trying to fuck with George Orwell’s statement for their purposes, how everybody can take ownership, this is how you guys are, high school sci-fi class, libertarian teacher, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut, kids are malleable, the books you read when you were young, Brave New World, look at this!, these are books that exist, who’s the publisher?, questions that never go into the mind of a student, Adbusters, slick production used against slick production, the best books tell you something you already know, I’m being gaslit, I’m not crazy!, that Goldstein book, literally true, did they create it themselves?, The Plague by Albert Camus, realist vs. allegory, a movie version of The Plague starring William Hurt, the Hurts hurt, the RCMP, anti-American imperialism, the Chinese threat, afraid of conscription, looking back do you see the hands?, staying with the Queen and following America’s lead, why we read the books that we did, the “free market” trying to sell books, not just the free market, Shakespeare for social purposes (rather than a CIA plot), The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, the legacy, the same books still being pushed, a certain number of novels in the curriculum, The Hunger Games used in school, massive cultural impacts (from inertia), The Prisoner is Nineteen Eighty-Four, the village is perfect, everyone has a place, a child of 1984, spook-life, political expediency vs. moral obligation, the new Big Finish The Prisoner, what makes the dialogue authentic, all questions are turned on their heads, number one is number six, why Atwood’s theory is bad, when the telescreen echoes words, doubling dream-like, nothing is on fixed ground, is it even 1984, write new reality, the one book, a healthy body is a negative, physically weaker, turning them into infants, that instinct is within us, I want a pillow, the Big Brother reality shows, make me a star, I like being babied, people would volunteer for prison, no problem for most people, does it matter (most people aren’t going to read it anyway)?, the Internet Research Agency story, if this book was written in the 1970s, the Muller stuff, okay Rachel Maddow went too far, a political hack who doesn’t even know what’s in his own report, political interference, Honduras, why are 80% of the refugees Honduran, a passing reference to Milton Friedman and the Shock Doctrine, Chile, the U.S. Empire, not a major part of the story, Airstrip One, is Britain in charge or is Britain a colony in 1984, post national, the difference between patriotism and nationalism, a good and natural thing vs. an artificial and evil thing, a connection and fondness for them, when George Orwell went to fight against fascism, ok I have to fight now, when you submit to an authority, Blake’s 7, that opening episode is absolutely drawn from 1984, they call him a pedophile and insert memories in order to convict him, the solution (never stated) is anarchistic group of people who do not love Big Brother, even on Star Trek they have to follow orders, Terry Nation’s Survivors, the “good fight”, working with warlords to take down the Taliban, dishonorably discharged for telling the media about warlord sex-slaves, why the good side lost, nobody conscripted them, about nationalism, the state more than the nation, the Michael Radford movie of 1984, national symbols, nations are constructed, French culture, the French state, the books that are important to you, a nation is a project, what Oceania meant, they control the world through the sea, not nation names anymore, Orwell is seeing what’s happened to the U.K., The Marshall Plan, no victory here, V-J Day, this book published in June, no mention of BoJo (Boris Johnson), neoliberalism, ideology is what’s missing, Boris Johnson and Donald Trump don’t have ideology, the alternative facts are just to make them look good, damage control and self-promotion, not having an ideology is the ideology, double-think, he’s lying but he’s revealing what other don’t want to say, you don’t need an intellectualized theory, a gas that’s everywhere based on double-think, who gets to do the gas-lighting, story after story about alternative facts, Cube (1997), Cube 2 (2002), owners, making fun of a conspiracy theory is a conspiracy theory, Noam Chomsky, The Wall Street Journal, it’s not the focus, preferred candidates, the staff of RT is former MSNBC employees, Jesse Ventura, Minnesota exist in theory, the dominant voice, the subtitle is what sold me, The Biography Of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, a birth, genes, afterlife, more books like this, a negative review, Bellamy is the soup that’s in the culture that you’re building on, an overall trend from utopia to dystopia, so valuable, all the stuff that was listed, a lot not mentioned, the number of respondents to Bellamy, William Morris’ utopia, we’re the sleepers, that opening line (much improved from the original draft), he was a very good writer, the previous drafts, what he took out, really interesting, Orwell’s personality, cruel to everybody’s babies, a fundamental place of honesty, I paid money for this they’re doing a bad job, no animosity for the writer and artist, not trying to be mean, Jesse fears he’s being mean when he ats Marissa, a smile with a thing, “Lies are the religion of slaves and masters. Truth is the god of the free man.” from The Lower Depths by Maxim Gorky, the quote in the book is not that quote, the spirit of the play(?), a drama in four acts, as hard as it is to identify the truth (very very very hard), if you don’t have truth as your god you’re fucked, if you were forced to fight in a war in the 20th century, of all the fascist dictators was Franco the least worst?, Hitler, Mussolini, WWII was a battle against fascism, WWI, the Spanish Civil War, the Vietnam War, Maissa’s question (turned on its head), the International Brigades, Norman Bethune, the Great Patriotic War (in China), battlefield surgery, fighting for a principle, what war would you fight for?, what principles would you fight for?, Orwell’s Homage To Catalonia, pirate mentality, you don’t get 1984 without that, thinking on paper, everything that I wrote was directly or indirectly against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, so Pollyanna, lay down and die, if conscripted during WWII Jesse would like to serve Alan Turning’s coffee, his country didn’t love him, you love Big Brother (he doesn’t care), the mustache is not a Hitler mustache, more Stalin, no one escapes the tar-brush, Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, an important and good book, how to fight against your government your institutions your Alexa devices, the Google button that’s built in, on principle it’s a bad idea to be submitting so, the reason it has a switch to turn the camera off, removing the battery, electromagnetic field sensitivity, keeping his cellphone in a lead-lined box, its off in a certain sense, devices with no off switches, “Nvidia Shield Off”, if the book is going to be relevant after 1949, B.F. Skinner’s Walden Two, positive reinforcement vs. negative reinforcement, use pleasure, use fear, News From Nowhere: 1984, the discovery of Eric Blair, lack of any institutionalized government, the dream of 19th century anarchism, 10 hours is a reasonable size, so much is suggested, the appendix is important, revising history, you don’t read the Dune appendix, the Tolkien appendices, A Clockwork Orange, a missing chapter, as Eric Blair intended, Eric Blair hates vegetarianism, teetotalers, nudists, Quakers, sandals, fruit juice, Marxist slogans, pistachio coloured shirts, birth control, yoga, and beads, anti-hipster socialist.

And, here are Marissa’s notes about UTOPIAS & DYSTOPIAS mentioned in The Ministry Of Truth:

1516 – Utopia by Thomas More
1726 – Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
1771 – The Year 2440: A Dream If Ever There Was One by Louis-Sebastién Mercier (time-travel to future utopia)
1880 – Dr Heindenhoff’ Process by Edward Bellamy (scientist learns how to erase memories and guilt – Orwell’s Oceania-like)
1872 – Erewhon by Samuel Butler (satire)
1887 – A Crystal Age by W. H. Hudson
1888 – Looking Backward: 2000–1887 by Edward Bellamy
1889 – To Whom This May Come by Edward Bellamy (telepathy has eliminated crime and deceit)
1889 – New Amazonia: A Foretaste of the Future by Elizabeth Corbett (feminist utopia)
1890 – News from Nowhere by William Morris (agrarian, anarchist utopia – counter to Bellamy’s “cockney paradise”)
1890 – Looking Further Backward by Arthur Dudley Vinton (bigoted sequel to Bellamy’s book, nationalism + feminism have emasculated America)
1890 – Caesar’s Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century by Ignatius Donnelly (Minnesota congressman & original conspiracy utopia in which “paradise is carved out in a Swiss-owned Uganda while American capitalism perishes in blood and fire”)
1890 – A.D. 2050: Electrical Development At Atlantis by John Bachelder (Right-wing utopia, refugees from Bellamy’s failing Nationalist society flee to Atlantis, which is turned into a proto-Orwellian police state)
1891 – Mr. East’s Experiences In Mr. Bellamy’s World by C. Wilbrant
1891 – Freeland: A Social Anticipation by Theodor Herzoka (Austrian economist “the Austrian Bellamy”)
1891 – The New Utopia by by Jerome K. Jerome (Bellamy spoof, introduces “numbers as names” SF trope)
1892 – A Traveler from Altruria by William Dean Howell
1892 – Gold In The Year 2000, Or, What Are We Coming To? by J. McCullough (time travel to future utopia where men play golf)
1897 – Equality by Edward Bellamy (fills gaps in Looking Backward)
1893 – Sub-Coelum: A Sky-Built Human World by Addison P. Russel (conservative utopia, anti-“materialistic socialism”)
1894 – The Land of the Changing Sun by Will N. Harben (underwater society with gov of eugenicists uses scanning devices and psychological torture)
1894 – A Journey of Other Worlds by John Jacob Astor (A conservative utopia, [by] one of richest men in the world at time USA, dominates planet & seeks to colonize others)
1897 –”A Story of the Days To Come by H.G. Wells” (forerunner to The Sleeper Awakes)
1898 – The Sleeper Awakes by H.G. Wells
1899 – Imperium in Imperio by Sutton E. Griggs (first black utopia, Baptist Minister, son of former slave)
1900 – The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum (“a Bellamyite, to judge by L. Frank Baum’s description of his egalitarian society in The Emerald City of Oz”)
1905 – A Modern Utopia by H.G. Wells
1906 – Looking Forward: The Phenomenal Progress Of Electricity in 1912 by Harry W. Hillman
1909 – The Machine Stops by E.M Foster (scientific dystopia)
1915 – Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (feminist utopia)
1920 – We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (totalitarian state dystopia)
1923 – Men Like Gods by H.G. Wells (parallel universe utopia), HG Wells,
1932 – Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (response to Wells’ Men Like Gods)
1938 – Anthem by Ayn Rand
1940 – Darkness At Noon by Arthur Koestler (author’s disillusionment with the Soviet Union’s version of Communism at the outset of World War II)
1942 – Unknown Land by Herbert Samuel
1945 – Animal Farm by George Orwell
1948 – Walden Two by B.F. Skinner (utopian)
1949 – 1984 by George Orwell
1952 – Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut
1953 – Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
1953 – Love Among the Ruins: A Romance of the Near Future by Evelyn Waugh
1953 – One by David Karp
1958 – The Rise Of The Meritocracy 1870–2033 by Michael Young
1960 – Facial Justice by L.P. Hartley
1962 – Island by Aldous Huxley

The Ministry Of Truth: The Biography Of George Orwell's 1984

Posted by Jesse Willis

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

Podcast

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

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

Map of Arrakis

Posted by Jesse Willis

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

Podcast

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

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

John Kerry Code Pink

Dune by Frank Herbert (dustjacket)

ACE - Dune by Frank Herbert

Waldtenapes - Dune: A Recorded Interview

Posted by Jesse Willis