The SFFaudio Podcast #845 – Jesse, Terence Blake, Will Emmons, and Tommy Patrick Ryan discuss Odd John by Olaf Stapledon
Talked about on today’s show:
it’s good to be here with you homsaps, odd terry, just Tommy, not that odd, regular tommy, story between Jest and Earnest, story not novel, quite like, dislike, came around, comparing it to Philip K. Dick, who’s smarter, doesn’t have a frontal lobe, he has boobs, a failed superman, keep it all together, spoiler he dies at the end, we know that right away, what’s going on at the end, did Philip K. Dick read this?, doing a lot of the same things, The Golden Man, as we accumulate odd freakos with weird bodies, back to Terry, Odd Tom, a book by Koontz, The Crawlers, lifespans, an earlier figure, born in 1886, died 1950, 1928-1982, started writing before Stapledon died, 1935, where were we exactly, the superman the ubermench, 36 Olympics, Jesse Owens, before that, what was the world thinking about some of these ideas?, Nazis, genocide, Friedrich Nietzsche, amor fati [love or fate], pain and suffering, achieves joy, take joy in the pain of suffering, the eternal side of things, homo superior or not, the eternal return, the noble affiliation, not in the degraded Nazi affiliation, your fellow Jesse, hard not to use the term, that perspective that we now have, Superman, 1938, a lens from where we are, Shakespeare’s Planet by Clifford D. Simak, reaches out and touches the woman’s tattoo, living in today’s world, that would have been canceled, seemed enlightened, murders the policeman, find out about me, all the good I’m going to do, the treatment of Pax, she’s a cow, super-amazing kid, induced labour, in gestation for 11 months, bovine cows have very long gestation, silly stupid and important, mutant stories, golden skin, super magnetic to females, see into the future, he has no thoughts, his frontal lobes are missing, can anticipate all things, mutants that look like slug babies, aborted fetuses, parents unwilling to kill them, form a society, eventually an island, isolated and attacked by the homo sapiens, strikingly similar, these ideas are in the air, superpowers, weird features, telepathy, John W. Campbell thing, go backwards and forwards in time, psychic investigations, influence people, something like telepathy, when he collects up his crew, exterminates the natives, colonizes their land, how much of this book is an allegory vs. straight up science fiction, Sirius the dog novel, A Fantasy Of Love And Discord, a Clarke story, a joking answer, Stan Lee, David Bowie, better make way, more enlightened sexually, that’s in this book too, creepy, more serious, more of an intellectual, writing for intellectual purposes, make a buck purposes, more humour, more sexism, they both have it, the lens of 2024 me, Star Maker, Eric [S. Rabkin], gimmicky ideas, this can’t be taken completely seriously, what kind of abilities will man have, respond to Tommy and Jesse’s question, who’s smarter and by what means are we measuring?, Stapledon’s idea of intelligence, a philosopher, early adopters, Bernard Shaw, quite conscious of all that, after the war in France, redeem Nietzsche from the German debasement, signs of that sort of battle, in Europe, some of these ideas will be taken up and believed religiously, very intelligent in the conceptual sense, not cooked enough in the images and characters and storylines, Dick read Stapledon, Arthur C. Clarke was very influenced, the same sort of ideas, he read just everything, Dick came out of the pulps, there’s the island of England, he’s English and he’s intellectual, there isn’t as much crossover, A.E. Van Vogt, he’s reading the pulp magazines, not directly, doing the same thing, came to a peak, getting Clarkeian type ideas, proof of a real connection, presenting ideas in terms of breaking away from a philosophical treatise, Stapledon is only half-way there whereas Dick is fully there, obsessed at the end with VALIS and so on, the priority is the image, the character and the story, that’s how he vehicles his philosophical ideas, ideas behind his writing process, a more intellectual approach, up to Will to judge, make this about Philip K. Dick, Jesse maps, apples and oranges, different kinds of intelligence, very conscious of the things that he’s thinking and putting into his work, spirit, Will doesn’t believe in that, transcendent something, crisis of the spirit, a crisis of how we feel?, this about a do that doesn’t have hands and it really bothers him, we get where he’s coming from, a hypothesis about his process, very rich content, not always aware, Jesse now understands what’s going on, Philip K. Dick is the Golden Man he is the Odd John, what it is to be a dog from the human’s point of view, Stapledon imagined himself, at some points, an alien feeling, dissecting science fiction literature, the science fiction and fantasy literature of the Bible, what he means by that, kind of interesting, Eric and Tommy’s book club, not going to disbelieve anything, Scientology, specific Catholic dogma, there’s something more than just science, that spiritual project that they’re working on, at the end our narrator is hoping that they’ll finish their project, didn’t stop WWII, reading this as a parable, they make an eden after genocide, invaders from the outside come to their garden, don’t pull from the tree not yet bearing fruit, they’re naked, instead of being innocent, they know what they’ve done, these are evil people, in comparison to what?, the mercenaries that come to destroy them, telescopes and mechanical contrivances, the same project Jesus was working on, no more man against man, what he’s doing there, a mix, demythologized Christianity, affirmation of life, affirm the higher being, an ideal of Stapledon’s, our highest concern, our narrator, Fido, Pheado, Plato’s dialogues, brainwashed, they do horrible things, beyond good and evil, an attempt to describe what that could mean, allegorical, the same as the Nazi idea, the Nazis are deluded, these people are superior, failed, there’s a problem, a huge leap beyond human intelligence, hated in Dune, the inside mind of Paul, fused with the spice, mentat bene gesserit, weapons training, the thoughts of a superior being who thinks in language, telepathy at the end, totally superior but expressed in language, a human being compared to an ape, the treating people as cattle, the mom, sometimes described as dull and dumb, capable of all sorts of stuff, he’s action, she’s just making the home work in a mysterious way, the stupid question asked at the beginning, one is regarded highly in a certain class, there’s change happening, reading Stapledon, commercial success, more recent, Blade Runner (1982), turned into movies, in the consciousness, its important to get a stupid question to get better questions, always talking about novels, you should be but you’re not, his very important novel The Man In The High Castle, short stories are not well regarded, a status thing, our Fido character, damning Pax by calling her cow-like, knowingly writing a flawed work, Stapledon knows but the narrator doesn’t know that, Philip K. Dick doesn’t put together a novel this well, much better at short stories, novels are meditative, Poe, found it out this morning, the same story, an earlier work, canis superior, better than the other dogs, a better book, striving for the same thing, this book inspired that one, limitations of the dog, all the other animals, they treat the narrator as a dog, they’ll cut his balls off, we’ll do anything to them, church on Sundays, they can’t understand our spiritual projects, they’re mad, torn up the living room, tell this story again from the dog’s point of view, pitfalls, thinking about the sexuality that’s going on, homosexuality, jujitsu, switches to females later, everybody’s having sex with everybody, he’s trying to say something here, too Philip K. Dick stupid, not a roman-a-clef, a Socrates line, a fusion of Socrates and Christ, a homo superior we can attain, ugly but knowing about seduction, we did The Symposium, English respects the Greek more, he’s married, homo-erotic relations of uplift, Alcibiades, do you give up sex or do you sublimate it in a physical way, their problem at the end, they pluck the apple, a brief flash of the idea of this being the same novel as The Lord Of The Flies, how its forced on people, lie fallow and be fine, a curiosity and such, rescued by a British ship at the end, primitive communist, the horrible novel, to punish yourselves, doesn’t have the stamina for audiobook listening, podcast listeners, Terence’s comment is right, destruction rays, the original sin of murdering all of the Polynesians, conversations with the Soviets, do these other things, we like communism because its good, individualist communists, one of the real sins is lying, lying all the time, being deceptive, morally outraged by acting, so as to take your money that isn’t for entertainment purposes, are they lying about them being communists, throughout Stapledon’s novels, the official communist tradition, get his swipes in, earlier in the novel, fired for leading a strike, he’s lying to him, honest assessment, too hateful, stupider than Philip K. Dick, Philip K. Dick is or isn’t ideological, detailed and interesting, a specific attack, hitting at something that is more universal, what is being smart anyways (other than getting what you want), herd animals, wolves are smart, big cute eyes, puppy-like qualities, tiktok videos, replacement babies for many people, Glenn Greenwald, one of the moral heroes of the earth, a noble person, when it will be time to kill him, 17 years old, there petting, wearing diapers, great arthritis, talk about how intelligence is superior one to the other, when to put the humans down, going to the vet, they get the sense, how do we know who’s the smart one, they put themselves down, spoil the ending, they kill themselves, because they were homo superior, this is much more like the Heaven’s Gate cult, high on their own supply, smart and everything, not for our benefit, we’re on a project, reasons to do it, so, bye, I kinda wanna die with you, what’s going on?, these are not creatures looking down on us fondly, ambiguous or ambivalent, doesn’t hold together, moral supremacy, vaguely bad internet, moral supremacy falls flat, we can’t see it, we can’t understand because we’re homo sapiens, we can’t know him, to be the subject of a story, they murder a lot, suicide for their own benefit somehow, why kill themselves, you need an end to the book, a dark end, railed out of society, the author doesn’t do that, something missing, in the title, the life of Christ, impressing the elders, the temptation in the wilderness, John the Baptist, a preliminary sketch of homo superior in flourished form, a connection with daily life on planet Earth, Star Maker, the cosmic vision, Atlantis sinking beneath the sea, transcendence and imminence, do the bridge, a sketch of what homo superior could be, seems like Jesus, the forerunner, the precursor, the voice in the wilderness, more to tackle, Clark Kent yet to come, they can’t uplift themselves, the wolf boy, Hayy Ibn Yaqdhan by Ibn Tufail, the Egyptian, praise of Allah, becomes like him, Jacquline, that lifespan thing, us being dogs to them, having a dog is intrinsically associating with death, to treat it like your child, you might want to die, setting yourself for tragedy, the long lived elves in Tolkien, Tommy’s mind is mapped, the Dresden Files, Highlanders, the antediluvians, Methuselah, vampires, 1000 years old, Will’s art piece, a pug Cerberus, why are they so long lived?, magical powers like wizards, The X-Men, Wolverine is immortal, neoteny, we are intelligence because we stay in the womb long and we’re still not fully formed, the infancy is a lot longer as well, his precociousness is evil, the word naughty as opposed to evil, licked all the butter, he’s not going to live that long anyway, be more careful, confront the child about the cookies, you’ve been naughty, overindulge in cookies, set aside some cookies, this is a time for us to fight, you need to be corrected, whatever its for he kills a policeman, malice aforethought, studied for no good reason, of adult mind tried as adults, his level, he’s also a juvenile, precocious things, who hasn’t burglarized neighbours homes?, semi-rhetorically and for jokes, kill his wife at home because she’ll be sad without him, nephews 8 and 10, a 4th grade class, 9 year olds, self-aware, they know what’s going on, cookie jar metaphor, food fight, Eric says it, when you give your dog food it means I love you, the corpse of an animal, cats are better about that, capable of this act, kids doing violence, rational and cold, really disturbing, the inner workings of Odd John, emotionally or spiritually, he ought to be tried as an adult, bright 9 year olds, what a kid is capable of, he doesn’t overpower the policeman, kill the guy in a fight, studied anatomy, small for a 9 year old, when the cop caught him, a childhood prank, the exercise of that new found powers, when little kids do bad things, do we throw them away, set outside of society as a punishment, not suitable for among us, after a certain point, you’re not reformable, prison is for you now, schizophrenic, age out, mid 30s declines, there’s a logical chain to it, extra explosion of testosterone, aggressive tendencies, starting wars, is there really a point where we get less violent?, a lot less violent, diplomacy or good upbringing, diffusing situations, avoiding situations, also Thomas Ryan, looking for fights, they would fight club, its programmed in, a huge effort in society, an instinct for violence, self-defense, this other instinct to dig and build, the only reliable person on this podcast, hear everything there is to be said before Will’s response, the wise man at the end of time, the being that only suffers, doesn’t like to think about it, think about that being a lot, persuade us, natural normal and ineradicable, self-defense, internecine warfare, what violence is, AOC says those words a violence, in the context, playing chess, get to the language of it, metaphorically judo-flip you, call it violence, we gone of from there, ingroup outgroup stuff, we killed a deer in the woods, we might dispute, which group gets to divide the food, scarcity was a big thing, when capitalist arrange thing, you keep the thighs, the older hunters should, where soccer is super-popular, male spectators, a special age range, guy is digging some tunnels, they work together to build something, two real instincts, land reform is needed, force of violence will prevent digging, the violence is amped up, the Minecraft instinct, and the first person shooters, one is amped up and one is reduced, run the media, not representative of humanity, Jesse is more or less human, the appeal of both, a judo match, imprimatur for use of evolution, one of the scientific world building principles, wary of adopting a naive idea of evolution, instincts, and human nature, what Christopher Tolkien does, worth studying by someone, more to say, riff, improving through evolution, not a great science fiction concept, More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon, what’s the point of this?, war and fascism bad, pot-shots in, an essential idea, as a religious idea, a fanatical way, he’s on to something there, correctly observes, avoid all these bad things, pessimistic, we don’t have the hardware not to plunge into war and fascism, not scientifically supportable, not a useful intervention, we need to morally evolve, maybe biology can do it for us, a miracle, the ghost of Walt Disney, who liked the book, who disliked the book, push the discussion forward, his weakest effort, those stories managed to be compelling, Chris Claremont, high end stuff, University of Michigan, short and furry all over, a sympathetic character, having respect for Wolverine, he has a good heart, kinda savage, Cyclops is a total douchebag, a non-entity, they’re all suffering, Tommy is Wolverine, Nightcrawler, who are you?, weirdly popular, knives in his hands, wanna be Beast, Terry and the Pirates, when they came out, before Wolverine got in, Beast and Cyclops, before he turned Blue, the evolution continued, pleasure in the X-Men, the sinking of the island of Genosha, X-Men Annual 1, the same as this book, a million connections, an X-Men reveal part, take guesses, Magneto, Gambit, Canada is like France, Juggernaut, Professor X, school, Jesse is Jubilee, a late addition, sparkles is her superpowers, technically, more like Dazzler, two cabinets connected, six playable character, sympathy for Colossus, shooting them with your eye vision, Alpha Flight, Gaurdian and Vindicator, Sasquatch, Shaman, Chinese American girl, wapping up with a deep X-Men discussion, a good late take, this idea of human evoltuion is persistent, Joe Rogan, a popular idea that’s persistent, better than is done in Slan, the similarity to the idea of Slan, The Midwich Cuckoos, either Dick or Stapledon, not human, more alien in the sense of estrangement, one of the definitions of science fiction, how does Pax feel?, he sent visions of it, he kept her updated, mom, making a giant ray, postcard to her mom, nods sagely, some milk squirts out, emotional intelligence, the meditation model, the surrender model, Islam is surrender, I affirm the ending, the gap between and Stapledon and other people’s intelligence, a precocious boy, read a lot, what we see of this character, basing it on himself, the gap between him and other people around him, trying to communicate that, a gap between him and women that we see in Sirius, Plaxxy, it’s close, good call, the female is less well laid out, the gap between a dumb man and a smart man, whatever smart means, one of Tommy’s notes, Stapledon stand-in, a highly intelligent person, him being a consciousness objector during the first WWI, people just generally go along with whatever, does he have a religious excuse?, no, Bertrand Russell, ultimately is dumb, who he based John on, not easy to track down, Ludwig Wittgenstein, tortured genius, live in a cabin by himself, children in a peasant village, a new paradigm, take Odd John as a figure of a philosopher, some of his evolution, Wittgenstein’s 1st masterwork, 1922, a professorship at Cambridge, the legend around Wittgenstein, a vibe, a lot of the people are the same, Arthur C. Clarke, not normal people, they come up with their own ideology, they don’t subscribe to a system, he treats dialectical materialism like its God, an army vs. an individual, over time, one eye bigger than the other, African features, playing with something, things from their bellies, communists of somekind, bam done, couple of minutes, one more X-Men reference, H.G. Wells, the Morlocks, Nightcrawler, they all look weird, the old cartoon, a lady who looked like a baglady, they become less ugly as he looks at them, these other beautiful women, less pretty after her, when you look at your own dog, objectively that’s a beautiful dog, they are different species, bigger brains, bigger eyes, the H.G. Wells man of the future, nutriments through their skin, The War Of The Worlds aliens, grew up reading Wells, the sublime and the beautiful, the sublime in some ways trumps beauty, vaster and infinite, disproportioned, that’s a mess but more profound or impressive, Kant’s critique of judgement, back to Socrates again, the most beautiful guy in town, so much written in the X-Men, Caliban from The Tempest, Ganymede was a girl, in mythology, one of the cupbearers of Jupiter and his catamite, making a quadrilogy of the great mutant writers, doing a lot of good work, they’re not even called mutants, when it comes out, the word isn’t used, a sport of nature, early 20th century, sport?, a mutant, a freak of nature, good news old sport, good news old mutant, a dwarf Alberta spruce, reversion to the normal type, retained it, how does he produce the concept without the world, on faded page, sporting point, an ancestor, original mutation, they gave him opportunities, John’s a great little sport now, John’s a dear these days, very cute, 16 times, he’s clever, upset with the book, annoyed with it, disappointed than anything else, he does do better, you can go that way, not as powerful, Sirius is weird, dog/woman love, in companionship to each other, mutant and homo superior shit is stupid, ais, will they eliminate us?, what is intelligence, biological, the great replacement, how humans are creating their replacements, Battlestar Galactica with the cylons, really good and very fun, ultimately, Ronald D. Moore, a good solution to the problem, integrated with humanity?, they’re not really superior, photocopiable, an emotional exercise, when Philip K. Dick tackles it, if this goes on, he doesn’t end it with a suicide, it was all a dream, the island blows up and sinks, a cop out ending, I don’t know how to finish the book, how does Sirius end?, a vigilante gang, being very smart and being interested in suicide, you guys know about this?, from the Cross Plains Review, June 18th 1937, The Tempter by Robert E. Howard, who are you?, Alpha and Omeger, which Hagar, biblical, men call me Suicide, lusted for the resting as a lover for his bride, this world of human cattle, o’er the paths that I had wandered, pressed the trigger, my soul went gliding gliding, good smart boy, 2 days before he shot himself, the word cattle in there, a smart smart guy, isolated, surrounded by regular folks, a struggling writer, maybe all men consider at some point, pretty rare, teens a lot more, shownotes, an idea or a name, shied away from in modern talk, “put to sleep”, switch to bluesky, Gaza pictures with childrens’ heads blown off, scary descriptions, people’s dumb ideas about, floating around this planet for 7 or so decades, Albert Camus, the only philosophical question, Sisyphus is happy, The Host, very good for a mimetic story, Algeria, take care of a prisoner, meet some Berbers, not enough science fiction, another planet, make the main character a robot, more into science fiction, the robot makes it timeless, a play, Dirty Hands by Jean-Paul Sartre, heart failure, bad revolutionaries but good assassins, the narcissism of the deed, is this an op, calling for Luigi with Bat-Signal, the ops are in every direction, why did the FBI do January 6th?, against the assassination of trump buy for Luigi, yes of that dude, the place but not the person, capitalism would wake up tomorrow, there are bad actors, there are good actors, what he represents in his job, more security for CEOs, might backfire, was he insured?, buy a new CEO, estranged, 2 things going on, Luigi the hero, Luigi the folkhero, the guy who actually shot the dude, Luigi was probably the guy who shot the dude, carrying the manifesto, we’ll see, more video, people killing each other, news analysis video, a viewing room, this would not have been shown, censored as well, a pushing back of the barriers of what is horrible, videos of torture, seeing corpses, seeing someone shoot someone in cold blood, censored, Mirko in Germany, why retweet?, it is because it is horrifying and hard to look at, consensus tweeting, really twisted porn, something governments are supporting and we should know about, of course they don’t want to see it, we should stop this, it’ll go away, hey, that’s wrong, a bigger movement of people, fake or real Luigi Mangione, what do you do about Zionism, ideological, we could displace them but there’d be questions, that’s evil, he tries to make the case with the Fido narrator, just is evil, we are superior beings because we have superior lives, don’t accept the premise, Jews live outside of Israel, Iran has Jews, the idea of Zionism precedes the Holocaust but benefited from the propaganda of the Holocaust, forces that want to keep it going, hasn’t solved anything, we’re having a spiritual crisis, overly dense, wait a second, forgetting Hegel, moving forward, crises, collective conflicts, the objective, this funny thing, sing the praises of the creator, a transcendent spirit, something wrong with the book, post-protestant thing, he needs there to be a Star Maker, agnostics, wonder, awe, reverence, we can’t call it the Creation, make the atomic motor work, the Manhattan Project, how to make atomic energy, this panpsychic thing, they no longer obey causality, intuiting some sort of quantum idea, you could rewrite it, except for the influence of the mind, reified entity, the most reliable person, he’s anti-flaky, ideological consistency, you love him, upcoming shows, accusatory inversion, you can’t quit I promote you, Lilith, next year becomes mysterious and unknown to Terence, Deleuze and Psychoanalysis, a once a month course, high concept, access to the other courses, priming the pump, bootstrapping, a link or two to a friend, everybody needs to know about Deleuze, everybody needs to know about psychoanalysis, more unreliable, it runs for a year, Project Pope, E. Nesbit, The Railway Children, Jason Thompson, a magical imp, boomeranged, accruing some interest, Will has been studying many things, winter depressive mode, studying the inside of my eyelids, Theodore Sturgeon, a lot of Richard Matheson, the end of I Am Legend, he’s more successful than Stapledon, the homo sapiens consoles himself, and there’s a dog, supersolid, the best thing he wrote, Born Of Man And Woman, trick stories, if only Will Smith had suicide, The Last Spaceship, so long ago, June 2nd, before Jonathan passed away, passed in the night, the audio for it, William Sky, what to do, the consensus was, the goddamn thing was missing, LibriVox removed a whole bunch of stuff because Gutenberg removed a whole bunch of stuff, by different narrators, Paul Lawley Jones’ podcast Golden Age Fiction, The Boomerang Circuit, how Scott Miller [The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast] was removed from YouTube, fraudulent removal requests, living in Korea, takes Meg citizenship away, bye bye buddies, three separate stories, not technically a violation, all good narrators, Phil Chenevert, google suppresses everything, it looks good, H.G. Wells’ The Crystal Egg, a 10 hour show, trying to get ahead, the ‘holidays’ when Santa Claus is on the road, is Santa Claus jewish?, able to work on Christmas, also a robot, that Galaxy, The Yeast Men by David H. Keller, Robert A.W. Lowndes, gross and interesting, sense of humour, many episodes, many weeks, my greatest failure yet, The Weapon Shop, weird, fugue statey, Fury by Kuttner, wasn’t a good book, Jonathan suggested, he’s dead!, social media, self promotion, he’s in creative mode, how to way to be, too much mental energy, new stuff in, The Jameson Satellite by Neil R. Jones, suicidal ideation, Josh Horotwitz, read it in paper, this guy is good, more recent than that, less rough hewn stories about people being put into robot bodies, that are good?, that are interesting?, Robert J. Sawyer, volume 60, a Walter Tevis!, The Big Bounce, a joke length, celestial hammerlock, The Door To Infinity by Edmond Hamilton, Dale Grothmann’s a good narrator, Hamilton!, he’s good, a broad range of acceptable, for something that old, 9 reviews, Invasion by Murray Leinster, the comments, a product of its time, Jesse fell asleep, on my nook, a pretty good read, pure fantasy, Nailan Smith and Fu Manchu vs. Cthulhu, Fu Manchu is homos superior, all of the homos superiors were asian, an upside down chevron yellow on the left, green on the right, it means something, the Japanese symbol for beginner, a couple, a search for her husband, winky face, an endearing review, keep going, special chevron, emojipedia, Charles Beaumont, Holes Around Mars, Robert Abernathy, Mellonta Tauta, the balloon one, echo chamber, multiple balloon stories, moon man comes back, “the Poughkeepsie Seer”, April 1, 2848, The Skylark, Poerful, loves cats, obsessed with cats, a real foible, scrolling cats, Mark Twain with a kitten on its shoulder, we have sympathy for you, cut cats up, how many would you miss, 19th and 20th century science fiction, not buddy, friend, more formal, when you talk to your cats, a special relationship, you are their servant and also scratching post, likes us emotionally, for her comfort, as a person, as a food dispenser, if Will were a cat, a dog guy converted to the religion of catism, need less than dogs do, there’s no crying, super sarcastic, pointed, who my heroes are, Damon Knight’s book on the Futurians, Donald Wollheim kinda sucked, weird relationship, Eugene Debs, to make a living person a hero, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, nationalize time, racist French guy who loves Lovecraft, Michel Houellebecq, Lovecraft guys, Dick guys, born on Reunion, an Indian Ocean island that belongs to France, monologue about Jaws, H.P. Lovecraft: Against The World, Against Life, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, very good at stories, discovered Lovecraft as a teenage, an open slice of howling fear, anti-modernity, philosophical denial of the real world, two of the realities, sex and money, really true, also false, sex is hidden but happened, not into sex or money, an American existentialist, life and death are meaningless, racial preoccupations, the comparatively racially mixed, racism back to fear, a mammoth hideous city, a very good essay, introduction by Stephen King, 20 years ago, At The Mountains Of Madness, The Cats Of Ulthar, cats got their revenge, Dreamlands stories, The Outsider has a mirror, discovers he’s a corpse, a good title, Michael Jackson, The Tomb, the story of a boy, The Tomb for beginning readers, DeviantArt, R.J. Ivankovic, long johns, I’m not certain it’s mine, parade in my brain, keeping these secrets since I was quite young, down into a nook, the door was ajar, the door would not give way, schoolroom, Hydes, a mad monomania, the books I had found, infamous hosts, the blasphemous parties, the hard lesson learned, to tend to the tomb, with my research completed, the familiar foul odor, that’s the end?, the site is dying, power outages from the wind, Lives by Plutarch, very happy in his green face, one of the books that Frankenstein’s monster reads, what a terrible shameful rhyme, certain you’d swoon, just like my grooming, scandalous rhymes, about which you may wonder, from man into mouse, lightning as a cleansing thing, a long hidden cellar, a private investigator, he has a dream and finds a key, secrets in graveyards, to worship once more, the strangeness began, that cold temple of stone, left me quite changed, found the old chest, an old key, a repeated symbol, The Silver Key, a time travel story, Ex Oblivione, dreams harder, whiteness, drugged himself to death, back to the land to the Forms, all knowledge and no experience, a damnable body, a suicide story in reverse, there was no more to do, coffins and cobwebs, oof, nightmare excursions, the eyes of the stranger, hired by his parents, what I did in the night, neglected to mention, what I’d done down in there, my spirits could soar, enjoyed it somewhere, things you would not believe, by Hyde invitation, pony tales from earlier centuries, blasphemous strife, should have been decomposing, a little bit more, that’s Poe from the House of Usher, the *this if fine meme* from Lovecraft, a thought then arose, I must claim my place in the tomb’s empty coffin, some other guy, a spot on the ground, a box had been found, a small porcelain bust, there was something familiar about the man’s face, too long, Asylum, something’s wrong with my brain, except for old Hiram, my servant for years, for a Jervas, and he’s satisfied with that, a crazy boy who goes to a mental asylum, he wants to be dead, a lich story, an ancestor coming to impose his existence on a future existence, psychically travelling through time, more mature, there’s something to it, underappreciated, he makes friends with dryads and nymphs in the forest, interested in books, sleeps in the woods, really well told, the cutesy version, first person narratives, a much more popular story, Upon The Dull Earth by Philip K. Dick, more of a weird tale than a science fiction story, done scientifically, Sylvia is insanely interesting, engaging with the ancient piece of the Odyssey, if this goes on…, I’m a big blundering guy, giving blood to butterflies, sometimes, he’s pointing to something, what makes you different from me, everybody becomes Sylvia, she got what she wanted, The Symposium show, it’s about love, different kinds of love, cursed by the gods and separated male from female, reconnecting with your other half, your better half, a union of a marriage, why are men and women different, different parts, a nice story, not true, go back far enough, we used to be these amoeba like creatures, a deep genetic memory, your my only love!, a little too close, not as good as you thought it would be for all time, very deftly, just shows us something, left with many questions, if you were me aka Sylvia, one of Sylvia’s favourite Philip K. Dick stories, recency bias, The Days of Perky Pat, instead of rebuilding civilization, the game of Life, you never grow up, the kids are out hunting, Connie Companion Doll, perpetual childhood, a good story, the earth belong to them, more competent than the parents, holding on to money to play Perky Pat with, so many great stories by him, dozens, The Variable Man, bloated, almost novel length in its long long length, Colony, Autofac, Beyond Lies The Wub, A Present For Pat, Faith Of Our Fathers, Human Is, Mr. Spaceship, Paycheck, James P. Crow, robots and black people, Impostor, Captive Market, a Monopoly story, The Defenders, Out In The Garden, the boy who’s father was a duck, Prize Ship and The Ship Who Sang, her best thing, a lot of series, a lot of Perns, not a really big series guy, decreasing happiness, The Exit Door Leads In, post public domain status, not meant for publication, he’s not a good novelist, remembered as a great novelist, one of the two greatest, Ursula K. Le Guin, Asimov’s novels, Apple TV, read old shit, more and more sympathy for your old position, read old books, through comics, Howard through the Scanner Darkly of Roy Thomas, there’s no question, some good novels, tedious and badly composed, fixups that don’t fix, the Library Of America crowd, try not to have a lot of contempt, is it contempt?, the feeling of contempt is not healthy, opposite of respect, the face you make when you’re being imposed upon, deserving scorn, beneath consideration, disregard for something that should be taken into account, worthless, an up down thing, god that guy’s heroic, Michio Kaku is contemptible, string theorist guy, haircut, bald faced lies, the proper attitude is to see things for what they are, better to overestimate or underestimate your abilities, within reason, don’t agree to either, both are really bad, cause problems, correctly estimated your abilities, cost you money, correctly estimating, a judo match, that’s gonna hurt, why they have weight classes, guessing right as to what is going on, to be contemptful or deferential, the deplorables, let their decisions to be made for you, very difficult, he was trying to gauge the level of things, as a person, the progress, lower people around him, finding his place a little better, a real thing, they’re just wrong, wrong about that one issue, listen to the arguments, swayed a little bit, new insight, Robert E. Howard is doing something different generally unless he’s writing poetry, higher output, different hobby horses, judge them correctly, Sirius is a better book than this, matured as a fiction writer, Dick’s best novel is Galactic Pot-Healer, the relationship between art and work, a springboard, The Silmarillion, not a narrative as such, specific incidents, maybe, hinted towards Star Maker, the spiritual work, one way of explaining it is writing, closet and meditate, into my office and write, essay, sales pitch, philosophy, that artifact, the font, the spirit of that once living thing, inside of this dead man’s brain, the latest John Scalzi novel, understand the way his mind works, doing his own thing, Kaiju novel, stuff happening, “well that happened”, their reaction to what happened, character, what’s Sylvia like?, she’s a witch, he’s a journalist, when everybody is Sylvia…, and it is a horror, he’s Sylvia and he’s fine with it, becoming the Borg, a single ideology, the ending, 25 pages, the last section, the late afternoon sky, sparkled whiteness, alien and unfamilar, a difficult place to find, swirling hot steam, terrified above the bowl, tear-stained and frantic, waver and slide, soft brown hair, being tasteful, the girl at the bowl bent to dry herself, confused she hesitated, Rick she murmured, please Rick!, a horror story, she’s trapped in the hell of everyone, her spells went wrong, let’s assimilate it, way overdone, a melting pot not a mosaic, have it both ways, traumatic or fine, it should be traumatic, I’m losing my identity, that state you’re in, Patty Hearst, calm life, in it with the revolutionaries, you’re arrested, her friends taken away, my granddaughter needs a pardon, come back out of it, the Borg queen shows the utter contempt, just lore now, you now have to live with it, becoming Locusts, he killed people, part of the Borg, you become a zombie, not compus mentis, when they start Deep Space 9, feel guilty without being technically guilty, a more interesting way to do the Borg, pure evil, goes on too long, lore kills, much juice was squeeze, some odd juice from Odd John, the weird sexual encounter not put on the page, adult girlfriend, repulsed by her, she’s a brute, solace himself sexually, remain respectable, a similar scene, diddled, the spoken words used on the island “damned” and other ones not yet acceptable in written words, the word “fuck” doesn’t show up [much] in written language until after WWII, sex with his mom, Odd John fucked Olaf Stapledon stand-in, the human girlfriend, sexually frustrated and upset, will not spell out explicitly, another dear person, respectable middle class, a lacunae, elliptical talk, homosexuality, ragged, enfant terrible, Tommy walking, ragging with his sister, the two of them together, shunned all physical contact, electrified, initiation ritual, India, another boys’ school thing, the word “fag”, a prominent role, this idea of fagging, abuse downwards, making children younger than you, patching in ceremony, a rocker, a patch that’s lower, as you ascend the ranks, once in the gang, a beating, an outer beating, harassment, abuse, bullying, formal done by the group rather than an individual, a group beating, a psychological technique, beat a dog and then feed it, very emphatically, the complacency of a cat, a cat may look at a king, his insult, tickle him the right way, John would be ruined, pretty explicit, shunned all physical contact, a known homosexuality thing amongst boys in England, covered by this phrase, luxury and disgust, an amatory brawl, tearing at his ear, he was not above learning from his inferiors, woke with lasting scars, the adult girlfriend, unprintable thing, hanky panky, implied stuff, by the standards of the 1930s, a bisexual superman, widespread, Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, like The Fall Of The House Of Usher but gay, circumstantial stuff, act really weird, only in the society of males, so prominent, private schools for girls?, where’s all the lesbian stories that come out of that?, maybe they exist, that’s Odd John, Flowers For Algernon, the long one, a good book, identification with the mouse, a similar book to this one, construct a mental superman, questions about the perception of the world, not all with it, happy about it, exploited then disappointed, she’s a fucking hooker, I thought I was special, your older brother is paying, and you never find out, the expected outcome, the expected situation, what makes them smart, intelligence and stupidity, Understand by Ted Chiang, simple things gain new meaning as you are able to perceive them better, the story can change, The Secret World Of Og, adolescence, not based on the Robert E. Howard stories, adaptations of stories, quality goes down, quality goes up, a diminishing returns, Arthur C. Clarke, G.K. Chesterton, whole genres of fiction, didn’t expect to, the secret life, public life, obviously very intelligent, takes a pill, Limitless (2011), investments, pickup girls better, writing about a guy who’s smarter than you or he was, the way you do it, you go over it and make it better, an idea for a poem, this rhyme, a word, a phrase, echoes back, this word is really great, the last word of the story, wake, they’re on a ship, a character dies at the end of the story, what’s behind, a wake and a wake, baby level of double meaning, that’s intelligence, triple meaning, stupidity is making mistakes, intelligence is making everything meaningful, using the full meaning of a word, sympathetic to this idea?, why do girls like rappers, slingin rhymes, what makes them cool, their ability to sling, virtuosity, increasing your brain quality, one of the major attractions of humans to humans, a forced rhyme, you imposing your will on somebody else, the gush of slime come from the bucket on the ceiling, a little bit like charades, crossword puzzles, the traditional signs that you’re intelligence, crossword puzzles, know a lot about a lot of things and are able to use it, top 1% one percent of English speakers, this doofus on youtube, obliquely, disgrace, 10 or 11 wrong out of 20, uncle, still got it, still good!, some random 20 year old dude, that is something mechanical intelligence, there’s all sorts of kinds of intelligence, compared to other people, knowing your level is being smart, those guys at the bakery, what makes Ted Chiang smart, sixteen chess moves ahead, there are grandmasters who are stupid people in other areas, grapple with different areas, avoid bad outcomes, PUBG, getting the dinner, the only objective that’s built into the game, conciliatory, lots, steal a BRDM from somebody, get one over on somebody, a sneakiness, cat intelligence, smoked weed, really really high, highness, do you think you’re smarter than me?, bad at avoiding the house piling up with crap, more aware of her surroundings, women are very social, keeping track of what’s going to happen to the space, the old magazines, stacking them, men are much more collectors than women, a sign of a lack of intelligence, an area of interest, making it into a hoard you can’t get through, that TV, too low, they’re not stupid, interested in their interests, deficiencies, native talent for math, not super valuable, how fast he picks up languages, if they speak six languages like Mayor Pete, he’s not intelligent, a second meaning, information, vocab expert, turned into the victory, as long as we’re here, the level that you achieved, frequently struggling with Clark Ashton Smith words, gemstones, he loves kind of rock, a homebody, manual labour, our guy carrying water, a very intelligent man in his way, a very curious person, the entire library, Aaron Swartz, he was a hero before the FBI murdered him, naive, something very boy like about him, the guy invented RSS dude, a real simple idea, now we can get on reddit, we still have podcasts, he didn’t invent torrents, Mr. Internet, Mr. Everybody, Tim Berners-Lee, weirdo kid who only eats white food, he may have been Odd John, this you?, I was 7 when I read that, the original days of autism, Rain Man (1988), a popular idea, something that’s bubbling up, autists everywhere, idiot savants, stupid and smart at the same time, go gambling, uses his intelligence to win, incredibly intelligent and incredibly stupid, can’t put your pants on, too many holes, not enough holes!, brain damage and unable to speak, alleviated or worked around, regain the ability to speak, retarded, gain at the regular pace in school, this fake autism of schools, is it real autism, school is autism, autism is school, an imposition, kids impose on the world and are imposed upon, its a factory, we have a very special boy, just a normal kid, looks a little different, his acquisition level, his emotional level, slowly grow, a calf newborn is running around minutes after it is born, a little liberally, there is damage done in the case of down syndrome, a folded x chromosome, enough folic acid, the child from your loins, your baby’s spine and brain and skull, vitamin b9, when you don’t want to talk to them, he’s the opposite of autistic, supertistic, the stacking of blocks, especially boys, if that’s all you do, not getting interested in other things, where the auto part comes in, an estate auction online, cosmetic damage, passing on his wisdom, he had two bb guns, 150 bb guns, selling stuff on ebay, lots of people who are weird, all sorts of different weirdnesses, Jonathan’s Sword & Scandal interior illustrations, pornographic, a little more tasteful, too pornographic for Jesse’s tastes, if successful, scale, love of the game, latest kickstarter, Jungle Scandals, white lady being cooked in a pot, could have linked to the thing in the tweet, ironic, a subsequent comment, Jonathan loves to go on podcasts, told Paul that Jonathan had sent me that thing, Jesse’s too much work, a little tiff, calling him a liar, projection, many things but not a liar, deceiving, disagree often, we have really bad internet, make some coffee.
Posted by Jesse Willis
