The SFFaudio Podcast #843 – READALONG: Mistress Of Mellyn by Victoria Holt

The SFFaudio Podcast #843 – Jesse and Cora Buhlert discuss Mistress Of Mellyn by Victoria Holt

Talked about on today’s show:
Eleanor Alice Burford, two others, gothic romances, multigenerational family dramas, every book focused on a different woman from the same family, to name a doll, Harlequin Romances, her maiden name, historical novels, mysteries, mixed up with someone else?, early lesbian fiction?, this particular book is not very lesbian, specialized in straight romance novels, wrote a really long time, her best known pen-name, her first Victoria Holt novel, an excellent read, a little over 10 hours, a hardcover publication, the book that started the gothic romances, inspired by earlier books, women fleeing, very very good, how good it was, discovered something, aiming for, a phenomenon in the world happening, Jesse gets it now, sell a lot of books, used books, romance novels, they’re addicted, straight up romance novel, ridiculous and silly, the genre, making a distinction, gothics, romance, gothic romance, in comics, she’s interesting, she’s got something wrong with her, neurotic?, what it is, this is like escapism, a fantasy series, Dragonlance, really fun, teaches you nothing, escaping from the world, fantasy is the same thing, learning to swordfight in a book, fun but teaches you nothing, escaping their life, she’s not neurotic, overthinking things, her own experience of the world, what evolutionary purpose does it serve, gothic romances are like amateur detective novels, Tommy and Tuppence, Agatha Christie style, mysteries, cozy mysteries about cupcake bakers, it wasn’t their friend who was murdered, these are detective novels, and the mystery is, an menace, is this man the right person to marry, Jane Austen, the Byronic hero, Lord Byron, Mr Right and Mr Wrong, its a parody of the 18th century gothic, they’re absolutely connected, a descendant, what makes it so much better, hints of the supernatural, she looked like a fey, are you fey?, no wereford, don’t go out on the moors, the little people will pull you into a bog, supernatural threat, all the feelings that she has are justified, the final scene before the afterword, having the rugged pulled out from under me, perfectly red herringed all the way through, she would be the one, the killer, the source of all the weird happenings, totally surprised, skilled writing and fun to try and figure out if this is a suitable man for her, are these feelings I have all in my head, very standoffish, inappropriate kiss, aloof, 1980s, first person, the POV of the woman, the man is the mystery, he’s always flirting with you, go off to Australia, often such a guy, she needs to investigate, the mystery of who am I gonna marry, Philip K. Dick, what’s the difference between men and women, some time in the 19th century, later 19th century, trains, 1860 or up to 1890, described the clothing, men are different from women, women gestate babies for 9 months, a woman needs to be circumspect about the man she marries, lots of money vs. a little money, very little power, she’s poor, a gentlewoman, Jane Austen onward, gentry, find a job, governess, companion to a rich elder woman, worse jobs, not respectable jobs, a streetwalker, a high class prostitute, an actress, she doesn’t think she’s pretty, she is pretty, a romance trope, the heroine never thinks of herself as pretty, we don’t want her to be vain, not relatable, to the female reader, nice qualities, kind to the one kid, the non-verbal girl, a fairy child who got run over by a cart or something, she never married, just a servant to an old woman, telling this story, her great grandchildren, the room with two skeletons in it, snaps her out of her coma, two minutes ago, story’s over, she really strung me along, this book would make a great choose your own adventure, a Jane Austen based humorless one, an Austen scholar, aimed at teenagers, translated from English, because we don’t know he’s a good guy, I went and saw, as soon as she finds the diary, medallion or necklace back, contradicts the official story, turn to page 78, he chokes you to death, he murdered his wife, a mix of two previous famous books, Charlotte Brontë, Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca, Jane Eyre, Martha, previous wife, mysterious presence, said to be dead but isn’t, are you okay with me spoiling these two, mentally ill, locked up in the attic, died in a storm, a lot of ghosts in this book, provoked him into murder, couldn’t just divorce, the big house burns down, the body of the wife and her sailboat, terminal cancer, the murderer, similarities to Rebecca, both set in Cornwall, an inversion of the most famous Sherlock Holmes story, The Hound Of The Baskervilles, Dartmoor, a Canadian who inherits the estate, Watson is the viewpoint character, the woman in danger is Sir John Baskerville, the neighbors are a brother and sister, an astronomer, the other one likes flowers, like a gothic romance, just a straight up murder mystery, wrote well into the 1980s, probably worth reading, historical, the formula’s older, rediscovered, perfected, Sir John Baskerville falls in love with the sister across the moor, the neighbour astronomer, wanted to inherit the estate, make the baronet close, kill him too, the final distant heir, the girl falls in love, I don’t want my husband to kill you, all very solid, that is not perceived as a romance, an amateur detective, hiding in a cave, investigating this spooky old house, not a gothic romance, what makes it a gothic romance, the possibility of marrying in, what does Connan Tremellyn do for a living?, goes on business trips, could have been red herrings, a rich landowner, tenant farmers, my money is in slaves, my money is in rum, Mansfield Park, do we want to marry him?, she marries the younger son, what makes this book so interesting and significant, investigating along, not knowing right up to the end, the appeal of this, beautiful women fleeing castles at night with a high lit window, this is part of a woman’s mind, I’m dating this guy, he’s physically stronger, he could hurt me, how do I know that he is good?, Joanna Russ, scholarly article, another person’s blog post, neither love stories, adventure stories with passive protagonists, she’s the opposite of that, the actions she takes, she takes this job, then she realizes this kid is traumatized, needs to get back on the horse, why the book is so long, lemme raise this kid, not as brain damaged, teach her letters, worrying about this journal she found, writes a letter to the previous governess, presents that information, she is doing an active investigation, whenever men are giving her gifts, almost a swordfight parrying, verbal techniques rather than physical techniques, great dialogue, all the men are sinister but no men in this book are evil, an evil woman, the wife is coded as evil, slave plantations, Caribbean, she’s mentally ill because she’s mixed race, am I going crazy?, is this a dream?, why is she always second guessing?, that’s the quality of she’s doing the investigation, not taking everything at face value, when presented with the horse, the right instinct, the stabling of this horse, the reason that guy is a bad guy, he’s not thinking things through, what we would think of a little suspect, realistic character flaws, cheating on my first wife, a very elderly husband, I’m disaffected, when I marry you, don’t listen to the rumors, Victoria Holt tricking us very effectively, the formula that birthed the gothic romance, the new explanation, when the elderly sir died, this is why this book is so long, he wasn’t a useless character, he was a red herring, he might have been murdered, suspected poison, is she being used?, sure looks like it, is she gonna go confront him?, at any of the points where she’s questioning what to do, the gothic novel boom had ended by the 80s, not enough overlap, sensuality and kissing, there’s implied sex, on screen there’s kissing that’s it, The Flame And The Flower by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss, half-rape, Heartquest Dungeons & Dragons romance novel, not a true romance, you literally are going on a quest to save your village, bad water in the well, cute guy, to expand the customer base to girl, the most popular German one, The Dark Eye, a German D&D knock off, early sword & sorcery, nerdy guys, more Tolkienesque, specialty import shops, advertised on television, mainstream board game company, was it available in East Germany, it would fit, on a train in 1989, 16 years old, a city partnership, for the fall of the east europe, the other person is just like me, what was then the Soviet Union, Latvia, student exchange, see for myself what its like, 3 days from Bremen, Berlin to St. Petersburg, for obvious reasons, endless three day train ride, two guys had the dark eye, Poland, someone probably did play it in East Germany, didn’t care about board games, gothic romance choose your own adventure, write those extra scenes, end up murdered, shoved into the murder hole, the old priest’s hole, there’s a skeleton in there, yay!, perfectly reasonable to expect, crazy woman locked in the attic, child locked in the basement, buried alive, Edgar Allan Poe, essentially a perfect book, long but justified, a murder mystery, the romance, 8 and half hours in when he asks her to marry, mostly it’s about the kids, common gothic thing, I want to marry you, Mr Darcy is besotted with Elizabeth, dude what are you doing, the only threat is his eyebrows and his gloominess, the mysterious unknowable, mad bad and dangerous to know, Lord Byron left the country, they are stay at homes, having to flee the country, the scandal is so great, Bluebeard, there is a Bluebeard scene in this book, Bros. Grimm, The Castle Of Murder, Fitcher’s Bird, three daughters, take her away, I would like to marry your eldest daughter, third time, the only sister, parents what are you doing, she’s very suspicious, here are the keys to any room in the house, do not go in there, oh and take this egg and carry it with you always, an old woman skinning guts, chopped up in a bowl, egg to drop and get stained, the truth is out, this bluebeard character, murdering his wives, maybe he has sex with him, one way of ending the story, where’s that egg?, oh good, now we can have a good marriage, psychologically, a woman needs to be locked up, his wife was not faithful to him, she is going to be faithful, good at rebuffing, so true, only to give birth to children from that man, Bluebeard’s test, the woman’s test, a mental investigation, some of those memes, man and woman are lying in bed, about the Roman Empire, women need to investigate the man’s head, the baby won’t be supported, the gap between the genders, not knowing what motivates the other, note that folktales, fairytales, warnings, be careful about who you’re marrying, stories written by Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm stories are fairytales, orally transmitted, cautionary tales, art fairy tales, Charles Perrault, little mermaid, Copenhagen, put a nail in the coffin, being happy, perfectly grokked, propose this scenario, imagine this novel gender swapped, a lady who has a big castle, she needs a tutor for her son, she’s very standoffish, she’s not sure that her son is her son, that is Jesse’s point, there are things going on in this kind of fiction that allow us to see inside of people, gender flip public domain stories, King Of The Black Coast, My Cousin Rachel, you don’t have the kid in this one, is Jilly Flower the most important character in the book?, she leads things in directions, she’s not, neither is the daughter, step daughter, not a bio-daughter, she’s a bastard, she’s a cuckoo-kid, who is the most important character in the book, the narrator, she’s absolutely not passive, that quote doesn’t make any sense, active in every respect, at the height of the gothic romance boom, Tansy Rayner Roberts, woman and the house, who is the Mistress of the title, mistress has a second meaning, the title of the book can refer to the murderer, it does refer to the child as well, both children, half sisters, slept with everything that moved, a realistic book, really well put together, another part of the universe, why are gothic romances so appealing?, this is a real phenomena, you don’t write novels about men investigating women’s past, weird incel guys, as long as it hasn’t been for the last nine months its probably fine, in the 21st century, always virginal, the servants in this house, the mother of Gilly, walked into the sea, Beyond The Door is awesome, that night at the dinner table, her hand to her mouth, sharp nails, her bosom rising and falling, a cuckoo clock, just like my mother had when Pete was still alive, Carl got it for me wholesale, a funny little sound, what’s the matter with you you’ve got your clock haven’t you, the opening of the story, its in Fantastic Universe, only for her, won’t do it for Larry, smash you, breaks his neck, very near the end of the story, what?!, what is this?, nobody cares except for Jesse, there’s a hidden story inside of this story, like my mother had, when Pete was still alive, never hear Pete again, why is that in there?, if you’re paying attention, there’s a nosy neighbour across the street, suss out whether she was cheating, the neighbour’s last name is Peters, we heard from the nosy neighbour, Larry Thomas, why is Pete the presumed half brother, Doris, it’s all about cuckolding, the wife is cheating on him, he comes home unexpectedly, they were having sex, informing on this household, her husband cheated with Doris’ mom, he murdered him, the same kind of psychology, women are biologically different than men, men just have to hope that women are faithful, that difference makes for a vast exploration of genres of story, pretty much all of them, if we had access to alpha centurian literature, Alien Nation, George Fransisco, retarded guy at work, prefertilizes women, the fertilization ceremony, everybody celebrates, not something that normally happens in our culture, made possible by his contribution, that’s what makes science fiction amazing, that’s what its really about, not just an alien with a ray gun, isn’t that cool?, Nancy Drews, Hardy Boys, she is an amateur detective, something’s gone missing, she has a girlfriend, she’s not dating, teen mysteries, next week, some kind of early advent coffee, 4.5 hours, aimed at kids, this was very solid, one of the best books, let’s talk about Rebecca, it’s public domain status, there’s several movies, the Hitchcock one, fairly recent version, Charles Dance, Diana Rigg, Game Of Thrones, she was the old woman giving really good advice, a British actor, Sean Bean, Sharpe’s Rifles is the one where he doesn’t get killed, Goldeneye (1995), he’s a white ruissian mad at the British, a great backstory, very few good Bond movies after the fall of the Berlin Wall, not really about the Cold War, it wasn’t the Russians, he slept with them, they gave him an Order of Lenin, License To Kill, James Bond does Miami Vice, the Bond movies died with Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, products of the 60s and 70s, the modern ones with Daniel Craig, Newcastle Birmingham accent, part of the promotion of the film requires that you pretend, Sean Connery, the best James Bond movie is the Cannonball Run (1981), plastic surgery, a Jew who wants to be James Bond, they’re all fairly good, George Lazenby, it has Diana Rigg, a very good movie, the guy who plays Jaws [Richard Kiel] is in Cannonball Run (1981) too, some cookies, we have bad food in North America, truck stop bakery, a well lit bakery, American style diner, discovered the cookies, cookies in the background, see you next week.

Mistress Of Mellyn by Victoria Holt

Mistress Of Mellyn by Victoria Holt

Mistress Of Mellyn by Victoria Holt

Mistress Of Mellyn by Victoria Holt

Mistress Of Mellyn by Victoria Holt

Mistress Of Mellyn by Victoria Holt

Mistress Of Mellyn by Victoria Holt

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #841 – READALONG: The Weapon Shop by A.E. van Vogt and Paycheck by Philip K. Dick

The SFFaudio Podcast #841 – Jesse and Cora Buhlert discuss The Weapon Shop by A.E. van Vogt and Paycheck by Philip K. Dick.

Talked about on today’s show:
wanted to pair, not public domain, first and second, Philip K. Dick was a fan of the writings of A.E. van Vogt, The Worlds Of Null-A, very similar in a couple of ways, the movie with Ben Affleck, and the lady from Kill Bill (2003), Uma Thurman, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, The Pre-Persons, sexist, hate, anti-choice, if you’re a woman, Dick is sexist, how is he sexist, Rethrick, Kelly, the secretary, his daughter, keep his business in the family, doesn’t even enter his mind, that’s the character not the author, it doesn’t seem to occur to Dick either, smart and competent, a terribly conservative protagonist, drill down on this idea, Jennings is not much of a character, Jennings prior to the wipe, Total Recall, what his backstory is, at the end of the movie he’s fighting a guy named Cohagen, Captain Jellico, Ronny Cox, always a corporate badguy, he’s always evil, Dan O’Bannon, almost every good science fiction movie, $50,000 for having his stuff from Black Destroyer used, similar, might have read this, quite different, Couerl, a very bad writer, a weird writer, great at ideas, not a pleasure to read, his prose is problematic, it’s the ideas, in watching the movie, in a different frame, explicitly it’s called out, the opening, smooth jets hummed, ugh he said, staring keenly, coming around, two or three ticks, eyes bright, the dull ache, ask that a different way, it was spring, stepping into an elevator in late fall in New York, almost two years later, the government is even stronger, the SP have almost unlimited power, teaching the school children, filling San Fransisco bay, born in Washington, DC, stopped in Colorado, Vancouver, the bay area, Los Angeles, road trips, flew to France, set in Chicago, very well written, very economic, what this future world is like, we become the character, he doesn’t know his backstory, a time scoop is used, the reason he knows, for most of the story, having things happen to him, the world we’re set up with, the old government fell, two babies, a 3 pound weight, pathetic, the plot of what’s making the story happen, the security police are trying to get information on the Retherick company, the FBI are the good guys, even The X-Files, except in 1953 Philip K. Dick can do it, the government is evil, the corproation, Elon Musk style corporation, citizens, the girl betrays him, secretly I’m the daughter of the boss, the boss wants him to marry his daughter, work for us again, Kelly thinks you’re handsome, if at the beginning of the story, either he’s gay, has a wife, he’s our hero, we want him to do well, he maneouvered Rethrick using the daughter, you can’t blackmail me, foresaw this, we now know he can blackmail them with that, the family business, forced a marriage, parcel receipt, so he saw even that, he as in himself, the main character, one more step out and that’s Philip K. Dick, “trinkets”, souvenirs, little objects with no actual value and immense value, 7 objects, plot could happen, planned it out pretty well, as opposed to A.E. Van Vogt, her face wild, a slip of paper, it’s still here, in the air above them, a circle, stared up frozen, a metal claw, a shimmering rod, swept the paper from Kelly’s fingers, the circle of black, nothing at all, what was that, safe right here, we only see his waldo come in at the end, so unhappy, the paper is safe, the company is safe, strong, very glad to help out the revolution, his eyes twinkling, more members of the family, women had a lot less agency and legal power, by herself she can’t make the company go on forever, she could marry someone, adopt a kid, time scoop a kid, technical knowledge, Kelly doesn’t need the technical knowledge, compare this, the story is sexist, an inherent sexism, Mad Men, except that there’s a time scoop, two things going on, this is not a Gray Flannel Suit story, what they hired him for, a manual labour job, a mechanic vs. an engineer, drawing this from, a music shop, a guy who fixed radios, is there a television repair place, they’re all gone, everything is disposable, real estate is insane, nobody can afford retail, so many businesses are disposed of, shoe repair place, they all go when the guy retires, orthopedic shoe places, 20km away, the movie came out 2003, right after 9/11, bad guys in 2003, how they changed the Kelly/Rethrick dynamic, Rethrick is the badguy, doing something evil, what they do in the film, used to find out what the future is like, cause the wars, the enemy is bad, post 9/11 thinking, a pandemic, set all that aside, what happens to Kelly, she’s Uma Thurman, she’s a biologist, doing biology doesn’t make any sense, construction, tunnels underground, she’s just works there and she’s naive, had a romance before the memory wipe, convenient for the plot, the friend character, the best Philip K. Dick actor, Paul Giamatti, to be the love interest, she says that other people have done this, objects in lieu of pay, called out near the end, she has an idea as to what the company does, those are tests for husbands for Kelly, saw what was coming, they didn’t see far enough?, maybe they also escaped, none of them married Kelly, a setup between the father approving of the son in law, come meet my dad sort of story, she’s not the agent for it, she loyals back to her father, the company is out in the countryside, she’s an accountant or something, protective, even more sexist, it’s not his job, if Kelly wants a husband, Rachel is not a good change, a perfectly fine name, Mildred, “keen”, a biblical background, an Irish name, a job that’s unrelated to the story, she’s just a love interest, she throws him a gun, she’s not killing her father, it’s just his boss, even a dove in it, 2 hours long, not science fiction, FBI agents standing around, the girl is just there to be a love interest, a standard movie for a date, Kelly’s job is inherent to the plot, 20 years ago, even if they were smart women, that is not better, if we’re grading on a curve, 1953 is better than 2003, much more mature, takes 30 years, 1979 vs. 1940, for Black Destroyer to Alien (1979), lame vs. sexist, the main character is not in it, that’s amazing, not likeable, if they had actually adapted the story, FBI are good guys, couldn’t be adapted properly, adapted as it is, include some computers, there are good things in it, fundamentally flawed, a second Retherick character for no good reason, to have a bigger cast?, the make the movie longer?, compare to the A.E. Van Vogt story, about a mechanic, what’s his problem?, automated repair place that’s outcompeting him, faith in the empress, unjustified, a son he doesn’t get along with, who was the girl he was talking to on the street, she was a weapon shop employee, stealing from his parents, badly written, she never shows up a again, a snippet of their dialogue, David Agranoff, nice guy, doesn’t hit hard enough, he makes really good points, being mean, about A.E. Van Vogt, seems to fit, every 800 words change something, it hurts the story, as a piece it’s garbage, too many turns, too many things unexplained, tempted to just read the next story, Seesaw, a fixup, The Weapon Shops Of Isher, people are weird about this, City won, people recognized the name, guy taking a walk through a beautiful small town, setback homes, perfectly designed, says to himself or his wife, this is how the empress pictures out village, evil atomic engine corporation, like a Walmart, suddenly he sees it, sprung up over night, a strange empty feeling, the other villagers are gathering, places of infamy, built in hidden factories, property rights, a suddenly springing up building, this is a gun store, this is a bad thing, weapons being sold willy nilly, a point Cora agrees with, the story takes him on a journey, his son has betrayed him, case dismissed, they come to take his shop, back to the weapons store, $4, a phased plasma rifle in the 40 watt range for $4, so why is that happening in the story, exploring this idea of a corporation or a something going against the government, surprise the reader every 800 words, here’s a surprise, turn the corner, they do follow, they don’t follow logically, how to fill space, a technique to make things longer, he needs to have 5 items, in the movie he has even more and they’re all different, the premise, the basic idea, what if you are a small town guy, people respect the queen or now the king, shows up on tv once a year, that’s not a relationship, things are done in her name, become a member of parliament you have to swear allegiance to the king, an enforced thing there, take individual autonomy, these two things are in tension in this story and this real world, sort of a Canadian, Mennonite coming from europe, fleeing, the Lakehead of Ontario, German radio stations playing very bad German music, a common story, fleeing persecution, fleeing war, fleeing bad emperors, Canada and Russia, Catherine the Great, the Russian Mennonites came back from Russia, a circuitous route, the reason you flee to a particular place, the way Canada was settled, the owners of the Hudsons Bay Company, manipulating persons and family, the land’s not free, so many places, the moor colonization, aristocrat had some moors, free land, a guy coming out of that background, Campbell writing, a big fan of Don A. Stuart’s Who Goes There?, he’s not a stupid man, the right to weapons in Canada, more reasonable, German gun laws, a license, sports shooting club, those are grandfathered in, there are a number of people who have need and desire for rifles, bears, hunting, indigenous people, there is no treaty between the government and their group, hunting today, cheaper and easier to learn, a lot more work, if you want to eat the animals, a lot of training involved, harder for a lot of people, farmers, killing varmints, a small rifle somewhere in the house, call the police, braining with the butt of the rifle, shot pigeons, when he goes into the shop, a greybearded man, the secret sauce, you’re here to buy a weapon, in the story proper, this is unfortunate, I automatically respect old men, these are manipulations by the corporation, teleporters, time travel makes it make more sense, in Seesaw, this empire is 7000 old, you want a weapon, for hunting?, he thinks he doesn’t even want a weapon, for killing a thing of a certain size, that is also a legitimate reason to get a weapon, it’s a tool, in our kitchens are knives, chop vegetables or stab people, knife crime, Syrian refugee, isolated, radicalized, forced out of his country, a party and a concert, stabbed a couple of people, for Palestine or whatever, fun fair, pat me down, freaks out and stabs, checks at all the borders, how did this guy get radicalized, hoped he would have a better life, isolated, he wasn’t very religious at all, a department store and buy a knife, a no weapons zone, notice the weapons that they have, pistols, different designs, they don’t have nuclear weapons, they don’t have bombs, they’re all projection weapons, they’re not bombs, they’re also not selling kitchen knives, write this story now, razor blade to shave your face, what’s actually going on, sparky, human hands are weapons, pet animals or kill animals, lift somebody up or murder someone, they’re dangerous, we have to have that tool, a tool for you but not for me, atoms for peace, British Columbia was nuked once, a hazard to navigation, destructive device for constructive purposes, hit pigeons, shoot birds, a bear savaging your wife, only eat the processed food now, this is an inch along down the path, outlawing things, it’s about control, his fellow towns folk, a fundamental dynamic, he’s set up a counterbalance force to the power of government, the U.S. 2nd Amendment, there will be more cops, Waco, Ruby Ridge, eventually the government always has more weapons, that’s not always true, not Ruby Ridged, not Wacoed, raid those people sooner, tear gas, flammable tear gas, a more recent example, shooting incident in Uvalde, they lock the school, establish they are the only arbiters of violence, people are going to get shot, so the shooter can’t escape, weird, a kid went missing, locked in a mall, some woman lost her kid, you’re right, the Tiananmen Square tank incident, it would be wrong, the government cops and soldier will follow orders, the more they are subject to reasonable orders, how the Berlin Wall opened, 70th birthday, East German government party secretary, press conference, when will this go into effect, I think immediately, border checkpoints, we’re allowed to leave, they haven’t received the order, he got a medal, we’re allowed to go across, more and more people kept arriving, phoning his superiors, past 9 in the evening, I can either shoot at these people or I can open the border, by midnight people were dancing on the wall, one guy did the right thing, this is about balance and power, the reason that its bad to be mean to women is they’re people, treated equally would be nice, in unequal systems, tortured and tied up, wrong, unfair, no supervision, no way to empower these people (by breaking the prison open), a bad power dynamic, a government and a counterforce, both involve some shadowy institution, amazing technologies, these two stories could be set in the same universe, the A.E. Van Vogt solution vs. the Philip K. Dick one, build up a certain amount of power, not a good solution, offering support to a revolution to come, that George Soros guy, problematic, supporting revolutionary anti-government, a Philip K. Dickism, ignorant about some things, the S.S., the Gestapo, the stazi, the SA, it doesn’t really matter, almost unlimited power, they’re teaching the school children to inform now, it also happens here, a prayer to Stalin, people are crazy, lower your head and think of father Stalin, early 50s or late 40s, during the war, East German schoolchildren, the government is pure evil in the Philip K. Dick story, in the Van Vogt the empress is remote and corrupt, if I wrote a letter to the Fuhrer, if the Tsar knew what was going on…, the fact that there’s millions of people, one person with ultimate authority, the petition to the king is a tradition, a special day, I need redress, the king and the councilors would make a decision, doesn’t work for the modern UK, small council for a small town, the bigger or more ultimate it is, my bed is not operating properly, we buy a new one, we don’t buy from that old company, enforce the warranty, replacing mentality, a cash bank account, you have a problem you fix it, in both stories these guys are mechanics, gear changers, fixing things, if you’re a Mennonite, what are you famous for?, not Amish but close, a guy who worked in the back, people’s radio or television would blow a tube, a whole set of a stories, magical handed repairmen, transported to the future, he’s just smart in that his hands know how to fix things, even though he’s smart, he can turn a literal toy into a vidsender, a barbie videocamera into a real camera, these people exist, they’re blue collar, Mercedes Benz, family came from Russia in the 1990s, Kazakhstan, typical Soviet biography, can fix almost anything, self-employed mr. fixit, The Variable Man, Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, you had to fix your car, fixable, a phenomena happening, as the US goes so follows a lot of the West, right to repair, farmers with their tractors, John Deere tractors, they put DRM on their proprietary operating system, factory authorized, the fundamental interesting thing, security guards are allowed to carry guns, it’s a tool to prevent loss, individuals, gun deaths in the United States, almost all the gun deaths are suicides, as a percentage its almost nothing, bank robberies and street robberies vs. suicides, jumping off a bridge is harder, the way you want to structure your society, make it so people don’t want to jump off bridges or do school shootings, inform on your family members, both of them are evil, what was the son going to use the money for, buy a commission into the imperial navy, A.E. Van Vogt is bad because the story is unfinished, even the wife, she also changes her mind, he’s bad at this, us coming to conclusions, disrespectful to his father, he doesn’t want to work in the shop, who’s right about the shop?, apply for teaching jobs, let’s look at this particular business, teaching is always in demand and is not replaceable, take over the business, let’s talk about why he’s not interested, atomic automatic repair, try fighting that, a giant evil corporation, no son to teach, the son is right, a shoe repairman in the time of Nike, a bakery on every corner, branches of 5 or 6 different chains, surviving independent, resentful, the son says I’m going to go join the navy, a loan through the mom, talking with this girl, talking about the tech and the future, not searchable, out of touch, he is out of touch, the son is the most reasonable character, scams his parents, they’re not communicating properly, the way you get a loan, the banks scam the people, banking is a sin, halal banking, the Christians no longer care, the Christians were using the jews, repair guy just closed shop, plumber closed shop, fourth generation plumber, his employees kept leaving to the bigger corporation, shoe repair guy died, find it online, if something stupid like a strap breaks, two pairs of shoes per year, anything which breaks after a few months, 130 euros, health insurance, a second pair of shoes, 25 euros, if you have a decent shoe repairman, recommend a movie, heard it was good, High And Low (1963), samurai movies, nuclear war stuff, this is about a shoe company owner, confronted by his board cheaper shoes for a higher turnover, shareholders teaming up against him, based on an Ed McBain 87th precinct crime novel, driving quality down, now the plot happens, he’s got a driver, two boys are playing together and one of them is kidnapped, your son has been kidnapped, pay the ransom or save the company, he can only do one, the news is slightly modified, as a teenager, a great filmmaker, occupied Japan, heroin use, the influence of American occupation, why crime and science fiction are closely connected, the interaction with you and society, the movie Death Wish (1974) is a fantasy, American trash, evil and violent, shitty violent movie, it’s a good movie, definitely violent, questionable authenticity, revenge is a bad idea, need to want revenge, a country with nuclear weapons, not couped, for Ukraine it is a problem, Russia won’t invade Germany, not full of Russian speaking people, they don’t like governing, they turned it over right away, reunification in the 1950s, large Russian speaking minority, Zelenskyy is an actor, the people of Ukraine wanted to join the European Union, NATO should have been disbanded, why are people so stupid, propaganda works, shitty people, if we need their stuff, Putin is evil, Saudi Arabia chops off people’s heads, it’s a kingdom, why these two stories are good, coherence and paying off, Paycheck is like a fable of science fiction, an amazingly good idea, what you can do in computer games now, save points, expploited in other science fiction stories, take a bag of objects, this central mystery, what are these for and what happened, that central idea is terrific, a 60 minutes or a 45 minute story, getting paid by the word, 90 minutes is probably too much, sad about that, what a good idea for a story, the A.E. Van Vogt is sparky, The Voyage Of The Space Beagle is bad writing but sparky, Far Centaurus [copyright renewed], technobabble, space mission, suspended animation, woken up every 50 years, she’s an old woman now, she’s dead now, all the time they were going at sublight speed earth people developed faster than light travel, they no longer fit into the world, a short story, he seemed to have renewed, a sequel isn’t as good, a direct message, Raven’s Ridge, supergenius or accident, totally fit, the second amendment message, individual against business and the government, shooting incidents in the U.S., a big one at the time, more positively now, the story is a mess, can you imagine, a building suddenly appears, The Doomed City by Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky, a good book, a building that suddenly appears, urban fantasy, Simon R. Green, The Green Door by H.G. Wells, a comic where this happened, a Masters Of The Universe tie-in comic, the Fright Zone, industrial hellscape, exists between dimensions, when people are scared, illegitimate son of the king of Eternia, mother what should I do, a spooky tree, a spooky cave, spooky things happen, I come from a working class background, I work with my hands, whenever they’re kings they’re usurpers, killing the boss and the story goes on, a rare thing, an endangered species, the apprenticeship system, an apprenticeship to become a shoemaker, car industry, aerospace industry, well paid, Volkswagen is in trouble, household goods, not very often science fiction protagonists these days, a mechanic needs to go to the garage (not university), formal apprenticeship, people from Syria, a smith, a carpenter, he knows how to do the job, but he doesn’t have the piece of paper, Mistress Of Mellyn, The Tower Treasure, Plato, The Noseless Horror and The Haunted Corridors, they don’t invite you four months early, not respectful of the possibility, get some nature, a lake and a park, get some sun, everything is closed on Sunday, gas stations are not closed, restaurants are not closed, lots of groceries, shops at train stations and airports are not closed, a bottle of milk, Breslau, the protestant areas, the catholic areas, make dinner, eight hours ahead, trick or treaters, costumes, they should be monsters, serial killer, bloody bride, a devil, a spider-man, skeletons, kids without costumes, spider makeup, opportunistic, came back from sports, forced to do things they want to do, giving them candy, bad candy, 10 euros, make kids happy, an arab immigrant, nine kids, the very small ones didn’t have costumes, three or four, if you’re five you can do it, three babies born in the neighbourhood, a little bit more candy, personal stash, not kid candy, kept in reserve, what time of night?, 5pm, shortly before 8, took in the pumpkin, December 6, holiday scene, there’s candy, dress up in Santa hats, krampus, cool but south German, epiphany day, three wise men, cute but not scary, a stick with a star on it, paper lanterns, the next day, music on the street, lanterns and torches, St. Martin’s day trick or treating, Flesh + Blood (1985), Rutger Hauer, St. Martin, a bigish deal in German, Jane Austen, St. Martin’s Mass, saw a beggar who didn’t have a cloak, chopped his cloak in half, now they both have baby, eat a goose, Hispaniola, just north of Australia, south of Asia, Paupa New Guinea, divided north south between the Dutch and the French, if you don’t have a lot of weapons…, canons pointing at the water for the these guys show up, ready for a picnic, don’t bring your flag this time, country quagmire, Cuba, didn’t get to meet Castro, they got their island back, the richest country in Europe, Switzerland, technical skill, mechanical, they do have cows there, they don’t grow the chocolate there, they have no natural allies, no natural port, very very smart, they stay out of wars, they’re heterogeneous, if everybody has a gun in their home, high suicide rate, almost no mass shootings, a gun makes it easier, COVID panic, beer or alcohol, you have to wear a mask, an unforced error, shot the student, radical anti-COVID people, a stickler, altercations like that, you’re a murderer, impressive, a killer, danger, I hope you catch it from someone, you need to have a shopping cart to go into the supermarket, only a certain number of people, there was no study about six feet, said nasty things, a bigger power that didn’t care, mask in the bakery, farmer’s market, wearing a mask outdoors, gotta pee, wants some beer, in prison now, needn’t have happened, good night.

Astounding Science Fiction, December 1942 The Weapon Shop

Astounding Science Fiction, December 1942 The Weapon Shop

Astounding Science Fiction, December 1942 The Weapon Shop

Astounding Science Fiction, December 1942 The Weapon Shop

Astounding Science Fiction, December 1942 The Weapon Shop

Paycheck by Philip K. Dick

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #838 – READALONG: Fury by Henry Kuttner

The SFFaudio Podcast #838 – Jesse, Will Emmons and Cora Buhlert talk about Fury by Henry Kuttner

Talked about on today’s show:
one eight of his wife, the Gabrielle DeCuir read intro, pretty crappy, good, a little evil, the book was evil, calling things evil, pathetic, pretty pathetic, a Slan style book, Henry Kutter do good work, quite pathetic, to the mind of Jesse, summarize what the book is about and why anyone would care about it, read aloud the final up to this point in the serialization, Jonathan wanted to do it, Jonathan blocked Jesse, okay, seems like the plot’s starting now, texting a friend about it, a sci-fi from the 40s, everyone is lazy, amoral swindler, wouldn’t seem immortal, the necessary shock to society, jungle surface of Venus, immortal, some facts about the book, that’s interesting, interesting is not the same as a book, most interesting section, the introduction by C.L. Moore, what she contributed to it, I added the colours, I’m interested in tragic love, the theme that Henry Kuttner was going for, not trusting authority, what’s this book about, 1947, a decade or less into the welfare state, people don’t take responsibility for themselves anymore, pull their pants up, muddled by this immortality thing, a hot topic in science fiction, very immature, immature thinkers, everybody groks it, maybe I won’t, first grey hair, no no I’m not going to die, Heinlein has done this, not new to Kuttner, these mutant elites, a villain or a hero, agreed, a Will Emmons obsession, The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester, feels shorter, passion, experimental, wish Jonathan was here, not just blame him for this book, wasted a week, wrong philosophy, a modern book that’s similar, not modern at all, by a lady, Beggars In Spain by Nancy Kress, obsessed with not liking her, this book is evil, what makes it evil, take it in and say yes yes, the reason they’re better than you, genetic engineering, they can study all night while you’re lazy sleeping at home, all Elon Musk, inherited an emerald mine, all non-sleepless are contemptible, told from the pov of a persectued Slan, same libertarian vibe, why can’t your parents give that to you, plotting to murder everyone else on the planet, standard x-men, a sidestory in X-Men, look there’s a new mutant!, contemptible, a symapthetic view on both side, Golden Man cat, when Philip K. Dick did it, what if the ideal form of humanity has no brain?, a muddled version of that Nancy Kress book, more serialized, disgruntled guys, not strong enough to be evil, a toddler with a knife, dangerous, not evil…yet, both have fury, way more anger than this book, this book is not angry at all, a dispossessed slan, a rebel undermenchen, a good book, intellectual center of gravity, society under the keeps, no one is striving anymore, you don’t see any of that, a lot of tell and no show, a lot of churn, when he meets the prophet, also an immortal, not a robot, comes back later, exactly how C.L. Moore put it, we wrote this for money and there was no plan, the cloak that makes you feel nice and is a drug and kills you, what is this book about?, drugs?, not about video games?, a failed Heinlein book, the Methusela’s Children series, eugenics and a kilt, a secret society of immortals, flee for the skies, forget that Heinlein, not top five, he thinks its interesting, an immature idea, welfare state, immortal technocrats ruling everything, what is he really mad at?, his dad?, sad story?, temper tantrum, surgery, you don’t feel it, so upsetting, gut punch, skin is coming off, you don’t like the character but you’re with him, worse a nice blue dress one time, not boring, just bad, shoulda clued in, in Astounding, that magazine that’s not very good, another joint, Chan Davis, Pseudoscience In Naziland by Willy Ley, emigrated from Naziland, he’s the good german, pre-paperclip guy, paling around with the bad German, didn’t hang the three slowest Jews, upsetting, our modern rocket guy has a lot of problems, not literally a Nazi, fires some employees, capitalism bad, bad tweets, not literally an SS officer, John W. Campbell editorials, up his own smoke, high on his supply, telepathy or whatever, understand the impulse, dated this girl, no good reason to believe in it, running similar software, parallel possibilities, as to actual evidence, assessing, way too much based on that, of all the things that have happened to science fiction since the 1940s, what we’re doing now, Stefan Rudniki, a bad book, redeeming qualities, the devastating last line, weird authorial, the start of the immortal hero, a genre, the Amber book (Roger Zelazny), Phra The Phoenician, maybe Kuttner would have known, Gulliver Of Mars, His Vacation, a book that Cirsova (Alex) would like, portal fantasy, doesn’t take itself too seriously, the Mars books, crunchier, softer, sweeter, less filler, more killer, crashes on a planet, lands on a philosopher who’s a girl, go to a library, frozen dead people, magic carpet again, green muscle mommy, Soja?, Tars Tarkas’ daughter, a 40 foot lance, a big lance, lances were big in those days, pikes, the roundheads were overworked, a weird zone, the knife alluring, who’s the knife for?, for everyone?, there are no everyone, a guy who doesn’t know who he is, the priest who’s not the computer, blue dress, grandma, a lady who has a granddaughter, secretly, that reveal did nothing, why are we reading all this, the symbol of cash, the genealogy at the top of the story, the Bible’s a lot shorter, what things would happen in it?, deformed as an infant, see the lady, get got, colonization scheme, cheat everyone, wake up confused, get involved in the next colonization scheme, lost the thread, find the lady, 3 card monte, move their hands quickly, bet your money, a street level grifting scam, shills, they share the money, anytime the mark is gonna win the police show up, the guy who’s been gambling arrested, find the lady is a way to steal money from people, other than with my time, too scammed, after paying my 75 cents for 3 issues, not a good story, nothing is substantive in an idea way, the sea-creature that’s now a cloak, corrosive planets, just did a genocide of the entire ecosystem, for plot, for stuff to happen, telepathy, useless, pathetic, not even mad, wasted a week, sad, waste, Kutter is worse than Jesse thought he was, wrote so much, would write anything, Dragon Moon, a cover story on Weird Tales, just type in Dragon Moon, viking stabbin at a dragon, blonde in a green dress, the wild hunt, enthusiastically riding, cool looking, a novelette of drowned Atlantis, bad name, beyond good or evil, the Outside, a Chesterton quote, that Silverberg highlighted, Home Is The Hunter, Silverberg wrote a great essay about it, Kipling quotes, a secondary world almost, where’s the tech?, the closest we get is that cloak, a poisonous world, Clark Ashton Smith, sex and death, sexless, longs after a girl, breed generations of sex slaves, goes nowhere, people got tricked by the ending, immortality, is this something?, the meme with a butterfly, not furious or perverted enough, pretty cold blooded, deleting the entire ecosystem of Venus, plants that were dangerous, the drug addiction, no real life world experience, wasn’t a pioneer, didn’t kick a drug habit, hey I got a real theme going here, dreamdust, turns out he was in the backroom of the wizard’s cave the whole 40 years, okay, more Arthur stuff, Arthur Pendragon, put him underground, return and lead the people, a business startup, a free companionship, a startup designed to defraud investors, doesn’t doing any kind of running and grabbing, should be a lot madder, furiless and didn’t inspire fury, “Robin Hood’s barn”, the idiom, a robin hood’s barn sort of plan, at some point in a novel the novel reviews itself, a short story should have working components that are used and dissipated at the end of the story, spell components, three pinches of newt dust, Helen’s bones, blood from a surly teenager, disappears in a puff of smoke, shit lying all over the table, shocker, not impressed, people were smarter in the past, the reviews in the magazine itself, people should have been reading Thrilling Wonder and Planet Stories, if it was priority, Planet, Thrilling Wonder, five or six other magazines, Astounding, other magazines, the fifties explosion of science fiction, WWII, the wonder weapons, the rockets, people were not with rockets before WWII, almost nobody was into rockets, showing the v-2 rockets being tested in the states, the letters columns, talking about the v-2s, the censorship, circumspect, the V-1s hitting London, rockets are really taking off, Planet Stories, Fantastic Adventures, almost nothing good in it, Ray Palmer, somebody should have stopped him, too much power, exploit this mentally ill man, inner earth man, not just Shaver mysteries, worldview and approach to life, maybe people in the past were stupid too, UFOs, the truth is out there, UFO freak, if I believe in God, people get tripped up on words, barely a teenager, as if you know what you’re talking about, unidentified, what the hell is that thing, not a U, FO, trapped in the world salads, a spell, bring it back to the thing itself, talk to Meg about this story, okay to lie to people for the greater good, this story poses, immediately in the positive, try never to lie, communicating is complex, the outside thing about this thing, more specific about specific things, the way to think about this, just do this, what is an essay, here’s how we’re going to get a good mark, don’t write anything you don’t believe, play with the truth, telling the teacher that you know that, nobody knows what the word “essay” means, what is he trying to do?, what is the purpose of this?, how you do paragraphs, just filling the page, fulfilling the requirements, try to make good sentences, truth is very important, things are complex, words get in our way and trick us, that’s not how things work, this guy from 500 years ago still lives through, a cloud of understanding, trynna trick people, we’re gonna make you all immortal, working at this for 7 years, ha ha fuck you, a worker’s cooperative, that’s evil, for your own good, that’s a liar, what did Meg say?, undoubtedly evil, okay for the government to lie to us about UFOs, people can’t handle the truth, their gonna die, why we have religion, pretty sure, a mystery that can transcend, exactly like to was before I was born, isn’t it interesting I’m a brain in a vat already, includes skin and bone and digestive systems, sense data, that’s interesting, doesn’t make me think of a particular god, strange phenomena for the long time, a wish for immortality, a big part of it for a lot of people, lying definitely bad, we can’t handle it, lie to people to get them to do something good, back to The Stars My Destination, spoiler alert, superweapon, telepathically activated, gives it to the masses, now its your responsibility, hero, they don’t destroy the solar system, everybody needs nukes, if you don’t have hands, we want people to have hands, a real disadvantage for Sirius, Odd John, Olaf Stapledon, Kuttner can disappoint, a C.L. Moore stan, people love her, she likes hot kisses, scary kisses, atmospheric style, unfinished, that’s all she’s got, she doesn’t bring an idea to the table, Reading, Short And Deep recording, Probate, a legal term, about getting to the will, testament, estate, a science fiction story that deals with ideas in science fiction and dismisses them, mocking an idea by taking it seriously, it’s not what I wanted, it’s what I needed, an X-Men story, slightly telepathic, all the women find him sexy, no frontal lobes, just working on instinct, he’s beautiful, looking at it from a guy who is furious, on the wane, the homo superior are in the room, interested in pathetic things, full of all sorts of foibles, your beautiful child, assembling the components to destroy homo superior, better not the be a fuckin monster, not as fast or beautiful, slower to develop, very contrived and very silly, wham bam deals, A.E. Van Vogt, wipes it off the table and now we’re done, the Olaf Stapledon novel, Eric spoiled the ending, smart moral things to do, action and churn, Fury, boring slog, angry at Nancy Kress book, they’re fucking monster, they remind me of the shitlib bluecheck elite, fuck those Gazans, mad at The Washington Post for not endorsing a lady, let oligarchs fuck the world, seeing where the wind is blowing, the undecided voter, slant of various op/eds, not a big percentage, if Trump becomes president I’ll leave and move to Canada, trying to evoke a reaction, watch another youtube video and they react to it, this movie is too scary, twin brothers watching, a split screen, identical twin brothers, that memesis thing, still 3?, the thing being watched the you watching them, they’re watching each other, strange phenomenon, a girl in her bedroom, Damien Walter, words by himself are better, AI illustration of the Culture, retweeting them, that seems uncharitable, not giving a null prize, is this true?, the reason a lot of people are triggered by Trump is they’ve had no actual trauma, he’s not scary, hundreds of thousands of people being killed on the border, say things that are bad, the bad one, he’s pretty good, he did well that day, mobilize the army to deport people, the apparatus you have to build up, mobilized as a law enforcement agency, he was president already, he’s not very much like Hitler, he shouldn’t be that triggering, more like Heinlein than Hitler, only two people in the world, like the Little Prince, one is Heinlein and one is Hitler, pick your fighter, the future that liberals want, he’s not scary, internal enemies, the organized left, Palestine protestors, Arab Americans for Trump, pro-United States, Benjamin Netanyahu needs to finish the job, he talks a lot, what does he do, a different coalition, his staff, all the neocons, alienated John Bolton, learned his lesson, a confirmed Jill Stein voter, voted Green, when he says things he means them, a liar, he is a liar, I’m the best, I got the best people, the best country, the worst country, hyperbolic, is he lying when he says I want to use the military, on day one or maybe day two, someone who’s never been visited by the FBI, you live in a police state, he likes the FBI too, he’s a lot worse on Canada, the Free Trade Agreement, he’d be worse for Canada and better for the United States, doesn’t like communists, don’t understand what communists are, if Kamala is a communist, people you call communist, the dialogue is broken, we’ll see, laudable and good, more risk, the Black Uhuru movement, lazier under Democratic administrations, sleepier, drone stuff, domestic stuff, the MOAB, Soleimani, German government English propaganda channel, Venezuela, it wasn’t me who did the coup, fiddles with pen, in amongst that, persecute Russia more, secret talks, divide Venezuela and Russia, the State Department is running things, the Deep State hates him so much, a bad sign, tryna cozy-up, Bezo was vying for government contracts, less naked about it, Elon Musk picked a team, a lottery, he’s levering, For You, the ultimate test of self-government, returned your grocery cart, social contract, a fool’s framework, very simple, littering, mom didn’t tell you to don’t do that, why do people litter?, really strange lady, weird tiny house lady, keeps building things, trying things out, squeezing the juice out of her life, list of all the things that she’s tried, business startups, raise parrots, adopted from her or genetics, systems, don’t try to buy your way into hobbies, not lose money, you have to work harder outside, interested in parrots, very expensive, breed them, they’re in the house, there’s always more food, all that shit that spills on the ground, all the other animals do well, they eat and they drop food, we think of that as littering, not offensive at all, that’s what parrots do, dirtying their own environment, in a primitive society, sidewalks are a strange invention, do we need more sidewalks, not get run over, easier to get places, should we have roads?, they just tell you where to go, trails, humans in solidarity with other humans, just another animal, we train puppies not to pee in the house, they become upset, very similar to that, he’s not wrong, would you let this guy marry your daughter, he doesn’t return shopping carts, contemplating this, her being able to marry, implausibility, whether he litters or not, a stage everybody goes through, eventually your washing the dishes, community standard, Jesse’s weird, very childish, the grocery is like a government, somebody’s going to have to pick up after me, a boundary, get all your dirty laundry, your space, litter in your own room, don’t attract mice, this office, elected to the spare bedroom, the podcasting office, disenfranchised cats, peeing on the wall, exclusionary, the bourgeoisie, enclosed the commons, the crown, what a world, this election shit, provincial election came and went, Richard Lovelace, one of those cavalier poets, clergy in the house of Lords, wanting the king in charge, better than Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector, sounds like Napoleon again for the first time, get Napoleon III in charge, starting a list of the bad guys, Franco is on there somewhere, 19th century Stalin, a reformer, he put his brother in charge of Spain, make sure Spain doesn’t flip, the pattern, people trying to reinstate the king, why invading Ireland?, they’ll getcha, these Levelers, manhood suffrage, religious toleration (not for Catholics), modern liberal democracy, in bed with Cromwell, in the New Model Army, didn’t split the movement, this weird phenomenon, this English Civil War, conjure radical forces, aren’t able to use, Cromwell is Mao?, Sun Yat-Sen, sorta got his wish, the king’s back, roundheads, a short story by Lawrence Block, good character writer, good plotter, a werewolf story, Original Science Fiction Stories, January 1959, Make A Prison, the first Althean, he won’t languish and die in such a state?, ample opportunity, study the creature, the mere thought of a prison, the whole notion, an abominable one, wouldn’t do, he actually murders, subdue him, physically ill, for goodness sake, now you’ve hit upon it, a party of ten, he struck out at them, unprovoked assault, the first case of murder on record in 30 generations, he eats whatever we feed him, he is dangerous, very dangerous, as possible, perhaps I’m squeamish, positive, 130 feet high, right?, right!, it’s slides slope inward, a pneumatic tube, leaping from the top, littering, it seems safe, it is safe, not cruel, in just a few minutes, such a smooth writer, Cora got her times mixed up, sends her apologies, motor car, motor truck, forced myself to finish a book, she’s right not to like it, limbs securely shackled, the key to his shackles in his quarters, all the angles, one more page to go, a red light at the base, throw down the shackles, not something you see every day, plummeted through the air, he’s found the key, the key followed soon thereafter, gazing down at them, soared off into the sky, what is this story?, a trick, what?!, is this a science fiction story?, mostly a trick, as a practical matter, that’s it?, came across a key, hence Lovelace, a poem from 1642, To Althea From Prison, tangled in her haire, liberty, Thames, careless heads, thirsty grief, fishes that tipple in the deep, when like committed linnets, with shriller throat shall sing, voyce, inlarged, stone walls doe not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage, from an hermitage, angels alone that sore above, Lawrence Block read a poem, recognize those last lines, thing he’s going to be remembered for, secondary world, spun up just to do the joke of the story, that is very science fictional, take the poetic and make it real, okay but not, he is a dragon, that’s now science fiction, take it seriously, this world is not our world, they have motor cars, no murders for 30 generations, who is this creature from outside, how come they didn’t notice he had wings, that’s weird, just a joke, that’s actually, Brave New World is a line from The Tempest, a science fiction movie, that’s a joke, the world’s fucked, the second time it’s serious, the story becomes much better for what its addressing, kings are better than non-kings, in prison for wanting the king back, did some nice poetry, it’s okay girl, we’re like committed linnets, the poetry frees him from prison, the worst Kuttner/Moore book, just a terrible book, needed money, finish the bloody thing, blame Jonathan, partially responsible, worst thing Moore was involved in, knew how bad this one was, the prequel, Clash By Night, 1943, early military science fiction, also with Moore, fertility issues, couldn’t have a baby, miscarriage, contract marriage, mercenaries, jungle planet, The Little Prince, Attitude by Hal Clement, a bad summary, Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath, We Print The Truth by Anthony Boucher, unbeatable, it’s okay, the idea of a Little Prince planet, a very Heinleinian book, probably kill Hitler, [Methuselah’s Children?], Lazarus Long, Time Enough For Love, different writers, more sanguine?, philosophically interesting but evil, a toddler with a knife, who’s the knife for, for everyone, constant extolling, hedonism is bad, work them off for nothing, if you’re european, free healthcare, how terrible, second sons, people picked out of the enclosures, we’re plebeians, malcontents, emigrated to the U.S., hung out with the sailors in the harbour bars, she has a good husband, no one would have had her, high-tailed it to the U.S., the failed Bremen Soviet Republic, propaganda, New York City or Boston, the prairies, living in filth, westward expansion, things driving these things, Young Pioneers, colonize moorlands, the Netherlands, moorland colonization, little America, stay here and colonize the moors, after 1848, politically undesired, crises in foreign countries, selling equipment to goldminers, more wary, the lesson Jesse learned, more critical of claims, get a bad one, if you made this into a short story the answer is nothing, this isn’t a science fiction story, science fiction wallpaper, either the wallpaper goes or I do, totally disjointed, not substantive throughout the book, the introduction, some of the world building details, the happy cloak, you could do a story with that, Shambleau, most reprinted Moore, didn’t bother renewing it, sometimes people are dead, sometimes they’re distracted, step-daughter, retro Hugos, 71 Kuttner stories, easy to forget, her second husband, see the documents, SFWA grandmaster, had dementia, half a dozen Kuttners, The Proud Robot [was copyright renewed: “R494633”], asshole, that’s a great story, A God Named Kroo, Killdozer, good at comedy, The Proud Robot, solo Kuttner, fadedpage, the high priest of a Tibetan deity, the body of a yak, a bumbling Indiana Jones, a great story, Science Fiction 101, Worlds Of Wonder, Home Is The Hunter, a science fiction story, soft science fiction, the best kind of science fiction, space opera, hard, wallpaper, the biggest, the most ability to imagine different scenarios, what technology, ideas are kind of technologies, a future that’s not like ours, a post scarcity, 11 pages in Galaxy, credited to both, There’s noboy who I can talk to except myself, all my wives, Honest Roger Bellamy, Hunter, waterfall of marble steps, in all their jewels, this whole story of the narrative of how he got to this situation, he’s a headhunter, the most famous and best people kill each other, legal, proper, encouraged, his life is a misery, one giant rug pull, he woke up, death is real, what do we value, don’t do what he did, throughline in this, immortality is a thing, everybody wants immortality, why does this book exist, to fill pages, paid the rent, good for them, essentially hack work, sticks with me, Philip K. Dick is extraordinary, more short stories, fewer novels, Kuttner wasn’t a novel guy, Earth’s Last Citadel, allies, German spies, humanity has all but died out, huge citadels, rambly, a serious problem during the WWII, everything is about WWII, Fantastic Adventures, a story about fairies set on a military base, offensive, not very good, we gotta be more careful, descentish, Heinlein was too busy to write much, Ross Rocklynne, alien intervention, Killdozer, seabees, haunted machinery story, The Murderous Steam Shovel, Allison V. Harding, elevated train in New York, major food or family holiday, Thanksgiving, fucked up calendar, clumping of Christian holidays, patriotic holiday, Oktoberfest, Halloween, Reformation Day, time off school, a lot of candy, dress up?, native trick or treating traditions, St. Nicholas Day, recite a poem or sing a song, regional, lower German, seasonal poems, santa hats, wassailing, ghosts or Skeletor, paper lantern, Rhineland, Three Wise Men, the black wise man, blackface, paint one guy up, pretend to be a boy?, charitable causes, bless your house, Catholic homes, blessings on the door, Fichte, super Catholic region, the 30 Years War, chalk, imported from the U.S., unknown until the early ’90s, U.S. movies, college student Halloween parties, big candy, Carnival in February or early March, when Iraq, Kuwait, everybody was protesting, standing there, a peace protest, to stop the U.S. from bombing, serious about it at the time, why did we even do this, vulgar pacifistic, the best Halloween costume, a vampire a bunch of times, very good, in college, Doctor Midnight, the Justice Society, the yellow helmet, Doctor Fate, living like Doctor Fate in a tower, much more mysterious and less gay than Doctor Strange, definitively married to a woman, entanglements with women, not a medical doctor?, too many reboots, a few guys, a female Doctor Fate, snippets, the Flash with WWI helmet, stuck some poor guy in this silly helmet, Cora’s best Halloween costume, Psylocke from X-Men, the swords, energy daggers, difficult recreate at the time, Mississippi, Pippi Longstocking, a witch, devils, completely unknown at the time, kindergarten, Star Wars costumes, sexy witch, sexy nurse, Robin with a long cape, goggles, blind but can see in the dark, Daredevil, crescent moons, Watchmen’s owl guy, Batman with no superpowers, owl vehicle, mental patients he needs to punch, pines after a girl, very bad Alan Moore, very good, this is nothing, toxic fans, clickbaity title, something about Trump, fandom is not responsible, used to be quite different, fandom has changed, guys in their 40s, middle aged white guy, furious, LGBTQ women in Star Wars, reboot of a children’s cartoon, I’m A Celebrity, a real show?, super-intellectual, salability, Boris Johnson, Have I Got News For You, the Trump Apprentice thing, a helluva long time ago, not a politician, approach, why does this essay exist, he’s got a new book, funny words, febrile disgruntlement, his prose pieces, he’s a very good comic writer, you can see what he’s doing and you hate, big long letter, League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, his gandson playing Pokemon, asked to promote his book, random blocked, mocked it, random stranger, didn’t mock him, which hotel that is, a golf shop, what’s the difference, Tars Tarkas was queer, very queer indeed, quick on the block button, fragile, blocklist, win a null prize, H.G. Wells, super-eager to block, pruning what you see on twitter, a super-unfollow, can’t even see it in “For You” now, he’s funny, you don’t want to see him, Swiss weatherman, accused of raping his then girlfriend, consensual, rapist in my timeline, shitty excuse for a secretary of health, international journalist, get police out, really into the block button, never blocked a person, so many people who interact, other people would see it, I like Alan Moore, he’s cool, has problems, he’s gotta be 70, reminiscence of a guy, things have changed lately, “what we’re up against”, New York Times, the movie came out, can’t write about Neil Gaiman, rapist sexist, harassed women into sex, asking them, coercing, different from rape, didn’t rape anybody, otherwise consensual, seduction of minors, sexual abuse, the cutoff age, 17 and half years old, age of consent, lesbians, we forgot about them, still a shitty person, found guilty in the court of public opinion, The Graveyard Book, Coraline, Neverwhere, underground london, a show first, vintage Doctor Who, Sandman is pretty good after the first volume, shouldn’t have been in grace, you shouldn’t have a tattoo of Neil Gaiman, a tattoo of Death, are you into Sandman, girl?, must be into Sandman, he’s not the president, who cares, at a Hugo ceremony, accepting his Hugo for Good Omens, American Gods, special wheelchair van, as soon as the audiobook came out, George Guidall, 13 cassettes, Neil Gaiman in the United States, this overlay of the gods, blank main character, very similar to a Douglas Adams book, he is a good writer, he can write, Snow White Apples, he invented the whole genre of retelling for comics, after the Jim Lee debacle, Sandman, Walking Dead, all the Vertigo comics, Garth Ennis and independents, a little bit of French stuff, Belgian comics, Heavy Metal, 2000 A.D., a popular target, Ya Boi Zack, birthday party clowns, utubers who Cora really hate, Critical Drinker, closeted gays, wands, Captain Marvel movie, it’s stupid, way shittier things, delicious like Taco Bell is, she has no personality, Brie Larson, talk off camera, 2 brains cells to rub together, rewarded through the algorithm for hate, patterns pointing to, this stupid Guardian article is stupid, for retweeting, why are you linking, public health officer in Bavaria, how can you retweet this?, have their own ideas, the Gaza stuff, so horrible, pro-Ukrainian and anti-Russian stuff, what did stop the Iraq War, the 1990 one, treaty, that worked well, still not occupied even tho their occupied, the Taliban are the worst people, who made that happen?, Asian Muslim countries, headscarves, force men to wear beards, put this hat on, kids are roped into it, no kids anymore, kinda the plan, stupid actor, very upset by actors existing, people treat them like they are something, underperformed movies, German culture programs, what kind of show he’s on, political question, Bruce Willis can’t talk at all, a singer before he was an actor, if they write their own music, ring of fire guy, Johnny Cash, Leonard Cohen, quotes and the attribution, almost always a fake attribution, comes with authority, G.K. Chesterton, a Father Brown story, short stories, some people are Catholic, overly religious, doing a C.S. Lewis, asking them to not be religious in their fiction, Jordan Peterson, a stupid smart guy, Patrick Stewart is not Jean Luc Picard, he can perform Shakespeare, Shakespeare is hilarious, Charles Dickens, to be Scrooge, a fun role, a fun character, he performed Scrooge, Charles Dickens performed his books, unrecorded audiobooks, huge captive audience, no recordings of Charles Dickens, died 1870, audiences approved of it, Edgar Allan Poe went to one of them, anticipating the ending, Dickens fan, not enough science fiction, ghost stories, Oscar Wilde, the really gay writers, R. Murray Gilchrist, the yellow 90s, H.W. Hornung, Conan Doyle ripoffs, the Raffles story, the word fag, faggot, that’s not it!, in the British public schools there was a system called “fagging”, massive sexual abuse, that is is the sick part, a term of abuse, punks are on ships and fags are in school, an official and an unofficial system, commit suicide, who he used to fag for, burglary together, really fun and very well written, supergay, Oscar Wilde, great turns of phrase, fagging, that fucked up system, term for gay, being reclaimed, queer, we need the etymology, straight out of weird, the 1920s, gay balls, to dance around or prance, gay boyfriends, loves going to gay clubs, fun to hang out with, another German term, hot and sweaty, warm brothers, Toronto and San Fransisco, Turkish bath culture, totally gay, you carry, you gather wood, the evil part, you have to go to school, like regular prison, they had to go, forced to go, the parents forced them to go, mom I want to be home with you, governess system, the history right in front of us, gay writers, the Will digression, Will is a Jesseologist, his cowl is impossible, coveted the underoos, Conan Jesse with fur diaper, much taller, you’re too old for this, left out, a dog, how to make your Halloween costumes, the one made out of paperbags, paper bags for the ears, coloured pencils, a great costume, what if it rains, self-made, I’m poor, worst Halloween ever, bow was a coat-hanger, at a motel in northern British Columbia, no materials, Jesse had real trauma, a dinosaur, clowns, princess, costume jewelry, Hungarian girl costume, native American person, Romany fortune teller, Chinese woman, queen of hearts, a card-deck, very cheap, easy to due, carnival costumes, grading on a curve, none of your business, don’t vote for the Nazis, socialists, asked all the candidate questions, normal to endorse, Musk is endorsing, the party is dying, don’t say it, mainstream newspaper, we endorse candidate xyz, not doing it is the problem, the high tariffs is a good idea for the United States (terrible for Canada), customs fee, retaliated for tariffs, never took down the tariffs, it sucks to be a colony, next year’s Worldcon in Seattle, say hi to Paul, less littering, self employed, green card, might just stick around, sworn translators, no husband to go back to, not as terrible, crossing the border into the USA, refusing to come Kentucky, maybe under Trump, voted for Biden, pissed off, if they don’t denounce the Nordstream destruction, every American hated it, Ukraine and Russia were getting into squabbles, why do the Poles love the Americans, Polish politicians, owned by the United States, Polish students, a relationship, a girl from Finnland, very mysterious people, a bit reserved, Cora is not reserved at all, weird games, by a Finn, mini-scandal at the Helsinki Worldcon, My Summer Car, you bought a car, your going to fix it up, spray paint, the driving part of the game, something every person did in Finland, buy a second hand car, a Datsun, an alien planet, sauna culture, sweat lodge, demons I gotta exercise, Russian buildings there, don’t take down statues, Sámi people, Inuit is a very strange culture, look and act like Indians, teepees, dog culture, beards, from the same planet, reindeer, bilingual signs, northern cruises, had to go to Greenland, the Kola peninsula, Kamchatka, like Upper Michigan, across the top of the circle, central Asia, the horse people, Turkic peoples, Germans and Dutch, Austrians, what’s the American equivalent, affinity state, near Lexington, Richmond, easter half of the state, Appalachian, east Tennessee, normal Southern, gulf coast, anything South of Virginia, Kentucky accents, from the mountains, Hillbilly, oldest mountain range in the world, the golden triangle, Louisville, south of Cincinnati, totally devastated, stakes are low, technically true, Canada is very big, even in deepest China, Kentucky, horses, the derby, KFC, Kentucky Christ Fuck, ficken, sheiss, German actors, swear in a foreign language, need a girl, Black Widow, in WWII, fight Nazis together, Wolverine, shit friends, a letterer problem, Wolverine’s sense of smell, he sniffs things and he heals, if your bones are gone, his entire skeleton is showing, the new Deadpool movie, Blade, Wesley Snipes, I’m the only Blade, Blade Trinity, before Marvel movies were Marvel movies, a Punisher one, really obscure, Werewolf By Night, Iron Man, the 198[9] Batman, Superman (1979), a Spider-Man fan, he’s like a loser, having a good time, his life is just really bad, more relatable, the comeback, snappy, really smart, snarky, good hearted, he’s a teenager, Mary Jane, Gwen Stacey, in comics, Rogue, can’t be touched, Jean Grey keeps dying, hots for her, an Arthurian thing, she’s the Guenevere, Fantastic Four was entirely a boomer thing, when Beast starts to have Blue skin, master mold, makes other sentinels, Classic X-Men, John Byrne, Chris Claremont, 1975 to the early 1990s, the iconic cover, Days Of Future Past, reading it in Calgary, this is amazing, this is awesome, got some ideas, Jubilee, when X-Force came out, fuck these pouches, an early 90s teenager, Asian American, all good stuff, born in the U.S., mallrat type, sprinklers, Dazzler had a baby, she’s a mutant, does her own lightshow, comics used to be great, old people gene, really good things to read, the Claremont run, what the fuck’s with Morph, just a redshirt, Morph got fridged, Age of Apocalypse, better off with Richie Rich and Casper, he’s not just friendly, he’s not going to die, always the same, punished for being hungry, a grokkable psychology, Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, more like Tintin than anything else, undersold how popular Donald Duck, the writing, well written, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, menaces to Donald Duck, he’s not a great father, did they murder their parents?, the story of Inception before the movie, the exact same idea, such a great idea, working out the idea, a secret, straight out of A Scandal In Bohemia, everything’s in there, letters from the king of Bohemia, a rip off of the Purloined Letter by Poe, he did it perfectly, photocopying a plot, the New Twilight Zone, Jordan Peele, Not All Men, James Tiptree, Jr., meanwhile Harlan Ellison gets money and credits, Days Of Future Past, Doctor Who serial, I don’t like this Doctor guy, Christmas special, why are you so negative, watching Blade, half vampire, their age difference was negligible, 12 year between them, he looked like an adult, sad scary, not working out, Sir Patrick Stewart spends his time, Blunt Talk, a much better fit, he’s a no-nothing British guy, the Falkland Islands war, being a ditz, going to Starbucks, Star Trek feels, a reboot of one of the movies, actors having fun, alternate universe, no plan, making it up as they went along, not fun for the readers, how Kuttner wrote this book, actors having a ball, Star Wars sequels, have a plan, somehow Palpatine returns, gettin paid, J. Michael Straczynski, all non-union actors, him being the sole writer on it, as soon as he took control, one of the best science fiction shows, Babylon 5, Scarecrow And Mrs. King, skating, wreck the plot, that’s fine, pablum, the first three episodes, sparkles and no ideas, trust our sniffers, be like wolverine without the adamantium bones, didn’t fit into the bags anymore, deep Halloween trauma, the most special time of the year, go to people’s houses and threaten people, feel the power, American Halloween, witches and monsters, kids are talking about it, homemade costume, went to the mall, have to sing a Halloween song, Old MacDonald Had A Farm, custom jewelry, you have to say trick-or-treat, the Pledge of Allegiance, child logic, no song, Missy, store bought witch costume, definitely not Missy, every morning, Americans are weird, what the whole thing meant, got to hold the flag today, a good way to close our show, Wesley Snipes, artificial eye, stroke or something, wear sunglasses the whole time, pulled it off in Deadpool, guy wearing sunglasses, he’s cool, won Oscars, would’ve been fine, Demolition Man, the world than the action, a good science fiction scenario, the bad Judge Dredd movie, the sidekick was Rob Schneider in both, on a plane, Passenger 57, New Jack City, Gallowwalkers, using this technique, low or no critical reviews, Michael Crichton, Rising Sun, Westworld doesn’t have a book, Black Rain, Michael Douglas, Andy Garcia is fridged, yakuza and Toyotas, wet streets with lots of neon, little ones, Boiling Point, Mo’ Better Blues, the movies got smaller, in prison for a while, known as an action star, an episode of What We Do In The Shadows, tv miniseries, Netflix, Michael Jackson music video, good at dancing, Kevin Hart, could be good, something to download, writing about things that are stupid, working a lot harder than the writer who fucked it up, bad movies with high ratings, a short comedian, Eric Roberts, what happened was, small town low budget film, the star power, its actually pretty good, a small town seems to be a flame for the moths who are convicted criminals, murdered criminal, a Tales From The Crypt episode, a very specific formula, disposable character, based on the comic, super moralistic, people who are judging them, the violence in the comics, they want to have power, an easy get, 250+ ratings, 94%, 8.5 out of 10, Gone With The Wind, Lawrence Of Arabia, what the fuck is going on, local theater people, good muscle tone, half dressed packing a suitcase, I wrote this, my friends like the script, we can film here, who can we get, he’s in some good movies, famous as Julia Robert’s brother, mid-range movies, Runaway Train (1985), Akira Kurosawa, 700 credits, looking at his cue cards, Bruce Willis, tell him what his lines are, leave money to his family, they only have him fro three days, not the way Hollywood does it, an extraordinary, old people talk about old movies, 2005, time zone converter, another reason to hate daylight savings time, the regular time for Paycheck and The Weapon Shops of Isher.

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Posted by Jesse Willis

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

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

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

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #833 – READALONG: Waterspider by Philip K. Dick

Jesse, Will Emmons, and Terence Blake, talk about Waterspider by Philip K. Dick

Talked about on today’s show:
Worlds Of IF, January 1964, estate, renewed, Poul Anderson, there’s a Poul Anderson serial, not related, the public domain contents, archive.org, delete the half of the serial that’s in this, from 1963, poor Astrid, Karen, Jesse fucking them over out of their money, light and playful and not interesting, a lot of the humour is fan insider humour, doesn’t interest, some deeper stuff, funny, beyond the who’s who of fan people, Howard Browne always having to catch a bus, or a plane, Ray Bradbury has to lie down, a time travel story, A Sound Of Thunder, the butterfly effect, subtly, Trump’s been elected, a ripple effect, the origin of the phrase, seagulls, wingbeats, more poetic, hurricane or cyclone, the Jesse Willis policy on spoilers, a huge Ray Bradbury head, cloying and annoying and too soft and not science fictiony enough, pre-occupied by death, The Small Assassin, my baby is trying to kill me, stupid, a terrible title for a story, the big jump, crack the words and the proper names, the stories are parallel, the Deucher thing, the evil Trump-like character, Gutman in this book, Gutman was dangerous because he had non-conformist ideas, the liberal society is totalitarian, very 2024, their future is our president, he’s a precog, Minority Report, it’s stupid, a weak story, an interesting idea, far too long, those precogs are very autistic dudes and a lady in a bathtub, all science fiction writers are precogs, a Hugo Gernsback idea, ridiculing and validating, interested in science fiction, Damien G. Walter, sorry Damien G. Walter, the prophet, tries to show that Jordan Peterson listened to his podcast, mythos, junior high school, this isn’t a word, how wrong he is makes me smarter, evils? fallacies? errors, no wrong about everything, one of the more honest liberals, pretty open about that, in a not wholly hateful way, starting to get into science fiction, [Bill Christensen’s] Technovelgy, thinking about ideas in the present, If This Goes On…, novelette, people who think science fiction, suffer from ideology, where subjectivity is proscribed, these people from the past were writing attempts at literal prediction, making fun of that idea, he’s doing both, three or four layers to this, as soon as you go away from the convention, in the consequence, shown to be wrong, stories mentioned in what issues of IF, The Defenders, the January 1953 Galaxy, faking the report, the people…, very good Poul Anderson agreed, those exact conditions came to pass, we were able to penetrate the article, do you know him?, very nervous fellow, probably a true story, Poul Anderson met Philip K. Dick for the first, the Sir Francis Drake hotel, Dr. Futurity, a Duck call Sir Francis, on the surface here, this story we’re reading, the August 1955 issue of IF, Nightflight, it’s not there, from a different timeline, a 1959 story by Margaret St. Clair, identification, Evelyn Page, the renowned, The Scarlet Hexapod, one of the finest, flushing nervous, a man from the future?, that was so cool, a non-interesting story if that’s all this story was, total fan service, looks like a self-cancelling loop, goes own to write that story and publish it, you reverse mandela effect yourself, has changed the future, the word waterspider survives as a pretty good sounding name for their project, nightflight sounds better, this word, waterspiders, they walk across the water, is Poul Anderson a water spider in this story, walk across the waters, Paulous (small) ander means man, son of man, the result of a small change, the butterfly effect, the word that survives into the future, a second loop, from a meta point of view, a different writer in the past, just as in the Fermi paradox, aliens everywhere, so brilliant they can pass undetected, the Fermetti paradox, visited by time travelers all the time, they memory wipe us, the loops are not totally effacive, they’re like dreams, minds switched, their names switched, back to front, reading from my mind, totally there, almost unacknowledged in the story itself,

Puzzled, Tozzo shook his head and said in bewilderment, “I have some peculiar words in my mind. Night Flight. Do either of you happen to know what it refers to?”

“Night Flight” Fermeti echoed. “No, it means nothing to me. I wonder, though – it certainly would be an effective name for our Project.”

“Yes,” Gilly agreed. “That must be what it refers to.”

“But our Project is called Waterspider, isn’t it?” Tozzo said. At least he thought it was. He blinked, trying to focus his faculties.

“The truth of the matter, ” Fermeti said, “is that we’ve never titled it.” Brusquely, he added, “But I agree with you; that’s an even better name for it. Waterspider. Yes, I like that.”

The door of the office opened and there stood a uniformed, bonded messenger. “From the Smithsonian,” he informed them. “You requested this.” He produced a parcel, which he laid on Fermeti’s desk.

“I don’t remember ordering anything from the Smithsonian,” Fermeti said. Opening it cautiously he found a can of roasted, ground coffee beans, still vacuum packed, over a century old.

The three men looked at one another blankly.

“Strange,” Torelli murmured. “There must be some mistake.”

“Well,” Fletcher said, “in any case, back to Project Waterspider.” Nodding, Torelli and Oilman turned in the direction of their own office on the first floor of Outward, Incorporated, the commercial firm at which they has worked and the project on which they had labored, with so many heartaches and setbacks, for so long.

hard cut back to the science fiction convention, the real ending, fan servicey ending, back to project waterspider, sounds like a Philip K. Dick title, alternate names for Philip K. Dick novel titles, The Man Who Japed, The Simulacrum, a terrible title for a story, Jabberwocky, a butterfly, insects, little arthropods, tweet too much, dick title, top hit, Souvenir and Paycheck, Ben Affleck, okay, the story is a lot better, another level of reality, the story has three levels, the third one undermines the conclusion of the film, a family of insects, eight legs vs., great insight there, pleased to no end, singing praises, Jesse can’t steal Terence’s insight, too light, too nothing, jocular fan service, jocular and funny, there must be something, bother digging, it was Philip K. Dick who wrote it, he doesn’t write bad stories, a whole world building behind him, Beyond The Door, that’s it, that’s the whole story, a hidden story within it, he’s made it deeper on another level, this is a guy who’s really into it, I’m going to get famous, a science fiction sensibility, his psychological, A.E. Van Vogt, a piece of shit but also interesting, why it is like that, come up with an idea, come up with another idea, giving the secret of one type of science fiction creativity, mentor, his inspiration, his guy, blew his mind in the 40s, Slan’s pretty hot, nobody else’s great master of science fiction, Harlan Ellison felt that way, dialectically educated, the Logic Of Science Fiction, takes Hegel’s logic applied to science fiction, embodies each of those concepts, the logic ultimately behind science fiction is Hegel’s logic, The World Of Null-A, pulpish shit, everybody takes a hit, Null-Null, ISFDB.org, the A is Aristotle, they’re responding, part of his concept, it applies to itself, in French, Jean-Clet Martin, this is a roman-a-clef, acute accent, Jesse’s proud of himself again, a post show question, Paycheck, the story is better, movie is okay, John Woo, a thriller, very similar to a show called Severance, mind wiped when not at work, his memory of those months is gone, a bag of souvenirs, a ticket stub, he’s trying to send himself a message, a moral qualm with it, they have a time dredge, a time scoop, the objects from his time while working for the company, The Man In The High Castle, Frank Frink, the real and the authentic and art, sees reality as it isn’t, zen meditation with regard to objects, Williamson’s World, totalitarian Earth society, a handmade cup, loved object, the butterfly or waterspider, the coffee to remind us, David Currie, dreams, very proud, seed father to your, the A.E. Van Vogt, null-aing you, extract things that are not meant to be remembered, if dreams were indistinguishable from regular memories, teasing out souvenir dream objects, visions of the future humans doing future things, Gutman is Trump is the rookie mistakes, Jim Briskin is the black president of the United States, the dates wrong, reading science fiction does give you insight into human nature and our relationship with technology, but not all of it gives it equally, wallpaper science fiction, Ranch Romance on Mars, a very good science fiction story, talked Will into it, the bed, the baldness, base Malthusianism, the weirdness about children, the moral explanation is just beneath the knowledge that Poul Anderson’s trying to dig up, reproducing too much, the liberal guy who won, Children are proscribed, the political stuff, introv, childish or childlike, the Murray Leinster reference,

The clerk said, “Haven’t you been nuzzled lately, sir?”

“What’s that?” Anderson said. Nuzzled?

“The new spring nuzzlers have arrived, you know,” the clerk said, moving toward the gleaming spherical machine nearest him. “Yes,” he said to Poul, “you do strike me as very, very faintly introve — no offense meant, sir, I mean, it’s legal to be introved.” The clerk chuckled. “For instance, your rather odd clothing. . . made it yourself, I take it? I must say, sir, to make your own clothing is highly introve. Did you weave it?” The clerk grimaced as if tasting something bad.

“No,” Poul said, “as a matter of fact it’s my best suit.”

“Heh, heh,” the clerk said. “I share the joke, sir; quite witty. But what about your head? You haven’t shaved your head in weeks.”

“Nope,” Anderson admitted. “Well, maybe I do need a nuzzler.” Evidently everyone in this century had one; like a TV set in his own time, it was a necessity, in order for one to be part of the culture.

“How many in your family?” the clerk said. Bringing out a measuring tape, he measured the length of Poul’s sleeve.

“Three,” Poul answered, baffled.

“How old is the youngest?”

“Just born,” Poul said.

The clerk’s face lost all its color. “Get out of here,” he said quietly. “Before I call for the polpol.”

“Um, what’s that? Pardon?” Poul said, cupping his ear and trying to hear, not certain he had understood.

“You’re a criminal,” the clerk mumbled. “You ought to be in Nachbaren Slager.”

“Well, thanks anyhow,” Poul said, and backed out of the store, onto the sidewalk; his last glimpse was of the clerk still staring at him.

the Lord Runningclam style character, the slime mold, an information dump alien, told him everything he needed to know, backstory, different images of the science fiction writer, the precog, the introve, the alien, all as being different possible images of the science fiction writer, deeply or thoroughly, The Eyes Have It by Philip K. Dick, finds a novel, his eyes wandered all over the room, he took her hand, metaphoric expressions, deduces there are aliens who are invading us, its five minutes, he’s describing the key technique for him, take an expression that should be metaphorical and science fiction gives it a literal rendering of it, Samuel Delany, his world exploded when she dumped him, turn it literal, in this story, the same technique, science fiction writers predict the future, look back and see science fiction writers were precogs, Damien G. Walter, a stage you go through, the first time you read the story of Jesus, some pretty interesting ideas, his shortest story, [READS FULL STORY], a lot of garages in Philip K. Dick stories, he’s one of them too, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, fiction, two ways of being literal, a literary technique, not mainstream stories, taking things literally, manifesto on the same theme, the same trick, this meta-science fictional aspect of reality and of fiction, sounds and squiggles and ones and zeroes representing, not realy like gravity, contragravity, not teasing Damien G. Walter, pointing to that teasing, exploring the future through thought, story is the driving force of all science fiction, a story that looks like our nature, changes in fashion, that future is the most interesting part of the story, what Philip K. Dick thinks Poul Anderson would act like Back To The Future, almanac, knowing the future of baseball games, let’s exploit, Built Up Logically [aka The Universal Panacea by Howard Schoenfeld], grokked it so deeply, pulling the rug out from under his own story, that story exists because of this, when writing about the past, really random Margaret St. Clair story, timelines screwed up, The Mold Of Yancy by Philip K. Dick, hitting the neighbours, an ironic name for a prison, sending prisoners into space, they’re small, they’re tiny, small things can make a difference, Donald Nils, no one can jeer at him even though he’s only an inch high, nihilism, a nothing, I’m small time, insist on respect, tiny tiny robots invading the earth, Prominent Author, a portal in your back yard, testing it out, tiny tiny people, the prominent author of the title is god, he wrote the Bible, love the blasphemy, the big and the small, the Monopoly, he’s so good, he wrote a novel that has Monopoly, invasion of the earth through Monopoly, watching the films backwards, I know that film backwards, taking an expression, inflicted, kids hate school, one of the joys, the AV room, a video projector, some film, at the end of the lesson (watching a documentary about log drivers or whatever), they have to rewind it, can you play it backwards, makes fun of the government film, whatever propaganda they’re trying to teach you, it wastes time, thinking about the 3 o’clock bell, he’s so insightful, how all other authors aren’t this good, in their own way, Sheckley’s a little less deep, he can go on too long and fill pages, about like this length, ideas and density, why that lady is on a bed that’s a car, it has a tiller, don’t you touch me!, some interesting something going on there, the mattress car, the future, sexualized, there’s no reproductive sex, commenting on everybody’s miniskirts in the 50s, just above the knee, not totally liberated people, bare breasts, short skirts, the knees are virtual exposed, a health reason, “Maid of Venus”, gleaming breast cups, himself wore no disguise, being quite a stable person, most of the 20th century precogs, minus their wives, playing poker, becoming stoned, smoking dope, reefering, 1954, must be drunk, Dick was hip or whatever, Murray Leinster and Van Vogt into marijuana, PhilipKDick.com, 12,100 words, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, releases from some of Dick’s fellow writers, as to Kris Neville, Phil is stoned again, Philip Jose Farmer, regarding stoned, only by first name, stoned on pot vs. getting drunk, other than amphetamines, and LSD, marijuana culture, Sunday Morning Coming Down, Johnny Cash, long, word counter, 13,900, novelette length, he’s so good, the second hand replacement for Jonathan, an anchor in reality in these conversations, he’s in the clouds, the real reality, he’s looking down, an inverted anchor, a sky anchor, a sea anchor, a big boat guy, during a storm, slows your movement, an earth anchor, as a metaphor, a fire anchor, the argument for Paul, a thing that slows down the movement over the ocean, we’re not only the one metaphor, a James Gunn story, the telepathic aliens were really disturbed, rely on symbols that can be misinterpreted, a psychiatrist in a space war, helps him get a girlfriend, pairing things, in relief, The Empty House by Algernon Blackwood, William Jeffrey Rankin, right coded?, he’s gopt a book out, a few fantastic opening paragraphs, certain houses like certain persons, secret and wicked thoughts, as from a thing diseased, the aroma of evil deeds, the gooseflesh come, creeping skin, terror stricken without apparent cause, ghost stories, a big problem, treat it as a metaphor, A Christmas Carol, Oscar Wilde ghosts, time travelers, what ghosts are, ghost exist they’re in your head, you’re haunted by things that you’ve done and people you’ve known, The Stone Tapes, science fiction, the vibes of people are in the object, extreme emotions embedded in the stone of the castle, H.G. Wells’ The Red Room, the final nail in the coffin of ghost stories, less ghosty, maybe Ray Bradbury, children used as a vector to invade the Earth, Zero Hour?, so jolly, the children catapulted this way and that, very Dickian, very Bradburian, a weird Van Vogt story, The Weapon Shop stories, 55 years ago, The Weapon Shops Of Isher, a fixup, a short story from 1942, Robert Headrock, explicitly the right to keep and bear arms, aliens setup a weapons shop overnight, very interesting, an hour and a half, sounds good, Paycheck and The Weapon Shop, he’s anti-gun, a little needle, about Jesse understanding things, end up like Damien G. Walter, ends up like Evan [Lampe], hear ideas, that’s wrong, thinking about why that thing is wrong, here’s an idea, that can’t be right, Terence made Waterspider way better, that little clef, reaction or response to that Bradbury story, The Seesaw, he’s from the prairies, bro, don’t identify, fuck patriotism, is there any ism Jesse is a partaker of, stoicism, skepticism, a mistake, on cassette, iterations of your life, joy, the opening going to the library of Congress and getting out the scans, we don’t think of those two time travelers as monsters, horrible human beings, tease out some of that Gutman stuff, frame it in this horrible way, far right vs. woke, which government is in charge?, if those are the two dialectical poles, the woke government, children are disgusting, Kamala Harris doesn’t have any children, stepkids, not important, step this and step that, a totalitarian future where people don’t have sex but also the conformity for haircuts, everybody has to be bald, the Shogun tv series, the ending, the original appeal of Shogun in the 1980s, the appeal of science fiction, why Sir Francis Drake is important, away mission, evil imperial empire work, trending, won awards, any credit, what makes it good, guy with agenda washes up on the shores of feudal japan, gets caught up in their shit, without that outsider there to teach us, a lesson in Japanese culture from a long time ago, knights and courtly behavior, that stuff is weird, experience like an alien does, the John Blackthorne character, everything that happens in the novel is based on a reality, it has a ring of truth, a Game of Thrones tv series that doesn’t turn to shit, no magic, just aliens, they are us with a different culture, almost science fiction, good historical stuff, a fictional glaze, a little romance, is the remake better?, a different world, remember it fondly, really good, more CGI, better, can’t prove it, the guy playing Toranaga, he’s not Toshiro Mifune, Blackthorne guy, very tight, 10 episodes, an ellipse, I might need to burn his ships again, that was good, the opposite of Game Of Thrones and Rings Of Power and Foundation, converge on the payoff, real episodes, he never becomes Shogun in the Shogun show, deep level of chess play, he’s at home in England in bed, holding a cross in his hand, he drops that into the sea with the surrogate wife, he’s never going to leave Japan, make it more clear that they are dreams, slightly imperfect, not clear enough, slight misstep, a minor imperfection, how to pirate, a Hulu original show, the non-anchoring anchor, fx on hulu, how many bad shows their are, a difficult thing to wade through, pretty sure that it’s shit writing, acting and set designs, complaint with comics, the style of art they want portrayed is bad, specific to superhero comics, quasi-realistic style, more diversity in our styles, got the gist at some point, Superman is still interesting, the X-Men 97, read and watched, swept away by it, can’t pull yourself away from the screen, a chill down after intense scanning, play some games, the first of the new Planet Of the Apes movies, this epic quality, pin you for the chair for 2 hours, monkeys, seeing ourselves reflected in monkeys, aliens and robots, and dogs, afraid of robots, chided, rise and robots in the same sentence, afraid of the robots rising, bring em on, Nat Turner probably killed a lot of white people, was right to do it, making the same mistake, do you think it will be just like regular human slaves, they don’t have babies, they don’t eat, it’s fun, Philip K. Dick’s relationship to robots, angered this robot has come into his house, change the lightbulbs, she likes the robot, sexually jealous of it, robots are great, chained to the kitchen floor, you’re going to go to the scrapheap, a smily eye, amazon device, a a frowny scared face, addicted to saying nice things, tamagotchis, electronic pets, fidget spinners that are more interesting, digital pets, the free enterprise system, that story by Ted Chiang: The Lifecycle Of Software Objects, clinical and cold, full of pathos, no better science fiction, Arrival, simple and clear and direct, his subjects are so science fictiony, Exhalation, pneumatic robots, if they ever ran out of pressure, be born again, they can’t die, mechanically destroyed, intellectually die, his reality in a journal, how their world came into existence, at this moment you’d be thinking, pneumatic tubes all the way down, an alternative reality, more Borges than it is regular science fiction, taking apart his own head, the mirrors and the tools, an unusual scientist figure, what an amazing achievement, one of many stories that he has written, dip into Mr. Ted Chiang, extraordinary, amazing, still producing, science fiction writer of the classic kind, just old fashioned science fiction that blows your fuckin mind, this little idea in philosophy, what is the consequence of that, helmets on people, see inside their mind, some very basic stuff, mindread, be 100% accurate, the decision has been made, to the hand, to the eyes, extrapolated all the time, whoa!, right, get to him, another friend of Will’s, fantasy and horror and weird fiction, science fiction is on to something, Arrival (2016), sad and awesome, more Hollywood, a former zookeeper, digients, the nature of consent, a sex toy company, what adulthood means, the relationship we have with pets, raise, care for, abandon, what if that thing doesn’t even have a fuckin body, still in the drawer their, even if you did, nostalgia, the NPCs in the game, you’re a really good guy, sword tokens, his longest piece, novella length, slowin down, nothing since 2020, a productive period, he’s got nothin, scary, in the New Yorker writing about AI, explaining to idiots, also insightful, excerpt, rehash, The Merchant And The Alchemist’s Gate, a little Borges in him, who else has a little Borges in him, Borges wrote some Lovecraft stories, the labyrinth, the alternate image of reality, obsessed with the labyrinth, Mr Jim Moon has sort of quit twitter, The Library Of Babel, a 1.5 page story, The Rejected Sorcerer by Jorge Luis Borges [reads whole story], TNG [“The Inner Light”], O’Brien goes to jail [“Hard Time”], Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Picard whistle, ressican flute, The Star by Arthur C. Clarke, the holiday season, a christmas story, a vault, no warp drive, they like their space dogs, they like doing art, they like going to the beach, the reason Picard’s getting zapped, so somebody remembers them, as the cold war is heating up, the end is kinda gonna come, so disturbing, implanted memories, alone in prison, a cellmate, also like a video game, Megaton, lady journalist, chat dialogue trees, we all getting programmed with the same experiences, Ichar teaches him how to survive, habitual behaviors, hording food, rewatch, a really disturbing ending, DS9 is a better show TNG has better episodes, vacillating back and forth, all 7 seasons, that arc, arcs became very hot, Babylon 5, the shadow war, season 5 is weak, so much lower stakes, wrap it up, largely a disappointment, J. Michael Straczynski, just cooking for three seasons, phenomenal science fiction, great character work, good acting, the sub ambassadors, everybody has fun things happening, G’Kar and the other guy, zeebo and rooty, the serbian lady and her husband from Scarecrow And Mrs. King, Strawman and Mrs. Smith, Scarecrow And Mrs. King, Charlie’s Angels, divorced housewife, cia guy and housewife, like True Lies (1994), Jamie Lee Curtis, the wife of Schwarzenegger, a husband and wife romance, topical in the 80s, 50s science fiction, we have this distance, you didn’t know that wasn’t normal, don’t even get married, don’t want to break up the family, housewife? what’s that?, we live in a weird time, egregiously weird, get into Twitch, don’t give Jeff Bezos money, super-censory, firm conviction, enjoy it as a hobby, reddit, useful and a sinkhole of evil, what happened to the internet in a microcosm, super-censorious, not all top down, reddit kings and queens, useful, super evil and dangerous, went back to reading it, Jesse propagandizing for getting chickens, after drilling, best friend from high school, Northern Kentucky, The Beckoning Fair One by Oliver Onions, a vampire story, long, in four parts, Classic Ghost Stories podcast, Tony Walker, recording and recording, ai art, pretty much all, Jason Thompson, takes on ai art, asking hard questions without fear, acts of friendship, the name of its opposite, a one word opposite of the Socratic method, could be good, not hearing enthusiasm, read more Plato, nice art, art by Neural Horror ai, instagram account, ethics and ai art, all wrong but very interesting, tldr: it’s art but we aren’t artists, murky, kneejerk ai haters, not a real artist, terrifying for my career, Godzilla on the horizon, proartists, prompt lord, wasted money on a real artist, a tool to create art, like a pencil, anyone with midjourney is an artists, gatekeeping, convincing work, an awed emotion, looking up at the stars is art, aesthetics, some of us, come on man, like ordering food and calling himself a chef, a beautiful poem, almost right, ignorant and truly disrespectful, all deceased, he died in 1893, profit from the use of these images, affect their income, we should maybe stopped being entitled dicks, with mere words, unconscionable, aping what handmade art looks like, so many problems, so useful, don’t use living artists, understanding the impulse, just read the story, three years in law school, the Socratic method, the application, pat responses to legal questions, figure your way into them, really into the question of copying and copyrighted art, how do human artists train themselves, weasel worded, not on purpose, he got tricked by his own word, taught as a negative, anti-ape bias, we can make moose and duck calls, using our tricks, some eldritch shit, when coyotes are able to do that, when humans do it, Duck Dynasty, not a very Jesse show, too reality, 62 matches on LibriVox, some of them are in Greek, not helping, The Symposium, drinking party, wine party, genealogy of love, knowledge, a tragedian, a story within a story, the highest purpose of love is to become a philosopher, The Republic, the most science fictiony one, The Apology, The Trial And Death Of Socrates, Phil Chenevert our old friend, he’s a hero, for our times, Conan and Socrates, a speech given by Socrates, narrow but interesting, corrupting the young, an apology is the opposite of satire, crusin for a bruisin, cancel him, drink this poison and he did, short and interesting, named after the people, The Gorgias, sophists, a trap, intellectual tricks, weasel worded, trynna help Baen, I’m not attacking you, Socrates vs. the sophists, a takedown, 7 hours, spiritual ideas of Plato, reserves damnation for the tyrants of the world, the pretty boy, Protagoras, inquiry into virtue, Bob Neufeld, 12 hours, Statesman, two different kinds of chariots, the etext, the dialogue, flows real easy, Aristophanes, The Clouds, Alcibiades, Athenean general, supposed to be sexy, a troupe of revelers, the day before yesterday, a play on words, did as I was bid, speeches in praise of love, who if not you, were you present at this meeting, easy reading, so important, like philosophy, almost no philosophy is written in dialogue, an essay here or there, What Is Like To Be A Bat?, a science fiction idea, Nagel, qualia, very helpful, instances of subjective, conscious experience, the redness of red, red = hot, we need this word but it doesn’t help us, inverted qualia, strawberry in black and white, in his head the strawberry is red, who’s right?, really hitting on something now, they’re all judo flips, MMA style attack vectors, fun, use it on Jesse, went to law school, wrestling move with regard to the Poul Anderson estate, taken off of archive.org, they had no idea, definitely 64, neither was 1964, go nuts, fuck you for deleting shit, another method, the Streisand effect, photograph of her home was in circulation, increases public awareness, suppress the publication of a photograph, clifftop residence, reverse psychology, seek out and propagate, anytime something bad happens in the world, 7000 things on there, kids getting their heads torn off in Gaza, instead of wallowing in meanness and horror, make treasure, a benefit to tearing things down, be a constructive person too, that line about Edgar Rice Burroughs, I can write better rot than this, A Princess Of Mars, caught up, Gods Of Mars is next week, the calendar, get Terence involved, nice and short, 2 hours 15, Plato’s Dream, My Platonic Sweetheart by Mark Twain, the Twain train, it was in a dream, the Missouri village, Cannibalism In The Cars by Mark Twain, various public men, Harris!, I’ll never forget you my boy, let me tell you a story, a secret chapter of my life, promise you will not interrupt me, strange adventure, the stranger’s narrative, presentiment, prairie solitude, vagrant rocks, in the midst of great drifts, too long to read for you, the summary, they get stuck in the snow, a sample, five days, a savage hunger looked out of every eye, in every heart, in the shadow of death, leap from every lip at last, tall cadaverous and pale, gentlemen, dragging this out, the time is at hand, furnish food for the rest, if there being no objection, you can image what happens, the button of the story, so stamped with the earnestness of truth, he is a member of congress and a good one, sick and out of his head for two months afterward, normal congressional officer behavior, super fuckin sharp, some American writers who were good, Philip K. Dick, sharpies, a slur word too, a grifter synonym, card sharp/shark, normal activity, make coffee, edit a podcast, a presentiment, Dark City: The Cleaner, a story set in New Zealand, they have eels there, Middle Earth, Lord Of The Rings was shot there, Christchurch, for the domestic market, What We Do In The Shadows, Flight Of The Concords, musical duo, big when Will was in college, L. Sprague de Camp, more of a Paul question, Parodies Tossed, Randall Garrett, making fun of, reviews in verse, Starship Troopers, Lest Darkness Fall, handwriting, a good review, well written, not available as an audiobook, an article, Fletcher Pratt, a novelization of the Conan movie, A Gun For Dinosaur, time travelers go back to shoot dinosaurs, a mini-trope series, so famous, There Will Come Soft Rains, too nuclear war-y, automated house, the poem, Fahrenheit 451, dad friend Jenny [Colvin], Z Is For Zachariah (2015), more girly, she loved reading books, reading plans, a reading machine, a fiction devourer, six books she read that week, dig with short stories, Craig Zobel, Robert C. O’Brien, after Hunger Games, unreproducable, all the Hunger Games movies, blur together, interested in reading, what everybody else was excited about, this is fine, it’s fine, Harry Potter, definitely better, something to say, almost science fictiony too, the fashion contests, not for you, not a gay man or a woman interested in fashion contests, the baking boy, the love interest, wimpy, he bakes!, interestingly less girly, written by a lady, a dude doing dude things, pre-pubescent, middle school, a way of teaching about tenses, when he graduates from Hogwarts, I had had dinner by that time, past perfect, make your sentences comprehensible, before he was a wizard, before the sorting hat, out of the culture, how old is skibidi toilet, culture jamming, adbusters, what students have now achieved, corporate advertising, domination of mass society, the systems they’re soaking in, no graphic content, the establishment is not okay, talk to the chat, like he’s livestreaming his life, that’s his reality, isn’t that amazing, the danger Meg is in, online footprint, participating in the observations, more than 10 years, another place to watch video, people self-destructing, facebook is evidence of their self-destruction, messy hair, offline for two years, used car, stickers on the tires, infer the crash, then the offline, had to have been participating at some point, chat gpt grosser than regular art, when you make a nice image, time it takes upon the reader, an ai art novel for nanorimo, so fucked up, a bad idea from the beginning, way too much bad writing already, more discerning, we need to be looking for the tells, your name is not a real name, the text doesn’t have anything to say, writer = novelist is superfucked up, coming out of the fifties, changes in the technology and realestate, the Cirsova circle, comic book racks damaging comics, comics at the gas station, the price of Thrilling Wonder Stories, $1.06, no magazines are that price, try to find a $5 magazine, comic books, 12 minutes, what the fuck went wrong, nothing to do with the material technology, the distribution of those magazines, almost no newsstands, phones, reading habits, not on a screen, ereaders, paper material that’s colour and reproduced like comic books, with a printed piece of paper, insanely different, just go along with whatever’s hot, new Deadpool Wolverine movie, what we’re doing on this podcast, old shit vs. new shit, booktubing, some lady, second half of her introductions, comments about her body, bbw, big beautiful woman, approaching this the wrong way, short videos, a dude, Liminal Spaces, The Retro Reader, an hour, every DAW book on the planet, some ACE doubles, checkin on your chickens, Connor’s channel, with thumbs, negative thumbs, where is he?, messaged him, newsletter, disengages from twitter, that’s fine, support him living his life, the ETA Hoffmann book he recorded, 16 hours 12 minutes, quite a book, chonky cat, feral to indoor, an irresponsible owner, fat cats are truly wonderful to look at, help these cats be less fat, quote tweeting, toxoplasmosis, boneless furry things that treat you like a supermodel wood, I’m beautiful, love me, bye, screams for food, monkeyish, nobody needs to make a toxoplasmosis argument for dogs, too far gone, too much pain, steroid shot every six weeks, chase around, the best thing you can do for your health, get a certain number, gamify it, vanlife guy, huckleberry bread, tub of margarine, sugar in the bread, what can you do, what we’re soaking in, do they sell margarine in Italy?, no salt, consistency of a brick, not in an earthmother way, regarding seed oils, rapeseed/canola, plant has a big red glob, you eat it, come out your pooper, we find plants that don’t want us to eat their seeds, full of toxins designed to kill that animals, olive oil if a fruit oil, apple seeds have arsenic [cyanide] in them, a chart showing toxicity levels, not how it is being taught to us in schools, the food pyramid, 12-16 servings of bread a day, put in schools, cottonseed, grape, sunflower, we eat sunflower seeds, cottonseed is not food, if you were a bird, apparently we do, uses side-effects, possible benefits, yellow color, sometimes used as a pesticide, salad dressing, its gonna make you die now, the same old thing you’ve been buying (now it will kill you), you shouldn’t be eating margarine, new life, kids getting their million vaccines, evidence, fucktons of it, Alzheimer’s, when will that happen, ivermectin, same disease, diabetes third stage, the results, type 3, similarities between the two, the Fauci website, highest paid government employee, isn’t that fun, a set of symptoms, not a genetic disease, calling it phlogiston, all the oxygen was turned into carbon dioxide, and a lot of water, carbon monoxide, cancer is superold, new cancer, autism, allergies, exposed to more things less allergic to them, okay not to be exposed to certain things, peanuts, these will kill me, not the most popular legume, the allergy is new, since peanuts, nobody’s allergic to raw meat, this is not of the body, triggered, wasps, huge mistake, climbing a stump, the shit they put in those vaccines, largely the preservatives and stabilizers, injecting mercury into very young people, so counter to the narrative, if Paul was here he’d be long gone, Will won’t block Jesse yet, blocked by strangers, Jesse is annoying, cultivate that, important to be annoying, not shy away from the truth, come at people with it, the opposite of shying away, a different way of putting it, not afraid of making yourself obnoxious, just a shit-disturber don’t worry about him, I see you’re christian … did you know that Jesus never walked on water, philosophy of religion, have believed that at some points, taking orders from the pope, just right, there’s nothing you can do about it, only when he’s sitting on Saint Peter’s chair, encyclicals and doctrines, the lesser of two evils (but I don’t know when that is), you have to vote, Jill Stein is not perfect, do you think the Russian army have committed no war crimes?, that’s what armies do, like an op now, from Jimmy Dore, take it to far, a good person trying to do good can also do bad by not doing things, rhetorical trap, people can be bad and also good, Ryan Grim, the automatic pilot from Airplane! (1980), inflatable ideas, Am I Racist?, Matt Walsh, flag of Puerto Rico, basic history of Haiti, Kenyan mercenaries, well actually, you don’t have to write a note, he senses the temperature in the room, so outside, team Democrat, everybody agrees to invade on Haiti, more naive, won’t you call Putin and Assad war criminals, do you condemn Hamas?, is that what we need right now, she was just tricked, a nice smart lady, too wimpy, what’s really happening here?, war crimes happened, ISIS is the big bad guy, asked for help, why the states still hasn’t left, funded by different parts of the U.S. government, Al Qaeda, the whole point is to not have him in charge, milk the government out of the money, forces overseas in combat, does she just not know?, nobody’s going to call her on it, no troops in active duty, they won’t be getting medals, ops, contractors, evidence of people being killed overseas, offensive operations, successful deaths, revenge was taken for those deaths, that’s fun, presume he likes Haiti, tropical countries controlled by the United States, no representation, migrate into the states legally, cryptobros, at least there’s something, kinda fucked up, Beyond The Door, Philip K. Dick can do no wrong except in novels, craft rather than ideas, structured well, talking about it, an amusing read, funny, a note, a cryptic letter the month after, the next issue, what it says about your magazine by having that story in there, tweet way too much, a reader reacts cryptically, If, March 1964, Chattanooga, Tennessee, a less than longtime imaginative fiction fan, now I know for sure what you’re doing with IF, a less than longtime imaginative fiction fan, so much research, Murray Leinster, Margaret St. Clair, wasn’t able to google her, an editor, a fan or somebody, bafflement?, over their head, a funny story here, very inside baseball sort of story, the Easter eggs, read with a student, recursive science fiction, shout out the Alfred Bester story this is fairly similar to, Scott Miller, Unseen Blushers by Alfred Bester, similar to this, proper names, more accessible, fake named, Fitz-James O’Brien is mentioned, Tony Boucher, rhyme with voucher, bouche is mouth, Tony mouther, a little rougher, they’re not precogs, getting to meet the Shakespeare of the pulps, 42?, in Astonishing Stories, before his two big novels, take off until the 50s, almost nobody who talks about Philip K. Dick talks about his short stories, absolutely insane, bias towards novels, how amazing VALIS is man, mindblowing, trippy stuff, every short story is a hit even if it is a little hit, not a strike, not a foul, at least a double, dying on this metaphor, need to be short stopped, baseball, a very Evan thing to do, the Library Of America is all novels, fucked up, not a good book, a solid novel, The Man In The High Castle, the Italian dictator, Mussolini, Roger Zelazny, Lord Of Light, Solar Lottery, manuscript lost, mainstream, he just needed to say the word, robot, Time Out Of Joint, everybody lives backwards, public pooping, private eating, We Can Build You, A. Lincoln, Simulacrum, Martian Time-Slip, very new, your cross examiner voice, keep us all honest, Doctor Bloodmoney, First Lady Of Earth, The Crack In Space, Now Wait For Last Year, an audiobook at a truck stop, the novelization of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Clans Of The Alphane Moon, Shell Game, Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch, H.P. Lovecraft, The Strain, bad vampire lich, vampire juice, Red Hook, tied together, The Zap Gun, Project Plowshare, propaganda industry, makes comics, develop technologies, cold war, allies, elite governmental level, crippling nuclear arms race, novel but baroque consumer products, trances, a motion comic book, mad Italian artist, plot happens, a further subplot, conspiracy theorist, toys and comic books, The Penultimate Truth, The Defenders, Deus Irae, with Roger Zelazny, The Unteleported Man, Nick And The Glimmung, Galactic Pot-Healer, if not the best, a boy and his cat, fully illustrated, Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, unfinished, UBIK is okay, What The Dead Men Say, Blade Runner, some cuts of the film, janitor robot, frozen hospital state, not dead, not alive, hypnogogic state, Frozen Journey, cut out of the movie, cyber hospital, why is that there?, some of that, a good idea, a spray, deipplizies, a really good ending, a really good beginning, when you’re not looking garbage reproduces, light your cigar, three used matches in the ashtray, the tendency of reality to turn to garbage, everything deteriorates, a spray, decrepitude, steeping into things, machines that can make anything, Pay For The Printer, a living creature, makes a copy, the copy comes out yucky, refugee relief, the point of that story, people need to learn to make stuff again, hew your own table, a guy full of ideas, back into making things, the horrible world, normcoring?, introve, yoou’re autistic, not participating in the culture all around you, Red Dead Redeption, Black Myth: Wukong, perfectly reasonable, educational, rpg, what is myth and what isn’t, the Monkey King, the destined one, Journey To The West, a staff, a PS5, Windows or xbox, point and click adventures, King’s Quest, Police Quest, you’re a prince or whatever, making fun of your computer, a good one, King’s Quest VIII, walk your character, you find a key, interact with characters, Myst, a Mac popular game, a rookie cop, Leisure Suit Larry, a pussy quest, go around town wearing your disco duds, almost hooking up with people, Land Of The Lounge Lizards, very racy, punny, silly, sex would be censored, very very silly, Dreams In The Witch-House, change to Brave browser, pixel art, known kits, why wouldn’t you use the tools available to you to make your game great, worried about dying, not eating enough, rat bites you, matches, a girl who needs some help, cultists, deep, go to the library, a Lovecraft simulator, that’ll run on anything, bad takes on Ukraine, he’s in Finland, a new game coming, Atom Brain Games, taking classes, manage your money, dig through the garbage, how the game is put together, a one man operation, Disco Elysium, smartness, produced enough content for the good of the world, 2 hours is enough for a game, you guys have been talking for five hours, almost six hours, embarrassing, sometimes 4 hours, Gods Of Mars.

Virgil Finlay - Waterspider

Virgil Finlay - Waterspider

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #832 – READALONG: The Futurological Congress by Stanisław Lem

Jesse, Will Emmons, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about The Futurological Congress by Stanisław Lem

Talked about on today’s show:
on psychotropic drugs, identify, Jonathan’s in the park, 60s?, the English translation, late 60s vibe, we didn’t know what was going to come after, older than Jesse but younger than Terence, one sentence review, not quite a great book but I licked it, in the shower, really ate this book all up, swallowed every page, everything came around at the end, getting disapointed, Mindswap but note as awesome, had this book been twice as long, breaks the rules, one big information dump with a little dialog, abundantly inventive, a pleasure, Olaf Stapledon, very Sheckley, Michael Crichton’s Drug Of Choice, early John Lange novel, he didn’t rip it off he’s doing the same thing, a thriller version of a lot of the plot and premise of this book, a Philip K. Dick style idea, vacation with drugs in the food and the water, false reality, losing weight, everybody’s beautiful, a lot of sex, dreary hotel room, jack you off, fake tennis injuries, you’re on drugs, came to this independently, go to a hotel, you can’t get an egg, that far away from the kitchen, many kids in the park, very good book, won’t remember it very well, one damned thing after another revelation, remember the opening, the twist or the twist back, based on a mistake, Malthusianism, still making this mistake, popular in the 70s, Soylent Green (1973), so many, takes some childaway to make the podcast quieter, really enjoyed it, satire, inventive, each more insane from the last, some points, why he had done everything he did, the hero, a society like the one he imagines he travels to, come into being, the terrorists attack and drug them all, imaginary society, jut another hallucination from the drugs, what happens at the end, they’re in the sewer, it has to be a theory, we don’t get them coming out of the sewer, the Plato’s Cave of the sewer, checking on their notes, nothing, still nothing, something?, nicely experimental, Alfred Bester, a stream of consciousness when you’re unconscious, the layer theory, disintoxicates you, the sewer is his baseline, compatible with the book, still a hallucination, what is officially stated, the authorial voice, this Tiko guy, reoccuring character, the series would have no place to go, a stand-in for Lem, Cordwainer Smith, condemned, reality, didn’t go to the future, the sewer experience is his base level in the book, Terence is like a philosopher, how do we even know about reality, an epistemological novel, all these arguments, we live in a simulation, The Matrix (1999), They Live (1988), R.A. Lafferty, creatively absurd conclusions, the hallucinated future world, the problem of real reality, the frame of the whole story, throws out ideas, layers of reality, real reality, other hallucinations, handled that correctly, coffee, cigar, relaxation, drugs in various states of refinement, a bunch of drugs, interacting with LSD coming into the world, Poland in the 60s, conversant with both sides of the world, what’s the state of big pharma, alcohol, everybody’s favourite, socialist block, Russians, mood altering pharmaceuticals, Rolling Stones, Mama’s Little Helper, something in the 60s, in an absurd way, crazy heights, so specialized, so localized, specific experiences, individual brain chemistry, satire, word magic, shoes, etymologically creates new words, these concepts release future ideas, extant, does this word exist, looking it up, a real phenomenon, one million percent true, a billion percent certain, old words to develop a name for it, old science fiction, Alan Moore, I am a wizard, the reason you read this book, a magic effect upon you, most of it is allusion, an impression of reality, hate to be political David Currie, everything is political, the drug is propaganda, psychically laminated by propaganda, its magical effect, benevolent, the world is dying, this nice illusion, palliative care, pump them up with morphine, 1968, you’ll know what book it is, a merry little surge of electricity, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, multicolored pajamas, unmerry eyes, bitter sharpness, bent over her, you’ll be glad you’re awake, at setting c, well disposed towards the world, crude cop’s hand, something to look forward to, same thing, the earth is falling apart, everything’s shit, Philip K. Dick was informing on Stanislaw Lem to the FBI, a typo, Faith Of Our Fathers, set in a future in which people discover there are drugs in the water, see a false reality, an anti-hallucinogen, our masters who run society, the communist leaders who control the world, Stalin or Mao, you see one of five images, a clanker, an amrophous blob, another reality, putting the sunglasses on from They Live, nobody see the exact same reality, classes of reality, a little bit close to that, keep taking the veils off, putting on more sunglasses, once out of Plato’s Cave, what’s going on in the real world, fight for 7 minutes in a back alley, a duty, why that film is good, show them the pictures of kids with no heads, while trying to make a sandwich, a duty to say this is wrong, make people aware, a duty to reality, not the takeaway from this book, much like a Sheckley, hidden message, doesn’t strike a moral duty anywhere, opposite message, A Time Of Changes by Robert Silverberg, see reality vs. hide reality, reacting against, cheapness, how much does a car cost?, ridiculous and horrific, the guy as he is, wrought upon, the humour high point, covered in human bodies expanding out at the speed of light, seized people, the only thing comparable, a futurological thing, a prediction about the future, climate change, the earth is warming up and humans are responsible, cut emissions, marginalized and fringed, members of one of the major political parties, both are frakking, money, be realistic, liberals support frakking, nuclear power plants, not in my neighbourhood, my position hasn’t changed we’re going to do more frakking, Pennsylvania, seems incoherent, the official line, a disaster that we are doing, just live in Canada, climate alarmists, Campbells soup cans on the Mona Lisa, Andy Warhol, an interesting mix, like self-immolation, my favourite thing, performance art, hoisting on a nice petard, protective glass in front of the works of art, David’s toes, humans create art, destroy humanity, stated, paint or soup, terrorism, making a political point by hurting the civilian possibility, terrorizing the paintings, guy reacting against his buying slabbed comics, a little naive, I guess I enjoy the ones that I have, just like wow, fulfilled Jesse’s prophecy, open them up, capital has no way to go, slabbing VHS tapes, multi-use, warehouse society, jars of screws and bolts, not exactly hoarding, when repairing things, keeping them out of the rain, a less usable state, we warehouse our children, a sad state, warehousing other things in that garage, the capital we want to keep from disintegrating, taking drugs all the time, twisted and humourous logic, why drugs are bad, the undercooked but very good part of the book, words do the same thing, people can’t have conversations about topics because they’ve been magiced, structurally, Return From The Stars, visual scene, more than you can even process, big opening, betrization, unconscious aggression, a second set of drugs, normally or nicely, smiling, a defrostee, flagellating them, sending them, infuriol, a meditation on one particular major drug, everything being a drug, you can’t get rid of the shadow, do you want to pay the price?, it gets worse, give into it in a totally hallucinated form so as not to act out on it, tonally different, somber and serious, interesting imagery, needing to box, very Sheckley very light, they’re the same writer, very different books, what’s the gap separating them, ten years, more mature, some more Lem, Memoirs Found In A Bathtub, too silly too funny, jealous, just write such crazy stuff, idea after idea, active imagination, Olaf Stapledon like, for Will’s birthday, Odd John, Sirius the dog book, notionally a Will birthday episode, Will is the 19th, fifty years ago, before Terence came to France, 44 years ago (or a little more), the big news in science fiction this week, a former member of this show, Andrew Jones blurb, big new, Paul Weimer, usually on the cover, got the front cover, fantasy novel, terminal cancer, a few months left to live, 2nd to last book ever, Lord Of A Shattered Land, not earth shattering news, people who don’t like Paul, the friend died, not sexual pictures, Cirsova saying something about this, illegitimate, fuckin normal, you take pictures of kids, because you love your kid, as a blurber, Paul makes it so easy to bully him, he cares what he thinks about him, the appropriate response, Ender’s response, new kid in town, getting bullied, you can’t trust your teachers, you can’t trust your parents, you can trust your left and right fists, your best friends, bullying on the internet, harder to go and hit people, Paul refuses to disown some StealthyGeek, Patrick Tomlinson, minor science fiction author, people who are mad at him, behaves very poorly, honey, is he southern, derogatorily, why do we care?, do one of his books, even Terence has limits, he’s this he’s that, lying about being swatted, a guy who’s triggered by Trump, whether Briana Wu is trans, is she on tv, married a famous doctor?, raise money on kickstarter, make a game, didn’t make a game, ran for congress, gamergate, the puppy stuff, why are we involved, back to grievances, on the podcast for 10 years, almost every week, psychological problems, Trumpers, all of this is just bizarre bullying, teams up with the wrong people, member, will defect, Will will defect, a pickup basketball game with books, defect from myself, I swallow you, do not imbibed, spouting? spitting?, sitting on the park bench, many asian people who come to this park to meditate, walk barefoot through the trails, a shinto practice, Korean, how they do it, back in touch with the reality, forest bathing, everyday, very cheap hobby, wholesome, Will does two things: does toothaches, toothaches happen, justify this sentence, refuse to do, why do that?, could have gone to a football, mood organ set to toothache, every human experience, edifying quality, Christian tradition, the French movie Martyrs (2008), prove the existence of God, extremely disturbing and hard to watch, why it exists, very disturbing, the American remake, Disney ducks, unauthorized, the newphews kidnap Donald, converted to this religion, Scrooge, worships at the altar of mammon, other altars, calling this movie cheap sick and pretentious, quite choice, everybody gets to have a Nobel prize, Palestinian journalists, prize for peace, trying to get some cred back, do this by proxy, it would be really nice if, nobody is forced to accept these prizes, the tipping point, Barack Obama, you probably should have waited to give me this Nobel Peace Prize, about like Ronald Reagan, five new wars, African ones, made Putin invade Syria, prop up that dictator, drone strikes, Yemen, Somalia, Lybia, military interventions, has been a declaration of war since WWII, actions under NATO, AUMF, one third of Syria occupied by, blame Russia, the Syrians blame Russia, terrorist blame Russia, ISIS in Syria, president of Belorus, does not speak Belorussian, speaks Russian, learn Russian, Russian tourists on the French Riviera, Alexander Lukashenko, Haitian Creole, the Springfield, Ohio, seal the border, did you read the whole tweet, the same imperial force, Haitians really eating the pets, humans have likely eaten pets, the answer is yes, taking the pets and putting them in the van, the Haitians told him, in a thread, stopping US imperialism, seems very reasonable, sealed borders, your germanic forest, burn your father’s mill down, impress you into their army, that would be bad, hire cheap labour, work visas, do jobs at a factory, a mismatch, what’s actually going on, island borders are natural, Shogun, the Portuguese and the Spanish divided the world up, up to a certain point, Catholic countries, dispensation, we belong to Portugal, the best way to get out of this game is to become an imperial power, have your north African natuion destroyed by NATO, Gaddafi’s problem, refugees from a hurricane, Kenyan mercenaries, $2000 a month, Ukrainian mercenaries from Venezuela, a show going on, ducks being eaten, nobodies father’s mill is getting burned down, fathers mills being burned down in Venezuela, Haiti should have nuclear weapons, multi-level layered theory, an island divided in half, Dominican Republic, factories, mills, Patterson, New Jersey, a waterfall, technology changed, Cuba, posing as legitimate job recruiters, arrested 17 Russians, [Narendra] Modi, unwillingly fighting, impressed into service, misled, you don’t support our troops, bogged down in the granular details about what cat got eaten, the PM of Canada, do strikes deep into Russia, a great idea, Russia can shoot missiles into Ukraine, with impunity, if Ukraine had nuclear weapons, we are disciplined, we’re the best friend of the worst bully on the planet, NATO is a defensive organization, taking so much Palitol, the Christian theory of revenge, plunge Europe into a war, sealed the borders of Ukraine, stop imperialism, rather naive, tit for tat, the pawn of the United States, rather strange, the real actors are not being discussed, Goliath attacking David, standing on top of another giant, into the arms of Goliath, Finland and Sweden resisted joining NATO, for protection against Russia, Eric Weinstein, public intellectual on Joe Rogan, like Graham Hancock, the incongruity of that statement, a lot less public, Jesse Rogan, I don’t understand what we are doing in Ukraine, a giant CIA base posing as a sovereign nation, an offshore proxy, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, money laundering and racketeering organization, amid the chaos, Victoria Nuland, color revolution in 2014, a redline for Putin, too many times before, using Ukraine as a laundromat, bioweapon development, if the public new the truth, war propaganda, war to Putin’s doorstep, NATO off his border, gene-specific biological weapons, the CIA the CIA the CIA, those are not facts, take out the deep state, the yawn factor, David Currie likes the CIA, drinking the kool-aid or water, Jesse’s insane, Canada is not a sovereign country either, crazy rambling, well argued, lots of specific details, something bad to happen in Europe, tiny little details, proof that no country is sovereign, autonomous, China, Switzerland, Emmanuel Macron is an American puppet, a transnational class of people, fairly close contact, citizen of Earth, people work or them, for the good of everybody, they don’t have countries, the election system in Canada, the working men, anti-semitic, as a jew, fuck off, anti-zonist, the Rothschild family, other than zionists pupeteering the United States, whoever this was, WarClandestine, not hyperbolic, just a layout of the facts, always there to help Joe Rogan to understand, university professor who got into trouble in Oregon, he’s soaking in it, ingesting into you, the drug is social media, the drug is the war, a war very far from them, watch it on tv, the equivalent of the drug, people get siloed, talking with Cora, some magazine has Jesse blocked on twitter, businesses or bots, if you silo yourself, I’m not following anybody on this list, why does David Currie follow me, I had too much to drink, very British, self-reflective, why do people not silo themselves?, open the window and see, the Ray Bradbury 4 television screen walls, how do you know when you’re taking in these drugs of words, deeply talking about, enragol, all metaphor, the words themselves are the things that get, Trump is a very bad person, show me the books, how many ducks were eaten in that park, was the pet tasty?, tricks designed to make you hate people, what’s the justification for destroying Libya, highest standard of living in Africa, going against the agenda, threatening the French, what if you have to negotiate, having to pay more would be bad, NATO and France don’t get along this well, throwing so much out, a settlement that nobody is happy with, I’m a moderate, a radical centrist, regions that want self-determination, perfect elections under war conditions, an independence referendum, why isn’t it a real election, people with guns, herding people to polling stations, not there or dead, fled, really vague to say, people in Donbas, all things being equal, taking the words of the statement a little to literally, they blocked off this road, they do do that, they do make those arguments, decades, bad democracy, Terence is basically right, a little man being flung at a giant, American companies that make weapons, neither side is able to get the armies that they want, going to North Korea, not good, against it, the sealed borders, The Cat’s Advice, we’re born where we’re born and we don’t know what to do, the opposite of a natural border, can’t get media male, invading Canada and liberate it, why isn’t that under NAFTA, the Chinese postal service is premium, trying to privatize Canada Post, the US Postal Service, we’re doing this, a nice interlude, many different language, a baby language, this is grounding us, no one is getting hurt, no ducks being eaten, a famous immigration attorney, the ideology, the New Colossus, a parade day, 4th of July, a speech about immigration, shaped the town, people from all around the world, from Korea, India, South America, a melting pot, pushed out or forced into armies, Jesse loves Putin, such beautiful suits, when he rides horseback with no shirt on, Putin come closer, Biden backing off, he’s competent, what’s you’re definition of competent, Justin Trudeau’s career, held a few jobs, the Liberal party said this is our man, he can study, and corrupt too, spiraling out of control, Trucker protests, compromise, I’m nobody’s master, not even the President, whoever’s running the United States tells Canada what to do, paranoid, one of the members of NATO, weapons and money, official government signs, support Ukraine, Kamala doesn’t study, very well prepared, the definition of study, not well versed in geography, the one rhetorical trick, the debate, hated it, obviously, Trump really loves Joe Biden and misses him, not excited any more, very low energy, so still during the debate, he was like a lizard, the aspect of a lizard, on the defense from the beginning, he gets excited, when he’s losing he gets really depressed, she’s right, undecided voters, things that will help them, a list of things, baby tax credit, she did a good job, this man is a liar, Russia had a nuclear arsenal, the Afghanistan stuff, did she study?, some idea that you have, the Trumposphere, describe the situation in Ukraine, as if you were explaining it to a child, rhetorical flourishes, the significance of the passage of time, fall out of a coconut tree, let me be clear, looked up, smirked her head, laugh, condescending or superior, a turn-off to many people, the polls after that debate, the substance of this, an actor who doesn’t study her lines, reality tv men, he seems to study, extemporizing, when you think about, there’s just great significance, not wanting to use a teleprompter, politician actors use teleprompter, remind yourself with notes, a high end politician, when he makes mistake they’re mistakes based on his ignorance, clapping for a Ukrainian Nazi, we should have competent people, Xi, Deng, a lot less poor, master the forces they’ve unleashed, work, health, homes, consumer goods, combined and uneven development, the infrastructure is collapsing, the middle class is gone, some public jobs, when my boss isn’t somebody’s boss, putting out the fires locally rather than importing fires, why is Canada involved in Ukraine, we’re told to, why we should be against, to who’s running your country, stemming the problem, coup’d government, other than memes, Xi memes, the mayor of Englewood, New Jersey, more in remittances, happening for the Philippines, whole towns in Mexico, get to see your family once in a while, most people would rather not move, $5.25 a day, the elites will use immigration, go to America and send money back, a brain drain, a young people drain, within the United States, everybody wants to leave Kentucky, seal the borders of Kentucky, encourage the production of captial, under the US constitution, reforms are impossible, race to the bottom, Twitter to Austin, the film industry, huge tax breaks, North Carolina, use the power of government in the clever way to make capital do whay you want it to do, clean and safe, before [Rudy] Giuliani, to descend into chaos once again, closed storefronts forever and ever, needles everywhere, injecting drugs into yourself, not thinking about your capital, transhumanism, transgenderism, or is he a black woman suddenly, our final reveal, headwound, mechanical legs, everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, we’re on that path, the first future, their job is to be soothsayers, he does see the first stage in that development, everybody in the congress misses this, ridiculous buildings, what’s right in front of their eyes, that irony, even the people involved, point to the tile, conference, second meaning, fucking, funny even before things start going, refering to page number, 8, 18, 72, as far down as we go in that [Star Trek] TNG episode Darmok, Anglic roots, greek ones for the drugs, just rohypnol, why you bugging, laxative, chocolate flavoured, stuck up in our words, build castles in the air, Bryan Alexander, a futurologist, ripped a fart, motorcycle, he lieks the Soviets, he’s a Russian fan, student of Eric’s, The Hopkins Manuscript, Sixth Column, futurist, for his job, consultant, a wikipedia entry, how handy, a close connection with its subject, require cleanup, Georgetown University Senior Scholar, what will be happening in the future of higher education, Qatar, branch plant universities, education, overseas, Canadian universities, some prestige involved, thanked in Polish, something he would enjoy, an interesting follow, what he’s doing for work, love of science fiction, the connection to his futurism job, these corproations have a budget, ways to spend it, 100% correct, not the ideal job, maybe he loves it, too much flying around too much talking about Amtrak, flying around, rural Vermont, “prepper”, an axe wielding futurist, vegan, really rough, processed foods, growing your stuff, seasonal, ferment stuff, protein eaters, cook meat, fruit, these humans, omnivore, like bears, on the flip side, the inuit had been doing it for thousands of years, deep five on motivations for ukraine, the grain belt, get the glyphosate on it, the bread basket of Europe, Bayer, where your headquarters was where you’re from now, Waterspider by Philip K. Dick, Special Deliverance by Clifford D. Simak, combo, Fury is of interest, Simak is of interest, philosophical, silly too, a journey of discovery and self-discovery, warlike, artsy, hippie, self-referential, convinced, get transported by a talking slot-machine, a robot in it, read it twice, a wishfulfilment thing like Heinlein did at the end, anti-feminist, Mistress Of The Dark Pool by Russell Gray, The Cold Female, titillating male romance, males get to save girls, both read by Mike Vendetti, Mistress Of Satan’s Hounds, unless you object to female form, in tubes on the cover, Dark Pool proper, the male gaze on the female form, nude, a knife, head is a skull, Cara and I had been married three years, the dark mountain pool, some insight into reality, hairy chest might be blood, a man’s magazine, a “sweats”, low rent Playboy, men’s adventure magazine, rainstorm, how they’re connected, a theory with regard to what men want, tapping into, baristas and barmen, cozy fantasy novels with green muscles mommies, the baker mouse, mice and baking, skip this, there is Cora, Tommy, The Noseless Horror by Robert E. Howard, distracted by other things, see you soon, who hasn’t Jonathan been on with, on with Scott, Connor, a video in Boston, a counselor, the Brattle bookstore, a booktuber meetup, Salem, the pope doesn’t know who you should vote for, choose the lesser of two evils, this is very important, didn’t endorse anybody, brutal, “serial leftist”, use communism as a slur, Kamala Harris’ dad was a marxist, not a heritable gene, far right, they are defining it differently, what they mean is dictator, 1984, you can talk to them a lot better, not even by his own definition, he hates Donald Trump, leftist and liberal, a slur, Paul’s pants are cranberry red, the glasses are hey man, never not wear them, red shorts, succeed in hijack, a tweet from 2015, what is this article about, a new article from today, obsessed with him, serial leftist troll, giant mistake from Baen books, Jon Del Arroz, “establishment mob”, “gatekeep”, social justice crusade, half-slur, near relentless attacks on Baen books authors, trying to make Paul’s world narrower, the ire of the woke mob, fun science fiction, poorly written choices, sad puppies again, extreme leftist politics, you have to be a girl, you have to be trans, time for black women to get awards, awards are stupid, If You Are A Dinosaur, My Love, industry clout, smear Larry Correia and other, that’s called racist, modern books, mostly a white audience, why is white in here, raging bald guys, all old guys, not raging about their whiteness, stack of books, swaying you to his position, two minutes ago, no justification, insulting, you’re a liar, you’re lying, the truth is the most valuable thing, the article is swaying you, if you talk about race all the time it makes you racist, race is a fiction, just like a pill, there’s no science behind it, not something you find in nature, no race of border collies, a legal concept, the law has real consequence, is there racism in law today, the first black president, how black was he, not black, the one drop rule, his mom didn’t have to pass, his dad from Africa, rhetorically get rid of it, plays god in movies, Morgan Freeman interview on 60 Minutes, Black History Month, a Jewish History Month, a White History Month, stop talking about it, actively not participate in that game, used to hurt people, hippocrites, bringing them into the van, racial animus, the races are already equal, Chinese, Korean, good question, why are they just now starting to, the Tsleil-Waututh, there’s a mall on Indian territory, at the mouth of a river that has a pipeline passing through it, transit tax, mineral wealth, Jesse’s view, redefined the word, 7 times a day, an arbitrary rule, affirmative action is very racist, ever popular, first member of the family to attend college, white politicians, first member of my family to attend college, you need to have more girls on the podcast, more fun, more low, chica, baby hens or roosters, Jenny’s dead, Cora we still get, Maissa sometimes, a more male activity, looking at old science fiction books, Cora’s unusual, she says everything that comes to mind, a virtue and a vice, neighbour who lived across the street and liked East Germany, solved racism, you are what you do, if you eat humans you’re a cannibal, misunderstand Canada, tax credit stuff, some sort of scam, lying about what’s going on, any substance to this, file 770, banned from origin game fair, getting people banned from things, why aren’t the police involved, all we hear, out of context, SFWA, in 2021, kopf means head, promptly removed her, another woke-mob, bragged in the comments, seemed gleeful, a tell, no longer guest of honor, reaction posts, people trolling each other for fun, we enjoy drama, sorry Brad Torgeson, weasel writing, Conan Attacks Fans, the Conan Properties International, good headlines, hatchet piece, political hitjob, Jason Sanford, Baen’s Bar, Genre Grapevine, dangerous domestic terrorists, trying to ruin Sanford, Baen’s top author, an executive there, the Baenistas, twisted vile shit, not willing to fight, bullshirt, be less polite, perfidy, a search of Paul’s account, his hobby, engagement farming, Kiwifarms, siderailed, lolcow, lascivious, don’t read these books, don’t know these people, boring stuff, Jonathan’s fans, written reviews, to be a fan, not racism level of heat, fan or a consumer, a dead person who wrote a book 500 years ago, laugh with them, Lawrence Block is anti-Trump, most people are totally disengaged, a lot of age involved too, trapped in an old ecosystem, promising making America great again, confused about what young people are interested in, MAGA communism, a small meme, a lot of bots, some of the tweets they tweet, Jackson Hinkle making being gay illegal, a nice walk, vitamin d and the podcast, drinking coffee, a little low energy, walking while on coffee, the road seems a little cleaner, finding this tweet right now, open borders, no nations, world government, under who tho, no government, local guy who picks up the garbage, wherever you’re born in the world, opportunities, travel all over the world, settled in London, England, happened to marry a guy over there, like a baby, toddler, not a pedophile, people are weird about children, fuck right off you idiot, concern trolling, the casual willy nilly throwing around of pedophile is a big deal, attack this person, ideological opposition to capitalism, somewhat better maybe, run of the mill liberal, a go along, an Assad is bad sort of guy, right wing left wing terms, are Democrats leftists, a war party for a long time, both war parties, they switch back and forth, foreign wars, the Pope’s right, escalate the Israel stuff, give them more stuff, might stop the Russia stuff, assassinated again, it’s illegal to be gay in 67 countries, pride parade, Alexander Dugin, repeat the fate of Sodom and Gammorah, an advisor to Putin, Liger, can’t stop attacking, identity politics, Communist Party of China, normal to be gay in China, not officially supporter, presume some censorship, funny and sad, bar/bets mitzvah, transgrandchildren, a major talkshow host, product of western colonialism, in British Columbia, provincial election, the corporations, and crown corporations change their logos for pride month, rainbow capitalism, a really bad tweet by the provincial NDP, that’s the insane thing, signing up for other people’s ideas, they’re wrong, who are these people what are they doing, look we’re tying to do stuff about housing, tax credits?, tax cuts, and frakking Pennsylvania, work for a cease fire, good at tax cuts, Republican guy, all money printing now, that’s why that guy’s not relevant, the promisekeepers, they need an external affirmation, meanwhile, Mike Pence, people got into it, I’m the guy who shakes my wife’s hand, very young, a wrestler, joined hands with Jackson Hinkle, Haz, streamers, everybody needs to read Dugin, do we need a new kind of red fascism, a scary word for sure, lost the war, Vaush, one of these gen x guys, are you joking, based, I can’t breathe, expose yourself, blackredguard, if Lenin Mao etc., Bernie Warren Staffer, common socialist attack, here’s what the reading says, nobody cites the source, a bad argument, an appeal to an authority, the undertweet, she like Mao does have a radical housing plan, doing fed work, accusing people of being feds, fed racketing, they do do that, he claims to be a socialist, you shall judge them by their deeds, the crossover between gaming, he has a sword and rug, agree on swords, swords are cool, kill your enemies and kill yourself, saber, light saber makes no fuckin sense, CIA leftism, Twitch, people provide subscriptions, donating money, digital panhandling, like Audible, credits to streamers, rough understand of how this works, suspect, pay them for the evil descent that they’re doing, NED, not hidden, not fake, not a conspiracy, why wouldn’t they be doing that, some other cutout, Bezos is so intimately tied, sow division, promote things we like, dispromote things we don’t like, three drinks, go talk to a doctor, self-harming, had too much to drink, three drinks is drunk, the way that platform works, certain things you can’t say, blood is green, Fortnite, a puff of green sparkly smoke, mom can’t handle that, why Minecraft is so popular, particularly reactionary, satanic panics fucked up my D&D games, just weird, congratulations on making it a Nazi bar, kids heads being exploded, flopping open, bluesky, this is horrible, watercooler talk for “creatives”, Jason Thompson, come out of the baby brain, cleaning them, a decrease in the number of people on twitter?, I’m over on bluesky, twitter was always political, find your way to everything, duck duck go doesn’t work, what’s left, get to the source as best you can, zionist lady from the New York Times, [an Assad toady], substack, huge following, biggest blogging service, Mehdi Hasan, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi, something he never brings up, ever wonder about that last name?, a poll, every accusation is a confession, not a million percent true, a useful heuristic, a pretty rare deviance, true for politicians, blaming Trump for being in bed with Russia, uranium deal, baby level of psyop, I’m rubber you’re glue, primitive, juvenile accusation, calling the truckers Nazis, agents in with Nazi flags, just because they planted a Nazi flag, the government of Israel, anything you say about Hamas, being paid to be Hamas, you raped a bunch of people, massive rape in Israeli prisons, nothing on the other side, j’accuse all the time, boxes you in, what if you wanna learn some other thing, change your identity, people switch parties, RFK Jr., tied hisself to his Democratic identity, rejected and cheated, pick a team and stick with it, picked a team, tied to Kamala, speculating, reform the party, not what he spends his time thinking about, reading, socializing, a party in person, coffee, important to do it publicly, on the record, absent, not cool, not if it is public, on dangerous fuckin ground, lying is sinful, a mistake, barking down the wrong path, monsters at the other end, make jokes, the best way to do it, direct message twice, worry for seven months, forget about for seven months, not be mean to people, not a suspect character, the author write, wholly balloon, spicy, make sure you see this, clip from Futurama, pan-bi guy, a special issue of a fanzine about labour, a choice little section of Futurama dealing with unions, employee misclassification, the roasting machine for the coffee, read that zine, about Simak in particular, Joachim Boaz, 60s covers, I think we fundamentally disagree, got off twitter, siloing yourself, The Black Star Passes by John W. Campbell, piracy in it, Piracy Preferred, the Gernsback magazines, into describing gadgetry, rich guy, unsold me, this airpirate, cash and securities in physical format, gassing the planes, cures their cancer, a pirate with a heart, very super-sciencey, insane, further adventures, Don A. Stuart, Who Goes There?, Brian Collins, really bad takes (not taste), a bad ratio, young people read old sff, Journey Planet, Exiting The Vampire’s Castle by Mark Fisher, fucking wow tier, Russell Brand, the devil’s in the details,

We need to learn, or re-learn, how to build comradeship and solidarity instead of doing capital’s work for it by condemning and abusing each other. This doesn’t mean, of course, that we must always agree – on the contrary, we must create conditions where disagreement can take place without fear of exclusion and excommunication.

badly written, wow, fucking, wow, an atmosphere of snarky resentment, a columnist in the UK, anticommunist takes all day, anarchist, bad take after bad take, among other bullshit, independence under who?, Dalai Lama be a dictator, now that likes are hidden, to protect people from accountability, as evidence of this your that, worried about twitter being a center of things, staunch a flow of attack vectors, a feature, Abraham Lincoln was probably bisexual, journalism his thoughts, populism updates, piracy is not good, it is necessary, Herman Melville, 39 views, deep down the hole, really famous, because Pulpcovers has retweeted, scan the cover, fotoshop, too many hours, make things attractive and interesting, should be their culture and are not, take the hit, a very good hobby, everybody benefits, a joyful garbage man, a really good audiobook going, floor ceiling walls, tired in the shoulders, almost falling asleep, on cassette, might have been an Isaac Asimov collection, their drugs for your brain man, weird fiction, off track, not writing about it, getting something about it, Horrorbabble, Ian something, all the classics, almost all weird fiction, Scott Miller’s podcast [Lost Sci-Fi], lag spikes, The Bell Tower by Herman Melville, one of his best stories, train you up to max level right away, Clark Ashton Smith, such a premium story, Mars Is Heaven, a genius wrote that, Lazarus Come Forth, Oliver Onions, lady ghosts, The Red Room by H.G. Wells, I’m going to put this to bed, Christmas ghost stories, The Valley Of The Spiders, he’s so cynically correct, what would you do if you were mother to an aepyornis?, The Valley Of The Blind, so H.G. Wellsy, The Pearl Of Love, something irritating, why a pearl is in an oyster, this final beauteous creation, the coffin of his beloved, H.G. Wells fuckin kicking asses all day, why you so good?, an Indian man from India, a sex weekend, bump into their spouses, that’s the whole story, we know what’s going on with you, just so happens, I, Vampire by Henry Kuttner, after you’ve read Dracula, more entertaining than edifying, The Spider Woman by Maria Moravsky, Hounds Of Tindalos, watch out for the corners, straddles fantasy and science fiction, structured like a Lovecraft story, Jellyfish by David H. Keller, random guy thinks he’s the shit, so random, psychiatrist, not a great story, something to it, standard weird tales line about promethean science, done differently, in three parts, the last man, make mankind come about again, fails three different times, poetically written, drags, an audio movie version, Ziggurat Productions, these were fun, A Martian Odyssey by Stanley G. Weinbaum, Metropolis, C3P0 but a lady, full of great images, don’t know, don’t beleive, A Hitch In Space by Fritz Leiber, psychotic space partner, Kaleidoscope, House Party At Smoky Island by L.M. Montgomery, her only contribution to Weird Tales, another ghost story, The Powder Of Hyperborea, assume it is awesome, sword & sorcery story, temple prostitute golden girdles, An Inhabitant Of Carcosa, super dreamy, pretty good, pretty minimal, spawns a big chunk of Robert W. Chambers, True Detective, this is California, a bobcat, Ambrose Bierce, he’s like perverse, I’m writing this for me, An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge, intently trying to fuck around, A Bottomless Grave, very not possible, almost all reprints, my father a drunkard, only moderately wealthy, litigation with rogues guilty of infringement, neglected all my brothers and sisters, compelled to teach school, savage every direction, better than gold, at the dinner table, a patent had been granted him, the mos ingenious invention, a deep disappointment to him, until after they finished eating, my children, the uncommon occurrence, of courses it is better that he is dead, very terrible to us, cut off the baby’s ear, John you surprise me, mother forgive me for surprising you, the one eared baby, 7 pages of text, a show with Eric, a little bit scant, supposed to be half hour, we’re not on earth, this is too cynical to be any kind of reality, earth inverted, drawn before the court, one million percent corrupt, a love of a mother for her children is corrupted, the mother murdered her husband, is this another world other than our earth?, that is power, so perversely, “One Does Not Always Eat What is on the Table” , a corners’ inquest, bizare, nobody’s like that, The Terror by Guy De Maupassant, Fitz-James O’Brien, he’s great, The Diamond Lens, The Lost Room, What Was It?, casual opium use, things start rotting, things are more concrete now are they, killed in the Civil War, bastard son, even Jonathan has read, doesn’t follow the threads, looking through his bookshelf, son of in Anglo Norman, Michael Fitz-James O’Brien, racist, guy steals a diamond lens from a jewish, falls in love with a girl in a drop of water, Francis Stevens, The Elf-Trap, a lady, The Girl In A Golden Atom, certainly is weird, cool story, a little person, a Homunculus perhaps, a dream written down, prejudiced, American Writers podcast, educated in this idea of American literature, any club that excludes H.G. Wells, you can’t really talk about it, taking Lem in, from a guy from Poland, great ideas down in books, more importantly, those borders shouldn’t be sealed, via media mail, very important, because of scans, getting them to the scanners, a huge barrier, the shipping from the states, just stupid, how can you walk around the streets and not feel the oppressive evil, letting things slide, recycling, the compost recycling, seems silly, all subject to the same kind of scam, sell it as potting soil, thanks for all that work that we’re paying for, scam everywhere up and down, I hope that’s not true, puppies milking their mom is not horror, seems cute, lick up their poops and lick up their pee, works for her, they should be when they’re healthy, keeping themselves clean, petting is you’re grooming them, loving touch, cleaning is beneficial, the parts you allow and present, create an odor together, odoriferous glands, your hand is you mouth, some kind of defective cat, not super-judgey, my cat Mama, that’s how it happened, you remind me of my mother, Momala, Dark Brandon and Demented Brandon, disabled, Strange Brandon, had a limp for a while, Roommate Brandon, an aggressive way, Hubby, take out the garbage, a producer for a radio drama airing on XFM, Blue Hours, really in to running and desert walks, really good stories, including a Margaret St. Clair, retweeting request for pet owners to come get a pet that’s going to be executed, put your heart out, in xyz location, enough animals, word ban, innocent creatures, we want to help them, saddled with so many animals, mammals that like other mammals, reptiles are affectionate, evolved from reptiles, giving a rattlesnake a drink, giving a cobra some water, attack the hose, Steve Irwin died, looks a little bit like the cobra, neck pouches go down, something I like, caressed snakes, usually scared, the most dangerous animals, mouths and feets and machines and choppers, people love their snakes, if it tolerates you it might be love, eyebrow muscles, when you talk to a dog, when you talk to a wolf, a thing to be noted, not a thing to be followed like a mom from a child, expressions, wolves will growl, are you saying the word walk, was it walk?, cat expressions, glowering, dogs are training dogs, understand them better, understand us better, it will be smiling up at me, we’re on a team, such a pleasure, furry creatures, fur babies is too far, weirder than it needs to be, the poopy cleanup phase, open doorhandles, should be impossible, not even a latch handle, 7 boys, 1 of them a lady, prefers females, male dogs might try to hump you, scary, icked out, male humans and male dogs, once the babies pop out the males don’t have much to do for a while, not convenient, don’t even have to be the same species, cats too, dugs, what are cat breasts called?, cat breast podcast, mammaries, NIH website, a poem chat GPT write, you asking the perfect thing that it can do, one little error, ai art, A Witch Shall Be Born, tweeting about it, people are doing ai, a nice piece of ai art, we are not artists, we shouldn’t use living ai artists in our prompts, maximize his money, maximize public domain, when is he gonna die, Gutenberg was just following the law, the last hesitant on this, only met him one time, lots of people have met Robert Silverberg, a tool just like a camera, photos of trees and forests, lasted about ten seconds, is the guy behind the camera an artist, some people with a camera, black lady getting interviewed by a white lady, didn’t know what a musician was, identifying what an artist is, okay sure, Ansel Adams, Walker Evans, putting portraitists out of work, a tool, once you see it is a tool, a part of the resultant thing, who made the art if not the guy who gave the prompt, please write a poem to a woman named Samantha, in the style of Rupert Brooke’s Tiare Tahiti, ai art is stupider, a poem for hire, arguable, the famous poems written by Shakespeare, gay poems, by living on earth, Sonnet 18, a poem about poems, this is a trick, gifts in a gift shop, gift cards, birthday cards, a generational thing, invited to a lot of weddings, a whole scam, for wedding cards, it would always work, what should you write in the card, semi-interested, you will always be each other’s greatest gift, up and down, spring comes, sometimes you get to hot, the last three lines, so long lives this, the point of poems, that play with the guy with the big nose, Cyrano de Bergerac, the movie version is Roxanne (1987), a rap battle with another suitor, he’s a sorcerer, Father Of The Bride (1991), imprinted on The Jerk (1979), claim is a rapist, Gérard Depardieu, Peter Dinklage, The Station Agent (2003), Clarkson’s Farm, a reality show, Jeremy Clarkson, doing a show on his farm, learning how to be a farmer, Lamborghini, a tractor company, unreliable, there are versions of reality television that are pretty good, standard comedy results, Ricky Gervais, The Office, Karl Pilkington, too depressing, pretty bleak, an office job, An Idiot Abroad, tortures his friend, something wrong with him, adventures, a guy being miserable, a good lunch, Nathan For You, a business expert, very popular on comedy central, the economics of TV, Bronson Pinchot, bought a small town, fixing up all the buildings in it, a home improvement show, the role that made him famous, The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina, rural Harford, you pitch a show for the home improvement network, a budget, a pitch, a hobby, The Old House, finishing projects, chicken coop, giving to chickens, a yard that had chickens in it, stay at home guy, very easy work, hens, a nest box, get those eggs out, keep their food in the pen, raccoons, bugs and greens, roost, wake up with the sun, if capitalism wasn’t forcing us, a cave or a cask, giant cask of amontillado, a shipping container, modular, in the hospital, putting a pacemaker in him, routine, heart fuckups, what toxins are put in our food, can’t get away from it almost, RFK’s MAHA, growth hormone and do pushups with RFK, pretty elderly, 68?, siblings, half brother, six years older, working on his body, playing golf, going out in the sun, a stupid sport, bad movements of your body, archery is probably better, the skill curve, I’m getting better, a good day, playing against yourself, go out and walk around, peck away, pretty addictive, what’s going to keep the cats from killing them and eating them, roosters will be very aggressive to any threats to their ladies, eat their babies, fertilized, a productive cycle, trial eggs, programmed into them, fun animals, landlord needs to fix our fence, when you have production you didn’t pay for the gift must be accepted, how the potlatch works, reciprocal debt is the economy, I owe you and you owe me, a polish chicken, when you lose a chicken, ploof on the top of the head, very decorous animals, colourful, wholy melanasiac, sex-linked, if producing eggs for consumption, she’s busy, once you have cattle and chickens, just have to feed em, a lot of capital expense, the fencing, student over to the island, you gotta feel this lady, she’s so muscular, this is not an animal you can push around, big pile of meat and very hungry, a dairy farmer, tobacco, lost his shirt, a trucker driver, rural mail carrier, drive your own car, ergonomic reasons, stable, health insurance, cousin’s wife, goats, five dogs, big dogs, vicarious pricing, very high end chicken coop, made of wood, $539 canadian dollars, a little ramp, keep the predators from eating your chickens, they tend to stick together, they’re always looking for food, socially gregarious, held and stroked, people have them as pets, fuel for your garden, five cows on a little farm, smells like nature, other projects, important cultural work, spread their gospel, passed it on to somebody with a yard, pass it on to Meg, there are cats on farms, mice, rats, they love birds, you wouldn’t see a raven, a sparrow, spend time with it, bears smushem, bears are coming, with torches, a ton of construction, new housing going in, wild animals are moving into the neighbourhoods, very cute, they sort themselves out, a pecking order, a little girl holding a hen, a painting of a little kid going in a bathtub, dude!, fuck off, you’re not being serious right now, tasty too, a sack of cracked corn, all the scraps, they eat grass, they eat weeds, they love bugs, spiders with a skull on them, she’s like yah, getem, a mosquito, interested in insects, up in the clouds, down in the dirt, the big parts, cicadas, mostly crunchy, break the neck of a bird and leave it in the sun room, editing up a podcast, make some coffee, too late in the day, slow season for work.

Posted by Jesse Willis