The SFFaudio Podcast #799 – READALONG: Dark Carnivals: Modern Horror And The Origins Of American Empire by W. Scott Poole

Jesse, Evan Lampe, Will Emmons and Terence Blake talk about Modern Horror And The Origins Of American Empire by W. Scott Poole

Talked about on today’s show:
according to the empire, And The Origins Of American Empire , doesn’t sound right, empire should come first, not his thesis, third book by him, Wastelands, a big one, association of ideas, correlation is not causation, a good book, WWI and horror, the Lovecraft one, Evan’s concern, kind of appreciate it, should have read more books, into Heinlein now, it has to be done, Glory Road, what’s the thesis of this book?, escapism, American empire is reflect in American horror, a facile thesis, Mike Nowak, getting judged, its fun, silent conversations happening, South Carolina, written a book about South Carolina, horror ladies from Finland?, Vampira or Suspiria?, promote his book, three or four books came out, when Elon Musk bought twitter, conversations deleted, broken now, the way he emails Jesse, Dr. Poole do you think Trump’s election…, Dr. Poole rights back, really just history, Trump as less an aberration, a synecdoche, he/him, object right away, psychological explanations, political explanations, fits in, dark forces, historical/political motifs, quite anarchic, a giveaway, the first third of the book, that might be the thesis of this book, still working on the introduction, separate essays integrated into a structure, not a cohesive thesis book, more Zizeky, a propagandistic work, in a good sense, a better way, making people free, if he didn’t tell you whether the book was good or not, a lot of judgement, checkmark, needs to be longer, not filler, how he feels about a particular thing, Stranger In A Strange Land, a fascist?, misspeaking, forms a cult, Jesus kills people, he unpersons them, Valentine Michael Smith, The Horror At Red Hook, obviously racist, build that scaffolding, not a metaphor, remembering it wrong, a veteran who goes on another adventure, get it that wrong, Tobe Hooper, Jaws (1975), Amity Island, whitewashing American empire, Poltergeist (1982), Jaws is fun, thesis supported, Peter Benchley’s The Beast, sanding away, box office gold, Get Out (2017), Jordan Peele, not elevated horror, a business marketing thing, people don’t trust academia or reviewers, professional reviewers, massive gaps, Roger Ebert, The Medusa Touch (1978), one of the worst movies of the year, moviemakers usually want to get their movies to make money, Rod Serling vs. Jordan Peele, both hosted The Twilight Zone, ongoing dialogue with David Currie, loves America too much, my greatest neighbour, he doesn’t know he’s in airstrip 1, the DEW line, if W. Scott Poole had added some textual reference, a lot of shitting on Heinlein, vs. short stories that would fit this argument incredibly well, a media studies guy, lots of interesting movie recommendations, more balanced, looking at art, the film canon, paintings, movies and TV, very important, the majority of people don’t read books, a book about movies and TV shows, Gulf War I, little asides, how [Bashar al-Assad] is a bad man, you’re at a university, you want to be supportive, throw around an accusation, undermines everything else, could have been a lot longer of a book, a lot of people are alone, all his colleagues at the University of Charleston, not a scholarly work, riffing on, ultimately useful, morally undermine, mostly Americans, weaken it from within, turn people’s attention to facts on the ground, this book is dated already, 2022, Ukraine is not in here, Israel/Gaza are not in here, Houthis are not in here, Russian hacking in here, a media bubble, undermined him, his colleagues are going to read it, a liberal anti-imperialist book, I saw the signs, a materialist liberal, watching all these horror films, the media realm, the real horrors existing everywhere perpetrated by the American empire, as opposed to idealist liberal, a believable protagonist, protest and vote, horrible at the end, if we’re lucky, the American empire will fight another foe, Biden is not in this book, Trump is all over this book, doesn’t call Obama by his true name, he mentions Bill Clinton, unfortunate, makes the book less awesome, a favourite chapter, the best, the zombie chapter, very solid, George Romero, Night Of The Living Dead (1968), super low budget, Dawn Of The Dead, long, ponderous, Walking Dead episodes, a political speaker, Haitian voodoo movies, Red Letter Media style, watching Poole watch these movies, horror movies are good, The Devil’s Rejects (2005), more like twitter essays, attacking the libs, it was slick, the pivotal scenes, forgettable, Nope (2022), intended audience, white liberals, maybe a lot of black people thought it was terrific, a successful film, Native Son (2019), communists become the foil, white liberals, the equivalent of communists (white liberals), interested in race, the centrality of white supremacy, foundational, class, some nods in the direction, settler colonialism, it aint the white man it’s the rich man, the vast majority of people moving across the landscape, poor whites in the Confederate army, they deserve to die for that reason, false consciousness is a real thing, just gotten together, the planter class, how race worked in America, the idea of American freedom, American Slavery, American Freedom by Edmund Morgan, if you are obsessed with America, written for an american audience, the Strait of Hormuz, the powers in charge, who are they?, they have an agenda for you, it’s going to effect you, respond correctly when they come at you, addressing an American audience, that’s a thesis, other stuff in there too, January 6th, really?, not a big deal, 9/11?, the forever war, traumatized a lot of people, triggered a lot of people, one million percent, Starship Troopers, inserts itself, a science fiction guy, a seminal figure, tying it to the security state, Who Are the Heirs of Patrick Henry? Stand Up and Be Counted!, he was all in, the difference is, when people are wrong, quick to denounce, when there’s a denouncing party in the room, some scary stuff in there, ignoring a lot of what’s going on in that book, he took the book at made fun of it, liberal academics, some people are not going to see the criticism, bad because some people won’t see it as fascistic, Verhoven sucks us in, arent these shiny happy people showering together, Doogie Hauser dressed up in an SS uniform at the end, it’s dangerous, it is dangerous, literature should be dangerous, makes you think thoughts outside of the nannies trying to control our brains, Haldeman likes Heinlein, The Forever War, what he’s pointing to, doesn’t correspond to experience and memory, a tiny possible aspect, a sort of monologue, science fiction as a megatext of dialogue, in dialogue with Starship Troopers, thoughtfully funny, The Sound Of Music (1965), dismisses him, using things to make a , tips his hand, N.K. Jemisin’s now classic novel, an article by David Agranoff, why is this written down for us?, the sensation that the robot was a robot sometimes, robophobic, an exaggerated the broken up and assembled thesis, giving addresses the way a robot would give addresses, jarring, competent robotic, work for hire, experiencing it as we were, deep sense of outrage, sounded robotic, some weirdness in the pauses between paragraphs, weird page breaks?, the style, errors in the recording, relooped, left out little bits, at the end, his memory became a cubist painting, the same historical sequence, he repeats, he can’t do it in order, the kaleidoscope is good, where the writer reviews his own book, starting a new section, some factor about some person or some event, one paragraph, the historical sequence, what the relation is, what has just gone before, a quirk of style, a painting or a photo of something or someone, does it over and over again, a summary of the book from Random House, too much, why even in here, Charles Manson, connected to Heinlein, Stephen King and school shootings, the 2017 clown traumas, little historical anecdote, that IT movie, somebody reads a book, 2 years later taken as gospel, guy reads book, cousin tells main character, UFO stuff,more material, different direction, the aftermath of Roswell, what the 60s were like, an MKUltra experiment, Rage doesn’t indict Stephen King, talking to your lawyer all day, do it in doses, Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, Church Of All Worlds, didn’t kill any moviestars, just a horny guy, a bit of a hippy, gaia thesis, deep ecology, liked Lord Of The Rings too, weird mentions, The Omen franchise, got paid to handle snakes, a girl holding a snake, satanic panic films, Courtney Brown, Emory University professor, put his classes online, Science Fiction and Politics, interesting, read through a bunch of books, classics, novels, remote viewing, nutso bullshit, DARPA is spending the money on it, the Men Who Stare At Goats, astral projection, The Men Who Stare at Goats, Trump is disconnected from horror (except for he clowns), who’s the best the president?, the guy who builds houses, John Adams, that modern people would know, but freed the slaves, Americans can kill each other all they want, outside the borders, fewer people killed than Obama, central America wars, Predator (1987), Commando (1985), we’re a rescue team, you lied to us, Dillon, muscle-off, punished, a good connection and he makes it properly, he didn’t read, supposed to read this, making the phone calls, regular politicians, possibly that’s the reason, didn’t start any new wars, the Mother of All Bombs, assassinated an Iranian general, went back, distanced us from Iran, trying to make peace with North Korea, triggering people, we didn’t have the word, broken brains, ugly truth, at the heart of it the worst thing is true, we’re the bad guys, in the context of, shadowbanned, for his award, he’s the bad guy, point of view, people don’t want to accept, news for the Americans, some Americans, a book with nice examples, a good book, pretty good, good stuff in here, soft touch, trying to keep his job, kick himself off of twitter, this is allowed in history class, conservative historians, demented people, money in the demented industry, how did the 14th amendment lead to Jim Crow?, why this is racist, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”, the foundation of American civil rights, gave rights to black people, not capable, excellent answer, a common take on reconstruction, bleeding as a cure for colds, something that was left out, The Repairer Of Reputations by Robert W. Chambers, set in the future, a head injury, asylum, an unreliable narrator, observing the state of 1920 United States, imperial horsemen, the reality that he sees around him, people didn’t classify it in that way, poll numbers at the end, Americans who think the country is on the right track, the British Empire in 1945, the Empress of India is the head of an empire, not a lot about corporations in here, reflected in horror movies, I don’t think people should have guns, keep your job measures, Heinlein thought fighting the Vietnam War was a good idea, don’t get into any accidents, Friday is amazing, interesting themes, the optimism of Space Cadet, he has to focus on the popular and famous, got to attract attention, find them where they are, provide the evidence, back it up, the casual remark, saying something fascistic, peace and love and sex, grading this book, somewhat incoherent, why are you so focused on Charles Manson, Brad Pitt, Quentin Tarantino’s argument about Manson, laugh gleefully as you kill the Manson family, we shouldn’t have firearms, where’d you get that idea, c’mon man?, why attack Bashar al-Assad?, didn’t gas his own people, one third of Syria is occupied right now, one line about Libya being a mistake, denounces Saddam Hussein, got too big britches, Will’s colloquialism, tool of the CIA, being stupid, two items of information, annexing Kuwait, palpable in the hallways, the head of Iraq attacked Kuwait, why do we care about this, carved up empires recarved, why are we involved in this at all, the Red Sea, all goes back, feels a bit muddled, make that case, the invasion of Grenada, Heartbreak Ridge (1986), too young for the Korean War, going 1 for 1, almost gelling, The chainsaw, Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), looms large, the evil is never defeated, the final girl runs away, the external evil, if we can ferret out his thesis, good book ultimately, Jesse doesn’t denounce Poole, misinterpreting him, the cultural significance, Heinlein’s responsible?, juxtaposition, Wernher von Braun, I Am For The stars (but sometimes hit London), the cynical underbelly, what they’re doing all the time, Fauci’s in the government, comparable, funding Wuhan has had a huge consequence, excess deaths from mysterious other reasons (a vaccine that doesn’t fit), a plan to kill everybody on the planet, not the greatest guy even if he was good at rockets, Fauci more impactful, the sideshow, other than with satellites, space telescopes, ICBMS, V2, too hard to see for most people, under COVID, how fearful he is, conspiracy theories, he does both in this book, doesn’t go into JFK, how its relevant, the CIA did kill JFK, a horror movie example, Stephen King is underrepresented, King has a lot to say about empire, Pet Semetary (1983), American expansionism, the story of the Philippines, our gene Poole, fight for us, part of our great union, insurgents against the Japanese empire, you’re your own, whataboutism, Hawaii is a state now, Puerto Rico, Oklahoma, Guantanamo is empire, July 1st 1776?, the American Empire started before America did?, the treaty of Paris, where are the horror films for that part, Ravenous (1999), ramps up in the 70s and 80s, the less solid it is, enjoyable and interesting, Poole sold me this thesis: Lampe write a book, Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe on empire, all from 2022, goodreads?, reviews online?, The Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, Young Goodman Brown, Weiland, those stories are part of this, James Fenimore Cooper, a propagandistic work, nobody’s going to read that, sadly non one cares, responsible for the title: Ray Bradbury, he wrote the book, he owns it now, in reference, just in the air, Insane Clown Posse, Insane Clown President, facepaint and faygo, a michael Jackson tatoo, Matt Tiabbi’s important work, could have done without all of those, endorsement, get his colleagues, I got checknamed, feels like that, academia is very weird, people don’t have the kind of job security they want, his job and his privilege, being privileged, a popular professor at a fancy school, Gay lady got shitcanned, Claudine Gay, cheating on her homework, that was the excuse, they dug up her shit to shitcan her, the mostly kindly possible way, her performance, she did nothing wrong, he aint a cheater, he aint a liar, trying to be careful, a sense of paranoia amongst adjunct professors, pretty good writer, pejorative, bad speculation, Ray Bradbury, The Pedestrian, guy goes for a walk, police car arrests him, just a robot, wonderful, FBI following Ray Bradbury for ten years, Philip K. Dick informing on people, learns to drive from an FBI guy, cultural horrorshow, I would like decent government, Nixon has it in him, in the 2020s, a big Bradbury man, 55 and 60 years ago, stalked or studied by the FBI, the stark aspect of his work, influenced by [George] Finney’s The Circus of Dr. Lao, a dark circus, notable by its absence, demarcate each epoch, the Iraq War, video game simulation, weak, the Gulf War didn’t take place, Independence Day (1996), ah, yes, recognized the name, vaguely interesting, just the idea of the dark carnival, didn’t do much with it, the polarity between Jaws and Texas Chainsaw, several other polarities, a film review of Zone Of Interest (2023), presenting the horror without showing it, Shoah (1985), comestible, making a Nazi a nice guy, a way of reading it, a hate on, seems to hate Stephen Spielberg, they’re twee, a comestible catastrophe, an item of food, make it palatable, Welcome to earth!, PUNCH, Alien (1979), an alien in the horror mood, a class movie, mentioned, fragmentary, an assemblage of fragments, readable in slices, why are you putting that it there, #BrassBra, it passed the time, it was comestible, walk out of the movie theater of this book, Valentine Michael Smith is a fascist?, WTF, triggered but for what purpose, the Our Opinions Are Correct ladies, and Poe is a third rate writer?, just trying to trigger people?, received opinions, probably not the worst person on the planet, why is he mentioned at all?, Americans created a vacuum, his dad died, I’m gonna run my own country, you were supposed to do what you were told?, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, regime change, Russia, the “brutal Assad regime”, making Kurdistan its own thing, not even tied to a horror film, The War Of The Worlds, vs. vs. vs., that thread back to the original War Of The Worlds, doesn’t read texts very much, did a lot of other stuff on the side, he’s space Jesus, I don’t think that’s very nice, the second season of Reacher, a consensual, disincorporates people, not a good season, good riddance to the villains he gets rid of, judge and jury and executioner, just provide the evidence, provide the data, a wicked joy, you think he’s a libertarian, libertarians are bad too, they’re bad, sideburns and Boris Johnson’s hair, sister is first lady of Argentina, fun to see what happens, America might become fun again, barring health issues, barring assassination from the conversation, when and if Trump is assassinated, what’s our reaction supposed to be, bemusement?, he’s not a threat, he called a lady bird brain, he was president before and nothing happened, he’s gonna be wiser, he’s seen the deep state for what it was, if he’s assassinated it was because he was mean to them, you threaten everybody getting paid, I’m making deals everywhere, it’s so meta, weird, are we supposed to be rocked to our core, they sent everybody home in fucking Canada, this is a foreign guy, he was JFK, if Regean or Obama had been assassinated, a child in Australia, are they gonna commemorate the assassination of Trump?, we’re so fucked it has become comedy, the dangerous clowns, not so worried about the clowns, an addenda, better update it, wanting to Scott Poole’s tweets right now, are there any 2020s horror movies, Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann (1982), fun, Suitable Flesh (2023), the hot lady, couple hot ladies, Heather Graham, and Barbara Crampton, the bodies of women turn you off?, bought a DVD, Will and Maissa, Marc Singer from The Beastmaster, 1976 TV play for television The Taming Of The Shrew, meeting Catherine, commedia dell’arte style, Scaramouche by Raphael Sabatini, such a hot body, goddamn his body’s hot, wonderfully performed, available and complete but very low rez, awesome so heat, was he in V?, didn’t have his shirt off in V, loincloth movie, the Andre Norton book, the last Navajo?, read it in German, why don’t we do this book?, how do we convince Evan, maybe, Othello, the beast with two backs, Iago and another dude, Othello’s father in law, Shakespeare is gold, the teachers and the school boards have no clue, the ass scene, Romeo wanting suck and fuck Juliet’s ass, pomegranate things, so hilarious, they don’t focus on that scene, kids love it, read it back in their own words, he’s based, the time zone effect, Chinese New Year, starts off well, dig Hoffmann, The Tales Of Hoffmann by Jacques Offenbach, an adaptation?, wrote many tales, nobody reads books, try talking to people about Hoffmann, you have 20 English teachers, they’re the ones who read Shakespeare and don’t see how sexful it is, computer games and Xboxes exist, you don’t need to do much to be an academic anymore, punished by a lot of reading, you inhereted money, you’re going to your mom’s school, Evan as president of Harvard, delete his twitter acount, when this podcast comes out in 7 months, so many Hugo awards it’s going to be unbelievable, sympathy Hugos, tit for tat Hugos, when you just read Scalzi and don’t read anything ten years ago, David Agranoff is going to win a Hugo and you’re going to be sorry, he stopped calling Evan, set up a slack then Evan will show up, contact me on tawianese wechat, Kakaotalk, cute like everything from South Korea, purify yourself, self love, hot funny stuff, dig out my Bleiler, The Scarlet Planet by Don Mark Lemon, really funny and good, kind of a slog, Wonder Stories Quarterly, never reprinted, a spider woman story, The Mansion Of Forgetfulness, not well remembered, a proper science fiction story, Mike Ashley, free expression, spoof on male dominated society, editorial comment, realistic rather than satirical, boys will be boys, SF should seek to realistically portray the impact, the little corporal, pretended suicide, no emotional impact, planet plane, make them rich and live forever, secretly acting under orders of a fraternal reference, the Basques, master criminal, insubordinate comrades, radiocycles, feeling Ringworldy, totally down with it, keep getting into fist fights, chasing monster girls, is it funny?, same joke over and over again, back and forth for 60 pulp pages, a novel, red blooded masculine impulses, women and girls are objects to be conquered, a progressive opinion, our public opinion, but what will we say in our private slack?, it takes two to tango (and conquer), it takes two to Conga, marry once they return to Earth, acting according to their nature, the little corporal must have been a phrase, mostly repetitive, reflections on feminine youth and beauty, crystalizes their bodies, a giant tomb of crystalized girls, She, Gulliver Of Mars, a glacial region, Edwin Lester Arnold, Robert W. Chambers, petrifies items dipped in a bathtub, a sculpture that is fake, the artist model goes in the bathtub, you know this guy is a good writer: his focus is aesthetics, Lovecraft, that’s a story about art, when it isn’t, him doing the art in the writing, literally was an artist, writes about artists, same with Poe, writes a story to fit the drawing, The Philosophy Of Composition, The Philosophy Of Furniture, why are you talking about this, Poe?, is there anything there?, he’s all about aesthetics, an educational tangent, Mark Of The Beast, the entire entry, a lot of sympathy, pulps from the turn of the century, attacked as surreptitiously erotic, Hugo Gernsback flew into a panic, lots of blood drinking, destroys memory cells, ease the suffering to the bereaved, died at sea, the woman is Morella, the lovers will start afresh, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (2004), 1907, The Spider And The Fly, The Thrill Book, the way you think about women, a particular crooning noises, two hammocks, Julia is a spider woman, you have not tamed her, you’ve fallen into her web, sometimes Terence wins, you only have to hammocks twice, my spider friends, overrated, investigating Lego Minifigures, spider women stories, the snake woman, the gorgon, snake women, snake bodies but with breasts, ancient Greek Mythology, Arachne, sueey!, suddenly realized, warthogs, suidae, big lightbulb goes off, it’s about weaving, fun politics, more Don Mark Lemon, good ideas, The Sale Of Shakespeare’s Ghost, isfdb is great database, how could this not be on ISFDB?, corresponding French site, noosfere.org, Chuck Tingle?, a guy with a bag over his head, the unknown comic, free in ways we will never be, freer than Chuck Tingle, he would feel unfree, if anything was going to be censored from the Hugo, space butt invasion, unionized in the butt, unicorn tinglers, Campus Damascus, an aspiring proctologist comedian, likes having his prostate exam?, thinking about Trump being assassinated, who killed Trump?, so silly, why is this considered science fiction, kill somebody in central park and get away with it, invent quotations, funny as it is, even with Elvis, self-referential piece of writing, he deserves something, a Hugo, relativizes people’s self-importance, Sad Puppies, this is considered in the same, too long, that’s the word, some salty bits here and there, don’t put in so much rosewater, happy that he read it, in an actual bookstore, pretty short, Terence knows where to get it, multiple Bleiler books, he’s a hero, very happy to be pirating his stuff, Guide To Supernatural Fiction, Checklist Of Fantastic Literature, these are from the 1990s, if you look at the text, Science Fiction The Early Years, the most interesting part of our podcast, 1000 pages, very tightly spaced, review after review after review, he read everything, The Gorilla, you see where this is going, obsessed with blood, very mild mannered, acting like an ape, the reader may assume, 1905, gonad transfusions, conquering woman, becoming a goat, at the wrong time, Confessions Of An English Opium Eater, a real believer in illustrations, include them in your tweets, said something in French and disappeared, other sources, it shouldn’t have any repeats, LibriVox, Martin Geeson, 5 hours 21 minutes, visit not contact, slow but delectable, like opium, look at the comments, this guy is horrible, this is absolutely divine, the best narrator I’ve ever heard, positively fantastic, “performance”, spelling mistakes all over the place, another perfect pairing of narrator and narrative, weird youtubes, book reviews, Superboy comic review, Edward Rice Burroughs unboxing, he gets dressed up for it, fun to know, being bossed around and shit on, fuck right off, that CBC thing, Jesse had to go to copyright school, what are Happy Tree Friends?, a less popular Spongebob?, the right Spongebobby age, evil google, Bryan Alexander tweet from Qatar, Qatar sounds painful?, he’s doing his normal thing: consulting, consulting about consulting, universities going out of business, he’s not there to join the Houthis, getting paid to be there, Bryan is very careful, doesn’t say radical things, liking gothic horror like Weiland, for work, adjunct professor guys, the middle class’ fear of falling, there’s concerns, he doesn’t have a bank, free to make his jokes, he has to be anonymous to be free, getting off the airplane in Chengdu, especially Chinese ones, an unemployed layabout, fun work, might work for a living at some point, mental health episode, wealthy lawyer, spouse who works, cheap shipping, a comic book store yes, new Philips Brubaker book, Charlton girl comics, Teen Confessions, Where The Body Was, Eisner Awards, Ed Asner gives out the Eisner Awards, he’s like the Hugo Gernsback of comics, Jack Kirby, Will Eisner’s studio system, an early comics guy, Tara from Planet Comics, she’s public domain, mostly badly written, Tara Outlaw Of The Universe, text features, text pages in comics (are garbage), nobody is supposed to read it, just a rip off of Farmer In The Sky on one page, Farmers on Ganymede, fast writing, shooting hoops, write 5000 times, this is not a good story but it is good, the way Jesse solved a problem, The Cat’s Advice by Jesse, such a good story, a Bros. Grimm story The Cat And The Miller’s Son, written in 7 minutes, stupid and good, the mill’s mouser, Will’s all in, structured, everything is perfect, the cat is touching him, should be hitting Will in the feels, they pressed Hans into their service, the cat was right, he was put on a path, he does what his father tells him to do, the state?, some other state?, killed his dad and raped his sister, child soldier, how do you like that?, get up in those clouds and become untethered, all the apostrophes, the cat doesn’t have a name, not owned by the mill, take whatever you’re given, no thinking, on your bag is a pin with a bicycle, little schoolboy holding ramen, he won the rabbit from a wizard, takes the chopsticks, in the undergrowth, a calico cat, it only works for here, the way that story is solved, anime or manga level, next issue, never an end, that will be resolved next issue, for the idea being expressed, you gotta do something or someone will choose for you, to thy own self be true, adults will give you advice, wrong and right, go get passionate about something, three hours is probably the ideal, break them out of that, read something that’s at least 20 minutes long, she’s not engaging, the material is terrible, supervisor nearby, outsourced stuff, stack of Lovecraft poems, she lit up like a sparkler, 100% down with meter and metaphor, brain level is right but vocabulary isn’t, the rhyme and the meter, polished, almost nobody in English ever think about, saying the same word over and over again, about how long the word is, to fit a meter, dreamed vs. dreamt, saves a character, microblogging, poets are very focused on this, o’er, where text and speech are designed to go together, narrating as a job, it doesn’t flow, definitionally prosaic, prose need not be prosaic, there were points when, dialogue that almost feels like Shakespeare, this is Inception (2010) level of interesting, engaging with Poe in a science fictional mode in the first decade of the 20th century, brings his own shit to it, all a coincidence, hooded or something, zaps himself, brings a layer of Poe upon it, buncha other Poe, this is why Jesse loves being a tutor, finding the spark is amazing, lighting up with these reviews, stories from the 20s, 30s, 40s, the Campbell era of Astounding, the pre-Campbell, important but not that cool, personality quirks, difficult upbringing, the psychology of Campbell, a domineering trickster, pretend to be each other, Who Goes There?, interesting but very stilted, people getting paid for cash, banned space opera, to serve different audiences, a blurb about the author, so many fuckin lies, responding, women didn’t use their own names, why is that a persistent thing?, nice narratives persist, I don’t think I should pay any attention, not motivated to do so, strangely, uninteresting at this point, The Golden Globes, conceive of them, European journalists rewarding Hollywood, French guys who liked a movie, pretty hilarious, when Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize then went on to become the drone king, be dismissive of all this stuff, need to talk to Paul, banished from China, smoking cigars, if it makes you happy, cinnamon bun, sugar is bad for you, which guy should I be, it’s your fuckin life, look into it, doesn’t react well to text, well quoted in The Guardian, a dramatic thing is about to take place, the drama was very one note, develop further, Hugo Book Club predicted, that’s pathetic, rewarding Paul for being snubbed by China, rewarded for the meta-situation, Jon Stewart said mean things about George Bush, Cirsova was using his mind over it, Daily Show and Colbert Report, he’s a shitlib of some kind, a science fiction freak, a Tolkien freak, Elon Musk is more science fiction than anybody else that’s famous, D.D. Harriman, Requiem, the evil that is libertarianism has infected his brain, somebody is going to heckle Musk well and give that person an award, tried to make a media career, you got tweeted at by Donald Trump, Jesse’s uncle’s neighbour is a youtuber, very offended right now, as a communist you’re responsible for this, building civil society ties between the West and China, fuck around and find out, we don’t have the full picture, entirely plausible, a big deal, when the shoe is on the other foot and Israel’s doing a genocide in Gaza, these are not fake, these are all real, some guy says, look at this satellite photos, are these graves?, because words have consequence, you didn’t get your cigar, at least you got cinnamon buns, the cigar of the Hugo award, lose a family member, incomprehensible, the gum you like, twinkies are out of business, a recognition, an affirmation, it’s dangerous, more follower and more likes, more engagement, very good friends, I can’t smell you but I don’t need, Jesse might smell like curry, an excuse, good work on deleting people you’re following, Pulpcovers is a standard for one direction, technothriller heaven, this guy likes books, I like books, we can be friends, Cirsova’s account, marketing something, a shitposter is the opposite of being careful, Bryan Alexander’s youtube account, that is telling you something, YouTube is not where its at, a very good ratio, obligatory thank you tweet and lifelogging, foreign universities moving in, money in educating the ruling classes, non-client states, part of the alliance or whatever, part of the Empire, host Al Jazaaera, Kurdistan a good idea?, astride five different countries, using the Kurds as an excuse to control the area and fuck around, Deutsche Welle, propaganda cutout, a little doc, interviewed three ladies carrying AKs around the deserts of Syria, who blew up the Nordstream pipeline, Biden saying Nordstream will be ended, did one on Philip K. Dick, Roog, that’s the art Jesse did for it, a fence and a garbage can and aliens, gravitation beam, that German propaganda company stole Jesse’s art, snitching, Heinlein estate you should be paying attention to this, bizarre consciousness, very common, reject the idea The Green Odyssey is in the public domain, in their fuckin interest, get rich from their copyrights one day, Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc., hiring good artists, Joe Jusko, so locked down, can’t do shipping, Diamond, out of the loop since COVID, three distributors, three times the work for your local comic book store, the Previews phonebook, lines with numbers and a name, a hoped promised date, lies or false, incentive covers is where its at, guessing what Jesse wants, same dudes, comics books are fucked, Comics MATTER w/Ya Boi Zack, Windows Tiny 11, weird computer software people are transgender, Tiny 10, completely stripped down, tubi with no ads, youtube with no ads, the good stuff, Iraq War guy with bad lungs, kickstarter, 104k followers, twitter drama, reads comics, very interesting, explains why comics are unreadable, Hugo style drama, mainstream American comics, quality of those has been going up, it all works as long as you’re in the ecosystem, pretty pricey, new canonical ERB novels, to develop ip to pitch to movie companies, The Cave Girl, a cat in a forest riding a bicycle, can’t write it very well, doesn’t stop them, it’s a math thing, writing about math, the singularity in math, the characters disappear, symbolic logic, unreadable, you have to have a base level of connection with the material, Jesse’s best joke, break the ice, very ESL or very young, I don’t like female sheep, why, dam, ewe, dam, ewe, in retrospect it is humorous, cocks and hens, what’s a female peacock, peahens, peawfowl, foul is bad, why are ducks such bad actors?, because they perform fowl plays, brilliant!, dad jokes, father to many students, baby raising industry, cuckolded by the planet, forced to raise them, a simp?, a silly or foolish person, simp verb, urban dictionary, someone who does way to much for a person they lake, here is the entire public domain of Terror Tales, shudder pulps, a Ray Cummings, Mike Vendetti, really going fast, the art is amazing, forthcoming, Beauty And The Butcher, Bride Of The Serpents, Cat-Woman, all of these have nudity, Kiss Of The Flame Blossom, Mistress Of Satan’s Hounds, Pleasure Cruise To Hell, When The Banshee Calls, Test-Tube Frankenstein, Mistress Of The Dark Pool, Where Dwell The Living, the interior art is accurate, Test tilde Tube, a monster engulfing a woman, this man was not my old friend Chester Vermis, late 30s, Lovecraft’s shadow, horror science fiction movies, fetish stuff, fetishy, Veil Of Tanit, [Jesse is shadowbanned], the latest set, can’t argue with the length, finally got some traction, racist and very interesting, supposed to shudder when you read them, a lot of salacious, “weird menace”, generally feature heroes pitted against villains, cults, I didn’t want to do it, very base (not based), all that she wants, babies mysterious disappear, that’s what the hook says, Dime Mystery Magazine, Grand-Guignol theater, a simp for art of all kinds, Shudder streaming service, seems to have a lot of cash, Midnight Pulp, more for Meg than for Will, a horror head?, she’s a keeper, horror movies are scary, not to infect your dreams with horror, parents had a rental property, had to go clean it up, had mold in it, not threatening, Tetris dreams, playing Tetris too much, a CPAP machine, quite a production, sleep test, moderate sleep apnea, wrecks your dream, low blood oxygen, is it worth it?, die from cinnamon buns, Jenny Colvin may have died from Jesse’s joke, 2019: why do bibliophiles prefer loud deaths in libraries?, funerals, hearse, another duck joke, too many tweets, duck attack, Remarkable Story Of Chicken Little, so fuckin smart, mysterious, my new joke, where does Red Lobster get their breadsticks?, what did FDR say?, popular with nobody, what has tulips and kisses?, I don’t know much about wolves?, what does a suddenly deshelled bivalve say?, technically excellent, what kind of food do Chinese cannibal dogs eat?, pretty good, so petrified, why do robots never need haircuts?, theoretical physicist, some people are neutral about uranium, a science fiction jokes, why don’t cows wear shoes?, ex-spy didn’t like it, former spook didn’t, what is the name of the magazine for people who like simple or elegant aircraft?, which kind of nut do impoverished cobblers most prefer?, I was impressed by the British Navy’s recruiting methods, why are math students the best protestors?, if digital watches made any sense, I asked the captain to stop eating popcorn, he was so smitten with her, a domestic violence joke, running out of jokes, certain people at this table, what do you call a severe wound on a highly ranked army teen, how do horses greet you when they have food in their mouths, nice inside baseball, took so training, trying to make kids not hate school, what does the masticating train say?, why do barbers not allow their customers to trade their hair?, looking forward to it, happy to hear, Walmart catfood, meat or kibble, Walmart brand, congregating in the catfood aisle, 7 -9 cats, old ladies, I’m a tad annoyed, a shaggy dog or cat story, Jesse’s other podcast, pretty good, it’s short and deep, he thinks things are deep, funny and deep, a long joke that’s is in the end not funny, a longwinded anecdote, terminated by an anti-climax, useful term, something wrong with it or something wrong with you, flummoxed, setting you up, mad at Jesse, Roger Zelanzny’s A Night In Lonesome October, Ulalume by Edgar Allan Poe, a jokey funny book, health problem, wanted to like the book, it’s a trick, you’re being trolled, this is a long story and nothing really happened, a monster rally, meet Abbot and Costello, to feature the monsters, Norm MacDonald’s jokes, it’s a troll, a real genre that’s been around forever, being trolled over a novel, a novel length troll, you don’t read a troll book, “Aliens Invade My Butt”, maybe those Chuck Tingle books aren’t novels, why would I do that?, gets attention, Trish and Paul were not happy, Jesse got trolled too, like judo, how did that happen?, weird genres, tae kwon do, they’re all doing Brazilian ju-jitsu, another reason they don’t like Trump, fighting is base, MMA things, just bring a gun or a taser, no swords, karate’s a thing, hitting points, the victory conditions, scored on hits, putting people into a submission, wrestling, tap three times or pass out, it works because people can fight and make it happen, judge you on your form, the 85 year old kung fu master, tai chi, very base things, shudder pulps are interesting because they are very base, zombie preppers, magazine rack, becoming a mercenary, firearms magazine, prepping is a popular activity, ways of spending cash on your money, a lack of faith in the government, do you want to be caught without food or electricity, you don’t want to be subject to the new M-rays, keep your boosters up, seeing it as racist, tap dancing towards, zombies are dangerous whether they are black or white, because of the police, the next one [Dawn Of The Dead], solidarity as a human species, institutionalized racism, fear of the cities, “inner city”, Jesse’s buddy Jimmy Dore, [Stef Zamorano], Chicago is the worst place in the world, always picking on Louisville, still pushing on the race button, a thing in conservative spheres, they think laws are important, understand this instinct, incompetent and sold out buttons here and there pressing buttons, not exactly what Scott Poole’s seeing, Trump did the same thing, using the terms that they refer to, what Terence meant, when Trump gets assassinated, how are they going to stop him?, increasingly unable, their goal is to put Trump in jail, the fire sale that is the United States right now, that student debt thing he just promised, infrastructure bill, so many new construction projects, so far behind, railroad disaster in Ohio, economic disaster everywhere, see you in cyberspace.

Dark Carnivals by W. Scott Poole

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #798 – READALONG: Return From The Stars by Stanisław Lem

Jesse, Will Emmons, Cora Buhlert, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about Return From The Stars by Stanisław Lem

Talked about on today’s show:
a betterized Terence, what happened to Jonathan, refusing to speak with us because communist dictators, Bibi worship, need more Lem, great, really great, great science fiction, solid novel, there are moments that are excellent, great ideas, amazing scenes, the ending confused, Beyond Atlantis (1973), a 1970s movie from the Philippines, Lovecraft combined with Atlantean, a sexploitation movie, John Wayne’s son, family friendly, the opposite, an adult movie, hits all the beats, competent and funny, Jesse promises, The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre (1948) with Atlanteans, they lost all their pearls, that’s not funny, at the end of Gumball Rally (1976), “gumball”, illegal road race across the country, the bird at the end, the betrazated bird, no wild things exist, unlikely to kill humans, notice it isn’t afraid of the human, taught to be afraid, humans are no longer scary, confusing beginning, first gets on/off the airplane, cutouts, flashing across the ceiling of this tube, end of the book, sitting in the snow, eating snow, going home, acting like a child, pretty good at telling us about what it means, people don’t change, a pretty good theme, describing this book to a dude, guy comes back from space, stronger than anybody else on earth, no other men on the planet, they’ve all been castrated, like John Carter, jump super high, the chairs reach up to comfort you, masculine power has been turned into something useless, John Carter goes to Mars and there’s no problems there, he’s going to go on that expedition, sets up the sequel, turns this book into The Forever War, a utopian/dystopian book, Conan shows up in a kingdom, what’s your problem, ruins Robert E. Howard’s argument, undercurrents of discontent, robots?, drug to undo, an underground supply, we do that too, people consuming alcohol or cocaine, in vino veritas, there’s no escape from a dystopia, a non-dystopia, fell in love with a woman who belonged to that society, the adventure is good side, the final transformation, a star child or a messiah, nobody gives a damn about them, he becomes ordinary, echoes the end, I did not want the stars, crazy/derranged, a man must be completely ordinary, otherwise impossible/pointless to live, testosterone fueled adventurism, espousing conformity, he doesn’t seek betrazation, conditioned by capitalism, seeing creative destruction as good, its own sense and logic, he can never be at home, he doesn’t want to go and do it again, he falls in love with a woman who is ordinary, extraordinary didn’t interest him, chose ordinariness, exhibit D, a page from Teen Confessions, a redhead and her teen boyfriend are falling in love while visiting Washington, D.C., outside looking at the moon and the Capital building, you’d better agree, would there be a penalty?, then I’d kiss you and keep kissing you until you agree, romance comics, girl comics end with periods, in that case I refuse, I’ll keep saying no, thinking while being kissed, end of scene, she’s figured it, so interesting, the scene that’s like this in the book, trouble communicating, jesus christ people have difficulty communicating their wants, animal sex, are you okay with me kidnapping you?, the heart of the problem, when she don’t know what’s she’s thinking at all, she’s betrazized incapable, she can’t ask to be kidnapped and raped, unthinkable, the reason you carry a woman over a threshhold, taken her from her father’s house, a hairpulling thing, caveman style of interaction, maybe she wanted this and that’s why she’s afraid, women do like men and their male characteristics, not just a roleplay, I’m forcing my will upon you, that’s what we’re told by the narrator, he doesn’t know that at the time, that’s how stupid I was, we’re not telepathic beings, words are usually a good way of rationalizing thoughts, you’ve stated it perfectly, dialogues, not knowing what it meant, incomplete sentences, left puzzled, one of the topics of this book, Planet Of The Apes, The Unincorporated Man, its not about understanding it’s about action, it’s about metamorphosis, another possibility, by loving this woman, he turns into a child at the end, how much can love transform you?, he does not fit in, hence his attraction and our attraction to go back to space, ordinary is not the same as conformist, the anti-I Am Legend, he’s just a normal guy with superman muscles, 1961, East European science fiction, space books, the thing to remember, the official doctrine, we will have socialism soon, wonderful utopia, socialist utopia, there will be people who won’t fit in, German science fiction writer, socialism is like Christmas, just sleep a few more nights and there will be socialism, socialism was the endgame, we know this is going to be the future, how do we get there?, what will we lose when we get there?, the women in the book, there were three, progression between the women, no matter where Jonathan went, many such cases, it’s because Jonathan’s a handsome American, do you want me?, $200, pre-fall of the wall, interhotels, similar things in the Soviet Union, women who would do whatever you wanted for western money, she’s kinda like a whore, the screen star, the actress, the realist, she treated him like a whore, he was novel, maybe I can conquer him too?, eventually, figure her out a bit, take her from her husband and go talk to him, Terence came to France (the apes had power), spoke French very badly, a talking dog, quite amusing, fell in love with a French woman, became French, hear from Will, thinking in terms of dialectics, what is a dialectic?, two poles, old style man adventure, the betraized Eloi, John Carter meets The Time Machine, the death drive vs. the pleasure principle, discharging energies to get to a steady state, death drive, alcohol or crazy choices, changing paradigms, always a possibility of setting up a third way, dialectical, this society is impossible, there are contradictions in this society that are staggering, do this poorly, the propaganda version, a school textbook, have you read school textbook, school is designed to indoctrinate, the offical ideology, the robot smelting plant, does it set something up, underrealized, a reel of a realization of that, I’m in here improperly, I’m not broken, really crying out for help, what’s so cool about that, all the humans have become robots, putting them into recycling centers instead of death camps, the robots do the selection, really terrific book, Mockingbird by Walter Tevis, suggested based on a John Lange novel, from there to here, the weird German copy, The Terminal Man, using pleasure to counter the death drive, deep writers, reinforces the murderous impulses, inhibition is A Clockwork Orange, also a travel book, air b and bs, a utopian novel, a dystopian novel, Logan’s Run, the Berlin Wall, traveling was aspirational, Lem did travel, privileged, The Dispossessed, poverty planet, everyone suffers under communism, to capitalist planet, that’s the point of fandom, Donald A. Wollheim, how about reading this book as not a utopian government, fully automated luxury, safe under grandma’s skirts, communist countries were more open, Hillary Clinton couldn’t imagine being a woman astronaut, it was just different, Sally Ride, Valentina Tereshkova, she was a seamstress, this is girl planet, what makes a man a man, the ability to have violence in any conversation, handshakes are a big deal, girls and handshakes are copying men’s behavior, I can’t be pushed over, something wrong with their brain, apologize, farmers hands are all sinew, he doesn’t know all strong, a possibility of violence between us, many skills and not drunk, that potential for violence is always there, the holding up the hand is the unarmed, not a universal human greeting, the open hand, the how, you have to learn it, this is what its for, holding out your hand, as opposed to against that person, refusing a handshake, doesn’t know what to do with his hands, feels weird in his skin, what they look like or what they’re wearing, SFWA dm, the people over here are odd and strange in different ways, luxuries we don’t have, obviously German, weird acronyms, words we have to intuit, legal loophole, sold east German stuff to us, about being a man, many ways of being a man, most masculine hobby is smoking cigars, beer tents, unhealthy, one of the ways of being a man is act as a protector to the smaller female, women cops protecting male victims of crime, moderated, he’s a pilot, traumatized, backstory, why he’s PTSD, an Earth that can’t understand him, boxing matches aside, stolen girl, tell me about this scar, he’s such a wounded animal she can’t resist them, scars on men, a whole German society, a lot of Nazis, right wing, this is a planet that has been feminized, man against lion, the lion is not a threat, holograms, not a robot lion, where does the meat come from?, lion and a lioness, the hologram experience on the rope bridge, dives in and rescues her, everybody has been coddled, everyone has soft hands, physically strong, considered suicide, even the dudes are girls, everyone seems to him like his idea of a girl, a little hyperbolic, bring boxing gloves, I need someone to threaten me, would be as lost, nobody has to work because everything is free, if you want to have a car, the supervisory job, an archaeologist studying an ancient relic of human civilization, a very discombobulating world, becomes a child again, putting snow in your mouth, Jesse would still be a podcaster in this world, Ukraine or Belorussia, Poland was recreated as a state, after WWII, Truman was strongly involved, Stalin decided, after the Russian revolution, the Baltic states, put into houses where German people had lived, traumatic, always upset, uproot us again, Silesia, moved to northern German, literally stopped living, no chance to keep his farm house, a weird guy, felt sorry for him, 1921, survived the holocaust with false papers, always in the subject of the other countries around it, a post national world, does everybody speak the same whatever it is?, esperanto?, the opening is awesome, Lem has a plan, continously discombobulates, how the tech works, why the behavior is so stange, a lot like Logan’s Run without the depth, calling them Eloi, constantly young and beautiful, no predator underneath, even the robots, take this another direction, lead a robot revolt, if you listen carefully to what the robots are saying, reasonable, religious fanatics, a whole bunch of demented people, the other option is a horror, this whole society can’t be fixed, a lot of time in hospital, help me!, get me out of here!, just yelling, looks good on the surface, a totalitarian government, that is totalitarianism, propaganda, hypnagogic tapes, we don’t know who issues those, a smokescreen, they can’t, not wanting to as an excuse, an inhibition, they have all the tech for it, lost their sense of adventure, going to space would be dangerous, can’t place themselves in danger, if Niven took this book, Berlin, kids drowned in full view, their own comrades would shoot them, immigrant kids, people standing around, society is based around several lies, just as bad as the alcoholic, a religious fanatic who is peaceable might be annoying, dysfunctional, less likely to drunk drive you, dysfunctional neurotic, just as neurotic, in a different direct, less manly, there’s no PTSD on this planet, the primary contradiction, incapable of wanting it vs. incapable of doing it, the idea cannot come into their heads, the apologetics aren’t necessary anymore, space rapes, Theodore Sturgeon, penetrating other spheres, ideological belief in equality, no, you’re a homemaker, we don’t put women into danger, men are disposable, the tragedy of a woman being destroyed in space, given this premise, he would try, turn it off, fix it, even rapeyer, pretty rape, The Cosmic Rape by Theodore Sturgeon, castration, violent thought come from the balls?, the totalitarianism, Philip K. Dick’s Progeny, maybe Will is just totalitarianism, the one child policy, a blanket solution, oppressed nationalities, a button you switch on or off, totalitarian style thinking, you’re not wise enough to have children, turn off all these indians ability to have children, when in doubt sterilize, do it on the downlow, not something you advertize, controlling every aspect of reality, nobody has any boo boos, where Larry Niven could take this story, we could do a robot uprising, religious leaders, you could do a lot with this world, has the guy broken in the end, that expedition is gonna solve anything, super-anti-gravity drive, go away forever, unless they’re doing it Heinlein’s Universe style, posit something new, he’s going to inform, evidence against it, he chooses to become ordinary, his children will be betrazated, a profit and loss thing, 50-50, hence he gives in, the central thing that distinguishing, falling in love with one of the dogs, showing your hands in a weird way, incapable of doing the horror, what’s the central contradiction?, the solution to violence, it’s not true, those in power can order a robot to kill someone, money is not eliminated from the economy, money exists for more valuable and rarer things, she’s gotten illegally, the drug, where’s the prisons on this planet, what crime takes place, what makes it illegal, the robots are not the police, the robots will kill you if you’ve gone to far, the robots are the people, the robot might decide, this is a system, she’s studying at university to become an archaeologist, the robot supervisor (husband), wants to secretly confront him, legit there wasn’t a second engineer there, a false flag, an excuse to visit this horror show, compare this very good book to Mockingbird, there are only systems, a secret government hidden in a bunker in Cheyenne Mountain, not because it is illegal, robots don’t get upset, who’s really running things, isn’t this exciting, phones being tapped, the paranoid person from the past, insane, he’s a failure, he’s Conan, he’s Tarzan of the Apes, come back to a world of pussies, don’t, slap the tarzan out of my mouth, will?, like a really good star trek episode, the Betazeds, a trick question, you should be saying it, what kind of fantasy?, an idealist fantasy, a materialist piece of science fiction, not a contradiction between classes, understated, what are the classes, the robots and the eloi, the young and the old, the aging problem, a weird way to go, third childhood, the men try to look as young as they can, women would look for wealth, heroics, scars, we don’t need a biological solution to war, nations are an output of classes, trying to say things she’s unable to describe, no context, she seems to confirm it, wants to be taken but unable to say it, what female genes say: take me take me now, the y chromosomes don’t understand, character posing with two dolls almost kissing, Masters of the Universe collection, this is part of the girl version, the love of the relationship stuff, the Princess of Power movie, the original She-Ra, a continuous storyline, Days Of Our Lives, superhero team movies, don’t care about princess, princesses and magic swords, Sheepfarmer’s Daughter by Elizabeth Moon, The Deed Of Deed Of Paksenarrion, kinda like Red Sonja, Baen, terrible distribution, a fantasy solution to the science fiction presented today, not a series makes it even better, Lem can be very funny, The Futurological Congress, all brain material, super-science fiction stuff, under pressure, The Silent Star (1960), serialized on VKvideo, 5 part 1989 production, very popular for adaptations, a great book, second Lem, One Human Minute, grumpy about doing this one, it was available, The Cyberiad, last week, Jesse tried to pin it on everyone, we are all guilty, no one forced you to sign up for this, all your hands are bloody, the Wikipedia didn’t make it sound great, plot wrong, coming together right now, a little less than Paul, Australia or Poland, twitter is the best way to keep in touch, The Devil’s Elixirs by E.T.A. Hoffmann, in 58 parts, caveat under the audiobook, just during the high moments, an outcue and an incue, barring change, Bremen Soviet Republic, family secret, they didn’t talk about that, Connor is hard to get, 17 hours, Terence has nothing but time, Will studies science fiction right now, lifting weights, kettlebelling your brain, making critical claims, didn’t get the pseudonym of the dictator who went to Mars, always Pulpcovers, Scott Miller, dictator goes to Venus, his title was number 1, you have to infer it, the dictator is Weichsel, read the description of the tweet, Happy Ending by Fredric Brown and Mack Reynolds, whatever it was?, did Stalin like dogs?, Khrushchev? we are not destalinizing the dog space program, miniseries, a late night thing, the lady who plays the hologram, no excuses, Dark Carnivals: Modern Horror and the Origins of American Empire by W. Scott Poole, The Gun by Philip K. Dick, Murray Leinster had nothing to do with it, Mad Planet by Murray Leinster, The Liar is Jonathan’s idea, that was a robot, Demons Of Cthuhlu by Robert Silverberg, Time Is The Simplest Thing by Clifford D. Simak, up to speed on Fredric Brown, that’s a robot dude, that’s a fuckn robot, audiobook with terrible feedback distortion, the DRM?, you don’t have enough audiobook experience, an argument from authority vs. an argument from strength, a british fuckin robot, not a human, just listen, three tenths of a second you can tell, look at the hands, a lady drawing a sword, two handled sword, hilts on both ends, wait for the humans to do the human work, it’s wrong, my life is worth more, not going to pay for it anywhere, it’s not labour it’s love, you could eat toothpaste, fake sugar, aspartame, way too sweet, gotten sweeter, adulterating your toothpaste, toothpaste shouldn’t be delicious, baking soda and salt, East German toothpaste, read by a single narrator, this is where dictator Jesse comes in, can you have all the tools, a robot show, a good place to draw the line, a Margaret Atwood book, dramatic readings on LibriVox, almost incomprehensible Italian guy, Scott Miller looks up fuckin word, he’s a perfetionist, he’s a great voice, so good at producing his show, AI art, he spends a lot of time crafting some of them, Paul’s argument against AI art, not more than the usual mad at Jesse, busy being mad at Chengdu, if Paul was here, chat GPT style things, his argument, gives him a bad answer, you have to work with it, the way you play with your dolls, Lego Minifigures, going into a database of copyrighted materials, AI art is bad because it sucks not because its morally incapable of being good, if we were in power, AI generated picture, extra fingers, a stray head, Jonathan at some point robot narrators may become great, Gregg Margarite has good taste, if we can’t find a good Gregg Margarite, loved what he narrated, if you listen to Scott Miller on his livestreams, he brings the same interest and level of care to the production of his audiobooks, hired an artist, more difficult, Deviant Art, artists who are doing something approximate, rates and other stuff, if you objectively look at Jesse’s tweets: looks at art all day, oh lovely, appreciate/criticize, pretty good taste so far, nudity, sand princess, not nude enough, covering over her nipples is unfortunate, fuck off, artstation, that’s a good cover, hashtag leg cling, posted, tweeted, frickin pirates, hashtag leaked, reign over the museums, what’s allowed to be purchased to the state, handshake isn’t strong enough, the green creatures are around a woman doing things to her, doesn’t have the good taste that Jonathan has, exquisite taste, more minifigs than He-Man, allows them power, chat gpt gives you power, to really appreciate a good essay you have to be able to write one, when acting as an artist, planet’s worst actor, you appreciate good acting, good art, good writing, getting excited about it, little kids are excited about ai art, collage, on a book cover, ai art book covers are better than most industry book cover art prior to ai art, tin ear, the font matters, he’s Ukrainian and Jesse is pro-Russia, not a Nazi?, get out of your bubble, bud, embargo, we’re not going to stop Putin or Lukashenko, we’re not going to stop the Houthis by dropping bombs on them either, Cora doesn’t have sympathy for the Houthis, Appleonster, too cheesecakey, people need an eye for shit, you need to know what to look for, Uncle Horst, bought a bad car, overwhelmed by its beauty, beautiful mistake, ASAP, pirate website, step off, is it illegal?, you wouldn’t download, show me the law, taking a law course, terms of service, DRM interfaces with the law, a license, you can’t steal something that you can’t own, tab city, continuous defollowing, unfollowed 500 people/publications/organizations, mute people, muting Jesse, peak COVID, nothing but COVID, still coviding, we’re all going to die anytime soon now, maximum COVID panic, used to be the argument, verbal sparring, argumentation, loved university, meet a lot of young people, getting into fights, people who were right wing, confusing for people, that star trek planet, you’re not of the body, Operation: Annihilate, spore that go into people and betrazate them, racist, conservative, this or that, a fear of infection/contamination, precious bodily fluids, no brown grandkids, their dancing is pretty cool, put up a wall, dirty/icky/scary, show me the difference between that kind of people and people who are fearful of covid, left winger or right winger vs. liberal and conservative, calling people communists who are not communists, slurs, pro-vaxxer exists, pro-booster, this covid one isn’t very good, do your own research kinda guy, reading, Jesse is a fan, Hugo Book Club and Cora tweets, this is politics of being fans, not a fancast, calling people out, not playing the games, procasts, fanatic yes, fan no, a doomer account, sad, the only kid who masks at the tutoring place, white lady, corporate profits, can’t even process that, we are creating their future habits in realtime, COVID hysteria, long covid since 2020, the profit thing, open the businesses again, keeping the economy open, ruined people’s businesses, livelihoods, happily wears a mask indoors, bribed with hotwheel, people who are deluded, deluded people, seeing reality in the wrong way, the argument for licensing parents, every Jesse button, back to that well, Our Opinions [Are Correct], try not to follow accounts, mainstream comics, feels bad to unfollow people, I don’t value their voice, angry/annoyed/pissedoff, try to keep a good ratio, crown corporations and indian tribes, Jesse always was an indian, he just forgot about it, adopted, first nations, when you go to their indian reserve and you talk to the indians, some indians say first nations, Jesse’s sister, The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Jesse is Old Shatterhand, Cora is obliged to marry Jesse, Chief Dan George, what privileges does this get, nothing, hired actors to do acting, hiring indians for playing indians to play indians, CBC turned, a little tiny industry was cool, so Paul could get triggered, cool people, land acknowledgement at Davos, Turks and Vietnamese in Germany, Montagnards, pretending to serve food, authentic Chinese people, Italian ice cream parlours run by ice cream, ice cream culture, gelato, good ratio, still working on it, 2 to 1 almost, following 1700 people, bad for your brain, going looking for tweets more sketchy, three bad tweets in a row you’re a candidate, can’t call you out on the podcast, it’s rough out there, listen and learn things, interesting insight, what Puppies are, calling Jesse is not a fan, dealer’s room was the best part, something that will never happen, if they wanted to make the Hugos better they should not do media (tv shows and the movies), suggested for ages, coverage is only for dramatic presentation winners, send a representative, two ladies from Sony Ireland, animated Spider-Man movie, pointing towards an argument, undermines the whole prospect, do you need a Hugo?, Hugo Winner Cora Buhlert, a piece of land with two motorcycles, two cars and two Hugos on it, hanging on to the dream, indians rode around on horses, very few of us ride around on horses, if the Hugos are useful…, a reading list, as you evolved, David Brin’s [Startide Rising], when Harry Potter started getting nominated, late to the game, it all happened earlier than you know, bad book, badly written, stolen from Lester Del Rey, used to be interesting books, that was really good, associating Hugos with that, a learned response, The Wanderer by Fritz Leiber, the second weakest, based on the premise, They’d Rather Be Right by Mark Clifton and Frank Riley, Connie Willis syndrome, it’s her turn!, an Oscar thing, except of Ursula K. Le Guin, All My Cats Did This And That, such a baby, as the new adoptive parents to this new child (Will), The Demolished Man, yea or nay?, The Long Tomorrow, Double Star, The Big Time, A Case Of Conscience, alien Jesuits, Little Fuzzy with Jesuits, was an asshole, bounced off Blish, Starship Troopers (useful to have read), a boy book, not mandatory, you don’t get any vote, Heinlein was not a fascist, a military fetishist, overstated, A Canticle For Leibowitz, Stranger In A Strange Land, if you were a Heinlein character, the round ball that can make cute voices, teaching Will to fish, Clifford D. Simak, Waystation, not as good a book, Roger Zelazny’s This Immortal and Dune, giving people homework?, that’s not allowed anymore, didn’t get along with Dune, very dense, 24 different narrators, George Guidall, he’d be ideal, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, Manny is the non female robot, the guy with one arm, the head of the revolutionary cells, Heinlein is ridiculous, prison planet, awesome title, love the politics, endless speechifying is a problem, group [line] marriages, swinger club within walking distance, Lord Of Light, a lukewarm review, very 60s hippy dippy, short story, kill an old person to get an apartment, Stand On Zanzibar by John Brunner, so thick, The Left Hand Of Darkness, a big weighty tome, makes you grow up, bureaucratic country, listening to an old person, this novel is everything, Ringworld, the weight of that spinning object in place, let’s go to the ringworld, age-gap discourse, she’s so lucky she gets to have sex with him, just her luck, a very dirty young man, that’s fine, he was asian you’re not allowed to criticize him, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, a tough year, The Gods Themselves, three gendered aliens?, Robert Silverberg, Rendezvous With Rama, big dumb object, Time Enough For Love, Protector is so good, alien can’t do his job properly, chasing after the rumour, not enough people to protect chases down a rumour about an expedition to the far end of the galaxy, shows up in earther’s solar system, humans are not from earth, the soil on earth didn’t have the right stuff, a pupal stage (or zygote stage), tree of life root, power exoskeleton super-thinking machine, offspring, amazing idea, completely wrong, go with the premise, awesome hard SF, cool explanations for things, superinteresting, The Dispossessed, The Mote In God’s Eye, highly recommend both, Cora not the biggest Niven fan (because she’s a girl), Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, Old Man’s War by John Scalzi, The Stochastic Man, Alfred Bester, The Computer Connection, Inferno, Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm, Silent Spring, pollution, a Green party convention, Mindbridge, a clone novel, Man Plus, Shadrach In The Furnace, late Pohl vs. early Pohl, Gateway, crazy guy who needs therapy goes to therapy with AI doctor, disappointed, Lucifer’s Hammer, Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre, The Moon And The Sun, The Fountains Of Paradise, his short stories, his early novel, Eric S. Rabkin, good stuff in here, why is it a novel?, novels is where the money is, collaborations, terrible, The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge, Tiamat orbits a black hole, Hegemony, if it is okay, Ringworld Engineers, Beyond The Blue Event Horizon, C.J. Cherryh’s Downbelow Station, Claw Of The Conciliator by Gene Wolfe, Julian May’s The Many Colored Land, Project Pope by Simak, bias against Simak, Foundation’s Edge a book that should not exist, a book that need not be written, very hit and miss, Sword Of The Lictor, Friday by Heinlein, double strength muscular body, the worm turned, wtf?, Brin doesn’t work, nobodies doing nobodies, Anne McCaffrey, 15th Pern book, Robots Of Dawn, Millenium by John Varley, Tea With A Black Dragon by R.A. MacAvoy, an art book, he’s Clark Ashton Smith, art sounds, also cool heist plot, Job: A Comedy Of Justice, Integral Trees, year of Will’s birth, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, The Postman, Cuckoo’s Egg, Will is kinda corny, Footfall, teen in the 80s, Blood Music, the short story is even better, Greg Bear, Speaker For The Dead, Marooned In Realtime by Vernor Vinge, Uplift War, back to the shitty old business, coulda been summed up by Lester Del Rey in 15 minutes, When Gravity Fails, Mormons in space, dogs and apes, dolphins is Brin, The Faithful, as an idea man, he’s ripping off H.G. Wells, hold my beer dead guys, reading screens to the audience, he thinks he’s a the supergenius, doing bad work, why awards are dangerous, put bad thoughts into their heads, triggers Jesse more than doomers, Cyteen, bounced off, first third, masterpiece, most ambitious, I’m like a person who like is going to die, a cloning book, over the course of 22 hours, a very dystopian book, lots of unhappiness, lots of everything, 1990, Dan Simmon’s Hyperion, turned really weird, the sequel might have been better than the first one, steal their titles from poems, stealing the structure, it didn’t have anything to say, it has no message, it didn’t have an idea it was exploring, the characters were interesting, when you’re watching a new tv show, ooh this is promising, try not to get tricked, X-Files used to not do that, weird cases of the week are very rewatchable, the lore shit, Lois McMaster Bujold’s The Vor Game, a series of wins, she’s a good writer, Falling Free, space unions, set in the same universe, the modern era, where things show, A Fire Upon The Deep and The Doomesday Book, what I’m hearing is you hate Willises, cut her down to size, needlessly long, oh Mr. Dunworthy, all her characters are british, she has good ideas, needs an editor carving out big section, [Bellwether] the same topic over and over again, girls go back in time and the Blitz, can’t connect to her, some hot officer, very romantic for a girl, an observation, 1993, a big change in publishing in the 1980s, a big fuckin honker, why this happened in publishing, price of paper, hit a certain price point, spinner racks, longer and thicker, the airport bookstore model, Tom Clancy, James Michener, John Jakes, Kim Stanley Robinson, don’t pay attention, scientistis talking to each other, Beggars In Space by Nancy Kress, an evil book, an evil writer, evil readers, Virtual Light, Mirror Dance, Neal Stephenson, Robert J. Sawyer, doesn’t do characters well, The Diamond Age, nanobot lung, more series, Elizabeth Moon, Starplex, a Star Trek novelization, an episode of Star Trek Continues, addictive series, they won’t punch you in the guts, there’s one missing, a better book?, Forever Peace, more mature, Frameshift, Michael Swanwick, To Say Nothing Of The Dog, the subtitle of Three Men In A Boat by Jerome K. Jerome, kinda Jeevesy, through Heinlein, Connie Willis, Have Space Suit, Will Travel, read this book, Kim by Rudyard Kipling, a movie, filmed in Germany, on LibriVox, revisiting it, post modern age, Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, Darwin’s Radio, unreadable, height of Harry Potter hype, Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson, Calculating God, he used to write science fiction, a lot of people are not science fiction people, fakes, she loves science fiction, Robert J. Sawyer is a science fiction writer, just the ideas, that’s it, nothing else, Neil Gaiman, American Gods, Perdido Street Station, ends with an invite to the next book, done with Sawyer, Paladin Of Souls, Charles Stross, Susanna Clarke, stopping to pay attention, two Irons, met three of these people, China Miéville, Michael Chabon, diminshing returns, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, mainstream stuff leaning in the science fiction direction, The Graveyard Book, Paolo Bacigalupi, you guys hate liberals, The City And The City, Ann Leckie, never have to deal with Hugos ever again, Three Body Problem, N.K. Jeminson again, Mary Robinette Kowal, Murderbots, Arkady Martine, T. Kingfisher, reverse order, retro Hugos, Farenheit 451, a different unimportant novel Z For Zachariah, The Caves Of Steel, heavy quite short, More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon, do your own research, really great actors, just forced, hammerlock, you’re in a vulnerable place in your life, make you more manly, correct and cornily done ending, an interesting think, a learning experience, Hal Clement in 1954, a pretty good list, Childhood’s End, Juett told Will about it, the first version is public domain, 1951, whatever stupid don’t care, just fascist white men winning, Farmer In The Sky beat The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, Heinlein for the win, C.S. Lewis’ most famous novel, Maissa not Will, sad story, you still have an opportunity to read this excellent book The Dying Earth by Jack Vance, a fixup, super episodic, The Mule, The World Of Null-A, always a complete mess, a weaker year, 1945, Leigh Brackett’s Shadow Over Mars, Sirius: A Fantasy Of Love And Discord, Brackett over Stapledon, Fritz Leiber’s Conjure Wife, Hermann Hesse, Weapon Shops, 1943, Beyond This Horizon, The Uninvited by Dorothy MacArdle, Donovan’s Brain, move on from the Lensman, second stage lensmen, lost their legs now they’re slugging around, 1941, Slan by A.E. Van Vogt, a lot of people have not turned against fans are slans, planets run by women are better than planets run by men, this yes (evil), stay on your meds, final year, 1939, T.H. White’s The Sword In The Stone, Legion Of Time, Out Of The Silent Planet is a blather is space book, best off when it doesn’t happen, I was reading this great book Dad had given me…, make note, Narnia reference, Enid Blyton, court judgement for fraud case, how many of the guys are innocent?, actual numbers, what percentage are guilty?, sneak over to your purse, zero percent innocent?, Rawandan refugee, 4% innocent, most English speakers are guilty, illegal fireworks, drug cases, obviously guilty, prices.

Return From The Stars by Stanislaw Lem

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #797 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The World That Couldn’t Be by Clifford D. Simak AND The Worlds of If by Stanley G. Weinbaum

The SFFaudio Podcast #797 – The World That Couldn’t Be by Clifford D. Simak, read by Gregg Margarite AND The Worlds of If read by by Stanley G. Weinbaum – read by Mike Mike Manolakes (both recorded for LibriVox). These are complete and unabridged readings of the stories (2 hours 8 minutes) followed by a discussion of them. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Maissa Bessada, Will Emmons, Jonathan Weichsel, and Terence Blake

Talked about on today’s show:
the podcast boosted intelligent version of Terence, The World That Couln’t Be and The Worlds Of If, paired these up, two short stories, they both have world or worlds, subjunctivity, subjuntivier, by raise of hands, Professor Van Manderpootz, Pygmalion’s Spectacles is very similar, The Ideal, student Dixon Wells shows up, uses the machine, falls in love with a girl in the machine, profesor dismantles the machine, commercially for a few years, off hand line towards the begining, check it, falsifiable, The Point Of View, February 1936, Worlds Of If is the first one, don’t need to be read in order, realized while listening, Philip K. Dick has a tribute to Professor Von Manderpootz’s stories, two short stories starring a professor who invents machines, narrated by a former student, Doc Brown and Marty McFly, 1st 2nd and 3rd Back To The Futures, crazy scientist and student or younger, Professor Dumkopf, Pootz is like Putz, mander like meander, greatest scientist who ever lived, beat the asians in 3 months, A Martian Odyssey, had read before, disniguishing each of the stories apart, they’re all the same, guy narrates his experience falling in love with a woman inside of a machin Girl In The Golden Atom, preceded by girl in the drop of water, Fitz James O’Brien’s The Diamond Lens, weird fiction, science fiction, The Short Happy Life Of The Brown Oxford, a dutch oven, a way of cooking or baking on top of a stove, shoes inside, they come to life, run around the yard like little rabbits and breed, combining these two stories together, dance themselves to death, Philip K. Dick’s brain is awesome, must have read in reprints, first visit to Von Manderpootz!, a story with him in it, a familiar character, Dixon, the Wells from H.G. Wells, just fits, the Soviet Union wanting to dig a tunnel through the Urals, various desserts, nothing about them being communists and evil, the future of 2015 or so, very 1935 optimistic science fiction, lobster salad, full future luxury communism soviet rocket, precedes the jetset class, post WWII, transoceanic flights, clippers, refuel in Hawaii, make your way to Shanghai, much more like getting on the Concorde, casual and fun, running late, misses his airplane, hold the plane for him, the Beirut office, very nice future, not the focus of the story, the picture we get of it is nice, a critique of the story: overwhelmingly bourgeois, inherited money, still financial crises in capitalism in this future, chorus girls and caddies, this high end education, a terrible student, highly incompetent and competent, no real consequences, bourgeois fiction, tends to dramatize minor inconveniences, cozy, the butterfly affect, there’s a whole magazine named after this story, what we deal with in science fiction is the worlds of if, IF, Worlds Of Science Fiction, a skinsuit mag for it debuting next month, Stanley G. Weinbaum stories, If Reader Of Science Fiction edited by Frederik Pohl, A.E. VanVogt, 1952-1971, the Galaxy guy, Hugo Gernsback delve, Gernsbacked pilled, read Weinbaum everyday, fluffy and light, an H.G. Wells story without the H.G. Wells heaviness, a very interesting cynical message, no matter which choice he takes is the wrong one, that’s what happens, a better deal, this is the best of all possible worlds, not getting the desired object, the best thing that could have happened, conflating the two women together, not good to have as a wife, silly airplane, fixated on him, a horrible wife as well, he got the better deal, like The Time Machine, you get enlightenment, you get affirmation, not satisfied, being not satisfied is satisfying, when their on the rocket ship together, expected to be a friendship of the ship, vacation girlfriend, together with another couple, promised to write, not proximate to you, friendship that seem really great, talking about the podcast right now, accidentally make a baby, desire is subjunctive rather than indicative, he was lucky he lost his money, a good wife who only loved him for his money, stayed in the subjunctive type of desire, a refutation of the power, of all the sad words the worst: it might have been, called out in the story, Maude Manner It might have been, [Maud Muller by John Greenleaf Whittier], it wouldn’t have worked out,

God pity them both! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall.

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: “It might have been!”

Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies
Deeply buried from human eyes;

And, in the hereafter, angels may
Roll the stone from its grave away!

a bit of hope, pie in the sky, we get sequels, two sequels, I want more, it didn’t need to have the same characters, easier, more commercial, people like series, here’s another with the same characters, more marketable, A Martian Odyssey, Valley Of Dreams, unneeded, Professor Challenger, Tom Sawyer, Detective, good story, expected to be more blown away by Weinbaum, our Simak story, much meatier, more interesting, three times longer, it’s great, an attack on Jesse, Clifford Simak didn’t have conflict, appears to have more conflict, how much Simak have we all read, a bit, Shakespeare’s Planet, Way Station, Goblin Reservation, Over The River And Through The Woods, really nice, of the countryside, Leiningen Versus the Ants by Carl Stephenson, a war against army ants, classifies as science fiction, German, foreigners going to Brazil, rubber plantation owners, Confederates went to Brazil, Confederados, the last country to get rid of slavery, NATO brought it back to Lybia, more alien than red indians, set in space Africa, hominy, exposed to it as a child, parched corn, dried popcorn?, food going on, sytha, slow drip of information, very cool story, thank you, asexual, James Tiptree Jr story, Your Haploid Heart, we’re doing this for you, sorry, gotta fuck you, taboo for them, they don’t want to tell, they don’t know how they reproduce, our main helper dude, Sapar, it says something, I grew up with that thing, all those other creatures are taboo, a list of creatures that are taboo, make a claim as to what is actually happening on The World That Couldn’t Be, like on our planet, adaptation evolution, an alternative form of evolution, this hunt, to help the Sytha learn and evolve, instinctual knowing but not consciously aware, who is it faithful to?, it is faithful to Duncan, the mother function, the same brood, several sequences of broods, a bigger Sytha, a planetary Sytha, Shotwell, is it eternal?, is it immortal?, a young one, right to the ending, oh wow cool, chapter 6, they halted on a knoll, vua, wearing thin, it is an awful effort to keep on being smart, it was nice knowing you, back to animal again, very simple said the sytha, just begin hunting me, get smart, I guess that will work, admirable, next time I have a brood, old uncaring comfort coming back again, seethed with happiness, won’t he be happy and surprised, will he be ever pleased, slipping back into unintelligent, you can almost miss it, a psychoactive drug for humans, it’s not good to be intelligence, pathologically trying to kill this creature, he goes nuts, reading from a collection of Galaxy stories, originally published in Galaxy, an H.L. Gold ending, making a lot of claims about editors, reviewing a bunch of random pulp stories, joint, especially when there’s two editors, a question about Planet Stories, Jerome Bixby, very interesting, it has to be Simak, otherwise Jesse’s theory wouldn’t be true, a lot more pulpy, the length, the character development comes out through the action, discover by talking, curious about the origin of the story, suggested by somebody else?, wonder, not early, in the middle, ended in the 80s, squarely in the middle, our main character is an asshole, for a Simak character, Philip K. Dick’s Beyond Lies The Wub, the natives, the way the captain treats the natives, our planter, our food grower, he is an asshole at the beginning, a typical Simak character at the end, projecting, conflict is fixable by cogitating together, not ethnic cleansing and not genocide, anti-colonial, in the same way as Wells always does, this is really good science fiction, by knowledge, finding out what the world is actually like, at the end, he’s found a way to coexist with this alien planet, he’s gonna get a surprise, little girls and boys, they’re all gonna be like him, they’re gonna be smarter, I found this very stimulating, actually smarter, added to the genepool, no species on the planet is sexed, adding sex to the planet as well, he’s gonna have a brood of Duncans show up, the sample has been taken, Donovan, a sampling, the Donovan kept walking, now we are even said the Sytha, the more assholish human on the planet, things that hunt, what’s cool about this story, this is a planet without conflict, two things: 1. the hunt, 2. is the ability to stop, much more aggro, a big preshow discussion, a lot of people goin vegan, they have theory that backs up their behavior, people who identify as vegan and practice veganism, everything eats everything, weird exceptions, we tamed each other, they found jobs for us, we found dogs for them, sheepdogging and cowdogging, mostly their job is companion/housewarmer, tooth and claw, in the form of Eden, healing the sick, some of it is not for their natives, hominy, they’re changing the planet, they engage with the sytha, a non-edenic planet, that’s a positive, almost religious story, the edenic world was imperfect, what we needed was a war of all against all, growing to something better, it is that, right?, felix culpa, back to Will, H.L. Gold, appraising a story, Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle For Leibowitz, wasn’t a damn bit grateful for it, not your pussycat editor, plain damned brilliant, a character in The Space Merchants, high speed tempo, the books success, the nagging nagging nagging presence, if he hadn’t demanded it, a great book, serious problems, pacing issues, a very involved editor, the anti-John W. Campbell, positive but annoying influence, a much different experience, a better experience, better stories, personal essays, more or less the same thing, you worked very closely with him, a Greek monster, Scylla, Lewis Carroll, boojum, alien names, nonsense words, hang your associations on, the endpoint is more satisfying, empathy is learned, emotional intelligence, up to a higher emotional intelligency, ends in exogamy, The Lovers by Philoip Jose Farmer, inputs, asexual reproduction at the end, Edward Sapir, even if just through the news, an engagement with the American landscape, bucolic landscape, Simak stories not set on a planet?, A Choice Of Gods, Time Is The Simplest Thing, these are native indians, engaging in a different way, enslaving them?, still in initial contact, smarter even though it is dumber most of the time, incorporating the new mode into its system, 8 year olds show up, the male female dynamic is needed, little Duncans that are different than each other, toes on their feet, like different flavours of ice cream, if we know anything, having sexuality, maybe not by volume, avoids the disease problem, develop a new banana, science class, clone armies will die, cloned mammals, a different kind of cloning problem, sea-lizard that does parthenogenesis, theoretical too, twins and triplets, same exact genes, in plants all the time, a genetic bottleneck, brown lizards, especially common in plants, letting the forest plant itself, monoculture farming, pesticides, herbicides, fencing, overwhelmed suddenly, cavendish banana, other plants as well, one guy gets a fungal infection, this whole planet is theoretically an army clones, genetically human, a cognitive mapping of human, the sequel to the story, the sytha will discovered that it’s fucked up, surprised at the reaction, more aggro, eating the others, close the restaurants, a good transitional thing, The Word For World Is Forest, The Queen Of Air And Darkness by Poul Anderson, become friends, a fascist story, overcome their prejudices, the wrong side and the right side, anarchistic hippy nature lovers, our prophet would disagree with you, a Vietnam war allegory, more grist to ignore it, they can do more than one thing, Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, it can do more than one thing, the bad reading, one of the things, environmentalism vs. rapacious capitalism, Avatar (2009), Call Me Joe, friendship with misunderstanding on both sides (colonialism), a positive ending, humorous, a big surprise, you need more humans just like you, could be very strange, a cat: my master would like a sparrow, will the empathy acquisition keep on going up, some descendant Duncan it, vegan, will he forget?, will he lose his emotional intelligence?, The Monsters by Robert Sheckley, this is a comedy of a morality that’s different, ecogenetics, little sexless natives, how can they have familial feeling without having a mom?, acts like a female, only one scytha on the planet?, multiple bodies, this one, all the oceans are connected, this embodiment of a scytha, a force of nature being, individual minds, not even eggs, budding?, the youngs are raised together, form their taboos in the same way that, poo poo go in toilet, don’t sleep with your sister, twist endings, very earned, if you’ve got a premise start with it, my god it’s a time machine, my god it’s Adam and Eve, overpopulation, good but necessary, underconsumption, The Midas Plague, The Stars My Destination, a final revelation, very Horace Gold, undercut ideas people have, this story is not that great, understood the world, a revelation, an evolution, we never see the face of the girl who’s so ugly, they were hiding something, the story wouldn’t exist, will his brood forget?, afraid of one of them, that one forgets, they’re gonna be like him, losing his place on this planet, he will be displaced, they’ll be farming, moving in a new direction, people don’t ask for rewrites, printed, asked for rewrites, Warrior Soul, set in the far future, set in the present, he was right, good criticism, a much better story, copy editing, put typos in the magazine, Cirsova, changed a little bit, sold 2 to him, Clarke of Clarkesworld, certain similarity to the stories, want their own voice, to get that voice, submission guidelines, traditional publishing, Barnes & Noble, the way tradpub works, agent vs. publisher, many cooks, reviewing a lot of audiobooks, somebody need to work on this book, why is this in here three times, Stephen King, pulp, lower tier, interesting voices in science fiction, in the old pulps, Philip K. Dick couldn’t work with John W. Campbell very well, Anthony Boucher, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Argosy, Blue Book, they wanted him to edit his story, rejected The Outlaw Of Torn, basically Robin Hood, wanted to make money quickly, a folk hero, The Cave Girl, King Richard, its just this particular royal is bad, being very frustrated, art and thou, medieval England, prince kidnapped as a baby, mislead by political radicals, The Lad And The Lion, democratic rebels that are really fascists, assassinate the king and rule the country, WWI basically, WWII references too, very clever, unable to rule because they’re incompetent, this pattern goes on continuously, more incompetent from the last one, more diluted blood, he has terrible politics, my Tarzana, nobody in the right mind would agree with it, a pet lion, crash in Africa, goes around Africa, happens everyday, the rewritten one, bidding wars, Heinlein, Starship Troopers, the juveniles too, Podkayne Of Mars, when a government decides to take away your guns, don’t kill her, Stranger In A Strange Land, late late Heinlein, The Pursuit Of The Pankera vs. The Number Of The Beast, Sam Moskowitz, book editor vs. magazine editor, a commentator, 1963 or prior, Weird Tales, Fantasy Times, Under The Moons Of Mars, the fluffiness, just another fluffy cute story, big long story by Simak, paying off so well, it’s built into the idea of the story, everything was leading up to that, why write the story at all, Simak over Weinbaum in this instance, Simak has more better stuff, in the course of a year, two handfuls of short stories, really good stuff, very solid, both fun, both good, pretty close to amazing, if this was a novel, a three character story, the anthropologist, one of them kills himself, he finished what he needed to do, he has a thorn in his foot, thorns come up a lot, just before chapter 5, I will be with you to the death of both of us, a very biblical thing, it stayed with me, it’s hard to figure out these jokers, seethings of emotions, what variety of belief, Simak trying to make an asshole out of the guy, missed the trail, fearing it had gone, loyal and faithful, the outlander and intruder?, is there a common meeting ground?, stroked it polished it petted it, just another chance, a steady bead, back to the farm and field, that misty other life, very interesting stuff, Good., a soggy blanket wrapped tightly around the body, another dirty trick, distraction from what’s about to happen, progress in empathy, relativity of beliefs and ethics, perhaps it has reasoned, sentient beings can do tricks, cognitively map the enemy, induce that mentality into error, a theory of mind type empathy, this dirty beast, a worthy adversary, here’s the end, your knife mister, if we take this as a falsehood, take it as a truth, looking straight at Duncan, the native cut it’s throat, from helping you to the end, psychic communication, spear, rock, smarter and smarter, doesn’t need to be alive anymore to evolve the scytha, the turning point for the story, committed to a purpose and a challenge, it was something more than that, weird entangling, this pronoun thing, big in the 2020s so far, as another man might stroke a woman’s throat, rubbing the gun, petting it, “mister” said a voice, bwana, respected outsider who we really don’t respect but have to, Duncan stiffened, it now can talk, the Sapir language, the story seems that way, never shouted out at all, for you to extrapolate, an elephant and tiger and a grizzly bear, how big is this thing?, you start imagining what he’s not saying, near great, our Weinbaum, the action scene are a little bit overdone, the action scenes are fun, went on a little too long, future stuff, another Simak on the schedule, Hellhounds Of The Cosmos, space opera, A Choice Of Gods, The Call From Beyond, Empire is a short novel, City, Kevin Green, City is a fixup, Foundation, Dune, when you’re doing short stories, you can’t talk about 10 Ted Chiang stories in one show, maverick science, threaten the corporation’s monopoly, sounds super-science, Fury by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore, super-science is kinda dumb, carefully modestly super-sciencing, Roger Zelazny, Unicorn Variation, The Horses Of Lir, A Night In Lonesome October, Creatures Of Light And Darkness, Lord Of Light, This Immortal, post-nuclear war, a tour of the Greek islands and Egypt, a rebel who wanted to kick off the aliens, undercover, torn between, might be a sequel, Damnation Alley, post-apocalyptic suburbia, before the white man came, robots are priests, how they fit in, very Simak, something we never brought up, “Moby-Dick with a twist”, let’s get something good, got distracted, Project Mastodon, Mastodonia, Second Childhood, Cemetery World, Time Is The Simplest Thing, A Spell For Chameleon by Piers Anthony, a book for the blind, how it was produced, in the commercial space, a special loophole in copyright, a great thing, put into the ears of blind people, not in favour of following the law, Xanth, exiled to Florida, Charles Burnett Swann, marketed to kids, 344 pages, On A Pale Horse, he liked to do series, a huge amount of effort and inspiration into the first volume, 12 hours, a nice 8 hours Simak, named the land after himself, before we lose anybody, Return From The Stars, what exotic location, a Valentine’s play, playtime, nothing can live up to The Taming Of The Shrew (1976), I will rip it, Marc Singer plays Petruchio, amazing peak performance, staged for television, if that was on TV!, remember Bravo?, artsy shit, television is full of filler, Dark Carnivals, we miss you, bud, Jesse’s email is a horror show, a Connor show, 50 Jesse messages, message him less, doesn’t engage with twitter for months, Confessions Of An English Opium Eater, go to drug guy, 5 hours 21 minutes, more possible, a lot of feedback on youtube, the greatest thing ever, almost all positive, he sounds insanely awesome, Martin Geeson, The Seventh by Richard Stark, The Gun by Philip K. Dick, The Mad Planet, its all gonna be on Will, its all gonna be on Jonathan, Alex pulpcovers, very understandable, a novella, it’s all on Alex, Jetta Of The Lowlands, assuming he hasn’t contracted shingles, The Pathological Liar, a case of deceiving the enemy, lie for the sheer pleasure of lying, a compromise, there’s no digits in my name, that’s a robot bud, The Liar, Penguin Classics, Dialogues, dramatic readings, acting level, thickest accent on the planet, it can be a nightmare, keep hoppin away, Plato, The Story Of A Cat, do this research off air, What Mad Universe by Fredric Brown, culture shock, sewing machines that open to a voyage in space, H.G. Wells, an implacably hostile alien species, Arena, The Case Of The Dancing Sandwiches, Lawrence Block’s The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown, The Jesse Show, 700 episodes in, Just Jessing, more demographic audience, none of the trolls listen to this podcast, The Triumph Of Evil, Paul Kavanaugh, do no research come up with an idea novel, supposed to be a true story, doing pushups and drinking alcohol, montagnards, heist a shipment of nuclear weapons, Vietnam War is happening, we need more Paul Kavanaugh, a guy confesses to a crime, pure writing talent, a historical crime, Not Comin’ Home To You, a Lawrence Block devotee, goes down so smooth, much younger dad, live to 103, not a sequel, would be wise to do so, writers abilities, Maissa won’t love it as much because she’s a girl, Travels by Michael Crichton, given the power he does nothing with it, he would prefer not to, Bartleby The President, power hungry dictator, Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, beloved, could be spicy, love the spice, there’s a podcast that exists because this show is too spicy, Julie Davis and Scott Danielson’s A Good Story Is Hard To Find, this is not a Christian podcast, this is pre-antivaxx, personality and flag, pirate flag should not be hoisted there, flags in bio, the Yemen flag, qualified, the new one is the red triangle, a theory about Yemen, the Rawandan genocide, houthis, who from the empires outside?, a big deal in Canada, how traumatized he was, Romeo Dallaire, a big deal in Canada, bureaucracy, macheted to death, sad spicy stuff, the Julie and Scott show, not supposed to be one of his best books, who chose that one?, not responsible, Wikipedia, Lem himself judged the novel as unsuccessful, treated in a simplistic way, who is responsible?!, we validated, convinced, Stan Lem, I’m not a Lem stan, become slan, the meme: fans are slans, more advanced than other people, form a world government, focusing on utopia, the least pessimistic, a hope punk book?, a 1989 Soviet play, yes because of the name, Strugatsky, asian racist, russian racist, they’re all the same, who is he to judge his own books?, Philip K. Dick, how trustworthy his own claims are, Solaris, the Andrei Tarkovsky movie, The Futurological Congress, to catch the drug experience, The First And Last Men movie, a short French film, hit by various psychoactive drugs, The Congress, what Cora says about it, boundless interest, needs his own podcast, when is that podcast coming out?, much easier to show up on Jesse’s, eventually, a lot of work, Eric doesn’t listen to podcasts, you can tell kind of, he likes doing podcasts, you can kinda tell, well hidden?, good at talking, he was a professor, University Of Michigan, Dean of Stony Brook?, lot of people don’t, cuts into audiobook time, you’re missing out on a whole genre, audio drama series, Toby Stephens, the Philip Marlowe series, what are you listening to, I have that in my car, used to be the BBC’s James Bond, British guys doing American characters, Raymond Chandler, Farewell My Lovely, The Long Goodbye, Red Harvest, The Maltese Falcon, two good stories, one really great, a silly question, the first season of Reacher, reviewed the first book, I don’t love this, he’s not human, he’s Conan, that almost makes sense, The Terminator, he smiled, he relaxed with his army buddies, Conan is not a patriot, he gets a pension mailed to him every month, a fantasy, the first book was fine, done with Reacher, a one concept thing, like a theorem, a deduction, a flashback character, don’t care, to be fair Jesse was sick, still a little bit of phlegm in there, F. Paul Wilson, Repairman Jack, still alive and on twitter, scary stories, Dean Koontz, Soft by F. Paul Wilson, makes you go soft, a blob of jelly on the floor, cats become your biggest problem, starts from the bottom up, New York City, I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, keep his daughter’s spirits up, before the rats get you, the softness continues, a hard story called Soft, The Keep (1983), Michael Mann, WWII Nazis, a retelling of Dracula, set during WWII, 80s music aesthetic, not winning any Hugos, Tangerine Dream, did musical soundtracks for movies, the 1977 epic Sorcerer, William Friedkin, fuck that shit!, completely subsumed, The Wages Of Fear (1953), they go to Brazil to escape death, 4 guys to drive 2 trucks, land be despoiled, snuffs out the fire, second gulf war, the dynamite has gone bad, nitroglycerine, girls won’t like it, but if you’re a dude, Roy Scheider, existential rather than psychological, I’m a movie fan now, Star Wars is good and all, The Exorcist (1973), way to popular, The French Connection (1971), the fish people one, The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre (1948) with fish people, names in profile, hyperBadiou, set theory mathematics, a scoop, explain it to an English speaking audience, this is really good, a video series, hyperthinking the absolute, occasionally talks about science fiction, Gilles Deleuze, François Laruelle, philosophy is generalized science fiction, if it’s not doing philosophy it is not science fiction, Bruno Latour, pioneering figures in science studies, the Salk Institute, an anthropological study, no preconceptions, what people did and what materials they used, Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Moon, when the Chinese land on the Moon, so loyal, Bernard Stiegler, grew old and died, Jacques Derrida, a seminar on Youtube once a month, conceptually powerful, used some of his concepts, individual and collective individuation, Marxist French theory type way, without needing to carry the Jungian baggage, Agent Swarm blog, Anathem by Neal Stephenson, his masterpiece, quantum physics, Logics Of Worlds: Being And Event II, Olaf Stapledon, Arthur C. Clarke, Xenoswarm blog, analyze Dune, hence your recent interest on being on a podcast a lot, dialogue is better than monologue, a defense of the bad review, a lot of time liking tweets and blogs in French, a friendly retweet, absolute silence, Ray Nayler’s The Mountain In The Sea, has Terence been blackballed?, The Peripheral, my videos are horrible, totally improvised, lots of umming and ahhing, well prepared, he’s high on his own supply, meaty for youtube, he has opinions, some of them are good, the occasional insight, the presentation, David Brin, thinks he’s the smartest guy on the planet, multiple podcasts, a promotional exercise, they didn’t know enough about him, he aint dumb, here’s the thing about Ursula K. Le Guin, the Ng person, the acceptance of the award, Joseph Campbell, really young, conflating Amazing and Astounding, Hugo Gernsback is not John W. Campbell, Astounding SF, similar name, Analog, Ray Palmer, women were discriminated against, hidden women we don’t know about, were not as many female readers based on the letters, discriminated against, by readership or editors, repeat what wikipedia says, how you end up being the prophet, this lady from Germany who does the, Sabine Hossenfelder, a baby explanation of capitalism and why it’s not so bad, turning all the externalizes, dumb smart people, got a degree, physics there’s almost nothing to do, Michio Kaku, some things are so base and clear, no matter what 100 years ago you pick, email is no longer usable says Jesse, most people don’t use email, full of spam, an email manager, never a message that is relevant, occasionally there is an important one, you have not paid your bill, dip into that horror show, auto subscribed to, already in every system, worried about the wrong things, when he becomes famous or more famous, daughter of Afflecks and Garners, email is not a great way to harass people, spreading rumours via email: not a thing, yahoomail, you might need this, 1997, 26 years full of spam, Mike emails twice a week, Mike Nowak, Jesse’s an indian now, or always was, adopted into the band, tsleil waututh, can’t wait to tell Paul, Indian status, if you want to bore everybody: you people gotta get off of my land, Paul will not like this concept at all, a hierarchy of people who need representation, BIPOC, fairly recent, excludes, so important, wanting to exclude Asians now, no acronym yet, reserve certain positions, Kamala Harris becomes VP because of skin colour, a scary ideology that is not wise, a black robot president, open source AI, dictator Jonathan to unite everyone, Will: this one is for you, student in a minute, Black House, excited about that, read it twice, early incarnation, a student in Sydney, does he reference, inspired to come to France, the cinema, a quotation from Confessions Of An English Opium Eater, well expressed in various films, more interested in drug culture, other than coffee, noted Will’s dream, I don’t need drugs I am drugs, brain under sleep is on drugs, tapping into it while awake, defenses are down, we are multiple drugs, dreams and science fiction (same thing), a coherence, the same thing for free, Will was in it but he was a pug, deceased dog, I wonder if he smells like cigars, dming reading Planet Stories, never smoke on a pulp, don’t smoke the pulps, they don’t smell when they’re scanned, nobody listens except for Mike Nowak, heartbroken mother, parents friends, almost never, the one time they shouldn’t lock, that was me in the past, delete it, a student coming in 1 minute, double talking to you, 5 hours, Jesus!, 10pm, something more presentable.

The World That Couldn't Be by Clifford D. Simak

The Worlds Of If by Stanley G. Weinbaum

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #791 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Through The Gates Of The Silver Key by H.P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffmann Price

The SFFaudio Podcast #791 – Through The Gates Of The Silver Key by H.P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffmann Price, read by Ben Tucker (for LibriVox). This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (1 hour 29 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Mr Jim Moon, and Jonathan Weichsel

Talked about on today’s show:
Weird Tales, July 1934, a lot of Lovecraft, The City, a nice little poem, kind of a Christmas story, a miracle happens in the winter garden, blooming flowers, holly and hollyberries, a little Christmas image, The Nameless City, one of his terrific stories, The Outsider, so sequelly, all the greatest hits, the pillars in Irem, The Statement Of Randolph Carter, The Festival, The Silver Key, a lot more, Hypnos, spheres of reality out in space, what happened here, hey I love you fiction, favourite Lovecraft story, a long correspondence, Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard, visit him in New Orleans, he had a car, give it a go, play with his ideas, supportive of that, Crypt Of Cthulhu, 6000 words, as he is wont to do, less than 50 words of mine left, keep the core concepts, the facets, the ultimate gates, very theosophical ideas of souls being reincarnated, scattered all through time, ran with them, the missing link between Dreams In The Witch House and The Shadow Out Of Time, everybody in the room in Carter, matrilineal related, a Sackville-Baggins sort of scene, not huge into Lovecraft, stupendous, they’re ok, the plastic and the dream world, weird cosmic, weird juxtaposition, more artificial in the sequel, you know what I love is character, the idea, a book about a guy who remisces too much about his childhood, does dreamwork, The Tomb, super-lonely and isolated, he is wrong, some aspect of him is trying to be another aspect of him and be him, The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward, am I not myself?, Harley Warren always dominated me and I feared him, trying to recapture golden youth, a startraveler and an immortality, is the guide he has a night gaunt?, what night gaunts do, maybe that’s even Carter, gone beyond the ultimate gate, he’s every character in the book, By His Bootstraps or All You Zombies, any females in this book at all?, yithians have no gender, a repeat of the scene with the camera in a different place, come with me, ok, ugly, at the very end, goes in a circle, Farnham’s Freehold, The Door Into Summer, he steals his own car, less time travel, about the frame, does it help the story?, okay but how does this Indian guy know this story, annoyed rather than made curious, disappointed in it, being a teenager, the lore, little glimpses and hints, it’s not a Call Of Cthulhu or a Pickman’s Model, very Dreamlandsy, Dreamlands 2.0, completely cosmic, drawing a lot of these ideas from, Philip K. Dick kind of cosmic encounter, Agatha Christie style denouement, Poirot, like Glass Onion, Randolph Carter behind the mask, mittens?, cheapens the other ones, The Festival, this friendly guy behind the mask, invites you into his house for Christmas, he’s not human, a King In Yellow situation, that’s not as good, mythos, some basic, R’lyeh gets a mention, nods to other stories, super-cosmic mystical context, awesome and terrible, not alien monsters, weird things in robes in cosmic hyperspace, a bit new age, alienation, cozy alienation, everybody is everybody else, a source of real horror stories, the new horror, the next horror, the greater horror, no evil here, the annihilation of ego and self, Ex Oblivione, a mini-version of The Silver Key, it’s great to be non-existent, thrust into a body once again, re-incarnation is the horror, writ large, everybody gets to be a king, more fanboy than it should, Lovecraft’s literary manifesto, a character based on him, we lose that in the sequel, it doesn’t feel like Lovecraft really, he’s made himself the chosen one by being such a prodigious dreamer, other people around the table, dividing the estate and getting the money, a more traditional narrative, The Wonderful Adventures Of Phra The Phoenician, 1890, reincarnation, The Star Rover by Jack London, experiencing life on earth, his own past, nostalgia, other worlds and living on other worlds, The DreamQuest Of Unknown Kadath, going to space, 100,000 years, a rocket ship and cloak yourself, through other dimensions, astral plane and the ethereal plane, Hell is not down it is out, another planet, that’s what this book is, having fun with this, Randolph Carter is his stand-in, Samuel Loveman, bits added, The Unnameable, some milksops complained, The Loved Dead is so funny, mad recluse who was incredibly uptight, he seems like just a regular writer, good at selling stories, his interests are in here as well, loving time, a phrase that only repeats twice, the unknown outer sky, in the context of the story, about self-revelation, losing the amnesia that you had, an astonishing achievement, a lot of repetition, to make it more clear?, saying the same thing twice, a very similar form of repetition, when he went long, saga mode, it doesn’t quite work, less the sum of their parts, the structure of the story gets a bit too loose, a lot of action, not orchestrated, run to the end now, a torrent of images, when Jesse co-writes with somebody, not trying to steal the show, to help someone else, a fan boy, the Lovecraft legacy, Stephen King’s It, told through the mode of Stephen King, collaborations, The Mound, Zealia Bishop, bombarded with all these images, what it would be like to float disembodied through the cosmos, layers of reality, to what effect?, the same effect by having a montage, you don’t actually have to show it, flip between them, he does do this at points, I spent 10,000 years on this planet, pick one idea to develop, oh that’s a story I’ve read, an annotated one, this is a reference to some other story, I love you work, I wrote this thing, oh my dear boy, out of control, writing for me, writing for someone else, they have a hand in it, a failure on Lovecraft’s part, shorter, comic book adaptations, you’re better off sticking to the team, The Nameless City is so solid, it turns into The Silver Key, this is really good, an inherited view, that terrible biography by L. Sprague De Camp, the proper Lovecraft, not right at all, it could be Cthulhu if you want it to be, not a word misplaced, it’s building, where is this going, he’s gonna crawl out of here, at the end how is he even telling this story, some cop comes up in the park in the middle of the night and pokes a bum with a nightstick, sleep it off, fun things in it, cozy, not the Lovecraft that Jesse really really loves, a masterful self-analysis, an adventure with some of the ideas, the math stuff that’s in here, more successful in some ways, Magic Carpet Magazine, Spicy Detective Stories, Spicy Western, published in the 1970s, a renaissance in the 60s and the 1970s, I’ve got some new stuff, The Devil Wives Of Lee Fong, his lovely wives were really serpent demons, 1979, alive til 1988, either in Weird Tales or Oriental Stories, a much more felxible and salability, co-writing, Adolphe De Castro, a sudden scene where it’s actually good, back to the crap writing, since you don’t pay me, fix the punctuation and the grammar, cthulhu monster, competent, with great taste, more to be said, disappointed, don’t read sequels, maybe there’s something great in it, gonna forget it, missing that x-factor, that one is beautiful, true beauty in it, how much nostalgia is poured into it, that aspect, somebody from the past is trying to dominate you, that isn’t in here, Randolph Carter’s back because they don’t want Bag End to be sold, bodiless, using it like a magic wand, a lot in here, you don’t think of Lovecraft this way, such a different portait of the time, the 1920s and the 1880s, Steinbeck, The Grapes Of Wrath, the Dustbowl, makes you look at history different, one of the great benefits of reading Lovecraft, the reality that was his, the racism is what most people latch on to, some of that in them too, where is his power coming from, way more horrific, says the occasional word we don’t like, didn’t hurt anybody, very kindly, [Lovecraft Country] a way to get angry about stuff, this is beautiful picture, how cozy his youth was, for us to time and space travel, Providence, Boston, Randolph Carter was richer, a dilettante who can go on adventures, he had a car, there’s King Carter, Kuranes, to reign as a king, 11 beings from earth, 7 of them humans, half of those guys are carter (if not more), there is a gold piece in here, a cool idea, so filled out and so decorated and so checkboxy, collaborative works that are good, more responsible, just the premise, picked up and ran with it, more out of it, just doesn’t pull everything together, a structural pacing problem, heavy metal, heavy rock, ding ding ding ding ding ding ding, once it gets up to speed, gone to 11, no where else fore the story to go, after the cosmic voyage sequence, an invasive demon, great wizards, getting notes, a precis of the story, feeling it sentence by sentence, the descent, blind and then he see, revelation, all being told in past tense, one guy at the meeting, if you insist on proof I’ll give it, Clark Asthon Smith does this a lot, Sadastor, an incubus makes a succubus have a baby, everybody’s evil, they like evil, a flight of imagination, as a decorous thing, what August Derleth is doing, all connected into one big thing, the easy instinct, the Cthulhu Mythos section of Deities And Demigods, takes the mystery and delight away, take the dreamlike quality and make it plastic, one big pantheon, Abdul Alhazred, the more constrained, who tore Abul Alhazred apart?, the alligator cat bulldog people, it’s symbolic, his yogsothery, happy to contradict himself, built that in as a feature not a bug, the real bad boy was Lin Carter, couldn’t leave a reference alone, dim visions through the window, size, weight, eye colour and phone number, editorial introduction, an utterly amazing novelette, so far transcendence human experiences, titanic!, for sheer imaginative daring, the joint product, rejected originally?, some sort of fight going with Farnsworth Wright, a beef against Lovecraft since the beginning, not been able to produce a magazine, most of them are dross but you have to fill pages, competent but not memorable, everybody has their thing, if he could just bring himself to move to Chicago, editing a magazine of weird fiction, no, can’t do it, editing a magazine, the problem is he’s kind of broken, broken is a way that is beautiful, able to do some great work even when he has nothing to say, seeing greatness in other people’s writing, other than taking Lovecraft, in the early issues of Weird Tales, occasional gems from unknowns, fanboys and girls of Lovecraft, Seabury Quinn on the cover?, not commercial at all, wary of taking on the role of editor, rejecting stories by people he liked, not the same guy, he’s so fuckin weird guys, he can’t do some things, his first fictions to weird tales, take em or leave em, these are pieces of art, live on beans rather than compromise his artistic vision, the City Of Singing Flame, not a real sequel, a semi-sequel, Jungle Jitters, the Action Girls, a movie within the world of the book, rethinking a lot, this scene goes here, tedious busy work, that first revision is where the magic happens, Mr Jim Moon as a podcaster, more than the regular, the monster movies, 17 weeks homework, that one sounds great, wish there was a checklist, audio of Jim Moon stories into the feed, dabbled with writing, took stock, about 20 now, a new ghost story for Christmas, releasing them on your podcast, no spelling for these things, pioneering a lot of stuff, podcasts that come and go, the best of the 2020s, doing your own thing, an interesting phenomenon, don’t know what everyone else is doing, research, writing the music, coding and design work, coding and designing for your own podcast, chasing trends, a true crime podcast, BBC is producing another Lovecraft story that’s not Lovecraft at all, comedians get their shows announce their dates and interview each other, releasing your fiction through your podcasts, 3 shows released today, the audio advent calendar, The Signalman, a Commentary Club episode, most of December off, a lot of catch-up to do, transcribe podcasts, so much work already done, ghost stories, general weird fiction, a novel in 31 parts, huge narrative chunks, a cozy zombie story, Beating The Bounds, a Christmas sequel, Cirsova magazine, an anthology called Mighty Suns Of Hercules, write a few short stories, magazine credits, a fun way to get your stories out, Anvil Magazine, it feels good to get published in a good magazine, doing it very differently, Hypnobobs, 15 years now, scrolling back 17 years on a weekly show, The Adventures Of F. Bolger, the hobbit who stays behind, waves goodbye to the other hobbits, he goes shopping sees farmer maggot, gets some pipe weed, runs into some ringwraiths, they have a smoke, don’t know nothing about Mr. Frodo, huddling like it’s COVID, the other Hobbits come back and completely ignore him, Pippin and Merry are a foot taller each, a cozy story, a cozy fantasy, Thomas Burnett Swann, centaurs, fauns, nymphs, panisci, satyrs, and they all have sex, a professor in Florida, studied ancient stuff, most of his books were not published until the last few years of his life, 1967, archive.org, published in the U.K., compared to J.R.R. Tolkien, a connection there, too risque for swan, Henry Treece, The Viking Trilogy, viking kid joins crew of vikings to viking, a quasi-fantasist, The Green Man, 1968, sword and sorcery and savagery in King Arthur’s time, Piers Anthony, how can I make this popular?, a good amount of sex, cuter, funnier, a classical feel, more conventional, too weird for a lot of people, weirded out, uptight, A Spell For Chameleon, bawdy humour, grotesquery, ribald jokes, a coming of age story, you say people…, mythological creatures, everybody has a magic power, gonna be banished, exiled from the land, a classical setup for a myth, Joseph Campbell, The Weirwoods, laughed out loud many many times, there’s no way to read this without thinking its supposed to be funny, pure treasure, very subtle, an irony there, almost all Eddy, other people are allowed to write terrific stories too, Pity Me! by Bertha Russell, sex with the dead bodies, a Spanish lady had died, get the goop in, she fell on me and she was alive, I finished the job for you, let me tell you about how depraved I am, a tombstone for his writing desk, nothing funnier, got Weird Tales in trouble, pulled from the newsstands, Eleonora, The Canal, Everil Worrell, angry a long time ago, what Evan said, the tightness, more free flowing, it must exist, a PDF of The Green Man, unjustly forgotten, a lot of historical fiction, considered juvenile, caveman boy story, C.S. Lewis gets all the rest, no champion, the estate is defunct, get neglected, it’s not fair, treasure that’s hidden, in a limbo, we need more Henry Treeces, more Swanns, you do need a champion, Edgar Rice Burroughs has Moorcock, Nevil Shute doesn’t need a champion like Henry Treece does, little dog for a last walk, big snow, a good book, had a lot of fun with that one too, guy goes for a hike in California, discovers a weird spot, ends up in another dimension, a moth to the flame thing, more coffee and more sandwiches, discovering a whole other moth people and aliens, throwing themselves into the fire, The Bright Illusion by C.L. Moore, Logan’s Run, more Howard than any of them, that kind of fantasy, Lord Dunsany, so weird cosmic and trippy, an emotional core, goes to that cursed thread, Cultural Critic, 25 books that should be on every school curriculum but isn’t, The Gulag Archipelago, I think I can dismiss this list, 75 hours long, twitter accounts fishing for attention, not making serious suggestions, exercise account, makes fun of these things, getting his account banned, a way to have fun, 25 more books, is this a list this person has read?, Think And Grow Rich, Guns, Germs And Steel, a list of books, how to do 17 crunches, post a wrong answer to get a right answer, playing for engagement, why would you retweet that Jesse?, part of conversation we’re already having, this isn’t nonsense, more like hyperbole, every school child should read the history of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, a really good way to send links, things to scan, people to be on a podcast, Alex P., interesting tweets, manga mindset, good to be in touch, a cynicism that isn’t depressing, skepticism, Robert Ingersoll, that’ll make you cynical, a fellow who you can really see is not lying, Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary, Ingersoll quotes, a Christmas Sermon, totally depraved, tormented in eternal fire, against organized religion, as an adult, how to deal with bad ideas, you literally have to learn that, why kids learn to lie, just like the sun being in the sky, child abuse, harmful and hurtful, when people don’t have full access to the facts, learn intellectual self-defense, people who are miserable, things imposed on them that they have no defense against, how gender affects climate and climate affects gender, everybody’s good at the table, falsities, Sylvester Stallone is frozen, goes into the future, Demolition Man (1993), people don’t know how to deal with violence, they predicted, the plot is stupid but the world is quite interesting, form a cult and takeover the world, create a lot of weird beleifs that make absolutely no sense, cut people off from everyone else, very insular, dietary restrictions on them, bottom up, these ideas come from the internet, from the media, magazines and articles and tv shows and movies, I’m gonna be a vegan, comes out of vegetarianism, being closer to god, deprecating the body, animals are nice and cute, why should we eat them, you’re a meat eating animal, how do you reconcile this?, they might not know it comes from an animal, nobody says, meat that I slaughter myself, a slaughter house is really depressing environment to work-in, scream and die, somebody will lose a finger, that’s not the end of the story, just one thin that’s happening.

Through The Gates Of The Silver Key by H.P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffman Price

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #789 – READALONG: Gilgamesh The King by Robert Silverberg

The SFFaudio Podcast #789 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about Gilgamesh The King by Robert Silverberg

Talked about on today’s show:
serialized, 1984, simple question, science fiction or fantasy novel?, how could it be, other than crude financial reasons, a novelization of the oldest epic that we know of in any great detail, The Road To Science Fiction volumes, an excerpt, claimed, adopted, annexed, interstitial material, fragments, and a whole lot of Silverberg, the major events are seemingly from quasi-historical sources, demystifies the fantasy, a rational explanation, the epic shares, the novel shares, the search for transcendence, brought back down to earth, losing out to imminence, immortality, Dickian, the basic formula for science fiction, come back transformed, wants and needs, wants a lot of sex, wants immortality, needs transcendence, the immortality is in the work he does, living out his life the way it can be shaped, who is the survivor of the flood?, Zeusasudra?, that guy presents, I didn’t say that, you’re inferring that, how not to die rather than how to live forever, 1984, maybe one day, that’s such an impressive statue or temple, passing from a living being into a mythical being and written about by Robert Silverberg, a bit of Ozymandias, fragments of the wall and the epic itself, we look up this book and despair at its length, writer and artist, other intellectual activities, 1.7 speed, unpleasant to listen to that fast, the first 3rd or first half, the part he invented himself, Game Of Thrones, more dynamic and less descriptive, 2x speed, he changes the story, the first third was painful, tedious?, a boring story, really dragged, this isn’t really, because we’ve done a number of Silverbergs, his beats are all out on display here, chasing after women, concerned with death, the solitude, The Book Of Skulls, a Charles Stross novel, when Schweitz showed up, Enkidu, comfortable garden, kicked out of the city, comes back, kinda like Conan as a king, bored on his throne, kickoff, the interesting bit, greater acceleration, experincing this book, a flashback to Hayy Ibn Tufail, raised by antelopes, wise with the wisdom of nature, a man coming out of nature, Tarzan, before all that, the granddaddy of them all, he resonated with the idea, this isn’t the only book into this series, Scott asked Jesse a question, the same Gilgamesh as Gilgamesh In The Outback, a road trip across the United States, not a hero as much as a drug user, Downward To The Earth, once administrator of, a lot of tourism, he sees himself as this character, pushes her breasts into his face, what, I’m six, autobiography, Gilgamesh believes but Silverberg doesn’t, a potion, he’s sprouting hairs, a placebo, rejects the teaching the of the religion, is she sincere?, the political subplot, his conjecture, makes the wrong decisions, the lens he looks at everything [with], a volcanic vent, it’s both, translating, one of the big successes, the difference between poetry, philosophy and religion, William Blake, really a volcanic vent, psychic perception taken too concretely, he’s got epilepsy, Gene Wolfe, head injury, he see the gods, Wolfe being Wolfe, meeting the same characters over and over again, the fantastic is supposed to be taken as partially real, a concrete example, the sick tree scene, three demons in it, making bricks and fuckin ladies all day, the leaves are all falling down, thing’s he’s wrong about, cuts off the sick branch, worst poison, pours it down the hole, the demon being a snake, all fun stuff, the concoction is probably manure and it fertilizes the tree, the three demon problem, what a shaman does, things in all directions, really there’s one thing in there that works, decoration, trying to impress people, his presentation is as the king, having sex with everybody, goes to far with that, loves the bricklaying too much, he abandons the city, he is Man, lessons for men, if you’re going to be a man, very Jordan Peterson, Inana, he thinks she killed the previous king, not fully fleshed out for her, why is her face fucked up in the end, a disease, venereal disease?, leprosy, of love, war and political power, Venus or Aphrodite, a bloody good time, psychologically, they’ll laugh at me, reason for rejecting her, he knows the story of going to the underworld, he’s afraid, points in the story, a showmanship part of this I’m not really a goddess, role model, a Candide naive adherent, he didn’t have a dad, the manly arts, doesn’t have a friend, wrestle and become best friends, ruled by affects, addressed in the text, we were not lovers, doth protest too much, all the women he’s having, we can’t read this on a subversive level at all, the bull of heaven, not an earthquake, the explanation is made to fit, a woman’s jealousy, mask off, what’s going to happen, obvious he was going to kill her, for the last time, he’s going to banish her, shuts her up in a hole, uh huh, yup, he’s the king, nothing complicated or delaying of satisfaction, ruled by his emotions, a foreign prince in another city, not subversive, writing from an atheistic perspective, very minimal, the closest we get is when he goes off to get immortality, the magic pearl was lost, feels like a fantasy, he goes off to Africa at one point, wooly haired, visitors, Yemen?, Qatar, China, placenames, this place used to be called that, guessed it, sort of saying, a rational explanation for everything or is there?, the science fiction aspect as well, the myth of the flood, no longer an immortal, tell the story like it is, a huge downpour, no ark, a miniversion of this book, a legendary story and so is this, “‘euhemerism’ 1. the theory that gods arose out of the deification of historical heroes. 2. any interpretation of myths that derives the gods from outstanding men and seeks the source of mythology in history.”, what if this actually happened, psychological stuff too, a modern novel, told first person, very reliable narrator, perceives in a different way, I, Claudius, you don’t need to bring the gods into it, two thirds god, it doesn’t make sense, a two father point of view, Lord something who is divine, two fathers and one mother, he’s not a demi-god, a step up, the god come into him, the ancestor of Hercules, Prometheus, Ulysses, doesn’t steal fire form the gods, a titan, he’s a builder, side note, a historical Gilgamesh, Civilization 6, don’t judge us, yes we can be friends, wrestling with him, that can save you on higher difficulties, demystifying, mostly historical alternate history straight, vampires and zombies, Zeusy, pocahontasy, Heroes In Hell, To The Land Of The Living, one of the fragments not included in the Epic Of Gilgamesh, his shade comes back, dirt farmer, preferred to be a fisherman and not a great scientist, hindsight is 2020, 0202, straight up, post-modernism, read an old text, what if this was real, Alan Moore’s Watchmen, zero irony, The Calydonian Boar Hunt, no situational humour, her boobs in his face, the sex is really enjoyable, not a normal book, too mundane, not wild enough, it doesn’t get crazy, becomes subversive and undermines the society that he lives in, needed a drug dealer, a subversive element, the premise is double, what if people really saw the gods and the world in this way, Julian Jaynes’ two hemispheres hypothesis, the right side of the brain, the irrational intuitive side, the left rational side, a dissociated way, people in 2023 talking about prayer, in a dialogue with god all day, students, what people meant by prayer, what does that even mean?, kneeling at the bedside hands in prayer mode, Gilgamesh is writing his own story, always on about, write an essay about things that are bad, self-dialogue and self-talk, I need to pay attention to mummy and daddy, it was you who was listening, I have a relationship with god, bizarre but real, more so long ago, secular mindfulness, Buddhism, very popular, journaling, accountability tweets, Carl Jung, what she says and what the wise old man says, get dialogues going, objectively, chat gpt is the god I ask to write up my journal, multiple personalities like we see in dreams, traveled around a lot, strange or exotic beliefs, believe in ghosts, seeing ghosts, ghosts are 100% real, you shouldn’t go hiking at 4 oclock in the morning, the fear of things, taking in data, the screen of reality, The City In The Middle Of The Night by Charlie Jane Anders, similar length, firs book in a series, Leonidas, Conan and Ted Nugent, learned so much from this novel, old myths of Gilgamesh, what the story was trying to tell me, baffled, mid-3 stars, the ratings 11,322 vs. 901 ratings, what’s your point?, people don’t read old books, the editor of iO9, this is an old book, people just don’t read old books, making an assumption, not sure that’s a proven assumption, audience is extremely online, Silverberg’s is older, not fully supported, just looking at one thing, this is not a famous book, the novelty of being new, what’s a good book to read?, a book I’ve heard of that’s good, go by author, a Clarke award, a Locus award, a Hugo award, thousands of good review, by helpfulness, how goodreads sorts its review, likes, probably some algorithm, everything is in 3 star range, Amazon bought goodreads with the intent of killing it, just strangle it, Luke Burrage, disable features, the science fiction book, Lord Of Light by Roger Zelazny, a higher high, the similarity there, when the god manifests in him, the power of the god in him, survivors of a space travel crash, the Hindu pantheon, wield an attribute specific to that god, a precedent, Dune, the got-it-all-wong hypothesis, the bene gesserit, manipulating everything, not exactly a messiah figure, a savior for the city, The Cosmic Puppets by Philip K. Dick, a male feminist, misunderstanding Anana, he’s paranoid, Gilgamesh is the misogynist, I don’t see it, full of the juice, had to go and break into the wedding ceremony, on my way to have sex with the wives, mentioning, sex scenes early on, five women a night, it’s not five!, lay on the psychology, really well done, plodding rather than tedious, walking along telling his story, set pieces, the tree, the demon in the forest, the meeting with Enkidu, the things that are special, getting his emotions, good inference in what’s going inside Enkidu, presume some jealousy there, sex once a year, nothing otherwise, temporal vs. spiritual power in the third millennium B.C., trying to kill him, he’s a bad king, abandons the city, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, trying to kill him out of jealousy, a smear campaign, trying to hell the city?, he was lousy, transgressing the limits, cleansed means killed, he is a bad king, his job is to fix all the city problems, the councils, I’ll think about it, who’s going to fix the walls, what the priestess wants, go out and build that wall or the temple or fix the tree, the reason he comes back, threatening to take away his kingship, A Time Of Changes, a life in business, that coming back is what he’s supposed to do, to Australia and to hell, Conan is a funny case, the problem with being a king, just like Kull, campaign against other kings, the domestic sphere, a tension built into the story of Gilgamesh, a man is domesticated, she gets more power, yes, sitting there horny, carousing with his buddy, a fundamental dynamic going on there, I’m going to have sex with you when you’re older, not a guy who believes in kings at all, he’s bad at it, he does things to much, your soldiers are exhausted, nobody has the strength you have, yeah I have a giant dick, but do be jealous I have premature ejaculation, the first time he leaves, almost identical scenes, the new king, he grew up in a cloistered environment, when he comes back to see his brother, this awkward meeting, the same emotional set, pock marks vs. worry lines, prematurely grey, busy being king, uneasy lies the crown, footloose and fancy-free, experience the depravity and luxury, the full exercise of being a man, that’s in the afterword, Leonidas, Gerard Butler in 300, an alpha male, an ursine manliness, manly manless, gave myself ten pushups, fun and entertaining, three times as many, comparable to a lot of Silverberg, still alive, there’s overlap, remarking on twitter, two Silverberg novels on LibriVox, pre-fifties, a break in there, throughout the eighties, putting em out, multiple novels per year, fairly unknown Silverberg novel, doesn’t compare well, we should focus on things that people can do anything with, learn how to pirate, put these up with the story, whoever happens to be familiar, make it as easy for as many people, rigamarole, all the affiliate links, all the links die, this website has been online, wasn’t a good idea, SFFaudio isn’t a commercial project, send people to the source if possible, a different Herculean task for another day, Passengers, really into writing, short light things, The Sword Of Welleran, if this hadn’t been assigned, not as high a high, not as sparky, very insightful, he did a great job with the worldbuilding, a lot of research, William Coon, quay, draught, he’s so slow, very early in his narrating career, speaking of friends of yours, Kevin Hearne, Iron Druid, Luke Daniels, many many great narrators in the world, the theme of death, I’m gonna die some day, the origin story of the Buddha, come back and do your job, the crazy religious stuff is killed at the end, hurt by Enkidu’s death, stumble into the underworld, Conan doesn’t have an Enkidu, the only consistent character is Conan, after Belit dies, a paragraph in the middle, the adventures, fights hawkmen, the Black River of Zarkheba, buries her with her treasure with a viking funeral, sad, ten second pause then back to it, it’s too dumb, the colour palette, a great story, slowmo, a brown filter, too much green screen, the story and the emotions are strong, in the Conan stories, more Kull, he’s more human than Conan, likes sex too much, works his men too much, get your head screwed on right, clean your room, a thematic thing going on, he plays it perfectly, he’s enjoying it, from Wikipedia, reception, Neil Gaiman, Imagine Magazine, David Langford, White Dwarf, a gaming magazine, explains the fantastic, you have to kill a friend, a celibate priest doing rituals all day, do the work, he did the work, Larry Niven, the Draco Tavern, the men who lived forever, our hero the bartender, make it worth enough, the premise is like the Lord Dunsany Jorkens stories, The Callahan series by Spider Robinson, hard SF jokes, Zaphod Beeblebrox style stories, Asimov did some too, Arthur C. Clarke, a fun mode of storytelling, scientific love stories, from The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, Ray Cummings, Cautionary Tales, Limits, good at mathematics, Convergent Series, the one with the demon, July 1978, hence the title, that’s gonna make Jesse into a pearl, the Russian movie made by two brothers, don’t usually click on what Jesse sends, the trailer is in English, subtitle auto-translation, an amazing plasticine animation movie about gladiators, two female characters voiced, 9-0 minutes claymation gladiatorial combat, super-solid, anti-Russian, a raging anti-Semite asshole, insistence, limiting in general, trolls, patently bullshirt, convenient, reach me elsewhere, the problem with Skype, pornbots, inundated, messenger, social media just twitter, but…, delete the app your done, pity twitter, Elon Musk did something bad, the controversy this week, anti-white hate, sue Media Matters, like Scott had, the fucking trolls, more hatred, until Elon Reeve Musk is gone, hurtful meme, an exercise in antisemitism and personal attacks, after five years, pinned tweet, the frustration, a lot of work, your handle remains your own, Charlie Brown, take him at his word, get a bluechek, cut out, a really sensitive arrow, reactived to deactivate with more courtesy, going to Australia, 32,000 words, weekends off, why open a used bookstore, like Harlan Ellison, nobody here, a destination right beside you, a yoga salon, nail salon?, culture isn’t an important thing here, X-Box, bowling, Black Box Theater, you need a date for that, spend money, play games, 2 or 3 days a week, when not eating or pooping, the desk people, on their phone, sit on the bench on their phone, watch a video, swipe up swipe up, filling the hours between grave and birth, weird fuckin channels, figuring out how to preserve laserdiscs, laserrot, the technical know how, weird shit, as a percentage, ripping it through the coaxial output, processing involved, special developer kit, an even better signal, straight to the analog, more fidelity than you get from your screen, the animal videos, here’s a puppy with a duck friend, very poor, not a wealthy area, New Jersey, where the servants lived, closed highschool, where they sent the black students during segregation, a third of the storefronts are closed, there’s no train anymore, just empty, a small performing art school for kids, state run, the park, a housing project, the people who are incapable of living on their own, walk around, an opportunity to build something, do signings, advertise it, build a local culture, a place to store your books, an anchor, the story of Austin, how horrible it was under covid in California, industry, a liberal democratic section of Texas, Portland Oregon, keep it weird, you need something like an anchor, 15 bookstores on the same street, live above the store, use it as your workspace, some weirdo gets lost on the way through your town, games with Yelp, the internet stuff, a hair salon, we are upen, English is not a language you’re familiar with, can you pay the rent?, the banks approve the loans, charge a higher rent, the whole scam going on in New York City proper, business vacancy rate, 17.4%, at least half empty at street level, some empty apartments as well, this artificial thing, a foothold, physical infrastructure, shifts with the sands, do they have bookstores in China, we have no serious emptiness in business, people moving in, the economy is not a total train-wreck, people don’t buy physical books except at Costco and Chapters, lifestyle shit, desperately trying not to be in the book business, in the used market, regional authors, you have to visit my store first, you have to do a signing, phone stores are popular, bookstores are not popular, how much is rent going to be?, set up an LLC, this is going to be on the podcast, a cafe, people like coffee, a latte, I wanna try this latte, brought into the 21st century, sells an addictive product, relatively inexpensive to make, a relatively high price, a couple towns over, they always are older, they got a rent deal a long time ago, move or go online, I would love to own a restaurant, all the signs point to this being a terrible idea, you cannot fix the country on your own, FDR fireside chats, he was speaking via radio to a specific group of people, Wall Street was against him, he was treated like Trump, Smedley Butler, he went on record, the wiped him from the record, totally true, that was in the past, like Caesar, his uncle was president, the deep state and the billionaires were against him, this is what you need to do, this new innovation, 40 different alphabet agencies, you can’t will your city into not being fucked up, most people’s solution is to leave, a hobby that’s going to fail, fit enough books in there, it would be good to have customers, Walmart killed that business, by 1998, ebay, we should start selling on ebay, Sears catalogue pickup, extra foot-traffic in, by 2005, that business was still alive 2 years ago, figure out a way to not have the rent be an extravagance, unless independently wealthy, the George Washington Bridge, it would be about bitcoin and supermodel asses, cat videos and making fun of celebrities, Elon Reeve Musk is a bad person, what they say about a Nazi bar, it’s called censorship, it’s not a bar, much more like a public square, annoying when people have different ideas, let me hear their story, walled garden, Threads, Bluesky, Mastadon, Truthsocial, Media Matters is an evil organization, a functionary of one of the political parties, David Brock, the people who donate to it, institutions are naturally corrupted, institutions are evil, what if you’re a tenured professor, a staunch institutionalist, Eric is an emeritus professor, The New York Times, New Jersey, the had a Ted Chiang story, still big, that goes for art, a received opinion, animated movie about a kung-fu panda, the same school as Donald Trump, Denzel Washington, Colin Powell, Rudolph Giuliani, army, they don’t want to hear dissent or questioning, literally did that, at least it’s not an Ivy League school, H.P. Lovecraft, the decorative ivory, the building is old, they like the way it looks, they trim it, old east coast university, a Jesuit school, if you think institutions are right you do evil, I’m outsourcing my decisions and actions to a thing outside of myself, pirates stabbing liches, controlling things from beyond the grave, pirates are anarchists, piracy, I don’t trust this Dick Cheney guy, but I’ve been in this thing my whole life, what will happen if I don’t shaking Richard Nixon’s hand, like Smedley Butler, the supreme leader of China, would you still call him a dictator, it’s just a slur, what makes him a dictator, not Roman position anymore, regime, just a slur, autocrat, the guy gets shit done, he forces his will upon people, 23 years, he arrests dissent, a whole January 6th thing, they forgot to bring their guns, Huey Long, a collective action, literally what happened to Caesar, guns on the assassin, Lone Star Planet by John J. McGuire and H. Beam Piper, H.L. Mencken, The Malevolent Jobholder, Woodrow Wilson, arrested his opponents, revered by the institutionalists, his 14 points, Julian Assange, nobody has repealed it, he railroaded that war [WWI], a fascinating guy, they called Trump a dictator, he modeled his speaking style after Hitler, a little folksy, Bernie Sanders with a more humorous presentation, become obsessed, maybe there’s a science fiction tie in, populist, socialist, his family, revere him as a hero, like Caesar, he gets his power from his army, the whole thing happens because of slaving and genociding, to overthrow the old order in a particular town, successor, still going to do slavery and all that but less civil war, on the right path of doing something good, Gerald Ford, the Manson Family CIA assassination group, the deep state in action, Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, somebody so dumb, speaker of the house in Canada, everybody in parliament was clapping for a literal Nazi, the Speaker resigned, his boss is the prime minister, he chose to resign, a cuck job, prestige in the states, considered equal, head of state, head of congress, add some balance, the speaker is a cuck in Canada, run things when the king or queen is not in parliament, they choose their prime minister afterwards, a little bit of reverse order but functionally identical, a machine that should work identically, if they force the vote they can choose somebody else, changed the rules, the guy who has an owl for a wife, Newt Gingrich, he quit, a brand new rule, rules they are imposing on themselves, owl shaking Trump’s hand, an isolated incident, Democrats were cucks for Democrats, what happened to the Squad, chose not to force the vote, a little bit of backbone, a rule for them, once a rule gets written, that’s a not a law, a mode of operation, a coup in Australia, refusing to do the job, a mask off moment for the United States controlling Australia, now you gotta resign in disgrace, had an unwritten constitution, make Donald Trump speaker, that would be hilarious, wrong, a sergeant at arms, to enforce the speaker’s will, an actual mace sitting on a table, when the queen’s not in town, a shooting in parliament in Canada, copied from England, kidnap one member of parliament, no torture involved, they have a hostage, formal formality shit, all cucks to the queen, how Hitler came to power, he was appointed, side with the rightwing nazis, didn’t realize it would sound bad later, Hillary Clinton on a talk show, she thinks she’s smart, a warning or a threat, fear is the best tool, if we don’t do this one thing something bad will happen, an effective tool, Ross Perot, had some good ideas, if you look at his charts, perfectly reasonable, a billionaire businessman, the conspiracy theory or the truth, left thousands of POW/MIA in Vietnam, the official line was the sonic weapon from Cuba, compensation for something that isn’t real, literal people killed in Vietnam, unrecovered bodies, eaten by a tiger, movies that would support that, Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), Missing In Action (1984), Chuck Norris, Uncommon Valor (1983), reignite the Vietnam War, weapons of mass destruction, re-invade the country, drops out of the race, still on CSPAN, all 12 hours of it, kind of a naive guy, the October Surprise, these terms, false terms, a bag you stuff an uncertain set of ideas, I feel your pain, what makes you think there’s a distinction, a heel and baby-face, I like my girls like I like my…, what makes somebody left wing or right wing, campaigning on it is a trick, RFK, Jr., take votes from somebody, these are theories I want facts, 100% in favour of war, traditionally republican, both parties believe that, siphon the money off, George H.W. Bush, except for losing the election, circular reasoning, a robot or no vote, electoral college is a separate thing, it’s all a scam, institution totally gamed, senators in Canada, all paperballots all counted in front of witnesses for any parties, recorded, this vote is ambiguous, voting machines, a stylus pen, an anonymous ballot, there’s never going to be an overage, seems like it’s way more gamed, 50 state elections, are there any paper ballot states?, vote by mail, Alaska is hand count and optical scan, a real point of weakness, ballot stuffing, the Kennedys, Edgar Allan Poe may have died from this, the Chicago political machine, still ongoing, there’s video, ballot harvesting, just the official elections, the party elections, cheating members of the party, not working very well, people are not very good at choosing candidates, in the 70s and the 80s, internal vs. formal corruption, Hillary Clinton cheated Bernie Sanders, Donna Brazile, she wrote a book, pledged to support, inside party politics, taking advantage and cheating, neutral arbiter, when leaked emails showed, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Seth Rich, the “hack” which wasn’t a hack, the company that did the audit, ex-NSA guys, this is impossible, it had to have been a flashdrive, an unsolved murder, Robert Muller, working hard to say this is 100% untrue, the Christchurch shooting in New Zealand, Hunter Biden’s laptop, The New York Post, the twitter account was removed, overt censorship of true things, if people thought Biden’s family was corrupt, very relevant, very interesting timing, given it wasn’t a hack vs. a leak, kinda boring, exciting movie style, what that whole House Of Cards, Kevin Spacey’s career went flush, just delete it man, a lot of audience on there, pornbots, women who joined twitter 2 months ago, clogging up followers, suddenly to get your message, in Hollywood, the talent, it doesn’t matter it is fake, the decision makers are so stupid, fake followers, if you enjoy twitter tweet, it has utility, the complaint from the girls was, thumbs up emoji, it’s not natural, make jokes and people get offended, a good scrap-board, becoming less and less useful, get off this hellsite, funny, a scenester, like an institutionalist for a scene, the SFWA scene, takes his queue, age gapped themed short story, makes himself a victim, a huge follower count, in the scene, its outside of the acceptable, on the downlow, prudish, beautiful naked women, paintings, Bettie Page, they tend to be beautiful, PulpCovers, a practicing Catholic, he’s very liberal, it has flipped, not libertarian, artistic representation of nudity, twitter is not the universe, politicians are on there, people who right books, Instagram, blogs were destroyed, Alex from Cirsova, what twitter is good for, sending files to people, all sorts of good things happen, where the people are, some who are leaving or have left, people are being crowded out by bots, there’s North Korean agents, people misrepresenting themselves, delete or not delete, Jack Dorsey, why twitter is good, seeing the video of the kids’ heads opened, the war in Israel, nice that it’s not being censored, there’s fake shit, just happened 10 minutes ago, also give out news, everything’s an op, more public domain books, good audiobooks, good covers, emotionally manipulative, if you want censorship, he doesn’t want to be confronted with opposing ideas, get’s really noisy, a jumble of information, a very reasonable number, an exodus, the consensus says you can’t be on here, I don’t want to give Amazon money, he’s angry, that sort of anger makes you not want to be angry, put on your Paul hat, believe in nations, personal sovereignty, large corporations, Bezos and Zuckerberg and the Virgin guy, rocket guys, having a lot of fun, Bill Gates, lives in a mansion, is that fun, lives in a little box, making bullet proof cars, MSNBC, humiliated, a pie in the face, trying to not be hated, own things, manipulate reality, fun and useful, electric cars are a scam, ethanol cars, he knows its a scam too but he’s having fun with it, he loves rockets, makes jokes about rockets, sucking off the government teat, he’s wrong in many cases, Starlink is very good shit, making internet not stuck to cable, provides it to Ukraine, providing it free, Boeing or Lockheed Martin, circumventing the US government, gives him decision making power, battlefield decisions, he’s very personally powerful, smoking Joe Biden, that genius who’s not demented, if you want to cow that military power, information power, computers, they go through the U.S. military, unilaterally decide, the enemy, it’s good that people can share shit, to guide rockets, the Russians have their own system, give Cubans the internet, more powerful than actual governments, whatever his staff tell him, quasi-state like, more powerful than many states, more powerful than Canada, the global world order, Eric did not like it, my favourite billionaire, Bill Gates is intruding into my apartment, Elon Musk forces jokes on me, he trolls me, he’s a threat, he’s dynamic enough, like Apple used to be, they need him, bring him to heel, whoever you’re saying the government is is super incompetent ignoramus and clowns who can spell, they’ll tell you your grammar is bad, institutions, amassed an enormous amount of power, states have armies, he has rockets though, amazing how well he’s been able to navigate that shit, we can be done, two hours of Jonathan and Jesse talking at the end.

Jim Burns art or Gilgamesh The King by Robert Silverberg

Gilgamesh The King by Robert Silverberg

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The SFFaudio Podcast #788 – READALONG: The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton

Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Terence Blake talk about The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton

Talked about on today’s show:
Terry!, Playboy, March 1972, a novel in book form, where they features author, Playbill, the Jules Verne of our time, a Fellow at the Salk Institute, three pseudonyms, Dealing, a Warner Bros. release, a lot of money in 1972, re-write Frankenstein, rewriting Dracula, take my own life in 1973, 15,000 words per day, he’s going to direct, where Crichton starts ramping up, The Andromeda Strain was huge, 1971 film, directed by Robert Wise, Westworld (1973), that could have been a novel, very visual, Westworld RPG, it’s its own module that kills itself at the end, a wonderful one-shot, no one and dones, not anymore, take advantage of all of your successes, this weird phenomenon, the people who buy jigsaw puzzles, it’s like a romance novel, lacquer them, such a weird phenomenon, is this a science fiction novel?, arguing at the end, unless there is strong evidence, my Tolkien ripoff is a science fiction, not science fiction, speculation on what would happen, we have that technology, you might be scared, this stuff is being worked on, Terence wondered, a preparation for writing a science fiction story afterward, the question comes up, why?, why did he say it is his least favourite novel?, we can think of one that is worse, heavily didactic, the plagiarist?, a huge amount of effort trying to make it realist, the chapter on the operation, how good this book is, also a bad book, communicating what’s actually possible, people were doing that, the least realistic part was the plutonium, plutonium for pacemakers?, smart, plausible, squish the plutonium into the atmosphere, a spill not a dirty bomb, contaminate an area, it’s not a bomb, technically possible, fitting a cigarette sized thing inside of somebody, Penfield mood organ, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, for fun, more explicitly science fiction, robot humans, is he wrong?, sentient machines control him, showing his technophobia, his later crappy novels, he was inspired by real life cutting into people’s brains, not only that, the computers are coming against us, trends in computers, the chapel and the computer room, Crichton’s feelings about computers made manifest, Elon Reeve Musk’s neurolink, he needs to read this novel, there’s no telling Elon Reeve Musk what to do, Grok AI, against AI research, anti-technology, an ambivalence, Prey, nanotechnology, Jurassic Park, standard Frankenstein monster story, awesomely meta, never see his POV, Mr. Harry Benson, the creature, who is Doctor Frankenstein?, the medical system, and the criminal justice system, and also Harry, inferences, a lot that’s identical, shortened, the crisis of his brain, 6:04 to 3:02, the number of attack scenes, knife not microwave, girlfriend, the perseveration of the knife, stuff you have to do for film, seeing it on the screen, we only get his words, he forgets what he does, in a fit state, violent actions almost like a zombie, dance round him, he can reason with you, he’s robotic, he doesn’t look robotic, his whole program is making him violent, a very bad movie, bogged down in the wrong computers, he goes to a grave, hoping he would kill himself, the funeral procession, doing a symbolic thing, the ending of Frankenstein, after he tells the story, there’s no frame here, the woman doctor, Janet Ross, most sympathetic, Minnesota, Paul is a little biased, good writing, so many ideas, this amazing promise, Harry thinks robots are going to take over the world and maybe they already have, how he got into this situation in the first place, scheduled for surgery, under charge, volunteered or agreed to surgery, pre-research, did his violent act to get arrested so he could get into the hospital, he put himself on a path, this stoner who wants the surgery, man it would be really cool if I could self-stimulate all day, the tasp, Larry Niven’s doing science fiction, just science, self-stimulate all day, so close to it here, mundane science fiction, it’s science and it’s fiction, nonetheless, Terence is right, is The Martian science fiction?, live off of potatoes grown in Martian regolith, nothing that’s beyond, hasn’t happened, if we’re going hard SF, it could be, but just isn’t, breast surgery, radioactive enough, contained enough, the speculative element, what do you mean safely?, this is not done safely, haywire, they can shield it, what was the grainage?, off the shelf-technology, plutonium is shieldable, there’s a good reason for that, routinely put into people, pacemaker plutonium pack, never been done?, now its a science fiction novel, speculative, form q, research division, biological organs, speculation within the book, in 15 years if we follow this, MacPherson is speculating, the author speculating not the character, that’s the interesting part, The Andromeda Strain doesn’t feel like science fiction, except through ancient sources, A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, pusillanimous, a good connection, the way that book plays out, a feely idea of science fiction, something strange about the feel, technothriller, techno-science fiction, stuff on feminism, MacPherson again, the philosophical implications, when the link goes both ways, two brains communicating, Gödel’s theorem, laying in and throwing in, a rich dense book that doesn’t quite pay off, Drug Of Choice, sparking up my brain, Mr. Benson, the computer’s perspective, if he’s right, feared and hoped that he was right, the book doesn’t tip its hand, same disappointment, this book fucks up itself, missing a scientific element, in the description of the operating procedure, computer guided, psychiatrist Janet, interlinking routes creating unpredictable phenomena, aliens might, Southbound On The Freeway by May Swenson, 1963, May Swenson

A tourist came in from Orbitville,
parked in the air, and said:

The creatures of this star
are made of metal and glass.

Through the transparent parts
you can see their guts.

Their feet are round and roll
on diagrams–or long

measuring tapes–dark
with white lines.

They have four eyes.
The two in the back are red.

Sometimes you can see a 5-eyed
one, with a red eye turning

on the top of his head.
He must be special-

the others respect him,
and go slow,

when he passes, winding
among them from behind.

They all hiss as they glide,
like inches, down the marked

tapes. Those soft shapes,
shadowy inside

the hard bodies–are they
their guts or their brains?

the movie Cars (2006), complexity science, interaction between two computer programs, nasty and vice versa, bureaucracy of the policeman Anders, well chosen, not getting the information you’re supposed to get, in different media, complexity producing unpredictable results, traffic app, a computer projection, unrealistic, novelty in the first week, a six minute delay, here I’m using my new iphone cell phone, it can connect to the internet and the world wide web, the robot computer in the body in the car, how computers never make mistakes, an earlier podcast, show coming out, we think about an issue and then 7 months later we come back to it, its still there, computer programmer who wants to fix his brain, doing bad things, avoiding decision fatigue by having it all ritualized, Mr. Benson’s boss, a ping pong machine, an actual table, a sphere coming towards you you want to deviate, the Iron Dome idea, Ted Kaczynski, working on top secret military projects, his home, nothing modern, to kill her or to be saved by her, complains about her furniture being uncomfortable, the thing we’re trying to understand is the brain, not exactly Frankenstein, becomes vengeful, blackouts and doing violence, alienating his family, manipulates the situation, outwitting the cops and the doctors who think they’re smart, the bag with the wig, I did know, a gun in it, the cop doesn’t inspect the bag, necessary for the plot, what does he do with those screwdrivers?, nothing, explained as everybody has things that make them comfortable, did he anticipate, pleasure cycle that is a learning cycle, is that what the plot of this book is secretly about?, the master plan is to destroy the computer, this is illogical, he doesn’t ask, he has the plans, names the model, has the blueprints, once the surgery is complete, he doesn’t do that, did that on purpose, we can’t know that he knew that would happen, he’s of two minds, Ted Kaczynski-like, I can’t stop what’s happening, try to make a warning, the ideology of the deed, anarchy is better than monarchy, an exemplary action, can’t stop light switches, what he can do is shock the system, bring people’s attention to his ideology, already is, tries to escape, he goes to the sex bar, Doylesian and Watsonian, to pad out the plot, Crichton not Benson, not staying on task, how would destroying this one computer could help him, Logan’s Run, making him to want to do the surgery, he has mental instability, makes sense to him, it’s his game, [Binary], finally comes back to the hospital, of two minds, really good, the emergent new phenomena, new experience and new behavior, a demonstration, two brain Benson, go to the title, the new messiah, a good title, the last man, a new step has been made, two brains on an equal footing, the gateway to acting out on all his impulses that were suppressed before, the turnover point, he’s freed himself, we’re all going to be like that, cool and frustrating, other ways of reading the title, he’s the last man, he’s the first post-human, he terminates man, he terminates himself, love each other by pressing a button in your head, a short story where an old guy, Alfred Bester?, maybe not, all these prosthetics, [The Die-Hard], a podcast episode on that, a refutation of H.G. Wells’ story, a radio impulse that gives you perfect happiness, The Poison Belt by Arthur Conan Doyle, perfectly happy, pleasure center stimulated, a cunning psychopathic murderer, this book could have been one of his best, figured out a way, maybe Crichton didn’t know, it isn’t a manifesto, what the movie’s gotcha line, you didn’t stop to think if you should, basic readings of Frankenstein, not the best strands of science fiction, don’t play god, what Niven does with the tasp, just got addicted to hyper-opium, electronic opium, the Doylesian reason, what computer games, gambling games, Candy Crush?, they’ve hacked our brains from the outside, mapped the pleasure centers, training you to like things, play computer games all day long, electricity in my wife’s basement, just pleasure center, Jesse you’re a technophobe, isn’t it interesting that I’m a robot controlled by other robots, sending letter bombs to people seems wrong, that transcendence you get with a great Philip K. Dick ending, The Electric Ant by Philip K. Dick, manipulating reality, this novel promises something and almost delivers, not having the great revelation or the great insight, speculativish, doesn’t speculate hard enough, movie makes it pretty bad, but nice and clinical, like The Andromeda Strain, what he’s bringing to the table, the institution of doctoring, am I wrong?, there’s something about the feel of the book, nonetheless our feel is wrong, really pleasurable, chock-full of ideas, too much of a message, sociologically informed pictures, all very fine, one of the doctors has a leg injury, all that stuff, what Janet Ross says, no absolute difference between health and (mental) illness, spectrum, acting out of his anxiety, the family is mind control, the school is mind control, a haze of ideas around this cutting edge surgical procedure, he’s railing is about being blasé about it, intrigued and entranced with this tech, helping patients, seeing the list of things that have happened in the past, the very last one is fictional, seeing it as a progression, inflection point, the catastrophe, the cracks in the dam, the waystation point, the computing power, was that actually true, depends on how you calculate, what is the terrabyte capacity of my brain, really big, bigger than an 8tb hdd, but also pretty lossy, remember The Terminator better than The Terminal Man, the entire credit sequence, a couple of frames, doing the test on him, a ham sandwich on rye, rye can be spelled wry, quite ironic, dry humour, some wry humour, a fairly well done scene in the movie, at an awards dinner, Mr. Benson has escaped, some of the dialogue is identical, the surgery scene is just as long if not longer, the middle of the night, all the doctors are whispering, all trying to solve this problem, nothing big about blame here, get to the patient before something bad happens, what to tell the cops, if they say it the wrong way, when they categorize him eventually, a patient in need of medical assistance, how this is going to impact their careers, how to solve the problem, a meta-point, the female psychiatrist, she’s not the only one, one thing Terence thought was interesting, come back to the hospital, we want help you, take care of, the ethics of care, the human approach, the inhuman approach, treat me like a machine and repair me, in the doctor’s language, a machine approach, seeing everybody as a machine, the cognitive estrangement, we have been replaced with machines without knowing, doesn’t put a button on it, he’s almost got, too dumb to get it, in the way that he needed to, too timid, the crazy man has that perspective, all the evidence, language no longer means what we think it means, a greater book than The Andromeda Strain, we are now through the rabbit hole, this next chapter is going to be retelling, anticipate it, never reveals itself, better as an enigma, shown to be a fool in 100 years, memory tapes are erased, makes the noise, static, in the book, the movie and the audiobook, learning effect, 1.15x, 1.2x, 1.5x, after 10 minutes, up to 1.7x, the voice was so good [George Wilson], Blue Thunder, Roy Scheider, looking at his digital watch, his explanation to his new partner, the first thing to go is your sense of time, a minute can feel like an hour, Dan O’Bannon wrote all the good movies: Dark Star, his worst movie, watershed week, Star Wars, Alien, Dead And Buried (not actually written by him, despite the name being in the credits, he lent his name to a friend to get financing), Heavy Metal, Return Of The Living Dead, Lifeforce, Blue Thunder [is] underrated, did he direct it?, Mike Hodges, does horror films, The Great Train Robbery, narrated by George Guidall, Donald Sutherland and Sean Connery, a very solid film, based on true events, an action movie done as a comedy, the book is more serious, Travels, Eaters Of The Dead, Beowulf with Ibn Fadlan, he combines the two, The Thirteenth Warrior, he’s a liar, stuff on the copyright page that’s part of the metatext, very playful, he wouldn’t have changed the title, after Jurassic Park, John McTiernan, when does that turnover start, too successful to be edited, they don’t push back on anybody now, successful, maybe they pushback, they’re pulling on him, when he does the sequel, The Lost World, Disclosure, Rising Son, smell a little topical japanophobia, kind of a boring movie, haven’t done Timeline, bad torture cinema on Skiffy And Fanty [podcast], done that, A Case Of Need, where things have gone south, beyond human comprehension, he’s making money, you’re being a bad writer, a bunch of people die, suddenly oh no they didn’t die, Michael Crichton’s next book coming out in 2024, posthumous collaboration with James Patterson, a fusion of two different IPs, along with the ghost of Tom Clancy, what they can do… dump the entire IP into AI and say I would like a new Michael Crichton novel because I’m his wife, some bad books are out, we’ve had natural ai in some of the books I’ve read, pretty much done, a nap!?, decision making tree is chopped down, Gilgamesh The King, just had her dad die, terribly bad, Paul out, the emergency, it seemed impossible on Friday, very sad, a discussion, a message Thursday, see if we can move it, decision fatigue, next year when Cora would be available, her life is unpredictable, the default: don’t fuck around with things, G.K. Chesterton’s fence, a principle, the rash move, a polar by behind that enclosure, you can’t open doors sometimes, nice concept, plan my life so I don’t have to make decisions, make the fewest decisions possible, automated systems, what makes decisions harder is not having enough information, which leads to depression, I statements are statements of depression, I never win these things, I is an inhibiting factor, life is suffering, winning happens, running around chasing after happiness, forget the etymology, hap, happy, lucky, how things panned out, fell, not a very depressive sort, no contrast to it, not fined grained enough to describe anything much, a lovely dreary day, a Jungian analyst, James Hillman, virtually everything is depression, you shouldn’t identify with your depression, precise about the image, life is suffering, tell me more, won’t spoil the ending for you, a good talk, seven minute writing, Lab Partner by Jesse, closing up the back of a robot, the robot’s slender legs swung off the table and hit the floor, here in my basement laboratory we can be naked, the clear plastic raincoat from Blade Runner, his great grandfather’s secretary robot in his grandfather’s attic, pulls up the blinds and looks outside at the dreary day, naked female robot, solved this story problem, opened up a computer and put new ram in it, a garden of Eden story, put on a raincoat, writing the dreams down, seeing inside your head in retrospect, dreary, what we can program ourselves to do, Cora, dealing with all of her cleaning of her dad’s stuff, Cartsen Schmitt, dreamt i fell in with a growing band of, Tacoma to Anaheim, wild west rodeo show, ship to ship missiles, The Lost Boys aboard, some garlic in the galley, circus players, the surgery, a little bit’s there, vampires, very interesting, we got lucky, we got a good book, a thoughtful thinker, full of ideas, haze is a good one, a fuzzy novel, mindmaps, doesn’t mean anything to me, anti-story, anti-memory, anti-everything, an amazing experience, taught English in a technical school, senior high school, taking on all sorts of students that couldn’t get into or were not wanted at other high schools, first choice, alternative school, wastebasket, a basket of deplorables, strange people not meant to for the school system, cater to their presence, didn’t understand anything in English, get students working on stuff, strange people, there was a diagram, one of the tools, my friend has a problem with his girlfriend, an amazing use of mindmaps, continue the wrong direction, doesn’t give a shit about school, gets punished for trying, a guy on youtube, for finding weird shit, convinced, diagnosed with 70 iq, shitty jobs at McDonald, raising his iq, the insights you get from somebody who’s had experience, 18 dimensions, not paying attention, hours studying, early 20s, only study for five hours, not knowing what studying is, read a lot, that’s not studying, proving the theorems, not connected to studying for school, why does this movie still resonate, all the sexual spying, fly to the Hollywood hills, is she giving us a show?, that’s part of the point of the movie, cops using surveillance to spy on people, a very 80s thing, what’s striking about it, how timely it still remains, drones before drones, The Poison Belt, cameras, an essayist in your pocket, maven, in the style of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, we can say it is not the end of the world, the creative work instead of the representational work, point to a vocab word, bird, ma, all long words are made of parts, all long words are dead metaphors, let’s hang some stories on it, a circle with hooks, different ways to access the meaning of the word, tyre vs. tire, motor car vs. automobile, the history of why they’re called that, hanging meanings and feelings, a colour or a drawing, a way to learn how vocabulary works, you’ll get the feeling of what the word means, students know this already, you’ve seen “mal” before, malodorous, break it down six different ways, circumstance, a circum around and a stand, understand, a big thing hanging over you, we forget that they’re metaphors, pump a little life juice into them, horrible experiences in teacher training, no that’s wrong, didn’t apply to all cases, not a universal rule, a sign Terence was inexperienced, fail out of teaching school, Dead And Buried (1981), a girl wearing a red dress, famous photographer?, I could model for you, good vacation so far, she offers him sex, sex on the beach, flash photography, they’re all taking photos, she takes a photo of him, they beat him and light him on fire, then the sheriff investigates, some other stranger is murdered, the guy didn’t die in the hospital, camera wielding maniacs, the sheriff’s wife, a book on voodoo and a voodoo knife, teaching the kids, as he should be, the killing of strangers, the students are loving the stuff they’re learning about Haitian voodoo, a really great ending, a good movie, a horror comedy?, not really funny, art film, a Twilight Zone episode, we like not knowing what’s going on then getting an explanation, on youtube, an & where the and is, dig em up then bury them again, tweets are buried very quickly, fun and weird, a little snapshot of what you were doing that moment, Downward To Earth by Robert Silverberg, Gilgamesh The King, a chat about it, Jonathan’s going to join us, fun takes, dry sense of humour, unusual culture.

The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton

Tuesday May 9, 1972, in the NEW YORK TIMES

The Terminal Man (1974)

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