The SFFaudio Podcast #828 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

The SFFaudio Podcast #828 – Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, read by Mark F. Smith for (LibriVox). This is a complete and unabridged audiobook (7 hours 22 minutes), followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse and Alex (Pulpcovers)

Talked about on today’s show:
is this the best or one of the best openings for a mystery adventure story?, not a misplaced word, hits the ground running, in media res, you’re probably wondering how I got here, I’m a boy, the old pirate shows up, scares everybody, a magazine publication, each chapter has something going on, not super episodic, continually exciting, quibble with things later, nothing in this book is bad, in terms of an opening, quality of homeiness and call to adventure, The Hobbit, the more you look at it the more stupid it gets, exactly that feeling, the backstory, who is this pirate?, the one legged man, cove that’s out of the way, the stories that he’s telling in the tavern, deleted from Treasure Planet (2002), not bad, circle back, the father, he never gets adapted, it’s important, the whole particulars, the bearings of the island, 17 blank blank, when my father kept, saber-cut, the father dies during the stay, we don’t know a whole lot about him, will not confront, the huge bill that keeps piling up, Jim Hawkins will confront him every month, quite dire, took on someone else’s fears, turns him into a spy, steams his nose, anger and fearsomeness, will always pay, so awesome, way superior, the backstory in The Hobbit, a dwarf kingdom that needs reliberation, a character that’s drawn in a backstory mystery, live a quiet life, a Heinleinian style hero, his mom seems fine, there’s something wrong with his dad, my dad is broken, fairly timid, dies right before the actual leaving, before the tavern gets trashed, adventurous company, why Jim goes, allows him to go out, just gonna leave your mom?, so central to the experience of the book, this Long John Silver character, surrogate uncle/father figure, the thing that makes this a legendary s-tier book, the relationship, highly competent (sort of), good hearted/mean hearted, an interesting character, sympathies, Ben Gunn, Captain Smollett, such a great guy, its something like a Heinlein juvenile, the Disney one, an adaptation highlights, a gender flip, not a lot of women in this book, a little romance, side romance, the parrot, Captain Flint, an alien, Aladdin (1992), clockpunk?, super radical space surfing, the father left the mother, why the cyborg (instead of the one legged man), very huggy in the film, they’re more like this is a man I can model myself on/against, a great example, of goodness and evil, adds resentment, they burn down his farm, sense of intrigue, adventure and wealth, draw ourselves into, Bilbo Baggins or any Heinlein juvenile character, attracting you into the book, even the backstory, the old sea-song, there’s a map, Long John Silver, yo ho ho and a bottle of rum, the black spot, x-marks the spot, re-used throughout the book, a reminder of the plot, The Cannonball Run (1981), what the plot is, sailing towards that destination, the apple barrel scene, very Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn, becomes the hero, the speeder run in The Phantom Menace, a thing to do, chariot racer, in the coracle, spike the guns, cut the line, reverses, a lot of stuff to do in an almost plausible way, a dumb idea, he’s not a superhero, doesn’t have midichlorians, bumbles his way through it, his plan is screwed from the very beginning, a very good evil plan, they’re already planning to kill us, hold the pirates together, who’s going to be captain, highly influential, Survivor, tiki-stuff, every single pirate story owes 75% of its DNA, the other 24 percent is Peter Pan, direct references, you loved Treasure Island, now you’re talking about the prequel Black Sails, they really need to leave the island, Flint And Silver by John Drake, a trilogy, ship’s full of loot, more treasure, killing his own men, Flint is the ghost that looms over this book, an impression, poor Ben Gunn, ghosts not having shadows, lets the pirates be evil, real pirates, straight up murders a couple of people, something that goes unaddressed, pirate readings, the main audience for this, a general interest magazine, children’s literature, a YA, back to The Hobbit, a bedtime story, in this book the adultness comes from those scenes of murder, extremis, political comments, set in the 1700s, they have a clock in their inn, fought at some battle, 1750s, after the Golden Age Of Piracy, the pirating is done, came back looking for treasure, any of these adventure movies, Marky Mark gets a giant helicopter, pulling caravels out of caves, Uncharted (2022), Indiana Jones movies, Nazis, basic result, party now, generating sympathy, reading a book, not an actual book, a hologram, what’s wrong with the film, fudging this idea of space adventure with the original Treasure Island, commit to the future bit, retired bad ass criminals, Inception (2010), Iraq War, Geroge Clooney, Three Kings (1999), old pirate tech, ai prompt for with if Heinlein wrote this: “please rewrite TREASURE ISLAND as if it was written by Robert A. Heinlein, in the style of BETWEEN PLANETS or RED PLANET.”, the map and the asteroid, shoulda been a dash dash, chat gpt, New England, brimming with mysteries, doing the thing, a fun adventure story, my name is Jim Hawkins, shaking my head, I discovered the map, monsoon season, portable analyzer, multitool, the way they do Doctor Who, hand drawn star chart, prominent red x, historical technology, an array of holodisplays and quantum analyzers, an authentic artifact, stick the father back in the story, where’s the stranger with the saber cut, Billy Bones, why chat gpt will never write a functional story that’s any good, doesn’t even enter the tavern, immediately dies, not even a sip of rum, enemy pirates, off on the adventure, pretty good at some things, a paragraph from WWI, in the style of Doctor Who, translating text, Hemingway, Dr Seuss, Robert E. Howard, short little pieces, grok stories as a whole, it can’t, weird fragments, hallucinating them, dream fragments, artificial intelligence is already here and some of us have it, stories written by children, the story ends because, set 100 years before his own timeframe, echoing back to an earlier age, layers of nostalgia, the Gutenberg, for the hardcover, an opening sonnet to the hesitating purchaser:

“To the Hesitating Purchaser:

“If sailor tales to sailor tunes,
Storm and adventure, heat and cold,
If schooners, islands, and maroons
And Buccaneers and buried Gold
And all the old romance, retold,
Exactly in the ancient way,
Can please, as me they pleased of old,
The wiser youngsters of to-day:

-So be it, and fall on! If not,
If studious youth no longer crave,
His ancient appetites forgot,
Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave,
Or Cooper of the wood and wave:
So be it, also! And may I
And all my pirates share the grave,
Where these and their creations lie!
― Robert Louis Stevenson”

here’s my book, if you like all this stuff, you should like this stuff, a nostalgic piece, the thing that inspired him, the buried pirate treasure, the book wouldn’t exist without it, mystery of Captain Flint, the list, maroons, Bugs Bunny, is that a colour?, buccaneers and pirates are related, scallywag, carpetbagger, a collaborator with that, set in the Caribbean, around the Horn, the Spanish port, almost instantly, as soon as they’re off the island they’re in port, August 1750, pirate kingdoms, Port Royal in Jamaica, Madagascar too, depends on what you mean by Golden Age, triangular trade in the way that there was, slaves and money, Spanish colonization, navies got bigger and better, hunted down, losing that much treasure, class analysis, why Bilbo Baggins has a gardener, Sam Gamgee, the old Gaffer, wealthier, got his treasure, super-rich, low end nobility, gentleman farmer, lived in the top of the hill, Bagshot Row, joke, Hobbit last names, the reason Gandalf knew he would make a good [burglar], Baggins, Took, Sackville, they’re Oxford dons, Norman nobility, who’s growin the pipeweed?, lower class, the people at the tavern who don’t know how to read, big farms outside of the town, Farmer Maggot, money flow to buy birthday presents, Bilbo has a clock, the local squire is the highest we go, a good guy and an idiot, this conspiracy they have, screwed that up, I will listen to you going forward, in a modern story, refuse to admit his mistakes, if done in 2024, 22 years ago, David Hyde Pierce, endgame of 2D animation, Snow White style rotoscoped it, surfing, a lot of CG later, Disney Tarzan, looked really fluid, cool effect, Pixar ate their lunch, full CGI effect, the last gasp of traditional animation, Pixar became Disney animation, the major problem has never been the animation, a writing problem of late, not enough kids movies, Toy Story 5, Tangled (2010) was really good, a weird throwback, Frozen was more popular and made more money, The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Anderson, what if there was a queen who could do snow stuff?, Rapunzel?, folk tales vs. fairy tales, the best fairy tales are rooted in folk tales, more recent mythology, when you ground something in that cultural depth, slowly developed over a century, the best version survive, depth, sisters, not sisters, dig into that grab bag of pieces, rooted in something, super-Christian, fall away, ebb and flow, weird Germanic paganism gets Christianized, the lessons we want our kids to have, baptizing, Christmas trees, we like trees too, a star or a hammer, that’s fine, let people tell stories, inspired by him wanting to get closer to his new step-son Llyod Osbourne, why it is so good, this American lady with a kid, hey bud, real awkward here, you like pirates right?, an island with a treasure marked on it, he is Long John Silver, makes Lloyd Osbourne into Jim Hawkins, I want to be big and muscular, Conan was written for working class men, what’s The Hobbit, just an adventure, talking about himself, Bilbo is in his 50s, he’s Tolkien, he’s retired from whatever job he ever had, birthday parties, very casual, straight inserts, read about different kinds of people, the layering becomes much greater with Lord Of The Rings, Bilbo adopts his cousin, changes his name to Baggins, just so happen to have the exact same birthday, replacement for the next adventure, ultimately Frodo is 50 by the time the advenuture happens, 20 years paass, numerology thing, eleventy-third, fun number, adds up to a gross, meta-stuff, the creation of the world in the background, east of the Barrow Downs, the three trolls from the Hobbit, the legacy of the land, we don’t have Bree in the first book, Mirkwood, built up this whole world, the Silmarillion, like reading the Bible of Middle Earth, no one else has ever written anything quite like it, romance about the Golden Age of Piracy and England in this post-arrow, Admiral Benbow Inn, The Green Dragon Inn, a public house, the mail drops Billy Bones at the nicer inn down the way, near the sea, the people who are after me, the double backstory, an officer, an heir to Flint’s treasure and map, mysterious oilskin, drinking himself to death, Billy Bones and his fears, the fears that Frodo is given by Gandalf, the ring is that thing that everybody’s after, some wiser heads on this, when Gandalf doesn’t come back, Tolkien is amazing, the ends are less good than the openings, the fun adventure, the Battle Of The Five Armies, conked on the head, cool stuff in there, just Tolkien, healing, happy lives back in the Shire, the Sourging Of The Shire, evil is never quite beaten, to live you life, not a children’s adventure story, they leave the silver but they get the gold, the Indiana Jones effect, couldn’t we also have the gold?, an alien, a special gate, fairly well constructed as a plot, we don’t think of sailing as tech, apprenticed to the seacook, he’s the cabin boy, learning the ropes literally, in that engagement, both cruel and betraying but also teaching you things, very Heinleinian growing up, Citizen Of The Galaxy, the main character is purchased, indoctrinated into a secret spy agency, crippled in that book, beware of the no legged man!, born without a leg!?, weird monopod, as a part of the crew, suspicious right away, the cyborg, shocked to see a one legged man as a seacook, injured people, a missing arm in Treasure Planet, owning the inn in Bristol, a negress wife, lives in luxury, Muppet Treasure Island (1996), probably going to die along in a dinghy, one bag of gold coins, the most interesting character, everybody’s a captain, even the parrot is a captain, captains were elected, Silver was the quartermaster, he knows what it was all about, quartermasters were also elected, ability to get treasure, share out the shares, trust the captain to be greedy, almost equal power, when not chasing down a ship, who’s getting what portion, insurance when your leg gets blown off, more trustworthy, recruit everybody to stay on the plan, an indoctrination for the kid, a little culty, politiciany, same words, I was his favourite boy, that’s what politicians do, we probably wrongly like them, very personable, watches him murder a man, murder us in our sleep but so likeable, imagine your mom marries somebody who’s not your dad, you’re not my real dad?, how do you defeat that, one way to wreck a family, insinuate yourself in there, good and bad, agency and teaching something, learning the ropes, I’m in charge of you shipmate, smart as paint you are, the applebarrel situation, Blind Pew, cripples, sickly his whole life, never a man’s man, black dog’s in it, Isiah Hand, creepy and scary and effective, despite being crippled, personality and brains and not just brawn, the stand-in for himself is a threat and friendly, very disarming, narrative is basically why we are humans, if you buy the story that explains your behavior, why did you do that, come up with a story, that’s a bad story and you’re a bad kid, dogs don’t take in narratives, I want to aspire to be a better dog, sometimes they respond, do they feel guilty, they don’t understand our words very well, from a baby point of view, enjoy sugar and a good burp, a narrative about your position in the family, who you are eventually, the process of maturation, I might not be you biological dad, I might not be healthy, here’s a story that you helped me create, the psychology is perfect, an archetype that didn’t exist before he put it in here, scallywag sort of guy, the trope codifier, TV Tropes is too much and too big, we know this trope, this figure, he’s not Han Solo, Han Solo is who you want to be, Luke Skywalker, who aspires to be Long John Silver, Robert Louis Stevenson, shooting [Greedo] in cold blood, never does anything bad, I’m leaving with my money, comes right back and saves the day, redemption arc, real friends, gonna get hung, try not to get hung, I’m out, similar trope, the magical blackman, The Legend Of Bagger Vance, The Green Mile, Stephen King’s The Shining, magical black man, not scoundrels, lower class because of their race, teach to the white kid, Uncle Remus’ B’rer Rabbit, black folktales, like cartoons, animals trying to eat each other, fights with tarbabies, not a turncoat, they have to be perfect, weird anti-racism, no black kid has a magical black man, somebody who helps the kid become better at golf, Will Smith and Matt Damon, we don’t need sequels, spiritual sequels, maybe there’s a whole bunch of things that precede it, Golding book: The Lord Of The Flies, The Coral Island by R.M. Ballantyne, juvenile fiction with juvenile heroes, boys marooned, Blue Lagoon without the sex, Robinson Crusoe, Robinsonades, Swiss Family Robinson, Space Family Robinson, a whackjob Christian, attacking Christianity, meanwhile he’s skinning cats and building fortresses, a recipe for capitalism, becomes a slave, in the slave business, this is more tame, long, Jack and Ralph, that’s who Golding is responding to, it would be terrible, Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft, civilization or savagery, collapse is inevitable, why everything is shit, bitter and angry and cynical about humankind, stranding a bunch of boys on an island, descriptions, pretty little boys, samaneric, a very weird book to thrust upon kids, why they do it, because it has kids in it, Nineteen Eighty Four is an interesting read, Animal Farm, this is Stalin that’s Trotsky, diatribe against the Russian revolution, why was Orwell forced upon kids in Canada and the USA, why aren’t we reading Treasure Island in school, everyone knows the story of Treasure Island, holds up so well, such a good book, gotcha hooked, nice and short, 7 hours?, 200 pages as a paperback, pre-teen boy, modern crap, start with Treasure Island, don’t skip over the good stuff because it is old, don’t repeat the books, masterfully psychologically done, in awe of what a good job he did in tricking that boy into liking him, turning a kid into a spy because the dad is weak, it is important that he’s in there and weak, notice it more, adding resentment to an absent father is never paid off, joined the Space Navy, a Heinlein sort of ending, Starman Jones, abused by his step mom, new stepdad, tricked by a hobo who steals his books, idetic memory, sneaks on to a ship, that hobo, we’re friends still, space navy, animals on the ship, a crisis happens with the upper class navigators, lost in space, only the kid can save the ship, turn him into the captain, back into the saftey of space, granted cadetship, perfect, Robert Louis Stevenson did it first and better, always good, some kind of event, odd before, after this they get weird, doing the same thing, Heinlein names his sources, this is from Kim, The Jungle Book, some poetry from Stevenson is in some Heinlein, Hispaniola, Dominican Republic and Haiti, the direction they’re going, the prefix RLS, Rocket League Ship?, Robert Louis Stevenson, rewatch the Disney version, five years, since the 80s, every pirate things comes from Treasure Island, the accent in that movie, a very specific English accent, all pirates now talk that way, reading the text, fits the character in the book, the two have become welded together, with very few exception, Captain Bonnet, gentleman pirate, Our Flag Means Death, dressed up as Mad Max, the shoulderpad and the gimp leg, they were lower class guys pressed into this job, escaped slaves or sailors, we assume, we just think he’s a sailor, he could have been on a British naval ship, no passports, no fingerprints, nobody knows how to write, the recieved accent, Roger Moore’s accent, something you learn at school, Michael Caine learns that accent, Timothy Dalton has the correct accent, Pierce Brosnan does the accent, playing a pirate, navigation and how to run ships, our hero Jim Hawkins, moderately successful, property that they own, upstairs being sick all the time, down with the black dog, the cough of death, the local squire, makes good, makes the cash, not in a way we would fine contemptible, finding pirate treasure already stolen, go get that treasure, treasure is adventure, the thing you want because it means adeventure, can’t tell him to go away, I guess I’ll keep giving you, An Unexpected Party, mostly its just him playing with the Saga of the Volsungs, utterly shameless, very clear and explicit, give Gandalf six names, one dwarf name, never just about the plot, the wikipedia summary is not going to tell you, what the premise is, there’s a treasure, there’s a spy, what could spoil this book?, nothing, not spoiled, there’s no twist in it, you wrecked the book for me, way less value as a book, it was all about hiding this one thing from you, a map to a treasure island, let’s go, the twist is not much at all, everyone knows going in, the bad guy, he isn’t, some sort of double sided guy, two-faced, really good book, great book, thank you sir, out for the next two Sundays, The Aeneid, at the beach, driving, A Witch Shall Be Born, Gods Of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs sequel, the end of The Aeneid, books five through eight, more shudder pulps, weird menace stories, an issue of Adam (a men’s magazine), The Cold Female by Dale Harlow, the car smoothly ate up the road, doctor’s orders, a clear cool lake in the Canadian Rockies, flopped into bed, mysterious floating women, breezy and fast, the bright slashing sun, austere mountains, a huge silent lake a sense of foreboding, is there a cabin on the lake for rent, I want to relax and fish, he’s from Maine now, any firearms?, blanket, wood, and oil for the lamps, when everything was stowed in the car, eye-filling splendor, the volcanic lake, just what I need, peace and solitude, a short walk, the moon glowed sharp and bright, rushing around Seattle, another world, the birds too, an eerie glow, good fresh air, he didn’t see another human being, sharp lightning thrusts, thunder rumbled heavier, the light steady drumbeat, sweet odor of pine, he thought suddenly he hear a knock on the door, soaked to the skin, blue with cold, opening two pages, it’s a premise, that’s all I need, naked ladies, January 1958, pair one of these up with Mistress Of Dark Something, Mike Vendetti, Spawn Of Inferno by Hugh B. Cave, Unholy Night, The Valley Of The Worm, John Ames York, cavemen find a weird valley, a Jim Thompson story, Spicy Adventure, Mistress Of Satan’s Hounds, from Terror Tales, a lady in stocks, a guy with a brand in the shape of an eye, wearing a mask, was the monstrous little body which Jeff and Laura found, the half-world brood, sired by the hounds of hell, don’t read this eerie novelette, Mistress Of Dark Pool by Russel Gray, a cliff, Test-Tube Frankenstein, chops up earthworms, doing neoteric style science, Microcosmic God by Theodore Sturgeon, about a scientist like Edison, he’s so good at science, I’m going to make a tiny slave race, steal those technologies from them, put things in hydraulic presses, make a new technology that’s stronger and lighter, makes the world start to destroy, patents that technology, force fields, the same thing with a blender and earthworms, a technology such that this earthworm material can mimic other people, basically The Thing, replaces the scientist, its awesome, I wanted to destroy he protoplasmic horror, 12 minutes ago, look at the art for this, stupendous, I could not help but laugh when that ancient hag told me, the love of a wrinkled leathery crone, naked lady, kissing a skull with a great body, fantastic, I’m in.

MINISTER CLASSICS Treasure Island

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #816 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Cat-Woman by Ray Cummings and In The Orbit of Saturn by R.F. Starzl

The SFFaudio Podcast #816 – Cat-Woman by Ray Cummings (read by Mike Vendetti, 55 minutes) AND In The Orbit of Saturn by R.F. Starzl (read by Edmund Bloxam, 52 minutes). These are complete and unabridged readings of the stories (1 hour 48 minutes) followed by a discussion of them. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Will Emmons, and Jonathan Weichsel

Talked about on today’s show:
[Cat-Woman by Ray Cummings – from Terror Tales, May 1938 and In The Orbit Of Saturn by R.F. Starzl from Astounding, October 1931] that narrator, LibriVox, like to not listen, performing, distracting, a noble effort, everbodys got an accent, Trois-Rivières, a cultural, 30 years watching news reports, CBC generally gets its pronunciation right, the main character is an American, the half-breed Indian, Beaumont, a New York lawyer, take it too far, way too far, two miles from Manhattan, US states, the geography is so bad, giant book showing different continents, they don’t even know where they are on the map, maybe geography is a useless thing, from one tube enclosure to another tube enclosure, maybe it doesn’t matter, you need to understand geography in order to understand anything, a geology a little bit, from the Libertarian convention, use its military to defend itself, from what?, giant moat on either side, defending Hawaii, you don’t need a sixth fleet in the Indian Ocean, Nevada, Oregon, accents?, more than accent, Iraq, Iran, hearing about it on the news, the correct pronunciation, say it in Spanish, all these tourists, east coast politicians, it doesn’t need to be set in the orbit of Saturn, not as good as the other Starzl, E.E. Doc Smith, more compact, starts deep into the action, we’re in the middle of a battle, holding cells, dialogue happens, we’re done, fairly good for being fairly bad, published in the October 1931 issue of Astounding, the Clayton era of Astounding, having trouble following the action, put on a really big smile for your videos, the muscles of your face, practicing to be the joker, he’s really selling this, in seven months we’ll know if it was all worth it, Sword & Scandal, with that great art, very solid, character names, Quarl Finner?, Coerl?, Black Destroyer, Braniac Five from the Legion Of Superheroes, Lenore, character from Poe, Moby Gore, Lt. Burroughs, Captain Strom, he’s not shy, Mark Twain, a newspaperman, family newspaper in some midwestern town, its good, real things that happens, engaging with real stuff a little bit, her brother dies, dies from pneumonia, daughter of a capitalist, a capitalism in space story, the eugenics pirate, a good noble man, a man without a planet, engaging with the materials of the times, the Burroughs thing, make it about Romance, he doesn’t solve it, the IFP, the interplanetary flying police?, pirates infiltrated by east Indian company agent, sexy redhead pirate queen, a depth to it, for how short it is, a lot of time hating, too simple, a super good example of pulp that doesn’t suck completely, not enough beams, a cloaking device, I’ll parole you, new laser beam, ray of some kind, a little ethical back and forth, working for the fuckin cops, tremendous amounts of concentrated energy, the energy becomes sentient, weird juice, for the amount of plot and backstory, something in a series, ISFDB, seven of these stories, The Earthman’s Burden, very depthy, another Starzl story, Madness Of The Dust, he’s on mars, he has martian slaves, martian dust makes him go crazy, Against All Flags (1952), Errol Flynn, Anthony Quinn, off the coast of Madagascar, a political dissident, party now because there is no afterlife, mythological pirates, historical pirates, crook, of the golden age of piracy, still pirates today, the Horn of Africa, not British naval slaves, their backstory is different, a really good movie, the Mad Max novelization, Stone (1974), Satan worshipers, very beautiful, very artistic, by looking at pirates, land pirates, living life free from societal law, Hell’s Angels by Hunter S. Thompson, patch him in and patch him out, harassing ransom people, Pirates Of Venus pirates are not really pirates, Gully Foyle, Alfred Bester, a positive spin, write the pants off, very early in the history of magazines, by the early 30s Weird Tales is getting good, Science Fiction isn’t as mature, willing to pay relatively good rates, the writing of both of this, Ray Cumming fuckin sucks, The Girl In The Golden Atom, this is a fun story, Cat-Woman, flies by the seat of his pants, bad stuff in here, as a relatively short weird menace, shudder story, so similar much better idea, serums that transform you, a lot hornier, more idea filled, Sam Moskowitz on Ray Cummings, went downhill, never evolved to keep up with the times, formulaic, 1938, Ambrose Bierce, this genre didn’t exist, a story about glands, the science of glands, 1910s and 20s, the gland doctor in France, put this in a novel, mad scientist in France, a cutting from testicle from a young monkey, Bobby Derie’s blog, wealthiest men in Paris, complete nonsense, great scientist, have they retracted the story yet, the little touches, there was a magazine, that magazine had the formula, I never found that magazine, maybe she is a cat-woman, very meta, lurid covers, ladies being tortured, fed into machines, when they get nude, delivers on all fronts, exotic northern Quebec setting, palpitating breasts, her heart is beating so hard it makes her breasts beat, palpitations, am I fighting a drug or am I really sleepy?, can see out, writhe around on the animal skin rugs, jumps out the window, bad planning, four characters in this story, made no sense, masturbating in the corner while she dances around on the rugs, terrible plotting, terrible, horrible, a grindhouse 42nd street horror movie, very entertaining and over the top, entertained, trouble visualizing, so very visual, a floorplan of the cabin in the woods, needed to be in the same room as her, wakes up, girl dancing around, a big mirror thing, now that she’s my wife, she looks in the mirror, saw him as a cat, then a literal cat shows up, why does it have a baby in its mouth?, unburied baby?, the cat after all, badly put together, was fixing this story worth Ray Cummings’ time, pulp fiction factoids, Frederik Pohl, bulldoze Pohl, wearing a cravat, almost unusable stories, your standard pulp author didn’t write a second draft, after editorial notes or revisions, how Weird Tales worked, make some changes, I like money, I will not accept payment, my words are perfect, something in common, Lovecraft needed money, scrip harder, he wouldn’t work, he couldn’t work, rich as a child, grandfather was wealthy, wife taking care of him, sending cheques, artists need to be supported, inheritance money, residual stuff, lived with his aunts, rent and food was cheap, three suits, not buying a lot of stuff, editorial revision business, Edison’s laboratory assistant, Edison’s philosophy, Thomas Edison, mix these chemicals together, shrink ourselves down, looking through a microscope at a piece of gold, become very small, just a matter of looking in your cupboards until you find the right chemical, great men before corporate, Elon Musk, emerald mine, get a bunch of guys working for you, a patent troll, Musk isn’t as a bad, E.E. Doc Smith, invented powdered sugar, manufactured it industrially, revised it, space opera, doesn’t need to be set near Titan, a tour of the solar system, protect the whole solar system, as an ideas man, Fitz James O’Brien’s The Diamond Lens, covered in mirages, fun, stupid, fun, from the text, forays to the faraway undisciplined Pluto, colonial thing, tropical Venus, Aryl, stupendous and neverending mirages, Jesse’s Paul hat, his anti-Paul hat, mining anything near Saturn, too fuckn cold, nuclear power all the time, radiation, make it into heat, energon cubes make no fuckn sense, purple, pinky purple, I eat energon cubes, to sell cars that transform into robots, disguises, you think I’m just a boring, my uncle was in the Navy, a mcguffin to chase after, if Jack London had written this story it would be way better, lab assistant, Wells was the lab assistant to Huxley, learning shit, science teacher, The Star by H.G. Wells, Goliah, a device that zap people out of existence, blackmail the capitalists into obeying him, you don’t need it to be set around Titan, wanting to change reality using his tech, more science fictional, when E.E. Doc Smith solves problems, we can’t restart the warp engines cold, the mechanism of the plot, somehow do the thing that is impossible, during the battle they invent technology, Borg shit is fake science fiction, nothing real and tangible, to engage in a new relationship with reality, bad science fiction vs. fake science fiction, pretty different, what makes something a western?, Outland (1981), sean connery in space, High Noon (1952) in space, a western in space, is this story science fiction?, just cuz the guy wants to do eugenics, the invisibility shield, small details, invented from not used, prevents them from having an incident, we have nuclear weapons in our cargo hold, had them, didn’t use them, the combination, trying to change the world, bad at his job, a plan to do so, a new race of humans, rich, capitalist, large mine holdings on Titan, visiting dilettante, hostages for money?, science fiction but not good science fiction, the gland formula, moving the goal posts, weird fiction possibly by science fiction, werewoman, also possibly, the narrator turns into a cat, it could be it was a science fiction, I lost the documents, undercutting it on purpose, read the end, secret formula in a published magazine, Frozen Canyon, Jeanne and I, glorious vibrant young body that nature gave her, she is normal, a scheming criminal half mad with lust, had never seen the French magazine she mentioned, there was no such magazine, the product of a deranged mind, she disrobes, gazing at her beauty in her bedroom mirror, the grinding maw, for you see sometimes a strange lethargy, cat naps, gleaming green and yellow, my mind is tottering, the watchful eyes upon, like a cat watches a mouse, the ambiguity, doesn’t impact the rest of the book, is there any supernatural activity in this story, half-breed French Canadian in the north, Franklin’s motivation, wait until she gets her money, gotta see her naked, you can’t wait five minutes to see her dance nakedly, nice and ambiguous ending, are we reading a diary entry?, if you go back early enough in the story, undercuts his whole story, if we drank milk we’d all be like cows, the doppleganger one, real science fiction, Mike Vendetti narrated, what supernatural thing happened? what scientific thing happened?, dosing with something apparently, spanish fly, masturbation talk, to perform for her guardian, doesn’t deliver, buy your thesis, precluded from science fiction, breed a new race?, white man’s law, given the period, philosophers have said, atavistic, ray weapon, primitive urge, the great simians who he resembled, a south seas story can be science fiction, Island Of Dr. Moreau, A Thousand Deaths, dogs and disintegration, The Monster Men, amnesia, therefore worthy of the daughter of the scientist, memory returned to Quarl, orderly procession of the stars, the artificial gravity, very early, pre-Heinlein, very interesting, as the ship rotated, a thick swathing of bandages, peaked face, rotten, a portable apparatus, progenitor, this will work, an agreeable warmth, a great lassitude followed, filled the blouse, tunic, blue trousers, gold braid down the side, clothing talk, one of the chosen, the chosen race, an out and out damned pirate, what else?, inscrutably melancholy, the idealism of a poet, many means, disguise one’s purpose, for instance, felt himself redden, Strom was a zealot, prompt penetration, the point is he wants him to join the team, breeding a new race, takes generations, Hitler’s plans, it won’t work, the fiction part, because it was real, trying to do something science fictional, before Hitler, not running his race programs, everybody loved it, homegirl, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, sterilize, its a good story for what it is, how short it is for the amount of material that is in it, romance stuff, an outline rushing through the material, get to the ideas, who in this group is fun to hang out with?, the author more than the characters, genuine science fiction opening, faltered in her course, stockholders, visitors, aware of a cessation, bad sentence beauty, parts of Cat-Woman, badly worded, fictitious gravity, main salon, the entire midship section, to flounder in helpless confusion, they’re being attacked, skipped past, not a good story, interesting and kinda fun here and there, trouble following it, poorly written, omniscient, first person, a character narrator, more economy there, how to tell stories, 1st person, 3rd person, close and far, really important, detective novels told 1st person, Sherlock Holmes, 1st person from the 2nd main character’s point of view, Watson’s POV, very easy to follow, if he did see it he didn’t observe it, 3rd person, tightened up, Ray Cummings masturbating while writing this story, sexy stories, the girl here is terrible, how she is behaving makes no sense, aliens who come to Earth to kidnap all the women, not writing in the first half of the 20th century, explorers, our universe is an atom in a larger structure, make themselves really big, you’re blind, why are your blind, my eyes don’t work, why don’t you just replace your eyes, execute him, more ethical than we are, had Heinlein written that, a 10page philosophical discussion, elemental and frenetic, and then this happened, why it has a bad reputation, Lester Del Rey writing really short stories, three book series, good stuff as well, more detail, more sweat put into it, Jonathan as a the new Paul, shownoting a show with Paul, invite him back, email Evan, Cora couldn’t show up because her mom died, reschedule for sometime in the future, other plans, I honor my commitments, arguing himself into something, Paul makes the show worse, talking over people, not all being in the same room, a delay, distracted, bad for the listener, Paul can contribute well but often doesn’t, “comps” is what they call them, bad thinking, being worried about spoilers, bad modes of thought, why are other people interested in spoilers, fundamentally misunderstanding, ladies in glass cylinders coming to earth, 7 minute story, aliens kidnap all the women, research projects, spiderwomen, an excuse to read it, beef with this story as a cat-woman story, made her a pig, wildcat, mountain lions, didn’t do any research, remote or something, not thinking it through, care about ideas more than writing, nice writing, experiencing the story sequentially, the end is the most important part, two exciting novels, Donald E. Westlake crime novel, new Ace Double, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos, no Alex?, LibriVox, set in Florida, good noir opening, Murder Mistress by Robert Colby, “Scott Daniels is a washed up showbiz announcer who hit the bottle a few too many times and blew his big chance.”, three and half hours, a lady drowning in quicksand as a sex fetish, mud, this is a new time, naked on a bed, I could read that, crime and mystery stories, more interested in the phenomena of these horny novels, naked woman on the bed pointing a gun, pink unmentionables, green negotiables, Killing Time by Donald E. Westlake, Ben Tucker, Smith will squawk, the small town aspect, Westlake is really good at his job, eating a ham sandwich, I’m looking for a guy named Smith, heavy browed, hand painted and too wide, front name, this is your lucky night, nice prose, painted ties, vintage 1961 feeling, Westlake is awesome, 4.5 hours, zoned out again, check in, a push notification, something stupid, addicted to the petty bourgeois, small freeholder, yeoman?, the dopamine, 46, pick up from you, it is good to get out of the house, enough to pay minimum wage, it is good to have hobbies, put a scanner somewhere in the middle of that, give it to the world, even just covers, archive.org’s custom scanner, ones from China, funky, wanting to preserve the book, designed for bound books, you can’t crack the spine on a sewn book, reams, come loose, quasi pornographic, Lost City Of The Damned by Alec Rivera [Charles Nuetzel], horny science fiction novel, sex, excitement, and the unknown, terrible in all the right ways, John Kendrick Bangs, Bangsian fantasy, like Beetlejuice (1988), The Good Place, A Houseboat On The Styx, inspired Riverworld, collaborative, a sequel, four books in the series, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s Inferno, ghost stories, it just goes on, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, so cool, he doesn’t know where it is going, offered him $100,000, Thorne Smith, person turning into a goldfish, The Stray Lamb, Topper series, a navy, nautical fiction, supernatural, when a book that’s falling apart, there’s lots of things I could do, an unassailable defense, E.W. Hornung’s Raffles, the gay response to Sherlock Holmes, not being gay enough, Conan Doyle’s brother-in-law, Bunny, a burglar, unbelievably gay, the lady in the mud puddle, in mud puddles?, why is this a thing, high heels, Barrett Whitener, mild mannered, Cary Grant, ok?, 1937 film, the novel is public domain, a few TV series, 78 episodes, Eric Idle, Transformers: The Movie (1986), Roddy McDowell, Bettlejuice sequel that nobody asked for, curious, what was left to be said?, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024), an imperfect novelization, something really cool, a lot of infodump, an excuse to explain, depopulated Australia, shot without permission, one week at a time, in terms of story, reading it through a novel, more action and is simpler, incredible astounding wonderful, dog dies in both, Mel Gibson, [he has a monkey in the third one], 4th one is not good, 5th one, worst kind of idea, go watch the backstory happen, a very unnecessary film, 7 minute standing ovation at Cannes, just because a movie gets a trophy, Eisner awards, a popularity contest, a lady doing the petition, more like the nebulas, people campaign, understood the process, how to get into comics, Maus, not entertaining for kids, better than other homework assignments, leaves his burner on, wants to save on matches, a very long term view of this show, Jesse has an ideology (campaigning for certain things, campaigning against certain things), very hesitant to ever give Amazon any money, most people go along, get along, bootstrap, the PDF page, to try to get more shit on Librivox, hasn’t worked out that well, LibriVox won’t use Jesse as a source, they use Project Gutenberg, Haithi Trust, why it takes so long, very precise, Canadian and Australian ones, FadedPage, Scott Miller [of the Lost Sci-Fi Podcast] is great, his agenda, to record unrecorded stuff, make a little bit of money, he likes this stuff, doing a ton of work, 200 episodes out, three times a week, he wants to mix it up, things that people request, ads in his podcast, the ones on youtube, on the other hand, an imperfect system, Mike [Vendetti] recording for Audible.com, he has other names too, The Last Spaceship by Murray Leinster, the mushroom world, The Mad Planet, Clifford D. Simak, more packaging?, mutual on twitter, stuff for fun, used to be Jesse’s job, a tape gun, very precise, do things fast, Halloween costume, against store bought costume, diplodocus?, cardboard costume, you can model things up out of cardboard, homemade costume, a standing desk, so unergonomic, way too low, no warehouse, fairly small objects, so lucky about media mail, guy from Britain, copies of Analog, Children Of Dune, $40 shipping, silly, Connor can’t get anything in and out of Australia for a reasonable price, New Zealand, horrific, a person in the world today, internet, worst shithole countries, tweeting from Gaza, delivery of things, if there was ever a case, start with mail, an essential service, what makes a country, parcels and letters and things across the place, what made the Mongols an empire, without getting Mongolized, the postal agency, the main job of the government, insurance and mail, universal coverage, being Westlakian, make that explicit, before eveveryone dies, he goes down so smooth, he’s a good guy, The Triumph Of Evil by Lawrence Block, the purported author, wanted to join the CIA, gets recruited, assassinating the president, love the premise, suggest both, five political figures, one man with a gun is enough for the job, a man who’s sole life function, Miles Dorn, he’s so good, the one set in Ireland with a folksinger, hung out with Maissa, Passport To Peril, Reading, Short And Deep short Lawrence Block stories, wonderful narrator, very powerful, good with the openings, professional newscaster, sidethings, horrible ads, normcore, Apple podcasts, regionally targeted, government health insurance, Uber teen accounts, big city thing?, am against, not invented something new, 88th birthday, surrounded by the elderly, dangerous, they can cut you in their gangs, make friends with young people, work at it, make em come on your podcast, meeting young people through science fiction, one pulp fiction friend younger, a year younger, everybody else, fifty is pretty young, aint that young, conversations with people, the whole point is the side benefits, a lot of time looking at books you want to read, help kids pass tests and get better marks in school, let’s do something that will help in the future, don’t lose money at it, shovelling money out the door is unsustainable, maintaining, spend time around cool paperbacks, real conversations about books, most people don’t read, they gain in value, an insight into that period, 1931, 1938, investigate more shudders, weird menaces, weird fiction, Weird Tales is still being published, dude, trolling Jesse, this ideology, only share things that can be shared, worrying about the terminator gene, monsanto’s plan to destroy farming, doesn’t affect your worldview, support illegal things to stop the terminator gene, watch a minute of it to see the BC legislature, Edison Motors, response to Tesla, as a guy, electrifying logging trucks, powerful youtube channel, we better pay attention to this, invited called the Green Party, a third party, pretty small in B.C.’s legislature, a bill to change funding for vehicle subsidization, election’s coming up, very different from American politics, not wholly incompetent clowns, so much clownage is happening, spread everywhere, clown world now, more enclownified, Kentucky legislative proceedings, seeing the room, special costume, threw off that yoke, judges don’t dress up funny, tradition is all we have left, a gavel, Alien Nation, tv series, main white guy, main human guy, alien girlfriend, the way they do the show, there’s aliens, pull out some fact about Mr. Spock’s physiology, builds up lore, lore is the most serious problem any Star Trek has, moved all her stuff in, I see you put up the clowns, paintings of clowns, we do not have clowns in our culture, cirsova, mental maps, no massive overlaps, new fiction, imagine if you were going to open a restaurant, not allowed to use food from after a certain year, recipes are not copyrighted or trademarked, secret recipe, formulations vs. recipes, why do recipe books exist?, she wants to try new food, the creative art, I should write a book, like their poetry, a reference book, not supposed to read it cover to cover, ooh we could make that, get up the courage to do one of the things in there, look at my art, the cookbook is kind of a dead art because of the internet, youtube channels, food algorithm, instagram, twitter, I’m now going to talk about god for the next couple of minutes, preface your conversation about god, why Jimmy Dore quit pot, a Jungian analyst, funny and interesting, spoilers skip ahead, fuck off, they think they’re supposed to, people are very copying, Seventh Victim, you really need to sell it, when they go to read Sheckley, unwreckable, a visual display, lots of money being spent, go to work and feel happy or sad, the narrator explains, hailing, cars going by, a weedwhacker, on a porch, in a room, a novel about cars recorded in a car, doesn’t edit it, how ratchet that is, so charming, can’t even call it pirated, never going to come into, he wanted to read this book to you, he’s a human being, the ideal form of being, people telling a story, another person enjoying that story, and talking about that story, a really good pitch, Louis Rossmann, laptop repairman philosopher guy, right to repair, not everything should be a subscription service, the right way to go, not getting a lot of traction, no money behind it, individuals trying to be ethical, something like a movement, Rossmann has a billionaire backer, leverage political change, leveraging their youtube channel to get a government subsidy, can’t find a place to build their factor, they’re a municipality, Merritt, B.C., other countries are courting them, moving farther north, less investment taken, idle land, investment property, vocal complaints, we want government to be somewhat responsive, Apple will fuck it up on purpose, past the pain point, Starbucks getting shit on for Israel, Nancy Pelosi’s friends kids were killed, Starbucks gave $3 million, special beans, be on the phone with Nancy Pelosi to get shit happening, two gift cards, Tim Horton’s ones, Starbucks, big corporate now, its fine, donuts, Starbucks’ food is very expensive, $3.60, cheap for their products, an expensive part of the world, in terms of land, hard to find housing, a city but suburbs, unhoused, hobos, houseless, tentless, half a duplex, half-housed, housing many animals, some raccoons, big swollen teats, some babies, what racoon milk tastes like, the science of racoon milk, latch on and give a little suck, made redundant, life in rural Kentucky, mixed up with weird apologies for Joe Biden, Trump Derangement Syndrome, sniffing kids, blatant lying, confabulating memories, gross children grabbing, Astounding, doesn’t know he’s on camera, nobody calls him on it, his daughter’s diary, she left it somewhere, like the son left the laptops, woman sentenced to prison for stealing and selling Ashley Biden’s diary, going to therapy and telling the therapist her dad was having showers with her, pretty damning if true, Hunter calling his dad a pedophile, to hurt it his dad, pawing children, hand on a girl’s breast, evil that he gets away with that, a lot going around, what percentage?, double digits?, a survey, look around, just in your own life, it’s not zero, Biden paws girls breast, video distorts, granddaughter, here’s the apology for it, Natalie Biden, Beau Biden’s daughter, a Biden who’s not allowed to be a Biden, John Snow, what Game Of Thrones is about, politics, titillation, perverted sex stuff, Scott liked it, George R.R. Martin, huge entourage of women, Freya Stark, women’s brains, not a handsome man, got money, an attraction to the storytelling, for women, something to him, the first book is in the show, why people are into it, so much of it, the media stuff is not reading, people like talking about things around the watercooler, Americans are very prudish, HBO would have a little bit of nudity, traditionally verboten, high drama, reversals, responding to Tolkien’s vision of Middle Earth is escapist, Martin’s vision of Westeros, trying to be realist, got dragons, war of the roses, infighting between royal families, bottom up characters, when you see a princess get raped, that’s dramatic, girl mind mentality, they’re different, common core, women are weaker than men, shorter than men, things growing inside your body for 9 months, women care about health more, watch Alien Nation with Meg, watch the pilot, cheer for schooling, the Ruby Bridges story, desegregation story, govt. agents, sit in a classroom by herself all day, very TV dramatic, how fucked up American morality is, prudishness, the names are so funny, the original 1988 movie, a family drama done as a buddy cop show, got punchy, funny names, Sam Fransisco, low level humour in the background, another baby, needs to find a binnaum, Albert Einstein, you’re gonna let Albert fuck your wife?, be in the room while the partner is being cuckolded, Heinlein style violation of norms, this is all biological, made up to tell stories like that, to break down prejudices, so lefty feelgood, genuine SF, little details, weirdly sexy show, sex stuff on Fox TV in 1990s, cancelled, brought it back, reshoot the final scene, set in 1995, highly rated show, second to last episode: child sex slavery with politicians, nothing stays in print anymore, Netflix shows removed from Netflix, lost the license or embarrassed, not vertically, horizontal, vs. spherical, own the mines for the raw materials for your cars, marketing and movie theaters, merging with competitors, productions that it greenlights, Quentin Tarantino will own Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019) in 20 years, a Star Trek movie, see you next week.

Cat-Woman by Ray Cummings - from Terror Tales, May 1938

In The Orbit Of Saturn by R.F. Starzl from Astounding, October 1931

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #796 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Cave Girl by Edgar Rice Burroughs

The SFFaudio Podcast #796 – The Cave Girl by Edgar Rice Burroughs, read by Gerald Moe (for LibriVox). This is a complete and unabridged reading of the story (8 hour 18 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Maissa Bessada, Will Emmons, Alex (Pulpcovers), and Cora Buhlert

Talked about on today’s show:
serialized in All-Story, 1913, whatever, The Cave Man, 1917, a single book in 1925, Dell Mapback, can we all guess where in the book where the cave man begins?, a chapter title, end of Part 1, went on an on, dizzying, when the Cave Girl takes over the plot for a while, recover the jewels, I guess we’ll leave, the family shows up in the plot, less interesting, here’s the question that will spur anger and debate and make rage quit, classist, racist, or other ist?, really hated Germans too, WWI had not started yet, he likes the French, nasty stuff in some of the Tarzans, classist, no matter what, that race is bad, our heros always have to be Thurston Howell III, the doctor from Boston in MASH, literal count or royalty, every fuckin book, immortal warrior, an officer in a country that doesn’t have an official class, Smith-Jones isn’t even his real name, David Ogden David Ogden Stiers, reestablish the aristocracy, these are my peoples, dallies with primitives, “the main character is a mommas boy intellectual with weak muscles who washes up on an lost island full of cave folks – he disdains muscles, but there is a nude cave girl with a nice smile, so i think i know what’s gonna happen”, contessa in a cave, pirates, The Cave Contessa, just Tarzan, gender flipped Tarzan raised by cave people, rich white boy becomes man in six months, tuberculosis, his cough, the excuse for visiting the South Seas, Robert Louis Stevenson, non-specific cough of death, miserably died, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, Robert E. Howard’s mom didn’t man up, king of the Cave People, doing your way for 1000 years, sharpen a stick, we’re not living in caves anymore, do some fucking farming, limited wars are over bud, obey the king, we slaughter our enemies, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, At the Earth’s Core, the Yale, cannibalistic lesbian pterodactyl people, Waldo Emerson, the advanced peoples, he a momma’s boy, a living father?, wealthy widow, not good enough for her very precious son, luckily he preserved her chastity to impress her mother, hot for him for years, we have to do this properly, turned them all into versions of themself, Nadara, full title, illiterate, sign the book, what’s sign, literally a cave woman, a high grade wife, French countess, brown skinned, that’s the tan, their babies will be white, the white goddess, wearing a skirt at the end, Son Of Tarzan, runs off into the forest, girl rescued from arab slavers, she was French the whole time, no no jesse you stupid fool, of course she’s a countess, Ralph Waldo Emerson Smith Jones, important characters, not of the upper crust, phrenology, sloppy skulls not good for learning Shakespeare, a series of villains step forth, I’m Blow Blow the killer, Flatfoot and the other guy, I was going to kill you a minute ago, I’m a cave man, 20 minutes left, fast friends with a random pirate, what kind of pirates are in the middle of the South Pacific?, 3 ships show up randomly, blackbirders, trans-pacific pirates are not a thing, grow copra all day, cannibals are very romantic, yes, coincidence and pure fantasy, Monster Men, think’s he’s a creature, a girl he thinks he’s worthy of, his genetics are not monster men, genre classify, definitely Edgar Rice Burroughs, anthropological science fiction, the anthropology is really bad, a patriarchal society, women and caves are property, cartoon cavemen, what hunter gathers were like, The Old Way by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, The Origin Of The Family, Private Property And The State by Fredrich Engles, take issue, we’re gonna shoot your dog, do it straight up as a comedy, don’t change anything, the book is funny and fun and totally ridiculous, repetitive, he did no research, he could have researched, Typee by Herman Melville, not a single dinosaur in this book, a lost island, the fantastic element, all the coincidences, Caprona and Pellucidar, not a lost world, just a plateau in South America, did we get the coordinates?, FadedPage, degree, lat 10 south long 150 west, deliberate blanks to obscure the guilty, historians maintan the true answer is lost, Nagula, the earthquake and the monster in the woods, laziness?, pure Burroughs, internal mythology, the only other culture we get, a sewing kit for the sewing bag, sewed a costume for himself, grandma’s grandma remembered the earthquake, adopted parents, the lady in labour, that’s their culture, I am the strong one, King Kong at the end, the whole island sank, an atoll tho, all that’s left after the earthquake, just south of Hawaii, eat raw fish, a whole Mexico south of Hawaii, not a volcanic island, caves, a steaming volcano, used to be volcanic, how did you like the book?, fun without being great, you should check that out right now, The Mad King, lesser Burroughs, the one with the gorgeous Michael Whelan cover, fur suit, what colour is her hair, should be raven haired, if it’s not raven its not right, just a stick, a very very short spear, he’s got a shield, they throw rocks at him, cudgel, hide over a wicker frame, fire harden it?, cave men are very soft, the dialogue tree is very minimal, I’m wearing nagula skin, the morality is very simple, lesser Burroughs, some random person, a place great to get things, Burroughs ought to have a place in literature that’s taught in schools, don’t involve schools in your argument, Tarzan, this argument from twitter is overstated, the professor was a little bit like, travel narratives, yellow cover, Michael Herring, what scene is that though, grabbed on the foot, there’s a scene later, she hits him in the head with a rock, by accident, the cannibals worship her, confused, agreed, suddenly Stark shows up on the scene, need badguys, the random encounter table, a lazy book, especially because of the publication chapter, several years to be serialized out, what happened this chapter?, had to be closer, I gotta finish this thing, from the back, washed ashore, thought his life is over, staring desperately out to see, dark and mysterious interior, savage cliff dwellers, a tiny spark of bravery, with the help of the beautiful cave princess, stripped away, emdash, jum hum hum, Burroughs writing a coward and a weakling, that was funny, the Boston families all had two last names, the tell in 2024, we are very enlightened now, people are marrying money to money, the reason you have that famous last name, that money or status, changed the law, double name, politically active green leaning person, did the husband take the double name?, Saxe-Coburg, legal for a long time, marrying money, call me by my first name teachers, married the heiress of a factory, the reason people do it today, last name is Jobs, Bezos, last name was Boner, more of a left leaning green leaning tell, aspirational, all the activity that the upperly mobile middle class people, mirroring stuff from a long time ago, simulating rich people having servants, it’s a Disney ride, cleaning lady, alcohol decanters, east europeans, literal lawns are that, glass decanters, you’ve got a cask of Amontillado in your basement, or whiskey, the alcohol store, look in the mirror, what you’re doing is insane, the readership of this book, I wanna be a rich guy who marries a countess, lower class people striving to be in the upper class, that’s the fantasy, where is Heinlein showing royalty, go farm in the sky, Heinlein is not a classist, idealistic view of America, kind of a myth, striving for that, political dynasties, Bushes, Kennedys, Clintons, Adams, president of the European Commission, highest ranking person in the EU, minor aristocrat, Angela Merkel, if you’re going to canonize Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess Of Mars, once you start teaching books in school, this book has no answers, given to read vs. forced to study, Mark Twain is great, you’re on a podcast about vintage science fiction, All Quiet On The Western Front, an important book, honour kills his daughter, Nineteen-Eighty Four, Brave New World, the prison guards in that institution, punch a clock, abuse, the canon of school, the Library Of America, some sort of non-profit, funded by the US government and the Ford Foundation, let’s imagine they’re the canon, some of them are public domain, a good list of science fiction books, American science fiction from the 1950s, a Burroughs volume, for people who are Americans, Ralph Waldo Emerson, why did he choose that name, that New England feeling, sickly rich kid, politically different, named after a famous author, academic nerd, George Washington Carver, telling name, Smith-Jones makes it a this is your story reader, you asthmatic nerd you, Charles Atlas, you to can be a strongman, the sales pitch is it sells itself, slings and arrows and pointy sticks we stab into this book, page turning good writing, super-frothy and light, still a good book, read it within 24 clock hours, making things exciting, 15 20 minutes with teenagers, The Mad King, a king had died, a son had been locked in a tower, the mad king had escaped, the horse had bolted, car and horse chase, all go off a cliff, what was that, 15 minutes in, it’s on LibriVox go grab it, Edgar Rice Burroughs should be put in cars (not schools), still fun, just pick up a different Burroughs, Lexington, Kentucky, Ohio, Lexington Green bookstore, visiting family, some big road, Target, cross a road, the exact road, stupid, look at all these bookstores, pedestrian crossing, Caroline Island, the Dell Mapback, nobody living there at the moment, crime novels, murder mysteries, scarce, She, too expensive, Del Rey books, DAW books, Ballantine Adult Fantasy paperbacks, book club editions, stuck with them, coffee table books about ships and WWII, the Hornblower books, shitty women’s fiction, anything left to squeeze out of this very frothy book, his name means naked, did he know what he was going to do with him?, the old crew, William Stark, Burlingame is the captain, taciturnity, martinet, that half of a sentence, the non-cave man badguy who gets the most screentime, go rescue the kids stuck in caves, the real monsters were the civilized people all along, European villains too, a strict disciplinarian, named after the whip, hair cut in not short enough, this makes him a badguy, the sailors don’t like him, ethic common immigrants, the rich guy from Boston, rumors about this old mill, the rumors are always true, clannish religious whackjobs, ignorant, sees his big fishy eyes, Lovecraft protagonist, ready to swoon, any other author, would have been done first person, waking up on a beach, how’d I get there?, who am I?, what makes it funny, unreliable narrator, tries to rape our girl, punched her unconscious, got lusty, inside cave people’s heads, pointing sticks inside their heads, rocks, Nadara’s POV, I can’t marry you now, marrying doesn’t just involve grabbing your hair and dragging you to my cave, funny interaction, prudish, not-religious, doesn’t ever go native, not from the upperclass, fearful of cannibals, life is way better on shore, little work, lots of food, and sex available, made up earthquake, a leopard in the words, has a happy ending, what a classist, his mom dies, forced back to Earth, wife is laden with eggs, getting broody, just makes you get the next book, The Gods Of Mars, if that’s even a word, tied together, anglo-saxon and gallic ruling classes, seven novels in 1913, stinkers, Warlord Of Mars, The Mucker, The Mad King, at the typewriter labouring, he was The Efficiency Expert, the American dream worked for him, he wasn’t begging Farnsworth [Wright] for his cheque, harder, the millenial, he was web 2.0, PayPal guy, Charles Ardai, I’d like to be a sharecropper for streaming, your account is deleted, we’ve demonitized you, you have to, even if google downranks you, Eyes Left, 30 retweets and 1000 views, a huge account, turned off in a second, truth social!, all my devices, Bluesky, If This Then That (IFTTT), calling it like it is, in the bubble, we’re in a bubble, COVID is not over people, Ukraine and Russia crap, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner daughter, focused on her watermelon shirt, Palastine flag, wearing a mask outside, a celebrity daughter, a search, weirdos who take these pictures, always wearing a mask, that’s the story, an OCD trigger, people who have problems, a security blanket now, I’m a good person, she’s not going to die if she get’s COVID, it’s either she’s hiding her face or she’s triggered by it, wearing masks together, mental trauma thing, always COVID people, Trish Matson, outdoor party on the patio, vaccination status, the vaccinations don’t work, sci-fi conventions wear mask, all the killer virus stories we wrote, Glasgow worldcon, vaccination status, get bullied, allergic against these things, at a grocery store, yelled at in an empty room, murderer or something, dropped off on a primitive island, get their health up, cooking?, she made fire, Burroughs didn’t do the research, just eats those fruits he doesn’t even name, crabs, sashimi, fish out of the river, oysters, a girl in the forest he’s afraid of, he’s handsome, skinny rail 6 foot 2 guy, confusing tall for handsome, he runs away, gets his courage up, chases her, end it now, you’re the strongest man I’ve ever met, mischaracterized, perception wrong, I can work with this raw clay, his bumped up forehead, showed it had a brain inside, incompetent, she builds up his confidence, so many nagulas, I’ve never bothered to count, runs away like a coward, build up my muscles, she’s mad at him, he ghosted her, becomes unjustifiably angry, fully justified, dumped her with cave people, I’m right behind you, kidnapped by airpirates, drag me by my hair to that cave over there, unacceptable, needed to have the proper ceremony, honeymoon in Hawaii, fantasy wish fulfillment, gone native, what’s her name for him, Thandar!, Thundar, a Lin Carter name, the brave one, barbarian sounding name, sounds good, the beautiful one, the one with the high forehead, The Outer Limits, a Charles Beaumont story The Beautiful People, perfectly normal looking girl, it couldn’t have been like that, deformed, forehead is too high, Burroughs can’t play that game, he can’t play it, girl gets kidnapped, the same recipe every time, a great recipe, Lester Dent pulp fiction master plot, cut out all the racism and classicism, engage with the classicism, his dad turned out to be ok, the mom dominated the baby, all the languages, compose greek and latin poems, the mom fucked him up, the other girl fixes him with Burroughs, having a nice girl who can give you nice babies, the Burroughs fantasy, they don’t have kings before he shows up, Robert E. Howard had written this, civilization is bad, barbarism is good, have his book learning be useful, if L. Sprague DeCamp had written this, Mark Twain, explicitly a comedy, funny, funny on purpose, always does the same thing, American goes to Mars marries princess, Tarzan was a British guy, goes to Venus marries a princess, in the margins, his mother was an Earth astronaut, John Carter in reverse, this is also Donkey Kong, save the princess from the monkey mother, Super Mario Bros., he’s lower class, a Japanese thing, everybody knows only Americans can go to fantasy kingdom, you work with your hands?, not even an anglo-saxon, fake princess, half-breeds of whatever, not cool with it, make some friends, Woola, maybe that is why they don’t do as well as Burroughs, romance, maybe Will knows, romance is actually for men, men are more romantic than women, a romance for men, a meet cute, standards he is putting on himself, things that don’t make it romantic, maybe there are some kinds of romance books, if you look at what’s going on, Robert E. Howard stand-in, having a buff body so they can be suitable for a trad wife, Michael Crichton’s Travels, fantastic!, Tolkien, H.P. Lovecraft, Frank Herbert, Michael Crichton, right wing tradition, conservative, Howard’s not on the list, his fanzine, anything published before 2010, far right coded, farmers protesting, sympathizing with the farmers, unapproved people are daring to protest, useless rich kids who glue themselves to streets, heirs of tobacco dynasty, will is fuming at this statement, issuing paper, smeared as nazis, reichsburgers, more interested in romance than women, an older idea of romance, situate this, trad dudes who follow you in twitter, they didn’t exist, a mainstream audience of the working man, factory workers, marrying the rich dude, Cinderella, chunky Cinderella, adventure for sure, we do have to constitute it, this might have a grain of thought, men are much more romantic than women, is that really true, makes a very strong, 1912s, as a pragmatic woman, women have to be, a male romance, would appeal to that sensibility, 1913, more appealing, Jane Austen, contrast, which of these brooding men are most secure for my offspring, which of these cave women, a lot of dudes to kill, a lot of missing people in the female department, which of these families that are suitable for me to marry into, Persuasion, of the six, Mansfield Park, the focus, Jane Austen is to women as Edgar Rice Burroughs is to men, lower upperclass, upper middleclass, trying not to be lowered, Napoleonic wars, always stuck with the baby, always the case, baby out of wedlock, a meme, REH people, trad wife and chad, guys with beards, no NPC guy or Wojak, women and children into the lifeboats, CHADS: Yes, more problems, from the Titanic, the first class women, setting aside class, difficult, men saying that, men know they’re disposable compared to women, some other dude’s going to have to raise my kid, built into the men, romanticism, not very practical, giving insight into why it strikes the chord of popularity, class does matter because it is connected to money, a brainy boy, looking down on Nadara, little does she know, I’m going to do something I’ve never done: apologize, The Gilded Age, HBO, Cynthia Nixon, literally not important, his coping mechanism, the dad from Pride And Prejudice, dotty, Harvard or Yale, wealthy family from Boston, died because he couldn’t swim, how did he survive the shipwreck, act of God, act of Edgar Rice Burroughs, three guys went overboard, a huge endowment, every student should know how to swim, prove that they can swim, Columbia university, take a swim class, the 3rd class steerage kids, engineering classes, how many lifeboats a ship should have, lifeboats based on tonnage, added extra lifeboats, capsized at the pier in Chicago, inland waters, the great lakes are their own kinda thing, free shipping, just a highway, a line in this book about that, he looked at the map and saw these trade routes, tramp freighters, the Pacific is kind of big, real world experience, grandfather was a captain on an east Asia liner, the timing, an extended one into the forest, six months, a year, the elapsed time for the book, Gilligan’s Island, Robinson Crusoe, makes capitalism happen, a cross section of society, movie star, scientist, only one worker in this society, makes things out of coconuts, Thurston Howell III, trad wife, Mary-Ann, the movie star, boss, whatever the society tells him to do, a commentary on America at the time, what does it say?, stuck at Atlanta airport, all Cora’s stories: unaccompanied kid, a black woman reading romance novels, Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch, a whole sociological different thing, endless loop, TVLand, close it with the Robinsinade Gilligan’s Island connection, he’s king, trying to reverse the American revolution, the elected king, wanted Washington to be King, a Fredosphere idea, the United States as founded by Pirates, a King Washington descendant in the White House, palace rather than a house, how would things be different, DC surrounded by the Versailles of courtiers, ruled by an upperclass, wouldn’t be that different, kick out King Washington, the slavery question, gone the way of the British monarchy, figurehead, ceremonial head of state, speaker of the house, prime minister, a twitter conversation, I’ve been drinking, the fig leaf of our democracy, you can vote, if the demos had power you would get what you want, the myth staves off revolution, German democracy, blockaded on his holiday, take a helicopter back, she’s gone, the trains are striking as well, overthrow this horrible democracy in Germany, family owned farms, family estates, pork, schweinefleisch, fresh local produce, they should be revolting if the government is fucking up, gynecologist, surname, a dashed name, married to a pig farmer, super-happy, married outside of her class?!, what a scandal!, hate her husband, a small town in Canada, very catty, the green voters, upwardly mobile middle class academics, on the side of the farmers, new stuff added to the schedule, The Seventh by Richard Stark, 1st Sunday in Lent, you have to give up things you love, besides meat, give up smoking, start smoking so you can quit, you can still have fish, a bigger thing for a week, no meat, no twitter the second week, no screens would hurt, can’t get in your car sometime, 2 short stories, Weinbaum/Simak, Return From The Stars by Stanislaw Lem, he was a committee according to Philip K. Dick, W. Scott Poole book, a Connor show, we’re signing up for something, Confessions Of An English Opium Eater, a copyright strike from CBC, the closing credits of the John Carter Of Mars movie, a big nasty take-down strike, watchalongs, music playing in the background, 1821, about a guy explaining his addiction, drug memoir, pre-drug hippy style people, a bit of lingering death, a bad case of death, Lovecraft uses the pleasures and pains, The Mad Planet, a Maissa Will joint, Lucian’s True History, 2000 year old quasi-science fiction from the Roman Empire, What Mad Universe by Fredric Brown, The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown, The Triumph Of Evil, Such Men Are Dangerous, ill, get back in bed, doesn’t really matter, was it covid?, what difference does it make?, attacked Bernie Sanders, working from home, I’ve got COVID I’m sure glad I got those vaccines, DefiantLs, 2 tweets juxtaposed, not being ironic, what the hell dude, you should rest, six weeks of rest, the laptop class, Paul Kavanaugh, a pseudonym, a Florida Key island, not able to have conversations, two drinks every day, he’s gotta list, I want you for a job, hijack nuclear weapons and sell them for a profit, The Last Spaceship by Murray Leinster, interplanetary teleporters, steals the last spaceship, human read, William Sky (Stories From The Sky), a romping story, great old fashioned space opera, the pause at the end, a silent gap for five seconds, let the story sink in, Putin in his power, never read the comments, sell you on The Mad Planet by Murray Leinster, first global warming ever written, human beings have descended into savagery, are their dinosaurs, Burl has spent his entire life, post-apocalyptic nature writing, June 12, 1920, 30,000 years in the future, various forms of fungi, giant insects and arachnids, toadstool forests, you had me at giant spiders, what makes it a Maissa-Will book, Will is a fun guy, listen to the narrator, if you need a sleeping age, wait for the next version, it’s a long life, if we can hold out, long novella, short novel, giant spiders, satire of outlandish tales, presented fantastic of mythical events, travel in outerspace, I doubt it, Gilgamesh is gonna have it, would Hugo Gernsback call it science fiction, he has a good definition of science fiction, trying to sell magazines, satire, parody, only an hour and half long, swallowed by a 200 mile long whale, a sea of milk, an island of cheese, deliver a letter to Calypso given to them by Odysseus, in the original latin or greek, A Witch Shall Be Born, where he gets nailed, one of the most famous scenes, gets crucified, every illustrator does the crucification scene, two semi-naked identical nude women whipping each other, female body inspector, cimmerians are all like that, the only screen adaption of a Howard story, a Red Nails was in production, a fan version, Conan The Adventurer, three TV shows, Kevin Sorbo’s Kull The Conqueror, better than the Conan reboot, would have made a great Conan, the Solomon Kane one, devil worship and shit, good scenes, good costumes, get a writer who likes the material, Max von Sydow, Max von Side-Eye (@SvenTystnad), The Last Of The Last Of The Mohicans (1992), lotta Hawkeyes, fuck the book, Daniel Day Lewis, My Left Foot (1989), Lincoln, this movie is awesome, a very male romantic movie, Edgar Rice Burroughs with noir and real villains, West Studi plays the meanest indian, Magwa will put the greyhair under the knife, a good cast, Madeline Stowe’s the love interest, Natty Bumpo and Magwa, I’m stealing your woman, let’s run through the forest for six hours, a dude movie, so romantic, great ending, Heat (1995) is almost too good, Pacino and Deniro, checkmate, Collateral (2004), Thief (1981), Miami Vice, style, substance, just out of prison, back in the business of being a thief, the mob come to him, I’m out, Willie Nelson, no you’re not you got a girlfriend, so she’ll never love him, burns his house down, before going straight, Jim Belushi, Dennis Farina, a man expressing that extreme level of independence, very Jesse vibe, the Conan thing, I’m not going to take your shit, you have to inform on your friends, may have grabbed a sword, their mistake was letting Conan in the building, Manhunter (1986), very solid, Silence Of The Lambs (1991) came out, did too good a job, William Peterson looking cool, nerd, filmed in Florida, Public Enemies (2009), very 2009, banks are evil, here’s a guy who fought the banks, noble bankrobber, Ferrari (2023), semifactual racecar movies, The Insider (1999), they made the 60 Minutes crew the heroes, The Aviator (2004), they played brothers, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? (1993), The Lack podcast, how many podcast do you listen to?, audiobooks more than podcasts, listening to Damien G. Walter’s podcasts, interacted with him online, poor you, before he was a digital nomad, a columnist for The Guardian, he’s a prophet my dear, people are saying, he prophet greatly, he has takes, deeply ideological, the philosophy is wrong, his takes are bad, he prophet so it doesn’t matter, Sad Puppies hate him, little known writers, fantasizes about killing him, a deleted tweet from Cirsova, thought better of it, grey checkmark, wearing a plastic bag and a mask and a respirator under the mask, it was covid, minutes away, the only crime that occurred on J6, that’s violence, “storming”, revolution, I wish, they had no weapons, defend your lack of liking this deleted tweet, the person who was killed was shot by a cop, the narrative is that it was insurrection, they didn’t bring any weapons, the Capitol building, idiotic protestors, politicians were scared, caused a mess, a Christian holiday, if you drill down, deaths of 9 people, 5 people involved by direct cause, 4 capitol police officers caused by suicides, people don’t know, Ashli Babbit, fatally shot in the upper chest, Brian Sicknick, pepper sprayed, strokes the next day, all that transpired played a role, died of amphetamine overdose, naturally from coronary heart disease, eating margarine, in the days and months that followed, died by suicide, misdiagnosed concussion, in July, found, 15 were hospitalized, some with severe injuries, this is 9/11, the means vs. the ends, a protest, violence is bad, you should allow yourself to be killed, I don’t like these people, what shapes the narrative, flipping over our government, the government doesn’t care about you, fantasy of collecting social security one day, you can make our old people poorer and work longer, the damage done, when you put tear gas at people, furniture, Nancy Pelosi’s lectern, lady climbing through a window, an interesting life, people who have the time to go protest in Washington, D.C., the current president, even saying he has a claim is silly, the words coming out of his mouth, not the majority of the people there, or in Canada, the truckers, these are lies, all the farmers are Nazis, starve to death, buy mangoes shipped in at a huge cost to the environment, look at this, a class things, points his sidearm towards an attacker, tell the story please, broken glass, that guy is pointing a gun at a human being, roving gangs of avengers, super-powers the only way, strong young men from Boston, as only they can, like Tarzan, nosy old ladies in charge of these things, policing in Cuba, weaponize those nosy old gossip ladies, use judgement, a real gossip hound, digging up the boring dirt that is not a threat to our society, makes her really sad, recognizes it in herself, can’t we all just get a long, can’t I talk you down from this, give out a lot of tickets and do what the bosses says, a call center worker, old ladies, couldn’t sell them anything, something very benign, in house magazine for a government funded, Jesse was always at the bottom, not pressuring these old ladies more, Jesse just get off the call, call more people, impolite, Edward Bellamy, the society of the future, restaurants are horrible, a server, a greeter, hostess, that’s security guard, they’re old people, its just like a camera, a living camera, they find you a seat, part of the fantasy, American restaurant, just leave me alone, the ability to increase your wages by getting tips, feeds into each other, automat, a cafeteria, cafeterias in the future, access to a kitchen, this kind of mustard, how many kinds of mustard do we need?, dijon, honey, yellow, visible grain, thomy mustard, comes in a little tiny mug, blue lid, a literal mug, sometimes they’re not good, Bavarian classic mustard, mustard connoisseurs, #MustardAndKetchupGetup, one of the few Chinese words, sauce, tricking people into eating rotten tomatoes, Heinz family, descendants of German immigrants, curry ketchup, currywurst, gypsysauce, a bad word, gyp, sauerkraut, common here, everyday glasses are mustard jars, Hengstenberg mustards, Landsberg mustard, an export brand, other than spicy mustard, questions about Worldcon, Glasgow, what happens at worldcon?, masking, dealer’s room is good, panels, readings, signings, a gaming room, pronouns happens, old bald dude he him, pronoun stickers for your badge, cosplay, guests of honor, fantasy writer, British, Prometheus Award winner, they’re gonna take your Hugo back, take it back, they think they can revoke, don’t read Heinlein!, how dare you, listed on Wikipedia, that could be changed, withdrawn, removed, demoted, panels are a pretty normal experience, a podcast but boring, even a good panel is bad, run out of time, assuming no knowledge, not very much time, way off topic, potentially spicy, frowned upon, a moderator, to keep people from hogging the panel, someone who doesn’t talk, two podcasters who talked a lot, of Tor books, what does Teresa Nielsen Hayden have to say, podcasters don’t usually have a problem talking, kind of hates Cora, muted the thread, hyphenated, all hyphenated people are muted, not spicy enough, the usefulness of the Hugo awards, the trustworthy ones, for the best science fiction and fantasy, what role do they play, they don’t roll much, N.K. Jemisin, T. Kingfisher, Connie Willis, put Hugo after your name, a lot of misses, a lot of hits, became classics, David Brin, Hugo winner, Jesse is a total awards nihilist, bigger audience, following on twitter, pushed over the 3000 mark, meet more people, gets easier, how much did you get paid for the story, how many digits, in the 2 digit range, $2000 a year if they’re a famous writer, a cheque for $78, worthwhile exercise, a worthwhile exercise, a flash story, $25, answer the question, Cora, it depends, use it as a reading list, used to, quite miserable, fine with several of them, hated all of the books but one, Ken MacLeod, probably a lovely person, shitty people and you love their books, nice person and you hate their books, what else you got Will?, keeping up with it [short stories] in a meaningful way, top 15 nominees, just missed, crowdsourcing, big fanbase, goes to every con, great filkers, the nominations for 2023, LadyBusiness, you can add something, very democratic, list of podcasts, American Writers 100 Pages At A Time, Paul, Androids And Assets, for the Star Trek one, a YouTube, Cerebro, Chrononauts, Crafting With Ursula, Doctor Who Verity, Ex Urb Ad Astra, Fanac.org, Filkcast, Hugo Girl, Hugos There, Seth Heasley, cancelled for the Campbell reference, with David Agranoff, If This Goes On, J. Miles Explains The X-Men, vaugely science fiction related, Just King Things, Kalandi, a YouTube, SFFreader, gush about, Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast, second wave, Literature Science Alliance, Are Human, Octothorpe, One Flesh One End, Onyx Pages, Our Opinions Are Correct, won too many people, Radio Free Skaro, Rite Gud, not them they’re terrible, Science Fiction 101, it’s British, skeptical of the British, SFFaudio spelt wrong, host/producer, SFFYeah, SFF180, why do people hate you Cora, good takes to all 6 of his viewers, underpitching it a bit, Staship Fonzie, Steve Sheeves, Stitch And Bitch, Sword And Laser, g4 tech TV, Take Me To Your Reader, The Book Finch, Coode Street, steampunk Victorian people, good that steampunk is over, Gary K. Wolfe, Luke Burrage, Skiffy And Fantay, Shaun Duke has blocked Jesse, 2 Minute Time Lord, all the Doctor Who references, Wizards And Lesbians, Wizards With Guns, dudes with mustaches, fart and poop jokes, Worldbuilding For Masochists, Tar Valen or Bust, Wheel Of Time, Eating the Fantastic, comics people, Tales From The Trunk, Hillary is male, Story Hour, If This Goes On Don’t Panic, two different story titles in one, Voluminous, very good, read H.P. Lovecraft letters, very liberal nice people who have nice, HPLHS, one of them (or both) is gay, made Lovecraft their jobs, actors, Chilean SFF on Youtube, The Cromcast, Rogues In The House, repeating themselves, having fun, doing their podcast only for them, we don’t repeat shows, after 10 years, that’s fine, just do the poetry instead, can only read it once, if you’re going to remake a movie, don’t remake that, stop making that, do it once, move on, Luke Burrage repeats himself, eligible?, a minimum of 4 episodes, recusing myself, since 2023 is now over, they don’t pay your flight, guests of honor, good to get the people nominating on the stage, The Oscars, cosplaying as an unmade bed, evening gowns, the clothes are more weird, actual playback history, Second Shift, an audio drama where 3 teens who work at a pizza place and transported to a fantasy realm, as in the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon, The Last Drive, Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, Scott Miller, great audiobook narrator, a Jesse follower, a Scott follower, too democratic, Buckaroo Banzai, Golan Globus Theater, talk about movies, two Israeli guys, action movies, Charles Bronson, quick good fun movies, ignorant and funny, American Writers 100 Pages at a time, Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Mate, Gabor Mate, 2 Jews talking about what’s going on in Gaza, Gaza all the time, Matt Taibbi, The Lack, Racket To Go, SFBRP, Witchhouse Media, Strange Studies Of Strange Stories, science fiction stuff, liberal boring, H.P. Lovecraft guys who ran out of H.P. Lovecraft, weird fiction, Guy de Maupassant month, takes aren’t spicy enough, more of an entertainment show, the plot of what’s happening, a useful service, Compact Magazine, Nina Power, Mr Jim Moon, Hypnogoria podcast, BBC In Our Time, How Doctor Who Stood The Test Of Time, their opinions are not correct, to get inside the mind and understand people, figure out why people are wrong, the alternative is violence, censorship, the same thing, too spicy, quote tweeting, migrants coming at the border, one A-10 could solve this, that would make him a monster, a very fruitful discussion, murdering a whole bunch of people, a tool for the politicians to do shit, a result of politicians acting overseas, would be very reasonable, not here to defend that tweet, there are people, show them out of the helicopters, seems a lot more reasonable and more cynical, Paul refused to be on a podcast with him, very reasonable, very cynical on the tweets, generic shitposting, naked dick pick, vile antisemitism, free Palestine, why are you harassing us with all of these reports, “one a-10 would fix this”, 15,000 individuals, I can’t with so much pettiness, are these migrants?, daywalk, refugees, farm work for a while, guest workers, replacement workers, scabs, there’s arguments to made here, about as deep as you can get on twitter, severe down-punching, practical and political, the people who replied, cosplaying, cartoon responses, this is what triggers Paul, seems to be a call for violence, doesn’t come across very well in tweets, too vile, if your house burns, we still have the rental car, an engagement point rather than a solution, seems vile, incitement to hatred, parasites, kept denying the holocaust, step back, literally not true, who is in charge of the US airforce, secretary of defense, Joe Biden, whoever is ruling the U.S., a very cynical take, when you can’t do anything, shoot refuges at the German Polish border, he’s not a politician, an aristocratic lady and far right, Tolkien vs. Lewis, Teen-Titans, politics in here, Quakers get wrecked, Biden administration, statue of William Penn, a Quaker teacher once, typical for a government, Cirsova’s politics are political realist, really horrible, feels unsafe, constantly on alert, most San Francisco, gibbering black crack head barely looked human, FAS, a lot of problems in society, mom was drinking while pregnant, alcoholism, alcohol is poison, smoke a lot, baby underweight, very funny, read between the lines, they have no faith in anything that’s political, potholes everywhere, a great place to look at the failure of everything, watching good old movies, charitable, be prepared to do violence, may do and are doing is a big difference, Minority Report by Philip K. Dick, 3 precogs, 2 predict, hence the minority report, I’m not going to do a murder, prediction vs. are doing, so kindly butted into so kindly, David Currie in the UK, fight me, I like him, not a good thing to do, joking with, Guardian article, Russian and Chinese imperialism, could happen in future vs. actually happening now, hypotheticals, most of the bad things that could happen don’t happen, I shouldn’t eat this chocolate, is it good to not eat the chocolate, adulterated chocolate, artificial flavours, Hershey’s, palm oil, seed oils, belongs in palms, not food, no business being in chocolate, they feed it to humans, palm plantations, a food additive, instant ramen, Thailand, Brazil, rapeseed oil, canola, sunflower, which we like, olive oil, actually made out of olives, not human food, feed animals, industrial lubricants into human food, no more margarine for you, make your own mayo, they don’t have flavours, rape oil, canola, people think rape is bad, fields of rape, very Orwellian, not something you should put in your body, might remove some skin oils, when Cora dissed the tobacco industry, fume as in over the tobacco, a little bit tobacco pilled, pumping toxins into the air, continuously, exercise your liver a little bit, more than 10 drinks a day, cigar, you don’t put it into your lungs, the point of the drug, smoking is probably better than drinking, smoke or drink?, alcohol in your food, inherited whiskey, brandy, cognac, mostly beer, the alcohol is dry, I’m never going to drink that.

Dell MapBack - The Cave Girl by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #771 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Pirates of Venus by Edgar Rice Burroughs

The SFFaudio Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #771 – Pirates of Venus by Edgar Rice Burroughs, read by Phil Chenevert for LibriVox. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the book (6 hours, 12 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Alex (Pulpcovers.com), and Evan Lampe

Talked about on today’s show:
Argosy in 6 parts in 1932, the scanning community, go by date, somebody didn’t renew it, sticklerish, The Mad King, The Girl From Hollywood, fantasy oriented, dedicated to the craft of pulpwriting, cranked out words, do 700 episodes, he’s really good writer, Evan was shitting all over this book on Twitter, quibbles, not his best book, let’s start with the poo, my thoughts on Pirates Of Venus, meme with Sorpanos, listen to yourself you sound demented, the attack is…, high on its own supply, its a fantasy, very fantasy, riding the line on self-parody, cutting lose and veering into self-parody, playing with the tropes, Burroughs is demented, what are your problems, strawmans socialism, the same communist revolution from The Moon Maid, wink wink to the KKK, the birdmen, the treemen, they’re simps, unless he’s being ironic, a really bad take, during the depression, escapism?, escapist, his politics, my entire reaction: “really?”, what a freak he is, four books in this series, a fifth book, the ending on this, you’re going to have to read the next book, John Carter books, wrapped up nicely, I’ve got gold here, at least 7 books in that series, signed up to write a bunch of books, see about the politics, gets his money from his great grandfather, soldier in India, continuing the colonial project, Will [Emmons], somehow doesn’t motivate me, why this series doesn’t get the attention that Barsoom does, the takeaway, written as a retro piece, 1912, sword and planet, closer to Leigh Brackett, Weinbaum, a sop to the older readers, Asimov is coming up here, closer to Foundation, we’re moving in that direction, deliberate throwbacks, Burroughs wrote this, no one else, Philip Jose Farmer, no one could do it like he did, these are Burroughs’ sentences, a really fun book, really interesting, there are merits to A Princess Of Mars, same plot, kidnapping dekidnapping, lots of animals and creatures, weird alien not quite monster, anybody there?, crab monster!, kind of annoying, not much happens at the end, she says I love you, there’s no more time in this episode, read the next book, flown away by a birdman, various art, pretty cool, treading water with a sword, pirate ships with no sails, powered by endurium or plutonium or handwavium, a sailing ship with masts removed, in order to recognize it, I’m vaguely familiar with this piece of tech, starts typing, his non-science fiction books, not enough pirates, not enough piracy, the third third of the book, too much trees, earthlike tech, a lot of gun-polishing, that Graeber book, paying close attention, when the revolution happens on the ship, our hero is in charge because he planned the revolution, yeah and if you don’t like it, obey me, that is never how a pirate ship, pirate ships are democracies, communist democracies, a takedown of communism, the Thorist are supposed to be communists, presented so weak, in 1930s America?, the communists were the badasses, he’s wrong not to like them, point to the mountains of skulls, the skull counting, once we start attatching names to particular skulls, 100 million counted Nazi soldiers as victims of communism, the parody of Victims Of Communisms, look at all those guys he killed, Carson Napier, Burroughs is in this story, via telepathy which he learned from a hindu, never uses his telepathy on Venus, only a mechanism to communicate the story, I got it from my uncle, you can go visit his tomb but he’s not really dead, great opening line, he’s not really again, master of illusions never pays off, framework to get it back to earth, astral projection, Spider-Man 2 (2004), Octavius is inventing nuclear fusion, AI controlled arms, a neuroinhibitor chip, build the fusion thing faster, invests 7 different groundbreaking fields of technology, I forgot the moon existed, silly, very instinctual, put the girl in, I need more girl, Sikorsky Amphibian, only left in the world, not a cheap peice of kit, became a stuntman because deathwish because his mom died?, rich and bored, built rocket cars in German, rocket spaceship, Mars is the ceiling, books and a year’s worth of food, Venus is fun, trying to see the Russian revolution, the narrative was so different back then or…, it’s not in the text, am I stupid?, socialism or communism, economic systems, violent revolution, that’s the core of it, everyone becoming equal and level, no more kings, complete leveling, giant dormitories, children will be raised by the state, strains of that, communal kitchens, the history of cooking utensils, the ideal city of the future, westerners writing about it, writing a place they’ve not, everybody eating in cafeterias, H.G. Wells, G.K. Chesterton, what drove people to socialism, socialist agitation, socialism in the 1880s, economic necessity, suffering in the streets, I don’t want to live in a tenement, the thinkers of socialism, William Morris, an idyllic and pastoral future, freed from stupid work, how pirates work, a great scene, I’m not giving up my weapon, if he’s really critiquing socialism/communism, that’s a parallel of that, prisoners aka slaves, clean guns all day, prisoners with jobs, seize the weapons, important officers, a new officer class, I’m not going to give up my gun, another guy laughs and the revolution is over, if I’m just handsome dashing main character, the NPCs fall in line, the pirate campaign, Pathfinder, the PCs: we’re gonna kill all of them, treat people as people, a lot of people operate their lives that way, some bureaucracy, denying someone a kidney, the United States is worse at than most countries, so many levels of bureaucracy, University Of Kansas, Uncle Remus magazine, these are really bad we don’t endorse these things, a 600 word essay, we hate racism, we don’t endorse racism, are you sure you want to click on this?, trigger warnings, a button on google: I feel Lucky, the whole point is they want to curate your experience of reality, a piratical revolution, the jongs and the thorists, the royal guy has a cute daughter, the extent of my thoughts, a serious critque of communism, you don’t know what you’re talking about, you can choose your master, choose me, some other boss you can work for, the surplus army of labour, Carson Napier doesn’t because he has inherited money, it’s been washed, his mom was perfect, extracting value from Indian colonialism, that’s not the way to make money, an absolute spendthrift, hire the Mexican government, rocket sled, sitting on an omnibus in the 1930s, that’s me one day, peak pulp era, when the Shadow was big, Batman, am lift, Doc Savage, independently wealthy, inherited wealth, found gold mine in South America, he owns twitter now, on the Wikipedia entry, it’s just not that, the main thing they do, separate class systems are a bad idea, each is respecting each other, when there’s somebody from the lower classes, bullshit statements, no such thing as marriage, also no infidelity, a fantasy of humans and how they, sword AND pistol, shoot your enemy from across the room, had I known this guy was so good at swordfighting…, once again sheer dumb luck, literally astronomical odds, living in the ewok village, a shared balcony, this is your big security system, the mansion can only be so big, absolutely required, this has a recipe, they’re always princesses, he is never a king, he’s an up and comer, I’m officer class, I don’t even believe in presidency, I believe in royalty, very successful businessman, hyping things, let’s make a movie out of it, Tarzana at this point?, WWII happens, I’m going to be a journalist now, put on military officer uniform, his own fantasy life, soup kitchens, moving from state to state, horrors of being superpoor, like Stephen King he has a knack, on the back of letterhead, compared to Robert E. Howard, always poor, he’s got a car, didn’t try to sell to Weird Tales, he has magic fingers, Max Brand, such a huge hit, $100,000 or something, WWI deserter to wealthy man right into WWII, he bought that whole part of southern California, maybe it was the movies, he was the #1 selling authors of the 20s, and those movie serials, Johnny Weissmuller, Sheena is sexy, everyboduy thought he was the greatest thing ever, later Tarzan, really crazy real fast, arab shiek, hunting lions, too close to the daughter, lost Atlantean colony, sexual dimorphism gone crazy, shipwrecked, where Tarzan’s parents died, lost Roman legions, hollow earth, Pellucidar, weird ghost letter, marriage, line marriage, should’ve been a line marriage book, obsessed with monogamy, whoever Mrs. Burroughs was, life extension, amazing laser tech, amazing medical tech, radios, effective maps of their planet, all fun, the NPC handwaving problems away, he has an explanation that’s bad, low fertility, the Thorists want both, secret recipe, the scientists, such a strawman, not recognizable, and Marx starved two of his own children, they were so fucking poor, we don’t have enough food, an immigrant, that can’t be true, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, he was sad about his kids dying, infant mortality was really high, terrible service, he may have said that, other people may have seen that, the pop culture view of communism, people say lots of bad things about Putin, that’s the character your making in your head, The Efficency Expert, The Mucker, Tarzan Of The Apes, cringey because of the hanging, we’ve done this before, fishmen, Lost On Venus, not enough time with the birdmen, Heinlein’s 4 years away from this, Heinlein’s Time For The Stars, twins shows up every once in a while in Heinlein, indistinguishable twins, Space Cadet, his plan for the UN and nukes, the intro part, joining the army, going through basic training, when you nuke your own city, very aware of his audience, you’ve got to close your eyes and drop marbles into a beer bottle, proprioception,, arbitrary tests, you’re a grown boy, the female princess daughter of Duras, green screen, darker skin, green skin space babe, Star Trek, hot alien, sometimes she’s brunette, vaguely Arabic looking, pretty, the trees are not green, presumed pink, in contrast to Mars being the red planet, green being Venus, in the injury to his buddy, the wounds, Shelob, this is a fantasy book in almost every respect, rocketships to the Moon before this, gun to the Moon, Cavorite trip to the Moon, an anti-gravity, Weinbaum comes in, well actually, she lives in a bottle, a jellyfish floating in the clouds, that’s your gene pool, you can romance it, laid eggs, women have breasts but they lay eggs, the element of the KKK, not a condemnation, why does he bring it up?, a thing that’s popular, making these alien names, Olthar, Camlot, taking sounds, Amtor, fiddling around, he is so not J.R.R. Tolkien, Tolkien goes to farm, elfish poetry, where elfen poetry was once read, he enjoys himself, nobody asked for this, Tolkien is the anti-Burroughs, noodling around in his own head, my books should not be lowered [to paperback], pirated in the United States, Evan making a defense of The Lord Of The Rings tv show, the orcs, the orc stuff was really based, the Galadriel stuff was really good too, just a woke cuck, Jesse doesn’t know what a simp is, you gotta watch more streamers, why do these guys come up every three years, Vaush, Matt Christman, Evan likes both, he’s like a troll, he’s pretty good at that, most of what Vaush says is on point, there’s something wrong with Evan’s brain, and yet I have not murdered you, these should all just be podcasts, Jesse doesn’t need video, playing Elden Ring and just listening to it, are people still Elden Ringing, we’re all boomers, we all live in the age of US supremacy, I’d have a boat, consumer republic, less and less relevant, 26 Tarzan books, lost colony of Atlantis, a James Bond figure, where Tarzan was seriously assigned, is Tarzan a book about empire?, a really good insight into this period of time, maybe My Little Pony is comprehensible, I’m a dude, I wouldn’t say no to a loincloth and a knife made out of stone but 26 books, L. Frank Baum, 14 Oz books, basic language, generational, coming out every couple of years, Harry Potter, the Glinken country, the Yellow Brick road is about the gold standard, William Jennings Bryan’s cross of gold speech, 100 years later, is it the fact that this is supposed to be a critique of communism, blatant, the state’s controlling you, as opposed to the king, it wasn’t a libertarian revolution, more parallels to the French Revolution, that’s what was happening, something racist about Oz?, all of it was racist, pay not attention to the man behind the curtain, the emperor’s new clothes, useful concepts that come out of literature, people knowing them, a psychological defense, a psychological arm-bar with concepts, a series of images, a girl away from home, all on a quest, place everybody’s talking about, going to Hollywood, that’s exactly right, the Emerald City is a complete lie, to keep the emeralds from blinding you, a good concept, as a young person, in a different way than Encyclopedia Brown, the sword that says awarded after the first battle of Bull Run, the Battle of First Manassas, the only kid with Wikipedia on his phone running around solving crimes, The Only Man On Mars With Wifi, detective solves with chat GPT, list the clues in chat GPT and it will tell you who did the crime, a telephone chat GPT that uses spam callers waste their time, Hello Mrs. Blah Blah Blah, if you’re in India or Pakistan and your name is Simon or Stephen, this person’s a little weird, oh there’s a bee on my arm, an elderly person who can’t hear very well, the chat GPT salesperson, email and phone calls have been destroyed by spam, this was a fine book, direct messages, Burroughs Sucks As Does This Tweet, an ideology that has killed millions of people, it’s not an argument, not even a satire, I need some bad guys, what do bad guys look like, the sequels to The Moon Maid, so he could get to the totalitarian communist future, Red Dawn-style, let’s not do that, they’re Moon communists, when Will read about, protestant emotional repression, her brows knit in thought, what is that?, love, it is wicked, is love wicked on Amtor?, whatever her name is, without sinning, the daughter of a jong, Korean word for king, what are the odds he knew that?, not good, he believes everything he’s writing, not a construction, but an explication, not a lot of ideology, the win condition is marrying the princess, a storytelling technique, little girls want to be princesses, its okay for the dude to marry up into a princess family, the girl wants to marry into a competent family, Edgar Rice Burroughs is a fantasy men, Cinderella is a fantasy for women, Prince Charming is faceblind, spicy foods for everybody to enjoy, laughing about him, laughing along, they’re not set aside, The Mad King, in all of these books, it can’t be just a regular girl, it has to be , even the one about working at Sears (The Efficiency Expert), daughter of a high class person, romance for men in the same way that Conan is, Conan’s class consciousness, American men have always been incels, Jesse doesn’t use that language, dreaming of marrying up, how the incels talk, chads get all the girls, left miserable, but they can read Burroughs, hypergamist, the men always marry up, marrying up, he’s not, Zenobia is not a queen, Conan makes her a queen, she was a harem girl, she was not a virgin princess, a class thing there, Howard would have been wealthy had he lived longer, he wasn’t in bookstores, Lovecraft would have been wealthy, the demand is high, when reading Robert E. Howard, different kinds of games, sometimes he says “what is the nature of reality” and then he stabs the wizard, satisfied for a moment, showing up on LibriVox, we’ve seen it before, Howard is capable of much more on this guy, he’s not substantive, YouTube podcast, frothy and fun and light, compared him to Stephen King, a different cast, Burroughs never talks about kids, King talks about kids, kid protagonists, he has a lot more to say, most writers have more to say, space em out, adventure, avoid execution, marry the princess, The Girl From Hollywood, a female finding a man?, none of his popular stuff, no Tarzan books need to be Jane centered, Lois Lane or Jimmy Olsen comics, Superman’s girl friend, Supergirl, Jungle Girl, everything is about Superman, she’s always sexperving on Superman, is this what girls want?, Cambodia, stories for boys, a female protagonist story, he was a brand, you don’t want to piss off the audience, what the romance writers do, hardboiled detective under another name, The Cave Girl, a lost world novel, 1913, Dolores Claiborne, chain people up on beds, Gerald’s Game, domestic abuse, Misery, Rose Matter, Lisey’s Story, Outlaw Of Torn, relaxing rather than engaging, a society made out of tree people, other criticisms?, Donald E. Westlake, Killing Time, territories respected, a fine place to live, an anti-corruption investigator, 210 pages, still working on a couple, Mating Center by Frank Belknap Long, Hay Ibn Yaqzan by Ibn Tufail, guys raised by a gazelle, time next year, not that great, Paul will be upset by it, too much mating, specialized job, we’re there, reproduction is also a specialized job, horny people out in society, a frightening view of life in 2061, hey, we’re guarding, that Ninteen Eighty-Four cover, Winston Smith and Julia, lesbians in prison, encourage Evan to finish, he’s andalusian, Andalusian Aristotelian, Green Mansions by William Henry Hudson, Rima The Jungle Girl, Green Mansions, a primitive girl, Abel, Tarzan from South America, Sheena, The Jungle Book, another Kipling thing?, Citizen Of The Galaxy by Robert A. Heinlein, reading the writers who read stuff, it isn’t super-literary, reading material, Rocket Ship Galileo, Jack London would have made it the center of the book, the counter to Burroughs, fantasy strawman, fantasy animals, life is mean, let’s have fun, how much did Burroughs read?, hold my beer, he probably read the newspaper and a few pulp magazine, rips off Prisoner Of Zenda, today we have a lot of writers who are writing to make movies or tv shows, what’s so amazing about a good book, using the medium what it’s for, it is what it is, assigning a bunch of Ted Chiang stories, psychology, assign these short stories, grumble at first, they’re simps, they’re boomers, he’s short and he hits, they’re not designed to be adapted, Burroughs’ Tarzan is easy to adapt, some plants and a rope, Black Mirror, Charlie Brooker, how we use language, so psychologically relevant, substantive, that’s what you get for giving a historian the job, not your thing?, he marries a princess who’s an orangutan, like Robinson Crusoe, Rousseau would’ve loved this book, noted father, how to raise children to be free, Plato is wrong but he has amazing ideas, we can use those things, bad maps give us maps to territories that we can get to and give us better bad maps, commentary on education, the point of education, bye kids, I gotta go write about being free, Jesse is tryna be free, make the most of their freedom, what does Alex do about this, a weird high school, very lucky and happy, worry about college, college can be fun, top schools, Asians are the new white people, University of Minnesota Duluth, homeschooled, you’re going to horse school, you’re going to be a farmer, locked in, my cheques are going over there, homeschool, something to do, big college tip, under recognized as a great place to meet a spouse, just marry a princess at your college, this is the person I really like, Midwest cow college, with cows, between Indiana and the Rocky Mountains, north of the Ohio river, Brown, first major boss was a Brown Phd and a major dick, he really wanted to be a manager, he was right about that, fun trouble, save your anger up for the show, provoking Evan, the first 2 hours, the ideology that killed the most, this boring shit, Burroughs took quite a dump, he can go fuck himself, oh come on, not that much more to do, he has a lot of sequels, maybe if youre in a factory job, you’ve got a big commute, your escape on the way to work, 6 hour podcast, 8 hour podcast at work, putting up with a lot of shitty shit Jesse says, the secret to his success, doesn’t explain Stephen King that well, he knows people, brain mashing, Burroughs isn’t a character writer, both are incredibly smooth in transferring thoughts into your brain, there’s no difference, they’re blank slates, Carson is a lot less competent, incredibly stupid mistakes, he’s a sloppy researcher, John Carter was hypercompetent, he’s like The Highlander, hypercompetent, has superpowers, he’s Superman, gentleman adventurer, luck saves him again, coulda used a Woola, alien companion dog, an inversion of The Star Beast, explicitly just people, space tiger, Weinbaum’s a genius, he’s jokey, why the genre moved on, this is kinda retro, The Mysterious Island, the wish fulfillment engineer story, building the ship, inventing the thing, Black Priestess Of Varda, rawer, Erik Fennel, near the end, he’s just a romance guy, really, how do they even have the concept of a year, they don’t even have the sun, Farscape.

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Pirates Of Venus by Edgar Rice Burroughs

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The SFFaudio Podcast #749 – READALONG: The Venom Business by Michael Crichton

The SFFaudio Podcast

Jesse, Paul Weimer, and Cora Buhlert talk about The Venom Business by Michael Crichton.

Talked about on today’s show:
John Lange, the worst Michael Crichton novel, the worst of the Lange books, the number one problem, it is too long, badly padded, random sex scenes, compared to Easy Go, no sex in Binary, it’s annoying, the characters are horrible assholes you don’t want to be around, thinking of the money, who are we supposed to sympathize with?, our hero, nobody is likeable, very ambitious, a big book, fast and simple and cool and delightful, a murder mystery where you’re waiting for the murder to happen, when are they going to kill this fucker?, shortly before the end, starts awesome, terrific, Mexico stuff, Edgar Wallace, Indiana Jones, Walter Matthau, German actors, weird sharp turn, as soon as he’s off the plane and releasing the snakes, goes to the party, Richard Pierce shows up, one of the worst characters, full of resentment, hoping he was going to die, they waited to the end, an Agatha Christie before the detective comes in, the plot is gonna get cookin’, where’d this black guy come from?, the cats shit, a snakehandler, a smuggler, Richard not Rupert, The Prisoner Of Zenda, a layabout, Channel Tunnel, 1964, typical UK move, Paul’s high-school teacher, never, England shouldn’t be part of Europe, a weird way, this whole Brexit thing, laughing, the terrible teachers live forever, a math teacher in her 80s, a lady in her 70s, teaching in the 1930s, fast track program in the 1930s, died of shock, bullied her poor daughter, the lead character in Easy Go was named Pierce, Binary is such a clean book, Barnaby is our equivalent of Black here, rich elderly guy introduced later, he likes the name, his first name is Dick Pierce, hence all the sex, this is horrible, a lusting machine that’s abusive, why did he make him so horrible, rooting for his death, Gunter Sachs, Brigitte Bardot, sex dispensing machines, Michael Crichton knew somebody like this, doctors in this book, a little bit of psychology, a psychiatrist, a surgeon, more human venom than snake venom, later chapters, backstory, adopted father, a lot of contradictions, the terrible wife, he’s relating real experiences, hanging out with rich people with trust funds, Charles Renault, our main character, multiple names, failed out of Yale, the army, awesome hero character, also flawed, psychology all over the page, Easy Go, the journalist and the archaeologist, the incidents that happen, it fucks you up, the relationship between power and money, make people do what they want, adopts a friend’s son, adopted father, lampshade, his father, adoptd when he was 6, parents died in WWII, two or three years between, wouldn’t give him a child, resentment there, genetic competition, weird psychology, everybody is trying to fuck each other over, a horrible book because all the characters are horrible, away from the main character for much of the book, trying to write a big book explaining to himself, we keep shifting to other people’s points of view, visited by the step-mother, a dream-sequence, way too ambitious, his version of Moby-Dick, it fails, almost 12 hours, three times longer, the plotting was bad, his ambition was too much, somewhat more redeemable, Charles pistol whips a lady, double cross, he could have tied her up, violence, trying to kill people in cars, hung out with people like this, school friend, something that really happened to him, who is he other than Charles, a sequence where Charles goes to a party, one of them is a medical student, sticking himself into his own book, I can make this a novel plot too, studied in Harvard, Cambridge in the mid-60s, expensive cars, whores, drugs, so good to start, it settles into a horrible vest of vipers, spitting venom all over each other, that’s why I don’t hang out with those people anymore, Valley Of The Dolls by Jacqueline Susann, glitzy, those books, at hour 11 and a half, that was last week, last week?, it feels like five years in this hellhole, every couple of days he renegotiates his contract, no-fun, the book he started writing, how great this book started, the first hardcover John Lange, Drug Of Choice leans into the cats stuff, removing part of the brain, drugs to control people’s behavior, a Philip K. Dicky book, I’m interested in interesting things, fucking, alcohol and lording it over other people with their fancy new Maserati, sex is nice, interest in science, history, archaeology, cat surgery, rich people being terrible is sadly popular, Succession, Dynasty and Dallas, cars and clothes and fancy cars, fancy furniture, swinging sixties, over-descriptions, critical reviews from the period, overlong, encumbered, grubby collection of opportunists, too many subplots, too many dames, too many men and women, annoyed by interchangeable women, Dominique, Vivien, unimportant disgusting behavior, chasing after sex, we didn’t need that, he gets it every time, cruelty towards his Italian fiance, chaste until marriage, being there with those people, snake pit, stock deal, not completely terrible people, covered in venom, sacrificial virgins thrown into a snake pit, a horror, the author at the part is John Lange, bombastic literary figure, Truman Capote, conned into running these parties, a literary figure, this is the worst Crichton book Jesse has read, later period ones, Airframe, Disclosure, Prey, State Of Fear, Congo, intelligent apes in Africa, Rising Sun, Japan’s going to take over the world, Jurassic Park, which book is which, The Great Train Robbery, The Andromeda Strain, ossified, the script for Westworld (1973), Reading, Short And Deep, Alfred Bester, tuckerized, The Unseen Blushers, a poem by Thomas Gray, unknown Shakespeares, writers group, no editors allowed, an idea for a story, the new Shakespeare is a pulp, who would this Shakespeare be from this period of time, documents go missing, pulp science fiction writers, better or worse or equivalent of his period, he was not for rich people only, writing old tropes, Isaac Asimov, fart jokes for rich people and high brown literature for poor people, sea stories, he mumbled, a tropical disease in the Navy, throat cancer, he uses his friends to tell a meta-science fictional science fiction story, Bester is a superstar, Astonishing Stories, his power is amazing, stories that sparkle all over the page, make bad old ideas good new ideas, snip out that beginning of the book, it turns into a nest of horrible, after the party everything turns to shit, rich guy dilettante, he’s horrible in this book, from life!, Pickman’s Model by H.P. Lovecraft, horrible yucky, please tell me more about the gas chambers, soaking in the venom, Holocaust kid’s novels, endless terrible scenes, commit suicide, terrible, survivors accounts, historical value, as a catharsis, these things happened, sounds horrible, bestsellers, is this titillation?, go at it for the sex, Harold Robbins, rich people being terrible, we should wash our hands of this, Zero Cool, back on the horse with a good one, Odds On, critical path analysis, a lady kissing a man holding jewelry, Scratch One, A Case Of Need, the ebook, paper is preferable, even shorter, an American doctor goes to Spain, a conspiracy to obtain a jewel, not horrible sounding, arms shipment, a quote from Benjamin Disraeli, the horrible taste of this book, April, the writing vs. the plotting, a biography of Bester’s writing, seeing Alfred Bester interviewed [FANAC], you mean counterplot?, what went wrong here, three counterplots, as soon as he gets to Paris, the girl with the gun, the setup, a minor minor part of the many counterplots, Jane Goodall, Jane Mitchell, the Congo book, only gold up to this point, too venomy, pissed off, snake business, snakes as a subject, poison vs. venom, arsenic, hours of terrible pain and stomach cramps, building up a tolerance, a myth, Crichton knows, Black knows, he’s lying, idiotic nephew, sedatives or something, the poison of choice for murderers in the 1960s, sleeping pills, e605 [parathion], how did Jane get her gun from Mexico to Paris, he’s a smuggler with his own plane, they don’t search you bags, metal detectors in the 1970s, hijackings, airplane bomb, upping security, 1955 airplane bombing [United Air Lines Flight 629], this guy really hated his mother, macabre grindcore, Sinister Slaughter, 1949, Canadian Pacific Airlines 108 bombing, Albert Guay, tree stumps, timing pencils, acid eating through, glowsticks, advanced chemistry class, and then they had a rave, 1944 plot, Claus von Stauffenberg, Harry Turtledove, the world is terrible, WWII could have turned out, two evil powers, venerated in Germany, glowsticks go bad in 1-4 years, Re-Animator (1985), drug experiments done by the government, fucking around with brains, especially when the government does it, did not meet expectations, if he’d written the book he started to write, editor: give me a bunch of unlikeable monsters and make it long please, also dream sequence, baby born in an abbey, fast forward 30 years, people being horrible mode, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Basil Fawlty, trans-Atlantic tripe, everything we would hate to be in ourselves, a snob, hilarious, we didn’t need any of them, wipe them all out start again, Peyton Place by Grace Metalious, 10 Robbins books after he died, Tom Clancy, V.C. Andrews, Tycoon, Sidney Sheldon, mysteries, thrillery, furious at it, hugely popular, miniseries on TV, why do you have that thing?, you never even question it, wallpaper, why did you read John Lange?, looking at people’s bookshelves, judging Paul for his bookshelf, jettisoned ARCs, can’t hold everything, showing off or showing shelves, Jesse is judging them, this person is wise, this person is trash, organized by colour, youtubers, 2 books in the whole house: sad story, booktubers, not showing off enough, greenscreen fake bookshelf, how to make everything look really great behind them, fake blurred background wallpaper, organize your wall, judge your bookshelf, faux leather embossed hardcovers, videotape cases, leatherbound hardcovers, Subterranean Press, luxury books, a signal, drill down on this, a symbol of a rich person, the x the y or the z, a decanter, a tub of ice nearby, no decanters at the liquor store, rich people would go to the vineyard, buy a giant cask of amontillado, pour the liquor into the decanter from the bottle, its the legacy of the leftover of hundreds of years, which makes more sense?, why do we do the second one?, trying to cosplay being rich, the accoutrements of being rich, Mercedes is a car for taxis in Europe, the unconscious mimicking of rich people’s behavior is super-pathetic, measuring the books by the foot, Folio Society books, Centipede edition, not knowingly, more money than brains, secretly refilling from a whiskey bottle, cheap brandy in a pricey bottle, a basement full, a box with bottle openers, old liquor in the basement, Dundee cake, underground tunnels, Cora’s bakery, flower shops and gas stations, everything’s open everyday of the week, open shopping Sundays, an excuse, better in what sense?, LEGO art, action figure photos with Christmas lights, fake votive candles, lasers and glowsticks, can I have one, ubiquitous, dry ice is supercool, dry ice fog, makes for nice pictures, panicky about carbon dioxide, magnesium ribbon, potassium nitrate, blow up a model of the school, match heads, wax mixed with blackpowder, Chaos Day, Cora blew up her school once (and a volleyball net), two teenage girls, bad books happen occasionally, no indication, started off great, which book are you talking about, tall people die young, he would be 80 now, died at 66, this one was terrible, five or so, the first bad one, Grave Descend, Pirate Latitudes, Jurassic Park, Disclosure, State Of Fear, a lot to discuss it, climate change, carbon dioxide bad, terrible people, big evil oil companies, financed by the oil companies, the other end, a very complex system, we only have the one example, much warmer and much colder, climate observations from the 19th century, he’s interested in history and he likes the Caribbean, plenty more to read.

The Venom Business by John Lange

HARD CASE CRIME - The Venom Business by Michael Crichton

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Reading, Short And Deep #388 – Chronicle Of The Year 1850 by Anonymous

Reading, Short And Deep

Reading, Short And Deep #388

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Chronicle Of The Year 1850 by Anonymous

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.

This story was first published in The Columbia Magazine, September 1786.

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