Reading, Short And Deep #390
Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss Solander’s Radio Tomb by Ellis Parker Butler
Here’s a link to the first publication PDF and here’s the reprint from Amazing Stories, June 1927, PDF.
This story was first published in Radio News, December 1923.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!
The SFFaudio Podcast #311 – Ethan Brand by Nathaniel Hawthorne; read by Fred Heimbaugh. This is an unabridged recording of the story (44 minutes) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Julie, Seth, and Rose.
Talked about on today’s show:
The story as a “culminate chapter” to an unfinished novel; H.P. Lovecraft’s description of the story in his essay on supernatural fiction (see our Podcast of the Seven Gables); Ethan Brand as Byronic (anti)hero; Nyarlathotep by H.P. Lovecraft; the uncanny nature of laughter; Hawthorne’s Biblical allegory; “Puritans and sin, they go hand in hand”; Ethan Brand and Adam’s search for forbidden knowledge; the almost-total absence of women in the story; the vices of the townspeople in the story; Hawthorne’s regret of the Salem witch trials; parallels to House of the Seven Gables; Hawthorne’s sense of humor; similarities to Goethe’s Faust; the Jew and his picture box; how the Holocaust ruined our reading of literature; what exactly does Ethan Brand see in the picture box?; the biblical story of Job; the intersection of sin and evil; the sin of suicide–can it be absolved?; the ambiguity of the final laughter; morality vs. intellect; the multifaceted symbolism of the story’s final image; association with Cain and Abel; double meaning of the name Brand; the internal nature of Brand’s sin; the image of girls running off to join the circus is apparently timeless; The Heart of Ethan Brand 1944 radio drama by Weird Circle; is redemption possible?; relics, iconoclasm, and capitalism; fruitlessness of pursuing knowledge; the story’s roots in Hawthorne’s experience; staring into fire; the audio drama’s departure from evil; “Jesse does not eat babies–or even veal.”; using people as a means to an end; degrees of evil; the sin of pride; Paradise Lost; Rappaccini’s Daughter; the story’s measured tone; Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God; Dombey and Son; the dog chasing its tail; unconditional love; the alternate pronunciation of “kiln”; parallels in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray; contradictions in story’s final image; white as image of purity in Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince and other fairy tales; phantom limbs; more on The Happy Prince, The Selfish Giant, The Centerville Ghost by Oscar Wilde; the power of audiobooks; “hair-raising image of corruption”; Ethan Brand as a novel.
Posted by Jesse Willis
The SFFaudio Podcast #304 – Jesse, Paul, and Marissa talk about Time Out Of Joint by Philip K. Dick
Talked about on today’s show:
1959, New worlds, the Wikipedia entry, the New Worlds triptych, facial tattoos, A Clockwork Orange, Back To The Future II, body modification, terrible lifestyle choices, patois, Ragle Gumm, drugs, themes, the most 1950s story ever, Marilyn Monroe, fear of nuclear war, why keep evolving the culture?, no radio, Lawrence Olivier, The Prince And The Showgirl (1957), The SF Masterworks cover, Life magazine, The Truman Show (1998), pens, Mrs. Kittlebine is a Lunar spy, the model, the planted magazines, who was Ragle’s minder, The Prisoner, Mr. Black’s real wife, Philip K. Dick was extremely interested in cheating wives, marital infidelity, the breakdown of the nuclear family, being a writer, “your channeling yourself here Phil”, living in a false reality, mental illness, The Thirteenth Floor (1999), a horror trope, The Matrix (1999), Craig Bierko is a leading man from an alternate universe, “everything is a little off”, the colour palettes are off, very 1999ish, the future (2024) is the present, a much more coherent Matrix, it came from an alternate world, a little too much dancing, eXistenZ (1999), The Restoration Game by Ken MacLeod, The Tunnel Under The World by Frederik Pohl (from 1955), running advertizing experiments, what is the purpose of simulated worlds?, rough day at work? … go out and be a serial killer (in a simulated world), they’re working from home (like Ragle Gumm), The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth, Pohl worked on Madison Ave., robots, was the world physically real?, the slips of paper, the bus isn’t quite really there, the bus station, the solider, endless problems, progress is never made, one step forward three steps back, the diner, the malt, is he on a treadmill with hypnosis?, are they in drawers?, it’s in Wyoming, Kemmerer, Wyoming, technically insane, more insane?, Brazil (1985), Sucker Punch (2011), which reality is real?, any clues?, there’s no satisfaction, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, stacked problems, the guy learning to be a patrolman, the bus driver who doesn’t know how to drive a bus, they’re actors, brainwashing, falling through the cracks, mirrored scenes, ‘it borrows unapologetically’, thinking hard, we’re all happy at the end of The Truman Show, the outside world, our future is in the stars, Time Out Of Joint could never be a Hollywood movie, imagine The Truman Show minus the love interest, conservative endings, science class in a fake high school, there’s no existential crisis, Truman’s soul, he wanted to be an explorer, shilling the products, product placement, his happy ending is to escape the simulation, the rich father-in-law, 0% crime, how would they know?, turtles all the way up?, the granddaddy of all these stories, Hamlet, William Shakespeare was the original meta-man, to catch the conscience of the King, The Taming Of The Shrew‘s induction, Christopher Sly, it’s Trading Places (1983), a very weird framing device, plays within plays, Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter, a really good conversation, Dick’s worst books, Dick’s early books, Dr. Futurity, Eye In The Sky, carbon tetrachloride, coffee, the lasagna, existential crises, after his safe was blown up, an invitation from V-Con, X-Kalay, pretending to be a heroin addict, amphetamines, a mind like a Ferrari, Dick’s unsold mainstream novels, suburban 1950s reality falling apart, Ragle Gumm’s name, a character named Phil, half a prison of his own making, choosing to return to reality, the power station, The Kettlemen’s, surreal and weird, based on a real incident, monitoring devices, a mad person ranting, are they faking?, how brainwashed can they be?, borderlands, defense in depth, “this is Ragle Gumm”, the whole business with the light-cord, “I have to get back to my base,” he said. “Phil and I have to be in by eight o’clock or we’re AWOL.”, “Is that you Wade?”, author insert, post-it notes, 3M, “soft drink stand”, “SOFT-DRINK STAND, DOOR, FACTORY BUILDING, HIGHWAY, DRINKING FOUNTAIN, BOWL OF FLOWERS”, virtual reality, so intuitive, pattern recognition skills, nonsense, white noise, paranoid psychosis, another Jim Carrey movie, The Number 23 (2007), creepy and weird, on the list, Virginia Madsen, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (2004), Adjustment Bureau vs. Adjustment Team, a dog falls asleep, a talking dog, the least good, Imposter (2001), the short film, the original story, a robot that thinks its a scientist, why him?, Total Recall, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, implanted memories, don’t watch the remake, machinations, a secret agent, false endings, which story is the real one?, sitting on a park bench, why is this whole world being built up?, consider the scene…, the fake pressure, even if…, back to Shakespeare, the whim of a Lord, an essential skill, for advertizing, Rene Descartes, cogito ergo sum, imagine an evil demon, post-religious people, we don’t require a purpose, our purpose is to read Philip K. Dick books and drink coffee and watch old movies, a poetic polish by J. Michael Straczynski, Bishop Berkeley, its not a toaster its a post it with the word “toaster” on it, a rock on the dark side of the Moon’s existence isn’t contingent on our perception of it, God perceives everything, the elevator scene, their building up the world as it goes, Dick’s thinking hard and we’re thinking with him, the object or the word, Friedrich Nietzsche, Tibor McMasters from Deus Irae, “this book [Time Out Of Joint] doesn’t end it disintegrates” -Frederik Pohl, missing words, narrator Jeff Cummings, this book requires more study or less, 110.5 slips of paper, the Truman Show delusion, why they’re Tweeting so much, Skype is completely transparent to the NSA (computers), The Thirteenth Floor is beautiful to look at, what our reality is like, computer games, not knowing the difference, does the world (the GAME SERVER) exist when you’re not playing it?, what if it’s robots (AIs) running around in there?, Minecraft, when they built an 8-bit computer inside Minecraft, a giant physical object in a simulated world, there will be a computer program inside the Minecraft computer that can run Minecraft, what’s wrong with The Thirteen Floor, the time is wrong, a simulated world within a simulated world would take more time every time they go up a level, assuming the laws of physics, Inception does that, an infinity of time as a moment, all Science Fiction can be tied together by this novel, is it a Masterwork, it itself is not luminous but it is a conductor of light, it feels very inspired by, a good book for people who’d never read Science Fiction, a peek behind the curtain of reality.
Posted by Jesse Willis
Not From Space
Produced by Borgus
2 CDs – 108 Minutes [AUDIO DRAMA]
Publisher: Borgus
Published: 2002
ISBN: None
Themes: / Science Fiction / Satire / Radio / Greed /
We join Earth during the year 2000. The economic boom, advanced technology is prospering, and everyone is focused on… themselves.
—Not From Space Introduction
Not from Space is not your typical fare. Uniqueness in audio is something I haven’t come across in a long while, and here it is. With that said, I’ve got the task here of telling you what Not From Space is, and I can’t think of a way to describe it without making it sound like so many other radio shows. But here goes: Not From Space tells the story of alien invasion entirely through newscasts. Sounds pretty common, eh? Told you.
But again, Not From Space is not your typical fare. At the very beginning, for example, is a brilliant piece of satire as talk show hosts announce that Bill Gates is going to give away computers to “foreigners”, then take calls from people that are really upset about it. I’ve heard enough talk radio to be able say that this bit really hit home, from the encouragement of the hosts to the logic of the callers. And that’s what makes Not From Space so atypical – it is full of pieces that hit home.
The entire story is told through the news radio station. There is no traditional dialogue between characters, just news told to listeners. Jeffrey Bays, in a talk about the show which is included at the end of the production, says that the show is meant to be listened to in the background, much like a real radio station would be. There are so many interesting moments that popped out as I listened, and the more I listen, the more things I notice.
The show was produced in a unique manner as well. It was entirely created on the internet using a world-wide cast of 15 voice actors trading MP3 files. It sounds wonderful – a very accurate simulation of a radio station, right down to the commercials, which in this case are a pleasure to hear.
Borgus has captured the feel of an American talk radio station to tell a story with a point. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and am looking forward to listening again.
Not From Space will be heard on XM Satellite Radio’s Sonic Theater, Channel 163 this Halloween weekend:
-Saturday October 29 at 9am/9pm (US-Eastern)
-Monday October 31 at 5am, 1pm, and 9pm (US-Eastern)
You can also get a copy on audio CD from Borgus.
Posted by Scott D. Danielson