The SFFaudio Podcast #817 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Last Space Ship by Murray Leinster

The SFFaudio Podcast #817 – The Last Space Ship by Murray Leinster – this is a fixup novel, made from three stories:

The Disciplinary Circuit, read by Phil Chenevert, 1 hour 35 minutes (for LibriVox)

The Manless Worlds, read by Vinny Lerin, 1 hour 43 minutes (for LibriVox)

The Boomerang Circuit, read by Paul Lawley-Jones, 1 hour 57 minutes (for Golden Age Fiction)

These are complete and unabridged readings of the three stories that make the one novel (totaling 5 hours 16 minutes) followed by a discussion of them and it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Maissa Bessada, Will Emmons, Terence Blake, and Jonathan Weichsel.

Talked about on today’s show:
the last Terence Blake, the newest, the youngest, The Last Space Ship, a cowboy story, famous in the one genre, some problems with this novel, really loving it for the first third, fell apart, the last spaceship crashed, not literally, William Sky, available on Librivox in three seperate peices, audiobook available, the books are public domain, The Disciplinary Circuit, The Manless Worlds, a good way to sell, lied to, betrayed, The Boomerang Circuit, why am I still not happy with this book, the very end, 2nd and 3rd installment, the problem with series, excited about the premise, exhaust the premise, essentially, a me problem, you could tell it was an unedited a fixup, you can tell it was serialized, repetitions are necessary in a serial, not technically a serial, not intended to be a novel, a series character, barely a book market for science fiction, the fixup became a thing, a guy goes to a planet, summarizes, extremely tedious, his job or an editor’s job, two years after, three seperate “novels”, used to mean something different, in the prechat, novels in Weird Tales, The Man Who Loved Planks, novellete, official wordcount, Lord Of The Rings isn’t a novel, one big volume, it’s something, a weird technical definition, three separate stories that were long, Last Space Ship, the opening segment, not so sure about that, a bite at the end, the mayor of somethingHeim, doesn’t ever get a name, recurring characters without names, Steadheim, the colony organizer, political leaders, good point Will, 1984, Brave New World, political science fiction, and more stuff happens, the premise follows logically, our hero Kim is down there swanning around, a disheveled lady, we don’t need men!, get off of my planet!, the wife handles this, what women are and what men are, funny and interesting, wasn’t well executed, flatly written, repeating himself, over and over, no depth to it, no layers, driving on a very straight line, when there’s an hour left in the story, I’ve heard this a million times, what it turns into is space opera, it starts off with hard SF, not paid off, become suspicious, a transporter space ship, a little Larry Niven-like, Yankee ingenuity statement, Kim’s ability to do literally anything, an ideal subject, men without government, silly, a point to it, went to the beginning of time, it was impossible to get back, wife say something inspiring, that was good, reciprocal, what that can provoke, sexist, too many times, that was just their way, Heinrich von Kleist [“On the gradual formation of thoughts in the process of speech”], near random conversations, from a philosophical pov, the competent man can’t change a paradigm, but nobody’s ever thought of this, a German romantic, a book setsup expectations, subverts expectations, breaking its own rules, the worst rule that this book broke, that’s a deforming balloon of a spaceship, to trick other spaceships, but they’re building them, it still works as a title, matter transporters, public transportation, forgive the setup, this book is trying to be political, knock this out of the park, We, ultimately if every planet in the milky way galaxy has an evil dictatorship to get girls, let’s kill all the men, that does sort of fit the origin through pulp magazine route, comparing to Blake’s 7, anarchistic criminals, unconvinced of what the right thing to do is, the liberator, liberate the galaxy, soma, framed with pedophilia charges, brainwashing, ends in noir, betrayed and destroyed, there was no next season, cultivate some garden, get some kids, get off the pill, really sleep with you, a horny book solution to the problem of men wanting to hoard women, he doesn’t have the intellectual heft, quite interesting for five pages, Michel Foucault, great idea, we just cut your access, social credit in the popular news, cut your access to your bank account, can’t travel, used or sketched out, he couldn’t follow through with that, space opera fantasy with a few dollops of science, the electron telescope, he’s not perfect, it plays a lot like hard sf in a lot of places, hafnium is a real element, if we wear it on our wrists, plutonium, a secret until 1948, somebody’s fucked up, a secretive process, anybody can make it, in 1946?, pretty impressive, a plutonium planet, a good description, Ringworld, bluffs to get to places, make comments, women and men and lions and sheep, this is an analogy for guns, Americans often have a positive relationship with their guns, varmints, disciplining natives, reasons for having guns, if a mass uprising, if you are a state with nuclear weapons you don’t get invaded, if you are a state without nuclear weapons, Ukraine: no nuclear weapons, North Korea: nuclear weapons, things would be different, more dangerous to break into a gun house, bluffing, creating uncertainty, South Africa gave theirs up, France, the US and Russia, thousands each, how many does it take, really?, if we live in a society with the disciplinary circuit wired into their brains, fucked by the police, this is not new, a strong sense of ambivalence towards a monopoly on violence, this disciplinary circuit idea, to make everybody conform, shepherded to that path, from a Jesse pov, wool over their eyes, so cowed, fun with the radio, a most noble lineage, it’s good that we have this king that’s going to come in and save us, let’s rebel for a bit, guys who don’t ever get a name, frontiersman, bearskin cap, standing realm, sketched out stuff, that’s why it sucks, the promise of the premise is awesome, we all have to have guns in our houses to threaten the government, Jesse would like this book, free society, people from Ades, Jesse-like, every man for himself, every man as himself, voluntary, government but not really, worried about the economic system, didn’t care, above it, what is Kim?, a man who knows a lot about science, skilled tradesman, a technician, a reader really interested in things, extrapolate things out of a text that aren’t there, more destructive to give beginning readers texts like this, not as much here, of two minds about it, philosophically interesting, a point to be made, a free society, only so much they’re willing to do to protect other people, a technical fix, when Donna gives the metaphors about the scoop, a pile of grains, sparked, makes this book have a shape, I’m not doing this for you, I’m doing this for everyone, Jonathan Maberry acting wrong, bad for everyone else, encouraged by the economic system, H.P. Lovecraft is weaponizing his IP, generously sharing that, entirely being out of copyright, that kind of thinking, so deep into the capitalist system, exploitable and exploited, it should have been just the first story, tempted to continue, Leinster pronounced LINSTER, not even his real name, discriminating against him, such a workhorse, stuff from the 20s to the 60s, 1918, The Mad Planet, his skyscraper story, deeper, despite the flaws, it was Arthur C. Clarke-like, mind blown, a smear all over the sidewalk, in the way that Olaf Stapledon would do, zeroed in on very specific, the last city on earth, what people are like now, all about art, random algorithms, fully born, out of existence when they become bored with their art, a non-conformist, he’s strange, no families, emitted from a computer, doing science fiction ahead of where the system was, the disciplinary circuit is coming guys, by other means, the stupid brute route, Elon Musk brain chip, 5g brain chip, seeing a change in students, a ticktock video, she did a final, bored or boring, pretty competent, skibidi toilet, a short vide, riz isn’t even hard, neologism, what?, No!, rejected!, we’re having trouble making sentences now, ask Phil Chenevert, human headed toilets, electronic devices for heads, sounds like art, if David Lynch made with the series, heiling Hitler every five seconds, they’re indoctrinated by memes, talking to the chat, hey chat do you agree with this, hilarious but worrisome, youtube and twitch are corporate, reading long things, new things develop, not fighting against the corporate control, whole youtube channels and twitchstreams are deleted, skibitoileting themselves into a prison, negative reinforcement, locked in your apartment, locked out of your clothing receptacles, positive and negative reinforcement, the internet, it’s not the internet, done the other way around, this is a thing we want to push, fund channels, we don’t like this, delete things, being shadowbanned, being delisted, the circuit causes pain, dopamine, how the internet traps people, animal videos to Miassa and Will, what they do the sender, Jesse did good, a problem with the whole system of government, incentive, that’s what ideology is for, harnessed to a mule, the planet Kim escapes from, believes in it, planets where everybody gets 1000 women, no more free than the ones being subjugated, what’s the difference, touch on the radio drama, he’s making another point, relationship, sketched out, I appreciate you, why didn’t you come get me, he hears a radio drama, weird, strange, pretending men never existed, obsessed with this idea, Charlotte Perkin Gilman’s Herland, art, drill down, art shit, trans lady is talking about her 9-5 job, transcribing the sentence, this is art, an hour and half, buying a nice mouse on amazon is the way you stave off depression, that’s art!, Brass Bra is a thing, there’s another one, maybe see something come out of it, tropes or habits, life in Athens, the plays of Aristophanes, musicals based on movies, insight into that world from so long ago, pretending men don’t exist, still wearing veils, what are you gonna do with this, how disappointed Jesse was, prolific writer thing, just whipped em off, 300 million inhabited worlds, nothing was different about any of them, The Mad Planet, humans have involved into lesser creatures, also there’s mushrooms, bye, strange or strangely, what makes weird fiction good, the wikipedia entry on plutonium, wartime secrecy, a weird element, lots of different forms, strange qualities, Pauos 3, no atmosphere, worked five thousand years, plutonium mines, how plutonium on earth is still around, the relic of a relic of a relic, every time you hit that half-life, decays and decays, a whole planet made of plutonium?, it doesn’t make any sense, the big problem with this book, written to be a gee whiz space opera story, a Thrilling Wonder Stories problem, a pulp magazine question, should I just put up the Disciplinary circuit, Jesse can’t decide what’s good for people, they won’t understand, voiced their concern, lampshaded, there’s a problem in this story, now I like it, 3 hours into our discussion, shine a light on it, hypocraphl?, about Bewitched, apocryphal, Dick Sargent Dick York, I Dream Of Jeannie, the wrong husband, you look different, a new haircut?, aren’t bewitched and I dream Of Jeannie the exact same show, Bell, Book And Candle, Kim Novak and Jimmy Stewart, the problems are the same, there’s a mother in law and the wife can do anything, the costumes, one’s in the airforce, a businessman, hijinks, his wife is a succubus or whatever, a djinn, dark eyed houri, mind drifting away, killing all of the men on the planet, a bigger version of what happens in world history, is Murray Leinster anybody’s favourite science fiction writer?, how well read, how competent he is, interesting again, whole first third, gold, a really good story, what are we gonna do about this thing, Prison Break, they broke out of prison, a popular show, had to go on, on the run, Lost but more competently handled, tattoos all over his body, they knew it was gold, they had no plan, that kind of storytelling is ultimately bad, forgettable fluff, we have to be better than that, when we liked the Fall Guy (2024), Cry Macho (2014), nice old fashioned slow paced storytelling, the least plausible part, how enfeebled he is, a skeleton, still a good actor, he’s too old, Jersey Boys (2014), that’s impressive, in charge, in control, attentive to every single detail, majorly talented, good if not great, a boy and his chicken, his rooster, some meanness, so much heart, based on a novel based on a script, Arnold Schwarzenegger, clearly not him riding the horse, die soon, tributes, is there a guy who’s bigger for longer, Francis Ford Coppola, spaghetti western man, TV show guy, any which way but loose, Woody Allen, canceled himself, Polanski scandal, nobody denies it, the received opinions or facts, starting to doubt, was the president of El Salvador, commenting on the fashion, science fictiony clothing, didn’t even recognize the flag, Biden administration not as offended, cracked down on gangs, all male population in prison, 78,000 people, 6.5 million, 3 million men, gang age people, proved a point, the guys standing behind, brothers, sticky-out ears, related to each other, we can work together, uh-oh, 2% of the entire population, what’s the percentage for Canada, the UK, the USA, China, Moon over Parador (1988), the same plot as Dave, Sigourney Weaver, the good Kevin, liked grabbing men’s crotches, just twinks?, insult word?, Jesse said “twink”, a funny word, manic pixie dream girl, the girl from that comic, Scott Pilgrim, Elizabeth Town, Zoe Daschanelle, Katharine Hepburn from Bringing Up Baby, gay slang, every boy bang from Korea, twinkie, twinkle, Richard Dreyfuss is asked to double a president, central america, evil dictator, fake Spanish accent, Raul Julia is his advisor, Teri Garr?!, Sonia Braga, Brazilian, Caviar For His Excellency by Charles G. Booth, Mark Twain’s The Prince And The Pauper, a latin dictatorship, whitehouse competency porn, Frank Langella, Ben Kingsley, Double Star by Robert A. Heinlein, 2016, extra homework, The City And The Stars by Arthur C. Clarke, an earlier precursor, the little girl who’s the grandaughter of the cafe owner, restaurant, tamale place, randomly deaf, every part of that movie is well put together, every person who has screen time, solidly put together, masculine tenderness, cowboys, a very elderly mountain man, as a person from Alberta, a signed book, real genuine people who are not horrible, lucky, Memoirs Of A Mountain Man by Andy Russell, 1984, sleeping in a teepee, smoking a pipe, wearing his cowboy stuff, Will hasn’t taken up the pipe yet, hasn’t taken up the scanner, the tools of the trade, tools of a Kentucky mountain man, one good cowboy hat, a little too good, paid too much money for it, a dress cowboy hat, 2009 priorities, a relic from an earlier period, a range romance, regular western book, Will could do it, Rangeland Romances, he’s ketchup she’s mustard, an idiosyncratic, less sensational, the colour, red shirts, a red shirt, a classic science fiction, The Ship Who Sang is public domain, Anne McCaffrey, and Terence is no longer with us, on internet archive, very short, it’ll make you cry, going to a high tea, bring your pipe and your scanner, anything interesting to say?, really solid, Paul was really down on it being public domain, really good, an SFFaudio drinking game, one of the drinks is when Jesse mentions Paul, drinking games are bad, a Raymond Chandler novel, every time Philip Marlowe takes a drink, expanded into a fixup, then a seven novel series, here’s a hint, this story is a juvenile, why the ship who sang is public domain, April 1961, no such filing exists, a photo, note in 1989 there was no renewal, new matter, expansion and notes, a renewal for the fixup, a fatal flaw?, mistated the year, somebody got the wrong magazine but the right year, an attempt at a renewal, a mistake shouldn’t be punished, scrivener error vs. deliberate fraud, the caveat here, would you like some legal advice?, don’t talk to the cops, life advice, also don’t talk to the reporters, repeat 1 thing, longer than 2 words they’ll take it out of contest, Robert Silverberg story, Stellar Audio, Sundance by Robert Silverberg, corporation from earth, mental problems, sentient aliens, rebels against the company, native american?, navajo, well documented, still around, beothuk code talkers, they’re extinct, are their any beothuk left?, one guy or lady is dying, the last beothuk speaker, to tell you your wrong, how is the name pronounced in English, first decade of the 19th century, Shanawdithit, transferred people, moved around Nova Scotians, moved around New Brunswick’s stories, Viking’s Dawn, The Road To Miklagard, Viking Sunset [by Henry Treece], from the illustrations, fun names then they get killed, Eric Brighteyes, really, sophisticated lady, she’s a witch, a high falutin language, H. Rider Haggard, resident expert, 10 or 11 books by him, She, King Solomon’s Mines, Ayesha, 1885, LibriVox, John Nicholson, 10 hour book, when Maissa’s gone, he writes long, The Aeneid, a non-public domain version, August 4th, known to be flaky, The Green Girl?, The Green Queen by Margaret St. Clair, first Princess of Mars pastiche, Frank R. Paul, brings modern tech to King Arthur’s court, a meditator on Earth, falls in love with a princess, renaissance era society, in the body of a dead guy, plotters against her, makes all the modern weapons, powerful merchant prince type dude, ends on kinda cliffhanger, Palos Of The Dog Star Pack, by juicy?, J.U. Giesy, will is super flakey, somewhat flakey, Will gets cancelled all the time, Cora has parents dying, The Cave Girl, question marks, struck through, transfixed by this stick, judgements made upon me, you’ve got a super flakey crust, dandruff shampoo is probably bad for you, it would smell strange and probably, favourite kind of pie, pecan pie, hard questions, blackberry pie, a bold choice, strawberry rhubarb, when you buy the ingredients for you pie, cheese pie, ricotta, a meat pie, eggs and sugar, saying goodbye, bye on the pie, a chess pie, a transparent pie, just sugar and eggs, the people of this region, healthy choices, taking up the pie, sugar pie, what else is it tho?, all pies, fruit pies, prone to make rhubarb pies, adds strawberries, rhubarb is a little strong, black currant, banned in the United States, the plant had a rust or something that effected some other plant, banned for 7 decades?, a major flavour, fruit markets, a lovely thing, when in Britain, red currant, life without black currant would be horrible, go to planet and black currant won’t grow there, second galaxy, with all the planets out there, some nice natives veggies, only marginally habitable, some fungus growin on the grown, barely wanted to move, everything makes Will think about Jesse, sort of a stalker affect, people thinking about Jesse on other continents, seems dangerous, interested in Kentucky, Appalachian Aesthetic, abandoned buildings, rustic ruins, Michigan doesn’t seem interesting, with regard to the upper peninsula, Kansas has The Wizard Of Oz, make a list of states that frighten you, frightened by cold western provinces, cost of living, a shipping container, full size, a window, drywall inside, when am I moving in, there’s no toilet in there, container life, not much of a thing, #VanLife, so sad, the roman villas, central courtyard, indoor place safe from bears, bears in British Columbia, black bears, spirit bears, a black bear that’s white, a genetic advantage, white foam, a hypothesis, Kermode bear, they’re not albino, cinnamon bear, Anmore, rainforest, berries, garbage, salmon, where is the most wild places, Antarctica, Kamchatka, about as wild or more wild, mountains, small, elderly mountains, Eastwood mountains, very remote from commerce, the way the roads are built, cut the tops of many of the mountains, doesn’t have access to the interstate system, railroads, what fucked up Kentucky?, coal takes everything away and gives nothing back, any other commodity, demand and value, European levels of labour militancy, pitched battles with company agents, a bomb dropped by the police, probably not from airplanes, hey look the BC government isn’t completely incompetent, renewable resource, on crown land, revenue goes to the province, taxing corporate extraction, control the resource, stopped listening to CBC, getting angry, one of the worst feelings a person can have, in Italian or Russian, Ford bros., she’s muted, asshole of the East, highways through forests, land that’s supposed to be protected, stopped taxing, for votes, hiring his friends, big for profit, detrimental on the land from which we live, Moraine Lands, re-elected premiere, his brother was, PC, Progressive Conservative, hybrid names, we’ll have it both ways, we’re the forward looking conservatives, when the brother died, was it really scandalous tho?, guy likes crack, when a rich person is using crack, people are saying Zelenskyy’s on regular cocaine, BC is surprisingly competent, getting very cynical about politics, Enbridge, B.C. Hydro, a free air conditioner, that’s a good thing, not killing them is better, build up to not killing them, the invisible hand in the velvet hand in the iron glove, for the shortest time, Rachael Notley, Social Credit, the Liberals are the business party, municipal party politics, they can’t really do anything against dog, provinces have tons of control over municipalities, the suburbs put them in there, $1 beer?, steamroller, candy, these things flow from that, they can never win federally, reverse engineer a political party, CCF, put a finger on, the United States controls Canada, a tepid party, why can’t other provinces get their shit together, New Brunswick is run by the McCain family, Idaho, Canadaland, not going to talk about Gaza, this is violence against my people, indefensible zionist shit, local newspapers, they suck, gotten worse, death spiral, no longer using dating apps, copping to eating a mountain of antidepressants, that is not a newspaper article, not paid much, brand his column the first ever Weird Tales dating column, very endy timesy energy, not directly involved, that Haiti thing, convinced the Kenyans, when the US dollar goes, what’s that going to do to the fake Canadian money?, gold guy, under the container, the skibidi gold toilet, scared of skibidi toilet, willing to embrace it, the thing to embrace by the young, past the point of existential despair and are enjoying their time, school is basically optional, what’s the point of this, there’s no future for me anyway, debilitating despair, in Greece for a month, fuck it all, why not forever?, still got to make some money, to pay the rent, with the land reform bill, fabricating Kalashnikovs, Temu, Aliexpress, off brand Lego, that exists, realistic masks, once you click on a realistic masks…, a mask of somebody’s fist with a middle finger raised, your head is a giant fist with the middle finger raised, hang loose, the final face for the apocalypse, the V for Vendetta mask, the mask is the true face, circling the drain as the ship sinks, you have to hang out with a teenager, 9 year olds too, Reddit is a horrible place, super controlled, the moderation is evil, my little brother, how do I do this?, raging on meme video, make the system happen, the kid is culture jamming him, skibidi doesn’t mean anything, toilets are allowed, boobs and penises aren’t allowed, tweak the system, maybe it’s going to bring the whole thing down, freedom stones, a nonsense phrase, not the the future Jack London envisioned, load your runcible plastic like this, a way to go, what will the revolution look like afterwards, pamphlets, owning the non-communists?, NPC style memes, you crying bro?, impossible to save them, China putting the last emperor to work with a broom, when being invaded, trying to reverse the revolution, you have to do something, an anecdote, Toussaint Louverture, Haitian revolution, German mercenaries were deemed black, the slaves are revolting, kill all the white european colonizers, recognized as black in the Haitian constitution, quaker dwarf, Barbados, Dominican Republic, admin, to the DR on the DL, St. Lucia, Cuba, Jamaica, California or Mexico, rah rah rah thing every year, have to go also get to go, mandatory work thing, oh yuck, when they filmed Sorcerer in 1977, Rafael Trujillo, Toronto too, for the Caribbean, a little man with big ideas, dwarf wife, a little bit older than him, lives in a cave, vegetarian, abolitionist, Stephen Leacock, she makes her own clothes, The Retroactive Existence Of Mr. Juggins by Stephen Leacock, one of our best, a big deal, a humorist, like the Canadian Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, described as a parable, this saw needs to be filed up a bit, fix the grindstone, make a carpenter’s bench, that Carl Sagan thing, James Burke’s Connections, still alive, very interesting, go into a fugue state, kings and contest, he was working on that other project, learned everything and nothing, The Trigger Effect, no excuses, if you watch it on Brave, the power blackout of 1965, the invention of the plow, five or six shows like that, PBS, TV Ontario, interviewed by Dan Carlin, a history guy, the biggest podcaster, Scott Miller, Joe Rogan, Lost-Sci Podcast, he lives in Costa Rica, his wife is Costa Rican, just reads them, TV broadcaster, his dad, still doing a show, very good audiobook narrator, some of the popular people, Philip K. Dick, Robert Sheckley, Ray Bradbury, little 30 minute story, its great, about the ads, A Cast, uber for kids, you can hire people on linkedin, health insurance for poor people, different ads, generic corporations, ads for other podcasts, audio dramas, its gonna die, podcasting networks, never launched?, never happened, Stitcher, defunct August 2023, what led to its downfall, youtube controlls what goes on youtube, u controll what goes on your podcatcher, provide the hosting services?, the business of podcasting vs. podcasting, podcast network, remember Night Vale?, headgum, CBC radio, BBC, Al Jazeera, Earwolf, preserve having a job, let’s do a podcast, for HQ, sales network, there’s nowhere that isn’t podcasting now, TWiT, 14 shows hosted on the network, this week in whatever, thousands of episodes, Jerry Pournelle, this week in security, so weird, almost four hours now, the day slips away, time slips away, [Maissa slips away], The Not-World, Cirsova’s not available, #Sad, even if assassinating bad presidents, the anarchists tried that, [William] McKinley, propaganda of the deed, made sense in Imperial Russia, a competent manager, a condo, want to complain? have you tried volunteering, so fuckin boring, outsource this to Colossus, the colony organizer, the bearskinned mayor, the guy in the second galaxy, dishevelmed woman, jealous of Dona’s appearance (and man), weird reactions, mad for no reason, president of the woman planet, in charge, clothes are mussed up, disorganized shelves, can you be shevelled?, old French, about your horse?, about your hair, hair uncovered, hence disorder, kempt and shelved and my shelves are very scruffy, helping the children?, volume 4 of the Nancy Drew books, Hardy Boys, two sets of Nancy Drew, what a deal, need that fore Heinlein, Glory Road, age appropriate?, he’s a Vietnam vet, have sword will travel, Paul had problems with it too, nope out of it, some scene that happens, rape scene?, why do people not like Glory Road?, sexist piece of shit, trite, some classic fantasy, Stranger In A Strange Land, boring, painful, this stinker, starts on a nude beach in France, meets a fairy or elf princess, a dwarf hires him, an alternative universe, so PTSD he’s down a rabbit hole, Silverberg’s an interesting guy, which of my eras do you want to talk about first, a healthy sense of himself, robust, stay humble, doing pretty good, he could die and still be doing pretty good, he’s in his 80s, very 80s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 1969, The Rag Thing by Donald A. Wollheim, Margaret St. Clair, talk about the underdogs, a kleenex that gets sneezed on, dropped behind a radiator, gets sentient then gets revenge, all over the board, wants to exist, succeed for a while, It would have been all right if Spring had never come, thrifty and not too clean, March is a tricky month, last November, like Frankestein but with a rag, nice and short, making some time to finishing the Damon Knight Futurians book, what Donald A. Wollheim was like, bosom chum, John Michel, young communist league, stuttered horribly, what does stuttering mean?, everybody studies sometimes, Eric Idle, John Cleese, for laughs, a voice like thin paper, not thick paper, grok it out, weren’t robust in certain ways, John Milius is robust, does a robust man need a gun?, if own a gun, big collectors, very interesting technology, very important, you can’t dismiss it away, what Mao said about guns, all political power flows the barrel of a gun, group of enough people rebelling against the circuit, the cleverness of individuals, special attractive and brainy and useful wives, you’re too useful, trying to compliment her, chosen the wrong word, your ability to have guns, ability to read the situation politically, gain guns, print em up, machine shop, the Sino Soviet split was a bad mistake, caused the caused, what caused the end of the Soviets, bad read, the beneficiaries of the system stopped belieiving in it, thought they could do personally better as capitalists, kleptocrats, decadent, didn’t happen to China, China was nimble, Poe is alive, age corruption is not sound, elderly but fine, the age of the country, Canada is youngerthan the United States, a whole bunch of different dates, when did British colonization begin, 1775, 1776, 1780?, a moving target, pretend Canada is a little younger, we’ll be as corrupt, as big, as much, politics in Quebec, very very corrupt, Yukon, not so corrupt, as old as Ontario in a certain sense, younger in another sense, Australia, drill down, what corruption is, works how it is supposed to, the federalist papers, not supposed to change, supposed to stay the same together, demarcation line, rhymes back in time, Poe, vote rigging, 1840s, setup to be corrupt, 2/3rds of a man, heady words, some claims made, rapidly decline, Paul doesn’t think the Businessman’s Plot was real, Roosevelt was allowed to continue in office, massive popular support against his enemies, the NRA, fireside chats, threaten his enemies trying to overturn his rule, personal corruption in John A. MacDonald, not fake news, not even playing the game anymore, is Trump a political prisoner now?, walked away, smiled, too ridiculous to answer?, is it a ridiculous question, all prisoners are political, that deep, put someone in jail, seems unlikely, trying to annoy him, death by 1000 cuts, he’s invincible, visceral anti-corruption, not in the way that everybody else is, come back, they dont seem to be doing the assasination thing on him [this podcast recorded June 2, 2024], the murder industry, holding back weapons from Ukraine was a sin, somebody’s got to get his bread buttered, elites, deep political conflict with Russia forever, competent leadership on the other ends, accidents that happen, pumping the money out of the US government into the hands of the people controlling, dissatisfaction, Trump’s base, transitioning, they them gendered, an activity, they’re feeling it too, they don’t know what to do with it either, a certain level of corruption, faith, for the system to go on, Jonathan was on to something, people hate each other now, divide your enemies, divide your subject, opposed to the military industrial complex, ending foreign wars, reduce military spending, the Trump coalition, whoever supports trump, didn’t start any new wars, more strident supporters, Galaxy not Astounding, this is garbage to me, H.L. Gold, so silly, a military guy, blames Joe Biden for leaving Afghanistan, hemmed in by traditional beliefs, he reads the wind, more than anything, being popular is more important, he actually makes decisions, up close and personal, its different here, liberals more insufferable, “lefties”, conservatives, don’t put any thought into it, that’s bad, bad takes, hate Trump because they see himself in him, projection, he has tiny hands, Donny tiny hands, not even true, not freakishly small or large, a reference to him having a small penis, fat and weak, okay to body shame that guy, slightly orange coloured, not enough, badly cut suits?, a unique style, hair is on backwards, reverse stapled on, Biden’s bald, the part that never goes bald and move that to the top, rogaine that fails out, a weird appearance, accusing him of what he’s going to do in the future (that you’re doing now), fun to think about, denying something that’s wrong with you, a baby low level way of dealing with problems, drinking game players, feel comfortable, Paul doesn’t really listen to the podcast, people that I lie to, a thing about the middle names of people, only people he doesn’t like, middle names are funny, doesn’t have one?, Catholic, non-solid memory, Donald John Trump, 45, presidential number, Biden just gets one, Obama only gets one number back to 45 again?, Grover Cleveland, I heart New York, 34 counts guilty, the New Republic, insurrection and national security, stunning guilty verdict shatters his aura of invincibility, not stunning nor shattering, won an election, lost an election, is this invincible, masturbation for the people who hate Trump, alleged crimes, they didn’t bring again any guns, “storm”, Trump fans, show their grievance, verbed in the capital, agent provocateurs, an organized tour, theft of national security documents, even if he gave it to China without any personal profit, the deep state is not legally in charge it is just actually in charge, bad at filing stuff, like Hilary’s emails, deleting her emails, private server, hide her horrible emails, an extremely serious offense lurks beneath, he’s invested in it, The Terminal Man, made a mistake, Matt Yglesias retweet, the Civilization VI equivalent, he likes games, he’s getting gamed, viscerally triggering, he let his guys do that, he can’t be shamed, when Will was a kid, serious religious thing, lost to Obama, tricked, options on the table for most people, Obama or John McCain, that’s the trick, shoulda voted McCain, not a wise man, Obama at least was smart, too smart for all our goods, smart for his good, compromise his way through, a horrible thing, that’s the horror, willing to do things you shouldn’t do, I am what I am, not how the sizzle was sold, hope, stay on your parent’s health insurance until 26, so hot to talk about health care, Bernie Sanders noise, medicare for all, not perfect, not like what they’re saying, you get cancer, you get treatment, waiting list, its free, literally and actually free, the CRT television, the wifi’s free, not enough doctors, walk-in clinics, pharmacists can give your drugs directly, tryna solve problems, election coming up, debate about health care gone, only about Trump, killing in Gaza, horrible videos, Paul is a nice person, not willing to be mean, the national security question, a lot of deference going on, you don’t need a zap of punishment of pleasure, against leadership, management is not leadership, being the quartermaster, disbursing takes, let me finish, I did, Terence doesn’t talk enough, good at talking, this projection idea, look into the shadow work, what was sad about the conviction, how excited people got, pathetic, 34 counts how do you feel?, is it going to stop him from being president again?, don’t cut deep with Will’s mother, different relationship, much more sympathetic to people transing, trying to be nice to people, are they not wrong?, too nice to Jesse about, weirdly preoccupied, what is Jesse projecting, want some boobs, grow boobs on your own, are these boobs good enough, very interested in trans stuff, Day Million, Heinlein’s I Will Fear No Evil, one ought to be interested, important, its bigger than other such things, more controlling, more of an earworm, Blondie songs, running around inside your head, saying Blondie stuff, Heart Of Glass, Blondie is the band, Michael Jackson was very big an effected people’s dress, crazy to think about, Elvis, behavior at concerts, more correct, Elvis upset some people, because of hip movements, hormones to look like Elvis, its important, its happening and non-reversible, tattoo vs. cut off parts and hormones, haircut is very easy to reverse, give it some time, those boobs aren’t going to grow buck, people don’t know what they’re getting into, problems caused by brains, input output, hormones in your body, data input, an error, consider chemically composed, put chemicals into your brain to change it, jungian, kids are very subject to being not unpopular, isolated and made freaks, in school, yes, the Korean kids have this thing going on from home, they generally go along with it, top down influence, wishy washy, you should do good things and not do bad things, opinions or facts, hang out with some people and see what’s going on, hangs with them, patients or clients, the trans phenomenon, similar views, very wrong, only know so much, in general terms, clients who are trans, different, cultural and religious ferment, student coming, a book by Barret Brown coming out, American journalist and essayist, snarky in trouble with the government, arrested by the FBI for threatening the FBI, in prison for 63 months, reporting on Anonymous, against the US government, My Glorious Defeats: Hacktivist, Narcissist, Anonymous, heroin addiction, 2011, Barrett Brown, transparency movement, clever and hilarious, institutions are made of people, entertaining and illuminating manual, CPTSD, fucked around with, nice relationship with his mom, harassing his mom, not many people know who he is, Scott has a podcast with Julie, to be continued on the hormone conversation, coffee, talking point, don’t care about the truth, only about winning, some rhetoric and some sophistry, ad campaign, what does Will have to gain?, chopping our children’s dicks off, oppo research, have a good time.

The Last Space by Murray Leinster

The Last Space Ship by Murray Leinster - GALAXY NOVEL 25

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 #815 – READALONG: Mad Max by Terry Kaye

Jesse, and Connor Kaye talk about Mad Max by Terry Kaye

Talked about on today’s show:
novelization, Terry Kaye is Terry Hayes, he’s from the UK, UK phrases, balustrade, John Olsen is Jesse’s hero, he’s awesome, his channel AudiobooksForTheDamned, a website, a facebook group, waybackmachine, four years ago, a coda at the end, acknowledgements, not reading from his car, road trip, parked on the side of the road, someone else is driving, reading while moving, carsick, front porch, sounds like recorded in his car, backed up by hearing the weedwhacker, a guerrilla audiobook, pirate audiobooks, illicit audiobooks, books for the blind, audiobook sighted people are not allowed to have, a serial killer recorded one, its immoral, executing and deleting people, Phil Gigante, Stainless Steel Rat books, arrested and plead guilty to, photos from a 14 year old girl, he’s been canceled, he’s out of prison, good narrator, maybe not a very good person, announcements on some websites, really good narrating voice, he’s a human being who’s still alive, prisoners are humans to, a platform, consumer should have the choice, consumer logic, how to live properly, the movie Stone (1974), a necessary precursor to Mad Max (1979), Toecutter, essentially the same kind of person, a biker in a biker gang, the main character, good actor, good character, largely the same, riding around Australia’s coast and getting revenge, noticeably nice, movie and novelization, leaning into exploitation, naked girls and naked men, equal opportunity nakedness, dicks swinging in the water there, cheap, low budget, intentionally salacious, the bikeys being on drugs at the start, the ending is fucking fantastic, a cop film, goes undercover with a biker gang, usual plot arc, accepted in the gang, an anthropological film, trope maker not a trope follower, ahead of its time, just a job, you’re one of us now, beat the shit out of him, doesn’t press charges, that’s the cost of leaving the gang, speaks to a lot of things in Australian society, upper-middle class, his girlfriend is rich, they have a house, a car, a kid, a dog, similar themes, people who are living within society’s rules, people living outside of society’s rules, we’re outside the law, Mad Max is about the whole of society, scale shifting, lawlessness is in control, the legal system is neutered, inability to impose penalties, no justice anymore, every film after that, progressively worse, maintain it, justice?, society?, then outlaws have a society of a kind, a hierarchy exists in a way, Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (2008), the importance of stone, a gang that’s being hunted, by a cop, vicious crimes, they’re bad, badass and bad, behaving improperly, raping a lot of people, stealing things, murdering people, making cat noises while on roofs, stealing people’s ice cream, be careful girl I’ve seen him lick his eyebrows clean, slightly different, made more explicit, The Dark One, they go to his farm, May lady, she’s the hero of the film and the book too, she’s about protecting people, runs out of bullets, Max is not the hero, when the goose dies (he’s just burned), she’s going to make it, the wife is still alive, he leaves the bedside and hunts down, ruptured spleen, he’s like a zombie, listening like a zombie, revenge on his mind, one of the greatest movies ever, better than The Road Warrior, Fury Road, the prequel [Furiosa] looked terrible, no longer present, May Swaise, connected, related, she’s the aunt?, dead partner’s mother?, the hero car before the black and black, M. Rockatansky, the missing partner, through a connection with the cops and turning in Cundulini’s hand, makes arrangements, a bed and breakfast, she invites them in, protection away, danger that’s happening outside, the character of Benno, adult farmhand or son, jump scare, trying to be helpful, Mad Max II, expansions or repeats of Mad Max 1, truck runs over a biker, parallelism, truck that’s on a railroad track, road train scene, Stagecoach (1939) with John Wayne, Night Rider, lieutenants, biker gangs don’t work that way, Johnny The Boy, the source of ignition, when Toecutter dies the movie isn’t over, Max doesn’t kill Toecutter, called out in the book, the importance of reading the book and the film text, always started as a movie, based on the script and filling in the details, details brought out, in Stone how do you join the gang?, a probationary period, they have a vote, this is a pirate ship, history of pirates, we are lied to, disnifyed version of pirates, Robert Louis Stevenson, pirates didn’t bury their treasure, invented democracy and pensions, horrific exploitation, bigger responsibility, everybody is elected, captain, quartermaster, here’s the plan, they share you out, a covenant, until we hit a certain number, renegotiate, sign the articles, abide by the rule of the ship, no smoking below decks, no women on the ship, awesome and democratic, physical intimidation thing, any one man can be taken down by any two man, a cartoon version of a badguy or pirate ship is, guys who like not obeying society’s laws, they interact with society, a montage of scenes, goes around to all the suspects, team members, they attract business, they are business, they adopted this place, women lining up to be with them, the whole point of Stone, they’re human beings that are not cartoons, isn’t for everyone, respectable and full of respect, different values, they don’t kill him, they respect him even though he’s shit, the grievance, the ArmaLite gangs, Road Warrior was a bigger hit, more action, simpler, more cartoony, amped up, the film that George Miller wanted to make, Evil Dead vs. Evil Dead II, Terminator 2, The Terminator is a better film, parallel remake, reviewing the movie series, Fury Road is a visual treat, plotwise it is retarded, how simple vs. complex, the novel drills down into some of the worldbuilding details, complements it, the first chapter, what is the world this novel is set in, far in the future, a transcontinental highway, not set in Australia, no references to Australia, looseness with the words, to the other coast, not a lot of bridge action, inter vs. trans, across vs. between, no ArmaLite guns in the movie, the M-16, they don’t exist in the movie or the book, shotguns and a pistol, for an action movie there’s not that many guns, ran out of bullets real quick, I was saving these, a low magic world, a quote from the beginning of the book, cattle, there’s no animals in the film, a chicken mentioned, there is food, Goose steals the fries from a guy, “victims of a society which now relied on laboratory-produced proteins for nourishment and fast-food pulp for taste”, the dystopia of ourworld, disconnected from farms, even on May’s farm, a wheelbarrow, no animals, George Miller, George Kennedy, a contemporary action movie, couldn’t do it for a number of reasons, they needed abandoned buildings, the Halls Of Justice, clearly an abandoned building, guerilla filmaking, like Breaker Morant, Sun City, Sunshine Coast, Jerusalem, wee Jerusalem, putting things together, in the film of Mad Max, the tractor trailer in Mad Max II, methane, Prime Mover, a term used in the novelization, the Prime Mover ran over Toecutter, another word for God, Goose killed Goose, Fifi, that was not on the job, he was attacked by Johnny The Boy, the mirroring and the parallelism, Mad Max is not the hero, shown to be the hero, cleaning his hands with a towel, the incompetent cops, Roop and Charly, Big Bopper, doesn’t look 15, the chosen one, without a partner, Fifi has to tell his boss, given a hero car, we need heroes, the police commisioner, a kendo appointment, bamboo katana, lure him with candy, the feted one, his real one is Mad Max, paralleled between the second lead of the gang, Bubba Zanetti’s costume, accented with chrome (instead of bronze), a space blanket, quiet, the advisor to Toecutter, it’s your job to get him back on the straight and narrow, the path of becoming a proper member, Johnny doesn’t have a tear [tattoo], an insight into the structure, those kind of relationships, terrorizing Jerusalem, a couple, the Chevrolet, the Ford, hot-ride pipes, that girl and that boy are raped, the girl is tied to Johnny the Boy, rape and destroy party, literally chained to her, chained to a car and lit on fire, like what happened to Goose, the parallel structuring, good acting and acting sequencing, foreshadowing, the injustice, the whole town wouldn’t show up, the Turkey, called out in the film ever so briefly, a night scene, ambulance chasing experience, road gangs, “it’s in the food”, another night in the meatgrinder, have you eaten yet, there’s an awesome futuruistic story happenin in the background of the revenge film, all the sponsors, Kawasaki, cigar company, the girl and the guy, it’s Mary, this is a retelling of iconic stories in a way that we don’t recognize, what happens on the hill, the fruit of their union is one of revenge and horror, what makes Max good, Jesse is a mom, she’s a wife, when she is runover and loses her baby, fridging in comics, Keanu Reeves’ John Wick dog motivation, ran over his wife and killed his killed, the worst possible relationship with other human beings, setup setup setup, his boss is conspiring behind his back, it’s all fake, the proper relationship police should have with biker gangs, clubs not gangs, despite the cartoonishness we don’t feel, Max van has a spaceship on the side of it, lost control of the roads, a game of chase, Max is running rogue, he’s stolen that car, “the forbidden zone”, the Outback, roadtrains have guards on them, unintentional, special, Judge Dredd, paints a world that’s just like that, a few elite cops, very similar, Dredd (2012), post apocalyptic story, learning some vocabs, larakins, hoons, boisterous often badly behaved young man, larakinism, a ratbag, plays pranks, fucks around, an Australian of the kind that gets kicked out of England, crutch,phonetically, crutch, crox, an A-frame, here he is the walking armpit, bitumen, asphalt, Terry Hayes was hired as a scriptwriter for the following movies, The Year Of The Locust, car chase, motorcycle scenes, what people smell like, seaside home, the monster mask, a rare book in North America, buy em and sell em, $70, abebooks, the cost to post to America, $40 for shipping, a crateful, scan it and put it up online, the import expert business, follow the Man’s rules, listening to the radio, here are the regulations, as long as the paperwork is clean, Max’s objections, terminal psychotics, Toey, excited or nervous, hoofing the line, the first pursuit special, Night Rider, that scag and his floozy, hopped up/supercharged, two different versions, Mel Gibson looking shocked, the movie poster, a biker’s mask, commissioned the poster, still financing the film, Frank Frazetta, the 1985 rerelease, SuperChannel, novelizations are something that have basically died,you liked it so much you wanted, the novelization on Predator (1987), people trying to deny me access to knowledge, the summer of 1987, to spite the people are going to deny me access, novelization for a videogame, The Legend Of Zelda, really fucking expensive, one for Christmas, one for your birthday, indie games for a couple of dollars, installment, enjoyed the shit out of it, 100 pages, 8-12 year olds, you couldn’t get access to the media you wanted, the right effect, experienced it vicariously, reading is on the decline, just a fact, the publishing industry, bookstores were around an a thing, real estate speculation, a primary sale for a secondary sale, we’re going into the new meta, the new paradyme, you don’t own anything, subscription, all very evil, the movie and the book of Mad Max are becoming much more plausible, we assume a nuclear war in 1985, old footage, footage of nuclear bombs, we filled in the blanks a lot, the food stuff, called out in the book, granola crunching farmers eating whole foods, in the 1970s, brown bread vs. white bread, Bryan Alexander, protesting, a plant based diet for the school’s cafeteria, tacos or hotdogs, make your menu choices, make your food at home, loudness of relationship to food, the loosening of the control of government, the government is incompetent, larakins, hoons, taking over the roads, working in the city, cut loose by going into the country, the setup for the second film, Geiger counter, more and more cartoonish, the gangs are so evil and fun, a fuckin nasty film, the worst we see are the hand of Goose, the knee of Max, the reality of the gang, what they’re doing is plausible, victimizing people more, sadistic, fairly balanced in the second film, petrol, victimize a man and a woman, gap toothed guy, boot on somebody’s hand, raping this couple, stuff pulled from the first film, more palatable, a little kid almost gets run over, oh Christ they’re going for population, break off pursuit, Charley gets it in the throat, the good guys wear white, Cunégonde and Casca, Candide by Voltaire, a comic novel, half brother and sister, all the names are jokes, goodpussy, a tutor, all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, any evil is all for the good, girls chased by monkeys, that’s what the male of the species looks like, a prostitute has half her ass eaten, Mudguts, Lurch?, Clank, game names, somebody had carved out a piece of his ass, on the run, he flees, pretty awful, especially Max, this guy is not going to get punished, justice in the world for ourselves, if you have enough money and the circumstances don’t line up, if you have influence, make a lot of problems for them, on that note, bathroom break, the world of Judge Dredd, more what George Miller would have liked to have done, judges fulfilling, they are the judicial system, hero cops that operate outside the law, the world is simply to wild, too easily taken advantage of, direct justice, the police commissioner, the break down of society, more interesting, it’s perfect, teeter over the top into apocalypse, things go wrong in such a horrible way, he says fuck it, he abandons his wife, he abandons his morals, after the end of the film, he could have gone back with his life, Mad Max as a franchise, a character as a plot element, they all stand on their own, the gyro captain, Bruce Spence, as different characters, they play the same, the feral kid grows up, the legendary story about The Road Warrior, preceding and following film, in this weird space, they blow up the car in the second movie, it is back in the fourth movie, they’re not connected that way, Sprog, fulfill a purpose, she’s given a name and has a character, she’s to be fridged, it’s a guy movie, Fury Road, Max’s backstory is changed, the guilt that he bears, the people he couldn’t protect, flashbacks to characters that never existed, other adventures, missing adventures, “Mad”, a moral man trying to survive in an amoral world, what that does to a person, they thrive in this world, the survival of the fittest, Max’s car is not ready, the fuel line, he fucked it up, he’s trying to help, a lot from the pov of the gang, a surprise in the movie, they don’t try to kill max after they kill the girl, how to be proper, excised from the film, Goose’s girlfriend, Katamine, Catamite, not Calamity, a lovely scene in the car, the mooners go buy, wild larakins, just hoons, vicious gang members, having fun, she almost kills them, being prepared to defend your family is a very masculine fantasy, a story men like to see told over and over again, they’ve excised all that shit, competence family, his car is stolen, never matters, just get to the point, that’s why it is the best film, The Road Warrior is a better introduction, he’s dressed in black, federation of gangs, gay Mohawk, strength to strength, literally has him on a dog collar, to release the hound, his lover, the feral kid, comic relief, a black suited character, he has his own motivation, the positive character, help the good team, some sort of redemption, offered a relationship with the warrior woman, it goes nowhere, choosing when you’ve got two teams, Humongous’ army, calculated and smart, a very seductive team, why are these guys hoarding this gasoline, rooting for the oil company, they choose to blow it up, its very simplistic, in other revenge films, the inciting of the revenge quest, Death Wish (1974), trod on his daisies, the inciting incident that makes him turn back, a little bit like Yojimbo (1961), tumbled by the gang, Gyro Captain, they kill his dog, fucked up, like John Wick, precipitates the third act, works well in both cases, just in time to setup the massive chase scene, there’s nothing like it, the visceral awesome, dogs dying, the happy family, two year old sprog, on vacation, goes for a swim, she sees the dog dead, May is awesome, she has agency, disabled, deaf, opens her home to people in need, protecting them at gunpoint, hardy country woman, Casca, the town being called out, every other small town in Australian movies, saloon underneath, a milkbar, local cafe, long formica bar, milkshakes, a blender, a big stainless steel cup, ice cream milkshake, a reference to A Clockwork Orange, literally drinking milk, the symbols are all boobs, soda [jerk], a series of books, male competence porn, The Executioners, The Destroyer, The Eternal Mercenary, the character who stabbed Jesus with the Spear of Destiny, cursed to walk the earth until Jesus comes back, he can’t die, he’s like a Highlander, connect the movies together, he sees Mary raped, arrest the criminal, Johnny the Boy is the mirror, new to the gang, they both survive to the end of the film, everything is inverted, a Lovecraft story that’s the story of Jesus that’s reversed, The Dunwich Horror, invisible evil brother, torn apart by dogs, Max is like Casca, kills the evil that is Johnny the Boy, I’m sick, it’s not my fault, doing exactly what Johnny didn’t want to do, he has to abandon his family, he’s still mad in the desert, he won’t join any of the sides, he can’t trust anyone, the inciting incident in picking a side, a tale to tell to you to be careful, how do we end up not in this relationship, the gang is fake but the cops are real, their colour is real, pressure from above, the sides, and beneath, how do we not end up in this horrible relationship?, we have to do some politics and point up, government in the first Mad Max movie, like in Stone, they’re going to do their shit, appreciating life and living it to the best, take some drugs, respect your fellow man worthy of respect, a politician who wants to change things, starts with an assassination, intellectual anthropology vs. art, Z-900s, before we run out of time, some of the best writing in the book, Goose’s birthday, a motorcycle guy, scooter, road rash, no helmet, no leathers, cars are a little safer, has taken these long road trips, it was poetry, went a long way to explain his motivation, the excitement of what he is doing, they are mirrors again, freedom, escaping the body, becoming something else, not like a car, you’re sitting in a machine, a ragdoll within the machine, you don’t have that on a motorcycle, you are literally in control of every part of it, it responds only to your input and the road, when you ride a motorcycle, an extension of you, a suit, clothing, the response of the machine to your physical movements, when you want to turn, more in control on a motorcycle, sharper turns, you have to physically move, the toecaps sparking against the ground, camera over the shoulder, the camera moves, the rider’s point of view, riding a horse, more like a cooperative effort, a good relationship with a horse, a negotiation, the best riders have a deep trust relationship with their animals, what the rider asks them to do, attraction to motorcycles, the sense of freedom a motorcycle gives you, two weeks on a motorcycle, grew up around motorcycles, cars are fucking expensive, buy a used car, fuck interest, a midlevel car is $10000, $1000 for a really nice car in the 70s, the inflation calculator, the price of cars has become like homes (unaffordable), cars are luxury products, there’s no money in affordable apartments, they’re buying it for an investment property, combined with the safety insanity, less driver training, drivers being protected in the event of an accident, height restrictions, pop up headlights are not allowed anymore, hit in the middle is better?, increases the weight cost, Japan does it differently, subsidized a different way, different results, read all day, Elon Musk, making electric cars, thousands of Teslas, even on Vancouver Island, in the city everybody has one, incentive of $5-7000, carbon offsets to make gas guzzlers, double subsidized, you’re buying an Elon Musk product, what you’re not seeing, there’s no way for you to fix it yourself, another cost, why motorcycles attracted Connor, a Suzuki GS500, $2200, no insurance, written off in a bad accident, registration, third party insurance, $500 year, mechanical repairs, 50k, mechanical problems, the chain got too worn, travelled all over the place, two week trips, Uluru, around Tasmania, you can ride the whole day in less than $100 of fuel, the freedom a motorcycle can give you, the entrapments of society, a shitbox car, parking, need to have a job to afford this, why bikies, why there are no truck gangs, vanlife, live rent free on the highway, the copyright situation, if some corporate lawyer suggests, the new copyright situation, only recent and hot, or under particular control, full film, hundreds of films online completely free, the most recent things, anything past that is online, sometimes it is Tubi, youtube, Ok.ru, just use an adblocker, the cartoonish nature, the visual is more important than it being realistic, based on a finite resource, a constant supply of new parts, cracked engine case, fuel line’s fractured, the disabled mechanic, you got 12, completely disregarding the reality, how long til Cundulini’s bike is ready, go meet the truck, George Miller and George Kennedy, scrappy at one point, he’s become old and rich, the storm sequence, too much CGI, everything is practical, he’s not Hollywoodified, Tina Turner, the amount of shit that’s poured on, let’s do the Blue Lagoon is Mad Max world, a serious step-down, alive forever, the redeeming arc, like Yojimbo again, need a leader, everything in Sun City is great, you know girl power and Max Max is there, the premise is broken, why prequels don’t make any sense, the backstory is to get you to the thing you want, A Mad Max Saga, the Fallout tv show, its not perfect but it is very good, the original Fallout game from 1997, the wanderer, dog’s named dogmeat, lore, a sense of humour, a funny situation, winks and nods, goofiness, the Gyro Captain, its my snake I trained it I get to eat it, insult humour, the ultimate film, just watch Road Warrior again, he has camels now, such a cool airplane, they see Sydney, the whole mythology, bigger not better, some amazing stuff, he recycles everything, a saxophone, Tina Turner’s stilt house, the sort of scene, he has to give up his weapons, none of those weapons get used, Doctor Who’s jacket, we can see the descent happening, Jesse plays the saxophone, scrapping, parallelism, symmetry, looking for symmetry, intrinsically resonates, video essay about doppelgangers, mirrorings, they know it to be good, hard to do without the vocabulary, the mirror of the beginning to the end, builds to the hero reveal, he’s the least interesting cop, his personality is he likes his wife, coulda bin any actor who was handsome in that role, an interview with George Kennedy looking very rich, will Mel Gibson come back?, whatever the answer is it doesn’t matter, he was a replaceable protagonist, Tom Hardy, they needed a big name actor, as an old man, the eternal hero, the greatest action film ever put to film, Mad Max one is a better movie, what it is to be a man, in cahoots to try to keep him on, Fifi is an interesting character, he’s got a plan, people need heroes, the message of the film undercuts that, at the end he gives the kid a choice, he becomes an anti-hero, a great anti-hero, a film that is more Mad Max, The Rover (2014), about it being on the edge of the apocalypse, almost a better sequel to Mad Max than Mad Max II, motivation for revenge, his dog died, his dog is in the boot of the car, his relationship with his dog, gets pretty fuckin dark, his wife was cheating on him, he murdered his wife, he knew that the world was fucked, he was a farmer, he’s a bad guy, he murdered his wife and his lover, I knew that the world was over, that’s the reality, that’s Mad Max, being a paramedic is going to show you some shit, driving yourself if a horrific act, that can happy at any time, falling into the street, a pedestrian, make eyecontact with the people who can run Jesse over, cousin blind in one eye has been hit twice, with a car its usually not on purpose, outsourced to manufacture and design, required by law to wear a seatbelt, ad campaigns, shock ads, very graphic car accidents, put people face to face with the consequences of having an accident, criticized and shocked, true stories being recreated, people texting on their phone, t-boned, people screaming, somebody dead, really horrific, people were against it because it shows the real life consequences, once you see the videos coming out of Gaza, what are you supposed to do with that information, any blue will do, my god what have we done, mal-and-mis-and-disinformation, cigarette packaging, lung cancer and tumours, it could contribute, very expensive not allowed to smoke almost anywhere, working at a tobacconist, 90% of the customers were over 40, not actually as dangerous as we were lied to about, alcohol can kill you, as a toxin, drinking too much alcohol in an evening, there was no connection between melanoma and cigarettes, you do you while you can, I shouldn’t be guilt tripping you about it, subject to the propaganda all around you, Alberta is the most rebellious part of Canada, felt uncomfortable, a very defensive driver and rider, tons of car accidents, a moment’s inattention, 1% is a hell of a lot, going 110km down a road, a T-intersection, an offramp to a rest stop, some dickhead stopped in the main lane, when you’re moving, that car is getting bigger really fast, sandwiched between two cars, get the fuck out of the way, the best case scenario, passenger vs. energy, safetyism, you’re in a chair, it’s happening, a slight unexpected something, a chipmunk on the road, a car that’s smoking, responding to something unusually, the takeway, how do we not have this relationship of escalating violence, turn off the internet, control the internet, if we don’t have free communication…, the bad people say the bad things, the top-down insensitive way, keep the money rolling in, if they find out we’re stealing them blind, people’s jobs to go on the internet, three day old account, tweet is deleted, job to fight what their boss wants, rewarded to get that, you’re taste of the cash, your job is fake, doing it because they’re in the bubble so hard, how do you end up there?, what if I’m wrong, that would be horrible, the dentist company, the policies are changed, asking permission to do things, why are they asking for consent now?, do you want to have fluoride?, why are they asking now?, they can bill it differently?, too many things like that, new forks for your motorcycle, coil overs, you don’t have time to research, that first motorcycle, at the time, 100k isn’t reliable, odometer only goes to 100,000, only meant, off the grid here, heard from other people, this is why you need information on the internet, brilliantly helpful, this guy is full of shit, formed the opinion, bad opinions formed, almost dead, does that guy run a dealership, do you think good information drives out bad information?, a tossup, fear, fear is hugely motivating, a trip to Uluru, in the middle of the fuckin desert, too much money to get a tow-truck, 3000km, cheap old cars leave them on the side of the road, if this does go bad, after a certain point of your own personal experience, things can always go wrong unexpectedly, they come off the new lot with problems too, fear is deflected by insurance, BCAA, road insurance, roadside assistance, how the money is made, a model known for mechanical problems, a Holden Barina, the reality, Donald Westlake, obsessed with insurance, comic relief characters, comparing insurance, one short story about insurance, what ifs are the most susceptible, when the war on terror started, everything was what if, two different bottles of shampoo, these things are possible, how likely is it?, when it comes to fear, climate change, it’s going to do this, it’s going to do that, track your accuracy, this sounds bogus, you haven’t looked into it, the temperature is so high, one of the tricks they were doing, ground temperature, the air above the ground is never as hot as the air above it, measuring the ground temperature, there are trends, we still have glaciers that they promised would have been melted, the global ice cap was going to be open all year, traffic from Europe to Asia ice free, is this fear being generated legit or not, control and manipulate before, the most recent one, as deadly as they said, if you don’t get the shot, fear is the motivator, it did for some people, people did die of COVID, largely ineffective, people died from the shots than died from COVID, the super-scary truth that hasn’t hit the mainstream yet, look into it and really see, just like the flu, inoculate the body, prevents you from getting COVID, changed the definition, a gene therapy, a new tech, the flu doesn’t work very well, it’s worth so much money, far off Mad Max, back to The Rover, deserves to be discussed, 6.4 rating on IMDB, the ending puts some people off, the reveal, the entire motivation, oh, really, probably annoyed some people, the strength of this story, a man who has nothing by the end of the film, no real hope for the future, a man with nothing to lose, he’s the terminal crazy he was afraid he would become, angry crazy shithead, Mad Max style story, so many spinoff ripoff, Escape From The Bronx, go out into the desert, dune buggies, the 80s was full of it, vehicular combat, no bikies, more realistic, no combat with cars, people get out of cars to fight, it expands upon, if it took place, it would be a couple of the years after the first Mad Max, fuel stations, give me $100, people are getting really desperate, under martial law, the military arrest people, Mad Max 1.5, noticeably more grim and serious, so nasty and scary, resonated a lot to things happening in Australia, the Chinese influence, radio stations in Chinese playing English songs, part of Australian, Greeks and Italians as the last immigrant set, families for hundreds of years, the gold rush, more so in recent years, it wasn’t there to make a point, a reality of modern Australia, one scene, Australia has survived, tourism, manufacturing, coal takes a long time to be replenished, the wealth of modern Australia, coal trains, armed guards, one of the characters in the rover is a fly in fly out miner, the money dried up, you should do a video on The Rover, ten years ago, a science fiction story, a science fiction story, what makes it science fiction, the relationship between government and people, the roads, the food, the consequences rolling down hill to a certain set of people, bronze vs. skags, rocker panels on their jackets, they’re not how a pirate ship or a gang actually works, they’re an embodiment of the fear of anarchy, they’ll come and rape your grandma, clunk having sex with a blowup elephant, rapists, they only respect the Night Rider, never explained, willing to kill cops, maybe?, he’s stolen that car, it’s a cop car that he’s stolen, studied it a lot, so well put together, the religious stuff before, he’s calling it out there, playing the game of lifting and using, it isn’t called Jerusalem by accident, explaining things, when they leave Johnny the Boy behind, a goat they staked out, spaced out on drugs, the reason people do drugs, a when to escape, obsessed with your avatar in a game, get in good with the gang, brushing Toecutter’s hair, a catamite servant boy, it is never explained, beloved, the beach scene, the scene killing goose, make him face the horror, that’s what we do, killing someone at a distance, it’s the same, Johnny, on the other end of the button, you have stock in company that makes the missiles, even better, then you don’t have any connection, make that company illegal, something cool about what Toecutter is doing there, very villainous and very solid, more of a sense of it in the novelization, especially in Fury Road, the old world becoming mythologized, remember him when you look at the night sky, valkries, a corporeal person, a spirit goes into the sky, a satanic ceremony, these guys are amiable and nice in their way, quite responsible in comparison, we are not liking the tennis lady and her parties, that’s not real, the vagabond lifestyle, not wanting to hide out and go and get a drink, not denying their animal nature, when we see that mythologized, goes right to the end, Goose as the same kind of character for Max, someone who was good and who was killed, what made Night Rider good is he was wild, Max breaks him, he’s talking about his belief in the supernatural legend of himself, witness me, trailer bait, very disconnected from the reality, patrol the highways, a wife and a kid, pay the bills, loving the road, way more sophisticated, less and a less sophisticated as it goes, Blue Lagoon heaven, to a fake heaven that doesn’t exist, a mythical place of green, disabused of that by showing up, this is degeneration, way to far away from the ambulance for way to long, nearly 50 years, a franchise, a video game out of it, this is no longer art, scrappy art, less and less art, something else completely, a franchise is even worse, Stone is an art film, that beach scene, boobs are all out, that was beautiful, not even into dicks, God Speed You! Black Emperor (1976), heavy metal, weird funk, an anthropological film, how they decide things, new member, a part of the club, the new member stands up, my name is Connor, they slap the patch on you, a consequence, he fucks up in some way, shave his eyebrows off, he’s gonna get a name out of that, confrontations with the cops, swastika on the thing, buddihism, bikers in North America and , stahlhelms, nazi pistols, nazi flags, quite the opposite, taking a trophy, counting coup, disillusioned soldiers, fake biker gang, Sons Of Anarchy, interpersonal drama, biker gang culture, saw their friends killed, The Wild One (1953), reflecting rather than explaining, interactions with these people, not willing to submit, going off and getting killed in wars, why the biker gangs still exist, rotarian groups, shriners, the masons, they’re all dying, in the shit of it, served in the military, time with their friends away from women, companionship on the road, bikes, car clubs, not organized like bikers, living an alternative lifestyle, amish as a response to horror, why do you have that on your stuff, taking the badges of your enemy, a good documentary I’d like to see, thoughts and lives, biking culture, Japan, rebelling, post-war, disillusionment, no point of being part of this society, a hangover, human life thrown away, what is it ever doing for me, an alternative way of living, to be able to explain it, Blue Ruin (2013), pretty great, Taken (2008) is palatable, competence porn, alcoholic, the lowest of the low rising up to meet a challenge, his parents are murdered, he tries to take revenge, the folly of revenge, Momento (2000) too, Green Room (2015), music at a nazi bar, witness a murder, lock themselves in the green room, a pocket Assault On Precinct 13 (1976), a struggle, at night during the week, ping you online, great chatting.

Mad Max - Frank Frazetta

Mad Max by Terry Kaye

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #814 – READALONG: The Fearless Benjamin Lay by Marcus Rediker

Jesse, Will Emmons, and Evan Lampe talk about The Fearless Benjamin Lay by Marcus Rediker

Talked about on today’s show:
fellow creatures, historian who fails to read, big long subtitle, “The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist”, his thesis, thesis proved, a revolutionary abolitionist, disrupting existing systems, I think slavery is bad, moral arguments, centuries after, Fredrick Douglas, big long excuse, don’t worry, doesn’t have many sources, well sourced book, the one book that Benjamin Lay published, Quaker records, newspaper accounts, maybe met Voltaire, knew the same guy, a figure for which there is a fair amount, describing every inch of the portrait, not a first hand account, major quibble, promised a dwarf who lived in a cave, not a cave, Will’s household, a science fiction fantasy podcast, not Evan of late, The Many Headed Hydra, Villains Of All Nations, Madagascar, Pirate Enlightenment by David Graber, the other enlightenment, pass the whip, not ducking, a preamble, a lot of people read science fiction the wrong way, they think it is about space stuff and people who live in the future and that’s not what science fiction about, science fiction is about ideas, and when it isn’t about ideas it’s not good science fiction or it’s just like an entertainment, Evie in the title, what’s the percentage chance, last man on earth, a joke science fiction, maybe 7 or 20 or 50 pages, dealing with some idea of science, physics, geology, chemistry pretty rare, when you stray away from that, leads you naturally to mystery, Sherlock Holmes, deeply connected to science fiction, about perceiving reality, history is like that, holodomor, does it have the story in the history, backed up by evidence, gender and sex, reaching back in time and making a connection, goes into the future, making suggestions about human nature, shoot Jesse with a phaser, you and Rousseau, I’m just in it for the lols, Ray Bradbury, mostly connected to childhood, obsessed with how did we end up here, specific parts of America, Ohio, America as an idea, not a phenomenon, most people don’t read, all the shaming, a powerful reader, it was important to read this, talking about the just produced play, a play about Mr. Lay, he attended too, mostly about Quaker politics, mostly attacks Quakers, Quaker records, beefs with various Quaker churches, around the edges, services of other denominations, listen and disrupt, a real shit disturber, wrapped up in Quakerism, the English Civil War, Gerrard Winstanley, Book of Revelation, William Blake, the diggers, seekers, New Model Army debates, an important chaplain, a man named Dell, apocalypse, important to our own times, radical Christians, ultimate confrontation, ruling class of England divided, things seem possible, we’re in this crisis, what crisis are we living?, the 20th century crisis, falling rates of profit, smell that around, globalization, the fall of a huge empire, some kind of feudal system, youtubers, the 17th century crisis, climate change, declining birthrates, Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century by Geoffrey Parker, post-war liberal order, China, Russia, “rogue state”, Putin’s gonna ride over on a bear, creeping towards, two little wars going on right now, Israel killing Gaza and Ukraine, not many men left to fight it, that’ll decline your birthrate, college in the 90s, graduate school in Fall 2000, a class on globalization, Francis Fukuyama, how quaint, the end of history, Battle of Seattle, 1999, Zapatistas, China joining the WTO, impute a singular idea, trick people in the west, Jesse is the most grounded of you guys, studying Mao, just a workin sailor, Mao was just a librarian, a war against the Japanese, all undergraduate, not interested in the paperwork, there’s always a level of academia sniffing its own farts, mainstream media, people of a certain class, what the academics are telling us, controlling the popular narrative, making trouble in his own church, this guy is important, making people talk about him and his ideas, living the virtues he claims to think are important, lays out people who have made counterarguments, general theory of how things work, bottom up, history from below, the personal aspect, this dwarf guy is a lot like Evan, vegetarian, an anarchist rather than a Quaker, he didn’t learn his learning within the church, to be the radical he was, living in Barbados, mistreating a thief, he came to his own revelation, he used the church as his vehicle of disturbance, hoping Fred would be here, religious thinking, Jesse can’t submit, if you’re a Quaker you don’t have to submit, as a child you have to go to church with your parents, how this institution works, holding the threat of hell over people’s heads, hell and temporal punishment, slave holders should be put to hard labour, the Puritans, the Methodists, rebellion against the church of England, E.P. Thompson’s The Making Of The Working Class, a lot of power in religion, it has gone away largely, 17th century Quakerism today, grows out of rebellion against the mainstream tradition, compared to Socrates, Diogenes, living in a pot, making friends with animals, making you impure, if you’re bitter you’ve probably been eating toads, he was a troll, he had some juice, Alexander, get out of my sun, serve him some chicken, I’m your servant Benjamin Lay, he’s a hobbit, doesn’t wear shoes, Socrates’ argument with religion, he’s treats these as forces in the universe to be understood, seems to be a religious zealot, the best way of being on Earth, he helps them kill himself, Benjamin Lay isn’t martyred, canceled a few times, he didn’t have any kids, she was 41 when they married, also a little person, ladies make nice more than guys, the women like Benjamin more than the men did, he was cute, a marginalized person, trying to convert people to the best way to be, his message is meant to be a universalist one, the records are all Quaker focused, these people took records, abuse a word, Christian ontology, understanding of the nature of reality, gotta get back to Eden, insufferable, speaking on behalf of the benign creator of the universe, a little more milquetoast than that, George Fox’s counterrevolution, colonizing project, associating, like a Mormon community today, he has the same values as we do, not a Richard Nixon Quaker, “friends”, Cornel West, a disarming technique, disingenuous sometimes, going along to get along, if he was alive today, spinning his own cloth, making his own shoes, he can’t go to Starbucks, red mollusc shells, vegan, honey was his sin, drank milk, the secret there is it is religious, not a codified religion, body purification, vegetarians are very out of fashion now, Gandhi, liberation from colonialism, liberation of enslaved people from their slave masters, wear vegan shoes, abuse of humans, and animals and bad, you’re bad because you’re eating meat, riding horses, flax, he loved his sheep, severing our relationship to our animals, clothing, meet, love, eat, a good connection we have to animals, unconscious grazing animals, not even gathering, just grazing, they have no baskets they’re naked, a concept not totally explored, the lamb’s war, during the English revolution, libertarianism dot org, a science fiction novel set during the English Civil War, the Baroque Cycle, the King was appointed by God, 18th Brumaire, the colours of the revolution that came before, man can make history but, deists, self-determination, genocide, free Palestine, from the river to the sea, Genocide Joe, a meaning, the word holocaust, bombing not burning, getting very literal, dip into the Book of Revelation, convince people within his own church, what other language would he use?, Quakers seem nicer than some, fewer slaves, involved in the slave trade, make other people do work for you, the relationship with alcohol, got a pass for selling alcohol, in this religious mode there is a lot of abstaining from things, veganism is not a political movement, an economic shift towards servicing this group, banning meat, the animal liberation front, setting off nail bombs, Nelson Mandela was a terrorist, people willing to do crimes, do violence, seems legit, freeing pigs and they ate a guy, we want to eat them and they want to eat us, let them fight, powerful mammals that eat both meat and veg, the love wallowing, will get as fat as you let them, get pretty feral, in favour of the megafauna, a period of crisis, Bryan Alexander tweeted climate change, apocalyptic thinking, a lot of electricity around here, they’re expensive, it’s all a sham, if they really cared about climate change, the Nordstream Pipleine, fighter jets flying over Ukraine, the cynicism of the ruling class, all modelling, modelling what the future is going to be like, it never works, Alien Nation TV show, George Fransisco, predicting horse-racing and football games, too many variable, how important fear is in controlling people, what if the communists take over Vietnam, is that’s what’s happening, liberation from colonialism, try to stop horrible things, the fear factor, fearing God’s judgement will be on you, how god will judge us, any reply?, 17th century crisis, decreased growing seasons, it wasn’t planned starvation, bad weather for a little while and incompetence, people don’t build bridges properly, people do all sorts of terrible things, that’s a planning crisis, people making mistakes, squirrel away enough food, read Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything, very different narrative, temperature shifting, people are moving around, lots of reasons, the Sahel is expanding, supposed to plant your garden in May, now earlier in the season, April, fruiting plants, the systems we have now, dealing with lots of human beings moving around, dignity, beggar thy neighbour, immigration?, a factor in climate change, 1.5 degrees Celsius, killed a third of humanity, Tokogawan Japan, the Thirty Years War, unless you have no atmosphere like the Moon, by telling them facts, why would they stop, find out what’s true and act as best you can, El Salvador, do they have a bad government, very innovative things, crime is way down, meetings that are all filmed, independent prosecutor to investigate all of us in this room, a bitcoin economy, investing in bitcoin is not the plan, unable to daily transactions, debasing the currency, things getting more expensive, becoming less affordable, the populists wanted to devalue the currency, lower interest rates, we should be having jubilees constantly, how to get that to happen, always a bad idea, why would China want a cheaper RMB, pouring that money into the hands of people, mortgage length, being a gold bug, unfuckupable, we can’t just go out and find more gold to dig up, it doesn’t send people to the Yukon, a standard for trade, uses to many electrical cycles, Greece’s problem, whatever will be beneficial, show me one doing a good job, what is the benefit of switching to bitcoin, their bitcoin wallet is not seizable, where’s my quantitative easing, El Salvador, people moving out of the United States, where are they moving to, El Salvador, Costa Rica, cost of living, many Americans have moved to Canada, people are looking for better lives, where’s your stat for that, Belize’s currency was pinned to the USA, let’s help people and not hurt people, essentially just the gold standard, not an external commodity, taxation, tariffs, a form of taxes, forced labour, voluntary labour, buy war bonds, people would take their savings, unconvinced by, giving up your monetary sovereignty, many other countries don’t, isn’t that interesting, isn’t that another way, many countries use the United States the US dollar, a means of transactions, to promote exports, push employment in China, deficit spending, who is made the whim of these actions, affecting many people, University Of Central America’s public opinion, a successful experiment, it makes you independent, gold mining is very toxic to rivers, industrial gold mining, electrical cycles, causes global warming, coal, wasted cycles, people play games, it can’t be regulated, ban it, this is officially banned, it’s like torrents, data between computers, we’re doing that right now, China is a worker’s state, build socialism over the next 50 years, bitcoin within its borders, some Chinese man is kicking a dog, should a worker’s state be able regulate its currency, a stupid question, you cannot ban it, if we turned out all the computers and internet connections, an impractical idea, it’s stupid to question, Jesse’s favourite government, the B.C. government is pretty good, nobody is perfect, some is way worse, [Javier] Milei guy in Argentina, why would china want to ban bitcoin, it’s an alternative, a fiat currency is a good idea sometimes, get the good results, waving my hands too much, what’s BRICS going to do?, their own Euro?, officially banned, Cuba has three different currencies, trying to fix problems, North Korea has a big neighbour, you can only do so much, Cuban pesos?, good things and not bad things, less censorship, a climate crisis, you should pay attention to the climate, cynically selling, another Stephen King story, 11/22/63 by Stephen King, Isaac Asimov wrote for Gallery, now just a porn website, a bunch of essays about the John F. Kennedy assassination, all deleted links, at what point are we all going to agree it was just the CIA, what people say in school, Jesse got in trouble, looking at her apple watch every few minutes, drinking from her Starbucks, too much nudity in some piece of art?, some sort of religious offense, annoyed, just be careful, all above board, our beloved comrade Benjamin Lay, the scholarship in this book, historical evidence and how we use it, Christopher Columbus, a historian made a claim, Columbus started the first transatlantic sex trade, facts that historians collect, Rediker is incredibly careful, Columbus’ journals, condemning the Spanish treatment of the Native Americans, this is the author’s claim, this is the evidence we have, interpretation, what makes history fun, understanding reality, a claim: President Biden is demented, we can document stuff and ask if it is a valid claim or not, All Slave Keepers Apostates, why did he leave his printing company’s name off of it, this guy was really important, one of the first Quaker dwarfs to really shake things up, a biography of Warren Chase, a religious nut later in life, free labour, making a more socialist argument for equal distribution of land, a pro-free love book, arguments against marriage, the model would be this book, when people write biographies, three volumes on Lyndon Johnson, H.P. Lovecraft, the challenge of a book like this, even if the claim is overargued, when he’s speculative he’s very clear, it becomes a little repetitive, a commonplace book, could be read backwards to forwards, reading Philip K. Dick, maybe Philip K. Dick had an autistic son, in a story like Progeny, something strange is going on here, latest Heinleins, it’s going to be the trial at the end, the dad had a basketful of money, I want a spacesuit, Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men In A Boat, Kip is probably Kipling, same ideology, stories to understand reality that aren’t about kings, what battles were won what alliances were made, semi-important, an interesting cross-grain, more about spiritualism, a dark path to go down, a traveling lecturer, spiritualism, utopian socialism, Wisconsin, homestead exemption, women and black to have the right to vote, personally upsetting, people are getting tricked, they wanna get tricked, a good chunk of humans, everything can be explained by history, harbinger of the Occupy Wall Street movement, 2011, an occupation of the Wisconsin state capital, a huge protest movement, slabbing, you take a comic book, a vhs tape, and put it between plastic, ridiculous and odious, everything is becoming valueless, when the new money comes, Weird Tales, December 1928, buy some meat or veg, that’s a radish sir, silly and amusing, more difficult to get scans, protected from rain, do they fill those slabs with nitrogen?, study deeper the process of slabbing, for some purpose, widely distributed, when the servers go down, the richness we need to be focused on, that’s how we improve our lives (and also land reform), another speculative commodity, alienation of just being a worker, bitcoin speculators, what creates value is labour, a medium of exchange, we demand trade in that product with this dollar, the scarcity in my car’s gas tank, bitcoin has no inherent value, at virtually no cost, all become gangsters, we gotta fight where we stand, personal reflection, somebody on Facebook, take personal offense, enjoys collecting old magazines, quality of copy, that “objective” standard pinned on the front, legit, small potatoes, a dying breed, a bunch of old white guys with white hair, not interested in the preservation of the hobby, collecting as a strange phenomena, comic book speculation, the rate of profit to fall, new investment properties, the art world, a big scam, these comics and pulp magazines have stories in them you can read, money laundering, you shouldn’t be upset, if a mink breaks into your farm and kills a chicken, rethink the concept of farming, when all these dudes die, warehousing, 300 books, we’re lucky to have what how few copies we have, drawing a copy of this, the next ship, and we found it in that city, very good at limiting his claim to what is known, people still talking about him guerrilla theater, anachronistic, he’s good, and so should Evan, a useful contribution, plainspeech statement about doing your homework, ye doing ye homework, ye should read a book on bitcoin, end of midsummer, Podkayne, Stranger In A Strange Land, the longer version, Farnham’s Freehold, then we go wild with Number Of The Beast, 2010, an expanded version, a trad sized, small sized but new, Ace, more on sex, Smith’s sexual revolution, a woman seducing jubal, all good, not good, I’m sex him up, the ending for Podkayne, restored original and the editor’s suggested one, the few stories I skipped, Puddin’ was the prototype for Podkayne, feels like a juvenile, frozen fetuses, younger sister frozen longer, indefensible, vocal minority, the fascism, you go do the math for your homework, natural deductive logic, symbolic logic, sounds good, completely useless, New York, general semantics, that’s bullshit, history of moral philosophy, the controversial part, a vague memory of Heinlein supporting the Vietnam War, Michael Moorcock, “Starship Stormtroopers”, rationalization, why they call him a fascist, Joseph Campbell vs. John W. Campbell, Mark Neocleous, anti-communism mixed with anti-englightenment, a little to friendly with bad ideas, theories, the reason you want voters to be veterans, makes sense in a certain way, warhawks who went to war, grunts, in cognitive decline, this war is different, mainstream media, the next six months will tell, bottom up focus, Star Trek is a navy, Miles O’Brien got demoted, there’s no infantry, there’s no marines, we’re going to focus on the grunts, ascends the meritocracy ladder, the movie, goes deep, fascist propaganda, not much in the book, almost no propaganda in the book, naming the ship Rodger Young, Fort Currie, M.I. by Rudyard Kipling, nice and short and illustrated, both worth reading, a little more imperialistic, Gunga Din, from grunt’s POV, slip himself into that mode, the navy is a bunch of braggarts, from a Pacific War, reinvade the Philippines, the navy did that, what the army was doing in new guinea, intermilitary rivalry, unsuccessful in China, 80% of the military budget, 1941, Will to do more history stuff, throw some non-fiction in once in a while, literary non-fiction, The Aeneid, The Iliad, The Odyssey in reverse, ends on a really nice noir note, so much good stuff coming on LibriVox, The Green Queen by Mike Vendetti, Margaret St. Clair is really good, a man who somehow does science on his girlfriend, a few weeks ago, a ton of Ace Double d-176, 131 pages, Mistress of Miracles or Puppet of Super Science, his atomic puppet was out of control, his brain child became a full grown Frankenstein, Viridis, radioactive world’s atomic shield, destroy the girl he loved, under another title, copyright, nobody gives a shit, pulled down even tho legit, arbitrary and evil system, mostly a short story by her, she’s a girl, she comes at things from a girl POV, she was witch, she liked gardening, a weird nudist California, raised dachshunds, informed by science fiction, a girl angle, Heinlein is trans but not a girl, would he have the rainbow flag in his bio, thinking about it a lot, wishfulfilment story, The Inhabited Men [copyright renewed B00000306198], she’s usually creepy, Meem, these people are immortal, immortality, they live again, standard twist on immortality, a cultural practice, a cult following, no kids, estates, pretty grabby, movies really propel that shit, Asimov’s reputation is in massive decline, dude, it can’t, The Fun They Had, you can have a tiny little influence, Margaret St. Clair will have her day in the sun again, Agent Of The Unknown, why is Ursula K. Le Guin hugely popular, compare her to John Brunner, when he was alive, like Octavia Butler but longer, fashionable to read black people, breadth of work, people aren’t as obssessed, a hoighty toit, Omleas, why liberals like playing with it, couple of randos online, 10-15 tweeters, stories published in men’s magazines, men’s magazines are full of riches other than boobs, a feminine perspective, Leigh Brackett and Andre Norton, in decline by the 50s, not as popular as you think she is, a Raymond Chandler novel?, August 11, looking at colleges in the midwest, North Dakota, scary?, strong science program, weather and geography, culturally, Fargo, pirate sister?, other sister, too much property, financial aid, a house that’s almost paid off, parent’s house, disown your daughter, no parents, no inheritance, readopt her, North Dakota wants people to stay, please don’t go, good schools, top 20 universities, until WHO?, The Loved Dead, The Journey of Joenes, The Not-World, Attitude by Hal Clement, The Triumph Of Evil, pirated audiobook of the Mad Max novelization, audiobooks of the damned, recorded in his car, Why?, What?, Huh?, When!?, Gentleman Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos, illustrations as well, LibriVox, she’s a whore but she’s not explicit, you love her, she’s so funny, not stupid, not smart, everybody in it is stupid, an amazing comedy and very entertaining, racoon situation, around during the day, food available, a nursing mother looking for extra food, feed rats like Benjamin Lay, feral rats, in this very house, pet rats, tumors, it’s not humans that are cruel, the universe that is cruel, we live in hell, we have to make some compromises, not so glorious, predator eats prey, cute animal videos, extraordinarily picked out, videos of lions and people together, apex predators don’t usually go after each other, what cats can do, less domesticated, tigers, wolves, think less about wolves, equally present, fear controls people, coyotes, wary rather than concerned, fighting against fear, fear generated in order to control you, the biggest task, what if works so well, what if it is a tumor will, how they milk the moneys, you need that insurance money, open up a clinic, when you’ve got a lump, a passing thought, what if you get COVID will, many people died from COVID, what if the climate gets bad an people are unable to eat, getting worse, mitigation measures that line the pockets of people that are not you, current set of political leaders, fear is the way to do it, being the supposed incompetence with regard to the “invasion” at the border, get rid of the physical wall, new “biometric” border, in the digital business that never ends, a subscription to microsoft word, offer you servers, the CIA loves that, the NSA loves that, milk the cow, only cream for those in the know, ads in the feed, bussing, a legit fear?, not exactly what they want, also voting doesn’t matter, all hand ballots, counted electronically, scrutineers, the political parties are worried, stand around and observe the elections, human eyes, poll watchers, in the room?, Rhode Island, putatively non-partisan, retired people interested in helping democracy, so fucking boring, there’s no scandals, prevent communication of election results, because Ontario and Quebec, livestreaming, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, you are very bad, used to shut down the phones, if your legitimacy comes from democracy, a weird combination, vote strategically, any blue will do, prevent Trump, ensure Trump, Joyce Carol Oates, literally a professor a Princeton, not a political science professor, crazy and crazed, you have to vote and strategically, swing state, brainwashed, cutting off voting after 55, because cognitive decline, have you met these tweeters, less diseased when younger, Stephen King, drinking too much, too much cocaine, what was he angry at?, he’s come to love big brother, a Red Sox fan, a normal New England trait, Pet Semetary, a major cultural touchstone, names of actors, bookwriters, in the storehouse but not near the front, a less trustworthy voter?, swing in different directions, not vote, BC’s government is a lot better than it was, a toll on a bridge, get rid of bad policies, no more MSP payments for anybody, means tested, making changes to pharmaceuticals, dental, a problem with Justin, as close as they’ve got to leverage, Jack Layton, a moral figure, the liberals are sad when he dies, beloved doesn’t get you changes, romanticizing leadership, big mistakes aren’t being made, is the response solving problems, “my team”, how you end up like Joyce Carol Oats, orange man bad, bad president, in terms of killing people, a numbers thing, renegotiated the free trade agreement, the copyright law, after NAFTA, it sucks, less stuff that can be legally archived, legacies, a freeforall, millions of things, an active estate or an active corporation, people want to share it, it’s just about keeping your treasure and trying to sell it to some corporation, become grabby, you’re sixty years old your dad wrote a story in the 50s, selling to Hollywood, sold a public domain story to Hollywood, the studio lawyers aren’t doing their job, Adjustment Team, Adjustment Bureau, there’s no money in books, bro, aborted abortion that was the Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams show, random pig people, some of them are unrecognizable, The Impossible Planet, a bersmirchment on Philip K. Dick’s legacy, his reputation, Screamers, Peter Weller smoking marijuana cigarettes, terminators pretending to be little kids, Second Variety, Jon’s World, two Doc Labyrinth stories, The Man In The High Castle sequel, his brain is too disorganized, George R.R. Martin big plan, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, strong opening scenes, he know how to pull off endings, as a ploter, his hour and a half sort of ones tend to be a lot of running around, the market is for novels, snobs, I read Hugo winners[novels], novelettes, snobbery, Mysterious Bookshop [Otto Penzler], incoming selections, big titles, paphlets with short stories, magazine, anthologies don’t get the love that novels do, collections, The Virginia Heinlein Estate, the 12 Heinlein Juveniles, sell them at Costco, massive incompetence, people are asking for them, those would be nice gifts to give, Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys, other things to read too, Tom Swift, $1400 for the complete set, riddled with typos, leather bound, shit covers, Jesse fact checking himself, $2200 or $4000 for the special edition, $1300 complete works, correspondence and screenplay, designed to do the opposite, milk the cows they already have, ebooks on Amazon, Mother’s Day, Heinlein fading out, mid-century science fiction, mostly by and for men, by men for boys, now for old men who have a lot of money, new books are for adult women, books in general, not just science fiction, some females read and some don’t, cultivate a group interesting in reading old shit, 2017, history for men, mainstream books, dad books, the YA getting published, adult women who like to be teen girls, 1.5K library, RAH’s fans are dying while we wait for the paperback edition, your herd is not doing well, very interested in what if we banned wills, after you die you don’t get to live any longer, you made claims during your life, you’re dead now, you don’t get to say what happens, rule people’s lives from the grave, focus on being alive, the estates for the estates, the Virginia Heinlein trust at the heat death of the universe, vague feeling we gotta help the wife, help the kids, what about the grandkids and their kids, a reactionary, supposed to be a slur, he’s a reactionary, the Jerry Pournelle book, if there was a revolution he’d be on the other side, recent Heinlein show, this doesn’t seem very fascist, a man of his time, some overlap there, he’s wrong about some stuff?, caught up on any word, opposing social liberation or reform, rightist, ultra right, blimpish, reactionary and radical, we operate in different intellectual spheres at time, communism is not left, MAGA communists, most people think it is left, personal freedom, do I think I should embrace personal freedom, we have to know our limitations, programmed robots that are self-programmable, gender dysphoria, is that a real thing?, a diagnosable thing, Dirty Harry, a man’s got to know his limitations, you have to know you’re unable to fly without a helicopter or jetpack, take hormones to get wings, feminine secondary sex characteristics, paint a mustache on your face, a female mustache, chemically enhanced, MRNA shots that, more [Ian M. Bank’s] Culture novels, change their sex at whim, Day Million, a post-human future, they travel to other stars, sorry, Paul, we’re not going to develop warp drive, where’s the evidence for that, the path to immortality, lots of counter evidence, Herland, fear death, don’t stop existing, more permanent, made no objections, stomp on your corpse, the community may object, fly here and kill me?, people getting conned, Weimar Republic days, pre-nazi-nazi days, no followup, Jackson Hinkle, a hormone clinic that got burned down during the Nazi period, lot of Nazis who’d gotten treatment there, a blue costume, he liked paintings and art, that’s not exactly trans, Ernst Röhm, gay Nazis, jstor, wikipedia, gay men under the nazi regime, officially ant-gay, exceptions, Netflixs, secret gay reactionary line of thinking, so-anti-gay because day, whoever smelt it dealt it, PUBG, a good way to interact with people not in Jesse’s intellectual circle, they died, blame other people for their deaths, sometimes legit, Old White Beard, speculating, he will type, an airdrop, crashed my airplane, he would have said what he was doing, blame is a really big mistake, avoiding responsibility and trying to fix problems, that’s not the way to win, stay out of the fight, maybe we go on to victory, a charge against being called a newb yourself, a long setup, an objective way of winning the game, it says on the screen, comparisons and strategies, people not playing the game to win, gain social acceptance, loser thinking, not good thinking, a reasonable point of view, people acting mistakenly, do you think blame is helpful to your life, a former employer, losing time on it, find out what the problem, was avoid that path, minimize that interaction, whatever current set of problems, Meg you idiot, what have I done?, now you sound like my therapist, how to prevent the milk from falling out, just an ice cube tray, low stakes, a carton of cream, burn the apartment down, just enough cream, in the blame game, resentment is something we should never have, how do we avoid it, avoid generation of resentment, can’t afford to have it be unpredictable, budget for that, earn or steal more money, cultivating behaviors that prevent resentment, expectations not fulfilled, what’s the opposite of resentment, being treated unfairly, you order french fries, enjoying my tea, they got eaten, mistakes were made, the bullet interacted with the child’s face, neurotic and consciousness, seems like you ate all the french fries, a big beef, am I resentful?, not as big a deal, a lot of myself in this short guy, makes trouble and annoys people, part of why he resonates differently, excuse me, give you my opinions about Trump or whatever, calling things out makes you unpopular, he liked books, down with Diogenes, public urination, normal dude behavior, how public is public?, in the public pool, for Jesse’s own well being, a hilarious situations, not say that, wait until after to tell one of their friends, tell their friend but not tell Will, a recipe for mistake, a lot of trivial conversations, shitpost in dms, jokes, more than at the surface level, I like her hair, that lady has nice boobs on this cover, #LegCling #HeadCLing, a wrestling magazine, a wrestling lady, articles about wrestlers, not exactly sex symbols, a realm culture, that culture was really interesting and very real, participatory, playing a coordinated tag game, wrestling, on TV, Gorgeous Ladies Of Wrestling, fun, how much C.M. Kornbluth have you read, hard to understand, very smart, The Advent On Channel 12, mediated through Frederik Pohl, they colabbed, if there is a guy who can present, this is not an August Derleth H.P. Lovecraft situation, deep collaborators, friends too, from a young age, Pohl’s memoir, tight in the 30s, how goddamn smart this kid is, didn’t live very long, 4 pages, this will blow your socks off. Money was tight in the land, certain bankers who sate in New York, let Poopy Panda up periscope and fire all bow tubes, cursed be the day, feature length cartoon epics, nabes, devilishly splice, flop negatives, lo these beast and birds are like unto us in their laughter, mountebank, Poopy Panda Land, sandbagged by thousands of catchpenny engines, a child of my flesh, Remember boy, his heart was sore, addle the heads of children five hours, in the book of Space Merchants, spherical trusts, Motivational Research boys, the little bastards, untalented, Otto Clod, a sex fantasy for the more precocious girls, a liturgy of opening hymn, to coax and urge, sore amazed, this is the bleeding end, flipped their wigs, an old animator, from Winnie the Pooh illustrations back in 29, and Ben Graffis fired him, let it be so, a special film, enhaloed, Poop poopy poopy, it is definitely a tv first, he did go to the bar, a great gag, Who sate behind His desk, capital H, Poop poopy poopy, holy gee this is awful, an operator of marionettes, Poop poop poopy, 36pp, to even understand this story, the Mickey Mouse club and the power of Disney, Disney Plus, the bankers killed our poor C.M. Kornbluth, machine gun, driveway of snow, called out, he cut straight through all the bullshit, what is this phenomena and what does it mean, Disney is alive and well and means nothing except extraction, Annette Funicello all grown up, cuttin’ it right to bone, this is not impenetrable, that’s funny, he goes on to do something with it, too smart for his own good, Idiocracy (2006), The Marching Morons, a powerful story, a dangerous story, misanthropy, went through some shit, see his friends slaughtered, the good war, mostly talk about the Nazis, one empire fucking around with another empire, what are we doing in Hawaii, or Taiwan, a little piece of Taiwan attached to mainland China, heat up a war between China and Taiwan, fuckin evil, people buy that shit, heatin the pan, but nothing’s cooking much in the bowl, so cynical now, just focus on Trump right now, grocery store.

The Fearless Benjamin Lay by Marcus Rediker

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #813 – READALONG: What Mad Universe by Fredric Brown

Jesse, Will Emmons, and Jonathan Weichsel talk about What Mad Universe by Fredric Brown

Talked about on today’s show:
how to spell Fredric, mostly famous for a short story [Knock], The Star Mouse, The last man on earth sat a lone in a room. There was a knock on the door., a story stub, the basic premise, For Sale Baby Shoes never used., people who are really into science fiction from the 40s from astounding, from Planet Stories, Startling Stories, September 1948, some differences, 1 issue complete novel, 1949 hardcover, Lawrence Block had written this new Burglar book, The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown, a writer’s writer, Donald E. Westlake, dead much longer, Anthony Boucher, great, pretty good, before its time, multiverse shit, a little annoyed with it, overwrite, overexplain, sense of disorientation, conversations about bug-eyed monsters, when the women were dressed like this, the crowd chanting for Mechhy, stuff we’re missing, a review of the new Fallout show, a review of the review, a criticism of the show based on its a videogame that got turned into a tv show, enjoying it for spot the thing, fanservice, oh look a callback!, servicing the audience of Startling Stories and the like, early postmodernism, self-referential, woman wears the brass bra, green bikini-top, the space-girl uniform, B.E.M. is a deep cut today, 1950s with movies, kidnapping girls in film, up to the 80s, space girl uniform, when you’re in outer space, we have spacesuits, are they thin clear plastic?, girl in bikini in space, she needs to have a pressure suit, a plastic bag so you can see her legs, the art from the original, our hero fighting a bug-eyed monster, clouds, he’s asleep, fitting into a tradition, Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee, a representation of Surprising Stories, Earle Bergey, the father of the brass bra, bad at bug eyed monsters, great at girls, in this other world, he’s much better at doing bug-eyed monsters, venusians, arcturians, moon creatures, human models, good logic, a fun and funny book, Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022), tired of, a non-Marvel Marvel movie, has actual emotional resonance, the phenomena that happens, shit on then becomes mainstream, has to hit the official checklist, a science fiction movie about multiverses, guy who snaps his fingers, Thanos?, not official channel, groupthink, indpendent film that got made and blew up, as a science fiction movie, a family that’s struggling with itself, a science fiction device, what it’s like to deal with each other, the phrase, “above the mental level of a comic book”, nobody would accept this plot, it’s too low level, artistic contempt rolls down hill, comics at the bottom, Planet Comics, this is in the book, pulp magazine editors calling their magazine’s books, being aspirational, low social standing, what this whole book is about, semi-respectable, jobless, a lowly writer, a plagiarist, most important robot in the universe, his version of earth, now he’s the publisher, most sexy girl on the planet is now his wife, the angst of being a writer in 1940s, be respected and respectable, the girlfriend of the nerd, Rocket Talk, social strata, also true in our world, commercial product, Multiverse Of Madness, Spider-Man version, the most mainstream version of a lowly science fiction thing, official approval, did the Christopher Reeve movie, stupid comic book shit, stupid comic book shit took over, Disney+, main theme, having fun, reflecting, a roman-a-clef, story with a key, match characters for real life people, going to visit an author in upstate New York, paid for a novel but hasn’t started it, Theodore Sturgeon, interesting factoids, one version of Surprising Stories, very graphic on the cover, the Mecchyverse, the cause of all this later stuff, fun, when Heinlein did his multiverse stuff, ultimately where all of this ends up, an interesting case, basically one story [Make A Prison], all literary allusion to one poem, taking metaphor, that’s not how normal science fiction operates, if he’s finally doing that, maybe it’s going to be good, the prose is really solid, there were things that didn’t need to be there, a fairly short novel, slightly changed, titles of chapters, words here and there are different, he explained everything, science fiction pulp concepts with logical explanations, even the moon has an atmosphere, set in the future, published in 1948 but set in 1954, cold war paranoia, East Berlin, shoot you on sight, McCarthyism, a preview of that, ahead of its time, everybody is looking for spies, so cool, a time travel sort of story, doesn’t know the rules, the history, good insight into the book, a legit bug-eyed monster science fiction future, how their world became that much different, the world of Winton, no major differences other than a rocket to the moon, capacitor explosion, completely disintegrates one person, a future that didn’t happen for the United States in 1955, doing so many things at once, making fun of science fiction magazines of the 1940s, the fan was at the bottom of the pool, the best fan, the editor wants fans to write in, a shit disturber, makes jokes and fun, more addicted to the magazine, see your name in print, what we see as youtubers wanting subscribing, need engagement, asking questions, just a youtuber was bad, real media, feeling you’re a low level guy, the fan wants to be the best fan, the publisher is gone, all of it logically follows, everything is explained, the levels of meta, the universe a grown man imagines would be inside a 14 year old boy’s imagination, an impressive feat, not-super-super memorable, not-very science fictiony, The Number Of The Beast by Robert A. Heinlein, Lazarus Long says to Heinlein: look there’s Dorothy, L. Frank Baum, writers who write other universes, detailing 666 universes, already tired of it, seems like it was new, the twist is the multi-verse aspect, he holds off until the very end, precursors, Sidewise In Time by Murray Leinster is from the 1930s, a hand stand-in characters, E.E. Doc Smith, Zap Branigan style Doppleberg or whoever, space aliens doing spy stuff, we have to shoot the people on sight, multiverse, 1895, philosopher/psychologist, all plasticity and indifference, the etymology, comes from stuff like solipsism, you’re the only thing that’s real, doesn’t get you very far, coffee later, even if hit by a bus, all solipsism are true, the stupid wrong way to go, my truth, there aren’t private facts, the private language argument, Tolkien had a private language for a while but had to start sharing it with some elves, telepathy, graduate thesis out of being just a hack writer, a girlfriend who will respect him, Doppel, made himself French, he doesn’t know anything about it, the Winton editor who looks like him a little bit, she looks even better, all very fun, why did those two characters swap, so plot could happen, a narrative that swallowed itself, interesting philosophical implications, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, what is real, post-modern rabbit hole, Rick And Morty, six episodes is probably enough, took the whole thing of Futurama, hasn’t fully established, handful of tropes, hasn’t worked out all the kinks, he’s the publisher now, does he have the skills to manage a publishing empire?, invite your editors to your mansion in the countryside, Hearst, Patty Hearst’s story, money to feed poor people, robbing a bank, caught or burned to death, sentenced to prison, commutes her sentence, president pardons her, what was going on her mind?, things are mean, your grandpa is a horrible person, I like my grandpa, FBI gets here, grandpa says I want her out, I’d like my granddaughter to have a pardon, yessir, main character syndrome, comic book level, that level of corruption, if it has any point at all it is about that up and down contempt, night gangs, an awesome sequence, get robbed, robs a guy, moon-drugs, space-planes, well worked out, looking up and looking down, good thinking on Jesse’s part, pulp magazines: 10 Story Book, Fantasy Book, a different etymology, contempt, folk tales as opposed to fairy tales, massively blinded, Remarkable Story Of Chicken Little, how good it is, so simple and so good, finding new insights, in it, washed over a million liters of water over a million years, this beautiful rock, using tricks and an idea, trying to fill page, a grandma, tell them a story, it gets inside of them and comes out later when they’re older, meme idea of story be what’s most different about humans as opposed to other animals, contempt for Little Red Riding Hood, kids’ stuff, what is it good for, for understanding skepticism, how do you know it, so girls will respect and marry you, Jesse is right about all of this, Will hates to say it, work that comes after it, Philip K. Dick novels, sudden slipping into another reality, the tenor of it, when it happens in Dick, Dick always undermines, he sets up a thing to be skeptical about, another rug under there, bewilderment and bemusement, not a great novelist structure, make an argument for the sake of argument, something being said about the nature of contemporary society, one’s ability to perceive reality, there’s great pleasure in reading his discombobulated stuff some time, doesn’t feel that way when you read Dick, Solar Lottery, chosen at random, an interesting idea, there’s a lot of running around, when he’s writing longer pieces there’s a lot of running around, bad for the story, liking the experience of living in a universe, the action set pieces in this book were incredible, driving through the darkness, dead reckoning, twitter, postmodernism and nihilism, a little bit of nihilism in this book, if an infinite number of universes, making all the possible choices, nicely dismissed by Mecchy, you’re you, alternate universe Jesse, mirror universe, not very dark, very joyful read, bemused, the coins, the questions, when he’s on the train, the cots, regrets that instantly, mist-out, if that’s his worst sin, first Fredric brown, Arena, he likes his parodies of reality, near the end of WWII, man from earth is locked in mortal combat with a big red monster, USA vs. Japan in the Pacific, retelling current events with a wink and a nod, man vs. Japan man, fields of technology, the idea of Star Trek in the first place, the klingons are the mongols, the romulans are the soviets, Roddenberry’s philosophy, come let us reason together, humans won’t be racist, Scotsman and Japanese man African ladies, guy from Iowa, Soviet guy, mystery and crime stuff, The Case Of The Dancing Sandwiches, Lawrence Block wrote a little bit about Brown, multiple layers of reality, continually subverting his own story, replicant, very internal, Maze Of Death, playing a video game, weird book about prisons and planets and not knowing where you are, a derelict ship in space, a collective hallucination, The Days Of Perky Pat, colonist on Mars or wherever, dolls, barbies, The Sims, the kids are shooting bugs for dinner, where it comes from for Philip K. Dick, super horny guy, super thoughtful guy, playing with barbies, tries to participate, what does this mean?, many stories about games (Monopoly), Roog, a dog’s psychology, garbage men come, the aliens come and take the offering urn, the dog goes crazy, that dog is barking too much, were they aliens?, there’s no answer, is that post modern?, Overdrawn At The Memory Bank by John Varley, go inside a lion’s brain, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, Total Recall, Dick would have inverted it, likes pulling the rug out, the twist is he didn’t know there was a twist there, blogpost from 2011, Fredric Brown, 1958, Trapped Detective and Guilty Detective, New York Mercantile Library, pennies a day, freshman year, roommate, The Wench Is Dead, the Merc, a Friday, a bottle of Jim Beam, bourbon, Murder Can Be Fun, dangerous, Agatha Christie, the book barely half finished, a printer, The Fabulous Clipjoint, Ed and Am Hunter, Martians Go Home, and abundance of short stories, every story he told, read the first paragraph and relax, Night Of The Jabberwock, Louis Carroll enthusiasts, 1972, the day came when it was too late, clean engaging prose, you know you’re in good hands, very easy reading, smart, supersmooth, the nostalgia, the 40s pulps, as a writer now, self-publishing, there’s no market where a writer can live by his pen right now, self-publishing, in 75 years when the internet is still around, listen to this podcast, when did twitter become x?, you can’t be nostalgic for things that happened before you were born, paperback anthologies, digest magazines, the letters section, some of them do, the number of pages devoted to letters, where Lovecraft got started, fiction and poetry, shitposting is a huge percentage of what’s going on in the letters’ columns, in anthologies, they remove the art, they remove the context, rupture easers and Rosicrucians, the rosy crescent folks sent to Wayne June, stories evolving and devolving, fan demand, a meta-story, writing stories in the story, plagiarizing himself, if written today it would be insufferable, family of Chinese people who are upset with each other, where everybody has a beard, self-promote, Will’s review of Galaxy magazine, not a great cover, one of the best science fiction magazines, Galaxy Science Fiction, Alfred Bester, Arthur C. Clarke, Gravy Planet, The Stars My Destination, Philip K. Dick, Robert Sheckley, the power of editors, pushing vs. servicing, John W. Campbell, Horace Gold, a thesis about how science fiction should be, not his first thing, good ideas, interesting ideas, got the magazine out there, he was making the magazine, subservient to the publisher, the important part of this book that’s not right on the surface, whichever Hearst, your ancestor’s legacy, a good producers of science fiction, the real turn, super hilarious, a bug eyed monster, Alan Moore, everybody’s into pirate comics, stories set in the universe he came from, a really famous author, ripping off Asimov and Clarke, agree and disagree, ideas are cheap, it’s the writing that counts, good short stories, getting good ideas to fit together vs. novels, the one you bang out on the weekend, two covers paper in the middle, not exactly a novel, Jesse’s definition, the platonic idea of a novel, something Stephen King wrote, that’s the thing that will sell right now, Suzanne Collins?, Rick Riordan?, used to be Anne Rice, slice of time, Danielle Steele, Agatha Christie, mysteries not novel, mysteries can be short stories, the word “novel”, “romance”, an acceptable thing you can do if you are in the acceptable class, sleeze books, cultural, socioeconomic, want to subscribe to the New York Times but can’t afford it, I’m above these people, defining class by ideology, a set of ideas in people’s minds, it’s not the editors, it’s not the owner of a particular magazines, your editor is now your employee, the last powerful editor, Arianna Huffington, there’s no editors though, Anthony Boucher suddenly flown into our universe, Neil Clarke, make money?, not enough to live on, sells a lot of books, how the website supports itself, 10 cents a word, it’s horrible, Peter Watts, too much new science fiction, what’s good or not, Clarkesworld, a firehose, trying to keep up, January 2010, The Things by Peter Watts, 14 years ago, hate reading, doing some research, this story’s just like this other one, someone taking down Tom Godwin’s The Cold Equations, the Helicopter one, the N.K. Jemisin one, you’re a fucker, the killing of children is ok, we need a police state to stop you from thinking bad, post-post-modern, the best analayis, when somebody accuses somebody of doing something, accusation coming from a place inside, right wing memes, retweeted some Tucker Carlson interview, projection, they’re killing children at the border, where is this accusation coming from, classic projection, unconscious, accusations are true, the lady who killed her puppy, never heard about this lady, might be a vice president, bad team, the word “puppy” rather than “dog”, oh what happened, the quotes they like to pull, I hated that dog, there’s always context, there isn’t infinite funds, city life, killing involved in farm life, hunting for food, they’re not willing to look at the circumstances, big hate on, a USA today article, she put this in a book, advance a political career, support with people who’ve, guy goes to sit with dog in a pound, the reality, is this a horror stories, the most horrible part of this story, a poor political instinct, central part of the United States, a decreasing number, farms are consolidated, not getting invited to Mar-a-Lago, [Malcolm Nance], Jonathan predicts J.D. Vance will be Trump’s VP, pretends to be a hillbilly, Hillbilly Elegy, quasi-sociology, that whole region, RFK, Tulsi Gabbard, why did he pick Pence, governor of Indiana, midwest, come back north, the most disturbing state, an uncomfortable, the KKK, Indianapolis is fine, how many states?, enriching, eastern seaboard, traveling has dropped out, a roadtrip across the country, pre-pandemic, Michigan is nice to visit, a certain item that is legal there, partakes, beaches, great lakes, shopping, go through Ohio, Bloomington, Indiana University, Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace, a dynamic person, some king od laughing stock, contempt for him, a lot of contempt, Alaska, Sarah Palin, who the official fool is, Saturday Night Live, Gaza protesters, good to figure out where the liberals are, Michael Che, Joe Biden, wouldn’t laugh or clap, Colin Jost, suck off his old man balls, father of the nation, Mommalla Harris, annoying uncle, weirdly young father, when the Queen was alive, she’s an lady, lives in another country, how fuckin retarded are you people?, the parents for the country, the competent killer dad, he’s gonna hit you with his belt, whoever’s running the show, Xi memes, reaction, looks like Winnie The Pooh, competent manager, if we have to have this whole thing managed, a weird election, RFK, Jr., be assassinated, a tradition, if he makes the debates, how can there be debates?, one guy can’t debate, in court during the debates, the court case, after the election, indicted for many things, the perception, more in the public eye, the last poll, the intent, no good strategy, if you’re cheating, physically unable to campaign, there’s media though, Truth Social, when shitlibs are reacting on twitter, more cynical, WWI in prison, Eugene Debs, compare, campaigning, alien and sedition acts, not actually against the war, which war, improved since them, Lyndon LaRouche, ideological straightjacket, everybody calls you a nazi, everybody calls you a fascist, a railroad that goes all around the world, incoherent, his followers, almost a cult, coherent but hard to understand, be very skeptical, Jimmy Carter says he has lust in his heart, brain or crotch, memories in my head, prominent conspiracy theories, why do you think that’s a slur?, the origin of conspiracy theories, collateral damage, the popular phraseology, the phrase infects people’s brains, vaccine denier, controls you, the best memes are the ones that are obviously untrue, the really dangerous memes, national anthems, we’re all part of this melting pot, you got tricked, the internet gaslights you, take screenshots, child drag queen contests, drag story readings, what’s going on, one picture shared over and over again, any time a claim is made, drill down, Howard Hawks is the greatest American filmmaker of all time, Hitchock is from Britain, any claim that somebody makes is potentially acceptable, a positive thing, closer to reality, floating in the sky above, on the internet you’re sit with so many claims, processing a whole magazine, only in politics mode right now, how many followers to following, Scott is back on twitter, Victims of Capitalism, Paphlets, Ahoy Comics, Garth Ennis, Tom Peyer, summer just got better, Barrett Brown, Appalachian Aesthetics, Edison Motors, that’s a crazy take, Trump Derangement Syndrome, creativity, the internet pushes you to conform, work through one idea, pushes you towards other ideas, massive defense mechanism, be creative, a tool, three cards from a deck, just a tool, ad hygiene, 765, there are valuable things to pay attention to, the mute button, a boomer tweeting about how Trump is bad, a little bit useful to know what this age and class group, a lot of time for twitter, the class basis for both parties, older boomer, retired with a house, Robert Kroese, Basedcon, trad writer, indie writer, what does successful mean?, sells books, really into ai, he thinks it’s good, gaslit into thinking its good, the main character is the same, dive back into, emdash, hot water once again, uncommitted crimes, roped, bad writing in there, carpool buddy, android assassins, Syd Mead, trademark wit, guy who’s trynna make a little cash, what percentage goes to Amazon, freakin out about bitcoin, understanding vs. making money, gold speculation vs. a gold miner, a visceral reaction, a new basis of an economy, trying to wreck as many industries as they can, worried about ai, a real possibility, the last generation that writes books and make art, people don’t make art to make money, the whole point is people write to make money, if this was written today, the archaeological experience of finding out about a society from long ago, old stuff teaches you more, even in a bad story from a long time ago, you kinda already know with what today is like, destitute in New York, you plagiarize, making money and art, art existed before money and will exist after money, I don’t know if people will exist but some robot will be in a cave spraying paint from its mouth onto a cave wall and then finger painting some robot animals its gonna go hunt later, you owe me five male deer, is Stephen King an artist, sometimes result in art, what is art anyway?, what you do when you aren’t doing money, poetry is art, very elitist, to show their disdain for money, Robert E. Howard was not disdainful, Lovecraft wrote poetry to make fun of people, what is beauty, hot girl on a cover of a pulp magazine, Allen Anderson, that’s art, also commercial, you know art when you see it, it’s like pornography, Weird Tales authors writing poetry, housewives, Clark Ashton Smith, marketable skill, The Black Diamonds by Clark Ashton Smith, doing other things, sculpture, 1911 story, The Mahout, an elephant driver, 20 years later, The Justice Of The Elephant, written for money, to prove to himself that he was a professional writer, sold The Black Cat, Jack London, once you know who you are you can be happy, having edited so many magazines, how art intersects with commercialism, an essay by Sonia Green (Lovecraft’s wife): Commercialism The Curse Of Art, art is separable from commerce, designs and sells hats, capitalism fucks things up, his letters to Weird Tales, philosophy of story telling, this is what he said, why Weird Tales became good, they’re tied together but not the same thing, how come you’re not paying me for the stories, a farmer of chatGPT shit, Jeff Bezo’s sharecropping platform, King Nihilism, why upset, not upset, he should know better, larger follower count, he sells books, t-shirts, partially live off, A Scammer Darkly, Aye, Robot, clickbait, Starship Grifters, a lot of reviews on Amazon, he’s popular, 289 pages, 1,336, A Grift Too Far, isn’t this guy a Christian?, Jonathan doesn’t strike Jesse as a Christian, the Mormon church is basically a communist system, excommunicated, mutually supportive, for you career you should convert, Scientology, very nice people, the Celebrity Center, scientologists on bikes with guns, they want you to do well, more than a tithe, voluntary, they got their shit together at this point in the religion, he’s not a threat, how’d you know my name, better than the FBI and the city police, they all have audiobooks, what would be the advantage of reading it?, unless its awesome, not doing an audiobook, talked Jonathan out of it, cigars and their history, goes back to the Spanish conquest, what’s the etymology of cigar?, Mayan, cigarettes are female, little one, frails, rap terminology, usherette, racquette, rockette (a little rocket), narrating substack posts, robot versions, better than nothing, too long, cooped up nothing to do, reviewing counts as art, criticism can be art, recording reflections, some feedback, a would be art dealer in New York, the industry is a scam, big time art dealer, look at this awesome book, Virgin Planet by Poul Anderson, the premise is awesome, a planet of girls!, a government of girls, a swaggering and roistering navy of girls, the social message of it, fear governments, a lady riding a bird, a lasso, lasso our hero, they’ve never seen a man, deformed girl, get you, its true, he does look like a woman, both have nipples, bipeds, Robert Silverberg, The Woman You Wanted, Future Science Fiction, excellent cover art, a story by Weinbaum redone by Silverberg, gestalt something, driven by art, on a streak, a few novels, The Green Queen by Margaret St. Clair, the audiobook is done by Mike Vendetti, closed mouth in terms of judgements, that was a good one, only four hours long, Second Ending by James White, so much new content, good job!, Live Gold by Robert Sheckley, crime/spy books, a John D. MacDonald, Collision Course by Robert Silverberg, 2 novels by Samuel R. Delany, The Star Pit, no interest in character, The Einstein Intersection, [The Hemingway Hoax], mind changed, less-new wavy, Babel 17, doesn’t make me racist, Steven Barnes, Octavia Butler, need excuses to not read things, the most charitable explanation, excuse providers, an obligation to read any science fiction writer, winnowing, excuse, no more excuses, Nice Girl With Five Husbands by Fritz Leiber, Scott Miller [The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast], The Abandoned Of Yan by Donald F. Daley, If, March 1963, After her husband left her…, she had no family, going up ramp to say goodbye to the children, what the heck kinda world is great, some heavy stuff, five pages long, Imagination, he’s good, he has the right aesthetic, Philip K. Dick requests, people like all the stuff, hear a story they didn’t know existed, for commercial purpose, an enthusiast, also not for a commercial purpose, horrible ads, ads are horrible, Ursula K. Le Guin, ads are telling you lies, what do English majors do?, use you powers for good: art, use your power for evil: ads, how do I help people, adblocker, people are conditioned to tolerate ads, they’re teaching you what they want you to be taught, David Currie, Pamphlets, 10 things that Stalin did that were wonderful, doesn’t say ended famines, ended feudalism famines, a student locked out of his Microsoft account, why do you think Stalin is bad?, defensive of stop interacting, the leader of China in 1780, some emperor and empress, the last emperor, put him to work with a broom, what they did in Russia, an expedient way to solve a problem, and yet…, there’s a story behind stuff, George Orwell, being anti-communist, trotsykite conservative flow, Max Shachtman, mainstream figures in the AFICIO, supporting the Vietnam War, Christopher Hitchens, you have to always be humble and go back to first principles, how do we minimize that, AOC one is much funnier, eat the rich dresses, a workin lady, no principles gets you to whatever will allow you to live in that ecosystem, one of your magacommunist people, cosmonaut, 1. fought the banks, 2. drained the swamp, pro-purges, killing the royal family, killing the not good bolsheviks, mostly metaphors, you have to do a lot of unpacking, a reference to D.C., this is like a hype, not literally true, study the purges, jumping ahead to 4., the whole soviet people, Canada sent a boat, he’s not running for office now, before the war with the Nazis, what do you mean by best?, the war with Finland, running Trotsky out of dodge, Eisenhower was a colonel, they needed a good manager who made good decisions, defining what makes a good soldier, Napoleon seems to be a really good general, Rommel, and a good general and good man myth, The Desert Fox, propaganda on both sides, a standard technique, as a metaphor it fits, this is targeted, this is a cartoon for children, people know the phrase, massive conspiracy or killed lots of good people, that he died in office he did a pretty good job of purging, how Khrushchev got elected, just enough quorum, the political culture had become deformed, a tentative step, Stalin brought to his height and responsible for it’s end, homelessness, prostitution, Soviet democracy is way more democratic, Chinese democracy, meetings are fucking boring, not a lot of fun, grandmas and grandpas who have opinions, something you want to do, a young person, a Philip K. Dick novel, The Man Who Japed, the anticommunist case: look at all the meetings, “restored” is not the right word here, saved Europe, liberated eastern Europe, raised literacy, seems very plausible, turned Russia into a nuclear superpower, got Russia nuclear weapons, prerequisite for peace, the mainstream media tells us lies about Stalin, it wasn’t about personal aggrandizement only, treats, housing, almost a nationalistic patriotic fervor, transnational people, tariffs, ultracapitalists, defending your country from invasion, your nation’s resources, replace them, that’s a nationalist movement, the threat that Napoleon was, everybody has to have public education, pretty apt, power through a popular revolution, what happened, competent general, did Stalin fight in WWI?, Trotsky led the army, Stalin had a blue pencil, 10 Days That Shook The World, Trotskyite is the slur, Trotskyite tankie, in the comments, is this a parody account?, how would one know?, where’s the lie, Hitler built roads too, when did you stop beating your wife, liberals still mad about Molotov-Ribbentrop, roads just tell you where to go, easier to traverse than bushwhacking, banned by other things, whataboutism, questions about the restored part, regime or whatever, Nicholas Maduro was elected locally, elections everywhere, where don’t they have elections?, elections in North Korea, almost like he’s a king, his dad and grandad, a liberator, that steady hand, where don’t you get free and fair elections, more local, start worrying about Singapore, why am I worried about this?, who’s the bad guy here?, his southern neighbor for 70 years, are nuclear weapons good?, no, are nuclear weapons necessary?, yes, Cuba, the people will reject it, it doesn’t fit with the brand, a fight you can’t win, they have to kill everybody, a Gaza situation, a mask off of what they’re willing to do, Joe Biden is helping commit a genocide, also me wearing the sunglasses, Luke Skywalker, the special room in the White House eat from vending machines and pretend they’re journalists, doing the right thing, people can be so wrong, he doesn’t need more work, why does he believe it?, he’s old?, doesn’t see the videos?, tested a long time to realize something is bad, early trauma?, not willing to doublethink, a comfort level, maybe Bono is explained the same way, Sean Penn gave Zelenskyy his oscars, most people don’t participate at all, a minority that goes to vote, more non-voters than supporters of either party, big on twitter for one party, conservatives on twitter, people who are dumb as rocks, is Tucker Carlson a conservative, a spiritual and radical sickness, you can be a Christian and do a good interview, watching is the weird part, listening makes a lot of sense, not a Putin-liker, they never said Xi-puppet, literally a communist, transstuff is not communist, xi-communist, Chinese students, I can’t have housing because of socialism, understanding a lot of material, they might bulldoze your house but you get an apartment, housing is not the problem, more buildings than are needed, did really well in China and foreign invest it here, a tax on it, capital like land, the way to go, capitalism with a little spice of socialism here and there, mix of public and private, a rigorous control, international business, the party ideology is for a purpose, not just to make personal cash and reward your friends, what it’s for, a question in Chinese socialism, deviate towards great power chauvinism, a big country able to push around littler countries, the relationship to Vietnam, in the news very recently, China has invaded Vietnam, that was all pre, other than in Israel, we just want to control everything, China liberated Quebec/Tibet, come liberate British Columbia too, who are you liberating us from?, from the Americans, a liberation for the people, an abuse of the term, weird misunderstanding, Tibetans involved in the liberation of Tibet, back to monarchy, we don’t question the Dalai Lama, pedophile Fu Manchu who works for the US government, but not as cool, game respects game, threatens to not reincarnate, is there Dalai Lama in exile and a Dalai Lama local?, gulags archipelagos and Solzhenitsyn, a , more people incarcerated in the US than ever under Stalin, Jesse’s cookie problem vs. Will’s smoking problem, we’re not talking about me right now, it’s insidious, talk is what we take in as reality, words read with eyes or ears, what the chatter is, I heard covid is really dangerous, this one is very deadly, I’m feeling better, the test is available, you have covid?!?!, not a novel virus, a very tame virus, the chatter, the lady who sold Jesse her comics on Thursday, never stopped masking, dudes at the post office, how much traffic they have, how much they shaved, security blanket, used to think about sunglasses a lot, hats used to be a big thing, hats are okay, baseball caps, sunglasses and a hat, makes me look less bald, the sunglasses make me look cool, inappropriate sunglasses wearing, punctuating feelings, Only Angels Have Wings, always smoking/never has matches, an exchange of emotion and authority and empathy, cigarettes are a way for people to be generous to strangers and friends, a bunch of outcasts, always relying on those people, sharing a lighter, sunglasses are not as addictive, there’s a reason, an Apple watch, it’s an Apple watch, it’s a nice piece of kit, her phone, her heart, blood oxygen, regulated by the clock on the wall, a new tumbler from Starbucks, wanting to own it, take a photo of it and share it, it’s not for that, when you have too much money, unconscious unthoughthrough, I have to associate with the other team, wanna get dates, not answering your own question, universities investing, seeing dead children is traumatizing, in solidarity, exercising some sort of moral principle, those bad things are fake/necessary/what you get when , Destiny, Costco water is Hamas, Edward Snowden, dig it out root and branch, start with Madison Avenue (google/facebook), the stories of the stories of Madison Avenue, girls on parade, freedom sticks, ladies shilling cigarettes, the history of smoking in the United States, indians smoke, didn’t licoln smoke a pipe, not just a gay metaphor?, was Lincoln a pipesmoker?, Robert Abernathy’s Grandma’s Lie Soap, unable to lie, toothpaste, the world has changed, looks a little long, C.C. MacApp, chess player, And All The Earth A Grave, Darkness by Lord Byron, editorial introduction, there’s nothing wrong with dying, prospecting with his donkey, a new bookkeeping machine, blew a cog, humour all over the place, sell coffins, the big Christmas hit, Cabbage Patch Kid, coffin ports, automobile garages, a rich mahogany number, two black dots, the old prospector and his burro, Adams, some remark to the beast, Denver, skinny packrats, unburied coffins, Martians?, they’re gone Evie, we gotta start over, mild reproach, married to a jackass, The New Yorker, barbs, vintage New Yorker, its the thing, coffee, blast some meme, finish another Silverberg, podcast edits, prep for the next one, might even have a game, hunt for that dinner, Barry Convex, Cronenberg’s sells eyeglasses, surrounded by three teams, hide in the back of that car, everybody is getting killed, back of the car, don’t engage, hide, stay alive, he had a lot of fun, hiding is fun, simple adult version of hide and seek, save that cigar?, cats are smarter than that kind of thing, the texture, my cigar got eaten by my dog, do dogs eat tobacco, monkeys smoke tobacco, gorillas too, a bear that smoked, tourist encouraged chimp, North Korean zoo, in the Guardian so it must be true, associated press, the Big Book [atlas], South Korea produces clothing, counterfeit cigarettes, ip piracy, the important part, smoke the real thing, that the brands be honored, chimpanzee licking its fingers, Pyongyang, lights her own, just like us except for they’re ripped, she doesn’t inhale, monkey doing, monkey being, do not inhale, the juice, through skin, innerdermis, outerdermis, tissue, not an anatomist, human anatomy, Isaac Asimov’s Super Quiz, broke my clavicle, never broken a bone, skiing, uncoordinated, impressive, what about a bicycle, everybody just gave up, swim classes, fewer options to break your bones swimming, not be terrified of the water, interact with it in safe ways, horseback riding?, like fencing, how much you gonna use it?, looks cool, practice involved, other people with swords, household kitchen knives, practicing rumbling, seems kinda extreme, a knife that didn’t get used, never stabbed nobody with a knife, women debating, have you seen it?, punching fight?, that’s not a debate, women are capable of the violence necessary, a violent subtext to debate, you have to be in the same room, slap, challenge to a duel, why they get them up on the stage, two online youtubers, disconnecting, debate class, debating women, imagining Stephen Hawking in a debate with Trump, you can’t punch a guy who can’t move his limbs, you moderate, debate bro Destiny, overtalk the other person, drown out the other person, you better respect me, soibros, soiguys, walking around the world, are you serious?, you need to moderate your response, a physical threat there, what is the debate about, what should we do, what should be done, swaying the group, corporally control you, Edgar Rice Burroughs set on Venus, obvs. the Burroughs stand-in gets to be captain, the team that is against that is a strawman, just defect, another way of solving it is to get physically violence, be it resolved that…, trying to sway the audience, my learned colleague, the house of parliament, ungentlemanly behavior, distinguished gentleman, the sergeant at arms, enforce the will of the speaker, ejected, and or the mace is there, a way of preventing the debate from getting out of hand, the insult stage, a physical threat of violence, hands can be turned into fist, realized and recognized, why they had to ban dueling, wasting your team for killing the enemy, secret dueling, in the context of protestors at UCLA, the protestor’s response is to build barricades and fight back, are these people having a debate, protesting is I object, the speaker is the cops, or a vigilante, just as bad, worse, the occasional crazy person, life has meaning now, the paid operatives, zionist brownshirts, thug, are protestors peaceful or not, an organized protestor, a good idea, infiltrators, you organize the infiltrators, a committee, security culture, end up in a bad place, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, the Detroit PD and the FBI, pre-revolutionary communist movement, discipline, one of their best workers, parliamentarians, ultimately a cop, when do they become the Patty Hearst and join the workers for reals?, murderers and surveillers, after a certain critical mass, pain involved, incompetence, it’s falling apart, kids are not being taught how to read, reading is overrated as well, an important concern, if you cannot read well, the crazy part, they gotta get that money out now, turn to Russia, one things they never accuse him of is mismanaging the economy, spot fakers and call them out, your not even really voting for Biden, examples of public or private incompetencies, solve homelessness in California, if by solving…, money to friends who run organizations, voted up, lot of salaries, any kind of regulation, mergers, banking, find some area where things are doing well, Amazon is working, a monopoly that is consolidating, subsidizing from government contract, conservative Christians who want to be published, Costco’s membership model, the price is not so horrible, the return policy is really good, above industry standard, the return policy is important, extended warranty, will Best Buy around in five years?, appliances, decor, Lego, what bookstores, selling soap and candles, Barnes & Noble, floor space to fill, they don’t have used cheap books, what are books even about?, another dog collar store, another skin salon, people think Amazon is the place to get books, ABEBooks, Amazon is eating everything up, Audible, Brilliance, buy out your competition, very anti-Amazon, Amazon Web Services makes a profit, their business model, Elon Musk’s rockets, carbon offsets, twitter is not a money making concern, Prime is now putting in ads, now $3 more, we’ve just reinvented cable television, different sets of billionaires, the owners of the new media, capitalism is constant struggle, fitter-away their money buying skins, clogs to clogs in three generations, too cute, clogs to crocs?, Office Space (1999), clogs with flair, Andy Two Locks, just flair, school is by a Starbucks, upper middle classes, can afford tutors, Jessism is not a popular philosophy, controversial, Willism seems to be more happy, nobody calls will blackpilled, doomers?, a civil war in Will’s lifetime, no possibility of reform it seems, the TLDR, keep it the same forever, 2nd amendment, militia to kill indians, whatever the security of a free state is, free in many ways, unfree in many ways, an interesting person, mentally modeled, Netanyahu and the university’s presidents are out of control, once you plagiarize your way into a job…, lack of opportunities, reduced pay, some good instincts, Joe Biden could stop this genocide from happening, two problems, he’d have to go rogue, can’t read the teleprompter, Edward Wellen’s Mind Slash Matter, programmer/screenwriter, a president could stop it, if we’re being real, the people who run him, cut off funding, the key to stopping this thing that is going on, his own political party is largely responsible, two things holding him back, if Trump comes back to father, lotsa evidence for that?, CNN, watching CNN all day long, Hamas is this all powerful energy, Home Depot is Hamas, core ideology, willing to sacrifice all other principles, a delusion, isn’t ideology a delusion?, a concrete example of an ideology, liberalism, free exchange of ideas will lead to…, marketplace, soon we’re into metaphor, seeing metaphor as reality, words are magic, sounds like a metaphor, part of your brain says that’s interesting, words have magical power over people, magic is not a real thing, magical control over people, magic is real, how to explain to a dog why a man is staring at a piece of paper for 17 minutes, books are the thing that the man holds, they can read with their noses, reality not mediated through the word tart or pooey, that girl dog, they can get it unmediated (as close as possible), we can get tricked by words, undergraduate degree in black studies, Africana Studies, as somebody who took 10 classes at an elite university, the process of knowledge creation, knowledge production!, you can get confused by mistaking the map for the territory, useful human expression, it is a metphor, and yet it has an effect, monkeys don’t seem to be affected by words, associating words with behaviors, sentences seem to be off limits, Koko is a little more legit, Alex the parrot, the bird knows more than it does, what matter, using the voice of the trainer, even funnier, seems like Koko has ideas, dogs and cats, and birds and monkeys, dogs have ideas they want you to understand, walkies, we can get confused by the words, not know as much about what me mean, the words are [NOT] our thoughts, babies have ideas too, jumbled up in the map and not the territory, question mark, not get trapped, killing people bad, it bad, what about that guy, High And Low (1963), Toshiro Mifune, Akira Kurosawa, Ed McBain aka Evan Hunter, the cops finding the criminal, 87th Precinct books, he’s compelling, a podcast on 87th Precinct books, reversed New York, resent New York, the center of the universe, kidnapper, death row, something he wants to say but can’t articulate, a very good movie, Heaven and Hell, very powerful movie, amazing on screen, cooler Humphrey Bogart, more manly famous film action star, serious Kurt Russell good with a sword, Hell In The Pacific (1968), Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune, Enemy Mine by Barry B. Longyear, stuck on an island in the pacific, Arena by Fredric Brown, they fight each other Gorn style, Lee Marvin was in WWII, they know what they’re doing, ability to make movies that are really good, not experiencing that is a shame, almost all Godzilla films, levels you don’t have to experience them, Independence Day, a big cast, a big disaster, H.G. Wells is largely responsible for setting that stage, Yojimbo (1961), Clint Eastwood, Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett, Magnificent Seven and Seven Samurai, a very Conan-y story, A Fistful Of Dollars (1964), a western set in Japan, very Japanese but very familiar, a good place to start, archive.org, with English subtitles, an hour 52, a Conan story, an independent man, a masterless samurai, a weird social class, the weird ideas of their class, the empire and all that stuff, the military got out in front of the government, a rubber stamp, various competing militarizes running the show, sometimes helps my career, loyalty to the state, patriotism, my country right or wrong, you can see it as honorable as misguided, Nazis versus Wehrmacht, listening to authority, a flaw, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Colonel Alexander Vindman, a Trump whistleblower, the Trump Ukraine scandal, a liberal hero, just playing himself, it’s basically just Seinfeld, RFK Jr.’s actual wife, embarrassment, a sensitive topic, no politics, liberal people on it, 100 million percent sell out, pretends to do journalism for movies, MSNBC boy, Chris Hayes!, reacting to the news, Conan O’Brien, these are all the people who will do anything to get attention and be whores, readers of material, that’d be cool, when they do that for movies, lends negative credibility to everything that came before, Walter Cronkite, Cronkite-stan, how about next week?

Startling Stories, September 1948 - What Mad Universe

Startling Stories, September 1948 - What Mad Universe

Startling Stories, September 1948 - What Mad Universe

Startling Stories, September 1948 - What Mad Universe

Startling Stories, September 1948 - What Mad Universe

Startling Stories, September 1948 - What Mad Universe

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #812 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Soul Of Man Under Socialism by Oscar Wilde

The SFFaudio Podcast #812 – The Soul Of Man Under Socialism by Oscar Wilde – read for LibriVox by Martin Geeson. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the essay (2 hours) followed by a discussion of it. Participants in the discussion include Jesse, Evan Lampe, Will Emmons, and Terence Blake.

Talked about on today’s show:
the individual, therefore maimed, Martin Geeson, productions up on audible.com, some public property I can privatize, hundreds of contributions to LibriVox, almost all of it is poetry, about art, how to flourish with your soul, why Jesse likes Oscar Wilde so much, amused, a student for an hour, grammar, a deck of cards, images of various objects, leaves and bowls and roses, write a story in seven minutes using six sentences, a really good story, a king, a comb, and a snake, a lot of merit, “IT WOULDN’T WORK BECAUSE…”, a blind king who needed a wife, some tasty food, a mystery, there’s beauty there, Circe, Medusa, the missing card, works in many ways, no intended audience, central to the essay, problems as an ideology, that’s what he’s like, Oscar Wilde is also a fairy tale writers, an essay by Lovecraft’s wife, Commercialism: The Curse Of Art by Sonia Greene, she has the write idea, a case for socialism, the duty of society to liberate the audience, the audience for art, what the audience for a theater’s responsibility is, if the works of Shakespeare were presented as if new, Macbeth, counterarguments, long and rambling and strange, appreciated it, lasting impact, a good intervention, historically useful, by Wilde’s own metric, whether a work of art is useful or not, stories are incredibly central to human beings, society has a huge duty to the artist, he bends the stick too far, messaging the Che Guevara wikipedia page, Bill Maher, annoys in the right way, man can subsist under moral incentives alone, the new man, typical revolutionary, work 36 hours a day, student protests, what they’re protesting about, grieving, girl claims to be stabbed in the eye, shirt that says “Jew” on it, Che Guevara wasn’t, keffiyeh, huffington post, full of slurs, start drilling down, good or not, to tell a story that supports his point of view, we’re not socialists in America, a tenant that was talking to his landlord, the messaging has gotten through, we don’t live under socialism, everything is upside down, an interesting guy to read, in the context of a rich country, imperialist value chains that make British wealth possible, make a transition to socialism, socialist state builders in the 20th century, an immediate end to poverty, if we end poverty, through new machines, the William Morris book, News From Nowhere, a much more compelling story, whether essays can be artforms, designed to convince, an attempt, a try, not be prosecuted for your art, British vs. the French, a control of language on the cellular level, News From Nowhere is not plausible at all, how we got there, a pretty nice way, women do fabric art, men make wallpaper, an essay, his only political work, story is how people adopt, asked to teach essays, only the most insufferable people, the slandering of Che Guevara, A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift, undermines bad argument, functions like a story, within it are stories, best fricasseed or make a nice ragout, a series of plateaus, organized with a theme, crime and punishment, motivated by pleasure vs. pain, clusters of ideas, very Žižek in that sense, new paradigm, you can’t argue, counter-intuitive leaps, Terence spoke beautifully, agree entirely, very aspirational, quite beautiful, influenced nerdy graduate student Evan, do history, do podcasts, write it my own way, very juvenile about that attitude, the media, not just accepting the media’s interpretation about what art is, solipsistic, films and series, dumbing down, making everything consensual, why does popular art have to be bad, a democracy of individuals, ignorant schoolmaster argument, he’s in a knot, if this was the only thing we knew about Oscar Wilde, compare it to what happened to him, success and punishment, being publicly gay, physical punishment, a powerful lord, sent into prison, H.G. Wells, doesn’t get a sir, tried the wrong lady, royalty, it’s expected, previous conspiracy, a pretext for sending to prison, non-straight sex, Bill Clinton, he didn’t get punished for his art, lightfootedness, the Popes, the power of kings, a king with artistic sentiment, Voltaire, the curse of the public and their interest through journalism, successful, pandering to an audience, A Picture Of Dorian G[r]ay, a gap between, the abolition of property, the means of production, independent wealthy, a theme that’s in here, kind of, wealth and private property, Lord Byron, they’re not separate, he jumps around, you have to share your toothbrush, doesn’t really define it, the long section on how wealth is a burden to the wealthy, [Andrew] Carnegie’s gospel of wealth, that’s the legal system, entirely about private property, a warehouse is an amazing awesome technology, keep the rain out, books, pencil crayons/coloured pencils, keep your paper dry, personal property but not private, an apartment complex, no idea of transition from here to there, we got there somehow, this great possibility of free expression and individualism, he’s read [Peter] Kropotkin, crafts, automation, nobody should sweep, throw a fishnet into the water all day, quotas of fish, a serious problem with this essay, Will has intellectually warped himself through Marxism, the media does this says this, for what reason, what class do they represent?, the public’s ideas bad?, during the French Revolution, tear down the Bastille, all answered, this is not acceptable, a previous story which controls them, if that story is bad, suspicious of human nature, people progress, people change, how fucked up it was, starving peasants fighting for feudalism, The Third Revolution by Murray Bookchin, bottom up democracy, monarchy, liberals, Jacobins, sections of Paris, met in monasteries and churches, 1792/3, suppressed during The Terror, bottom up faith, Maoist epistemology, communists don’t make history, the masses make history, Wilde finds the masses to be repugnant, their condition, the rebel is good in some way, the thief, those who don’t believe the ideology, resentment is something that makes you ugly, living in squalor and full of hate, accept the squalor, more sympathy for the thief, you should be rebelling, it is right to rebel, it is right to rebel against reactionaries, Chinese factory worker be careful, the western interpretation, who one the Cultural Revolution in the end, too soon to tell, the Lost Decade, vaccination rates, two distinct periods, different factions, boring history, the developmental stuff, chaos, more chaotic than, Wilde’s views about what one’s duty to society is, volunteering to do more work, the barefoot doctors, is that so bad?, extremely useful, artists should be allowed to flourish, what the purpose of artists is, that’s why he’s wrong, all art has a class basis, to paraphrase Mao, the innermost kingdom of the bourgeoisie, who is the audience, the artist is the audience, onanistic, oppression, why this is not a great piece, art or light under socialism, giving you the feel, exactly contemporary, Christology, fun, religious group of people, what makes us so religious, is Wilde speaking to an audience that is Christian, he loves Christianity’s beauty, Catholicism for the aesthetics, Lutheran, the liturgy, aesthetically, a cultural christian, a slap in the face with a fish, Jesus, currently accepted ideology, before the socialist experiments, non-authoritarian, before Freudian type, pain and pleasure, very Nietzschean, robot slaves,

“For it is through joy that the Individualism of the future will develop itself. Christ made no attempt to reconstruct society, and consequently the Individualism that he preached to man could be realised only through pain or in solitude. The ideals that we owe to Christ are the ideals of the man who abandons society entirely, or of the man who resists society absolutely. But man is naturally social. Even the Thebaid became peopled at last. And though the cenobite realises his personality, it is often an impoverished personality that he so realises. Upon the other hand, the terrible truth that pain is a mode through which man may realise himself exercises a wonderful fascination over the world. Shallow speakers and shallow thinkers in pulpits and on platforms often talk about the world’s worship of pleasure, and whine against it. But it is rarely in the world’s history that its ideal has been one of joy and beauty. The worship of pain has far more often dominated the world. Mediaevalism, with its saints and martyrs, its love of self-torture, its wild passion for wounding itself, its gashing with knives, and its whipping with rods – Mediaevalism is real Christianity, and the mediaeval Christ is the real Christ.”

on the road to get healed somewhere, conversations with wives of Bath, a reflection of what artists are doing, a symposium of art making, by one’s self, music, one guy with a saxophone on a mountain top, pretty strong, his heart is in the right place, he himself wants his efforts to count towards social reconstruction, the overman is Caesar with the soul of Christ, one of his passions, art, science, politics, manual labour, craft and crafty, fishing, a self-help manual done right, come together in groups, very individualistic, kinda Ayn Randian, against business, against private property, against class difference, everyone a poet, as capable as him, been lucky, everyone can become creativity, more artists, better art, Roger Ebert, frustrated reviewers, easier to be a critic, snobby, Zack Snyder probably says that, why does he bloody show his movies, show to [Denis] Villeneuve and no-one else, a guy recording in his bedroom, stack of DVDs, free passes, free stuff, free audiobooks (that used to be expensive), becoming twisted and wrong, journalism feeding into bad behavior, cultivating an audience in a theater, utube is very big, hate bait, how to breed chickens properly, in that openness, feeling free to not have a popular channel, more ability to share, sharing is something he’s not fully thought through enough, so focused on oppression, the soul of man is art, whatever a soul is, why socialism is important, free us from the oppression of the property relationship, actual physical repression, the relationship is the oppressive thing, the freedom to comment, the freedom to review, if you don’t have your own printing press and your own distribution you don’t have freedom, mimeograph machine, the internet today, hard to find, the system is gamed against it, how bad google is, there but unseeable, virtually free to do that distribution, drowned out, ai art, an imperfect essay, handwaves a lot of this, the first line, we’re individualists in socialism, not making a program to get there, we’ll be freer individuals under socialism, we need other people to get us there, libertarian socialism, charity is the problem, amusing the poor, the accelerationist argument, the homelessness problem, people trying to solve, you shouldn’t do charity, the majority of people spoil their lives, he comes for the charity people pretty hard, this essay has such a humour to it, slave owners being kind to their slaves, let this outrage happen so the revolution will occur, in his back pocket, a program here, not detailed, it’s not for the masses, bourgeoisie cease charity, charity as a virtue, he’s for sympathy, for human feeling, otherwise socialism is going to be set back, it is immoral, the institution of private property, a personal program, under socialism this problem will no longer exist, places to organize, do what you can, Jesse might actually be right, Jesse is always wrong, a half sentence, the people who do the most harm, the charity degrades and demoralized, “Charity creates a multitude of sins.”, a hard argument, on French TV, presidential elections 30 years ago, equal time on TV, the marginal groups are marginalized even further, a Trotskyist, we are plundered, stealing everything from us, a star dancer at the Crazy Horse, stage name, as close to nudity as you can get, discovered by the head of the Crazy Horse, made her the star that she is today, the Marxist, I’m against charity, running for president to bring about the revolution, something sordid about this poor person elevated to stardom, patriarchal manipulation, charity vs. sympathy, property is theft, stealing $2 in the morning, Spider-Man should bite everyone to give everyone radioactive powers, with great property comes great responsibility, the logic of superheros, superheores are trying to stop the revoltionaries, Doc Oc, always some guy who wants to change things, Superman never zaps the president with his eye, judges shall not be impugned, questions in congress, happened for TikTok right now, you cant be super without lots of subs, sub-supers, The X-Men, homo superior, sympathy for Magneto, The League Of Evil Mutants, the oppressed group, the oppressed group, the oppressed individual, no one will have to seek approval, what’ll make somebody an elite under socialism, harvest more wheat?, an asian Soviet with a pipe [Semyon Nomokonov] who notched the number of nazis he killed on his pipe, 9 children and 49 grandchildren, not allowed to have open factions struggles, a war hero, a different sort of examples, Robert Sully Sullivan, played by Tom Hanks, whuffie, the congressional medal of honor gives credit to living people, Ulysses S. Grant, all the previous guys were all WWII veterans, you can’t give that status, Bush I, you’ve fucked up, can you have an elite, people’s who’s paintings you like, sweeps really good, tending to defer, a different kind of culture, this guy’s teepees are the best teepees, this collective, multiple elites, the stupid utube model, unbeleivable popularity, lowest common denomenator, flaming gold Ferrari, attract most attention for revenue, focusing on repairing fans (the things that you make you cool), Jordan U, why does he have 17th phones in his house, paintings on the wall of the warehouse, people who show off their rare book collections, Will’s greatest sin, scanners live in vain, scanner printer combo, the printer industry is superevil, Brother, Martin Geeson doing what Oscar Wilde is saying, unfortunate that Jonathan Weichsel doesn’t like Martin Geeson’s voice, the way to be popular, distracted by the whole socialism thing, a lot of people don’t get it guys, usually advertized without, its right in the first sentence, judging a book by its cover, talking about oppression, censorship on a basic level, people who can’t use words that they want to use, humanreadable, at symbols and upside down 3s, how much more could he say before he is thrown in prison, if the mood was wrong in the country, they chopped off the head of their monarch, restored the monarchy, Oliver Cromwell, if it weren’t for the Irish, Lord Protector, all cavaliers, now, a true leveller, entry points for people to grok things, start with what materials you have, making things easy for people is difficult, Martin Geeson is choosing interesting books, great voice, soul of an artist, valances with Sirius by Olaf Stapledon, the conditions of the people in England, under some social programs?, bankrupting the empire!, sold everything to win that war, the dog with no hands, the soul of dogs under socialism?, similar philosophy, an individualist quality, thinking together, working together, a particular novelist, Meredith, who that guy, Charles Kingsley, an immoral novelist, George Meredith, forgotten, didn’t have any science fiction books, just read Scalzi, The Three Body Problem [by Liu Cixin], The Dark Forest, Damien G. Walter, boycotting the book, the shows, why you have to do homework for this podcast, this podcast has homework, his sinophobia is facile and dangerous, too positive a view of the Cultural Revolution?, bad for science, the traitor to humanity girl, she meets up years later with the three women who lead the criticism and physical action of killing her father, privileged, before they joined the Red Army, able to better themselves a little during the Cultural Revolution, more complex than his propaganda, so empty, goes on and on, 2 hour things by him, you have to go to your death knowing that, did and didn’t, John Vervaeke, we need a new mythos, trying to determine what is in canon, you can’t do that unless you’ve read a lot, more of a media guy, an article, a list of all the women authors of science fiction not usually talked about, working through the canon, Mildred Klingerman, Margaret St. Clair, Judith Merrill, a great tastemaker, seems all right, writes really interesting stuff, leaning on make sure you get your diversity quotient in there, Madagascar science fiction, the same perspective, you can live in Bali, more about American literature, women writers and black writers, percentage, James Baldwin, first queer writer, Herman Melville, obviously super gay, if the stick is wonky, a qualitative judgement, compensating, black writers and asian writers and women writers, because he’s funny, being obtuse on purpose, Evan’s colleagues, eurocentric, teaching cohort, early modern history, too lazy to learn this stuff, we can tell the history of the world through European eyes, teaching world history, not just white European men, not about seeking out a quotient, not being ignorant about the world, people look for excuses not to read, because its propaganda, we all have to winnow, a bunches novel series ever written, Discworld, stuff without depth, not everything is showworthy, Tales Of The Gold Monkey, Indiana Jones pre-wwwii nazis, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century in the South Pacific, an ex-flying tiger, set in 1939, it’s impossible, no active duty until 1942, a hot lady in a hot tub talking to a nazi dressed up as a priest who wants to have sex with a native named Tiki, skin colour, sounds cool, what they called lived experience, their mom and dad were nice to each other, hung up on the wrong things, they’re all books, nobody talks about those, people need excuses not to read, Fearless Benjamin Lay, can we get more diverse than a Quaker abolition vegetarian dwarf who made his own clothes and lived in a cave, bend the stick to far against the liberals, what’s the baby, official commitments to anti-racism, why do you have a police state, the Deep State replaced Richard M. Nixon, the origin of policing after reconstruction, slave catching patrols, police hitting teachers, the philosophy professor being dragged off, sad but hilarious, I can’t breathe, she’s doing a callback, making an analogy to another situation, political correctness way of protesting, arrested and died, knee on the neck, oh you’re all right, fluids to make him calm down sir, heart massage, CPR, if somebody looks dead, we notice he looked unconscious, Evan is missing out all these amazing, give you you shittiest take, twitter is not good for Evan, talking about Reconstruction, the freedman wanted to be slaves again, quite good at governing themselves, Wilde in conversation with Mao, the greatest socialist intellectual of all time, something Damien G. Walter needs to read, Ursual K. Le Guin has a dangerous philsophy, The Dispossessed, not a lot of amazing art happening on that moon, a position of scarcity, post-scarcity, maybe Cuba has great art, musicians, health care, scarcity, internal production is not as efficient, a very small country, is Le Guin doing the same thing to criticize our man Oscar Wilde?, could be in dialogue, libertarian socialist, more liberal than anything else, attitudes towards copyright, for overthrowing the government, people don’t pay attention to what she says, near the end of her life, given an award, speaking about capitalism, a poem quoted in full on BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow had to take it down, The Master by Ursula K. Le Guin, the passing of knowledge and the mastery of tech, how to learn the slipstick, copyright in China, the argument that is always thrown against China is they steal patents/copyrights/trademarks, a serious problem, there’s a long story about the Tetris game, an ideological opposition to censorship, copyright is a form of that, Mr. Shitlib King, breaking copyright, not in favour of censorship ever, socialist/communist society, what’s the difference?, a communist society vs. a socialist state, a good place to be, philosophy of mugs, a really nice mug, spouse, a cute mug, bad shape for a mug, mugs should be functional, spoons, mug with hole in the bottom, a mug, an indigenous mug, made in an anti-imperialist country, handwashing, a mug is a device for delivering liquids to your mug, a cute mug, hence the drips, take a photo of it then get rid of it, emotional sentimental value, not broken yet, Mao would call that liberalism, use it often and carelessly, you should not be upset when it breaks, point in the direction, deception is allowed, the right shape, efficient, homeless guy who masturbated in the public square, Diogenes, u need a lamp, some onions, Louis CK, stoics, in a mugshell, one mug, thank you for everything, thanks for all the mugs, What Mad Universe by Fredric Brown, a novel, Lawrence Block had a book come out, a writer that Block appreciated, a way of getting into that relationship, a halfway important science fiction writer, a writer’s writer, Mack Reynolds, not his great novels, the fuckin system, after 1963 fuck everybody, copyright for 7 years, so it can be useful to multiple people, works in translation, a holdover from the imperial period, he’s cute, he’s funny he’s smart, a science fiction novel about science fiction, another case for the Baroque Cycle, interesting, long, as a long as a story needs to be, sometimes things need to be longer, this essay didn’t need to be 2 hours, why do we have long books, the cost of a credit, subverted, not why Stephen King writes long books, what censorship, he would never be censored, self-censorship, he’s not following the market, he’s 7 and a half feet tall, he’s not Spud Webb, most people who write long books, unnecessary sex scene, fetch quests, Evan went wild, a popular podcast, Geek’s Guide To The Galaxy, side quests, find the G.E.C.K., representing the game, defending it, The Stand, awkwardly updated the setting, the tone, this is here to sell more paper, he’s living life under socialism, he’s rich, people who are wanting to be Stephen King, writing novels, 7 sentences in 7 minutes, they’re wrong, you have to fill a certain number of pages, you have to have a cover, self-identify as a writer, not a real person, a class of people who aspire, doing a disservice by trying to make shorter or longer, when TV shows are about an hour are not confined by a hard number, when not helpful to the story it shouldn’t be followed, longer is better, big fat fantasy novel, wanted to live in that would, what Paul would say, room to breathe, he goes by instinct, develop a philosophy, make an argument, give me an example Will/Paul, favourite really long book Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh, doorstop books, a person’s whole life, a big Russian novel, wheels within wheels, Dune by Frank Herbert, a lot of plot, long for the period, every sequel by other hands, an important density in there, it isn’t room to breathe, it’s long because it has a lot in it, the Baroque Cycle, characters, packed with ideas, denser, despite being that long, the origins of capitalism, money, the scientific revolution, abolitionism, Anathem, Player Of Games, people who love Culture, don’t need Dune Messiah, bring Duncan Idaho back, that’s stuff happening, the guy has no name, the servant has no name, the lady who it is about has no name, ideas can’t exist in characterization, apple show A Man In Full by Tom Wolfe, an idea in it, military SF is more about gun polishing, ideas are central, fully explored in a short amount of space, the writing quality is less important than the idea explanation, the density, how many books I could read in the time I am reading this book, like Evan with women, build up the body count, women are the opposite of ideas, the people who like Dune too much, being immersed in the world, gets your juices excited, he isn’t heavy on ideas, The Colorado Kid, Mike suggested we do The Flitcraft Parable, a scene in The Maltese Falcon, chapter 7, like a fist when you open your hand, when processing it to consider it, Eric S. Rabkin, a really solid book, 196 pages, didn’t need to by 700 pages, Sam Spade is having sex with Archer’s wife, he’s one of the suspects, mysteries are an interesting parallel to science fiction, exploring our reality, in his rambling short book about the Flitcraft Parable, the length is appropriate to the idea, From A Buick 8, complain about his endings, life just sort of goes on, sets up characters as dominoes, eucatastrophes, shinings, the house forgot about its own boiler, not servicing fans?, intimate relationship with his fans, hurried to finish the Dark Tower, an old woman writing him, shitlibbery caused by a desire to please his audience?, Joyce Carol Oates, not normal for people to be liberals in our society, fucking suffer, can’t have a house, can’t have a wife, people are suffering, his fans are not all boomers, an Xer, Marissa likes him, it doesn’t define him, a 70s vibe, he feels the need to be relevant, comes off awkwardly, the Bachman book that was in a drawer, counter-culture vibes, hippie commune vs. the nazis, so not relevant, this old black lady, just show up, talk to the fascists, eucatastrophe happens, they’re mean and short, they have an idea and the character dies, The Running Man, Roadwork, Rage, The Long Walk, weary, just life, this oppressive thing the state is doing to them, questioning the purpose of life and why we’re here, droppin’ dead, a metaphor for life, an oppresive state, about school, the military and conscription, Carrie is nice and short, The Dead Zone, Firestarter on the backburner, in the zeitgeist, boomerness, what does Joyce Carol Oates represent in the zeitgeist, irrelevant Princeton professor, middle age guy, Killdozer, Marvin Heemeyer, Stephen King when still drinking, Thinner, gypsy curse seems silly, experimental in the 90s, the idea idea idea thing, one series, very meta, not like Hunger Games, a fast reader vs. a slow reader, you have to be in the right headspace, The Alleyman by Philip Jose Farmer, COVID doesn’t help, two boosters once, don’t accept injections unless literally dying, flu vaccine, now is the time to do Jesse’s epistemology, he’s a skeptic, have a police incident happen to you, it’s about that for everything, Sextus Empiricus, sense impressions, what’s a heap, suspend judgement, a lot of baby words, retweet a lot of far right things, show me one, nothing, heterodox, Jackson Hinkle, 1776 revolution, liberating Canada, absurdity, already captured, no need to invade, shampoo, how many of the words on the ingredients list can you pronounce, syllables, sodium lauryl sulphate, if your shampoo has more than syllables your children will have autism, putting all this shit in u, why do people do this?, a little discourteous, we know how long people have been smoking, spike it, most people who smoke don’t get lung cancer, that’s the weird part, a Philip K. Dick story, body parts you need to replace, if you can’t pronounce it why are you getting it in your body, there’s a lot of things I can’t pronounce, cancer too, NaCl (sodium chloride), end up in a whole bunch of cults you don’t know you’re in, dem vs. republican a cult, tribal thing, partisanship, demented tribal leader vs. demented cult leader, more cult like, Biden is in control, obviously he is not in control, reading the parts he’s not supposed to read, just defer to better him than Trump, against team bad, you should be against things that are bad, some sort of use for some shampoo, how an average consumer can know, a silly test, properly fund an independent agency that can check, it’s been corrupted, we’re left with the label, the Food and Drug administration is corrupt, Plato, you have feet, you don’t have the document in front of you, the documents exist, evidence all around you, assume corruption is the default, moms abuse, that doesn’t get us anywhere, there’s a mom over there, she’s doing, the shampoo supply is not safe, the stuff injected into your body, you have to buy food, flu shots, they don’t work, they’re full of chemicals, mercury, a chemical, salt is fine, know what the words mean, reading labels, margarine is not human food, lubricate objects, define mayonnaise, chlorine, basic chemistry, who put this shit together, something for sale, preservatives, calcium propionate, water that comes out of the faucet, no industry, there’s nothing, coast mountains, metal pipes (not lead), perfectly good to drink, bottled water full of plastic, advertised to, there water is terrible, the water in Taiwan, boiled water and bottled water, water dispenser, Coca Cola, drink the tap water, water are the ingredients, do what their parents do, who you probably assume are corrupt, maybe his graduate research, follow all his footnotes, bit the bullet, you could question everything, reasonable suspicion aroused, start questioning, bad puppy, cook that puppy, shot that puppy in an ethical manner, we all have to give up our inquiry, big flashing warning signs, recreate all these experiments home, this tub margarine has been sitting in my fridge since 1981, it doesn’t rot, food rots, alcohol is a poison, designed to kill things, sugar doesn’t rot, this is an industrial lubricant sold to us as a replacement for butter, seed oils and vegetable oils, a food product, you can eat industrial lubricant, your mom gave you butter and it seemed good to you, butter is really good for you, you need fat to live, asparagus fats, is this important, she makes a good point here, anything that is not super old, animals, see if they’ll eat it, when set of grandparents, switched to butter, poison that’s for sale, not human food, the coal butter, that’s what shit is, carnauba wax, employed in food grade polish, making food out of it, see you on twitter.

It Wouldn't Work Because by Jesse

Posted by Jesse Willis