The SFFaudio Podcast #712 – READALONG: Strawberry Spring by Stephen King

 

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #706 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Marissa VU, and Evan Lampe talk about Strawberry Spring by Stephen King

Talked about on today’s show:
Ubris, Fall 1968, pornography magazines, men’s magazines, set in the 70s, the audio drama, the audiobook is 24 minutes, seeds, the ads are horrendous, iheartradio, the style of the audio soundscape, music and soundbed all the time, phones are constantly ringing, all the standard audio drama stuff, stressful, a traumatizing podcast experience, ads would wreck your life, crawling to more podcasts, random jump in ads, worth my time, we will never put an adskipper into my podcast, we are the manufacturer of televisions that won’t make a mute button, very obtrusive short ads, there’s so many good podcasts, of these 20 great podcasts, who has the time?, how stories are put together, one big ad-free file, the spiking pain sound, they destroyed their own artwork, network deal, I Hate Ads Network, jumping back and forth in time, very linear, takes place over the course of an evening, describing the landscape as he walks, their favourite, the worst thing by Stephen King, not his best serial killer story, really good at the short stories, sharper work, Night Shift, journeyman, 20 stories, the stuff that didn’t make the cut, picked for a feel, an E.C. Comics kind of vibe, the Cryptkeeper, really pulpy and fun, the Night Shift narration, Graveyard Shift, rats have evolved in the sub-basement, having so much fun, The Man Who Loved Flowers, Boogeyman, ambiguous ending, The Good Marriage, Full Dark, No Stars, Night Surf, hanging out on the beach, they sacrifice a guy, this is well written, reading to enjoy or reading for a podcast, The Mangler, Trucks, Lawnmower Man, Children Of The Corn, 1975, 1968, a little subtle point, a re-write, the Cavalier publication, set in the 1970s after 8 to 10 years, recalling the events at a campus in the 1960s, Ubris bud, Stephen King is so collectible, we’re seeing his gloss on his original story, similar in plot to Alfred Bester’s Fondly Fahrenheit (in reverse), every time it gets to hot, smelling the sea through the sewer, wife abuser, car accident in the fog, traumatized, fog in a Stephen King story, obsession with fog, who doesn’t have an obsession with fog, All The Myriad Ways by Larry Niven, changing the narrator, like a werewolf story, a phrase, Cycle Of The Werewolf, the answer is always yes, Bernie Wrightson art, showcase, the order, the plot, the crippled boy being the hero, very King, a disabled child, an interesting idea, Silver Bullet (1985), Creepshow Stephen King, let’s get together, William Wilson by Edgar Allan Poe, it’s not me, early Stephen King, it doesn’t feel awesome, so short, without comparing the two texts, we’re never going to see this in a collection, a picture of Stephen King holding a shotgun, Study Dammit, insane hippie with a shotgun, Stephen King of today, that wildness that’s inside him, a good story, polished later King, a proposal for a column, the campus newspaper, rejected along with a request for a date, the ending is clearly forecast, the amazing last line, Campus Life, Hearts In Atlantis, blow their scholarships playing hearts all the time, I Know What You Need, someone who shines, an incel stories, to manipulate a woman, mismatched socks, doesn’t take care of himself, he knows what she needs, Everything’s Eventual, 1997, so simple, why is it springheeled jack?, 1819, 1830s, mass hysteria, urban legend, looking in the wrong direction, making a folk tale out of the murderer, expecting someone to jump out, expecting more jumping, prodigous feats of jumping, seven league boots, The Strange Affair Of Spring Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder, Richard Burton and Algernon Swinburne, a time traveler, The Time Traveler’s Wife, the deliciousness of enjoying, Springheeled jack research, 1838, leaf springs vs. coil springs, he looks like the devil, horns, fingernails, a cape, a moral reinforcement, a laser of evilness, a free spirit, damn the consequences, Indian Summer, Halloween, how to do Halloween, unlike Christmas, wassailing songs, Halloween is done by children, hopscotch, a thing that kids do, the Spring Jack, a license to be wild, Jack the Ripper, Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub, Wisconsin, no other suspects, fangs, description of the first girl who dies, a weird contradictory mix, a serial where we’ve forgot, the added material makes it confusing, most stories are at least 40 minutes or an hour, more characters (suspects), yes, she was at the next table, she wore granny glasses and had a good figure, most promiscuous girl on campus, ugly but cute, it was strawberry spring, the temperature 480 degrees deliciously Fahrenheit, steal from Alfred Bester, a masterpiece for the ages, when you compare them, this is good, how do you make your game so much more amazing, the Quentin Tarantino knock off, the feet, a good story for a young writer, that’s good writing, a lot of adverbs, Gale = wind, a rabbit’s foot key-chain he pounced, reading it charitably, the narrator is playing a game with us (the reader), my wife is upset, that lovely creeping fog, the lovely shadows without, such an ugly word “trunk”, I think so too, he’s been caught, a good interpretation, his dad hit his mom, more concrete, we see dudes like that in the world, jilted, bear re-reading, a subversive reading, expectation, drawn from life, an accidental Pickman’s Model, the SDS, Students for a Democratic Society, a breakaway, repeats, animal sciences, to protest the war, ha ha, the cryptic note, the campus right-wingers, outside agitators, Unlikely Fame: Poor People Who Made A Difference by David Wagner, heavily involved, fractured after the 1968 Democratic convention, civil rights groups, SCLC, breaking up or broken up?, more radical voices, civil rights groups, similar in strategy, confrontational, black power organizations, more northern and urban, student movements, Maoist groups, Democratic Socialists, how are we going to talk about this, talking politics, its all over this story, the reason people are reading it, an old Jack London story, used as a study text, used in English classes, a big clamour for it, Reading, Short And Deep, a knock-on effect, or a long tail, this doesn’t suck!, why Stephen King’s so great, he’s their gateway drug, hooking people into reading, substantial, light, The Shining, I can’t believe how good the writing is, so much electricity, come look at me, out on the balcony at 2am, the complete experience, you get lost in it, the worst is totally good, what do you make of the politics, a teaching university, the animal sciences parking lot, veterinary school, New Sharon teacher’s college, agricultural science is for crops, livestock, for farmers, how to solve problems with your livestock, raising of things to be slaughtered, for purposes of slaughtering, she wasn’t an animal sciences student, all good stuff, when night came, moving silent and white, the fog is spring jack, slow as cigarette smoke, out of joint, strange, magical, The Grinder, hard clear starriness, ancient gutters, you half expected to see Frodo or Sam, a druid circle, a fairy rings, enjoying a Tolkien experience, pastoral, Gollum’s there too, a bear, a wildcat, nature thinks your food too, super-obvious, a lack of other characters, how rather than if, when we jump to 1971, obviously he’s the killer, in the photo, oh is he the killer?, as if he was there, her eyes were sparkling, students who haven’t read a lot of Stephen King, stories can do this?!, the story didn’t need the narrator to be the murderer, cycles, nostalgia for college, fog really fucks up people and makes people murder each other, correlation but no mechanism, just an incel, he has a wife at the end, incels can have wives too, don’t talk to me right now I’m in an incel fog, other bodies, leaving a trail, worried about his wife, A Good Marriage, a box of 80 drivers licenses, the new Dexter TV show, exactly the same stuff, upstate New York, collecting of souvenirs, the story is the souvenir, listening to everybody’s rumours, “hi” extra loud, the monster behind the face, this is the guy who is very worried about gun violence, self-canceled [Rage], he’s got this monster inside him, how do you do such horrible stories, I like scaring myself, I just like being scared, she humiliated me, I could kill her, no no the fog the fog, romancing it, that Joe Rogan clip about Stephen King, full of these demons (drugs and alcohol and hostility to his family), recent Stephen King, Richard Bachman is under the surface of a lot of Stephen King’s works, Revival, Jesse’s never read The Shining, triggered Marissa, the second half of his career, Dreamcatcher, Doll’s House, pure book, the short films for Strawberry Spring, pacing timing, Stephen King’s saturation point, two or four or five television shows, let’s just do The Shining by itself, Stanley Kubrick, meat enough on these potatoes, opportunity to correct that defect, a college course on American Horror.

Study, Dammit!

Posted by Jesse WillisBecome a Patron!

Reading, Short And Deep #281 – The Two Kings And The Two Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges

Podcast

Reading, Short And DeepReading, Short And Deep #281

Eric S. Rabkin and Jesse Willis discuss The Two Kings And The Two Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges

Here’s a link to a PDF of the story.

The Two Kings And The Two Labyrinths was first published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, September 1955.

Posted by Scott D. Danielson Become a Patron!

The SFFaudio Podcast #147 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Pickman’s Model by H.P. Lovecraft

Podcast

H.P. Lovecraft's Pickman's Model
The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #147 – Pickman’s Model by H.P. Lovecraft, read by Mr Jim Moon. This is a complete and unabridged reading of the short story (21 Minutes) followed by a discussion of it by Jesse, Tamahome, Mr Jim Moon, Wayne June and Mirko Stauch. Here’s the ETEXT.

Talked about on today’s show:
S.t.a.u.c.h., comic book explosion sounds, “thwip”, Pickman’s Model by H.P. Lovecraft, Hypnobobs Podcast, Hypnogoria.com, Jim Moon’s audio essay about ghouls, R. Chetwynd-Hayes, Amicus Press, Beyond The Grave, The Monster Club, The H.P. Podcraft Podcast, The Tomb, The Call Of Cthulhu, The Crawling Chaos, The Music Of Erich Zann, The Festival, nobody wants to talk about art, Neonomicon, Pickman’s Necrotica, Night Of The Living Dead, Richard Burton, the German audio drama adaptation, The Thing On The Doorstep (annotated by S.T. Joshi), I Am Providence: The Life And Times Of H.P. Lovecraft, The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward, Robert E. Howard, Omar Epps, House, M.D., “no nordic man”, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, lead-lined coffins, a slurry of sauce, “the lesson”, “subway accident”, The Dream Quest Of Unknown Kadath, Bradford Dillman, “for procreational purposes”, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Unnameable, Gustav Dore’s illustrations for Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, the power of art, Supernatural Horror In Literature, Aristotle’s Poetics, Algernon Blackwood, YogSothoth.com, What The Moon Brings, a ghoulish sense of humor, Robert Bloch, Clark Ashton Smith, eldritchdark.com, Out Of Space And Time, Cotton Mather, spectral evidence, the original waterboarding, The Horror At Red Hook, He, Audio Realms, The Mountains Of Madness, Through The Gates Of The Silver Key, The Statement Of Randolph Carter, two one sided conversations, what would Lovecraft write today?, The Lovecraft Chronicles by Peter Cannon, Lovecraft’s racism, Mr. Nigger Man (Lovecraft’s cat), racist paint colours, WWII, xenophobia, the strange and the stranger, Samuel Loveman, mythologizing the author, Buck Rogers, Doc Savage, Poe himself is the star of The Raven, laughing in horror, the Night Gallery paintings, Hannes Bok, a wolf with a mullet, a modern adaptation, The Rats In The Walls, if a story can be spoiled it’s probably not worth reading (or re-reading), Tam would have dropped his shit, Joanna Russ, Cthulhu 2000, Poe wrote his wife to death, Beyond The Wall Of Sleep, The Crawling Chaos, “psychedelically cosmic”, Jim Moon’s Necronomicon woodcuts, 16th century Pickman,

Pickman's Model - as adapted for Tower Of Shadows #9

Pickman's Model - original Weird Tales illustration

Pickman painting #1

Pickman painting #2

Pickman painting #3

Pickman painting #4

Pickman painting #5

Pickman painting #6

Pickman painting #6 DETAIL

Hannes Bok illustration of Pickman's Model

Pickman's Model - adapted for Skull Comics, No.4, (1972) by Herb Arnold

Pickman's Model by H.P. Lovecraft

Pickman's Model - iIllustrated by David Prosser (1965)

Mitch Jenkins - Ghoul photo

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #102

Podcast

The SFFaudio PodcastThe SFFaudio Podcast #102 – Scott, Jesse and Tamahome talk about new audiobook, book, and comic book releases.

Talked about on today’s show:
The Infinite Worlds Of H.G. Wells, Sherlock Holmes, Memory by Donald E. Westlake, Hard Case Crime, A Good Story Is Hard To Find, nihilism, SFSignal’s 122 books that bring Scott to tears, All The Lives He Led by Frederik Pohl (a semi-nihilistic novel), Yellowstone, “half minus negative zero”, A Matter Of Time by Glen Cook, The Black Company, Abel One by Ben Bova, blood and flesh and shirtless, Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente, BoingBoing, Russian Ark, Enigmatic Plot vs. Enigmatic Pilot, Enclave (aka Razorland) by Ann Aguirre, The Maze Runner by James Dashner, The Scorch Trials, The Hunger Games, Hunt The Space Witch and Other Stories by Robert Silverberg, WWW: Wonder by Robert J. Sawyer, Starstruck, Blair Butler, “Geoff Boucher’s Los Angeles Times Hero Complex ‘Get Your Cape On’ pick of the week”, The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi, Macmillan Audio, Audible.com, Brilliance Audio, Warriors edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, Forever Bound by Joe Haldeman, Lawrence Block, O. Henry-ish, “I see no reason to buy through iTunes” (vs. Audible.com), Limitless (aka The Dark Fields) by Alan Glynn, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flowers For Algernon, Understand by Ted Chiang, acquiring a whole bag of pills, “smart people are neat”, Tantor Media, History Is Wrong by Erich von Däniken, Jesse becomes momentarily depressed, The Guns Of August by Barbara W. Tuchman, John Lee, the John Cleaver series, have world events have sped because of modern technology?, Libya, Tripoli, “The Graveyard Of Empires”, “from the halls of Montezuma to the shores Tripoli”, NPR, A History Of The World In Six Glasses by Tom Standage, beer, wine, spirits, tea, coffee, cola, the Today In Canadian History podcast, the Canadian Navy, I Don’t Want To Kill You by Dan Wells, I Am Not A Serial Killer, “normally I don’t do this”, Dexter, the Writing Excuses podcast, Homeward Bound by Harry Turtledove, alternate history, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, Grover Gardner, Eric S. Rabkin, George Orwell’s 1984, Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, William Dufris, binary fission, Tantor Media is very innovative in including ebooks with their audiobooks, we need a new demarcation to desperate urban fantasy romance from SF, “conspiracy and ignorance based books”, The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds, Tales From A Thousand Nights And The Night (aka 1,001 Nights!) translated by Richard Burton, The Thousand Nights And A Night is the first fix-up novel, Nostromo by Joseph Conrad, South America, Three Men In A Boat (To Say Nothing Of The Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome, To Say Nothing Of The Dog by Connie Willis, Have Spacesuit, Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein, Atlantis And Other Places by Harry Turtledove, Slave To Sensation shouldn’t be a science fiction novel, Orson Scott’s Card Intergalactic Medicine Show, Rejiggering The Thingamajig by Eric James Stone on Escape Pod #277, body-swapping, I Will Fear No Evil by Robert A. Heinlein, gender-swapping, For Us The Living: A Comedy Of Customs by Robert A. Heinlein, Heinlein’s old theme: “naked people talking to each other”, Heinlein likes to examine social preconceptions and social prejudices, “not a Heinlein classic but still classic Heinlein”, Eifelheim, Luke Burrage, Idiot America by Charles P. Pierce, George Washington riding a dinosaur, The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson, contemporary with Tolkien (rather than derivative of Tolkien), Michael Moorcock, Eric Birghteyes by H. Rider Haggard, Bronson Pinchot, The Plague Dogs by Richard Adams, anthropomorphic fiction, quasi-Science Fiction, quasi-Fantasy, Coyotes In The House by Elmore Leonard |READ OUR REVIEW|, The Call Of The Wild by Jack London, We Three by Grant Morrison, Transmetropolitain, Warren Ellis, Tama’s pet peeve in comics is silent panels, Audible Frontiers, The Death Of Grass by John Christopher, The Tripods, The Sam Gunn Omnibus, The Steel Remains, Cliffs Notes are now available as audiobooks, Brave New World, The Spiral Path by Lisa Paitz Spindler, Eat Prey Love by Kerrelyn Sparks, William Coon’s Eloquent Voice titles, Andre Norton’s The Time Traders, Gilgamesh The King by Robert Silverberg |READ OUR REVIEW|, Philip K. Dick, Henry James, Anton Chekov, Paul of Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth.com The Whisperer In Wax, wax cylinder tech, Embedded by Dan Abnett, SFSignal.com.

Posted by Jesse Willis